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Oral Answers to Questions
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
1. What his policy is on competition in the supply of superfast broadband services; and if he will make a statement.
The Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
Our aim is to ensure that we have as competitive a market for broadband as possible. That is why together with Ofcom we have taken a number of steps to ensure that the UK broadband market is one of the most vibrant and competitive in the world, including opening up BT’s ducts and poles to competitors and introducing new guidance on street works and micro-trenching.
Stephen Timms
So why are the Government, through the ill-judged Broadband Delivery UK exercise, recreating a taxpayer-funded monopoly for superfast broadband? Will the Secretary of State confirm that the number of firms on his framework has now fallen from three to two, and that all the deals so far have been with one of those companies, which stands to receive more than £1.5 billion? Is it any wonder that the European Commission is challenging the legality of what he is doing, or that Britain is lagging so badly behind on superfast broadband?
Mr Hunt
When the right hon. Gentleman’s party left office, we had one of the slowest broadband networks in Europe; we have put in place plans that will give us one of the fastest. His party had plans that would not have seen the roll-out of superfast broadband until 2017; we have brought that forward. We have also put in almost £1 billion of public money, so I think that our results have been pretty impressive.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
Wiltshire is one of the pilot areas for the roll-out of superfast broadband in England. Will increasing competition among broadband providers hasten its arrival? Despite the excellent efforts of the outstandingly good Conservative-controlled Wiltshire county council, none the less there have been some centrally based delays, so what can the Secretary of State do to assist in that pilot?
Mr Hunt
We are doing everything we can to reduce those delays, including seeking early clearance of state aid from Brussels, but we have put in place a competitive process that is led by local authorities, because we think that we will get the best results by putting them in the driving seat. That is why we have had a tremendous response, including from local authorities that, in almost every case, have agreed to match the money being put in by central Government, so in Wiltshire and throughout the country we will have an extremely good broadband network, if not the best in Europe.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
I welcome that response and hope the Secretary of State understands the eagerness in Wiltshire, south Gloucestershire and Swindon to proceed with their framework. Can he tell us anything about the timetable for reaching a resolution of the state aid issue with the European Commission?
Mr Hunt
I hope to meet Commissioner Almunia next week or, certainly, in the next few weeks to hasten that process as fast as possible, and we still very much hope that all local authorities will have signed their contracts by the end of this calendar year, so that the digging of trenches and the laying of fibre along poles can take place from the beginning of next year.
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
2. What recent progress he has made on his plans to ensure the UK has the best superfast broadband network in Europe.
Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)
6. What recent progress he has made on his plans to ensure the UK has the best superfast broadband network in Europe.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
7. What recent progress he has made on his plans to ensure the UK has the best superfast broadband network in Europe.
Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
13. What recent progress he has made on his plans to ensure the UK has the best superfast broadband network in Europe.
The Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
I have now approved 37 out of 43 local broadband plans—that is, almost 90% across the whole country—and nine are in procurement. A number of those are almost ready to begin delivery, and the other projects are being prepared for procurement with support from Broadband Delivery UK, which is also finalising details for the broadband delivery framework contract.
David T. C. Davies
May I congratulate the Minister on the progress that he is making on superfast broadband, but ask that this not be done at the expense of those living in remote rural areas, such as parts of Monmouthshire, who have yet to see any form of broadband whatsoever?
Mr Hunt
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and the whole purpose of the programme is to ensure that fast broadband speeds are available to everyone. Indeed, it is the people in the most remote areas who stand to gain the most in terms of preventing villages from being depopulated and helping people who are disabled to get their shopping done. There are all sorts of very important benefits, and I hope that the £57 million that we have allocated to Wales, which has been more than matched by the Welsh Government, will make that happen in Monmouthshire and throughout Wales.
Eric Ollerenshaw
Can the Minister confirm that when community-led schemes to bring superfast broadband to remote rural areas, such as Broadband for the Rural North in my constituency, initially raise their own funds, they will not then be discriminated against on access to future Government support?
Mr Hunt
We are specifically trying to set up a scheme so that, where people raise their own funds to solve broadband problems, it is possible to integrate that into the national network. Our objective is to enable as much local self-help work as possible, so I welcome my hon. Friend’s initiative and those taken by his constituents.
John Howell
Large parts of my constituency suffer from rural broadband poverty, but at an official level it is often masked because neighbouring Oxford has good broadband, and the level at which it is integrated is too great to show that granularity. What advice can my right hon. Friend give about making sure that those areas of rural broadband poverty in my constituency are recognised?
Mr Hunt
The comfort that I can give my hon. Friend is that our ambition, which is vastly higher than anything that we had from Labour, is that by 2015 90% of the country will have access to superfast broadband. However, it will not stop there, because we will have a plan in place for the other 10% which means that they will have a very good prospect of getting superfast broadband. In many cases—for example, in my own county of Surrey—plans are being put forward whereby there will be 100% access to superfast broadband by 2014. Good local authorities are thinking about the other 10% and making sure that they are not left behind, and we are doing everything we can to help them.
Andrea Leadsom
In my constituency we have lots of rural areas that are not going to be part of the superfast broadband roll-out. In one area in particular—in fact, it is where I happen to live—there is a large community of parishes where two thirds of people are home workers or involved in small businesses. What reassurance can my right hon. Friend give that we will be able to achieve access to the existing national infrastructure of fibre optic cabling to avoid having to reinstall new cables? In this area, there is a rural grouping who are trying to gain access to existing infrastructure and being denied that by private companies.
Mr Hunt
The best reassurance for the people who live near my hon. Friend is probably the fact that she lives there; I am sure that means that the issue will receive a lot of attention. People in remote areas who do not have access to good broadband are at the top of our minds. We are determined to put in place a structure that makes sure that even if they are not in the 90% covered by 2015, they will be covered very soon afterwards or we will have a structure that allows them to be covered within that framework.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
Developing the best possible communications network is one of the key priorities for Belfast city council and the local administration in Northern Ireland, and great progress has been made. May I urge the Secretary of State to support Belfast’s bid for greater funding for superfast broadband, which is an excellent way of attracting the greater economic growth and further direct investment that we need?
Mr Hunt
First, I should congratulate the right hon. Gentleman, because Northern Ireland has some of the best broadband in Europe already. He is absolutely right. One of the other big differences between this Government’s policies and those of the previous Government is that we are not stopping at having superfast broadband for the whole country but want our cities to have some of the best broadband in the world and to aspire to the speeds that can be found in Singapore, Seoul and other cities. I hope that Belfast will be among them.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
In the two years since this Government took office, they have not delivered 1 metre of extra fibre or one bit of extra bandwidth. BDUK is still sorting out its super-fragmented contracting process. Up and down the country, hundreds of thousands of people are denied decent broadband because the Government abandoned our universal broadband pledge. Does the Secretary of State deny that, under Labour, this year everyone would have had access to decent broadband to play their part in the innovation economy?
Mr Hunt
Let me remind the hon. Lady that when her party left office there was no money left. Quite how she thought that it was going to deliver universal access to broadband by 2012 when it left the country’s finances bust, I do not know. We took a plan that was clearly not going to work and instead put in place a plan that has much higher ambitions, with not only universal access to broadband but 90% access to superfast broadband and cities with ultrafast broadband—some of the fastest broadband in the world.
Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)
One of the alternative ways of making faster broadband available is through the roll-out of 4G mobile services, but has the Secretary of State seen the analysis by Freeview that suggests that over 2 million homes may have their digital television service interfered with as a result, and that the funds secured by the Government to counter that interference may not be anything like sufficient? Does he agree with that analysis, and what is he proposing to do about it?
Mr Hunt
I absolutely agree that the roll-out of 4G is another opportunity. One of the options proposed by Ofcom would mean 98% coverage of 4G, which would be extremely important in many of the rural areas about which hon. Friends are concerned. We have an ongoing consultation about the mitigation plans for people whose signals will be affected by these auctions. Ofcom has not told me that it has any concerns about the plans that are in place, but I will listen to it very carefully in that regard.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)
3. What recent discussions he has had on the future of local newspapers.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)
The Secretary of State specifically has had no recent discussions. However, I have taken part in a number of recent debates and events, including a Westminster Hall debate on 25 April, which was attended by no fewer than 50 colleagues, and a meeting with Johnston Press at the end of May, which 25 colleagues attended.
Jonathan Edwards
What discussions has the Minister had with colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government to extend the provisions of the Localism Act 2012 to include local newspapers as community assets? Under the terms of the Act, that would offer threatened newspapers a stay of execution while alternative ownership models were explored.
Mr Vaizey
I hear what the hon. Gentleman is saying. As he knows, the Department for Communities and Local Government has been successful in stopping local council newspapers competing with local newspapers, but local newspapers are private assets and I would be surprised if they could be registered as community assets under the right to buy. This is the first time I have heard this idea, however, and I will certainly let the Department for Communities and Local Government know that it is being proposed.
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
Will the Minister talk to our colleagues in the Department for Transport, who are now considering responses to consultation about transport adverts in local papers, to see whether his Department could support the presumption that public notices should be in local papers unless a clear majority of councillors and the public think that there is better way of reaching the public?
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
In recent years, 242 local papers have closed. Meanwhile, Ministers are throwing £40 million into local television, which will only add to the competition for advertising that local papers face. I know that Ministers have recently had some difficulty remembering all their conversations, but will the Minister tell us when they last discussed local television with News Corporation?
Mr Vaizey
I am not aware that we have had discussions with News Corporation, but I will certainly look at the Department’s records. Local television is certainly an opportunity for local media, and—[Interruption.] I will write to the hon. Lady about this; I thank the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) for that lesson in etiquette, which I shall take on board. Many local newspaper groups are interested in local television, and I think this is a potential opportunity for local newspapers.
John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
5. What arrangements he has put in place to recruit a new special adviser.
The Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
I recently appointed Guy Levin as my new special adviser, and he started this week.
John Mann
I thank the Secretary of State for that answer. Government special advisers are meeting as a group on a fairly regular basis, doubtless to get their instructions from 10 Downing street. Will the Secretary of State ensure that he receives a written report on those meetings, and that such reports are made public so that we can all see precisely what instructions 10 Downing street is giving to his and other special advisers?
Jim Sheridan (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)
Will this new special adviser be an additional cost to the taxpayer, or will he come from within the ranks of the Government?
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
8. What assessment he has made of the potential effects of advertising aimed at children on (a) childhood obesity and (b) children’s mental health.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)
No assessment has been made. The rules on advertising content standards are the responsibility of the independent regulators—the Advertising Standards Authority and Ofcom. It is for those regulators to assess the sort of material that is appropriate for different audiences.
Chris Ruane
Half the adverts aimed at children encourage them to gorge on junk food and become obese, while the other half extol the virtues of size zero. Is it any wonder that 20% of children suffer with mental illness? Will the Minister look at the example of Sweden, which has banned advertising aimed at the under-12s?
Mr Vaizey
Ofcom already has regulations in place to prevent the advertising of high fat, sugar and salt products in children’s programming. I understand that those regulations have had an effect, in that the exposure of young children to that kind of marketing has been reduced by between one third and a half.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for that reply. Do you feel that it is time for the relevant Health Minister and yourself to have a joint campaign to address—
Mr Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman is becoming a more experienced Member by the day. I ask him not to use the word “you”. Debates, including questions, go through the Chair. He is asking the Minister for a response. Perhaps he will complete his question. We look forward to it.
Jim Shannon
Thank you for that correction, Mr Speaker.
Would the Minister consider having a joint campaign between his Department and the Department of Health to ensure that the effect of advertising on children’s health is better addressed?
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
Has the Minister had an opportunity to look at the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation report that highlights that young people, in particular young women, have problems with image and participation in sport that are leading to higher levels of obesity? I realise that sport is not his area of expertise, but what can his Department do to address the issues raised in that important report and to ensure that more young people participate in sport?
Mr Vaizey
Sport is certainly not my area of expertise, in every sense of the word. One only has to look at me to understand that. However, I do possess a talent for watching sport. I can give the hon. Gentleman the good news that my colleague, the Minister for Sport, has read the report and is working with Sport England on its recommendations.
Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)
9. How many schools have registered for the Get Set programme; and if he will make a statement.
The Minister for Sport and the Olympics (Hugh Robertson)
Nearly 26,000 schools and colleges in the United Kingdom are registered with Get Set, which is 84% of those that are eligible. Of those, 18,763 have gone on to join the Get Set network, and of those, nearly 16,000 have qualified for a share of up to 175,000 free games tickets, which are being funded through a levy on corporate hospitality.
Stephen Lloyd
I thank the Minister for that answer. What resources will the Department make available to the schools that have signed up for the Get Set programme, and what incentives are in place to ensure a high level of participation from schools?
Hugh Robertson
The programme is run by the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, so it is providing the resources. The incentives to schools to sign up included the fact that the Olympics were coming here in any event and will be very big news this summer, and the free games tickets that I mentioned.
Tessa Jowell (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
The Get Set programme is inspiring young people across the country through the Olympic values of equality, respect, friendship, courage and excellence. Forty years ago, those values came under attack during the terrible massacre of nine Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich games. Yesterday, I wrote to you, Mr Speaker, requesting that we mark that tragedy in this House with a minute’s silence. Does the Minister agree that we should mark that tragic event, and will he undertake his own representations to you, Mr Speaker, on the matter?
Hugh Robertson
I thank the right hon. Lady for that question. Before I answer it, as this is the last DCMS questions before the Olympic games on 27 July, may I record all our thanks to her and to all parliamentarians across the House—a number of whom are sitting at the back of the Labour Benches—who have contributed to the delivery of the London Olympic and Paralympic games?
The right hon. Lady is absolutely right to draw attention to the tragic events in Munich 40 years ago. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is attending a commemoration event in the Guildhall during the games. I visited the Israeli Olympic committee some years ago when I was in opposition and am well aware of the importance of this matter to the state of Israel and to the Olympic movement. I will do everything that I can to ensure that it is marked in an appropriate fashion.
Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)
10. What progress he has made on encouraging more children to take part in competitive sport.
The Minister for Sport and the Olympics (Hugh Robertson)
Through the school games, we are encouraging all schools to offer their pupils the chance to play more competitive sport. The number of schools participating is now more than 13,500. Additionally, 64 county festivals of sport will take place this year, with more than 112,000 children taking part. We also had the inaugural national finals in May, where more than 1,600 of our best young athletes competed in and around the Olympic park. I know that as a great champion of sport in the county of Kent, my hon. Friend will be delighted that the Kent school games were launched on Tuesday night.
Hugh Robertson
Absolutely. This year’s school games were an unusually successful event, precisely because of the proximity of London’s Olympics. Thanks to the work of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, the finals were able to take place in the Olympic park, giving young athletes the chance to compete on the same stretch of track that the world’s best athletes will compete on in six weeks’ time. As I said, more than 1,600 children had that opportunity.
Mr Gerry Sutcliffe (Bradford South) (Lab)
When we left office, 90% of children were doing at least two hours of sport a week, and some were doing a lot more. Does the Minister know what the current figure is?
Hugh Robertson
Yes I do, because the Secretary of State for Education has helpfully—unlike under the previous Administration, as the hon. Gentleman draws that comparison—made physical education one of only four core parts of the school curriculum, so everybody will at last be doing it. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman, as a great supporter of sport, will support that.
Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)
Football remains a very popular competitive sport for people of all ages. Does the Minister share my concern about the loss in the High Court of HMRC’s case against the football creditors rule, and will he discuss with his ministerial colleagues whether the Government may legislate to get rid of that rule, for which even the chairman of the Football League has said he cannot find any moral justification?
Hugh Robertson
One of the interesting things that came out of the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport’s report on football governance, in which my hon. Friend played a key part, was that almost nobody responsible for football at any level tried to defend the football creditors rule. I know that he has a private Member’s Bill to abolish it. I believe that HMRC is contemplating an appeal against the decision, and clearly we want to wait and see how that plays out, but I believe it is a rule that has had its day.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
One problem is that once young people reach the age of 16 and leave school, they tend to drop out of sport in great numbers. Many people aged 16-plus go on to college and university. What discussions has the Minister had with his colleagues in the Department for Education about how we can address the problem and encourage more and more young people to continue with some sort of sporting activity?
Hugh Robertson
The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. Indeed, if we look back over the past 20 years or so, we see that the one thing that nobody has really managed to address has been post-school dropout. We are trying a new approach via the new youth sport strategy, which will be the key component of the next round of whole-sport plans. I very much hope that by linking schools much better to community clubs and putting people into colleges of higher education, which have not been well covered, we will tackle the problem in the next cycle.
Mr Speaker
Order. There is no hurry. I have seen the hon. Gentleman, but I am saving him up for his own question, which we will reach in due course.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister will know that young people are inspired to get into sport by top sportspeople. Does he share my concern about what happened yesterday with the bidding for the Premier League broadcast rights? The empire of people who some of us do not think are fit and proper to have senior positions in the media has yet again got the bulk of Premier League matches.
Hugh Robertson
That is an interesting point, but it is a very complex matter. One of the very first things that I did as a new Minister was to secure an agreement from all UK sport governing bodies, to which the Premier League voluntarily signed up, to invest 30% of their UK broadcast income into the grass roots. If the league makes more money, that means more money for the grass roots, which we should support. The interesting point about yesterday’s announcement was the arrival for the first time of BT as a partner. I hope that that produces more competitive tension in the market.
Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
14. What plans he has for the post of Registrar of the Public Lending Right.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)
As the hon. Gentleman knows, we are consulting on the future of the Registrar of the Public Lending Right. Our proposed transfer of the function of the registrar, which currently exists as a stand-alone public body, would contribute to the Government’s commitment to simplifying the public bodies landscape and at the same time maintain and ensure the effective, efficient and impartial administration of the PLR scheme.
Tom Blenkinsop
I thank the Minister, but does he agree with the second children’s laureate, Anne Fine, that the proposed reorganisation of the registrar is based purely on ideology and will cost the taxpayer more money than it saves?
James Wharton (Stockton South) (Con)
I thank the Minister for the work he has done with me in representing my constituents who work at the PLR, which is in my constituency. Will he confirm that the Government’s preferred option for the reorganisation of the PLR is one that will mean that jobs are not transferred from Teesside to London?
Mr Vaizey
My hon. Friend has been absolutely assiduous in representing the concerns of the people who work at the PLR in conversations with me and in writing to me. That stands testament to the active work of a great constituency MP. It is certainly part of our preferred option to ensure that jobs remain in the north and do not transfer to London.
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)
It is now increasingly accepted that part of the long-term future of book lending lies in e-books being available in all libraries. In order for our libraries to move into the 21st century, the tensions between the public lending rights scheme and e-books must be addressed. Will the Minister therefore tell the House why he has not moved to implement the extension of the public lending right to e-books, as mandated in section 43 of the Digital Economy Act 2010?
Mr Vaizey
Part of the problem with e-books is that most publishers do not want e-books lent in libraries. I have had discussions with publishers on that on at least two occasions, and would happily discuss it jointly with publishers and the hon. Gentleman so he can hear their views first hand.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
15. What recent discussions he has had on nominating a new sport for the next Olympics.
The Minister for Sport and the Olympics (Hugh Robertson)
This is a matter for the International Olympic Committee, but I am aware of the ambitions of a number of sports. London 2012 will feature 26 sports in its programme. That will rise to 28 for Rio 2016, when golf and rugby sevens are added to the mix. Decisions about the 2020 summer games will be taken by the IOC in 2013.
Richard Graham
The Minister knows of one sport that is played by more than half a million people in this country and many millions worldwide, on more than 50,000 courts, and in which the current men’s world champion is from this country: squash. Does he agree that the case for squash is strong and that it should be supported as much as possible? Will he meet me, UK Sport and the World Squash Federation, which is headquartered here in London? Lastly, will he, and indeed you, Mr Speaker, agree to join a team that I intend to put together—a Lords and Commons squash team—to play squash on world squash day in October this year to support the bid?
Mr Speaker
We all look forward to the hon. Gentleman’s upcoming Adjournment debate on these matters—although some people might think he has already had it.
Hugh Robertson
I was heartily relieved that my hon. Friend identified the sport at the end of his question, before I had what is known as a Caborn moment. The simple answer to his question is that I am well aware of the ambitions of squash, and indeed of lacrosse, netball and a number of other worthy sports. [Interruption.] That list could go on for ever. The decision is for the IOC, but I will do everything I can to promote those British sports in which, as my hon. Friend correctly says, we would have a good chance of winning a medal.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
The Minister is aware that rugby sevens will be a new sport in the 2016 Olympics. Given the tensions about Team GB in football, are he and the UK Government discussing with devolved Ministers how to get over the thorny issue of having a UK rugby sevens team?
Hugh Robertson
To be honest, football is a bit of a one-off in that respect; there is absolutely no problem with GB teams in the other 25 sports. Rugby is in the process of assembling the necessary GB structures to support a team, in just the same way as golf is. I hope nobody stands in front of the ability of UK athletes to compete in an Olympic games for political reasons.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) asked about the inclusion of a new sport, but some sports have been squeezed out of the Olympics. Does my hon. Friend the Minister agree that the French should have a chance to upgrade their silver medal at cricket, which they have held for the past 100 years, and that we should bring Twenty20 cricket into the Olympics?
Hugh Robertson
That campaign is often run mainly by Australians—or used to be, until they slipped down the test rankings. Personally, I think it is important that for any sport trying to join the Olympic mix it should be the height of an athlete’s career to win a gold medal. I think that that is the case for rugby sevens, but I would need persuading that the height of an international cricketer’s career would be to win an Olympic gold medal, rather than an International Cricket Council world cup.
Jim McGovern (Dundee West) (Lab)
It has been brought to my attention that one of Britain’s greatest ever Olympians, Dick McTaggart, who was born and brought up just down the road from me in Dundee, who won a boxing gold medal in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and a bronze medal in Rome in 1960, and who also competed in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, has been told that if he wishes to attend the London Olympics he should put his name in a lottery, and that if he is lucky enough to have his name drawn out, he could buy a ticket for £250—and that might not even be for boxing; it might be for synchronised swimming. Will the Minister use his good offices to ensure that Mr McTaggart is invited as a VIP guest to the London Olympics?
Hugh Robertson
I am not sure how Mr McTaggart has managed to get himself into that situation. There are two things he ought to do almost straightaway. First, he should go to the national governing body for boxing in Great Britain, whose president is the former Sports Minister—that would be a very good start. If that fails, however, he should approach the Olympians organisation run by the British Olympic Association, which exists precisely to ensure that former members of the Olympic family can attend events.
Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
With permission, I would like to make a statement, as these are the last Culture, Media and Sport questions before the London 2012 games.
I would like to take this opportunity to express the Government’s thanks to everyone involved in the organisation of this tremendous project and, on behalf of the whole House, to wish Team GB the very best of luck in getting a record haul of medals this summer. With 43 days to go until the opening ceremony, the project is in a strong position. We have shown beyond doubt that Britain can deliver big construction projects on time and to budget, and yesterday my hon. Friend the Minister for Sport and the Olympics announced that there was still nearly £500 million in the contingency fund. We can also be proud of the legacy that the games will leave, including the transformation of east London, the regeneration of our tourism industry and thousands more children taking part in Olympic sport through the school games. Some 2.7 million people have already lined the streets to see the torch, but we can be confident that the best is yet to come.
Ian Lucas
Freeview has been a hugely successful way of delivering free-to-air digital television services, but its future is threatened by the upcoming 4G auction. Will the Minister look at the £180 million that the Government have set aside to assist those whose signal is affected, even though Sky will not like it?
Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)
T2. Following on from the questions about superfast broadband, I wonder whether my right hon. Friend would be prepared to meet the Broadband for the Rural North community group in my constituency or visit the Lancashire uplands, taste the air there and see what extra we can do to maintain the momentum of this vital project.
Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)
Last year, the Secretary of State promised a Green Paper to set out his strategy for the creative and technology industries. These industries are vital for the future of the British economy, and it is his job to back them up. Last week, the Green Paper was scrapped, and after a whole year of consultation and anticipation, there is now disarray. Is that because it has been vetoed by Google, or is he a lame duck Secretary of State who cannot stand up for the industry?
Mr Hunt
I am incredibly proud of our progress on the creative industries in the past two years, including through tax credits for the video games industry, the animation industry and high-end television production, and through putting in place plans for the best superfast broadband network in Europe. That is vastly more than anything that the right hon. and learned Lady’s Government achieved. We will continue with the legislative programme to ensure that Parliament passes a communications Bill before the end of the Session to give our creative and digital industries the best possible competitive future.
Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
T4. Many parents across the country are very concerned about the content of sex and relationships educational videos that are being shown to children as young as six and which have had no external rating whatever—in fact, they are being sold for profit by organisations. Will the Minister consider requiring the rating of such videos by the British Board of Film Classification?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)
I certainly share my hon. Friend’s concerns. As a result of the point she has made, I will arrange to meet the British Board of Film Classification to discuss the issue, and she would be welcome to attend.
Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)
T3. Alex Salmond told the Leveson inquiry yesterday that he secretly backed the BSkyB bid because of the positive effect it would have on employment in Scotland, yet at the same time his now Employment Minister was signing a motion against the bid, while his MPs in Westminster were also voting against it. Can the Secretary of State tell us whether News Corp gave any indication of what the implications of the bid would be for employment in Scotland?
Karen Lumley (Redditch) (Con)
T5. With the entire country getting into the Olympic spirit thanks to the torch relay, which passes through Redditch in a couple of weeks, will my hon. Friend look into the fact that no local residents from Redditch will be carrying the torch?
The Minister for Sport and the Olympics (Hugh Robertson)
The best answer to that would be for my hon. Friend to take the issue up with the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, which is responsible for nominating people. She should just be aware that a number of people have been nominated by the sponsors. However, places have gone to local people, so she may find them hidden in the sponsors’ allocations.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
T7. Earlier, the Secretary of State said in reply to one of my hon. Friends that there was no money left to expand broadband when he came into office. Where did he get the money, then?
Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)
T6. Further to the answer given to the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) about the cost to households receiving free-to-view television and the impact of 4G broadband, will the Secretary of State look again at helping householders with the cost of installing professional filters to deal with the problem?
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
Has the Secretary of State found time to explain the ministerial code of conduct to his new special adviser, and if so, when?
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
T9. Will the Minister join me in congratulating the Olympic silver and gold medallists Ann Brightwell—formerly Ann Packer—and her husband, Councillor Robbie Brightwell, on the impressive array of sporting activities, involving all ages, that they are inspiring under the banner of Team Congleton? Does he agree that just that kind of local leadership is key to achieving the lasting Olympic legacy of increased sports participation of all ages?
Hugh Robertson
I would be very happy to do that. Will my hon. Friend please send my congratulations to them both?
Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)
Two weeks ago, we had the honour of welcoming the Olympic torch to Bolton West. It was a wonderful event and the community turned out in force. However, I have been concerned to hear rumours and press reports that some of the community champions selected to carry the torch have been replaced by people who have paid to carry it. Does the Minister know whether those rumours are true, and will he be investigating?
Hugh Robertson
I have seen absolutely no evidence that that is the case. The majority of torch bearers are nominated by LOCOG, which has specifically gone out looking for community champions with the sponsors, which is where quite a lot of the controversy lies. LOCOG also wrote to the sponsors, discouraging them from allowing executives to run with the torch and encouraging them to find as many local champions as possible.
Mr Don Foster (Bath) (LD)
Will lottery good causes be among the beneficiaries of any underspend in the Olympic budget?
Hugh Robertson
I think the key thing is to deliver the underspend first; then we will work out how to spend it.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Following the question from the right hon. Member for Bath (Mr Foster), can the Minister guarantee and assure the charities and good causes that have lost out to the Olympics that they will get the contingency underspend? Surely they deserve it, and it should not go back to the black hole of the Treasury.
Hugh Robertson
Under an agreement concluded by the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Tessa Jowell), as soon as the land sales are completed on the park, the lottery will be repaid; indeed, that memorandum of understanding was improved when the transfer was made from the old Olympic Park Legacy Company to the new London Legacy Development Corporation. As I say, I do not want to get into discussions about how we might spend a putative underspend until we have actually delivered it. The key thing is to make sure we deliver these games on time and substantially under budget.
Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
The Sports Minister will be aware that one of the factors in keeping girls involved in sport is the distinct lack of coverage in our national and local newspapers. Will he consider holding a round-table discussion with national and local media organisations to address that issue in the long term?
Hugh Robertson
One of the joys of my job is that I end up having round-table discussions with the media on a pretty regular basis—we did five hours of it yesterday. The great thing provided by the Olympics, above almost any other sports event I can think of, is the opportunity to promote the equality of sport. In Team GB, some of the most exciting prospects are our female sportswomen. I wish them all the very best and hope that they will drive the sort of improvement that my hon. Friend seeks.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
Does the Secretary of State accept that a reduction in VAT for hotel accommodation and tourist attractions would deliver a huge boost to jobs and tourism in places such as Brighton and Hove, would bring us into line with the rest of the EU, most of which has much lower VAT on hotels and visitor attractions, and would deliver a net benefit to the Treasury? What’s not to like?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (John Penrose)
The industry is making this case very strongly to the Treasury and it is clearly an issue for the Treasury to respond to. What is causing problems at the moment is that the industry is promising higher returns, as the hon. Lady rightly points out, but the Treasury gets an awful lot of such promises from a whole variety of different parts of the economy and it would need some positive proof before it would be willing to engage on such an issue.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
2. What progress he has made on the implementation of the Wright proposals on House of Commons reform in the last 12 months.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)
This Government have successfully implemented recommendations to introduce elections to Select Committee membership, established a Backbench Business Committee and, within the last 12 months, introduced an e-petition system to achieve a greater degree of public participation. The majority of the remaining recommendations of the Wright Committee are a matter for the House rather than the Government.
Paul Flynn
Can we improve the choreography of the parliamentary week by doing what the Wright proposals suggested—moving Prime Minister’s Question Time to Thursdays, allowing Wednesdays to be used for the increasingly important Back-Bench business debates?
Mr Heath
As the hon. Gentleman probably knows, the Procedure Committee is now completing and in the very late stages of production of a report on the parliamentary calendar. We would prefer to wait and see what suggestions the Procedure Committee makes rather than taking a unilateral view on what is best for the House.
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
What is the Government’s analysis of the effect of adopting the recommendations in the Wright Committee report? I understand that the creation of the Backbench Business Committee was blocked by the previous Government.
Mr Heath
It was indeed; there was no progress whatever under the previous Government on this matter. I am very proud of the fact that we moved quickly to establish the Backbench Business Committee. Speaking personally, I think it has been a great success. It is something that the House should have done some time ago. I look forward to building on it in the years to come, and I look forward to the review of the Backbench Business Committee’s work, which will give us an indication of how the House views its performance more widely.
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
The Wright proposals are about increasing ministerial accountability to this House, but there have been too many examples recently of Ministers preferring to do anything other than appear at the Dispatch Box to make statements on their own responsibilities or face departmental questions. This is a huge discourtesy not only to you, Mr Speaker, but to Parliament. To tackle this, might the Leader of the House consider introducing a penalty points system—or, with a reshuffle on the way, a “three strikes and you’re out” rule?
Mr Heath
That was what might be considered a bold attempt to transfer the answer for Question 1 that the hon. Lady had prepared to Question 2. I do not think that the Wright Committee was in any way concerned with the subject to which she referred. As she has raised the issue, however, let me remind her that the present Government have, on average, made more statements than their predecessors. We made 191 in the last Session, an average of 0.7 per sitting day, which compares favourably with the last Administration’s average of 0.4 per sitting day during the 2009-10 Session. We did almost twice as well as they did.
James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)
3. What progress he has made on implementing the recommendations of the Procedure Committee on debates on e-petitions.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)
Following the Procedure Committee’s report, we have updated and improved the e-petitions website. We have improved, for instance, the wording of the site and the search and submission functions, making the process easier and clearer for the more than 3 million people who have signed an e-petition since August last year.
James Morris
Does the Deputy Leader of the House agree that one solution to the problem of debating e-petitions would be for the Government to table a motion allowing Westminster Hall sittings on Monday afternoons during which e-petition topics could be debated?
Mr Heath
We are very sympathetic to that view. In fact, we said in our response to the Procedure Committee’s report that we supported its proposals for a pilot. It is for the Procedure Committee to present such proposals in Back-Bench time, but we are working well with the Committee to enable the House to reach what I hope will be a swift decision.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I think that the Deputy Leader of the House will accept that our old friend Tony Wright, who was responsible for the recommendations of the Public Administration Committee, would want the House continually to evaluate the way in which their implementation is working. There is no doubt about the success of the Backbench Business Committee, but e-petitions seem to have been taken over by elements of the popular press such as The Sun and the Daily Mail. How are we going to react to that? It is not the way in which the system was intended to work.
Mr Heath
The hon. Gentleman has raised an important point. This was never intended to be simply a cut-out-and-send-back element in a tabloid newspaper’s campaign, but there is no evidence that all e-petitions are of that type: in many cases, they constitute a genuine expression of public sentiment on a subject. Besides, we have the filter of the Backbench Business Committee, which considers whether the House has already debated the issue in question, or will have an opportunity to do so in the near future. When the Committee considers it right for a debate to take place, it will stage one, and I think that it is doing a very good job in that regard. However, we are constantly evaluating what has happened, and we are keen to learn from the experience in order to make the arrangement even better.
John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
4. What recent discussions he has had with ministerial colleagues on scheduling of business to achieve the Government's legislative programme.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)
My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House regularly meets colleagues in Government to discuss the legislative programme in order to ensure that Parliament has an opportunity to debate Government legislation fully.
John Mann
There is no problem with debating Government legislation fully, because the Government have hardly any legislation to introduce in this increasingly part-time Parliament. Given that they have no ideas to present, will the Leader of the House make better provision for Back Benchers, including me, who have a whole raft of Bills to introduce which the public would like to see implemented? Will he give us time in which to introduce them, or not?
Mr Heath
We are seeing an interesting juxtaposition. Our Department is so often criticised for providing insufficient time for Members to consider legislation properly, and now the hon. Gentleman is saying that there is too much time for them to do so. I remind him that, only a few weeks after the Queen’s Speech, 11 Bills are already before Parliament. I entirely reject his criticism that there is any deficit in terms of the legislation that is before the House.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
I understand that during the last Parliament there was criticism of the amount of time given over to scrutiny of legislation. This Government are remedying that. Can the Deputy Leader of the House confirm that this Government will always give appropriate time for scrutiny of legislation on Report?
Mr Heath
That is absolutely right, and I was one of those who led the criticism of the previous Government, as so often we found that the time for scrutiny was constrained. One of the key areas is Report stage. We have been very careful to allocate more time for that—very often more than one day—to enable Back-Bench Members to have their say. There is a quid pro quo, however: when we do provide more time, it is important that the House uses that time in a sensible way and makes sure that matters that need to be discussed are discussed in a timely fashion.
Mr David Hamilton (Midlothian) (Lab)
5. Whether he has any plans to bring forward proposals to reform the scrutiny of private Members’ Bills.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)
I understand that the Procedure Committee has today announced that it will be conducting an inquiry into the procedures for consideration of private Members’ Bills and that it will put out a call for written evidence soon. I look forward to learning of its considerations and any recommendations it may put to the House.
Mr Hamilton
Will the Deputy Leader of the House address the fact that we currently have an archaic system, and will he give due consideration to the private Members’ Bills issue? If we change our hours, such Bills could be introduced on a Tuesday or Wednesday night, with votes at the end of the debate. We must get rid of our current archaic system, whereby the awkward squad on the Government Back Benches can talk out very good Bills introduced by Members on both sides of the House.
Mr Heath
The hon. Gentleman has probably given the subject headings for the submissions he will put to the Procedure Committee. It is not for me to determine the outcome of this inquiry, but I look forward to hearing what the Committee has to say, because all of us have felt for some time that the matter is worth looking into.
Mr Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)
Is the Deputy Leader of the House aware that the Procedure Committee would be delighted if the hon. Member for Midlothian (Mr Hamilton) were to come along and give evidence to us? He is hereby invited to do so.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
6. What progress he has made on introducing a House business committee.
The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)
As I said in my answer to my hon. Friend on 19 April, we plan to honour our commitment in the programme for Government to establish a House business committee by the third year of this Parliament.
Mr Bone
By decentralising power and reforming Parliament, we can redistribute power away from an over-mighty Executive. The House of Commons should have power “over its own timetable.” Those are not my words; they are the words of the Prime Minister. Why is the Leader of the House dragging his feet? Surely he should be supporting our wonderful Prime Minister.
Sir George Young
We have not dragged our feet. As my ministerial colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), has just explained, at the first possible opportunity in this Parliament we introduced a Backbench Business Committee, which had been obstructed by the previous Administration, and we also made a commitment, which Labour never made, to introduce a House business committee by the third year. As I said in my reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) in April, we propose to honour that commitment, and I reject his suggestion that we have dragged our feet.
Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House guarantee that any House business committee will be entirely separate from the Backbench Business Committee?
Sir George Young
I am very happy to give the hon. Lady the assurance she seeks. We plan to keep the Backbench Business Committee in its current form. The committee to which my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough referred would look at Government business, and the two would work in parallel; the second would not displace the first.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
May we have a guarantee that when the House business committee is set up there will be full and proper representation of the smaller parties in this House, and that those Members will be able to participate fully?
Sir George Young
I understand the concern the right hon. Gentleman expresses, and it is a concern that he also expressed when we set up the Backbench Business Committee. When the relevant proposals come forward, there will be an opportunity to take on board the representation he has just made.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
So far, the Wright Committee proposals have been a disaster for the smaller parties—fewer places for us on Select Committees; exclusion from the Backbench Business Committee. We need an absolute guarantee that, this time around, there will be representatives of the smaller parties on the House business committee.
Sir George Young
The harsh reality is that the hon. Gentleman represents a minority party. He will know that the way in which Select Committees are composed represents the balance in the House, and a Select Committee would have to be very big indeed for him to have a place as of right. We have recently changed the rules for the Backbench Business Committee to give access to him which he did not have before. As I said in reply to an earlier question, we will look in the round at the proposals for a House business committee when the opportunity presents itself.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
7. What proposals the Commission has to make it easier for hon. Members and staff to cycle to the parliamentary estate.
John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)
The House actively encourages cycling to work: officials work closely with the bicycle user group to review facilities for cyclists; a scheme is in hand to increase the number of bicycle parking spaces from about 250 to about 350; the House supported and enabled the establishment of the Barclays cycle hire station at Abingdon Green; a Dr Bike free maintenance check is available, as are facilities such as showers, lockers, bicycle tools and pumps—more showers will be provided this autumn; and, finally, there is a loan scheme for staff which can be used to buy cycles and safety equipment, and a cycle to work salary sacrifice scheme for staff is being implemented.
Mr Speaker
I have no idea what more there could be to ask, but I have a feeling that the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) will have an idea.
Dr Huppert
I thank my hon. Friend for that list. It is good to see that the House is taking some steps towards promoting cycling to work here, but more could be done to ensure that cycle parking is covered, that bikes are available for hon. Members and staff to borrow for short trips around central London, that cycle training is available for those Members who do not know how to ride a bike and would like to learn, and that people no longer need a pass to exit this place by bike.
John Thurso
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for his lengthy but good list of aspirations. I know that he is a highly committed co-chair of the all-party group on cycling and was a leading member on the parliamentary bike run last Tuesday. I am sure that the members of the Commission and the management board, and the director general responsible, will have listened attentively to his requests and will do everything possible to implement them.
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
Does the Commission believe that closing the road outside the Houses of Parliament would greatly assist in trying to promote cycling?
John Thurso
It is a subject on which the Commission has not yet deliberated but, as the hon. Gentleman has raised it, I am sure that the Commission now will.
Mr Speaker
Order. I am sorry to disappoint hon. Members; normally, I try to get through the whole list, but there is considerable pressure on time today, so we will move on to the urgent question from Amber Rudd. Just before she takes to her feet, I should just explain that this absolutely will not run any longer than midday and it could run for a lesser time—we shall see. There is heavy pressure on time, this is important and we will now hear from Amber Rudd.
Fish Discards
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Amber Rudd (Hastings and Rye) (Con)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State if she will make a statement about the decision on fish discards arrived at this week in the European Council meeting of Fisheries Ministers.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Richard Benyon)
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for asking this question, as it gives me the opportunity to run through some of what we achieved in the small hours of the morning in Luxembourg. On 12-13 June, I represented the UK at the Agriculture and Fisheries Council in Luxembourg to discuss the reform of the common fisheries policy. This was a critical negotiation where I was asked to give my agreement on key elements of this once-in-a-decade opportunity to reform the broken CFP, through agreement of a “General Approach” text. My aim has all along been to combine radical political ambition with a strong focus on the practical means to ensure early delivery. I am pleased to report to the House that we secured agreement to key planks of the reform we are seeking. This includes some key demands that I know the House has sought previously, and that remain hugely important to the British public.
We successfully made the case for measures to progressively eliminate discards, with deadlines that kick in quickly after the conclusion of the reform. The text provides for a landing obligation in pelagic fisheries from 2014, and a staged implementation in our other fisheries between 2015 and 2018. Although not all member states shared our ambition for urgent action, a commitment to implement a landing obligation, with a provisional timetable, is a major step in the right direction.
We also secured the inclusion of provisions setting out a genuine regionalised process to replace the centralised one-size-fits-all approach. The UK has led work with other member states over the last year to find solutions to that. The provisions allow us to work together regionally—for example with other North sea member states, to agree the measures appropriate to our fisheries. That is a crucial start in moving decision making closer to fisheries.
As for my other top priority, we secured a responsible approach to setting fishing levels. Overfishing has been a central failing of the CFP, and the UK was adamant that the text should include a clear legal commitment, and deadlines for that, to achieve maximum sustainable yield in line with our international commitments. Through the discussions in Council, the UK has played a leading role in developing solutions and building alliances with other member states to shape the text we agreed in the early hours of yesterday.
This is not the end of the process. The Council of Ministers has now given a clear steer but the dossier will be co-decided with the European Parliament, so we will continue to work with others to improve the legal provisions and we will also guard against any weakening of the approach. This is a major step towards real reform on a long and difficult road and I do not expect these negotiations to conclude until well into 2013.
Amber Rudd
I thank the Minister for that answer. This achievement on a discard ban is a welcome step forward. Fish discards are recognised universally as obscene and unacceptable and I want to press the Minister, if possible, on certain elements of the subject. What are his views on slippage in the timetable, on the plans for implementation and on the consequences of the agreement for our fishing communities?
What confidence does the Minister have in the timetable? It has already slipped from the original proposals, so will 2018 not be considered by some as the marine equivalent of the long grass? The industry is willing to move towards the ban, but what support will it get for the change in gears and working methods that will be needed to meet the requirements? Everyone can and will welcome the commitment, but what structure will be put in place to help delivery of the outcome while working within a quota system?
As the Minister will know, the problem of discards cannot be wished away without the means being provided. What are those means to be? Maximum sustainable yield is at least as important as the discards announcement and there is universal recognition that stock levels need to improve following years of overfishing. The statement says that maximum sustainable yield should be achieved “where possible” by 2015; what confidence does the Minister have in the phrase “where possible”? As the level of available scientific data is ever increasing, does the Minister agree that that adds weight to the target and, one would hope, momentum towards achieving it by 2015?
I particularly welcome the regionalised approach set out in the announcement. The previous one-size-fits-all approach of the common fisheries policy has failed. Mesh sizes in Hastings were decided in Brussels, which was absolutely absurd. Will the Minister tell us how he expects those welcome changes to impact on the everyday ability of the small fishing fleets up and down the country to carry on fishing? I know that he is acutely aware of the need for a fairer allocation of quota to support the smaller fishing communities. Can he tell us whether the proposed regionalisation addressed by the Fisheries Council will lead to a brighter future for the fishermen of Britain?
Richard Benyon
My hon. Friend is right to raise the question of the timings of any discard or land-all obligation. There is no doubt that the United Kingdom’s ambitions were greater than some of the dates in the proposal. They are only proposed dates, but I can assure her that they are considerably better than some of the dates being discussed in the wee small hours, which could definitely, and quite rightly, be construed as slippage or kicking the issue into the long grass.
Let us look closely at the dates. Unfortunately, the reform will not be in place until the end of 2013, but from 1 January 2014 there will be implementation of a discard ban on herring, mackerel and other pelagic stocks. The year 2015 will see the emergence of white fish land-all obligations, so we will be well ahead with many stocks in many fisheries ahead of the 2016 date, which was seen by many as the measure. However, some will not come in until 2018, as my hon. Friend says. Many of the fishermen in her constituency and elsewhere dislike the top-down management of fisheries for a variety of reasons, but often because of the controls that are imposed, such as catch composition measures and effort controls. A lot of those are incompatible with discards, so we have secured in the text a commitment to remove those where possible. I look forward to working through the detail of that.
On maximum sustainable yield, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is the international obligation to fish to MSY by 2015 where possible. The difference now is that we are proposing that what was a political statement should be a legal requirement. That is a major step forward. On the regionalised approach, it has to be said that when we were starting this reform process, the UK was a lone voice in calling for an end to the top-down management of fisheries. We now have allies and have got that into the text, which is a major achievement. Let us look at what this means for the small, inshore fleets. Like all fishermen, what they want most of all are more fish to catch. Fishing to MSY will mean that fish stocks will recover faster and better, so there will be more fish in the sea for such fleets to exploit. They will also see an end to the system that my hon. Friend described in which eliminator panels sit in a particular net and mesh sizes are decided perhaps hundreds or thousands of miles away from the seas in which those fishermen fish. This is a major step forward. There is much more work to be done and I assure her that it will not be through any lack of effort if we do not get precisely what we want in the text.
Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)
May I begin by saying how disappointed I am that this important issue is being dealt with through an urgent question rather than a formal statement by the Government?
There are elements of this agreement that will be welcomed on this side of the House and throughout the country, chief among them being the agreement in principle on a ban on the shameful practice of discards. However, any deadlines that were discussed were vague and did not feature explicitly in the final agreement. Why was this? Can the Minister tell the House if Tuesday’s meeting ended with a comprehensive vote including all participating members? A commitment without a deadline is no commitment at all. Without a legally enforceable deadline, what assurances can the Government give that the practice of discards will indeed end in the time scale he envisages? The Minister told The Guardian on Monday that as he entered negotiations in Luxembourg, the Government had
“still not fully worked out its position”
regarding a deadline. That is an extraordinary approach to negotiations. Does the Minister really believe that to achieve the best outcome from negotiations we should announce in advance that we have no position—that we have not made mind up our mind about what we want?
On the regionalisation of fisheries policy, will the Minister explain what practical differences will be made to the common fisheries policy that will represent an improvement on the previous one? The big disappointment is the potentially devastating delay until 2020 of a commitment to reach sustainable levels of fishing stock, which will mean another eight years of guaranteed overfishing. Tragically, once again politics has trumped science. Does the Minister agree that a failure to rebuild fish stocks more quickly will damage the UK fishing industry, particularly inshore fleets at the low-impact, sustainable end of the industry?
Finally, what measures will the Government put in place to make sure that smaller inshore fishermen and their communities receive a fairer distribution of quotas? The House will give the Minister one cheer for his efforts this week, but the future of our fishing industry and the recovery of our fish stocks are too important to sacrifice to yet another Euro-fudge.
Richard Benyon
Let me start by formally welcoming the hon. Gentleman to his position. I look forward to working with him in the coming months on these important issues. He asked about the dates in terms of a discard ban. I should state quite clearly that when I was asked by The Guardian on Monday morning whether I would share the dates I was taking to the negotiations, I had very clear dates in my head, but we have a protocol—a courtesy—that we agree the UK line with all devolved Governments. I was very grateful to have the support of all the devolved Governments in Luxembourg. We had a very good spirit in the UK delegation room—we work well together. We agreed that UK line very clearly and we stuck to it.
The hon. Gentleman asked whether there was a vote in the plenary meeting of the Council of Ministers. At the end, the Danish presidency, which has been superb throughout—it is a great ally of the British programme, and has led very well—asked people to register any opposition to the proposal. One or two small countries did so, and one or two slightly large countries did so too. We should be under no illusion: there are people who do not want the policy to be reformed, and do not support the United Kingdom’s ambitions on discards, regionalisation and moving to sustainable fisheries. It is up to our colleagues from all parties in the European Parliament to make sure that a robust position is maintained and that the Council of Ministers continues to push on the deadlines that we have asked for.
The hon. Gentleman asked what the measure means for a regionalised approach. I am really pleased that the United Kingdom position has been adopted, and we pushed right through to the end to make sure that if a group of countries fishing in a sea basin decides on the details of measures that are currently decided in the Commission but which will in future be decided in those regionalised groups, the Commission can then implement that. In the original text, there was a clear indication that other measures could be imposed by the Commission in that process. We want to make sure that where countries agree, we have a truly regionalised position—a truly bottom-up system of managing our fisheries—and I think that will be welcomed.
The hon. Gentleman is wrong about our dates on maximum sustainable yield. We want to stick to our Johannesburg commitment, which was a political commitment, and make it a legal commitment so that we fish to MSY by 2015 where possible. He accepts that the science is not always clear, but we want to hold ourselves to account as much as possible. He asks about a fairer distribution among different sectors of the industry. He knows—if he does not, he should—that I have been working extremely hard on this. I want to make sure that we keep all those small ports and creeks that support the local fishing industry in business. There is a social dimension to the management of the industry. We have to maintain the diversity of the fleet, which is not easy, but it is a clear priority for the Government. I hope that he, like his predecessors, will continue to support that.
Mr Speaker
Order. If I am to accommodate colleagues, I need short questions and short answers.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on what he has delivered and the progress that was made, particularly on regionalisation, which is music to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee’s ears. Will he update the House on the question of a register for UK fishermen so that we can tackle the problem of slipper skippers, which will also help with discards? Will he confirm that it will be fish caught against quota on which we will proceed, not just fish landed, as that is one of the main issues with discards? Will he confirm that there will be support for fishermen to invest in the selective gear that has been successful in Denmark and Sweden?
Richard Benyon
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her support. It is a priority quickly to overcome the absurd position that we do not know who holds quota in this country. We want to work with devolved Governments to make sure that we have that register as quickly possible to ensure that we know and perhaps to slay some of the urban myths that football clubs and celebrities own quota. I have never managed to find out the facts about this.
The important point on discards is that we know how to make this work. We begin with a really good experience of working with the fishing industry. Catch quota schemes will result in 0.2% of discards of cod for vessels in those schemes. We want to incentivise fishermen not to catch fish that they would otherwise discard. We want to make sure, too, that where there is a land-all obligation there are supply chains that ensure that those fish are eaten or go into other systems. We should not just transfer a problem out at sea to landfill. The most important thing is that we have time and a clear direction to ensure that we can use all the work that we have done with the industry to make this effective and to stop the problem in a practical sense.
Mr Frank Doran (Aberdeen North) (Lab)
It is important to welcome the progress that has been made in the Fisheries Council and congratulate the Minister on the effort he has put in, but does he agree that the discards situation is complex, particularly in the mixed and white fisheries in the North sea—the situation is much easier to resolve in pelagic fisheries—and that we will not resolve the problem through European rules? We need practical regional measures, as has been shown in the Scottish prawn fisheries, where these practical approaches have managed to reduce discards by over 70%.
Richard Benyon
I entirely agree that there are fantastic practices in British waters that we want to see as part of the scheme and that it is not just a question of having a big-bang end to the practice. We want to use existing evidence and to work with the industry. I know that we can achieve that and look forward to working with the hon. Gentleman’s all-party parliamentary group on that.
Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
As a former Fisheries Minister, I congratulate my hon. Friend on what he has achieved. People have been trying for decades to get the sorts of reforms he has achieved, and had it not been for his leadership and that of the UK Government we would not have got where we are. The issue of discards is of considerable interest to large numbers of my constituents, many of whom have written to me about it. It is quite a complex matter, so will my hon. Friend consider sending a “Dear colleague” letter about discards to all Members of the House so that we can forward it to our constituents?
Richard Benyon
I am very keen to involve all Members of the House. My hon. Friend, like me, represents a constituency that is almost as far from the sea as it is possible to be, but we get letters from constituents who are massively concerned about the marine environment. I want to ensure that we keep up the political momentum on this and so want to work with Members on both sides of the House to ensure that we keep up the pressure and are effective through all the institutions that are involved so that ultimately we get the result we need.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
The Minister will recall that I have called a number of times for the abolition of the common fisheries policy and the restoration of historic fishing waters to member states. I still believe that that is the only final solution that will work, but in the short term we have inched forward. Will he explain how the system will be policed, whether there will be penalties, precisely what will happen to the excess catches and whether Britain will be monitoring, and indeed policing, rogue vessels from overseas that are fishing in British waters?
Richard Benyon
Britain has been policing illegal fishing, whether by UK or foreign vessels, and will continue to do so. I am pleased that we recently instigated a very heavy fine on an overseas vessel fishing in our waters. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that I want to ensure that fisheries are managed as close to member states as possible. There are some good words in the text that allow member states to take action when it is right for them to do so. Subsidiarity is supposed to underpin a lot of European legislation, and I ask him to look at the provisions we secured on regionalisation. Whether or not we had a CFP, we would still have to work with other countries because we are talking about an ecosystem, fish that swim in our waters and those of other countries, and the historical fishing rights that go way back beyond the European Union, so I think we have a good message and that it is something he can be pleased with.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend on the progress he has helped to secure in the negotiations. Does he agree that if the regional dimension of the common fisheries policy is to succeed it is critical that fishermen are engaged as key stakeholders in the management of those regions?
Richard Benyon
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is absolutely right. For too long fishermen have felt right at the bottom of the decision-making process, under layer upon layer of control. I hope that we can have a system that is simpler and closer to them. In December I sat up late into the night discussing with Commission officials where an eliminator panel should sit in a net that was to be used off the Shetlands. That is an absurd system. I hope that a more regionalised approach will mean that decisions are taken by fishermen and closer to where they fish.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
I, too, welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Mr Harris) back to his rightful place on the Front Bench. The Minister said that he wanted particular dates for the implementation of the policy against these immoral discards. Did he achieve the dates he had in mind in the negotiations?
Richard Benyon
No, but I failed to achieve them only by about a year. We can argue and quibble, but the important thing is that we agreed a general approach. Had we not done so, we would have becalmed the whole reform of this broken policy, possibly for years, and sent a message to the European Parliament that the Council does not really think it is important, and those who believe the current system works would have won, which would have been a disaster.
Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
As someone who sat up into the early hours of the morning listening to the negotiations, I really congratulate the Minister. Can he confirm that any discard ban will not prevent fishermen from Looe, Polperro and the Rame peninsula in my constituency from discarding seasonally prevalent fish, such as the red gurnard, that are not assessed as under pressure by the Marine Conservation Society?
Richard Benyon
I thank my hon. Friend, who is very knowledgeable about these issues. I do not know the details stock by stock, but what we want is an end to discards. There were proposals made in the negotiation process that, through de minimis levels that we considered much too high, would in effect have meant that there was not a discard ban. We must be clear about where we want to go, but we want to ensure that we work with fishermen in her constituency and elsewhere to achieve that.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Minister for his statement. With Diane Dodds, a colleague and Member of the European Parliament, I have been working on this issue for some time and therefore give it a cautious welcome. Does he accept that, in the spirit of the agreement, further effort, known as reductions, in the context of the cod recovery plan for the Irish sea, which affects Northern Ireland fishermen, will not be imposed in future?
Richard Benyon
One of the reforms we want as part of the process is a greater movement to multi-annual plans, which I like because they actually take power away from politicians. The horse trading that goes on in December is less possible when we have a good multi-annual plan. What the hon. Gentleman is talking about is a bad multi-annual plan, one that was not thought through properly, does not work and in many cases achieves the reverse of what was intended. I will work with him, Diane Dodds and anyone else to ensure that we get the right kind of multi-annual plans system within the reforms.
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
I, too, congratulate the Minister, who has achieved a great deal on discards in his time in office. I think that the local management of fisheries and fishermen owning up to the way fish stocks are managed are essential. We have to ensure that cod discards, which are still going on in mixed fisheries off the south-west, are stopped as soon as possible.
Richard Benyon
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has been a hearty proponent of an end to the top-down management of fisheries and an enemy of discards both here and in the European Parliament, and I will continue to work on that. We should be very grateful to organisations such as Fish Fight for the part they played in exciting popular culture in support of what we are doing, but it is also worth paying tribute to the small groups of scientists, officials from DEFRA and other organisations that have been working to end discards and reform this policy for a long time.
Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)
I give three cheers for this agreement, which represents a huge step in the right direction. However, given that some European countries, most notably France, remain opposed to some of its key elements, will the Minister ensure that he keeps up the pressure so that there is no slippage in the proposals?
Richard Benyon
I was pleased to welcome the new French Minister to the negotiations and very glad that I did not have to do what he did: ring his Prime Minister at 4.30 in the morning to get his authority to support the proposals. I can assure my hon. Friend that we work with every country that we feel can move this forward. It is really important that we do not just sit back because we have a general approach agreed; there is a lot more work to be done. I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s support.
Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
How miserable of the Opposition to refuse to applaud the remarkable progress made by my hon. Friend in an area of EU policy that has been calling out for reform for literally decades. Will he please tell us what the process is now for this to receive approval from the European Parliament and what his concerns about that might be?
Richard Benyon
We now enter a process of Kafkaesque complexity. The reforms will go to the European Parliament’s Fisheries Committee in October, and we will then consider what it thinks of them. They will then go to the plenary session of the European Parliament. They will then be examined again by the institutions early next year through a trialogue process. We will then come forward with a reform, hopefully about this time next year, for implementation in January, which is in 18 months’ time.
Business of the House
(12 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House give us the business for next week?
The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)
The business for next week will include:
Monday 18 June—Consideration in Committee of the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill (day 1).
Tuesday 19 June—Debate on a motion relating to the application of article 8 of the European convention on human rights, followed by debate on a motion relating to financial services market abuse.
Wednesday 20 June—Opposition day [2nd allotted day]. There will be a debate on disability benefits and social care, followed by a further debate on a subject to be announced. Both debates will arise on an Opposition motion.
Thursday 21 June—Motion relating to the work of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly, followed by a motion relating to the mis-selling of interest rate swap products to small businesses. The subjects of these debates have been nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.
Colleagues will wish to be reminded that the House will meet at 9.30 am on this day.
The provisional business for the week commencing 25 June will include:
Monday 25 June—Consideration in Committee of the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill (day 2).
Tuesday 26 June—Opposition day [3rd allotted day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion, subject to be announced.
Wednesday 27 June—Conclusion of consideration in Committee and remaining stages of the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill (day 3).
Thursday 28 June—Business to be nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.
I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 28 June will be a debate on social mobility.
Ms Eagle
I thank the Leader of the House for announcing the business for next week. We are all particularly looking forward to the visit next Thursday of Aung San Suu Kyi, which is the cause of the change in the start time.
This week the part-time Chancellor has been whingeing to a group of business leaders because they have not been publicly defending his decision to cut taxes for the richest 1%. This, in a week when we learn that FTSE 100 bosses have awarded themselves an extremely generous pay rise of 12% on average, with one in four pocketing staggering pay rises of 40% or more.
How do the Government respond? On Second Reading of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill on Monday, the Business Secretary announced that he is to water down proposals, which were already inadequate, to give shareholders binding votes on executive pay. Instead of encouraging business leaders to lobby for an even bigger deal for the richest 1%, does the Leader of the House not think that the Chancellor should clamp down on unwarranted and exorbitant rewards for those at the very top?
With the Chancellor disgracefully ducking his own statement on banking reform later today, how are we ever going to get him into this Chamber to explain what has happened to his abandoned slogan: “We’re all in this together”? We have also had an independent report this week on child poverty, which states that the previous, Labour Government cut child poverty at a pace and scale unmatched in any other industrial country. It reveals that measures that Labour introduced in government stopped almost 1 million children growing up in poverty, and it states also that measures introduced by this Government were both “unfair” and “short-sighted”.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies expects the number of children growing up in poverty to increase by 600,000 over the next two years, but the Government’s response is to try to redefine poverty, not to deal with the problem. There we have it: a Government who cut taxes for the richest and make the poor poorer while trying to cover it up. Will the Leader of the House finally find time for a debate on fairness? The Chancellor in his Budget made the wrong decision, and he also chose the wrong economic strategy. Britain is in a double-dip recession made in Downing street. Next week the G20 is meeting in Mexico, and this is an opportunity for the Government finally to come up with a plan B, but I fear that Ministers will have trouble even making it to the G20 given that they are constantly U-turning. A holding pattern over Heathrow seems like a more realistic ministerial destination than Mexico.
The Chancellor made good use of the recess to perform mass U-turns on his omnishambles of a Budget, and I now understand why there are so many recesses at the moment: the Government have built time into the parliamentary calendar to allow Ministers to slip out all their U-turns when the House is not sitting. Does the Leader of the House agree that Ministers should have the guts to come to the House to announce their U-turns?
House building is down, homelessness is up, rough sleeping is up and young people find it impossible to get on the housing ladder. What is the response of the Minister for Housing and Local Government? He spends his time spinning figures that are palpable nonsense. In what parallel universe can the Minister for Housing and Local Government describe a year-on-year drop of 68% in the number of affordable housing starts as an “impressive” and “dramatic” increase? He claimed that there was a “net loss” of 45,000 homes between 1997 and 2010, before deciding that that figure was not sufficiently dramatic and press-releasing that we ended up with 200,000 fewer homes.
In fact, the Government’s own statistics show that by May 2010, when compared with May 1997, there were an additional 2 million homes in England. Will the Leader of the House therefore arrange for the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to make a statement explaining the antics of the Housing Minister as well as his flawed understanding of simple mathematics?
The pay of FTSE 100 bosses is spiralling out of control, the number of children growing up in poverty is increasing, house building is down and homelessness is up. What we need from the Prime Minister and this Government are less PR and more delivery. To date, it is a pretty sorry record from an out-of-touch and incompetent Government.
Sir George Young
I begin on a consensual note and agree with what the hon. Lady said about next Thursday, when we welcome Aung San Suu Kyi in Westminster Hall.
“Part-time Chancellor”, the hon. Lady says, which is all very well coming from a shadow Leader of the House who a few weeks ago assumed new responsibilities for heading up her party’s policy unit. I hope that she is not going to be a part-time shadow Leader of the House.
On executive pay, the previous Government had 13 years but did absolutely nothing about it. Since January we have been consulting on the most comprehensive reform of governance on directors’ pay, and greater transparency on what executives are paid; strengthening shareholder rights by legislating so that they can hold companies to account; and calling on responsible business and investors to promote good practice. We will announce the final package shortly and do in two-and-a-half years something that Labour wholly failed to do in 13.
On child poverty, the previous Government’s target was to halve it by 2010. They failed. Although relative child poverty numbers fell over the past year, children were no better off in real terms, as it was largely due to a reduction in median incomes. Absolute poverty also did not change, so there are some perverse incentives in the current system, given that, perversely, in a recession it seems that poverty statistics are getting better. That is why we are consulting on a better range for measuring child poverty, something that looks at the causes as well as the monetary measures. In a report it will be announced that the Government intend to consult in the autumn on new, better measurements of child poverty, and when we introduce universal credits that will lift hundreds of thousands of children and families out of poverty.
The hon. Lady asks for a debate about fairness. I have announced a number of Opposition days, so she is perfectly welcome to choose fairness as the subject of one of them. Indeed, she might have chosen fairness for the debate yesterday; it would have been far better than the one that we had.
As for the sittings of the House, we are now sitting in September, which we did not do at all during the previous Parliament, and sitting like-for-like for more days than the previous Parliament.
As for housing, under the previous Government house building starts fell to the lowest level in peacetime since the 1920s. The hon. Lady asked what we were planning to do. We have plans for 170,000 affordable homes during the current spending review. We have reformed the planning system and we are making more public land available to house builders. We are taking a range of steps to assist the housing market.
Apparently, we do not deal with our problems in the same way as the Opposition. This morning we discovered an interesting new technique for establishing party discipline from a prominent Labour blogger in the New Statesman, who wrote: “Challenge Labour and you’ll find a horse’s head on your pillow”. It is no wonder that one insider was quoted as saying:
“We’re all being terribly positive at the moment.”
Mr Speaker
Order. A great many right hon. and hon. Members are seeking to catch my eye. I remind the House that there is a statement on banking reform to follow, and then a very heavily subscribed debate on mental health under the auspices of the Backbench Business Committee. I am keen to accommodate as many colleagues as possible, but if I am to do so I require short questions and short answers.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
At this time of year, local groups such as New Forest’s Normandy Veterans Association commemorate the greatest amphibious invasion in history. In two years’ time, it will be the 70th anniversary of that invasion. May we have a statement from a Defence Minister indicating whether there will be Government support for the surviving veterans to revisit the beaches in 2014 for the 70th anniversary commemorations?
Sir George Young
Let me begin by commending the fortitude and bravery of those veterans who, 70 years ago, landed on the beaches of Normandy. At this stage, planning for 2014 is in its incipience, but we will mark this important anniversary. The Ministry of Defence plans to work closely with the Normandy Veterans Association, and once planning gets under way, we will discuss with it some key issues, particularly what support we will be able to give to those who want to go to Normandy in person to take part in the commemorative service.
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
There has recently been much discussion about proposals to change the regulation of child care. Many child minders, child carers and parents in my constituency have approached me with real concerns about what this could mean for quality. Do the Government have any plans to pursue this agenda? Whether or not that is the case, will the Leader of the House find Government time for a debate on this, because I am sure that many other hon. Members would like to raise their constituents’ concerns about the implications of such action?
Sir George Young
There will be an opportunity on Monday for the hon. Lady to question my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education, who has responsibility for this. If she is unable to do that, for whatever reason, I will make inquiries of my right hon. Friend to see whether we plan any changes along the lines that she suggests. We want to drive up the quality of child care, be it provided by child minders, day nurseries, or other settings in which early years assistance is given to young children.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
Last week my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister met his Mauritian counterpart, when I understand that the future of the British Indian ocean territory was discussed. May we have a debate on the importance of the right of self-determination of the Chagos Islanders in deciding the future sovereignty of their islands rather than having those decisions made in London, Port Louis or Washington?
Sir George Young
I understand the strength of feeling on the issue that my hon. Friend raises. I sat next to the ambassador for Mauritius at a recent dinner, where we discussed this. Foreign Office questions on Tuesday may provide a forum in which he can pursue these issues in greater detail.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
Yesterday the Leader of the House told us that he thought the priorities for this Chamber should be the eurozone and Syria. This morning, two Secretaries of State made key announcements—one on the definition of poverty and the other on snooping. Yet three out of the four days of Government business that the Leader of the House has announced are on electoral registration. Why?
Sir George Young
The time that the Government have in the House is for their legislative programme. That is why we are spending time on the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill and why we had the Second Reading of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill on Monday. I was referring yesterday to Opposition days, when the Opposition can choose the subject. I suggested that instead of choosing the subject they chose yesterday, they could have chosen the eurozone or some other subject. I am delighted to see that they have chosen a serious subject for next week’s debate, and my right hon. and hon. Friends will engage in that. It is for the Opposition to choose subjects on which to hold Ministers to account; Government time is available for Government Bills.
Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)
The summer of 2014 will mark the centenary of the start of the great war. In view of the Leader of the House’s earlier answer, may we have a debate so that the whole House can discuss how we can join in to commemorate the great war?
Sir George Young
My hon. Friend makes a helpful suggestion. He will know that the Backbench Business Committee is the forum for bidding for such debates. I can only suggest that he presents himself to the newly established Backbench Business Committee and puts forward his proposal, which I am sure will have a lot of support on both sides of the House.
Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)
Following the unacceptable comments made by the Prime Minister to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram), may we have a debate on the snobbishness and elitism that are demonstrated on the Government Front Bench and were clearly demonstrated by the Prime Minister yesterday?
Sir George Young
I am not sure that any discourtesy was extended by my right hon. Friend. Speaking from memory, I think he called the hon. Gentleman a poet; I am not sure that that is a form of abuse.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
My right hon. Friend, like me, is a keen cyclist. May we have a debate on the benefits of bringing the Tour de France to Yorkshire in 2016, for which a bid has gone in that has been supported by Welcome to Yorkshire, the county’s tourism body? I am particularly looking forward to one of the legs being held at Holme Moss in my constituency.
Sir George Young
I bicycled to work, as did my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House.
On Tuesday, I saw a picture in the paper of my hon. Friend taking part in Bike to Work day, and I am sorry that he got as wet as he obviously did. As regards the Tour de France, I encourage Yorkshire to engage with the umbrella body, UK Sport, which would take the bid forward. In respect of the UK as a whole, I think that Scotland has put in a bid for the subsequent year. It is important that Yorkshire puts its bid through the appropriate sporting organisation.
Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House tell us when we might next be able to debate the benefit cap in Government time? Rent levels in London mean that that policy will have disproportionate effects on many families, and particularly children. Jobcentre Plus tells me that it has written to 900 families in my constituency saying that their benefits are to be cut by an average of £200. This could lead to many thousands of children having to leave their homes in inner London. Mayor Boris Johnson has said that he is opposed to it. Will the Government give us some time to debate it?
Sir George Young
This issue was debated substantially when the appropriate Bill went through the House. My understanding was that Labour supports a cap on benefits in principle. In response to the hon. Gentleman—I hope that this will be helpful—a substantial amount of money is available in a transitional fund designed precisely to stop families having to move house at short notice. I hope that his local authority, Tower Hamlets, can apply to the Department for Communities and Local Government for the relevant funds in order to avoid any unnecessary hardship such as that which he has implied.
Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)
The car manufacturing industry is delivering some outstanding results. On top of Bentley, Nissan and Jaguar Land Rover announcing 3,500 jobs, Aston Martin in Gaydon has announced 150 jobs in bringing back a model to be manufactured in the UK. May we have a debate about how we can support that industry and the supply chain around it?
Sir George Young
I am sure that all Members of the House will have heard with sadness of the death of my hon. Friend’s predecessor as Member for Stratford, John Maples, who died over the weekend. We send our condolences to Jane and his children. I hope that the contribution that he made to politics encouraged my party to encourage a broader range of candidates to come forward for selection. I am sure that that helped enormously at the last election.
My hon. Friend may have seen some figures that came out this morning indicating a very substantial increase in car manufacturing output, which is one of our success stories. I was delighted to hear of the investment and jobs in the area that he represents. Car manufacturing in the UK grew by 5.8% in 2011. We are clearly very competitive in world markets.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
As the Leader of the House knows, the Home Secretary published her draft Communications Bill today. May we have a statement on the way in which Government Departments, and particularly the Home Office, communicate with Committees of this House? I have been waiting for five weeks for a response from the Home Secretary on a number of very important questions. Will the right hon. Gentleman have a word with her, or may we have a statement on the matter of providing timely replies?
Sir George Young
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and her team do their best to respond promptly to questions from the right hon. Gentleman’s Select Committee. I understand that there is a high volume of correspondence between the Home Department and his Committee, and that, on occasions, responses are sought within very short deadlines. None the less, we will try to raise our game and give the right hon. Gentleman and his Select Committee the quality of service to which they are entitled.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
Gallay Ltd is a successful manufacturing company in my constituency. In February this year, it applied for a licence to export 88 specialised air conditioning units to a previously approved company. Unfortunately, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has still not approved the export licence, and the company is likely to lose the order to an American company. May we have a statement next week on why BIS is acting in this manner?
Sir George Young
I commend what Gallay has been doing in my hon. Friend’s constituency, in winning exports for air conditioning equipment in a very competitive market. I understand that the order to which he refers involves Egypt, where the internal security situation is giving rise for concern. I will ensure that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and BIS process the application for a licence as quickly as they can, consistent with their obligation to ensure that such equipment is not put to the wrong use.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I am sure that the Leader of the House will agree that, for at least 200 years, local newspapers have provided a vital communication link between those elected to this House and our constituents. In today’s Culture, Media and Sport questions, I was disappointed by the complacency of the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey) in his response to two questions on the subject. Papers such as The Huddersfield Daily Examiner are crucial to the democratic process, yet many of them are under threat. This month, for example, the Halifax Courier changed to weekly and online publication only. This decline in our local newspapers represents a real threat to our democratic process.
Sir George Young
I am sure that every hon. Member would agree about the importance of his or her local newspaper. The Andover Advertiser is certainly an important publication. I am sure that there was no complacency at all in the reply from the Minister who replied to those questions a few minutes ago, but, as the hon. Gentleman will know, there are trends throughout the country—and, indeed, throughout the world—that are making local newspapers less viable. I will get back to my hon. Friend and see whether there are any further steps that we can take, but hon. Members can also play their own part in making local newspapers readworthy by writing columns in them that make compelling reading.
Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)
Unemployment in my constituency has fallen since the general election to 5.4%. Despite that good news, however, it is still far too high. My hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) and I are trying to help the situation by holding a local job fair on 28 June. Will my right hon. Friend welcome that initiative, and the similar work that Conservative Members are doing across the country? Will he also grant a debate in Government time on getting unemployed people back into work?
Sir George Young
I am delighted to hear about the job fair in my hon. Friend’s constituency. I know that many hon. Members have helped to set up job clubs in their constituencies—[Hon. Members: “Of all parties.”] Of all parties. They have given support in that way, and I pay tribute to the work that job clubs do in raising morale, enabling networking and finding suitable jobs for their members. I cannot promise an early debate on employment, but there might be an opportunity in some of the debates chosen by the Opposition or the Backbench Business Committee in the days to come to talk about the important subject of unemployment and the steps that the Government are taking to reduce it.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Later this month, it will be the fifth anniversary of the devastating floods in Hull in 2007. Given the uncertainty over the statement of principles, and over the Government’s plans to provide reasonable house insurance for my constituents and others around the country, please may we have a debate in Government time on what they are going to do to protect householders?
Sir George Young
The hon. Lady raises an important issue. I know that there has been a dialogue between Ministers and the Association of British Insurers to ensure that adequate household insurance is available to those who live on flood plains. I will ask the appropriate Minister—I think that it will be a Treasury Minister—to write to the hon. Lady to bring her up to date with the discussions that are taking place, which I think are related in some way to the investment that the Government are making in flood protection measures in the areas concerned.
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)
As my right hon. Friend will be aware, the Coryton oil refinery in my constituency has failed to find a buyer yet. May we therefore have an urgent debate on the importance of the refining industry to the UK economy? During that debate, may we explore what further support the Government could give to the industry, and the possibility of offering it some form of financial assistance —as we did to the banks—so that Coryton can remain open?
Sir George Young
I understand my hon. Friend’s disappointment at the plans to close the Coryton oil refinery. It is disappointing that, so far, an alternative buyer has not been found. I understand that inquiries are still being made by the administrators, who are looking at a range of options for the future of the facility. I am not sure that keeping the refinery open indefinitely at public expense would be the best use of resources, but we are working with Thurrock council’s taskforce, which was set up in the light of the announcement, and I will ensure that my ministerial colleague at the Department of Energy and Climate Change does all that he can to achieve a satisfactory outcome. Of course I understand the concern of those who are losing their jobs.
Jim Sheridan (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)
May we have a debate on the activities of the so-called private benefit check firms? Those companies operate on a no win, no fee basis, and they advise people on how best to claim welfare benefits. They can, however, subsequently claim up to 50% of the benefits back from the most vulnerable people in our society. The Leader of the House will be aware that the citizens advice bureaux already carry out that excellent work, and it would be helpful if the Government could promote the work that the CABs are doing in that area.
Sir George Young
I think that the hon. Gentleman is referring to Atos, the company that does the medical assessments to find out whether someone is entitled to benefit. There is of course an appeal against the initial decision in those cases. I think I am right in saying that Ministers at the Department for Work and Pensions have asked for an independent review of the whole assessment process and, so far, they have implemented the recommendations of that review. I will make inquiries of the DWP to see what further steps are being taken to ensure that benefit claimants who are entitled to benefit get the appropriate support.
Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)
May we have an urgent debate on the situation facing British citizens in the Greek justice system, and on the inadequate support they receive from Foreign and Commonwealth Office staff? My constituent, Fran Prenga, is currently languishing in custody in Greece—having apparently not even been interviewed, never mind charged—in conditions that appear to fall below EU acceptable standards. May we have a statement from a Minister and a debate on this matter?
Sir George Young
First, I might have misunderstood the question from the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Jim Sheridan). If I did, and if I got the organisation wrong, I will write to him.
I share the concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) about Greece. I also have a constituent who is tied up with the Greek judicial system. I know that the FCO often does all that it can to help, but the Greek judicial system is somewhat obscure and difficult to penetrate, and one often needs to employ a local interpreter. There will be questions to my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary on Tuesday, and my hon. Friend might have an opportunity to raise this matter again at that time. I will warn FCO Ministers that he is on the case.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
Has the Leader of the House seen early-day motion 196, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell)?
[That this House is greatly concerned by the Written Ministerial Statement of 24 May 2012 on the future of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority (GLA) and the proposal to reduce the scope of the authority as well as change the licensing agreements from six months to two years with no inspections on application for a licence; understands that the GLA is a Government body which is fully supported by employers including Marks and Spencer; recognises the invaluable work which is carried out by its officers and staff to ensure the safety of workers across the UK; further notes that the GLA was established after the cockle-pickers tragedy which occurred in Morecambe Bay in 2004, yet understands that the Government plans to remove this area of regulation from the remit of the GLA; asks the Government to recognise that any cut to the remit of the GLA will have entirely negative consequences; and calls on the Government to rethink its proposals which will put vulnerable workers at serious risk of exploitation, injury and death.]
The motion refers to a written statement sneaked out on 24 May, just before the recess, which heralds cuts to the Gangmasters Licensing Authority. The House will remember that the GLA was introduced after the tragedy involving the Morecambe bay cockle pickers. The cuts will result in an increased rate of death and injury in certain industries. Surely that merits a statement or even a debate.
Sir George Young
I cannot promise an early debate. I have now seen the early-day motion, to which seven hon. Members have appended their names. I will write to the appropriate Minister and get a response to the concerns that the hon. Gentleman has expressed. I am sure that the last thing the Government want to do is to
“put vulnerable workers at serious risk of exploitation, injury and death”,
as the motion suggests.
Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)
The majority of employment in my constituency is provided by small businesses. I am contacted regularly by such businesses that have concerns about what support they might receive from the Government and other agencies. Will the Leader of the House find time for a debate on the support that is available to small businesses to reassure them and their employees that there is a great future ahead, and that they can grow and help us out of the recession?
Sir George Young
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Of course the Government want to support small and medium-sized enterprises. As she will know, a range of measures has been introduced to promote apprenticeships and encourage bank lending. I would welcome a debate on the matter, but cannot promise one in the immediate future. The Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill is currently in Committee. I am not sure whether she is a member of that Committee, but that would be an opportunity to take the matter further.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
The Public Administration Committee, with its Conservative majority, decided unanimously that Sir Alex Allan was not a fit person to be the independent adviser on Ministers’ interests. His collaboration yesterday with a political stunt robbed him of any claim to be independent. When can the House look at why the previous holder of the office resigned, and how the office—a very good reform—has been degraded and politicised by Sir Alex Allan?
Sir George Young
I reject the hon. Gentleman’s description of Sir Alex Allan. The Committee on which the hon. Gentleman sat in the last Parliament, on which there was an in-built Labour majority, produced the same recommendation about an independent adviser, and the last Government rejected it. A similar recommendation was made in the report that was published in March, to which the Government will respond in due course.
Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)
I have genuine concerns about the way in which the BBC covered the jubilee celebrations, the sky-rocket salaries of senior executives at the BBC, the bias of the BBC and the licence fee of £145.50. When can we have a debate on the sustainability of this out-of-date and bloated organisation?
Sir George Young
The BBC is an independent body and is answerable for how it covers events such as the jubilee and the pageant. I understand what my hon. Friend has said. I am sure that the House would welcome a debate on the BBC. I can only suggest that he presents himself at 1 o’clock on a Tuesday to the Backbench Business Committee to solicit a debate on the BBC. I am sure that he would be supported by Members from both sides of the House.
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)
A few moments ago, when the Leader of the House cantered through his statistics on child poverty, he accidentally forgot to report to the House that today’s figures show that the last Labour Government lifted more than 1 million children out of poverty. Given that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is today talking about shifting the goalposts—a change from the position that the Prime Minister took in opposition—and that much academic research expresses concern about levels of child poverty in the future, can we have an urgent debate on child poverty in this House?
Sir George Young
Of course we can, if his party chooses it as the subject for an Opposition day. I have announced two Opposition days for the next two weeks. The subject has not been announced for the second half of the debate next week. I am sure that the shadow Leader of the House will have heard the hon. Gentleman’s request, which would have been better directed to her than to me. The Government are anxious to see whether there is a better way of measuring child poverty than the way we have at the moment, which has a number of perverse consequences, one of which is that in a recession child poverty rates appear to improve because they are measured in relation to median incomes.
Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)
Will the Leader of the House allow us a debate in Government time on stillbirth certification? I have been after a Westminster Hall debate on this subject for some time. Such a certificate would help parents who have a stillbirth to come to terms with the death of their child, and give recognition to the fact that the birth has taken place. Following a previous question in business questions, the Leader of the House kindly got a letter sent to me from the Department of Health. It seems that the only reason we maintain the current system of stillbirth certification is to help the Department of Health and other Departments in the collection of statistics.
Sir George Young
I understand the concerns of those who have lost a child in the tragic circumstances that my hon. Friend has described. I will certainly pursue with the Department of Health whether a certificate can be issued in such circumstances. I will ask the Secretary of State to respond to my hon. Friend as sympathetically as he can.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
The Queen’s Dragoon Guards, the Welsh cavalry, are in Westminster today lobbying about the future of their regiment because of the concern that the Government will cut it. May we have a debate on the future of the Welsh regiments, with particular reference to the undermining of support for the Union that any further weakening of them would engender?
Sir George Young
I was at Defence questions on Monday, where the future of the regiments was raised. Speaking from memory, I believe that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said that work was still under way on the appropriate configuration. There is a Westminster Hall debate on Armed Forces day next Tuesday, which may be an opportunity for the hon. Gentleman to raise the matter when a Defence Minister will be responding.
Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)
The previous Government left Wales as the only nation in the UK without a single mile of electrified railway. Many Government Members are lobbying the Secretary of State for Transport about the electrification of the railways. May we have a statement on the matter to find out her latest thinking?
Sir George Young
If I remember rightly, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport has announced the electrification of the Great Western line to Cardiff. I am sure that that has been well received in Wales. There will be an opportunity the next time we have Transport questions to press the Government on their plans to invest further in the railways in Wales. Alternatively, my hon. Friend could seek a debate on the matter in Westminster Hall or on the Adjournment of the House.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
May we have a statement on the performance of the Child Support Agency, and in particular on the effectiveness of its support for the children of absent parents who are self-employed?
Sir George Young
There will be an opportunity to put question to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on Monday week. We all know from our advice bureau that the CSA is raised with us as a regular issue. If there is a particular instance that concerns the hon. Gentleman, I suggest that he writes to the Secretary of State to see whether he can usefully intervene and put matters right.
Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)
Some small and medium-sized businesses in my constituency still report difficulties in accessing finance. Although I welcome the Government’s national loan guarantee scheme and the business finance partnership, may we have a debate on what else can be done to ensure that companies can access the working capital that they need to drive growth and create jobs?
Sir George Young
The Government have introduced a range of initiatives, including the StartUp Loans scheme and the GrowthAccelerator programme. The £82.5 million StartUp Loans scheme is aimed at younger people who want to set up their own businesses. The £200 million GrowthAccelerator programme is for 26,000 of England’s most ambitious small businesses, some of which I am sure are located in Croydon.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Recently, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs commissioned a report from the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust on banning lead shot for wildfowlers and on wildfowling shooting grounds. That has caused consternation among members of the Countryside Alliance and the British Association for Shooting and Conservation. Will the Leader of the House agree to a statement or a debate in the House on that matter?
Sir George Young
I cannot promise an early debate, but it is an issue that the hon. Gentleman might raise on the Adjournment of the House or in Westminster Hall. I am sure that Members from both sides of the House would be interested in taking the matter further.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
Has my right hon. Friend seen early-day motion 167, which campaigns for Rachel’s law?
[That this House deeply regrets the fact that Mrs Annette Courtney, a mother from Harlow, has had to sell her family home to enable her daughter to live independently; notes that her daughter Rachel is 20 and has cerebral palsy and high functioning autism, but that she has achieved five GCSEs and is on target to gain a BTEC Level 3 in IT and an AS level in business studies; further notes that Mrs Courtney has recently said that “Social Services have been involved in our lives for the last two and a half years and we have been completely disempowered by the system… Having stated that Rachel wishes to leave home when she leaves residential college and having experienced life away from home for the last two years, no accommodation has been found to rent. Every avenue that I have explored has been closed down and I am now in the process of selling my home to buy her a flat which will leave me homeless”; concludes that Rachel is one of thousands of young adults with disabilities who are sent home with no opportunity to develop their skills, or enter the workplace; and therefore calls on the Government to bring forward proposals for Rachel’s Law, so that all post-19-year olds with a disability, or disabilities, should they choose to leave home, would have adapted accommodation available to them to rent.]
Annette Courtney from my constituency of Harlow has had to sell her home to raise funds to ensure that her adult daughter, who has special needs, gets suitable accommodation. May we have a debate on a level playing field for young people with special needs?
Sir George Young
I understand my hon. Friend’s concern. My understanding is that the disabled facilities grant is aimed specifically at families such as the one that he has mentioned to enable them to stay in their own home. In the last spending review, we sought to ring-fence the DFG money so that the resources were available to ensure that people did not have to move home if their existing home could not cope with a particular disability. I will make inquiries with the Department for Communities and Local Government to see whether there is any action that we can take to help his constituents.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
Constituents of mine have been through the considerable distressed of seeing their son’s killer in an area from which he was excluded by bail conditions, yet he was not returned to prison. May we have a debate on the rights of victims in those circumstances?
Sir George Young
It sounds as though it was a matter for the court in the first instance, when it discovered that the bail conditions had been broken, to return the offender to jail. However, I understand the concern of my hon. Friend’s constituents, and I will raise the circumstances that he mentions with my right hon. and learned Friend the Justice Secretary to see whether any action ought to be taken to ensure that bail conditions are properly enforced.
James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)
The number of new apprenticeship starts has doubled in my constituency in the past two years, and I recently launched an apprenticeship challenge specifically to encourage small local firms to take on an apprentice for the first time. May we have a debate about how we can encourage small firms to take on apprentices, so that we get the skilled and flexible work force that we need?
Sir George Young
I welcome what my hon. Friend has done, and more MPs could do the same and remind local employers of the resources that are available if they take on an apprentice. Some £1,500 is available towards the cost of doing so, and we have just made available resources that will support up to 40,000 new apprenticeships. I would welcome such a debate, but I fear that I cannot promise one in Government time in the immediate future.
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
May we have a statement on security at the Palace of Westminster? Following the theft of two laptops from my locked office in Norman Shaw North during the jubilee recess, I have learned that there have been 39 such thefts in the Palace of Westminster over the past 12 months. Such a statement or debate would enable colleagues to learn about best practice in securing their valuable items.
Sir George Young
I very much regret the theft from my hon. Friend of two laptops, which, as she said, were in a locked room. I have had a discussion with the Serjeant at Arms about this matter, and he takes it extremely seriously and is following it up. My hon. Friend reminds us, and indeed our staff, that we should take whatever precautions we can to ensure that we do not leave valuable equipment in unlocked rooms, to reduce the temptation towards such thefts.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
Thank you for recognising me, Mr Speaker.
Mr Speaker
I think the hon. Gentleman is referring not to an achievement on the part of my eyesight as such but to the fact that his own appearance has changed notably from that of earlier days. I say that for the edification of people who might be attending to our proceedings. We look forward to hearing him.
Christopher Pincher
All our appearances have changed since earlier days, Mr Speaker, as you and I well know.
Youth unemployment in Tamworth has fallen to a 12-month low, thanks in part to further investment in Jaguar Land Rover and in BMW in Hams Hall. May we have a debate on the steps that the Government are taking and will take to reduce business taxation and regulation further, so that businesses can expand and create more jobs?
Sir George Young
My hon. Friend’s beard has been enormously welcomed by the Deputy Leader of the House. In a week or two, he may even be able to match the hirsute nature of the Deputy Leader of the House’s face.
My hon. Friend is right that the investment by Jaguar Land Rover and BMW has had an enormous impact. On what more the Government can do, on Monday we had Second Reading of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, which contains a number of measures to overhaul employment tribunals and create a more enterprise-friendly society. The Government are on the case.
Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)
Last week, Trax JH Ltd, a motor components manufacturer in my constituency, announced a £4 million order from Renault, which safeguarded 50 jobs in the constituency. That was a hugely important announcement. Will the Leader of the House provide an early opportunity for us to discuss the importance of the close, pragmatic working relationship between the United Kingdom Government, the devolved Governments and the providers of finance, which underpinned the announcement?
Sir George Young
I very much hope that the firm in my hon. Friend’s constituency has the resources that it needs to deliver the order that it has just won. We have close dialogue with Welsh Assembly Ministers to promote the best output for UK Ltd.
I mentioned a moment ago that the recent figures from the motor industry were encouraging. The number of cars built in the UK last month showed an increase of more than 40% on the same time last year, and I am sure Members of all parties will welcome that figure.
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the Leader of the House and other colleagues for their co-operation.
Banking Reform
(12 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Mark Hoban)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on banking reform.
The financial crisis exposed a great many flaws in the system. Banks borrowed too much, took risks they did not understand and bought securities that proved to be far from secure. Banking groups became too complex and interconnected to be managed effectively, regulators failed to identify the risks and taxpayers paid the price. Between October 2008 and December 2010, European taxpayers provided almost €300 billion to prop up their banks, with liquidity and lending support in the trillions. In the UK, the bail-out of RBS was the biggest banking bail-out in the world.
Just as the crisis revealed many flaws, there is no single solution. The Government are reforming the substance and structure of the financial architecture, putting the Bank of England in charge of prudential regulation. We have created the Financial Policy Committee to look at risks across the financial system. Our permanent bank levy penalises short-term wholesale funding, and we have introduced the toughest and most transparent pay regime of any major financial centre in the world. We have worked with our international partners to deliver robust, consistent prudential standards for banks and markets.
The White Paper that we are publishing today sets out how we will implement the recommendations of the Independent Commission on Banking. The Government’s reforms will form a key part of our broader programme of reform. In the same way that the action we have taken on the deficit has meant that UK debt is currently seen as a safe-haven asset by investors around the world, we will ensure that British banks will be resilient, stable and competitive, and so attractive to investors at home and abroad.
The eurozone crisis makes reform more, not less important. The link between the strength of a country’s banking sector and that country’s stability could not be clearer. At the same time, our proposals reflect the progress that has been made in European and international regulation since December. The Government welcome the European Commission’s bank recovery and resolution directive, which will improve member states’ ability to resolve cross-border banks without imposing costs on taxpayers. We will also continue to press for full Basel III implementation in Europe.
The goals of today’s White Paper are clear. First, since financial crises rarely repeat the pattern of the past, we must ensure that banks are more resilient to shocks. Secondly, we must make our banks more resolvable, so that if they fail, they do not threaten the provision of vital services to the real economy. Seeing through those two goals will achieve our third—to curb risk-taking in financial markets. It must be clear that investors reap rewards when banks do well, but take the pain if banks fail.
The Government will ring-fence retail deposits from the risks posed by international wholesale and investment banking. A ring-fenced bank will be economically and legally separate from the rest of its group and run by an independent board. The ring fence will not in itself prevent a bank from failing, but it will insulate the deposits of families and businesses, and if a bank does fail those essential parts of the banking system can continue without recourse to the taxpayer.
The deposits and overdrafts of individuals and of small and medium-sized businesses will, in general, be placed in ring-fenced banks. To minimise the risks that a ring-fenced bank is exposed to, it will be prohibited from conducting the vast majority of international wholesale and investment banking. It will not be permitted to carry out activities through branches or subsidiaries outside the European economic area, or, except in limited circumstances, with financial institutions. Beyond that, and within certain constraints, firms may decide what to put inside the ring fence. Ring-fencing will provide customers with flexibility, but not at the cost of financial stability.
The Government also propose to strengthen the ICB’s recommendations by applying strict controls to the use of derivatives by a ring-fenced bank to hedge its balance sheet. That will ensure that a ring-fenced bank does not take excessive risks when managing its own risks, as was the case with J. P. Morgan’s much-publicised trading loss.
Governance of the ring-fenced banks will be important. The Government propose to strengthen the ICB recommendations in that area, establishing separate risk committees and possibly also separate remuneration committees. However, it is important to focus these reforms where they will have the biggest impact, which is on the biggest, too-big-too-fail banks. We therefore propose that smaller banks, with less than £25 billion of mandated deposits, will be exempt from those requirements. Large, systemically important banks gain a competitive advantage from the perceived implicit guarantee. Our targeted reforms will remove that advantage, helping smaller banks and new entrants.
One of the clearest lessons from the crisis is that investors and creditors, not taxpayers, should bear the costs of failure. That is why we have supported Basel III, which increases bank capital to 7%, with a top-up for systemically important banks, and why we have pressed for that to be implemented across Europe, but to protect taxpayers, the Government will go further. The largest UK ring-fenced banks should hold an additional 3% of equity on top of the Basel III minimum numbers. The Government also strongly endorse the introduction of a binding minimum leverage ratio. The White Paper supports the Basel proposal of a 3% leverage ratio for all banks, including UK ring-fenced banks, and we will continue to press for the implementation of the Basel standard through EU law.
Large ring-fenced banks should hold a minimum amount of loss-absorbing capacity—made up of debt or equity—of 17% of risk-weighted assets. Their overseas operations should be exempt from that requirement unless they pose a risk to financial stability. For smaller UK banks, as the ICB recommends, the minimum requirement should be lower.
To deliver those proposals, the authorities need a way to “bail in” bank liabilities so that bondholders, not taxpayers, bear the losses. The Government will work with European partners to ensure that the ICB recommendations on bail-in are credibly and consistently applied across Europe through the recovery and resolution directive. We intend to introduce the principle of depositor preference for insured deposits. Unsecured lenders to banks are better placed to monitor the risks that banks are taking and should take losses ahead of ordinary depositors.
Our proposals on financial stability also improve competition in UK banking. The implicit guarantee to large banks distorts competition; its reduction will help to create a level playing field. However, we want to do more to encourage new entrants and promote competition. We will shortly issue a consultation on reform to the payments system. I welcome the reviews by the Bank of England and the FSA into the prudential and conduct requirements for new entrants to ensure that they are appropriate and not disproportionate. We strongly support the need for a stronger challenger bank to emerge from the Lloyds Banking Group divestment. We are engaged with Lloyds and the European Commission to ensure that the divestment process creates as strong a challenger as possible. A more competitive banking system will work only—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Government Members do not need assistance from the Opposition on where they should sit. The Minister is making a serious statement to the House. Perhaps Opposition Members could hear what he has to say.
Mr Hoban
That really sums up the Opposition. All they can talk about is who sits where. They have no ideas on how to resolve this banking crisis.
I welcome the reviews by the Bank of England and the Financial Services Authority into the prudential and conduct requirements for new entrants to ensure that they are appropriate and not disproportionate. However, as I have said, a more competitive banking market will work only if consumers are prepared to change banks. The Government are pleased with the progress on the industry-led initiative to make current account switching faster and easier for customers. Providers covering 97% of the current account market have signed up and the scheme is on track to be launched next September. However, to switch, customers need better information, so the Government welcome the fact that the Office of Fair Trading and the Financial Conduct Authority will take forward the ICB recommendation to improve transparency across all retail banking products. Work is already under way on a number of projects, such as making account data available to customers electronically, to enable them to shop around.
Financial stability is a prerequisite for growth. Our analysis suggests that the proposals in the White Paper will cost, in gross domestic product terms, in the region of £0.6 billion to £1.4 billion per annum. However, that should be compared with the estimate that the 2007 to 2009 crisis has already cost the UK economy £140 billion, which is one hundred times the maximum cost estimate of our proposals.
The proposals, although ambitious in scale, are proportionate in impact. They will promote financial stability while supporting sustainable growth and making the UK’s role as the world’s leading international financial centre secure. The reforms we are announcing today, together with the changes we are making to the regulatory architecture, demonstrate that the Government are determined to take action to deliver a stable and sustainable banking sector that underpins rather than undermines economic growth. I commend this statement to the House.
Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)
Let me begin by thanking the Minister for notice of today’s Treasury statement on the vital issue of banking reform. The reforms are so important that—we read in the newspapers—they are to be the subject of the Chancellor’s Mansion House speech tonight.
The Minister said the statement was serious, and I am sure Opposition Members and Government Members will all be thinking: “Why is the Chancellor not making it?” Should I call him the part-time Chancellor? He was able to spend the afternoon on the Government Bench yesterday to support the embattled Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, but he is seemingly unwilling, despite media trails, to come to the House today. What is the Chancellor running scared of? Is he too busy this week on his other duties to be the Chancellor, or is the truth that he is ducking answering the questions because—once again—he is not on top of the details of his brief?
There are questions to answer. Last September, the Opposition welcomed the report by Sir John Vickers and the Independent Commission on Banking, which sets out radically to reshape our banking industry. We urged the Government to implement the reforms without foot-dragging or watering them down, but I fear that watering down is where we are heading. Is not the truth that, having failed to secure international agreement in Brussels and Basel on tougher international banking standards, the Chancellor is now being forced to water down and fudge the Vickers reforms?
That is one area in which the Opposition would not welcome a U-turn from the Chancellor. The Minister will say in his response that I am wrong, and that there is no U-turn, just as Ministers said we were wrong to spot U-turns on pasties, caravans, churches, charities and skips, but a pattern is emerging with this Chancellor. He declares, “This Chancellor is not for turning,” and then sends along a hapless junior Minister to do the job for him. We can ask the Exchequer Secretary all about that.
If the Chancellor is not watering down Vickers, why will he not agree to the Opposition’s request to ask the Vickers commission to come back this autumn and publish an independent report on progress in implementing its reforms in the past 12 months? The Chancellor could publish that report alongside the autumn statement, when he will have to come to the House to explain why his failing economic plan has plunged our economy back into recession. That is one area where a U-turn would be warmly welcome.
On progress against the three tests for banking reform, first, to protect taxpayers, the Opposition support the Vickers conclusion that banking services should be safeguarded and ring-fenced. In November 2006, the Minister told the House that
“light-touch…regulation is in the interests of the”
financial
“sector globally.”—[Official Report, 28 November 2006; Vol. 453, c. 995.]
May I ask this champion of light-touch regulation to explain why, contrary to Vickers, it is right to allow retail banks inside the ring fence to trade in derivatives and hedging products, which are among the controversial interest rate swap products that many small firms complain they were mis-sold in recent years? I have said many times that the previous Government got bank regulation wrong. Those on the Government Front Bench also got it wrong, but they are getting it wrong again. The Chancellor should be careful about leaving the door too wide open.
The Opposition agree with the Vickers view that we need a minimum leverage ratio and higher equity requirements for larger ring-fenced banks, but will the Minister confirm that the Chancellor is setting a lower minimum leverage ratio than the Vickers commission recommended, and that he is departing from the recommendation that larger banks should have tougher rules?
The Chancellor implied in December that he would mandate those services specifically within the ring fence to provide clarity and certainty. Can the Minister explain why the Chancellor is now delegating that detailed task to the Bank of England—the regulator—and not putting it in primary legislation? Will the Chancellor—or, on his behalf, the Minister—commit to inserting in the Bill the requirement that large UK retail banks should have equity capital of at least 10%? Is not the real problem that the Chancellor is not in the driving seat on this agenda?
That takes me to our second test, on international agreements. In December, I asked the Chancellor whether he was confident that he would get the necessary international and EU-wide agreements to implement Vickers. The answer is that he has not succeeded in delivering that. The Chancellor himself said at last month’s ECOFIN, when he refused to agree to an EU statement on capital requirements, that they would
“make me look like an idiot”—
a muttering idiot perhaps! Two weeks later, though, he signed up to exactly the same deal. The problem is that there remains the risk that he will be overruled by the EU.
There is a wider problem. We agree with the Chancellor that the UK should not contribute to a eurozone-wide deposit insurance scheme, but the Commission’s proposals go much wider and are said to be intended to apply to the 27. The Chancellor gives the impression that he has a veto on the plans, so that they would apply only to the 17. Will the Minister tell us, then, whether the proposals for Europe-wide banking supervision will be subject to qualified majority voting under existing treaties, and will he tell us how the Chancellor is doing in building alliances across the EU to ensure that British interests are properly protected and that Vickers is implemented?
That brings me to my final test: the impact on growth and the wider economy.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I hope that the shadow Chancellor will be brief, given how much of the time allocation he has already taken.
Ed Balls
I shall put my questions briefly, Madam Deputy Speaker. I only regret that I cannot put these questions to the Chancellor because he has not turned up.
We have consistently urged the Chancellor to take a swifter approach to competition and to have a growth objective for the new Financial Policy Committee. We and the CBI agree on that, but the Chancellor will not listen. The problem is that in those circumstances Vickers implementation could lead to a continuing impact on business lending at the expense of small businesses.
To conclude, we set three tests for Vickers, but on each one the Government are failing, causing uncertainty where we need confidence, lending and growth. They are failing to take the lead on reforms in the EU, and fudging and watering down proper taxpayer protection. We need a Chancellor who can do the economics, grip the detail and work full time on the job—someone who at least turns up in the House and answers questions on this vital issue.
Mr Hoban
The shadow Chancellor was the Minister who stood by when bank balance sheets ballooned and banks took on these risks. He did nothing to tackle that problem. As the Governor of the Bank of England said in May:
“With the benefit of hindsight, we should have shouted from the rooftops that a system had been built in which banks were too important to fail, that banks had grown too quickly and borrowed too much, and that so-called ‘light-touch’ regulation hadn't prevented any of this.”
Only two politicians were quoted in the FSA’s report on the failure of RBS as champions of light-touch regulation—the shadow Chancellor and the former Prime Minister, the architects and cheerleaders of light-touch regulation at home and abroad. They should recognise the costs that the British Government and economy have borne as a consequence of banking failure— £140 billion between 2007 and 2009. We must recognise the need for a stable banking system to ensure stable and sustainable growth in the UK economy.
As Sir John Vickers proposed, we are ring-fencing retail banking, imposing the higher capital standards required by him and introducing a binding minimum leverage ratio on banks. The shadow Chancellor asked some questions in the mix of his lengthy contribution, but he did not apologise for his role in the banking crisis. However, I shall respond to his tests. First, we have achieved international agreement with our European partners to implement Vickers through capital requirements directive 4 and capital requirements regulation. We have achieved that goal and are working to introduce a binding leverage ratio with international partners. Vickers can, therefore, be implemented through the existing international regulatory framework.
The shadow Chancellor talked about a banking union. Banking union is a product of the requirement for fiscal union and will be needed to promote stability in the eurozone, but that will not flow through to non-eurozone EU member states—an important distinction to make. Banking union is about the sustainability of the eurozone, not the EU.
The shadow Chancellor asked about hedging. Sir John Vickers recognised the need to ensure that retail customers and small businesses could access the hedging products necessary to manage risk on their balance sheets. However, we have gone beyond Vickers in imposing higher and tighter standards on how derivatives can be managed by a ring-fenced bank.
I have set out a clear programme of reform that responds to the mistakes of the previous Government and ensures a stable and sustainable banking system that underpins, not undermines, economic growth.
Mr Andrew Tyrie (Chichester) (Con)
The White Paper just published contains an impact assessment, paragraph 104 of which makes clear a point that we heard in extensive evidence—that costs to small businesses will rise as a consequence of these proposals. We also heard evidence that the scale of the rise would depend on the Government’s decision on the design of the ring fence. They have now published a lead option for that design, so what is their estimate of the increased cost of these proposals to small business lending?
Mr Hoban
We have considered Sir John’s recommendations carefully, including the cost on banks, the economy and business, but we felt it was in the interest of business to ensure that a wider range of products could be sold within the ring fence, including complex ones such as derivatives. We set out, in our cost-benefit analysis, to look at the cost of the package as a whole, not to break it up into particular areas. I am confident, however, that we will have a more stable banking system in a position to lend to business on a more sustainable basis. Through these reforms, we hope to increase competition in the banking system, which is in the interests of small businesses and will help to improve competition on price. I think, therefore, that this is a good package for businesses and will ensure the stability of the economy.
Mr Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)
Next Thursday, there will be a debate in the House on the mis-selling of derivative and hedging products to small businesses, yet the Minister has announced that these will be allowed inside the ring fence. His excuse is that there will be stricter regulation, but are these not high-risk products that should not be mixed up with deposits in retail banks?
Mr Hoban
The hon. Gentleman follows these matters carefully. I do not know whether he, like me, has a fixed-rate mortgage, but that is actually a form of derivative. These products are widely used and there is a need for them. It is in the interests of businesses that such products be within the ring fence—it will provide much more control over their sale—although it is important to supervise properly the conduct of the banks selling them. The Financial Conduct Authority is well placed to provide that supervision, and with the tougher powers we have given it, that supervision will apply not only to retail customers but to business customers.
Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend think it amazing, as I do, that the Opposition seem to take no responsibility for the tripartite regulation system that led to the complete disaster we have seen? I congratulate him on working to ensure that such a lack of accountability never happens again. Does he agree, however, that more can and needs to be done on new competition in banking, particularly on access for new banking entrants? Will he continue to assess—I keep asking him this—bank account portability, because it would be a game changer in the banking sector?
Mr Hoban
My hon. Friend, who is right to point out the lack of an apology from the Opposition for their role in the crisis, has persistently raised account portability. She will know that Sir John Vickers considered this matter in the report but opted for improvements to the switching process to make it easier and more straightforward for customers. It is important that we pursue that, although full account portability will be an option if the former does not prove effective. We also welcome the work that the FSA and the Bank of England are doing looking at the requirements on new entrants to the banking system to ensure that both the conduct and prudential requirements are appropriate and not disproportionate.
Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)
On banking reform, would it not have been appropriate to make at least some reference to the outright greed of those who head the banks or to the millions of pounds that some of them get each year? Why no such condemnation—or is it the case that this Tory-led Government could not care less? What is all this business about “We’re all in it together”? It does not appear so, does it?
Mr Hoban
The hon. Gentleman should reflect for a moment on what happened when his Government were in power. Bankers were able to take their bonuses in cash in the year they were paid, while Lord Mandelson said that he was “intensely relaxed” about the filthy rich. What we have done since we came to office is put in place the toughest and most transparent pay regime of a major financial centre and ensured that shareholders have a stronger voice over bank pay. We have tackled the problem, which the previous Government simply neglected and allowed to fester and develop, thereby contributing towards the crisis that we have seen in the banking sector.
Stephen Williams (Bristol West) (LD)
Two of the core reasons why the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats came together in coalition were to stabilise our public finances and to reform Britain’s broken banking sector. Our constituents tell us that they want more banks that specialise in lending to small and medium-sized businesses, as well as ethical providers, such as Triodos bank, which is based in my constituency. Will the Minister undertake to smooth the path through regulation for new entrants and also make it easier for people to move their money from existing banks to new providers?
Mr Hoban
My hon. Friend makes some important points. We need to make the regime easier when it comes to authorising banks, which is why the Bank and the FSA are looking at prudential and conduct requirements, to ensure that they are appropriate and not disproportionate, which is one of the criticisms that many potential new entrants make. However, he is also right that once we have new entrants to the market, they need to be able to attract business from other banks. We need to ensure that customers are able to switch their accounts more easily. An industry-led initiative will be launched later this year which will help with that, but it is also important that customers understand the costs of their accounts and are able to use that money to help them shop around and opt for better-quality or new providers, so that there is much more choice and diversity in the market.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)
Considering that the banks are directly responsible for the great recession that we have experienced since 2008, is the Minister not concerned that delaying the implementation of the reforms until 2019, as reported in the press today, will leave seven years for the so-called golden goose to hold a golden gun to the heads of ordinary working people and the real economy, and give ample time for the all-powerful financial lobby to water down the proposals?
Mr Hoban
What we have been clear about, following the Vickers proposals on the timing of implementation—Vickers suggested that the measures should be implemented by 2019—is that we are taking steps now to ensure that there is a framework in place, so that banks understand what the rules will be and can respond. Today’s White Paper is part of that, and we will produce a draft Bill later, which will be subject to pre-legislative scrutiny as well. There will therefore be a transparent process to ensure that we implement the proposals. The proposals that Sir John Vickers made, such as ring-fencing, are vital to ensure the stability of the banking system and the stability of the economy.
Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
In the 14 months since the publication of John Vickers’s interim report, which other major global financial centres have gone down the route of proposing either a ring fence along these lines or the gold-plating of capital requirements, which is also proposed, on top of Basel III, which was supposed to harmonise capital arrangements?
Mr Hoban
A number of countries have argued for the freedom to go further and impose higher capital surcharges—Switzerland is one and Sweden, which has introduced higher capital surcharges, is another. It is our responsibility to ensure that we protect the stability of the UK economy and the interests of the taxpayer, and respond to the structure of the banking system in the UK. Bank balance sheets in the UK are many times larger than our economy. We are much more exposed to risk. It is therefore right that we should take actions in the UK that help to protect the economy and the taxpayer, which is why we are introducing these proposals today.
Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)
The Scottish Finance Secretary and the Scottish First Minister have said that if Scotland were to become a separate country, the Bank of England would remain the lender of last resort, while UK regulatory authorities would still oversee Scottish institutions. Can the Minister tell us what representations the Government have received from the Scottish Government and whether he is aware of any other EU country that does not have its own central bank or regulatory regime?
Mr Hoban
The hon. Gentleman raises an interesting question. There are some important questions to be answered about how the banks would be regulated if Scotland were to become independent. As I made clear in my response to the shadow Chancellor, a fiscal union needs its own system of banking supervision and its own resolution arrangements, and it is hard to see quite how things would work for an independent Scotland.
Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his statement today, and also for these measures, which go a long way in dealing with the “too big to fail” problem, and in some ways deal with the “too small to start” problem. He will be aware that in the last 100 years, only one ab initio banking licence has been granted. Part of the problem is a reluctance on the part of officials at the FSA to grant new banking licences. Will he look again at the issue of competition in the Prudential Regulatory Authority, in order to try to help challenger banks enter the marketplace?
Mr Hoban
My hon. Friend makes a good point. As I have said, the Bank and the FSA are looking at prudential and conduct requirements to ensure that they are proportionate. However, the other thing I would say is that the implicit guarantee enjoyed by our bigger banks distorts competition. Our reforms tackle that, helping to create a more level playing field for new entrants and enabling them to compete properly with established players.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
The Minister will know that four weeks ago today the liquidation of the largest bank to have gone bust in Britain—BCCI—was completed, after 21 years. The foundation of the system introduced by the last, Labour Government was the Bingham report. The first part has been published; the second part is still confidential. As far as I know, only successive Chancellors have read it. Has the Minister read the second, confidential part, and does he not think it is time to publish it, so that we can have a proper understanding of the reforms that he has set before the House today?
Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on the measures relating to bail-in and depositor preference in particular. However, I am sure he will remember that under the last Government the FSA came under political pressure. Will his measures deal with that and ensure that, in future, banks are resolved under the rule of law?
Mr Hoban
It is important that independent regulators exist and that their independence is credible. Going back to the FSA’s report on the RBS failure, it was interesting that the FSA clearly came under sustained pressure from the shadow Chancellor and the then Prime Minister to have a light-touch regulatory system, and we have seen the consequence of that. It is important that there are clear rules to ensure that regulators act independently and that their regulation is seen to be credible. The shadow Chancellor should recognise that he got it wrong when he called for light-touch regulation and championed it throughout the world.
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
Given the double-dip recession and the continuing fall in net lending to businesses, what exactly are the Minister’s reforms going to do to stimulate the economy? Is there not a risk that we are going for the stability of the graveyard?
Mr Hoban
The hon. Lady makes an important point about getting the balance right, but let us not forget that the banking crisis cost this economy £140 billion between 2007 and 2009. An unstable banking sector costs the economy dear: it costs jobs, it costs tax revenues and it costs families. The important thing is to ensure that we get the banking system right, so that it is stable and promotes growth, rather than allowing banks to let loose, grow their balance sheets unconstrained and take on risks that they do not understand, which is what happened in the lead-up to the financial crisis, when the shadow Chancellor’s system of regulation was in full swing.
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
Where is the Chancellor, and at what point did he decide not to make the statement himself?
Mr Hoban
It has always been the case that I would make the statement today. This may come as news to the shadow Chancellor—it may be different from his experience when he was City Minister—but the Treasury is a team. We have worked together on these reforms, and it was always the intention that I would make today’s statement. The shadow Chancellor should not believe what he reads on Twitter.
Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)
Having invested so much time advocating EU jurisdiction over banking in the City, how are the Government going to protect the City of London both from that EU jurisdiction and from qualified majority voting?
Mr Hoban
I think it is very clear that the emerging debate about a banking union flows from the problems we are seeing in the eurozone. It is important that the banking union helps resolve some of the problems in the eurozone, but it is a consequence of having a single currency, not a consequence of having a single market. It is important for the eurozone to move ahead in dealing with its problems and strengthening the banking regime within it. It is also important for the future of the City to ensure that there are proper safeguards over the functioning of the single market.
Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)
With a double-dip recession made in Downing street, bank lending having fallen for five consecutive quarters and businesses facing a shortfall of £190 billion in finance over the next decade, why are there no further proposals in the White Paper to diversify the range of banking institutions to make sure that finance gets into the real economy?
Mr Hoban
I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has yet read the White Paper. If he had, he would have seen a section on competition that deals with encouraging diversity, making it easier for new entrants to come into the market and promoting switching. When the hon. Gentleman has read the White Paper, he might like to come back to me.
Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)
One of the very important and positive aspects of the Government’s reforms has been transparency, particularly over pay and banking products. Will the Minister assure us that there will also be a move to ensure greater transparency over bank lending figures, as small business organisations, and indeed small businesses themselves, tell us that the new lending figures provided often include existing loans and are simply not honest?
Mr Hoban
My hon. Friend is right, and I think transparency plays a key role in holding the financial system to account. We need to make sure that data on lending is transparent, but we also need to focus on identifying other ways in which we can help small businesses. That is why the Government introduced the national loan guarantee scheme—to help support lending to new businesses. That scheme is working; it is making thousands of loans to small and medium-sized enterprises, which are benefiting from the lower interest rates that the scheme delivers. That is an important way to help businesses grow.
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
Why will the Treasury not agree to Opposition requests for the Vickers commission to implement a progress report on how the Government are doing with its recommendations? Is it because the Government are trying to water them down?
Mr Hoban
The process we are going to go through is a very transparent one. We have published a White Paper today, setting out clearly our response—our detailed response—to John Vickers’ recommendations. As I said earlier, we are going to publish a draft Bill, which will be subjected to pre-legislative scrutiny. We are being very transparent about how we are implementing Sir John Vickers’ recommendations. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will work with us and ensure that the recommendations get through, so that we remedy the mistakes of the past.
Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)
I welcome the Minister’s proposals for the long-term protection of depositors, but he will be aware that many of us are concerned about the supply of credit to businesses in our economy right now and the impact right now of these long-term proposals. What analysis has the Treasury made of the impact on credit from these proposals in the near term? May I suggest that the Minister continues to monitor the impact with more urgency so that the concerns that have been raised can be assuaged?
Mr Hoban
Strong banks that are in a position to lend to businesses are absolutely vital to the long-term future of our economy. We have seen that the mistakes of the past eventually catch up with people. They have led to a weakening of bank balance sheets, which are now being strengthened. We need not only strong banks, but schemes in place to sustain bank lending and to ensure a supply of credit to SMEs.
Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)
In the week we discovered that a plan put forward to the last Government to prevent the run on Northern Rock was ignored, I warmly welcome these proposals. How will the Minister ensure that as finance changes in the years ahead, the Vickers proposals to ensure separation will always stay up to date with new technology and new techniques?
Mr Hoban
My hon. Friend makes two important points. He is right to highlight Hector Sants’s comments this week about how the previous Government ignored his proposals, leading to a run on Northern Rock that triggered widespread financial instability. If his proposals had been listened to, we could have had more financial stability, which would have been to the benefit of the economy.
My hon. Friend is also right that finance changes. Part of the problem of the previous Government’s regime was that it did not keep pace with changes in the markets. The previous Government clearly did not understand what was going on in the banking sector, despite the many meetings between the City Minister and the banks, but I think the regime that we are putting in place is forward looking. We will have the Financial Policy Committee looking at emerging threats to financial stability, and both our introduction of the Vickers reforms and the rules of the Prudential Regulation Authority will help to ensure that the ring fence is kept up to date and meets not just the needs of business, but the need for a strong and stable economy.
Points of Order
Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I have raised previously the awful case of the Prenga family, with Fran Prenga in a Greek jail. To my astonishment yesterday, I discovered that MPs’ parliamentary offices cannot phone numbers abroad, so I was unable to phone embassy and consular staff in Greece, unable to contact the family and unable to speak to the office of Edward McMillan-Scott, MEP, who is assisting in this case. It is clearly an absurdity to have to get my constituency office to make calls that I need to make myself from London. Could this matter be addressed as a matter of urgency?
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. The matter is one to be taken up with the director of Parliamentary Information and Communications Technology. I am happy to do so, and then refer back to the hon. Gentleman as quickly as I can. He has raised a pertinent point, which requires a timely response. I hope that will be to his satisfaction.
Backbench Business
Mental Health
(12 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Speaker
At this stage, there is no time limit on Back-Bench contributions. Let us see how it goes.
Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of mental health.
I am particularly grateful to all members, old and new, of the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this debate in the Chamber. The effort to secure the debate has been done jointly with my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), the chairman of the all-party group on mental health, which he has led so well, and with my hon. Friends the Members for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) and for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris)—I hope I have pronounced that one correctly—and the hon. Members for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) and for Foyle (Mark Durkan).
We were quite clear when we put in our bid that we wanted a full debate on the Floor of the House. Why? It is at least four years, and probably slightly longer, since the general topic of mental health was debated in the Chamber. That is a long time, given that 25% of the population—one in four people—will experience a mental health problem at some point in their lives. Just imagine if this were a physical health condition and it had not been talked about by Members in the House of Commons other than in very specific ways such as Adjournment debates for a very long time.
Mental health comes at an economic and social cost to the UK economy of £105 billion a year, yet mental health has been a Cinderella service—poorly funded compared with other conditions and not spoken about nearly enough either inside or outside this House. It is the largest single cause of disability, with 23% of the disease burden of the NHS, yet the NHS spends only l1% of its budget on mental health problems.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
Does the hon. Lady agree that it is not only a matter of the effects on individual mental health because mental health issues can lead to physical disabilities, leading to extra costs to the NHS on top?
Nicky Morgan
I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. The Centre for Mental Health has shown that for a person who has a physical and a mental health condition, the costs of treatment are increased by 45%. Those are additional costs around mental health problems, which are often untreated initially and then have to be treated at a later stage, so the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right.
According to the Centre for Mental Health, only a quarter of people with mental health conditions—children as well as adults—receive any treatment. I have no reason to doubt that statistic, and I find it shocking that three quarters of people with mental health conditions are not being treated. We should ask ourselves why that is.
Recent figures have shown that depression alone is costing the economy £10 billion a year. As we all know, we do not have a lot of money to spend, so we should be working as hard as we can on preventive measures. One in every eight pounds spent on dealing with long-term conditions is linked to poor mental health, which equates to between £8 billion and £13 billion of NHS spending each year.
I welcome the Health and Social Care Act 2012. I hope that today’s debate will be conducted on pretty non-partisan terms, but I realise that that may strike Opposition Members as a controversial comment. I welcome the opportunities that the Act offers for the commissioning of mental health services. I spoke in the Third Reading debate, and I especially welcomed the Government’s acceptance of an amendment tabled in the other place to ensure parity between physical and mental health. Although those are only words in a Bill, they are very important words, and they send a very clear signal not only to sufferers from mental health conditions and their families, but to those working in the NHS. I hope that, in his annual mandate to the national commissioning board, the Secretary of State will insist that the board prioritise mental health.
How are we to achieve parity between physical and mental health conditions? The question is about money, certainly, but it is also about awareness. Confessing to having a mental health condition carries far too much stigma. That is part of the reason for our wish to hold a debate on the Floor of the House. If we do not start to talk about mental health in this place, and encourage others to talk about it, how can we expect to de-stigmatise mental health conditions and enable people to confront their problems?
I find it interesting that, when I was preparing for the debate, a few people who had initially said to me “Yes, go ahead, mention my name” came back after thinking about it for a couple of days and said “Actually, I would rather you didn’t, because I have not told my employer,” or “I have not told all my friends and my family.” It is clear that mental health conditions still carry a considerable stigma. Admitting to having been sectioned is traumatic, especially when the information appears on Criminal Records Bureau checks connected with job applications.
I welcome the work of Time to Change, which has been funded partly by the Department of Health as well as by Comic Relief. I also welcome the Sunday Express campaign on mental health. However, the de-stigmatisation of mental health conditions is down to all of us, and it is especially important for those of us who are employers not to discriminate against people who may be working for us and who tell us that they have a mental health condition. I hope that today’s debate will constitute another firm step on the path to ensuring that mental health conditions are de-stigmatised, because I think that without that de-stigmatisation, successful treatment will be very hard for a person to achieve.
We asked for today’s debate to be kept deliberately general, so that Members in all parts of the House could raise many different issues on behalf of their constituents and, perhaps, themselves or their families as well as looking at the mental health policy landscape. Mental ill health is no respecter of age or background. It can strike anyone, often very unexpectedly. That includes people in senior positions such as Members of Parliament, company directors and school governors. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) will refer to the private Member’s Bill that he will be presenting, which would end discrimination against people in such positions who have mental health conditions.
I expect that during today’s debate we shall hear about new mums with post-natal depression. For them, a time of life that should be one of the happiest is often one of the most difficult. I welcome the recent Government announcement that health visitors will be properly trained to recognise signs of post-natal depression, which I think was long overdue. I expect that we shall also hear about veterans from our armed forces who suffer from mental health conditions, and about older people who suffer from dementia. Particular issues affect our black and ethnic minority communities, as well as those who find themselves in the criminal justice system. I am sure that we shall hear from the Minister abut the Government’s widely welcomed framework document “No health without mental health”, which was published last year. We now await the detailed implementation plan on which the Department of Health is working alongside leading mental health charities.
I want to talk, very briefly—I have noted Mr Speaker’s strictures about time limits—about three specific matters: listening to patients, integrated care, and the wider mental health well-being landscape. We made it clear during the passage of the Health and Social Care Act that one of the developments that we wanted to see, as a Government, was “No decision about me without me.” That means patients having a voice in their care. It seems to me from my discussions with those in the mental health system who have been sufferers that once the initial crisis has been dealt with, they tend to want choice and involvement in their treatment. They are facing a lifetime condition. They will have to self-medicate, look after themselves and identify the point at which they may be deteriorating or potentially reaching crisis point for years and years to come. They want a voice. They want to be heard by the health care professionals, and I think that it is up to us as a Government to help them to achieve that.
John Pugh (Southport) (LD)
The hon. Lady has just said that people who suffer from mental health problems have a lifelong condition. I think that many people have an occasional mental health problem.
Nicky Morgan
I am not sure that I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I agree with him that people often enter the system at a time of crisis and experience a single episode, but others who experience episodes will get better. For years they may have no problems at all. The hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but I can tell him on the basis of the experience of constituents and family members that it is possible to go in and out of the system. One of the hardest things for people to accept when they are diagnosed with a mental health condition is that they will be on drugs for years and years. That is often difficult for people to admit, particularly when they are striking up a new relationship or working for a new employer. I think that that is why people want to have a voice in the way in which they are treated.
According to Mind, people are three times as likely to be satisfied with their treatment if they are presented with a choice of treatments, and failure to stay on medication is the main cause of relapses, when people often have to re-enter the system at a time of crisis. There is a need to work with and trust health professionals. According to a recent study by the university of Kent,
“Low levels of trust between mental health patients and professionals can lead to poor communication which generates negative outcomes for patients, including a further undermining of trust”,
and
“trust can play a significant role in facilitating service users’ initial and ongoing engagement with services, the openness of their communication, and the level of co-operation with, and outcomes from, treatment or medication.”
In 2009, a mental heath in-patient survey by the Care Quality Commission revealed that in some mental health trusts as few as 40% of people diagnosed with schizophrenia felt that they were involved as much as they wanted to be in decisions about their care and treatment. I am no health professional—I hope that some Members who are health professionals will speak later this afternoon—but what people have said to me suggests that medication is not always the answer, at least in the long term. Research by Platform 51 has found that a quarter of women have been on anti-depressants for 10 years or more, that half of women on anti-depressants were not offered alternatives at the time of prescription, and that a quarter of women on antidepressants have waited a year or more for a review of their medication
I welcome the Government’s investment of £400 million in treatments under the improving access to psychological therapies programme. I should add, to be fair, that that builds on announcements made by the last Government. I also commend the report by the Centre for Social Justice on talking therapies, which calls for a broadening of therapies. Every patient is different, and patients will respond differently to different medications and therapies. Mental health patients must have real choice, and I think that Any Qualified Provider and Payment by Results must be extended to them in the way in which they are being extended to patients with physical health conditions. We must also ensure that patients’ voices are heard within the management structures of both clinical commissioning groups and health and wellbeing boards, whose job it is to hold services to account for the care that they are giving.
I expect that Members will refer to integrated care: the need for all services to work together. Poor mental health has an impact on every area of Government policy: health care, benefits, housing and debt, social exclusion, business and employment, criminal justice and education, to name but a few. One person with a mental health condition may need help from many different agencies, but too often care is not joined up, and each agency deals with its own bit and passes the person on. Sometimes there is no follow-up, and the person is lost in the system.
In a 2011 survey, 45% of people contacted by Mind said that they had been given eight or more assessments by different agencies in a single year. YoungMinds, which campaigns on behalf of children and young people with mental health conditions, has called for one worker to be allotted to each child needing support for a mental health condition, so that children can avoid multiple assessments and need not re-tell their story each time they see a new person in the system. However, there must be a clear care pathway, whatever the point at which access is gained to the mental health system.
The other thing patients are calling for is the ability to self-refer. We need to do all we can to prevent people from reaching crisis point, and often it is patients themselves who are best able to tell when they are about to reach that point. My West Leicestershire clinical commissioning group is developing an acute care pathway in partnership with Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust. It plans to replace the many and varied access routes to secondary care and mental health services with a single access point, in order to provide speedy access at times of greatest need. That move has come out of both patient and GP feedback.
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate, and I am particularly interested in the proposed single access point for services. That could be useful not only for acute services, but for non-acute services and well-being provision. Does my hon. Friend agree that well-being provision is an important part of mental health provision?
Nicky Morgan
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I shall talk about well-being shortly. We often talk about these subjects in very negative ways. If we all talk about our mental well-being, and are regularly asked about it when we see our GPs, that will help a lot to de-stigmatise mental health issues.
I want to touch briefly on secondary care. One of the Sunday Express campaign demands is that all hospitals should be therapeutic environments where people with mental health problems feel safe and are treated with respect and have someone to talk to. In a debate in this House last November, I mentioned patients who abscond from secondary care units, and in particular the tragic case of my constituent Kirsty Brookes, who was able to escape from a unit in Leicester and subsequently hanged herself. I am sure the Minister will remember that debate, and our discussion of the definition of absconding.
The Care Quality Commission has published its first report on absconding levels, and I welcome that, but the picture in respect of absconding and escape numbers is still unclear. The numbers provided in this first CQC report need to be broken down further, therefore, but the report showed that in the year in question—2009-10, I think—there were 4,321 incidents of absence without leave from secondary care. Some of them were, of course, far more serious than others; some will have involved a person missing a bus on the way back to the unit, while others might have ended in tragic circumstances. I make this point not to beat up on secondary care providers and health providers generally, but we must know the scale of a problem before we can begin to tackle it.
The impact of the voluntary and community sector on mental health must not be forgotten either, and I hope Members will talk about that. The sector offers vital support, and it must be part of the commissioning landscape.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate. Many smaller voluntary sector organisations give a very good service and understand their communities. Under the commissioning process, however, they often lose out to very large enterprises—large charities and medical companies—that have no real understanding of the local community, particularly ethnic minority communities. Does the hon. Lady agree that the Minister needs to consider that issue further?
Nicky Morgan
I agree; that is an issue. The commissioning structures are being changed, with local GPs now deciding what care they want to buy and where they want to buy it from. I hope that change will allow them to explore the value of smaller organisations, which tend to know particularly well the people they are treating. Although such organisations might not have the clout of large organisations, they are often more successful in terms of patient care. I am sure the Minister has heard that point.
I want to thank one of my regular correspondents, Mike Crump of My Time, a community interest company based in the west midlands. He may well be in the Public Gallery for this debate. My Time provides evidence-based, culturally sensitive professional counselling and support services. He said to me that a great deal of many people’s recoveries
“is owed to therapies based on basic common sense not the miraculous powers of a tablet or the mysterious wonders of the medical profession.”
Let me turn briefly to policing. My chief constable in Leicestershire is also the Association of Chief Police Officers mental health lead. In Leicestershire in 2011-12 there were 444 detentions under section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983, which gives powers to take a person to a place of safety. Leicestershire police deal with serious incidents involving mental health issues on a daily basis, and it has provided me with a snapshot of what happened on the jubilee weekend. From 8 pm one night to 7 am the next morning they dealt with 10 incidents in which mental health conditions or concerns were clearly prevalent. That night, police officers spent four hours with a man in hospital after he was detained under section 136. I therefore ask this question: are the police the right people to be dealing with such incidents?
I hope Members will talk about the criminal justice system, and the fact that nine out of every 10 prisoners have a mental health problem. The Government are investing more than £19 million this year in diversion services, but it is still taking too long to get prisoners out of prison and into secure hospitals.
Finally, I want to talk about the mental well-being landscape. All of us have mental health; it is just that some people’s is better than other people’s. We need to get to a situation where it is as normal to talk about our mental well-being as about our physical well-being.
Public health policy has a role to play. Local authority public health services are key in promoting good public health. I welcome the Leicestershire joint strategic needs assessment chapter on mental health, which was published recently. It makes it clear that mental health is important and says that it cannot be seen in isolation, as many factors contribute to mental ill-health, including the economic instability at present—which I am sure we will hear about this afternoon—and the welfare reform changes, such as asking people whether they are fit enough to go back to work. I think such questions need to be asked, but I thank my constituent Jo Gibbs, who recently brought me a letter outlining her concerns about these changes and the anxiety and pressure they are causing her and others.
Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate, and on her speech. On welfare reform, does she share my concern that people with mental health issues are being kicked off disability support allowance? Increasing numbers of people in that situation are coming to see me. Recently a constituent came to me who is bipolar on the Asperger’s spectrum and who scored zero in the assessment for that allowance.
Nicky Morgan
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I am sure we will all have similar constituency cases. A survey by Mind found that most people with mental health problems want to work but may not be well enough. For some people, employment—the right employment with the right employer and the right support—is the right way forward once they are better. For other people, however, employment is not the answer. The hon. Lady is right that assessors have not always understood the mental health needs of certain people. The Government have tried to address that through the two Harrington reviews. The system is never going to be perfect. That is where Members of Parliament come in; we will be making arguments on behalf of our constituents. I understand the hon. Lady’s point, however. We need to do more, and we need to promote awareness of these issues.
Other aspects of modern life do not help, such as loneliness and isolation. We live in an ever busier world, but people lead more isolated lives. We must not forget the question of families either. Sometimes they can be the cause of a person’s problems, but at other times they can be the solution. I commend the Centre for Social Justice for its work and its report, “Completing the Revolution”, about the importance of families and how significant family breakdown can be in respect of mental health problems.
This is an important debate, but it is only one step along the path of giving mental health the priority that Members clearly feel is needed given the number of them present today. I look forward to hearing their views. We need to talk about mental health far more openly, and we need to make it much easier for people to find out information about how they can get help before they need it. It is too late when people reach crisis point.
I look forward to the no health without mental health framework being implemented. Talking must never stop, but we must now also start implementing. I thank everybody who has contacted me in the run-up to this debate and shared their often very personal stories about their experiences in the mental health system. The House is all too often known for Members shouting at each other. I hope today shows that we are about more than that, and I hope we can all agree with the motion before us, as mental health is a huge priority for Britain and for our constituents, whether they are sufferers or carers. Working together, we can come up with integrated care that responds to the needs of patients and gives our mental well-being the prominence it merits.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) and the Backbench Business Committee on securing this debate, and I pay tribute to her very well-informed contribution. She is obviously a great champion for people who in many cases do not have a voice in the health system. Let us hope that by securing this debate we can give those people the voice they need, and not only, as she says, in the health service; we also need to get the message across to employers and others that mental health issues are not an inhibitor to a good and successful career and a fulfilled life. I shall discuss that in a moment.
I declare an interest as the president of my local Chester-le-Street Mind group. I have had an interest in mental health for a number of years. The hon. Lady mentioned the role of the voluntary sector. It plays a fantastic role, not only in promoting the issue of mental health but in delivering services. In some cases, these organisations are better vehicles for delivering this localised help than some of the larger companies referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), or even the NHS itself.
The hon. Lady said that one in four people could suffer from mental health problems in their lifetime. The hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh), speaking from the Lib Dem Front Bench, is both right and wrong in what he said. Some people do have mental health issues because of events in their life—crises happen and people can get over them in a short time—whereas others have long-term conditions that have to be lived with throughout their life, by way of drug treatment and other effective therapies, as the hon. Lady said. There is a big difference between those two situations. Anyone in this Chamber or any of their family members could suffer from short periods of mental health illness or be long-term sufferers. That is the important thing to get out of today’s debate.
We also need to address the cost, which the hon. Lady mentioned. I am thinking not only about the cost to the NHS, and the personal cost to individuals and their families, but about the cost to UK plc. I reiterate that mental health issues can affect anyone. I know general practitioners who have gone through periods of severe depression. I know one who works as a consultant cardiologist and is brilliant in his field but who lives with mental health issues, and has for many years. He has a very understanding employer and is very open about it. Let us not say that there are any boundaries in mental health, because there are not; these issues can affect anyone in society.
I wish to discuss two issues, one of which is the effect of funding on mental health. The other relates to the welfare reform changes, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) referred. They are having a disproportionate impact on people with mental health issues. I accept the view of the hon. Member for Loughborough that we do not want to get into a party political debate, but there is unjoined-up thinking in some parts of the coalition’s policy. I must say that I saw exactly the same thing when I was a Minister, when one Department does something that has an effect on others, and it is sometimes difficult to get round those circles. However, local authorities in the north-east are clearly having to cut back on funding for this. Mind has said in the briefing note it sent to us for today that about 22% of its funding at the local level has been cut. That is a shame because, as I said, those organisations are sometimes the best at not only being advocates for local mental health services, but at providing care. In regions such as my own in the north-east, funding is vital for those organisations. When I talk to local mental health professionals and charities, I find that it is unfortunately a fact of life that economic conditions at the moment mean that the demand for services is increasing.
The hon. Member for Loughborough referred to the Health and Social Care Act 2012, and I agree with her that it does present some opportunities, if things are done properly. Chester-le-Street Mind, under the great leadership of Helen McCaughey and her husband, Charles, delivers a local therapy service, commissioned by the primary care trust, and it is great. It is carried out in the community, and that is the model that I like to see. The only concern I have, from talking to GPs over the years, is that although some of them are passionate about mental health and understand it, others do not. The challenge for the new commissioners is to take a bold step and say that some of these services can be delivered in the community by groups such as Chester-le-Street Mind and others. The Government might have to be aware of that nationally. As my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North said, this does not have to involve just large companies, because the approach I have described would be effective. That is my only concern: that although I know some very good GPs, including my own, who have a clear understanding of mental health issues, others are not very good at giving this appropriate priority—I am sure that the hon. Lady is aware of some of those. We are thus presented with both an opportunity and a risk.
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr Simon Burns)
I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman because he is making an extremely good point, but does he agree that, under the reforms and the new NHS, a crucial role will be played by the health and wellbeing boards, which are there to monitor and ensure that the local health needs of local communities are provided for?
Mr Jones
Yes, that is one of the key roles of those boards. Again, however, it will be important to ensure that we get the right people on those boards—for example, counsellors who really understand mental health. As the hon. Member for Loughborough said, people have empathy in respect of cancer, but do not quite understand mental health. I agree with the Minister that it is important that the boards are the counterweight to ensure that that happens, but I think that central Government also have to play a role in ensuring that it happens. As I say, we have some great opportunities here and the commissioned work that Chester-le-Street Mind delivers is excellent. In addition, it is cheap compared with some of the major contracts in terms of delivery, because it is delivered by well-trained professionals and by very committed and hard-working individuals in the community.
A lot of mental health charities also rely on charity funding from organisations. In the north-east this funding comes from, for example, institutions such as the Northern Rock Foundation, which has now been taken over by Virgin Money. There is real concern that as those sums contract, the money going into mental health services from those groups will also contract. We need to keep an eye on the situation to ensure that, be it through the lottery or through organisations such as the Northern Rock Foundation or the County Durham Community Foundation, where funds are limited because of the economic crisis, mental health gets its fair share of the funding available. I mean no disrespect when I say that people give happily to Guide Dogs for the Blind or to cancer charities, but it is very much more difficult to get a lot of people to recognise and give money to mental health charities, unless they have been through or had a family member who has been involved in mental health issues. We need to be wary of that, too.
I now wish to discuss the welfare benefit changes, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West mentioned. I commend Mental Health North East, a very good group in the north-east that has interacted with the Department of Health. It is an umbrella group of mental health charities that not only campaigns for and raises awareness about mental health but delivers services to mental health charities and individuals. The organisation is run by a very dynamic chief executive, Lyn Boyd, and is made up of paid individuals and a large number of volunteers, many of whom have personal experience of mental health issues. They are very good advocates, not only ensuring that mental health is kept high on the political agenda but interacting very successfully with the Department of Health in consultations and so on.
One piece of work that that organisation has considered is on a matter that I have increasingly seen in my constituency surgeries. There are people with mental health issues who were on the old incapacity benefit and are now on the new employment and support allowance and who are, frankly, being treated appallingly. The way that is being done is costing the Government more money in the long term. I know that it is not the direct responsibility of the Department of Health, but some thought needs to go into how we deal with the work test for people with mental health illnesses. I am one of the first to recognise that, as most of the professionals say, working is good for people’s mental health; it is important to say that. However, we must recognise that certain people will have difficulties with that. If we are to get people with mental health problems into work, we must ensure that the pathway is a little more sympathetic than the one we have at the moment.
Another massive problem is the work needed with employers. If employers are going to take on people with mental health issues, they will have to be very understanding to cope with those individuals.
Jeremy Corbyn
Many of those who are taken for work-related interviews by Atos are declared fit for work, only to win an appeal to show that they are not. On many occasions, the levels of stress they have been through in going for the interview, failing it and winning an appeal are very detrimental to their health. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Department must be far more sensitive about that and think a lot more before it starts to call people in for these interviews?
Mr Jones
I totally agree and I shall give some examples of that in a minute.
We must try to get a system in which employers, even in these tight economic circumstances, understand the mental health issues and can make adaptations. Whether we support employers who take people with mental health issues on for a certain period or whether we do other things, we need to think it out a bit more than it is at the moment.
Nicky Morgan
One statistic that I did not use in my speech was that only 1% of the access to work funding, which employers can use to help to smooth someone’s path back into employment, is used for mental health facilities. It could be used for counselling or support workers, but only 1% is spent on such provision in the context of the prevalence of mental health issues in the general population.
Mr Jones
The hon. Lady makes an important point that should be considered. That is where we need to join up the two relevant Departments.
Mental Health North East has carried out a survey and I thank that organisation and Derwentside citizen’s advice bureau for the examples I am going to use. Like the hon. Member for Loughborough, I asked whether I could use names. One person said that I could, but late last night she rang me to say no. I am sure that people will understand why I use letters to refer to these individuals rather than their names.
The first case is that of Mr A, a 50-year-old man who lives alone and received ESA. He suffers from depression, anxiety, agoraphobia and anger issues. Despite the support he is getting and the drugs that he is taking, he was called by Atos to a work-related interview. He got no points at all even though he finds it very strange to go outside the house, let alone to interact with people. He decided to appeal and attended the appeal. There is a huge backlog in the appeals system that is adding to people’s anxiety as they are having to wait a long time, and the pressure on citizen’s advice bureaux and local welfare rights organisations to support those appeals is creating a crisis in some of them. When I give some of these examples, Mr Speaker, you will see that they should never have gone to appeal in the first place.
This case was very interesting. Mr A turned up at the appeal, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North mentioned earlier, caused him huge stress as he thought he was going to lose. He turned up in the afternoon, and his appeal had been heard that morning without his being present and his award had been granted on the basis of the medical evidence. If the appeal hearing could do that, why could Atos not do so? The reason is that Atos is not taking medical evidence into account at all.
The second individual is from Stanley in my constituency and I have known this young lady since she was in her early 20s.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
In the hon. Gentleman’s example, was Atos setting its own procedures or was it following the instructions under the contract?
Mr Jones
Having seen the form, I think it was according to the contract, and this is where things need tweaking. We need a special form for people with mental health issues, rather than using the generic form for people with other disabilities, too. That is the important point that needs to change.
Miss B, as I will call her, is 36 and a single parent who lives in Stanley in my constituency. She has a very supportive family and receives huge support from her local Sure Start and her local community mental health team. She has been unemployed, suffers from bipolar depression and is on a cocktail of medication. Although everyone has been told not to contact her directly but to contact her mother, Atos contacted her directly. She lives independently just down the street from her mother, which is good, but everyone has been told to contact the mother because she does not quite understand. When Atos contacted her with a telephone request for interview, according to her mother it sent her into an absolute panic. If her neighbour had not been there to help her, it would have caused huge problems.
Miss B went to the interview and failed it, getting no points. She is now having panic attacks, she has had episodes where she has felt suicidal, and without support her child would have been taken into care. She was nearly hospitalised because of the stress. She has now had to wait upwards of eight months for her appeal to be heard, but in the meantime, and not just because of the ESA, her housing benefit has been stopped so she is in debt. It is one thing after another, which is not what someone with severe mental health illness needs and that is why we must refine the system. That woman has been waiting for an appeal for eight months now and, knowing the case as I do, I have no doubt that she will win.
My final example is Mr J, a 52-year-old who suffers from mental health illness, partly as a result of his separation from his partner a few years ago. He suffers from very severe depression and is on antidepressants. He has tried to help himself by going to cognitive behavioural therapy sessions. In January 2012, the Department for Work and Pensions wrote to ask him to attend an Atos interview, which caused him to withdraw from his treatment programme. That was not good for him. Very insensitively, Atos then rang him on Christmas eve to organise the appointment. Again, despite the fact that a lot of medical evidence was presented, Atos did not take any of it into account.
There is another thing that Atos is getting completely wrong, or at least has an inconsistent approach to. Mr J took his son, who is one of his key supporters, along with him and asked whether he could make representations on his behalf. He was told no. In other cases, people have taken their community psychiatric nurses with them only for them to be told to sit outside the interview while the individual goes in. Atos is being inconsistent in its approach and is clearly not taking on board any of the medical evidence that is put forward. Mr J appealed and, as in the first case I cited, the appeal went through on the basis that the medical evidence presented was good enough. What is Atos doing? What concerns me about these cases is the cost not just to the individual but to the health service and the local NHS.
Let me highlight the findings of the survey I mentioned and read some quotes from it. In response to a question about whether medical evidence was taken into account, someone said that it was “not even looked at.” Another response was:
“Not at all and there was a great deal including an advocate (myself) attending the Medical. Nothing that I said”
seemed to make a difference. Yet another:
“Generally, clients feel that mental health is not taken into consideration”
and is not being focused in the way that physical disabilities are.
“Most clients believed that their own medical evidence had been completely disregarded”
at the interviews they attended. Another issue that was commonly raised was how little time it took—less than 15 minutes in most cases.
Question 6 asked about the impact on individuals. Let me quote some of the answers directly:
“Despair. Resignment to the cruelty dished out”
by the system.
“Very distressed, anxious, scared”.
“Very stressed, confused, angry and frightened as you can imagine, these people are already existing below the poverty line”
and this increases stress levels.
Judging by those examples, the system needs to be changed. It is inefficient, it is causing huge problems for individuals, and is also costing the system more. What we need to do, possibly through the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department of Health, is come up with a specific work test for people with mental health issues, and recognise that individuals have to be supported.
Now I am going to throw my notes away—I thought long and hard last night about whether to do this—and talk about my own mental health problems. 1n 1996, I suffered quite a deep depression related to work and other things going on in my life. This is the first time I have spoken about this. Indeed, some people in my family do not know about what I am going to talk about today. Like a lot of men, I tried to deal with it myself—you do not talk to people. I hope you realise, Mr Speaker, that what I am saying is very difficult for me.
I have thought very long and hard about this and did not actually decide to do this until I just put my notes down. It is hard, because you do not always recognise the symptoms. It creeps up very slowly. Also, we in politics tend to think that if we admit to fault or failure we will be looked on disparagingly by the electorate and our peers. Whether my having made this admission will mean that the possibility of any future ministerial career is blighted for ever for me, I do not know. I was a Minister in the previous Government and I think that most people on both sides of the House thought I did a reasonable job.
We have to talk about mental health issues in this place, including people in the House who have personal experience of it. As I have said, I thought long and hard last night about doing this and I did not come to a decision until I put my notes down just now. Whether it affects how people view me, I do not know; and frankly I do not care because if it helps other people who have depression or who have suffered from it in the past, then, good.
Politics is a rough old game, and I have no problem with that. Indeed, I am, perhaps, one of the roughest at times, but having to admit that you need help sometimes is not a sign of weakness. I also want to say to you, Mr Speaker, that we need to do more here to support Members with mental health issues. In terms of occupational health, we have an excellent individual in Dr Madan, who understands mental health issues very well. I know of only one other Member who has suffered from mental health problems because a colleague on the Labour Benches has spoken to me about her mental health issues and depression, but it is important to get the message across to individuals that if they are having problems they can go and see Dr Madan and her team.
May I also highlight to you, Mr Speaker, the problems that Dr Madan has with getting funding for treatment afterwards? The hon. Member for Loughborough mentioned drugs, and they are part of the answer, but they were not the solution for me. Things like cognitive behavioural therapy can be far more effective. As I learned over many years, it is about how you think. Dr Madan raised an issue with me regarding an individual for whom she was trying to get funding, but the House authorities were not prepared to do it. If she comes to you, Mr Speaker, regarding any Member who wishes to have mental health support you have to say yes because it is not easy for Members of Parliament to go to their own GP or local community to talk about these issues. Sometimes, it is perhaps better for them to have treatment and find solutions here rather than in their constituency. That is a plea to you, Mr Speaker, and I would be grateful if you took that on board.
As I have said, I do not know whether I have done the right thing. Perhaps I will go home tonight and think I have not, but I think I have. I hope that it does not change anyone’s view of me. Most people might think, “Christ, if it can happen to him, it might happen to anybody.” On that note, let me put on record my thanks for the opportunity to debate this issue. Let us go out and champion this issue.
Finally, let me say to every hon. Member present and to those who are not present that although being an MP is a great privilege—I have always thought that; it is a great thing that I love—it also has its stresses. Unless someone has done it, they do not know what those stresses can be personally, in terms of family, and in terms of what is expected of us in the modern technological age. A little more understanding from some parts of the media and some constituents about the pressures on the modern-day MP would be very valuable.
Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)
It is absolutely fantastic to follow the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones). I was a researcher here in the early 1990s and a few Members present were here at that time. They will remember the debates about homosexuality. There were some discriminations, as there still are, in relation to homosexuality, and people were beginning to feel very uncomfortable about that. Many colleagues came to this place to take part in those debates, and they would say, “These discriminations against homosexuals are disgraceful, but I am not gay myself.” They did not want to be perceived as gay because they had an interest in those matters.
I am delighted to say that I have been a practising fruitcake for 31 years. It was 31 years ago at St John’s Wood tube station—I remember it vividly—that I was visited by obsessive compulsive disorder. Over the past 31 years, it has played a fairly significant part in my life. On occasions it is manageable and on occasions it becomes quite difficult. It takes one to some quite dark places. I operate to the rule of four, so I have to do everything in evens. I have to wash my hands four times and I have to go in and out of a room four times. My wife and children often say I resemble an extra from “Riverdance” as I bounce in and out of a room, switching lights off four times. Woe betide me if I switch off a light five times because then I have to do it another three times. Counting becomes very important.
I leave crisp and biscuit packets around the house because if I go near a bin, my word, I have to wash my hands on numerous occasions. There has to be an upside to a mental health problem. I thought that the upside would be that I would not get colds, because apparently if you wash your hands a lot, you don’t get colds, but I wash my hands hundreds of times a day and I get extremely cheesed off when I end up with a heavy cold.
OCD is like internal Tourette’s: sometimes it is benign and often it can be malevolent. It is like someone inside one’s head just banging away. One is constantly striking deals with oneself. Sometimes these are quite ridiculous and on some occasions they can be rather depressing and serious. I have been pretty healthy for five years but just when you let your guard down this aggressive friend comes and smacks you right in the face. I was on holiday recently and I took a beautiful photograph of my son carrying a fishing rod—hon. Members may know that I love fishing. There was my beautiful son carrying a fishing rod, I was glowing with pride and then the voice started, “If you don’t get rid of that photograph, your child will die.” You fight those voices for a couple or three hours and you know that you really should not give into them because they should not be there and it ain’t going to happen, but in the end, you ain’t going to risk your child, so you give into the voices and then feels pretty miserable about life.
But hey, there are amusing times as well. I do not feel particularly sorry for myself, because my skirmish with mental health is minor. There are people who live with appalling mental health problems day in, day out, which is why I when I became an MP, I regarded it as a wonderful opportunity to try to help them. I hope that I have an insight into some of their pain and agony and the battles that they go through on a daily basis. Many people are frightened and feel excluded.
My first year and a half in Parliament was absolutely appalling. It was very, very difficult. My constituents thought that I was a jolly fellow—that is how I came across—but I remember sitting in my office going through my post. A book arrived with a letter saying, “Managing your Tourette’s”. I thought, “Oh my word, someone has spotted me on television. I’m done for. They’ve sent me a book and I’ll be outed in the newspapers: ‘Walker’s a loony’”. My constituents will turn their backs on me, my association will throw its hands in the air, and my children will be chased through the playground.” I sat in cold terror for 10 minutes, wondering how I would navigate my way through this. I then picked up the letter and realised that it was a circular that had gone to all 650 MPs, so I took great comfort from the fact that probably 50 others were having the same emotions as me.
We can talk about medical solutions to mental health problems, and of course medicine has a part to play. In reality, however, society has the biggest part to play. This is society’s problem, and we need to step back from our own prejudices, park them and embrace people with mental health problems. You only get one chance at life. You get about 80 years-ish. If you have severe mental health problems, you get about 65. Can you imagine going through your whole life feeling miserable, excluded, discriminated against, with little hope? I cannot. I have a wonderful vocation, I have a loving family, and I have a comfortable lifestyle, so I know, even when things are bad, they will get better, but a lot of people are not in that position, and we need to reach out to them.
I am really excited about the speech by the hon. Member for North Durham—I am very excited about that—and I am excited about the fact that my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) secured this debate. We are making progress and moving in the right direction. We will hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) in a few moments—or hours—about his private Member’s Bill. Many colleagues in the House are taking part in the debate. I think that some colleagues would like to be here but, again, if they are here discussing mental health, some people might feel that they have a problem. Look, it is a not a problem, it really is not: let’s get over it guys, and move on.
Media reporting has improved and we do not often see headlines such as “Frank Luno”, which was totally indefensible. The media are beginning to get on board, because there are many people in the media who suffer from mental health problems. As the hon. Member for North Durham alluded to at the beginning of his speech, who are these people out there? They are doctors, nurses, teachers and soldiers; they are all around us. Why would the hon. Gentleman’s constituents think any differently of him now than they did 20 minutes ago? In fact, they will respect him a great deal more. Why would my constituents think any differently of me now than they did 10 minutes ago? Those who disliked me will continue to dislike me; those who like me will continue to like me; and those who were slightly agonistic could go either way.
Here we are, having a great, great debate. The all-party group on mental health is going from strength to strength and, for the first time, I am feeling really positive and very happy. I am not going to speak for much longer, but I want to say two things. We need to sort out independent mental health advocacy for people who face incarceration or are on community treatment orders. Access to representation is patchy across the country, and we need to sort that out, because we cannot lock up people who do not receive proper advocacy or constrain their liberties without proper advocacy.
We also need to address Criminal Records Bureau checks under the heading “Any other relevant information” that are entirely at the discretion of the chief constable. I am aware of a number of people who have had mental health problems and have been detained for a short while. The police became involved, because they took those individuals into detention or to hospital. They go for a job perhaps as a counsellor or working in the charitable sector. They have a clean record but under “Any other relevant information” the chief constable can say, “We are aware that this person was detained for a mental health problem at this institution. We are not aware that they are a threat to adults or children.” That is that. That is the end of the matter, because we recognise that there is stigma and discrimination. I am afraid that in our ultra risk-averse world, that is a career death sentence for those people. We need to sort that out.
I join the hon. Member for North Durham in saying that I am not frightened any more. Like him, I am pretty middle-aged, and I do not care what people think of me any more. When people come up to me and say, “Mr Walker, we think you an absolute rotter and so-and-so”, with OCD, I would probably have said a lot worse to myself 20 minutes earlier. It is not such a big deal. I am not frightened any more. It is a really good place to be, and we need to ensure that many hundreds of thousands can be in that place as well. Not being frightened is a really good thing. Hon. Gentlemen, hon. Ladies and friends: rock and roll, as they say. Thank you.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I am privileged to be in the Chamber to hear some of the speeches that have been made, including those by the hon. Members for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) and for North Durham (Mr Jones). It is a great privilege to hear what they said. I congratulate the hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) on raising the matter in the Chamber. She said that everyone has mental health issues; I suppose it is a matter of how they deal with that and control it. We all have a breaking point. I hope that I never reach that breaking point, and that others do not do so either.
As an elected representative, in my interaction with constituents in my office, I see very clearly how people deal with depression. As the hon. Member for Strangford, I wish to express views on behalf of my constituents, ever mindful of the fact that health in Northern Ireland is a devolved matter. However, the debate is on mental health generally, so the issues in Northern Ireland are every bit as relevant as those in Broxbourne, North Durham, Loughborough and anywhere else in the United Kingdom. Every day I deal with those issues, whether through employment and support allowance appeals or disability living allowance appeals, or by interacting with people and the way in which they deal with their benefits.
An issue that has been highlighted in the Chamber is the difficulties that can arise. That was an issue before the economic downturn, but it is a bigger issue today, because people find it harder to deal with the economic and financial realities that face them, which compounds their problems. In all honesty, over the past year or 18 months, I have seen greater need in people who suffer from depression, as they have had to deal with issues with which they have never had to deal before. We have debated many great issues in the Chamber in the two years in which I have been an MP, but this issue is certainly one of the most important.
I want to deal with two issues. I want to talk about mental health from the perspective of Northern Ireland, and I also want to touch on an issue the hon. Member for Loughborough mentioned when she talked about the armed forces. There are problems for our soldiers and service personnel returning from the battlefield, whether Afghanistan or Iraq, because their memories of those conflicts do not finish when they get off the plane or boat after returning home; they are still with them many years after the conflict. I feel strongly about that for those who returned from both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Good mental health should be a priority for us all, as every Member who has spoken so far has indicated. In Northern Ireland we have also made it a priority. However, Northern Ireland—I say this with respect—has been underfunded for many years, owing to direct Government reasons and others. The figures show that mental health is a greater issue in Northern Ireland than it is in other parts of the United Kingdom. People would say that that is perhaps because of the 30 years of the troubles, which I think is probably true. When someone is under pressure or stress and worried about whether they will live or die, they turn to drink, drugs or other things, and that affects their lifestyle. Ultimately, a great many people in Northern Ireland suffer from depression and mental health issues because of our country’s past. I am glad to say that we have moved on. We now have a partnership Government and we are working together to ensure that there is a future for everyone, and that in the future there is a lessened threat of terrorism.
The British Medical Association in Northern Ireland has done significant research on mental health there. When the hon. Member for Loughborough introduced the debate she mentioned a number of the points that are also in the BMA’s report, so I could not help but wonder whether she had perhaps seen the same report. It contained a number of points that she referred to and commented on. I think that the reason those points are so similar to what she said is that the same issues are just as relevant in Northern Ireland as they are in Loughborough and the rest of the United Kingdom.
I would like to touch on how we can improve the situation. I know that the Minister will have a detailed and helpful response to the debate. To start with, it is a taboo subject. I think that the Government and policy makers must strive to ensure that the stigma, which Members have talked about, and the clear discrimination and fear that surround mental health are eliminated or addressed by focusing on promotion, education, prevention and early intervention. Those are the four headlines the BMA puts forward in its suggestions. There is clearly a work force planning problem that, in some occasions, occurs simply because of reductions in staffing levels. There are a number of things we need to do, and perhaps the Minister, when he responds, can tell us how the issue of mental health will work within the staffing restrictions and assure us that that concern will be taken on board.
The Northern Ireland Executive’s programme for government made a commitment to work for a healthier people and identified mental health as a priority. It also set out targets to try to address the issues. The person who suffers from mental health problems is only part of the problem. When a constituent with mental health problems comes to my office, as they do to the offices of other Members, there is not just one person sitting in a chair in front of me, because they are usually accompanied by someone else; there is a family circle, children, mums and dads and everyone involved. While one person might suffer from mental health problems, half a dozen people could be affected by the ripples.
I am also concerned about teenagers who suffer from depression. Between 10% and 20% of our teenagers will suffer from depression at some point in that short period of their life. I believe that there has to be recognition of mental illnesses, notably depression, and it means that we need to look beyond good mental health and at preventing mental health problems and ensuring early intervention. Many personal issues affect mental health, including drink, drugs, working conditions, homelessness, poverty, unemployment and risk-taking behaviour, whether smoking or unsafe sex, and those issues affect many of the people who come to my office with these problems.
Let us address these problems first by strengthening individuals, by addressing emotional resilience and by promoting self-esteem, life skills, coping skills and communication skills. We also have to strengthen communities. Those are the issues I feel are important. That means addressing the issue of social inclusion, improving neighbourhood environments, which make a difference. In relation to teenagers, we also have to try to address the anti-bullying strategies in schools. Those are important because bullying is one of the things that lead to young people having these depression issues.
We also have to reduce the structural barriers to mental health, which means access to education and meaningful employment. I know that that everyone will agree with that, but at the end of the day we need to have a strategy in place to address mental health issues, and that is what we are seeking to do through this debate. We all agree that there is absolutely no doubt that we all support the issue and the vulnerable people affected, people who we meet every day and who need real help.
Suicide in the community is a great worry for us all as elected representatives. Every one of us will have dealt with families, with people whom we know personally or with people from families that we know personally who have lost loved ones—who took their own lives because they felt that there was no way forward. They were coming off the back of terrible depression or terrible pressure, and did not know where they could go next.
Mr Kevan Jones
We have been talking about the voluntary sector, and in my constituency there is a very good organisation, which also came about as a result of a personal tragedy for the individual—a woman called Shirley Smith, who runs If U Care Share. Her 19-year-old son died, and it is about young people and talking about those issues. She goes into schools, youth groups and football clubs to do so. Does the hon. Gentleman think we should have a national strategy on that to ensure that it is part of the curriculum as well?
Jim Shannon
Yes, I do. When a constituent of mine died in a car accident on a Sunday night, I went to her house on the Monday night, and her father just wanted to speak and to talk about his daughter. That is the issue. On many occasions, it is just a matter of having someone to talk to, someone who can lend a sympathetic ear when it is needed most, so I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Gentleman on that matter.
Back in 2005, the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, who had some responsibility for health, the right hon. Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Mr Woodward), set up a task force to develop a suicide prevention strategy for Northern Ireland. It is paying some dividends in relation to a decrease in the number of suicides, but the number is still at a very high level.
Other Members have touched on dementia and Alzheimer’s, and after wearing my hat as a councillor for 26 years and as an Assembly Member for 12 years, before being privileged to enter this House, I must note that the number of people with Alzheimer’s and dementia is greater today than ever before. I do not know the reasons why, but they are real, the statistics prove it and we have an issue there as well.
On employment support allowance appeals, the hon. Gentleman made an interesting point about those who have mental health issues, because when they go to an ESA appeal the issue is clearly not a physical one, because physically they can walk about, move their hands, brush their hair—if they have any, unlike me—or put a hat on their head. They are asked whether they can do those things, but those are not the questions that a person with mental illness needs to answer. They need to answer the questions, “Are you moody?”, “Do you fall out with people?”, “Are you aggressive?”, “How do you cope with difficult situations?”, “Do you start a task that you cannot finish?” Those are the questions for a person who is depressed, and I agree with the hon. Gentleman, because the appeals panel—the chair and those who deal with such tribunals—need to understand those issues better, so that an appeal can be presented in a way that people understand.
It has been stated that everyone has mental health issues. No one is immune, and although stress is greater among the poor and the unemployed it applies throughout society. Good mental health is crucial to the overall well-being of an individual, of societies and of countries.
In Northern Ireland there are about 150 suicides each year: 41% are single males, and 22% are males between 25 and 34-years old. Some 50% of suicides in the UK involve psychiatric patients, and one reason is a loss of contact; in that context I want to talk about soldiers, about a loss of contact by the health service and about treatment non-compliance, whereby people do not take the medication that doctors give them.
Figures for the United Kingdom as a whole indicate that depression accounts for about 60% of the country’s main health problems, alcoholism about 10%, Alzheimer’s about 8% and severe stress about 6%. That leads me on to that second issue, which is to do with our soldiers.
The week before last I had the opportunity to go to Cyprus with the armed forces parliamentary scheme. Some MPs in the Chamber will be members of that great scheme, some will be aware of it and some will have been members in the past. We have an opportunity to meet soldiers and to hear about strategic issues so that we can present them to the House in an informed and knowledgeable way.
When we were in Cyprus two weeks ago, we noted its importance from an Army and a strategic point of view, but we had not realised that it is halfway to Camp Bastion in Afghanistan. There is a new scheme in Cyprus whereby soldiers returning home from Afghanistan come through a so-called decompression centre in Akrotiri; last year 30,000 did so. They call it decompression because it helps them to unwind after what they have experienced in Afghanistan over the previous few months. The sun is usually shining, which makes a big difference. They have a chance to shower, to have their kit completely dry-cleaned, and to have a good meal. They have access to mobile phones, and they are able to speak to their doctor, padre or commanding officer. They have a chance to get back into normal life—to step down and get themselves ready to go back home to their family. The work done for our soldiers in the Akrotiri centre, which cost £4.5 million to build, gets them ready for life back home.
Those soldiers have seen in Afghanistan the most horrific things that we cannot begin to visualise. They have seen friends and colleagues killed or injured, some with life-changing injuries. We know of those people because we have met some of them, and we are humbled when we do so. The bullets and the bombs are intermingled with the stress, the trauma, the bad memories and the nightmares—those are all part of the things they have to face long after they leave the Army. While the Army, the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force look after their personnel, the forces associations do likewise. We recognised from our time in Akrotiri, as we have in our constituencies, that once soldiers are out of the Army they are often distanced from those associations too. The Royal British Legion might not always be at hand for them. They might have no friends or their marriage might have split up. They might turn to drink and drugs, but that will give only temporary relief and they are still on their own. I am mindful that defence is not the Minister’s portfolio, but I hope that when he replies he will consider the welfare of our soldiers who have returned from Afghanistan, who are not in the forces any more because they have left or retired, and are now apart from the ritual and discipline that they were once very much part of.
Every one of us will be aware of constituents who have lost control because of the memories and nightmares of what they have seen. Whenever the memories flood back and the flashbacks reappear, they relive what they have come through, and then they face their demons alone. We need to face up to this issue confronting those who have served, and are serving, in the Army, the Navy and the Air Force. The health service needs to address it UK-wide, in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The plight of our soldiers should be a priority for this Government, as I know that it will be. I commend the motion to the House and hope that Members will support it.
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Paul Burstow)
There is no health without mental health. In that simple statement I sum up the coalition Government’s approach to mental health.
In contributing to this important debate, I start by congratulating my hon. Friends the Members for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) and for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), among others, on tirelessly pursuing the case for having this debate on the Floor of the House. It is one of the rare debates that we have on this subject, and it clearly airs the issues that are so important to so many of our fellow citizens.
The hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) said that it was a privilege to have the job—the vocation—of being a Member of Parliament, and I could not agree with him more. Sometimes, that privilege involves the surprise that we can still experience in the Chamber when debates are genuinely authentic and when people speak from the heart. I thank him for his candour and honesty; we need more of that. The chair of the all-party parliamentary group on mental health, my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne, talked, with humour and much else besides, about his experience with obsessive compulsive disorder. Anyone living and struggling with such conditions, who has not perhaps reached the point of wanting to talk about it, will feel huge respect for both Members for bringing the attention of the House to these matters. They have made us all wake up to something that we ought to know, but that we too often forget. That is that mental health is not a “them and us” game; it is about us—all of us. It touches us all in one way or another.
I am probably not going to be able to do justice to every contribution in the debate, not least those that I have not yet heard, but I assure hon. Members that I will continue to listen throughout the remainder of the debate, and that if any issues arise that I have not covered in this speech, I will write to the Members concerned to address those points.
The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) made some important points about the support for our veterans, and for our armed forces more generally. This Government have done a lot in that regard—not least the commissioning by the Prime Minister of my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) to produce his report, “Fighting Fit: a mental health plan for servicemen and veterans”. The report deals with many of these issues, and the Government take them, and the action that they require, very seriously.
Mr Kevan Jones
I congratulate the hon. Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) on the report, but would the Minister acknowledge that it built on a lot of the work done by the previous Government, which I was responsible for?
Paul Burstow
I hope that there will be cross-party consensus on these issues today, and I shall take the hon. Gentleman’s question in that spirit. He makes a fair point. This is about building on what is working, and ensuring that it can work even better. The work done by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire has certainly accelerated the pace.
When the Deputy Prime Minister and I launched the mental health strategy last year, we recognised the need to tackle the root causes of mental illness as well as ensuring that community and acute services provide timely treatment and care. We placed a strong emphasis on recovery from a human, rather than just a medical, perspective. We also made it clear that delivering significant improvements in people’s health and well-being requires parity of esteem between physical and mental health.
I know that some hon. Members are concerned that not enough emphasis has been placed on acute and in-patient care. Let me be clear. Our plans to provide a safe, modern, effective mental health service give equal emphasis to the full range of services, from public mental health and prevention through to forensic mental health services. This is about people receiving high quality, appropriate care when they need it. If services can intervene early—the case for that has already been powerfully made—so that mental health problems can be managed in the community before more serious problems develop, that should result in acute in-patient care being made available more quickly for those who need it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough mentioned the concerns raised by the Association of Chief Police Officers about places of safety. In partnership with the Home Office and the police, we are examining how to ensure that health services are properly commissioned in custodial situations. I would be only too happy to meet her and the ACPO mental health lead to discuss those issues further.
Jeremy Corbyn
Will the Minister look carefully into the circumstances of people who die either in police custody or in a mental health institution as a result of a mental health issue, to determine whether adequate forms of inquest and inquiry exist, and whether adequate lessons are being learned from the experiences? In view of what is going on in one or two inquests at the moment, I feel that there are some quite serious deficiencies in that area.
Paul Burstow
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. May I undertake to write to him about that matter in more detail? It has come up in our work on our suicide prevention strategy in relation to the nature of suicide verdicts, and narrative verdicts in particular, in coroners’ courts. I would be happy to come back to him on that issue.
In the past year, we have made progress across a broad front. We have committed £400 million to make psychological therapies available for adults of all ages, as well as for people with long-term health conditions and with severe and enduring mental illness. When it comes to our focus on recovery, the latest figures show that 44.4% of those who complete programmes recover and that more achieve lasting improvement. That puts us on track to achieve our target rate of recovery of over 50%.
Given that we know that the first signs of more than half of all lifelong mental illnesses can be detected in adolescence, we have to go further. That is why the Government are breaking new ground by investing in a new training-led approach to re-equip children and young people’s mental health services to offer a range of psychological therapies. I pay tribute to the leadership shown by YoungMinds. Without its support, we would not have come as far in this area as fast as we have.
I want to say something about the necessity of achieving the best possible outcomes for people in mental health crisis. Secondary mental health services across the country have made significant changes, both in community and hospital settings, including the provision of alternatives to psychiatric hospital admission. For example, more than 10,000 people with an early diagnosis of psychosis were engaged with early intervention services last year. That is the highest figure ever recorded. The improvements in community-based early intervention services are driving up standards of care, as well as reducing the demand for hospital admissions. I freely acknowledge that there is more to do and I take on board the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne made about the need to look at the variability in the accessibility of mental health advocacy.
The development of recovery-focused services is a critical part of the Government’s strategy. That work is being led by the NHS Confederation’s mental health network and the Centre for Mental Health. They are supporting pilot sites that cover almost half of England and are making the kind of changes that service users have sought for years. The programme has identified 10 key changes to the way in which staff work, the types of services that are provided and the culture of organisations to embed recovery principles into routine practice.
When I visited the South West London recovery college, I heard powerful personal testimonies from people who were living purposeful and fulfilling lives, and who were living with their illness rather than having to be cured of symptoms or illnesses. It is important that recovery is not just seen in medical terms, but is self-defined. Students at the college learn not only how to manage their condition, but skills to help them back to work and to form new relationships. Some become lecturers at the college themselves. I was told that being called a student, rather than a patient, helped people take control of their recovery, gave them more confidence and, crucially, made them feel normal, as opposed to being treated as a helpless, passive recipient of care.
Part of a good recovery is the ability to exercise more control over one’s life. In health care, that means that there must be more shared decision making and choice. In opening the debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough mentioned the principle of “no decision about me without me”. Undoubtedly, the any qualified provider policy and tariff reform have a part to play in that.
Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)
Many of us recognise that many people who come to our constituency surgeries, perhaps with a housing benefit inquiry or other benefit inquiry, are actually struggling with mental health challenges. It seems to me that the lack of control that results from the way in which Government services are designed can be a great contributing factor to stress and, therefore, to depression. The Minister is speaking about control. Can the design of public services, such as housing benefit and other benefits, be taken into account as a way of relieving the stress on a great number of our constituents?
Paul Burstow
That intervention rather helpfully moves me on to the point that has been made by several hon. Members about Atos. Although it is not my ministerial responsibility, a number of important points have been made about how it operates in particular cases. I will ensure that those points are taken into account by my ministerial colleagues at the Department for Work and Pensions. I will gladly pass them on.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
The Minister will know that mental health charities have proposed changes to the mental health descriptors in the work capability assessment for employment and support allowance. There seems to be some delay in implementing those. Will he pick that up in his discussions with his colleagues?
Paul Burstow
I will certainly act as the messenger and pass that point on, as the right hon. Gentleman has requested.
Stigma has been referred to in this debate. It is undoubtedly one of the biggest barriers to access to mental health services in this country. The Government are determined to reduce the prejudice and discrimination that surround mental health, but we recognise that we cannot do that on our own. That is why Mind and Rethink Mental Illness have developed a major anti-stigma programme called “Time to Change”. That campaign is working and is delivering significant behavioural change across society. That is why the Government are contributing the substantial amount of £16 million up to April 2015.
Mr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)
The Minister says that the Government wish to reduce the stigma surrounding mental illness, and I accept that. Does he agree that the decision of the Department of Health in 1994 to hold an independent inquiry into every death involving someone who has suffered mental illness or been part of the mental health system continues to perpetuate that stigma?
Paul Burstow
That is an important and challenging point, and I will want to go away and think about what we do. For patient safety, we still need to learn lessons when things go wrong in our system, acknowledge when things have not been done properly and put them right. In that sense, confidential inquiries are an important part of the learning mechanism. One point of frustration that I hear in debates in the House and see in correspondence from hon. Members is the sense that lessons are not learned. As part of our reforms, with the NHS Commissioning Board taking on responsibility for patient safety, we need to ensure that that is not the case in future.
We are investing £16 million in “Time to Change”, and we were delighted when Comic Relief decided to put in an additional £4 million, one of the biggest grants that it has ever made.
I wish to make another point that touches on the contributions of my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne and the hon. Member for North Durham. One in five people still think that anyone who has a history of mental health problems should not be allowed to hold public office. How many former Presidents, Prime Ministers or Ministers would have been excluded if that view had been applied? [Hon. Members: “Churchill.”] Precisely. Such a law is as outdated as asylums and as outdated as many of the attitudes that sit behind it. It has to be consigned to the history books just like asylums have been, and under the coalition Government’s watch, it will be. I congratulate the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) on securing a slot for a private Member’s Bill on the subject.
Looking ahead, although we have made progress there are still big challenges to tackle. Reference has been made to the implementation framework that will be published to support the roll-out of the “No health without mental health” strategy. That framework has been produced in conjunction with five national mental health organisations—Rethink Mental Illness, the NHS Confederation, the Centre for Mental Health, Turning Point and Mind—and many others have been involved.
We have previously had a very good debate about “Listening to Experience”, Mind’s excellent report on acute and crisis care, and Mind’s policy team have been directly involved in ensuring that the framework delivers on those issues. It will provide a route map for every organisation with contributions to make to improve the nation’s mental health. It will spell out how progress will be made, measured and reported.
What does success look like? To me, it means more people having access to evidence-based psychological therapists; services intervening earlier, particularly for children and young people; services focusing on recovery and people’s needs and aspirations above all; and service users and carers being at the heart of all aspects of planning and service delivery.
Today, economists tell us that mental ill health in this country costs £105 billion a year, and that is just in England. If we succeed and put in place the right combination of public health, anti-stigma policies, accessible psychological therapies and excellent community and acute services, we can dramatically reduce that figure. Put another way, if we can deliver the right evidence-based treatment to children and young people so that their conditions do not persist into adulthood, we can prevent as many as two in five of all adult mental health disorders. As a society, we have made huge progress in how we recognise people’s mental illness, but despite that we have not fully accepted that mental health is equal to physical health and that parity of esteem is needed between the problems of the body and the problems of the mind. That is the challenge—
Dr Lewis
I have waited many years to intervene on a Minister in his final sentence, and I have achieved that today.
Does the Minister accept, having made a convincing case for people being able to live with their illnesses by being at home, that part of the reassurance that they need to do that is to know that in periods of acute crisis, there will be a bed available for them should it be needed? That should be not only for detained patients but for voluntary patients.
Paul Burstow
One thing I did not say—I was trying to cut down my remarks—was that there is an essential need to give more people the ability to control their health care through crisis plans. Crisis plans are an opportunity for people to make a statement in advance on how they wish to be treated in the event of a mental health episode that requires an intervention from mental health services. We know that when the plans are in place, they make a huge difference to the need for admission, and that they can reduce the length of stay. We need to ensure that there is a sufficiency of beds so that people can get appropriate treatment, but we also need to ensure that there is much more focus on good, community-based intervention at an early stage. Getting that balance right is always difficult for health commissioners to achieve—I know my hon. Friend is struggling with that in his patch at the moment.
Those are the challenges the NHS faces. They are challenges not just for our health commissioners and providers but, as this debate has clearly demonstrated, for our whole society. We can transform mental health in this country only if we transform our attitudes. This debate plays an important part in that.
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
I begin by giving my apologies to the hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) for missing the beginning of her speech, and by congratulating the Minister on his excellent and thoughtful speech, to which I can hopefully add something.
I have high hopes for the debate. I hope it will help us to confront a major paradox: how can a subject that is so central to the big public policy challenges we face as a country—the challenges are not just of public health provision, but of worklessness, benefits, the criminal justice system and addiction—still exist on the fringes of our national debate, getting so little airtime and attention? As other hon. Members have acknowledged, the House, sadly, rarely applies itself to mental health. Perhaps that reflects our national stiff-upper-lip tendency not to talk openly about mental health, which in turn might help to explain why our public services are designed for the 20th century rather than the 21st.
Andy Burnham
I am proud of the improvements we made in the last Parliament, but I did not come here today to say that everything the previous Government did was right and wonderful. I will talk a little about those improvements, but given my failure to sing about Labour achievements, I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for doing so.
We are reticent to talk about mental health as much as we should. There is a complacency in the public debate—that is not to make a political point, because it involves hon. Members on both sides of the House. The complacency goes throughout the civil service and the Government. To reflect on my time in government—not just in the Department of Health, but in the Treasury and the Home Office—it is remarkable how few submissions or meetings I had relating to mental health, given that it underlies the spending of hundreds of millions of pounds of public money. Indeed, £105 billion is the estimated cost of the full burden of mental health to this country.
That complacency is not shared by everybody and I congratulate the hon. Lady on introducing this debate. We have heard two unbelievably powerful speeches, from my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), to which I will turn at the end of my remarks. My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), who leads on these matters for the shadow health team, has rightly pointed out how mental health lies under the whole public health challenge. We will soon introduce Labour’s public health review.
We are beginning to wake up from our complacency. I am leading the debate for the Opposition to show that that comes from the top. We see the mental health challenge as central to health policy. Indeed, I made a point of making my first speech on returning as shadow Health Secretary on the subject of rethinking mental health in the 21st century at the Centre for Social Justice.
I must be honest: I shared the complacency about the mental health debate, or perhaps did not give it enough attention, but two things changed that when I was a Health Minister. First, I spent a day work-shadowing an assertive outreach team in Easington. I will never forget what one of the team told me about the early ’90s, when the mines closed and GP referrals for support were piling up on clinic desks, but there simply was no support to offer people. She said that that lay behind the social collapse in those mining communities. People facing difficult times were given no help.
A second thing made me think differently. When I became Health Secretary in June 2009, I inherited Lord Bradley’s report into mental health problems and learning disabilities in the criminal justice system. I will never forget sitting in my office at Richmond house reading that about 70% of young people in the criminal justice system have an undiagnosed or untreated mental health problem. If that is not truly shocking to every Member and does not make us do something, frankly nothing will. That was the moment that changed how I thought, and I have tried to follow it through ever since.
I mentioned that we had a public service designed for the 20th century, rather than the 21st century, and I want to illustrate that point with reference to my own constituency. The world that gave birth to the NHS was a very different place. When the NHS was set up, Leigh, like Easington, was a physically dangerous place to live and work in. Working underground exposed people to coal dust, explosions and accidents, and people had no choice but to lock arms, look out for each other and face the dangers together—that is how it was—and that spirit of solidarity was carried over into the streets above.
Like many places in this country, then, Leigh in the ’50s was a physically dangerous place but emotionally secure, because people pulled together. In the 21st century, however, that has completely reversed. We now live in a physically safe society—our work does not generally expose us to dangers—but it is emotionally far less secure than it was for most of the last century. The 21st century has changed the modern condition. We are all living longer, more stressful and isolated lives, and have to learn to cope with huge and constant change. Twentieth-century living demands levels of emotional and mental resilience that our parents and grandparents never needed, yet the NHS does not reflect that new reality; essentially, it remains a post-war production-line model focused on episodic physical care—the stroke, the hip replacement, the cataract—rather than the whole person. That is the issue to confront.
The demands of this society and the ageing society require a change in how we provide health and social care. We need a whole-person approach that combines not only the physical but the mental and social, if we are to give people the quality of life that we desire for our own families. That one in four people will experience a serious mental health problem makes this an issue for all families and people in the country. It also means that mental health must move from the margins to the centre of the NHS.
I shall say a couple of things about that necessary culture change. How can it be that an issue that causes so much suffering and costs our society so much still accounts for only a fraction of the NHS budget? It cannot be right. We also have to consider the separateness of mental health within the NHS. This has deep social roots—the asylum, the separate place where people with mental health problems were treated, the accompanying stigma and suspicion about what went on behind those four walls. Essentially, we still have the same system in the NHS, with separate organisations—mental health trusts—providing services on separate premises. That maintains the sense of a divide between the two systems and raises a huge health inequalities issue.
The wonderful briefing that Mind, Rethink and others have prepared for this debate contains this startling statistic: on average, people with severe mental health problems die 20 years earlier than those without. What an unbelievable statistic! Why is that? It is partly—not completely—explained by the separateness within our system. If someone is labelled a mental health patient, they are treated in the mental health system, and consequently their physical health needs are neglected.
Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, right from the very start, the way in which a baby’s brain develops—whether development is healthy, through a loving bond, or not—can have profound implications for future physical health, and therefore life expectancy? It starts as early as that.
Andy Burnham
I completely agree, and obviously that was one of the major conclusions of the Field report, which the hon. Lady’s Government commissioned. The problem is not just the separateness of the system, although that is one of the factors; rather, it starts much earlier. We need to take that broad view.
More co-location of acute care and mental health care within the same hospital would be a good thing to encourage. We heard on the radio this morning about the RAID—rapid assessment interface and discharge—service in Birmingham, which is an excellent example of that and something we need to follow. That is part of the culture change we need in the NHS. The other part of that change is that practitioners dealing with mental health, particularly GPs, at the primary care level, should not just reach first for medical interventions, rather than social or psychological interventions. However, I am afraid that that is what we do. Let us look at these, more startling statistics. In 2009, the NHS issued 39.1 million prescriptions for antidepressants—there was a big jump during the financial crisis, towards the end of the last decade. That figure represented a 95% increase on the decade, from the 20.2 million prescriptions issued in 1998. Were all of those 40 million prescriptions necessary? Of course they were not.
Prompted by my north-west colleague, the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh), let me pick up the point about Labour’s successes. We did address some of these issues. The improving access to psychological therapies programme is something I am very proud of taking forward as Secretary of State, because it began to give GPs an alternative to antidepressants and medication to refer people towards. That was an important development, and—credit where it is due—it was Lord Richard Layard who made such an incredible change, by pushing so determinedly for that programme.
Jeremy Corbyn
My right hon. Friend is making an important point. Too often GPs reach for medicine when they should be reaching for counselling. They should be offering a more supportive environment, but when we get high-speed GPs with little time to talk to patients, they tend to prescribe medicines when they ought to be doing something else. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we need to go a lot further than we already have?
Andy Burnham
I completely agree. I do a lot of work shadowing, and I recently shadowed a GP. What amazed me was how many of the people coming through his door were the people who also come through our doors on a Friday and Saturday. They are not necessarily looking for something to take to the chemists; they are actually just crying out for help, in one way or another, with a problem they are struggling with. That GP was very good and did not prescribe, but referred lots of people to the IAPT service, as I sat there with him. However, he said that across Coventry, where he was based, many others were not doing the same.
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
The Minister mentioned the number of prescriptions that have been issued. I received a parliamentary answer a couple of days ago which said that in 1991 there were 9 million prescriptions. The Minister mentioned the figure of 42 million, but from 2010 to 2011 the number went up by 4 million. In the years before that the increase was usually 2 million a year, but in one year the figure increased by 10%, or 4 million. When I asked the Minister what his assessment was of the reason for those increases, there was no conclusive answer. We must get to the bottom of why these prescriptions are being issued and why they have gone up by 500% in a 20-year period.
Andy Burnham
We must. Perhaps I am about to make more of a political point, but as has been mentioned so eloquently today by my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham, as well as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), although the trend is upwards—that is happening come what may: I mentioned the financial crisis, during which the rate has jumped up, including in our time in government—the cumulative effect of some of the benefits changes on some of the most vulnerable members of society, coupled with the withdrawal of social care support by councils, means that, right now, some people out there are suffering very badly indeed. That is part of the explanation for the worrying figures that my hon. Friend has just given the House. The Government need to have a look at what is happening out there and whether or not some people are struggling with mental health problems because of the extra stress that other factors, particularly financial, are putting upon them.
I welcome the Minister’s commitment to the improving access to psychological therapies programme, but I hear that waiting times for it are increasing in parts of the country where GPs face much longer referral times. Indeed, a Mind survey of 2011 said that 30% of GPs were unaware of services to which they could refer patients, beyond medication. That tells us that we still have quite a long way to go. IAPT needs protecting and nurturing; it needs to come with a national direction in the operating framework. In the new and changing NHS world, we cannot allow it to be simply whittled away. More broadly, we need to look carefully at commissioning and find out whether GPs have the right skills to commission properly for mental health. We need to consider what the precise commissioning arrangements for mental health are, as there is still some confusion out there about them.
Paul Burstow
One of the key aspects of the NHS Commissioning Board’s work in authorising clinical commissioning groups will be to assess their capacity to commission in mental health. As I am sure the right hon. Gentleman knows, the Royal College of General Practitioners is currently exploring what the extra year of education and training will involve, as we move forward to ensuring that mental health is part of it. I think it is a very important innovation.
Andy Burnham
I welcome what the Minister has said, but I say clearly to him that we are going to be vigilant about this. We do not want to see things slipping backwards, as we fear they may well do under this NHS reorganisation.
The hon. Member for Strangford made an important point about service personnel. I would like to pay tribute to the organisation Combat Stress, which has done a wonderful job—voluntarily, I think, for many years—giving some help and hope to people who come back here only to find that the statutory services are not providing anything for them. We have to absorb what it has done and the changes it has made into the mainstream to provide much better support. It is beginning to happen, but there is further to go.
On benefits appeals, I echo a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham. As he said, the number of employment and support allowance cases going to appeal is ridiculous. In 2009-10, the first full year of the ESA regime, 70,535 cases went to appeal at a cost of £19.8 million. In 2010-11, there were 176,567 cases at a cost of £42.2 million. If the Government want to cut waste from the benefit system, they have to get a grip on that. What we find is that 38% of cases—almost four in 10—are overturned on appeal; those cases should not have to go to appeal. My hon. Friend also mentioned the human cost. The financial cost is bad enough, but the stress that people with mental health problems are put through as they go through that process is, in many cases, unbearable. The Minister really needs to talk to his Department for Work and Pensions colleagues to encourage them to get a grip on this important problem. The Atos system is simply not working; it is actually making life a lot harder for some of the most vulnerable people in our society. Ministers need to look urgently at it.
Let me conclude with a point about stigma. I have picked up from today’s debate the fact that the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) is bringing forward a private Member’s Bill along the lines of the Bill introduced in the other place by Lord Stevenson, to whom this House should pay tribute. It is wonderful to hear that the hon. Gentleman will introduce that private Member’s Bill. Currently, a person who has had a serious breakdown and has been sectioned under the Mental Health Act 1983 is barred from being an MP, a juror, a school governor or a company director. What message does that send out? It says that recovery is not possible—a message that we might have put out about cancer in the ’50s or ’60s: “Once you have had it, it is a black mark; that’s it, you’re finished.” We urgently need to change that. Today’s debate has probably achieved some change. The Minister indicated his full support for the private Member’s Bill and I can pledge the full support of the Opposition for it. We wish the hon. Gentleman all good luck with it.
I think that today’s debate can begin to change social attitudes in the broader debate on mental health in this country. For the reasons I have set out, I think our debate has been historic, but we have a long way to go. When the Norwegian Prime Minister, Kjell Magne Bondevik had to take some time off, he publicly admitted that it was for depression. That was the reason he gave. Imagine a Prime Minister doing that! But he did so, and he changed the culture in Norway. Moreover, he went on to be re-elected and to become Norway’s longest-serving non-Labour Prime Minister since the second world war. That constituted incredible bravery and political leadership, and I think that we have seen two more examples of those qualities today in the speeches of my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham and the hon. Member for Broxbourne. That is the kind of leadership that changes social attitudes to mental health. Both Members deserve enormous credit for what they have said today, and I think that both have taken a major step towards changing the political debate.
I believe that we must all go back to first principles. I mentioned the start of the NHS. In 1948, the World Health Organisation defined health as
“a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
Whatever differences we may have about precisely how we should construct the NHS, I think that today Members in all parts of the House can unite behind that definition, with the emphasis on prevention and well-being. I think that we can all commit ourselves to making major changes in the way in which mental health is seen in the House of Commons, the Government and the country, and begin to create a system of care for the 21st century that recognises the difficult, stressful lives that people are leading and gives them support when they need it so that they can fulfil their potential.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Given that 19 Members wish to catch the eye of the Chair, it would be beneficial if each of them could aim to speak for about eight minutes. I hope that that will make it possible for everyone to contribute.
John Pugh (Southport) (LD)
Let me begin by commending those who have spoken about their own problems today. I assure them that they have done their prospects no harm whatsoever. They have risen appreciably in the esteem of the House, although whether that is the key to promotion I do not know.
Mr Kevan Jones
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, but the use of language is very important when it comes to mental health. I do not consider it to be a problem. My own experience has made me stronger. I think we should be careful about how we use language: we should not describe mental health as a problem, because it is not.
Sir Peter Bottomley
The hon. Gentleman and I would probably agree that it is an experience.
John Pugh
We will settle for “experience”, then.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) on introducing the debate, although she omitted to mention the Mental Health Act 2007, over which the House laboured long and hard to, I hope, some good effect.
In the 18th century, it was possible to cross the river to Bedlam and gawp at people gesticulating, ranting, performing odd rituals, talking to no one in particular, exhibiting delusory beliefs in their own power, or expressing paranoid fears about their foes. The nearest 21st-century equivalent is probably Prime Minister’s Question Time. [Laughter.] That is not an entirely facetious point. The dividing line between robust mental health and mental illness is, in fact, a fine one. Statistics show that the bulk of people of working age who either report or are diagnosed with mental health problems are not, in general, those who suffer from the terrible scourge of schizophrenia. The hallucinations and delusions often associated with that disease currently affect less than 1% of the population, and are treated more benignly and more effectively than ever before. Moreover, numbers are not substantially on the increase.
Most mental health problems occur when the anxieties, the fears, the stresses and the dark moods to which we are all prone become insupportable, prolonged and disabling, and the individual is no longer able to cope in any ordinary sense but breaks down and loses control, social capacity and, sometimes, insight into his or her condition. That is on the increase: it is the major mental health challenge that we face.
Mental health is a genuine continuum. The mentally ill do not have viruses, germs, cellular patterns or physical impairments that the well do not have. They have the same gamut of emotions that we all have—often exaggerated, accentuated or uncontrollable, but in no way unique or uncommon. We all possess a shared vulnerability to mental health issues which could be described as a tendency to neurosis, managed with differing degrees of success at different times in our lives. That is why I took issue with some of the comments made by the hon. Member for Loughborough.
There is a nugget of truth in the American belief that we could all benefit from an element of psychiatry. As I have said, we share a common vulnerability, and for a variety of reasons—fairly complex in many cases—one in four, or one in six, citizens falls victim to that vulnerability. We have learned not to be too judgmental about those who do, and not to stigmatise them. We recognise that the vulnerability they display is often a product of circumstance, and that it is as frequently related to desirable traits—empathy and sensitivity, for instance—as to undesirable ones such as self-obsession or lack of self-control. However, although that recognition is now widespread, it does not eradicate stigma, nor does calling everybody “service users” as if they are some kind of consumer, and nor does saying mental illness is just the same as physical illness, because it is not.
The big problem for those with a record of mental health issues—particularly, perhaps, in respect of the workplace or getting off benefits and back into the workplace—is the bias of the wider world in favour of those who have not illustrated our common vulnerability. That bias is rather like having a—rational—preference for people with a stronger immune system. There are other vitiating factors at play, of course. People who suffer from mental illness often suffer from a lack of confidence, for example. There is also the fact, which has not so far been acknowledged, that a mental health diagnosis can sometimes be misused for employment and benefit reasons. The big problem is this bias and discrimination, however.
There are only two real remedies for that. One is better public education about what mental health actually is and what mental illness and frailty actually are. I would put more faith in the second remedy, however: having a public mental health campaign that is geared in positive directions, as described by the hon. Member for Loughborough. Having said that, we must acknowledge that the active pursuit of mental well-being is a bigger and more significant task than we currently recognise. Corporate Britain, business Britain and every public service in Britain needs to be seriously engaged with the Layard agenda and to accept that we need to promote well-being at work—including here in Parliament. We must create a wholesome workplace, and therefore bother about the happiness of the workplace and the individuals in it.
We may need to tackle a huge fallacy, however: the idea that we either have mental health or we do not, so we are either employable or we are not. That ignores the fact that many people in employment—in senior jobs, even—have mental health issues, some of which might not always be diagnosed. Sometimes they work them out in the office and the workplace in a wholly unsatisfactory way, and sometimes to the detriment of their colleagues—although not always, in certain professions, to the detriment of customers and profits. Sometimes people mask their symptoms and problems through alcoholic self-medication.
There was a time when employers would have walked away from considering issues such as personal safety at work, and there was a time when they would have walked away from issues of employment legislation and the rights of people at work. Nowadays, however, most employers are keen to stick “Investors in People” logos on their notepaper to show that they are a good employer in that respect. The next, and most obvious, stage is the pursuit of the wholesome workplace, in a move beyond the “Investors in People” initiative. That must be encouraged by public health bodies and by large public and corporate organisations. Indeed, to some extent it already is encouraged: 41% of large companies now have a mental health policy. That represents appreciable progress.
For most of us, work is where we spend most of our time, and it is where our feelings of self-worth are either confirmed or demolished—that is certainly true of this place. It is where people find meaning to their lives—although we do not always succeed in doing that here. Indeed, we in Parliament cannot honestly say our working environment is wholly conducive to good mental health.
Let me conclude by reiterating my key point: we cannot help people with mental health issues without making it manifestly clear that in everyday work and everyday life mental health is everybody’s issue.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I welcome this debate, and I will do my best to stick to the eight minutes that you have suggested, Mr Deputy Speaker, to ensure that everybody gets to make a contribution. It is valuable to have this debate and to raise the whole issue of the stigma surrounding mental health. I pay a huge tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) for speaking out, because it is necessary to do so. The public need to understand that everyone knows somebody who has suffered from degrees of depression or many other conditions. I am sure that all of us, even if we do not believe that we have suffered from this ourselves in our own lives and in our own families, know people who have. Public attitudes have come a long way since the late Tom Eagleton was driven out of the US vice-presidential nomination in 1972 because he had had treatment for severe depression. He, to his credit, later went on to become a senator, elected with 60% of the vote, so the timidity of the political establishment in the US in 1972 was overturned by a much more generous political atmosphere some years later. We should remember people like him, who, in many respects, paved the way for it.
We have to understand that about 4,000 people a year in this country commit suicide. The figure varies a bit from year to year, but it is about 4,000. That is a very large figure indeed, which is why I intervened on the Minister on the question of deaths when people are in care or in custody, and I am looking forward to his response. As a society, we have to think a bit more carefully about the terror that some people live their lives in, which ends in a lonely suicide. These are people who were unable to seek help or support from anybody else, and were probably reading in the papers, hearing jokes on television and being the butt of comedians’ jokes about “sad nutters”, “desperate people” and so on. As a society and as a community, we need to reach out to people who are going through their own tensions and their own crises. If we cannot do that, the number of suicides will not fall and is likely to increase.
In my community, we have a good mental health service. We have a trust that operates in Camden and Islington, which is quite a small geographical area for it to operate across. It is certainly much smaller than many others in other parts of the country, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) and I fought very hard to ensure that it was operated on a relatively small basis because we felt that that would provide for a better service that was more in touch with the local community. I hope that it will be able to continue in that way, but I am saddened to have to report that this year the trust plans to deliver what it describes as
“£75.1m savings across the acute sector; £46.7m from acute productivity and £28.4m through changes in care setting and other demand management initiatives.”
That is quite a big cut in desperately needed services in an area that suffers from a very high level of need for mental health care and treatment.
My own local Islington borough council, to its credit, instituted the fairness commission after the 2010 elections. The council has said:
“The work of the Islington Fairness Commission highlighted the wide-ranging impacts of challenges to mental health and wellbeing for people, communities and services in Islington, particularly during a period of economic uncertainty and financial hardship.”
A number of recommendations are then made, with the council going on to state:
“Levels of need are exceptionally high in Islington. There were 3,152 patients on serious mental illness primary care registers in Islington in 2010/11, representing 1 in every 65 patients. There are an estimated 31,000 adults and 3,000 children and young people…experiencing mental health problems…There are an estimated 3,500…drug users, and 10,000 problem alcohol users, with 46,000 adults in total drinking at hazardous or harmful levels. Underlying rates of mental health and substance misuse problems in prison reach in excess of 90%.”
My borough contains two prisons. We have to examine those issues seriously as a House and as a society.
The other point I wanted to make was that the economic issues associated with stress are very serious indeed. Obviously, one such issue is unemployment, but others are housing and overcrowding and, often, the domestic violence that results. My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) and I share the Finsbury Park Homeless Families Project unit, which is based in her constituency but does wonderful work to support families in both our constituencies. The unit’s staff point out that the severe problems of the people who come to see them are usually related to serious overcrowding, housing uncertainty and lack of secure tenancy. Various levels of stress and mental health issues pertain to that. In solving these issues, we must consider the economic factors.
We should also consider very seriously the levels of stress and depression among young people. Growing up as a young person in any community is not easy. They are faced with enormous pressures from a consumerist society to achieve and to have. Many cannot fulfil those ideals and will never be able to fulfil those ambitions. The levels of stress we are forcing on to young people result in some cases—although, thankfully, only a very small number—in serious illness or even suicide.
Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)
To return to the social pressures, does my hon. Friend agree that debt is a considerable social pressure? I ran a scheme where debt advice was provided on prescription and paid for by the PCT. Independent analysis reckoned that at least three suicides had been prevented by early access to debt advice. Does my hon. Friend share my concern that that access might well now be restricted?
Jeremy Corbyn
I completely endorse what my hon. Friend has said and the great work she has done in supporting advice agencies and dealing with such issues. My borough recently opened a new citizen’s advice bureau—I congratulate the council on being able to fund and reopen it—and it has been inundated with people with serious debt issues. It offers serious debt advice and a great deal of help. We have also given a lot of support to a credit union that is working very well with a large and fast-growing membership. People are accessing a limited amount of credit and support, and it is far better that it comes from that source than from the high street loan sharks who are appearing all over the country and bleeding people dry with the excessive rates of interest that they charge.
There are some things we can do, but my point is that if a young person worked hard in school, did well, studied hard and got good grades but is still unemployed and after a while becomes almost unemployable, it becomes a source of enormous stress about the future.
I want to bring up two more issues before I conclude. In my part of London and, I suspect, many other parts of urban Britain, many victims of domestic violence, usually women, seek support and therapy. The voluntary sector is often best placed to provide that support and therapy and that was why I intervened on the hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) when she introduced the debate to make the point that when commissioning is done by the primary care trusts or the wider trusts that deal exclusively with mental health issues, it tends to be skewed in favour of the very large and financially burgeoned organisations rather than local charities and voluntary sector groups with a specific base, which are often much more effective and provide a very good service. I would be grateful if the Minister could give us some good news on that, or if he could write to me about how those issues could be brought out.
In my community, we have a number of very effective charities that work with victims of domestic violence and racist abuse, which, fortunately, is not an enormous issue but nevertheless exists. We also have a large number of people who have experienced torture and violence and are either asylum seekers or have achieved refugee status. I thank those charities for the work they do. Nafsiyat, an intercultural therapy centre based in Finsbury Park, has done good and groundbreaking work on cultural values and dealing with stress and the victims of violence. The Maya centre deals with women who have suffered similar problems. We also have the Women’s Therapy Centre, ICAP—Immigrant Counselling and Psychotherapy—which gives enormous support to other people, and the local Refugee Therapy Centre. They all do very good work, all have difficulty coping with the demands placed on them and all have financial issues. When the Government talk about increased money for mental health, they should think very carefully about how the contracts are negotiated, as they often force very low rates of pay on the voluntary sector to undertake the kind of work that is done. The Minister needs to think quite carefully about that.
The housing issue has been referred to and the number of homeless people in this country is rising, as is the number who are suffering from stress. Locally, we have a group called the Pilion Trust which has recently been given a donation—I am grateful to the Amy Winehouse Foundation for that—to help in its work in providing a night shelter, but a night shelter is not a solution to homelessness problems. A solution to homelessness problems is having a requirement regarding re-housing and a much more aggressive housing programme in this country.
I conclude by saying that too many people commit suicide and suffer from mental health issues and stress in their lives. We cannot change all that but we can change the approach to mental health issues. We can look at the good work that is done and support people in that work. We can say to those who have gone through depression and crises, “That is not the end.” Such people are contributing to our society and will succeed later in life. We should recognise the value of everyone and not consign people to a mark that indicates they have become unemployable and have no future. That is as bad as what the asylum system did in the past. We can do better than that and learn from others and the good experience they have had.
Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)
First, I thank the Backbench Business Committee for securing this debate. In my limited experience in the House, the Committee’s debates often show the Chamber at its best. I also want to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan), who is one of the stars of the 2010 intake on the Government side of the House. She is an example of the work that Lord Maples, who sadly passed away this week, had done to diversify the make-up of Members on our Benches. That is about a lot more than tokenism.
As a number of Members have said, I came fourth in the private Member’s Bill ballot. I found that out because my inbox was suddenly swamped by a large number of e-mails congratulating me, and my mobile phone and desk phone started ringing at the same time. For a Back-Bench Member it is a fairly rare opportunity to change the law of this country. I have taken my time and thought long and hard about what I wanted to bring forward. On Wednesday, I will be presenting the Mental Health (Discrimination) Bill, which was introduced by Lord Stevenson of Coddenham in the last parliamentary Session, as the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) has said. I am doing that partly for personal reasons. Two of my closest personal friends suffer from mental health conditions, and two teachers who had a very formative role in my education, when I was a teenager, have also suffered from mental health conditions. My predecessor, the former Member for Croydon Central, Andy Pelling, who some Members in the House will have known, also suffered from a mental health condition.
In addition, since I have been a Member of the House, in my surgeries I have met a significant number of constituents who are suffering, including people whose children have been detained under the Mental Health Act 1983. There is one gentleman I will never forget who came to my surgery suicidal because he had lost his job and was at risk of losing his home and the ability to support his family. A couple of weeks ago I visited the South London YMCA and met a man who had witnessed someone commit suicide and had gone to his GP for help but had not received proper help and had suffered a breakdown. His marriage had broken up, he had lost his job and he had ended up sleeping in the park. So my decision has been prompted by a mix of personal reasons and what I have seen as a constituency MP.
The Bill is supported by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Mind, Rethink Mental Illness and the Law Society. Its purpose is very simple: to remove the last significant form of discrimination in law in our society. This country has changed a huge amount since I was a young child. I remember the first Asian family moving into our road when I was growing up. Some of the people who lived in our road put pressure on the people selling their house not to sell to an Asian family. I also remember the arguments about section 28 and the language that was used in my school playground. We have made a huge amount of progress since then as a country, but we have not got there yet. To our shame, however, the law still discriminates against those with a mental health condition. An MP or a company director can be removed from their job as a result of a mental health condition even if they go on to make a full recovery. Many people who are perfectly capable of performing jury service are barred from doing so. If my private Member’s Bill is approved by the House, we will look back in a few years’ time and be amazed that the nonsense I have described was on the statute book in 2012.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough said, one in four of us will experience a mental health condition in our lifetime; three in four of us will see a member of our immediate family experience such a condition. As the right hon. Member for Leigh said, the numbers have increased because, while the physical conditions in which we live and work have improved, our lives are busier and much more stressful. The World Health Organisation estimates that by 2030 more people will be affected by depression than any other health condition. The law as it stands sends out the message that if someone has a mental health condition their contribution to public life is not welcome.
Lord Stevenson’s Bill had four aims: first, to repeal section 141 of the Mental Health Act 1983 under which a Member of Parliament, of the Scottish Parliament, of the Welsh Assembly or of the Northern Ireland Assembly automatically lost their seat if they were detained under the Act for more than six months. There is no equivalent provision to remove an MP if they suffer a physical illness that affects their ability to perform their role and, furthermore, someone who lacks mental capacity, as defined by the Mental Capacity Act 2005, can be detained for up to 12 months and not lose their seat.
Secondly, the Bill would amend the Juries Act 1974 significantly to reduce and better define who is ineligible for jury service. At the moment, the Act says that mentally disordered persons are ineligible. The definition of a mentally disordered person is extremely wide and includes people who manage their mental health condition through a prescription from their GP or counselling from a psychiatrist, thus eliminating all sorts of people who would make excellent jurors. Only 2% of people tick the box, but many more should probably do so. Not only is the law discriminatory but it is ineffective. If someone is on trial, they have a right to be confident that the jury is of sound mind. The Bill would better define who should be ineligible, thus making it much more likely that those people would identify themselves in the process.
Thirdly, the Bill would amend the Companies (Model Articles) Regulations 2008, so that someone no longer ceased to be a director of a public or private company purely because of their mental health. All companies are required by statute to have articles of association, and model articles operate where a company has failed to draw up its own. Many companies incorporate them into their own articles. They include a provision that someone ceases to be a director if a registered medical practitioner who is treating them gives a written opinion to the company stating that they have become physically or mentally incapable of acting as a director and they remain so for more than three months—in other words, the correct test of capacity. However, they go on to include a totally unnecessary additional provision relating solely to mental health.
Finally, the Bill would amend school governance regulations so that people detained under the Mental Health Acts would no longer be disqualified from holding office as school governors. Clearly, while someone is detained they are unable to attend governors’ meetings, but that may be for only a short time, and there is no reason why they should not resume their role.
I am delighted that the Government have dealt with one of those issues—the School Governance (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2012 came into force on 17 March, and rightly set the disqualification test as failure to attend six meetings in a period of six months without consent from the governing body. The Government made a public commitment, when they published their mental health strategy, to change the legislation in relation to Members of Parliament. I hope that they will support the rest of the Bill. In the other place, Lord Wallace of Saltaire said that the Government were considering the detail of what was proposed on jury service, and he hoped that the Bill would be reintroduced in this Session. I hope that it receives all-party support, and I was delighted to hear what the right hon. Member for Leigh had to say.
I want to end with two simple contentions. First, Parliament, schools, companies and the court system benefit from the involvement of people with experience of mental health conditions. Indeed, our debate has been illuminated in particular by the contributions of my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) and by the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones). I do not know the hon. Gentleman very well, but I have always pictured him—and I think he would regard it as a compliment—as a bit of a political bruiser. For someone with that reputation to have the courage to say what he said will change people’s opinion of him, and very positively. The whole House has a high regard for what he has said, but I am sure that when we move on to other debates, normal hostilities will be resumed.
A school may have a pupil with a mental health condition; in a court case, the accused’s state of mind may be a key issue. How much better will that school be if a governor has experience? How much better will that court case be if there is a juror with the necessary experience? The Bill will directly help a relatively small number of people, but it also sends a clear message that discrimination is wrong: people have a right to be judged as individuals, not labelled or stereotyped.
In September, the excellent Time to Change campaign, run by Mind and Rethink Mental Illness, surveyed 2,700 people with mental health conditions. Of those, 80% said that they had experienced discrimination, two thirds were too scared to tell their employer, 62% were too scared to tell their friends and, worst of all, more than a third were too scared to seek professional help. Having a mental health condition is nothing to be ashamed of or to keep a secret. It is high time we dragged the law of this land into the 21st century.
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
Most of the contributions we have heard so far today have concentrated on mental ill health, but I also wish to address mental health and well-being, and not just for those who have experienced mental health problems, but for the whole population in general.
Over £400 billion worth of illegal drugs are traded around the world ever year, which is the same amount that is spent on energy, or 8% of the world’s wealth. When that is combined with the amount spent on alcohol, cigarettes, legal drugs to help us over depression, over-eating and the amount spent trying to fix all those problems, we are probably talking about 20% of the world’s wealth being spent on, essentially, escaping from reality. That is a modern reality that has many causes. We need to look at the debate in the round and consider all the factors, including nutrition, advertising, the farming industry and work practices, because they all have an impact on what certain Members have so eloquently described today. We should look not just at the pinnacle of the problem, but what is behind it.
Statistics show that 29% of US school children have mental health problems. At what point will American society say, “Enough is enough”? Is it when 39%, 49% or 59% of their children are mentally ill? The UK is not far behind. We follow the Anglo-American pattern, because 22% of our children experience mental health problems, and they are the lucky ones, because 74% of children in care homes experience mental health problems, as do 46% of those who are fostered. Some 90% of prisoners have mental health problems. Obesity is also a problem. At age five 10% of UK children are obese, but by age 10 the figure is 20%. What is happening in that five-year period to make those kids consume the sugars, fats and salts that will react with their bodies? Those fats will react with the fats in their brain and their myelin sheaths and neural pathways. It is an epidemic that is growing out of control, and we will be picking up the costs, including the financial costs and health costs for the individual and their families, for decades to come.
I recently received an answer to a parliamentary question. It showed that in 1991 almost 9 million prescriptions for antidepressant drugs were dispensed in the UK, but by 2011 the figure had increased to over 46.5 million, a 500% increase. When I asked the Minister for his assessment of why that was so, he replied:
“We are unable to provide a conclusive account for the increase in the number of prescription items dispensed.”—[Official Report, 30 April 2012; Vol. 543, c. 1286W.]
We do not know what is making the kids obese and we do not know what is turning our population into legal addicts. Those statistics are just for antidepressants and do not take into account the other drugs taken to help us sleep, keep us awake, keep us happy or manage our sex lives, although I never use them. There are other ways, because drugs are just one way of handling it. One-to-one counselling is another way, but it is very expensive. There is a third way: self-help. One of the best ways of self-help is mindfulness.
Mindfulness has been around for 2,500 years. To give a definition, mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way; on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally. In other words, it means someone just focusing—not being chased by their past or worried by their future, but experiencing what they are experiencing there in the moment.
Mindfulness has been taught very effectively in America over a 30-year period and more recently in this country over a 10 to 12-year period. It involves an eight-week course, two-and-a-half hours’ taught lessons a week and 45 minutes’ meditation at home for six days a week, and it is taught in groups of eight to 20, so the costs are minimal and the benefits are unbelievable. It is out there, but it has not been taken up—even when NICE recommended it as a more effective means of treating repeat-episode depression. In 2004, it recommended the programme as being better than pills, but it has not been taken up. GPs and, dare I say it, Ministers do not know about it. I have quizzed Irish and British Ministers, and they do not know about it.
Mr Kevan Jones
I am listening carefully to my hon. Friend, but my experience is that, although group therapy might work for certain individuals, for many it does not. One thing that my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) did in the previous Government, and which has made a real difference, was to open up cognitive behaviour therapy treatments, as they have been a substitute for drugs. So no one treatment is a silver bullet for mental illness.
Chris Ruane
Absolutely. Cognitive behaviour therapy is fantastic, and mindfulness has now been tacked on to it to make it even more effective. The group therapy lasts only for eight weeks; after that the individual can handle it themselves. I have practised it for five years now, and I have been on the formal course.
It was Descartes who said that the mind is separate from the body and the body separate from the mind, but in eastern philosophy and medicine that is not the case: body and mind are inter-related. Mindfulness can be used to combat pain, stress, eating disorders, addiction, anxiety and psoriasis, but it has been recommended in the UK only for the treatment of repeat depression—and it has not even been used for that.
In America they use it in the prison service, in the police, fire and emergency services, including on those with witness trauma, in the health service for a range of medical conditions, to improve heart and cancer treatment and, even, in Congress. Congressman Tim Ryan, its expert on the subject, has just written a book, “A Mindful Nation”, about how mindfulness can be used across the board.
So there are other ways that we have not explored, but they have been around for 2,500 years and proved to be effective. There are experts in mindfulness, such as Jon Kabat-Zinn who pioneered it in America, and experts in positive psychology, such as Martin Seligman. Freud believed that if a person was mentally ill the most they could achieve was wellness, not happiness, but Martin Seligman, who headed the American Psychological Association, turned that around 20 years ago and developed positive psychology in America.
We have our own experts: Professor Richard Layard, a Labour Lord in the other place; and Felicia Huppert, the mother of a famous Liberal MP based in Cambridge, who has a theory that if we shift the whole wellbeing curve, including on the right-hand side those who are mentally ill and on the left-hand side those who are positive, across and make the whole population happier, the greatest impact will be on the unhappiest—on those with mental health problems.
There are also impacts on the policies that we develop throughout society and on what makes people happy. On the Office for National Statistics’ list of what makes people in the UK happy, No. 1 is living next to a park or having access to a swimming pool; No. 2 is having access to cultural services such as libraries; No. 3 is being physically healthy; No. 4 is having time to relax and enjoy oneself; No. 5 is living in a fair society; No. 6, the only one involving money, is having enough money to do what one wants; No. 7 is freedom; No. 8 is being content with one’s situation; No. 9 is people looking after each other; and No. 10 is the smell of freshly ground coffee.
Only one pertains to money, yet our whole society is geared to making money. Those are the values that we and Governments of both parties have adopted, but now we need to develop policies that recognise the situation and the position of mental health in society. It is the No. 1 issue affecting our society, and we need to look at it in the round.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
It is a delight to congratulate the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) on his speech. We are having a debate of which the previous speakers and the Backbench Business Committee should be proud. I missed out on a lunch the other day and went with my hon. Friends the Members for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) and for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) and others to appear in front of the Committee. They were tough and they were clear. We made our point that the subject needed a debate, and the issue then was whether it should be in Westminster Hall or in the Chamber. I think that if it had been in Westminster Hall, the impact would not have been so great.
When I was first elected to the House of Commons, if a Member of Parliament was thought to have gone mad, the Speaker would refer them to two people nominated by the Royal College of Surgeons. One of my early interventions was to suggest that psychiatrists might be rather more useful. If the Bill taken up by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) gets through, perhaps that approach will be thrown away in turn.
Again when I was first elected, The Times and The Daily Telegraph would report debates and pick up a good point from everyone’s speech. If that happened after today’s debate, people’s understanding of the experiences of the lack of mental health, and of more extreme, occasionally disabling mental illness would become greater, deeper and wider. That would give comfort to the hundreds of thousands of people who care for people who are experiencing the lack of mental health.
Andy Burnham
I apologise for interrupting the hon. Gentleman so early on, but he is making such an important broader point about media coverage of mental health. Would he want to pay tribute to the Sunday Express, which has led a campaign that was mentioned by the hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan)? One would not necessarily expect a newspaper to run a mental health campaign, yet it has. That is precisely the kind of media leadership that we need to see on this issue.
Sir Peter Bottomley
I join the right hon. Gentleman in saying that. I was trying to say things that had not been said already, and there has already been a tribute to the Sunday Express. I would add that several journalists have been prepared to speak about their own medical conditions that have challenged their ability to live or to work effectively. I am not saying that we should all have to spend our time saying what our physical or mental experiences have been, but it does help if it is regarded as being as normal to talk about having had an episode of depression as of having had a basal carcinoma removed or having recovered from a broken hip.
I pay tribute to the hundreds of thousands of people who care for those experiencing the lack of mental health. I also pay tribute to the professionals, particularly to Lisa Rodrigues, who is chief executive of the Sussex Partnership Trust. She has spoken of the services it provides across East Sussex, West Sussex, Brighton and Hove and Hampshire, and the 27,000 young people with whom she and her colleagues come into contact each year. They are not all experiencing real disability, but some will.
When I became roads Minister, one of my ambitions was to try to get the number of road deaths down below the suicide rate. Young people’s suicides number about 900 each year. The total number of road deaths among adults and young people is 1,800. The road deaths figure has come down from 5,600 a year to 1,850. Would it not be good if we could do the same thing for self-destruction and the penalties that that imposes—not only the shortened life but the damage to those around the person who has died?
My wife was a psychiatric social worker before she became a Member of Parliament, a Health Minister, and then Secretary of State for Health, when she took mental health issues very seriously. She worked with those at the Maudsley Institute of Psychiatry where, with one of her colleagues, Peter Wilson, she ran a support service for teachers. If we are to start being concerned with young people, we need to make sure that those who are in contact with them—parents, and teachers in primary and secondary schools—have an understanding of what is normally unhealthy, if I can put it that way.
One young person in four experiences some kind of mental health episode. We need to know how much of that involves a relatively normal experience from which they will recover. We also need to identify the one in 10 who will probably need help from someone with experience or specialist qualifications, and the 2% or 3% for whom the experience will be disabling.
YoungMinds is an association with which Peter Wilson was associated—I think he might have created it. It has a manifesto in which young people say that if they can get help when they are young, many more of them could be kept out of prison and psychiatric hospital, and kept in work and leading the kind of life that contributes to society.
I once met someone who had had experience of schizophrenia. There was a fine mental health project just outside my former constituency, and he told me that he was glad to have got to know about it. He became a client of the project. Six months later, he became a volunteer. A year later he wrote to tell me that it was the proudest moment of his life, as he was now a taxpayer with a paid job. He was given the opportunity to take those steps forward, in an environment in which everyone knew what was happening and could share in it and give support when appropriate. Those opportunities matter.
Had there been more time, I would have been tempted to talk about a range of issues, giving a sentence or two to each, but I do not think that that will be possible. I would say, however, to those who suffer at times, or constantly, from depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, phobias, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or personality disorders—I could go on—that information on most of those conditions is available on the websites of the organisations that provide help.
About 31 years ago, I was appointed to the council of Mind, formerly the National Association for Mental Health. The reason for that was that the then Conservative Government wanted to give the organisation their support, and its then general secretary was thought to be left-wing; I was there to provide balance. I am not sure how my Whips would regard that decision today.
The Mental Health Foundation does good work, and I also pay tribute to the Samaritans for the help that they give to people about whom they are concerned. Their website contains information on how we can help someone, even if we are untrained. It suggests avoiding the “Why?” question, as that can be regarded as challenging. Instead, it suggests asking:
“When—‘When did you realise?’ Where—‘Where did that happen?’ What—‘What else happened?’ How—‘How did that feel?’ In an ideal world what would you like to happen next? Would you like me to come with you?”
Standing beside people in that way can be a pretty effective approach.
I want to give the House one or two examples from the weekly newsletter from Lisa Rodrigues of the Sussex Partnership Trust. I try to send it on to two or three other people each week, to whom some of the points might be relevant. One week she talked about cancer, describing how, in the 1950s, Sir Richard Doll and others had started to examine the causes of lung cancer, and to realise that asbestos could also have a serious effect on breathing. She wrote:
“So why am I talking about cancer? It is because today dementia is where cancer was all those years ago…Why Sussex? Because we have the highest percentage of old people in the country living here. And why me? Because specialist mental health services hold the key to unlocking the potential in primary care, acute hospitals, local authorities, the voluntary and nursing home sector to provide better treatment and care to people with dementia, and support for their families.”
Lisa Rodrigues also recently attended a conference on how to get the various groups to work together more effectively, which is vital for people and their families and carers. If only they could find a one-stop shop to refer them to a place where they could be embraced as a person, a household or a family unit. She said that if we could get our mental health services working more effectively, our physical health services would have far less to cope with. That point has also been developed by other hon. Members this afternoon. She also wrote in her newsletter:
“We have a dream. In our dream, our psychiatrists, nurses, social workers, psychologists, therapists, care staff, receptionists and anyone else who comes into contact with the 100,000 people we serve each year will have the best possible tools to do their jobs. This will include a small, lightweight…portable device via which they can access patient records”
and the background of all the people they are in contact with. Up to now, that has not been possible.
Lisa Rodrigues talks every two or three weeks about employees who have done something special. In one example, she talks about the staff who have worked on a clinical reception and their helpfulness to patients and other visitors. She goes on to mention a person whom I have not met called Jackie Efford, a nurse in the health team at Lewes prison, who
“works flexibly so that, when prisoners arrive late into the night, she comes in to assess them and respond to any urgent physical or mental needs. Imagine being a prisoner and what a difference it would make to have a meeting when you first arrived with a compassionate and effective nurse.”
Lisa Rodrigues also talks about the child and adolescent mental health services. She says that the name is
“no longer fit for purpose. The word adolescent has negative connotations. And young people don’t respond positively to the term mental health.”
We must find the right language, not for political correctness, but to help people more effectively.
It would be easy to say more on this issue. However, I want to end by saying that if we have to wait another year to develop these themes, Parliament will not be doing its job properly. We should not have to rely on the pleading and cajoling that we provided at the Backbench Business Committee. Debates on this matter ought to be built in, rather than bolted on.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the thoughtful contribution of the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley). I am very glad to be in the Chamber to speak alongside those who have made exceptional speeches today, including my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) to name just two.
I will highlight three things. The first is the key factors that are linked to mental well-being and the characteristics of my local borough of Newham. The second is what resources are available to my local health authorities and mental health services. The third is the need for those resources to be improved in the light of what we know works in improving mental health.
The need for a robust strategy to promote well-being is illustrated by the correlation between the determinants of mental ill health and some of the characteristics of the population of my borough. As my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane), who is no longer in his place, attested so powerfully, one such determinant is age. The rates of mental illness vary across age ranges, but it is a sad fact that younger people are more likely than the elderly to experience mental ill health. A high proportion of mental health problems develop between the ages of 14 and 20. One in 10 children between the ages of five and 16 have a mental health problem, and such problems may well continue into adulthood.
The borough of Newham has one of the youngest populations in the country. The number of young people with mental health problems is therefore greater than elsewhere. Some 40% of the borough’s population is made up of people under the age of 25. As nearly 10% of people aged between five and 16 experience mental health problems, statistically we can expect 4,262 of the children and young people in Newham to experience such problems. That clearly has an impact on the needs of the population of Newham and on the type of service that it requires. It should be funded to cater for those needs.
We all know that there are other important determinants of the mental health of a community. One of those is deprivation. Common mental disorders such as depression, anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder are more prevalent in deprived households. Again, Newham suffers from high levels of deprivation. It is ranked the third most deprived local authority in the country and 51.5% of its children live in poverty. The index of deprivation ranks the borough fourth in the country for the proportion of children aged between nought and 15 living in an income-deprived household. That is just one measure of deprivation, but I am sure hon. Members will agree that it is a worrying one.
In addition, the decline of owner-occupation and the increase in the private rented sector changes the very nature of local communities. Support networks that people rely on—their friends and family, and wider communities such as their Church and faith—are disintegrating as housing pressures force families to move home, leave their communities or remain in overcrowded, sometimes unhygienic and often poorly managed private rented housing, which is sadly a fast-growing sector of tenure in the London borough of Newham.
In my constituency, there is a high level of need for services that will enable the people of Newham to be self-sufficient and lead independent, successful lives. My concern is that the process used to allocate the resources needed to support those services is fundamentally flawed. It is skewed in a way that significantly disadvantages my community.
Since 2006, if not earlier, the population estimate for Newham has clearly been an underestimate by the Office for National Statistics. The under-count was estimated at about 60,000 people until, in November 2011, the ONS went some way towards recognising the historic underestimate by provisionally estimating the population at 272,000, an increase of 32,000. That significant increase of 13% is, by the way, the largest change in any London borough. However, the new figure still falls some 30,000 short of the population estimate made by an independently commissioned study. That is a shortfall in excess of 10%.
The real population of the borough stands at roughly 300,000. That is the figure that should drive resource allocation, because it relates to the real world and real need. However, the ONS mid-year estimates are used to determine how the national funding pot is allocated to local areas, even though they do not accurately reflect the true population of my area. Given the level of need in my constituency, to say that resources are not allocated on a level playing field is an understatement.
The effect of an inadequate allocation system is compounded by a reliance on historical spend to determine current needs. That means that my local primary care trust has consistently struggled to find resources to deal with persistent need. Figures in the House Library tell me that expenditure per head on mental health in Newham in 2010-11 was £208.93. That compares with £447.21 in Westminster and £331.81 in Kensington and Chelsea. I wish to hammer home the point that the spend for Newham is based on the ONS population estimate, so the real spend per head is even lower.
The shadow health and wellbeing board for the London borough of Newham has discussed the matter at length and agreed a robust strategy, with a clear focus on maintaining resilience within the community. It wants to support people by ensuring that they possess the skills and resources that will enable them to negotiate successfully the challenges that they experience.
Let us face it: we know from evidence what works. The health and wellbeing board has indicated that it wants to focus its activity on parenting skills and pre-school education to set up an early family environment that supports children’s emotional and behavioural development. It wants to support lifelong learning, with health promotion in schools and continuing education, as schools are a really important resource, particularly for children facing difficulties at home.
The board also wants to find a way of improving working lives in the borough, as one in six people in the work force are affected by mental health problems, and a way of supporting a good and healthy lifestyle by encouraging exercise and good diet. It wants to encourage the learning of new skills and the taking-up of creative pursuits—social participation that promotes mental well-being across the piece. The board is also supporting communities through environmental improvements. Environmental predictors of poor mental health include neighbourhood noise, overcrowding, fear of crime, poor housing and so on. Finding out what to do is frustrating, but it is also frustrating that resources are being rather unfairly allocated. Newham is poorly served in that regard.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for creating this opportunity to discuss an issue that is often invisible, and on which there is not enough focus and debate. Poor mental health has an extraordinarily detrimental impact on huge numbers of people in our communities. We could and should be dealing with the problem in a plethora of holistic ways in our local communities.
Newham is severely under-resourced in the face of significant pressures on mental health provision. I am glad to see the Minister of State, Department of Health, the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns), in the Chamber. I know he has listened to me and, given that he is a former Whip, that he is a very honourable man. I shall write to him to push the case for greater funding for Newham as we continue to fight for the resources that my communities desperately need to access better life chances, which includes better mental health.
Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)
It was beginning to look like a Whips’ cabal in the Chamber. I was quite worried. A number of hon. Members, particularly the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who is busy disappearing from the Chamber, mentioned care for, and the mental health of, veterans—[Interruption.] I am making a plea to keep my small audience. To my delight, the shadow Secretary of State mentioned a famous organisation in that field: Combat Stress—[Interruption.] He is also leaving the Chamber the moment I mention him. He can read my speech in Hansard as he has obviously been urgently called away.
Combat Stress was supported by the previous Government as it is by this one. Combat Stress clients—ex-servicemen, or veterans—suffer from the appalling conditions of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression or anxiety, or all three. Anyone who has seen such individuals with such conditions will recognise that they are exceptionally debilitating. They destroy the normal life of victims and those around them.
Combat Stress has three centres—the main one is in my constituency—an outreach service throughout the nation and a liaison team. It has been making a difference for some considerable time. Some 83.5% of Combat Stress clients are ex-Army. Three per cent. are female. Most of the veterans contact the Combat Stress service themselves or through family referral, but only 3.6% are referred by general practitioners, 6.9% by community health teams, and 0.3% by a hospital service. I hope the Minister thinks about that.
To make access to those services more available, Combat Stress set up a 24-hour helpline in March last year. It may interest the House and the Minister to consider statistics from the helpline from March 2011 to January 2012. Combat Stress received 6,279 calls, including voicemails. A few people hung up—a tragic few calls were silent, which I think says a lot.
Of the callers who were contacted, 74% were male and 26% female. Army veterans made a total of 2,248 calls. The second largest group of callers were family, friends and carers of the victims, who themselves were therefore victims. Seventy-seven per cent. of callers called about themselves. Perhaps tragically—I hope the Minister makes a note of this—just 6% of callers were given the number and contact details by a health professional. The call centre seems to be catching on. In March, it received 286 calls, but that doubled to 604 the following January. The organisation is funded by the Government, and I plead with the Minister to keep the funding going. I am sure he will.
The average post-service delay is a staggering 13 years. The Minister should be aware that after such a delay an individual’s condition will have developed in complexity, meaning that their recovery treatment can last for years, whereas if treatment is early, it can last just weeks and months. Early diagnosis and referral can lead to faster and cheaper treatment, and greater success, and can mean that the potential side effects of alcoholism, drug problems, which have been mentioned—[Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Will the Minister wait while the hon. Gentleman is standing? The Minister was right in my line of vision, and it is not fair to the person speaking. This is the third time it has happened.
Sir Paul Beresford
As mentioned by several Members, the result can often be imprisonment, yet all these side effects could be avoided. On average, it takes veterans just over 13 years from service discharge to first approach Combat Stress. This is an ongoing issue for veterans.
Community outreach teams across the country now provide much support for veterans. They provide support and advice in veterans’ own homes and nearby community-based clinical care. Yesterday, we made much of the Falklands war, which ended 30 years ago today, on 14 June 1982. Of the 4,800 veterans Combat Stress is helping, 221 served in the Falklands war. The youngest is 46 and the oldest is 74, and on average the Falklands veterans have waited 15 years before going for help. Last year, 18 Falklands veterans contacted Combat Stress for the first time, and this year, to date, 10 have contacted it. But of course the case load is not just from the Falklands. Of the 4,800 ex-service men and women being treated, 589 served in Iraq and 228 served in Afghanistan. Between 1 April 2010 and 31 March 2011, Combat Stress received 1,443 new referrals.
Having set the scene, I shall touch on a few key points for the Minister to consider. First, all the UK Governments must acknowledge the ongoing need. Most of the Governments contribute considerably towards Combat Stress and its costs. Combat Stress estimates that in 2012, 960 service personnel will leave the armed forces with the likelihood of suffering from PTSD. I shall follow up a point made by the hon. Member for Strangford. We must persuade the MOD to look specifically at their decompressing veterans-to-be and, if there is any suspicion, to refer them to Combat Stress. It would make treatment by Combat Stress easier, because it would be given earlier, and all the pain and suffering of these men and women could be reduced to a tiny fraction of what it is for many of those in Combat Stress now.
That brings me to the crux of the problem, which has been touched on. Because mental illness is not a physical but a mental wound, a stigma is attached to it. A lot of Members have mentioned that. Combat Stress tells me that 81% of veterans with a mental illness feel ashamed or embarrassed, which often prevents them from seeking help—it certainly delays them seeking help—and sadly one in three veterans are too ashamed of their condition ever to tell their families about it. As a result, many of those families break up. Among the other side effects are crime, disorder and alcoholism. This is a mental health problem, then, that could and should be alleviated early.
Much has been done to raise the profile of the condition and the availability of help, so that those individuals do not feel that they are unique or, perhaps, weak. Much needs to be done to encourage them and their families to seek assistance. We need to put these valuable individuals back on their feet—and they are valuable: they have already performed valuable service, and there is still valuable service available if we can do that. Amazingly, there appears to be a considerable lack of understanding among GPs. Research conducted in September 2011 showed that only 5% of the veterans receiving help from Combat Stress had been referred by their GP. Perhaps those GPs failed to recognise the condition or were unaware of the existence of Combat Stress—or, more likely, both. I urge the Minister to ensure that the word is spread among our GPs. Combat Stress has done a clinical audit, and it would appear that approximately 80% of the veterans who come to it for clinical treatment tried to get help from their GPs or other specialist services first, and did not get it. Appallingly, that support and treatment was not forthcoming. It should be.
I hope that the Minister will consider joining me in a visit to Combat Stress, to see the value of the work first hand, to understand its difficulties and to help to build on the opportunity to prevent some of the tragedies that we see. We need to remember that for those veterans the physical war is over, but the battle is still raging in their heads.
Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)
I want to keep my remarks quite brief, because I know that many other hon. Members are keen to speak. Let me start by apologising to the hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) for not being in the Chamber for the start of the debate. I heard some of her thoughtful and comprehensive remarks on the television before I got in here, and I congratulate her on securing this debate. May I also say how powerful and honest the speeches that we heard from the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) and my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) were? I echo what the Minister said earlier, which is that this place is often at its best when people speak from their personal experience, rather than quoting statistics from briefings that we have been sent or things that we have read in the newspaper. It reassures everyone outside this place that we are also human beings, as well as Members of Parliament.
I have little expertise in this matter. Having said that, I have a close family member who has suffered obsessive compulsive disorder and psychosis in the past, and I have two very close friends who also suffer from OCD. I know how difficult it can be for them to overcome some of the challenges they face, so I think it is important that we have this debate today. I want to focus on the huge challenge of providing high-quality mental health services in what are difficult economic times. Given the tone of the debate, I do not want to turn this into a piece of political knockabout, but I do want to speak about the reality of the situation in my constituency, where a number of mental health facilities either are threatened with closure or have already been scaled back.
The shadow Secretary of State for Health spoke earlier about how the mental health system is somewhat separate from the rest of the NHS. However, the mental health system is also facing considerable budgetary pressures—just as the rest of the NHS is—which is having an impact on some of the people we represent. During the parliamentary recess I visited a continuing care home for elderly mental health patients which is wholly funded by the NHS. The patients there are elderly people, often in their 60s, 70s or 80s, who have been sectioned and who have significant mental health needs, in terms of both medical and care support. The centre, in Granville Park in Lewisham, is threatened with closure. The service is excellent and the care provided is exemplary, and the families of the people who live there are incredibly concerned by the proposal to shut the unit down. South London and Maudsley NHS Trust is consulting on the closure. It claims that it has too many beds of that kind and says that it wants to scale back provision in Lewisham.
My constituents know that many more elderly people have significant mental health needs so it is hard for them to understand why a mental health centre should be closed. I have to say that the way in which the consultation has been conducted is far from perfect. Parts of it just do not make sense. I have raised my concerns with the PCT and the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust.
Also threatened with closure are therapeutic care services for adults who have much lower mental health needs. A fantastic centre, known as the network arts centre in Lee, has been threatened with closure. I hope that the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust will find a way to maintain the provision by setting it up as some form of social enterprise. This is a place where adults with mental health needs—perhaps not as significant as others’, as I said—can come together and enjoy arts-based therapy in a setting that helps them to take the next step towards their recovery. I am hopeful of finding a way through that situation, but when services like this are threatened with closure, it is a matter of huge concern to the people who use them.
I said that I would focus my remarks on the challenge of providing high-quality mental health services in difficult economic times, and the budgetary pressures faced by public services is one of them. Another is the greater uncertainty that individuals themselves face, which some hon. Members have touched on. A few weeks ago, I visited Mencap in Lewisham and met a group of people who were primarily carers for people with mental health difficulties. The questions they wanted to ask me were about the work capability assessment for the employment and support allowance; they wanted to ask me about the process their loved ones would have to go through in transferring from disability living allowance to personal independence payments; they wanted to ask me about the changes to local council provision of day centres. What struck me was the great deal of uncertainty in the lives of people living with mental health problems and the people who are caring for them.
We heard from the shadow Secretary of State about the importance of getting advice and support to people in difficult times, and he mentioned the miners in Easington. That brings it home that we all—the Government and councils—need to recognise the importance of getting that local advice and support to people when they face this uncertainty, which only adds to people’s stress and problems.
The mental health charity Mind sent me some details about its information line. It told me that in the last 12 months, it had received 40,000 inquiries, but that unfortunately, because of the pressure it is currently under, two out of five of those calls went unanswered. Since the start of recession, Mind has seen a 100% increase in the number of calls relating to personal finances and employment. We need to understand the worries of people out there, and find a way to do more to recognise the importance of the local services that provide support and assistance.
I said that I would be brief as others wished to speak. I think we have had a thoroughly excellent debate and I congratulate those who made it happen. I look forward to hearing the remaining contributions.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) on securing this important debate, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), whose speech has immediately entered the list of my top 10 favourite speeches. I thank and commend him for the work he has done over many years as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on mental health.
I state from the outset that I am married to an NHS consultant psychiatrist and that my husband is involved in providing briefings to all Members on behalf of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. For that reason, I think it best for me to confine myself mostly to some personal reflections and some concerns that have been raised in my constituency, and in particular to address the issue of stigma.
As we have been told today, one in four people will experience mental illness at some point in their lives. We have heard powerful speeches about that from a number of Members. Like the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), I have experienced severe depression: at the happiest time of my life I experienced an episode of post-natal depression, so I know what it is like. I am sure that many other Members and people who are following today’s debate will know exactly what it is like genuinely to feel that your family would be better off without you, and to experience the paralysis that can accompany severe depression.
It has been rightly said today that there is concern about the way in which some GPs handle depression, but I want to make it clear that in my own case, accepting that I had a problem and seeing my GP was very much part of the road to recovery. I think that we should be careful when we talk about how GPs manage depression, because I can tell the House—not only on the basis of my personal experience, but on the basis of what I have heard from others—that there are many GPs out there who provide an excellent service, which I think can only be assisted by a move towards longer appointment times and better training.
We have heard today about the various terms that people use for mental illness. Earlier, we heard it described as a mental health “experience”. I would say to anyone who is listening to the debate that an experience of depression makes many people stronger and more understanding. I am absolutely sure that my own experiences of depression and recovery—recovery is very important—caused me to become a much more sympathetic doctor, and I hope that it made me a more sympathetic and understanding MP, able to recognise the issues in others and respond to them appropriately.
I want to sound a note of caution about employment and depression. Many Members have rightly mentioned the issues surrounding Atos assessments, and I was glad to hear the Minister say that he would address himself to some of the concerns that had been expressed, but I think that we should be careful about making assumptions. We should not assume that people with depression are unable to work; we should individualise the position.
When I returned to work after having a baby, I was still suffering from severe panic attacks—especially when travelling on the underground—and in retrospect, I realise that I was still significantly depressed, but going back to work was part of my recovery. I know that it can be difficult to challenge the ideas of people who are depressed, but I think it important to present them with challenges and encouragement at some level, because depression is sometimes followed by a crisis of confidence, and getting back to work is part of the road to recovery from depression, however difficult it may feel. We should not make generalisations and assume that no one can return to work when they are depressed.
I pay tribute to all those who help people with mental illness, including the many volunteers in all our constituencies, and I pay particular tribute to a voluntary group in my constituency called Cool Recovery. It is an independent mental health charity which cares for a number of people—not only those who have experience of depression, or are currently living with depression or other forms of mental illness, but those who have recovered from mental illness, and those who care for people who suffer from it.
I feel that such voluntary sector groups are essential if we are to realise some of the benefits that can come from the Health and Social Care Act 2012. I was concerned to hear from the volunteers at Cool Recovery that they do not feel they have been sufficiently involved in the commissioning process, and that there are real anxieties about the extent to which the user voice and the voluntary sector voice are being heard in the new arrangements. Perhaps the Minister will give us an update on what is being done to ensure that there is adequate representation for the user voice and the voluntary sector at every stage on HealthWatch, on health and wellbeing boards, and right up to national level at the NHS Commissioning Board.
Paul Burstow
I give an undertaking to answer those points in the letter that I will write to Members.
Dr Wollaston
I thank the Minister for that, and I look forward to reading his response.
I was pleased to hear that my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) will introduce a Bill to remove stigma. From talking to service users and those who have recovered from mental illness, it is clear to me that they are entirely capable of taking a full part in every aspect of life in their community and workplace, and in our national life. I was glad that the Minister and shadow Minister gave their full and unconditional backing to that Bill, as it will mark a very important step in removing the stigma of mental illness. I also join the Minister in paying tribute to the work of Time to Change, and I hope he will commit to continuing to give support to that organisation.
Some 22% of the disease burden in England comes from mental health issues, and it is time that we recognised that in our local and national commissioning. The mental health strategy is excellent, but we now need to ensure it is implemented. I know the Minister has set up a cross-ministerial group centrally, but who in this new system will be accountable for the successful implementation of the strategy locally and regionally—and what levers for change can they exert, and what sanctions will there be if it is not carried out?
Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)
It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston). She has great personal and professional experience in this field. I congratulate the hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) on securing the debate, and I apologise to her for missing her opening speech as I mistimed my arrival in the Chamber. I will read it in Hansard, however.
This is a very important debate. Mental health problems stigmatise. We have heard harrowing stories from colleagues on both sides of the House about how mental health issues affect our constituents—and also Members of Parliament. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) for his brave speech; he will now only have greater respect. It was interesting to hear how his experience made him stronger. The hon. Member for Totnes made that point, too, from her own experience. The hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) made a speech that managed to be entertaining despite the seriousness of the subject under discussion, and all I have to say in response is “rock ’n’ roll.”
Mental health problems are met with intolerance and discrimination, and sometimes fear. When I was growing up, the terms used to describe people with mental illness included lunatic, nutter, headcase and maniac, all of which have associations of dangerous or unpredictable behaviour. No real effort was made to understand or support. The usual solution chosen was to lock people away, or to stay away from them.
Many people, especially men, are reluctant to admit they have problems or that they are feeling depressed or are hearing voices. Some people do not understand that their lives are being affected by the state of their mental health. We find in our surgeries that people sometimes start talking about one problem, but when we dig we find layers of issues, including mental health issues. About 60% of the people I see have an underlying mental health issue, ranging from severe stress to serious psychotic conditions, and I do not think my constituency is unusual in that regard. Teasing out what support they have, or have not, sought can require great sensitivity, and very few MPs are trained counsellors or therapists. At times, however, we find ourselves taking on that role and doing our best.
Plymouth has a number of organisations that work with people across the full range of conditions; the Samaritans and Plymouth Mind are excellent. Mind has been in touch with me to express serious concerns that, at a time when more people are struggling, money is a huge problem, relationships are failing, young men and women are returning from war and housing pressures are intolerable for some, the main provider of mental health services, Plymouth Community Healthcare, is no longer structuring mental health as a specifically defined directorate of health care and appears to be shifting resources from mental health to generic health services. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), on the Front Bench, talked about bringing mental health closer to acute care, and that is obviously a better approach. Mind is concerned that in Plymouth the limited funds are being shifted away from mental health support. The charitable sector, too, is struggling as a result of a reduction in resources. There are some truly excellent support groups in Plymouth, and I pay huge tribute to the staff and volunteers at those, many of whom have come through mental health illness themselves. There are far too many of them to name, but I just wanted to put that on the record.
I have mentioned housing pressures. How many of us have constituents who are living in desperately overcrowded situations? We encounter pressure on parents because their children have turned up, perhaps with their grandchildren. A woman who came to my surgery is sleeping on the sofa in her front room while the rest of the house is taken up by her children. These people are clearly struggling. Many of them are on antidepressants or more powerful medication, and some are suicidal. Our caseworkers also deserve enormous credit for the way in which they sometimes have to support people in those circumstances.
Equally, housing officers often cannot manage the tide of human misery that they face. People with mental health issues are much more difficult to deal with. A housing officer can understand someone who has a physical disability, as it is often obvious—it is there in front of them and it is not invisible—and they can offer adaptations or a possible move. Things do not work in the same way for people with mental health issues, and it is much more difficult to deal with those.
As we have heard repeatedly, mental health cuts across every area of our society. We have heard a great deal about the need and support for our armed forces and the excellent work done by organisations such as Combat Stress. We have heard about the iniquitous treatment of people at the hands of Atos and about problems faced by those in the criminal justice system, but there are other areas to address. The hon. Member for Totnes touched on the issue of young women, who clearly often need support both before and after childbirth. Midwives are potentially very important in that scenario, and I would be interested to hear from the Minister on what guidance and training they specifically receive on supporting women in those circumstances.
Work is also being done to address the needs of children. The Minister mentioned the work of YoungMinds, but we are still failing very many young people. Recent media reports on suicides highlighted just how difficult it can be for young people who are being bullied or are struggling through other personal issues. Tragically, schools and other responsible adults have failed to recognise what was going on in their lives. I pay tribute to the incredibly well-informed speech by the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), which specifically dealt with those issues. YoungMinds, which was praised by the Minister, is concerned by the service cuts and reductions in provision for child and adolescent mental health. We also have to address an issue about the transition from support in that area into adulthood. That area needs a lot more attention, and I hope that the Minister will address some of these specific issues in his correspondence with us.
Finally, I wish to offer my support to the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) in his attempt to make significant changes on the whole issue of stigma. Intolerance or discrimination in employment, and preventing people from holding public office because they have been sectioned, is wholly unacceptable. He is right to say that this archaic piece of legislation needs to be binned, and I welcome the support that he has received from the two Front-Bench teams. I also welcome the fact that we will have a further opportunity to debate some of these crucial issues and just get it out there.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. As hon. Members can see, about nine Members are trying to catch my eye and we have just over an hour. We want to get everyone in, do we not? If everybody speaks for only six or seven minutes we can accommodate everybody, so I ask Members to be time-focused, please.
Dr Phillip Lee (Bracknell) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) on securing this important debate. There have been some very impressive speeches, not least from the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones). I have the pleasure of being, like him, a member of the Administration Committee because very early on in my time here at Westminster I realised that there were quite significant mental health problems among my colleagues. A few of them had approached me so I went to the usual channels, wanting to know what support was available for colleagues. As a consequence, I was put on the Administration Committee and I am now also on the medical panel. I am encouraged by the support available to colleagues if they choose to use it.
I congratulate the shadow Front-Bench team on what appears to be a decision to lead with mental health. It is an important decision that is politically astute and those on the Government Front Bench ought perhaps to reflect on their goals in that area. My advice would be not to be overambitious.
I want to reflect on my experience in this area, my family experience and my professional experience before saying a few brief words on GP commissioning. I have heard mention of the police and the concerns about their involvement in this area, so I shall comment on that. Finally, I want to mention the Human Rights Act.
At a family level, at the last count there were three suicides in my extended family. I know a number of people who have had depression and, unfortunately, a family member has recently been diagnosed with early onset dementia. I myself have had moments of, shall we say, fluctuating mood, perhaps a bit more so since I have been in this place, so I feel that I have first-hand experience through my family and myself of how prevalent the problems are.
I know from my professional experience that the nature of this topic means that it is something one does not forget. I recall clerking in a patient who was a survivor of Auschwitz—I remember the tattoo quite clearly—and the following day, that person hanged himself. I remember the relative of a senior member of the Ministry of Defence at the time breaking down in front of us, which was a quite shocking incident for me as a medical student.
Finally, I remember a case—I only remembered this as I listened to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)—of somebody who had been a victim of the troubles in Northern Ireland and had been relocated to where I was working under the witness protection scheme. That gentleman had experienced guns being held at his temple, in his mouth and so on, and I was in a position to be able to help him.
The nature of this subject means that it tends to throw up cases that are quite memorable and emotive. I feel strongly about it. Locally, I have done my bit. I have met Rethink Mental Illness and the first hustings I attended during the 2010 general election campaign was run locally by a mental health charity. Broadmoor hospital is in my constituency, at Crowthorne. I have visited there and I would encourage everybody to visit Broadmoor hospital. It is a very interesting place to visit with recidivism rates that are, I imagine, the envy of the prison system.
I have done my bit to try to raise the profile of the discussion and debate around mental health services, because this is a significant area of concern. About 800,000 people have dementia in this country at the moment and that number will rise—it will double. That is because of ageing and lifestyle, depending on whether it is Alzheimer’s or vascular dementia. The estimated cost of mental health is £89 billion by 2026, although perhaps that figure is out of date as I heard the shadow Secretary of State give a larger figure. Half of that is due to loss of earnings in the work place. The significance of this topic cannot be overstated.
Unfortunately, more than half of people with anxiety disorders do not interact with the service and about a third of those with depression do not interact with it. The services we have cannot deal with the demands being placed on them, so God only knows what it will be like when everyone starts turning up to see me as a GP or, now I am here, as an MP. I fear that this will need some realism on the part of the current health team and any future health team that might come from the Opposition side in terms of rationing and prioritisation of resources. For example, I read that we are now giving fertility treatment to everybody. I am sorry, but if I were to prioritise where my funding was going, I know it would go to mental health before it went to fertility treatment. I know that is a difficult thing for people to accept if they have fertility problems but we have to make decisions and I know where my priorities lie.
Let me address GP commissioning and some concerns that I want to raise with Front Benchers. There is some unease in my profession about the commissioning of psychiatric services—more so than for diabetes, hypertension or any cardiac service. In a recent poll that I saw, about 70% expressed significant concerns about this issue. I want to flag this up because most GPs do not get a lot of psychiatric experience when they are training. I happened to do a post in which I worked with depression and dementia as a junior but quite a few do not. That needs to be borne in mind. Perhaps we need to look at training in the way that my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) mentioned earlier. The commissioning of mental health services is complex and difficult, and we need to be cautious. I have been broadly supportive of the Government regarding commissioning but psychiatric services are different.
Another matter that I want to raise is about the police. I heard the earlier comments about the police force and I know that the police are not terribly enthusiastic about getting involved in acute psychiatric crises, but let me tell hon. Members an anecdote. A good friend of mine attended a psychiatric hospital at which someone had been brought in by the police. Six policemen had brought in that person, who was in a violent state of mind, and there was one female psychiatrist there. The six policemen had stab vests on and she was wearing a blouse. Somebody has to do that work and I am slightly concerned about who will do it if the police want to get out of it because the psychiatrists on the front line do not have the same protections that the police have.
On the Human Rights Act, let me highlight that whereas when people come on to the parliamentary estate they have their bags checked, psychiatrists cannot check the bags of a patient they are about to assess even if that patient has displayed violent intent. So someone could come in with a bag with knives and guns in it and the psychiatrist cannot investigate that bag or have it searched because of the patient’s human rights. I would very much like the Front Bench team to look at that and get back to me.
I want to take this opportunity to ask a few questions and re-emphasise that the knowledge base of GPs in this area needs to be improved, particularly for commissioning. I should like to know what the Government propose to do in this area. On the issue of choice, it is all very well wanting patients to be able to exercise choice but if they are not capable of doing so because they are profoundly depressed, demented or psychotic how on earth can they exercise that choice? Is the Minister confident that patients will get the care they need? I welcome the £400 million for talking therapies, but I should like to know where that money is being spent. What is the breakdown of the expenditure of that money? Is the Minister confident that it is being spent in appropriate areas? Anecdotally, I am hearing that it is not making much difference on the front line.
What can be done about the Human Rights Act and the example I have given? We should look at this. Perhaps it is an issue for colleagues in another Ministry, but I would appreciate a response about this.
Finally, let me raise a local issue. The Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst is in my constituency—or at least the parade ground and the buildings are. The residential accommodation is in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education. The problem on the Surrey-Berkshire borders is that there is a difference in the mental health care provision from each trust. There is a perverse situation in which people registered at the Royal Military Academy, whether personnel or family members, receive different levels of care. I would appreciate a written response on this from the Minister or from the Ministry of Defence. We may be able to address that with commissioning groups, but it is important, particularly given the comments by some of my colleagues, with reference to our armed forces.
Finally, may I congratulate everyone in the mental health sphere and anyone who is delivering care. They do so in often challenging circumstances. Doctors, nurses and so on need all the support that they can get in a service that will be increasingly important to us in future.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Unlike the doctors who have spoken from the Conservative Benches, my hon. Friends the Members for Bracknell (Dr Lee) and for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), who spoke with such expertise, I have absolutely no medical qualifications whatsoever, but that has not stopped me giving my opinions on this subject in the past, and I am afraid that it is not going to stop me today.
I see from the index on my website that this will be the ninth speech that I have made on the Floor of the House or in Westminster Hall on mental health. Many of those speeches were supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), and I do not think we will ever hear a finer speech than the one that he made today. In passing, I pay due credit to the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), whose interest in these matters I have known about for a long time, although not his personal history.
The speeches that I have made in the past have tended to concentrate on three themes: the importance of separate therapeutic environments for people who have to be admitted when they are acutely mentally ill—it is obviously unwise to have psychotic patients cheek by jowl with people suffering from suicidal depression, for example; the importance of single-sex wards, particularly in mental health units, although that applies to the NHS hospital network as a whole; and the importance of making adequate bed numbers available for people who require periodic admission to a mental health unit.
We heard from the Minister about the new emphasis on recovery-based programmes, and I am all in favour of that. There is everything to be said for that, but even its most ardent advocates do not deny that there will always be a need for in-patient beds for some people some of the time. I am concerned that the cuts imposed on in-patient beds may mean that if we are not very careful indeed there will be enough beds available in future only for people who are sectioned. Those people who wish to receive the support and the underpinning—the fall-back position—of an in-patient bed when they are experiencing an acute episode may be unable to secure one.
It has rightly been said that a debate at national level brings out the best in people in the House of Commons. However, the debate at local level does anything but bring out the best, given some of the schemes, plans and measures that have been introduced. In that connection, I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) who, in a measured and thoughtful way, made a speech that has become all too familiar to me. She talked about the way in which Granville Park in her constituency has been scheduled for closure on the basis of a consultation that she regarded as somewhat suspect.
I refer the hon. Lady to the Adjournment debate on the Floor of the House introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths), who discussed similar techniques that were used in his constituency, and to my own experience with the Southern Health Foundation Trust, which used a similar method to make 35% cuts in in-patient beds for acutely ill adults, even though bed occupancy figures were consistently over 90%. The pattern seems to be something like this: they hold a consultation; they make assertions based on, at best, subjective surveys of what they say people want; they then rely on pseudo-independent “expert” research, which usually turns out not to be independent at all; and finally they bulldoze their pre-existing plans through.
Therefore, to take the message that Mr Speaker always used to give when teaching the art of rhetoric, which is that a speech should have at most two main points, the main point in my speech is the need for the objective monitoring of statistics so that when we are reconfiguring services we at least know whether there really are spare beds before we close services down.
I would like to be fairly positive in this debate, brief as my contribution necessarily is, so I would like to say that the health overview and scrutiny committee of Hampshire county council, despite the harsh words I have had to use about it in the past, appears to be taking on board some of my concerns by seeking to ensure, as it has stated in its minutes,
“that further bed reductions are being safely managed”
and that it is
“made aware by the commissioner and provider should future acute inpatient bed demand regularly exceed bed availability in the service.”
I think that it is terribly important that in the process of reconfiguring we do not simply say that we are recreating a new system in the community while decimating the system that allows people the safety net of an acute bed during those episodes when they are really ill. As I said in my brief intervention on the Minister, if people are to have the confidence to get on with their lives and know that they can have useful and fulfilling careers even while living with and managing a mental illness, it is absolutely vital that they also know that, on the rare occasions when they really need the ultimate support of a few nights or even a week or two in an acute unit, a bed will always be available for them.
Mr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)
I will keep my remarks short, as time is certainly against me. I want to focus on the stigma of mental illness and the reasons why I think it continues to exist. We often recoil in horror when we think of the old asylum system in which people were locked up for various reasons. I believe that the care in the community system has been welcomed by most people, and I say that with evidence from the 1994 Ritchie inquiry into the care and treatment of Christopher Clunis, which broadly endorsed the community care policy.
Even though the community care policy is widely accepted, the issue of mental health is not accepted by the majority of the British public. I say that with evidence from the 2010 public attitudes survey showing that, although people are broadly sympathetic towards those who suffer from mental illness, some of their attitudes are worse than when the Department of Health first commissioned the poll in 1994. I believe that it is fear that drives this county’s mental health system; not the fear of those who suffer from mental illness, but a fear that is perpetuated by the actions of vested interests and perpetuates the stigma. I believe that it occurs through three main areas: mental health lobby groups, politicians and the media.
First, fear of those who are mentally ill has been fuelled by lobby groups that use the rare cases of homicide to keep mentally ill people in the public’s consciousness. Although their motivations are honest, the reality is that their actions promote a fear that is not always conducive to their aims. I do not intend to criticise individuals who have suffered terrible personal tragedies, but highlighting mental health issues as aggravating causes in deaths will not reintroduce a policy of asylum hospitals for severely mentally ill people. That behaviour alienates other mental health charities, which consider it to be unproductive.
Secondly, we as politicians have to take responsibility for reducing stigma. As I have already said to the Minister, the political decision to hold an independent inquiry into every homicide involving a mentally ill person has exacerbated public fear. Following the Ritchie report in 1994, the Department of Health ordered that an inquiry should be held into every homicide involving mental health services, but mental health professionals describe the environment in which they now have to work as an inquiry culture, whereby staff are made aware that any variation from recommended perfect practice could lead to an unpleasant afternoon in front of a cynical committee and the humiliation of being named in one of their reports. Those inquiries are viewed by mental health professionals as a threat, rather than as a corrective mechanism to enforce a “safety first” culture that promotes a perception among the public that every death is preventable.
It is easy for politicians to fall into that trap of trying to face both ways; indeed, the previous Government did fall into it to some extent. They were described as “compassionate” when they embarked on what the Mental Health Commission called
“the quickest and most dynamic transformation of policy in the history of state intervention in mental health illness,”
but to the public they presented an authoritarian face, capitalising on the alarm caused by the random attack on Jill Dando and the assault on George Harrison.
The third influence on mental health policy is provided by the media. Comments have already been made about the front page of The Sun in 2003, when it faced a significant backlash for branding Frank Bruno “Bonkers” after he had been taken to a psychiatric hospital. But that was not an isolated story. There have been many others, such as “Doc freed psycho to kill” and “Psycho killer was a time bomb waiting to explode”. They all inflame public outrage and continue to promote among the public a perception that mental illness equates to dangerous murderers whom doctors allow out on to the street, free to roam and to kill at will, but that is simply not the case.
Figures show that there has been no increase in killings by people with a mental illness in the past 40 years, during which time many mental hospitals have been closed in favour of care in the community. Less than one in 10 murders is committed by someone with a mental disorder, and over the past 40 years that number has decreased as a proportion of all homicides, as the overall murder rate has increased over the same time.
On the representation of mental illness on television, the Scottish Recovery Network found that 45% of characters with mental health problems in soap operas were portrayed as violent or as posing a threat to other people. In real life, it was very concerning when in 2007 Nikki Grahame, someone who clearly has mental health issues, and Pete Bennett, who suffers from Tourette’s, were allowed on “Big Brother” simply to increase its viewing figures.
Kerry Katona has admitted that when she sought to go on the same programme on Channel 4 in 2010, she failed the psychological test, as she had just come off her bipolar medication and a doctor advised her that it would not be sensible to appear. In 2011, however, when the show went over to Channel Five, that broadcaster did not produce any psychological tests and she was allowed to go on, the consequences of which could be seen each day.
The biggest change over the past decade has been the increase in protests from people with mental health problems who use the services on offer. Their dissatisfaction is with treatment, its greater emphasis on risk reduction and containment and its narrow focus on medication. Those who suffer from mental health problems dislike the heavy use of antipsychotic and sedative drugs, given their side effects, with some even rejecting completely the biomedical approach, which defines mental health problems as illnesses to be medicated, rather than as social or psychological difficulties to be resolved with other treatments, including talk therapies, for example.
There were some good measures in the Mental Health Act 2007, but there were also some negative ones, so I ask the Minister to address them and, in particular, to outline the benefits that he thinks the 2007 Act has introduced or, if he does not think that it has introduced any, the coalition Government’s policies to address the need for legislation that is fit for the 21st century.
The public and politicians want to be assured that the services people receive from mental health organisations are safe and will protect people from such rare but catastrophic attacks as those that have occurred in the past. People with mental health problems, and their families, however, want to be assured that the services are responsive and supportive, not coercive. They want to be included as active partners in, not passive recipients of, their care. However, a coercive service whose priority is public safety is vote-catching, while concern with civil liberties for a minority group, and one with a dangerous image at that, is not.
Patients continue to be treated with drugs rather than therapy, yet the constant cry is for more talking treatments, which NICE now accepts work for conditions such as schizophrenia. Carers are still neglected; their views are ignored and they lack support. There is huge variability, with some places having great services while others, as has been described today, have appalling services.
Perhaps the biggest scandal in mental health provision is in physical health. Evidence shows that people with severe, enduring mental illness die 15 to 20 years younger than on average. That is partly due to high levels of smoking and the use of other drugs—in effect, self-medication. There is also evidence that people with mental illness suffer discrimination in relation to their physical health. They do not get seen as quickly and they do not get treated as well as those in other parts of the NHS dealing with patients who do not suffer from their conditions.
The prescription for Ministers appears to be this: more talking treatments; better physical care; concerted action to reduce stigma; and more direct payments for those who can cope with them, allowing those on benefits to buy their own care rather than relying on social services.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. To help the remaining speakers keep to time, I am introducing a six-minute limit.
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
I speak as somebody with not only constituency experience of mental health issues but nearly 20 years of professional experience of dealing with a number of cases involving clients with mental health problems committing serious crimes such as murder, and crimes right through the criminal spectrum, many of whom have required the input of consultant psychiatrists and the assistance of the provisions of the Mental Health Act 1983. For many years, it struck me that the question of why those people ended up in that situation was never adequately answered. Years after my first experience with a such a client, I am still struggling to answer that question; perhaps it never will be adequately answered.
Mental health conditions are an integral part of what being a human is all about; they are with us every day of our lives. We are all, parliamentarians or otherwise, a little more brittle than we sometimes care to admit. Some of the testimony that we have heard today has shone a welcome light on the realities of what it is to be a human. Remembering that rule will guide us much more effectively as a society when we deal with mental health and the sad stigma that still pervades mental health issues far too strongly. However, I will not reiterate what other hon. Members have said about stigma.
I repeat my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) on securing this debate. It is not an overstatement to call it historic, because many of the comments that we have heard will be remembered long after it is over, and not only by interested people in the mental health community. That is an excellent example of how this place can really help to make a difference in our wider society.
As a constituency MP, I take a huge interest in mental health issues in my area. Swindon, like many other towns of its size, has its fair share of mental health challenges. We have excellent local voluntary organisations that are increasingly working together to improve provision. In response to the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), the way to deal with the challenges of commissioning is for local voluntary groups increasingly to come together to co-ordinate their activities and to make bids for tenders. That is what is happening in my constituency. Only last Friday, I was at a meeting of Swindon Charities Working Together, where those from the carers centre, Swindon Mind and other organisations were all talking to each other and co-operating, because they recognise that if they do not, the scenario envisaged by hon. Members whereby the big players secure every commissioning tender will become even more prevalent. We must avoid that if we are to develop genuinely local and properly tailored mental health services.
Much has been said about the importance of involving service users themselves, and I cannot place enough emphasis on that. We have a wonderful organisation in Swindon called SUNS—the Service User Network Swindon—which runs a listening line that is operated by service users, for service users. So, on those lonely Friday and Saturday nights, if those people with mental health conditions have nowhere else to turn, they can ring their friends, talk to them and work through their problems. That saves thousands of pounds that would otherwise be spent on the use of crisis teams in the acute services. That is diversion. That is the kind of therapy and approach that we need to encourage more.
There is also much that can be done in the workplace. The Mindful Employer organisation is one of the largest networks of employers in the country. It brings together local businesses, shares best practice and emphasises the fact that it makes good business sense to manage the stresses and strains of the work force more sensibly. I am proud to be what I regard as a mindful employer. One of my employees here in Parliament, Christopher van Roon, has suffered from a mild bipolar disorder—I have his permission to say this to the House—and he manages it with the help of his employers, my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) and me. He has worked here for two years while dealing with his mental health condition. He enjoys his work and being part of a healthy workplace.
That is an example of how people with mental health conditions can be brought back into the workplace and shown that there is a way forward. The idea that mental health conditions somehow mean a dead end for people’s lives has to be ended. That is far from the truth. As other hon. Members have said, such experiences can often make people all the stronger.
My thanks go to all the organisations in Swindon that do so much for mental health provision in my constituency, and also to the army of family members and carers who, in an unsung way, do so much to support those with mental health conditions. I am delighted to have taken part in the debate, and I commend the motion to the House.
Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)
I too offer my thanks and praise to my hon. Friends the Members for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) and for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) for securing the debate and for putting mental health at the centre of Parliament and the centre of our thoughts today. I also want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis). Over recent months, he has played Starsky to my Hutch in relation to mental health debates. He also managed to make my speech today in a much more succinct and erudite manner than I could ever hope to do.
I rise today to make a plea to the Minister. He graciously attended an Adjournment debate that I secured on the closure of the Margaret Stanhope centre, a mental health facility in my constituency. It was as a result of his intervention that the consultation was extended, and I was grateful for that. The end result, however, was that the local PCT—South Staffordshire PCT—took the decision to close the centre. As a newly elected Member of Parliament, I assumed that such decisions would be taken based on facts and evidence, and that there would be hard facts to enable the PCT’s claims to stack up. I assumed that its claims about the provision that was going to replace the Margaret Stanhope centre would be demonstrable. As my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East said earlier, however, the reality was a mind-blowing situation, in which the inability of the PCT to make any of its claims stack up throughout the process became apparent. I was disappointed, but not surprised, that the PCT dismissed the petition organised by my local newspaper, the Burton Mail, to save this much-loved facility, which some 8,200 people signed. The PCT decided to dismiss it because, it said, the petition did not deal absolutely to the letter with all the options that were in the consultation.
Throughout the consultation, the PCT made a number of claims. To start with, it said that it had carried out a pilot scheme and could demonstrate that it could reduce the need for in-patient care by a third. Understandably, we asked for the evidence to back that up. After five weeks of asking, it eventually provided me with some occupancy rates. We then asked for further occupancy rates, because the initial ones did not stack up. We asked for daily occupancy rates. It took a further two months for the PCT to give us that information. When we analysed it, it showed that far from reducing the need for in-patient beds by a third, only stays of more than 90 days—a minute part of in-patient care—had been reduced by a third. The vast majority of the figures had stayed the same and one-day admissions had actually gone up.
We looked further into what the PCT was saying. It had claimed that an independent report by Staffordshire university had said that closing the facility would not have an impact. When we looked at the report, we found that the professor from Staffordshire university who had conducted it was also employed by the PCT. She was on the payroll of the PCT, and yet it was praying in aid her report.
We cited a benchmarking report by the Audit Commission, which demonstrated that the PCT had among the lowest provision of mental health beds in the country. It stated that of 46 mental health trusts, Staffordshire had the lowest provision. Surprise, surprise, the following quarter’s evidence showed that my PCT had the highest provision. It had shot up from the lowest to the highest. When we explored that a little more, we found that the PCT had included beds such as those for eating disorders and drug and alcohol problems. It had lumped them all together to fix the figures.
The most worrying thing for me was that when I attended the final hearing where the decision was made, lay members on the panel were asking basic questions such as how many beds were available and what the occupancy rates were, even after a four-month consultation. They clearly did not have any of the information that was necessary to make such an important decision.
I urge the Minister to think long and hard about how we can bring rigour into such decisions. Mental health issues can affect any family, rich or poor, and are no respecter of intelligence, upbringing or anything like that. It is essential that there is a rigorous, accountable and transparent process before PCTs are able to decide to do away with these vital beds. I urge the Minister to consider how the Government can provide those reassurances.
Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) and for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) on what has turned out to be a fantastically refreshing debate, which has been part debate and part group therapy.
I want to add my own personal contribution. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), I suffered from post-natal depression. It is unbelievable how awful you feel when you are sitting with your tiny baby in your arms and your baby cries and so do you. You cannot even make yourself a cup of tea. You just feel so utterly useless. Looking back on that time, I genuinely agree with my hon. Friend that going through that experience makes you a better person. It also makes you determined to do something for other people in that situation.
Post-natal depression is a key issue for women as individuals. Like many others, I got over it with the help of a good family and husband, and by going back to work. Many people do not get over it. Although the consequences are profound for those women, the consequences for their babies are often even more profound.
I want to talk briefly about the experience of a baby. When babies are born, they are about two years premature. Their brains have barely developed. They have all of the neurones but none of the neural pathways are laid down. That happens only during the first two years of life. The peak period for the growth and development of a baby’s brain is between six and 18 months, and that growth is literally stimulated by a loving relationship with an adult carer—usually their mum, of course. If a baby’s mum has a lovely, smiling face and always picks them up, cheers them up, hugs them, feeds them and changes them whenever they cry, their brain becomes hard-wired to understand that the world is a good place. They will go on to be a person who can deal with life’s ups and downs, and who retains the idea that the world will be good to them.
It is like Harry Potter. He had loving parents until he was two, but then along came Lord Voldemort and murdered them, and he had an unspeakable experience until he was into his teens and escaped to Hogwarts. What kept him on the straight and narrow, and understanding right from wrong, was his secure foundation. I put it to the Minister that that is how to secure good emotional health for our society.
If babies do not have a secure bond—usually with mum, but it can be with another parent or with adoptive parents—their brain develops in such a way that they expect to have to fight or withdraw. Those babies are the people who go on to fail to cope with what life throws at them. They struggle to make friendships, and they are the people who are bullied or become victims, or indeed become bullies themselves at school. Babies at the acute end, where there is real neglect and abuse, are the ones who go on to become drug addicts or violent criminals. In fact, research shows that 80% of long-term criminals have attachment problems stemming from babyhood.
A sad truth about our society is that research shows that 40% of children aged five are not securely attached. Of course, that does not mean that they all go on to become psychopaths or murderers, but it does mean that we are raising generations of babies and young children who do not have the emotional capacity to meet the ups and downs that life throws at them. They will have a much greater tendency than other people to mental illness. They will struggle to have all the things that we perhaps take for granted, such as a secure family and a decent job, and they will be less robust in their emotional make-up.
There is much that we could do to support people. We heard yesterday in the debate on early intervention about how much more could be done to support social workers and destigmatise going to children’s centres and seeking help. One very good example came from the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), who has talked about it for a long time. Why do we not ensure that people go to a children’s centre to register their baby’s birth, and then to get their child benefit? That would instantly mean that most people would use children’s centres, so it would destigmatise them.
Children’s centres should not just be places where people go for antenatal and post-natal check-ups; people should be able to go there for psychotherapeutic support such as that offered by the Oxford Parent Infant Project, the charity of which I was chairman for nine years. It provides psychotherapeutic support for families who are struggling to bond with their babies. Social workers, health visitors and midwives love it because it is somewhere to which they can on-refer people. We hear a lot of talk about training for health visitors, but no talk about what they should do when they spot attachment problems and what help they should provide to families to turn the situation around. OXPIP has shown how incredibly easy it is to do so, because both mother and baby are extraordinarily receptive to being supported in such a way as to develop the attunement and empathy that they need for a good relationship with each other.
Mums who adore their babies do not allow partners to stub cigarettes out on them. They do not shake them to death or neglect and ignore them when they are crying. It is all about building an early relationship. It is greatly in the interests of our society for sound relationships to have been built by the age of two so that we do not constantly have to deal with the consequences of failed attachment later in life.
James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)
I welcome this important and timely debate. As other hon. Members have said, mental health issues are often marginalised in debates about health in general. Mental health must take centre stage, because mental health problems are widespread across the social system and affect people of all ages.
As Members have pointed out, there has often been a stigma attached to mental illness, but we are beginning to tackle that stigma head-on both here and, increasingly, through other public figures talking about their mental health problems.
As we attack that stigma, we must also examine whether our approach to tackling the problem is fit and appropriate for the 21st century. Our approach to mental illness over a number of decades has been based on what I would call the psychiatric model. The model has medicalised mental illness and treated it as something to be dealt with using drug-based therapies. It is dominated by a concern for short-term relief rather than long-term cure. That approach has dominated our thinking about mental illness in mainstream health. In my view, it needs to change, which is why I broadly welcomed the recommendations in the Government’s “No Health without Mental Health” strategy, particularly its emphasis on improving access to psychological therapies. The Government are investing £400 million over the spending review period, which is a welcome development.
People who suffer from a range of mental health problems need clear access to a range of talking therapies, but it has become fashionable to be sceptical about the effectiveness of long-term approaches such as psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, and we must not fall into the trap, as we do in many aspects of modern life, in focusing on therapies that have a short-term effect. I believe strongly that psychoanalytical and psychotherapeutic approaches can help to treat a range of mental health problems, from anorexia and psychosis to schizophrenia. We should not be embarrassed to advocate the use of such therapies.
At the same time, we need an integrated approach at a local level. I am impressed by the approach taken in Sandwell, part of which I represent. A GP-led approach to mental health care in Sandwell has borne results. The area has high levels of mental ill health, and high social deprivation and unemployment. Local GPs, led by Dr Ian Walton, agreed that depression should be a top priority. They developed an integrated mental health care approach emphasising greater choice, and helping to build emotional resilience and independence. The approach shifts the focus to mental well-being rather than mental illness.
As other hon. Members have pointed out, GPs are an important first gateway into NHS mental health services and the early identification of treatment for mental health problems. Big steps have been taken in Sandwell to improve GP training to deal with patients presenting complex mental health problems, and Dr Walton and his team have invested time in GP training to improve the efficacy of early diagnosis.
Improving early diagnosis of mental health problems is a fundamental part of the integrated model that has been successful in Sandwell. It frees resources in secondary care and allows people to deal with their mental health problems in community and family settings. The Sandwell model emphasises positive self-help, access to appropriate talking therapies and a focus on specialist programmes tailored to the needs of patients, which other hon. Members have mentioned. It also emphasises the importance of partnership working with schools, health, employment and other social providers.
Dr Walton and other local GPs have helped to transform mental health care in Sandwell, with consistently high recovery rates using IAPT of 63%, compared with a national average of just 44%. As we seek to tackle the major problem of mental health across our country, we need that greater emphasis on talking therapies. We need to challenge the psychiatric model of mental health treatment that has dominated thinking in our health system for far too long. We need an integrated approach at a local level that takes the best talking therapies and gives people access to the treatment they need. As the debate has illustrated, we also need a commitment from the Government to place mental health as a top priority within our health service as we seek to tackle the problem.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
In the short time available, I wish to address two subjects. First, I shall consider mental health in the military and the excellent progress made since the election, and refer to the work of my friend and constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison). Secondly, I want to reflect on my experiences dealing with constituents over the past two years. I think that many Members have been surprised by the sheer number of individuals who come to surgeries with mental health problems and associated issues. I want to refer to several of my experiences with constituents.
Soon after I was elected, one constituent told me about the treatment of her brother, who had recently committed suicide. She was unhappy with his experience and that of her brothers and mother during the previous 20 years, so we convened a meeting with relevant health professionals. I sat in the room for an hour and a half, as we went through the history of that poor man’s experience over 20 years. We have had an excellent discussion this afternoon about the different investments, and new policies, resources and approaches, but it struck me in that meeting that the real challenge was to join up all the different components that make for a proper solution for that family as a whole.
We were given an excellent briefing in the run-up to this debate, but one comment, in particular, from Mind and Rethink struck home. They wrote that
“whilst many people with mental health problems receive excellent care, all too often people face barriers in getting the care that they need as people’s journeys to recovery are rarely linear or straightforward.”
That is the key issue. People do not know what to expect, and because many of these conditions are unseen and the future is unknown, a great deal of fear creeps into families doing their best for a struggling relative. That leads to great tension and anxiety, so it is incredibly important that as we move to a new commissioning environment, we give local providers of appropriate support a voice and enable them to be commissioned. These decisions must be based not on numbers and spreadsheets but on the practical experience of local people.
The “Fighting Fit” report was a valuable piece of work commissioned in the first few weeks of the Government taking office. It is important to think about mental health in the armed forces in the same way as in other areas, but it is difficult to do so, given the culture in that environment. We heard some excellent statistics and useful perspectives from my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) underscoring the fact that many people in the military suffering from mental health issues do not take their first step towards accessing care until more than a decade—13 years, on average, we are told—after they leave the services.
It is pleasing that progress is being made on the principal recommendations in the “Fighting Fit” report—on increasing the number of mental health professionals conducting outreach work, on the establishment of an online early-intervention service and on a veterans’ information service. That progress is welcome, but much more needs to be done to educate new recruits and personnel throughout their career on the need to be open about their mental health, to admit to it and to seek support from the relevant authorities.
As everyone has said this afternoon, mental health issues do not discriminate by age, background, career or profession. That is the key message that we need to get into every aspect of life in our country. We need to continue to de-stigmatise mental health issues. We need to work for earlier diagnosis and smarter commissioning arrangements, and to invest in preventive measures to ensure that we achieve the maximum benefit to our society—that is, a lower rate of mental illness in the future.
As someone who recently endured the misery of seeing those very close to me suffer when a relative was in and out of mental hospital, I realise that this issue is very painful and difficult to talk about, and I commend those Members who have spoken so openly about their experiences and conditions this afternoon.
Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)
I, too, congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) and for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) on securing this Backbench Business debate in the first place. Indeed, this is an historic moment, for the simple reason that it must be the first time that three former association officers of the Battersea Conservative association have found themselves speaking in the same debate.
Oliver Colvile
I am sure my hon. Friend is quite right.
I have followed this issue very closely, because in my maiden speech I gave a pledge that I would try to raise the issue of mental health for our veterans during the course of my time in the House of Commons, however short or long that might end up being. I hope very much that I have been good to my word. Only too often when we have had debates on mental health or veterans issues in the House, we have found that it has been the Armed Forces Minister answering, and although he has always done a brilliantly good job of explaining what is going on, the debate has unfortunately never had a joined-up feel about it—for instance, by including Ministers from the Department of Health. That is why I very much welcome this debate.
I congratulate both the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne on their sheer candour in speaking about this issue. If we could capture my hon. Friend’s energy, we would sort out the national grid once and for all.
I recently had a Falklands veteran come to talk to me about how he feels he is being discriminated against in his benefits. That is something we most certainly need to look at as a House. My interest in this whole matter began in 2000, shortly after I was selected as the candidate in Plymouth, Sutton, when I went out with the people from one of the churches and saw them handing out soup and sandwiches to various people. Plymouth, being a major—indeed, principal—naval port, most certainly has a lot of veterans issues. There was a man on that occasion who had left the Army and was sleeping rough. He had come across real problems because he had taken to drink—he had obviously taken to drugs as well, which was also a very big issue.
Indeed, when my father served in the Navy—he went in as a boy sailor at the age of 14, serving in Dartmouth and subsequently in the second world war—he had the job of picking up the head of a man he was sharing a cabin with and throwing it over the side, into the sea. I think that would most certainly have given me the heebie-jeebies, I can tell you that, although it did not seem to affect him at all.
A number of Members have made a series of points in this debate which I fully agree with. I was going to talk a little bit about the position now, as we commemorate the Falklands war, 30 years on, but my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) has already dealt with that. However, we have to recognise that the families are the first people to get to know whether mental health issues are arising and how combat stress affects them. We need to remember that at the time when my father ended up having to deal with these issues, there were no mechanisms in place to look after his mental health or even try to take it forward. As others have said, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) has produced a very good report, which has very much formed the basis of Government policy in this area.
I ended up talking to Mind during the course of the last few days. The hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) and I are speaking as one, as she made the point that the amount of money devoted to mental health in Plymouth is an issue. It seems that money has been taken away from mental health to be given to those who suffer from physical ailments. I think that we most certainly need to look at that.
Last week, during the jubilee recess, I visited the Glenbourne mental health unit at the Derriford hospital. I was told that it had seen a significant rise in the number of people with mental health issues, especially from the military, and I was told how important it was to ensure that something was done about it.
We must make sure that we adopt a proactive campaign so far as stress and mental illness are concerned, and that we give our support to those organisations that are in the business of delivering it, while also ensuring that we have trained GPs to look after people. The Jesuits have a saying, do they not—“Give me the child until the age of eight, and I will show you the man”. That was very much the issue that my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) raised in her contribution, for which I was grateful.
Let me finish on a small note. We need significantly more joined-up government between Departments. We should not be talking only about the Ministry of Defence, but about the Department of Health, the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Work and Pensions. If we can do that, we can make real progress.
Nicky Morgan
I am sorry that in the short time available, I will not be able to mention all the fantastic speeches we have heard this afternoon. We can definitely say that we have considered the motion fully—and we should all be very proud of that achievement.
I shall make a few brief points to draw the issues of the debate together. First, we all agreed that the debate was somewhat overdue and that it was time that mental health was discussed more often in the Chamber. I hope that we have shown the House of Commons at its best. I certainly think we have; I think this is one of the best debates I have attended since I was elected just over two years ago. We were right to hold out for a debate in the main Chamber, which was an important issue.
Secondly, we have shown that Members of Parliament are not immune to mental health experiences. I would like to pay particular tribute to the speeches of the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and of my hon. Friends the Members for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) and for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), who should win an award for bringing the name of Harry Potter into her speech.
We have shown this afternoon why it is so important for my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) to introduce his private Member’s Bill. I am sure that we all wish him well with it and look forward to working with him on a cross-party basis—another significant achievement from today’s debate. I thank both Front-Bench teams for their support for my hon. Friend’s private Member’s Bill.
I think it was the Minister who said that this issue is not about them and us; it is just about us. Mental health affects everybody within society, and it is up to all of us to challenge stigma. Mention was made of media leadership, particularly of the campaign run by the Sunday Express. Mention was also rightly made of the importance of using the right language when we talk about mental health. That is certainly something that I shall take away from this debate.
The point has been made that many different treatments work and that we should respect that. I entirely take the shadow Secretary of State’s point about moving the NHS into the 21st century. His point about the physicality and the separateness of our mental health trusts and buildings was a good one. I had not considered that point before; the right hon. Gentleman was absolutely right.
The hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) talked about the many challenges faced by local mental health services and those working in them, and her speech perhaps best summed them up. We have also heard concerns about the work capability assessments.
My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) argued that different parts of the Government needed to work more closely together in the sense that a number of different Ministers could have sat on the Front Bench to talk about this issue.
Finally, I want to thank all the speakers, the Backbench Business Committee for securing the debate, everyone who has watched it outside and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee) mentioned, everyone working within the mental health system.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the matter of mental health.
business of the House (19 June)
Ordered,
That, at the sitting on Tuesday 19 June the Speaker shall put the Questions necessary to dispose of proceedings on the Motion in the name of Secretary Theresa May relating to immigration not later than four hours after their commencement; such Questions shall include the Questions on any Amendments selected by the Speaker which may then be moved; proceedings may continue, though opposed, after the moment of interruption; and Standing Order No. 41A (Deferred divisions) shall not apply.—(Michael Fabricant.)
Walsall-Rugeley Line (Electrification)
(12 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Aidan Burley (Cannock Chase) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for allowing a debate on the electrification of the Chase line, which is the line from Walsall, just outside Birmingham, to Rugeley in my Staffordshire constituency.
The Chase line is actually a key section of a longer rail route running from Birmingham New Street up to Rugeley Trent Valley, but whereas the section from Birmingham New Street to Walsall is electrified—taking in Duddeston, Aston, Witton, Perry Bar, Hamstead, Tamebridge Parkway, Bescot Stadium and Walsall—the section from Walsall to Rugeley is diesel only. Hence the onward journey to Bloxwich, Bloxwich North, Landywood, Cannock, Hednesford, Rugeley Town and Rugeley Trent Valley is considerably slower, with poorer passenger service and fewer, older trains.
It goes without saying that this is the key rail route for my constituents. Thousands of them use the line daily to commute to and from work—usually in the city of Birmingham—and many commute to Walsall for work as well. At weekends, it is the main route into Birmingham for shopping, leisure and social life. Birmingham is the second city of this country, and fast, frequent and reliable services to and from that vital economic hub are essential to the economic growth of towns such as Cannock, Hednesford and Rugeley, just 15 miles away.
Let me take this opportunity to pay tribute to Keith Fitch and the members of the Cannock Chase rail promotion group, who have campaigned tirelessly over many years for the reintroduction and, now, for the development of passenger services on the Chase line. I also thank John Morgan, the principal planning officer at Cannock Chase district council, who is responsible for the railways and is a long-time campaigner for the electrification of the Chase line. It is a cliché nowadays to say that people have worked tirelessly for a cause, but the work that John has done over the years with successive council administrations and Members of Parliament has been far above and beyond the call of duty. It can really only be described as a labour of love, stemming from his passion for the railways. John is watching in the Gallery tonight. After some 35 years of commitment to the railways and the electrification of the Chase line, it would be a fitting end to his career for him to see his goal finally realised.
Gavin Williamson (South Staffordshire) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Does he agree that people have been campaigning for the electrification of the Chase line because they know that it will bring massive economic benefits to his constituency as well as mine and many others?
Mr Burley
The short answer is absolutely, and I shall say more about that later. One of the startling facts that I discovered when researching for my speech was that the electrification of the line has been a project for various council administrations and Members of Parliament of all colours since the early 1960s—20 years before I was even born. It really is a project whose time has come.
Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)
I must declare an interest, as not only do a good many of my constituents use the line, but I myself use the section between Birmingham New Street and Bloxwich North. I therefore understand perfectly the position that the hon. Gentleman is describing.
This is, of course, an all-party effort, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will not wish to make any party propaganda points. I certainly have no wish to do so, and nor does my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz). For the reasons that have been given, the project has all-party support. However, is it not also the case that electrification could create well over 1,000 jobs? As the hon. Gentleman knows, jobs are urgently needed in our part of the world.
Mr Burley
Indeed. I believe that the exact figure is 1,386, and that is part of the economic case that I hope to put to the Minister this evening.
Since the general election, the upgrading of the Chase line has been one of my key priorities. I have been working closely with all the key players, including the councils, Centro, Network Rail and London Midland, the operator of the trains on the line. I have already hosted two successful stakeholder meetings, bringing together all the key players to discuss how we can proceed with the development of the line.
It is fair to say that there has been massive historical frustration as to why this line has not been electrified at some point in the past 20 years, and why the scheme is still not included as a named scheme for control period 5—CP5—as part of the high-level output statement, or HLOS, due to be published by the Department in July this year. I am aware that reference was made to Rugeley-Walsall electrification in the initial industry plan in September 2011, but only as a “candidate scheme” rather than as a commitment. That was extremely disappointing as we had hoped that the strategic importance of the project would have been recognised and there would have been a firm commitment in the Government’s HLOS announcement for CP5.
I am pleased, however, that since the election we have managed to persuade Network Rail to fund the west midlands line speed improvement scheme for the Chase line. This speed upgrade from 45 mph to 75 mph, announced in the Chancellor’s autumn statement, will not only help support our efforts to bring business to the area, but it will reinforce the message that Cannock Chase is the place to come to in south Staffordshire. However, Network Rail has not set any time scale for the line speed upgrade, and it may not happen until after the current Walsall to Rugeley re-signalling programme is completed. Options are being drawn up over the next six months, but the funding does not have to be spent until March 2014. This means it could take a further two years before my constituents see any improvements.
The line speed improvement is, however, only a sticking plaster on the wound; the real fix that has long been needed is the electrification of the Chase line itself, and I would like to take this opportunity to explain to the Minister why that is the case. Over recent years, the Rugeley-Cannock-Walsall-Birmingham line—the Chase line—has continued to go from strength to strength. Increased passenger growth of 10% per annum or more has been achieved in recent years. Over half a million passenger journeys a year are now made just from the three stations in my constituency. The Chase line now has the second highest levels of passenger growth in the Centro area. Yet despite that, the route has seen a reduction in services and shorter trains, most recently last December through the service level commitment changes, as a direct result of a shortage of diesel trains. That is because the Chase line is the only Centro route operating out of Birmingham New Street where diesel trains have to operate. That has resulted in an inefficient mix of diesel and electric services between Birmingham and Walsall, in order for diesel trains to operate north of Walsall on the non-electrified section to Rugeley. Therefore, in spite of having one of the highest annual passenger growth figures in the west midlands, passenger services on the route had to be reduced from December 2011 as a direct result of it not being possible to operate the whole Birmingham-Walsall-Rugeley service with electric trains and the need to transfer scarce diesel rolling stock to provide capacity on other routes.
The situation is predicted to get even worse. From 2013, the Chase line will have the lowest service frequency of any suburban route radiating from Birmingham and yet still have one of the highest passenger growths. So I say to the Minister that we urgently need to address this contradiction of passenger growth and reduced services, and the only solution is the electrification of the Chase line. That must be included in CP5.
Mr Winnick
On the point about last December’s reduction in service, many of my constituents have pointed out to me that people took to the roads instead. There is already a lot of congestion on the roads from Birmingham to my constituency and that of the hon. Gentleman, and it would get even worse.
Mr Burley
As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, the railways have undergone a renaissance in recent times and it seems perverse that at a time when more and more people wish to use the railways we are in effect forcing them on to roads that are already heavily congested. I am sure that, like me, the hon. Gentleman is a regular driver on the M6 and surrounding roads, so he will know that traffic congestion is a major problem on them. We need more people on the trains, not fewer. It is therefore perverse to force them on to the wrong mode of transport.
Mr Burley
Excellent.
Given the history of this scheme, it is astonishing that this small 15-mile section of track has not already been electrified. The scheme originally had a high-profile inclusion in the former Railtrack network management statement in 1999, including a detailed pre-feasibility study showing it was deliverable. It was again identified in Network Rail’s electrification strategy 2009, and in its west midlands route utilisation strategy in 2011, as a scheme that should be fully considered in more detail as part of the west midlands and Chilterns route utilisation strategy.
Although Centro and other local stakeholders feel that the west midlands and Chilterns route utilisation strategy process did not consider the case for electrifying the route as effectively as it could have, recent work by Network Rail demonstrates that the electrification scheme has a positive business case and a benefit-cost ratio of 1:2, even without the inclusion of the wider strategic benefits that will arise from creating an alternative electrified rail connection between the west midlands and the west coast main line, which links the region to the north-west and Scotland.
The Minister may not be aware that recent work undertaken by KPMG for Centro has also identified significant further regional economic benefits from the electrification of this route, which, again, are not included in Network Rail’s business case. KPMG’s analysis indicated that electrification would generate an additional £113 million of gross value added benefit per annum and support the creation of 1,370 additional jobs, as has been mentioned. That is why Centro and others locally are so passionate about seeing the Government confirm the Walsall to Rugeley electrification as a high priority scheme for 2014 to 2019 in the Secretary of State’s forthcoming high-level output statement on rail investment. That is also why both Centro and the West Midlands Regional Rail Forum have now identified the scheme as the No.1 electrification priority for the whole of the west midlands region.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. It may seem to be a bit geeky and for train-spotters, but this subject is very important for our constituents. I am pleased that Walsall is not being ignored, because it usually is. Will he say whether any of this is part of the High Speed 2 bid? Will we be able to have a bit of slippage in that bid in order to see this scheme come to fruition?
Mr Burley
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, and I will come on to deal with HS2 and the way it connects up a little later in my speech, when I believe I will address her question. I also thank her for signing the letter to the Secretary of State, which I should also mention, from just about all the MPs along the line in support of the scheme; as has been said, this is a cross-party effort, as we all want to see this happen.
Although Centro and other regional stakeholders strongly support the electrification of the Walsall to Rugeley route, the train operator, London Midland, also believes that electrification would deliver ongoing operational cost savings, improved journey times and reduced crowding. Electrification work will make it easier to create a larger loading gauge, allowing the increasingly common W10 containers to be transported. In the longer term, electrification could allow services such as the Birmingham to Liverpool service to run via Walsall, significantly improving Walsall’s connectivity to Stafford and the north-west, and giving new commercial opportunities to serve a town that is now larger than Wolverhampton, as I learned yesterday.
The Minister will be aware that the electrification strategy as part of the network route utilisation strategy identified the following gaps as driving whether a route should be considered for electrification:
“Type A—Electrification to enable efficient operation of passenger services…Type B—Electrification to enable efficient operation of freight services…Type C— Electrification to increase the availability of diversionary routes…Type D—Electrification to enable new patterns of service to operate”.
The Minister can take comfort that the Walsall to Rugeley line electrification would cover all those gap types.
The Minister will also be aware that Network Rail has identified a number of criteria to be considered when looking at whether to develop a project for CP5. Again, we in the west midlands strongly believe that all these criteria, as set down by Network Rail, are met. Tonight, I just want to highlight three key criteria, the first of which is affordability. Railtrack commissioned Atkins in 1999 to undertake a pre-feasibility study into the electrification of the route, and, with the exception of clearance issues in the Walsall station area, the route appears to be straightforward to electrify. It must be remembered that the line was earmarked for electrification in the 1960s as part of the west coast electrification scheme, and that all the bridges and other structures were rebuilt with electrification clearances. Atkins assessed the cost of electrification as approximately £32.6 million, plus an extra £6 million to achieve W10 gauge clearance. However, it is worth noting that the recent work by Centro reduces that to just £30 million, or £1 million per mile of track—15 miles in each direction.
The second criterion I want to draw to the Minister’s attention is value for money. There should be a financially positive benefit-cost ratio of more than two. We believe that the multiple benefits that the route drives have already resulted in a positive BCR of 1:2. That will be further enhanced by the KPMG work, which will push it over two. Network Rail’s business case assessment is narrowly defined and has been superseded by the Centro-commissioned KPMG work that takes into account the wider benefits such as job creation and economic development. As has been mentioned, it would mean more than 1,300 new jobs and a gross value added of £113 million, which are not reflected in Network Rail’s more tightly defined business case, which still gives a positive BCR. We therefore urge the Minister to take that into account as part of her decision process for named schemes in CP5 as part of the HLOS next month. This is a capital scheme that will trigger economic development and job creation across the west midlands.
The third criterion for Network Rail that I want to draw to the Minister’s attention is the extent to which economic growth is driven. As I hope we are showing tonight, the service improvements arising from the scheme would drive significant economic growth in the Walsall and Cannock areas, which are badly affected by the economic downturn. The freed-up capacity elsewhere on the network would also support wider economic growth in the west midlands. There would also be the ability to redeploy diesel capacity on the busy Snow Hill network, which would help the economy of Birmingham city centre to develop further. Without the electrification the current service on the line could worsen, leading to economic growth constraint.
I believe the scheme meets all the key criteria for electrification set down by Network Rail and that is why all our local stakeholders believe that Walsall to Rugeley electrification strongly meets Network Rail’s criteria for CP5 named schemes for 2014 to 2019. As a result of all this, on 18 May I sent a letter to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport signed by 20 key stakeholders, including the chairs of the Greater Birmingham and Solihull, Black Country and Staffordshire, and Stoke local enterprise partnerships, the leaders of all the metropolitan, county and district local authorities on the route, private sector business leaders, the chamber of commerce and six MPs with constituencies along the route, some of whom are in their places tonight, all giving their unequivocal support for Walsall to Rugeley Chase line electrification. As can be seen from the number of MPs from both sides of the House who signed the letter to the Secretary of State and who are here tonight, this scheme has the support of the region.
The scheme has the strong support of my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant), who has already written to the Minister about this matter but cannot take part in this debate because he is a Whip, even though he is sitting in front of me on the Treasury Bench tonight. It also has the strong support of my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy), who has publicly given his firm support, saying:
“Electrification of this line is a vital, not simply for local and regional transport, but for the national network as it provides alternative routes for electric only trains.”
It also has the support my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Mr Howarth), who was the former Member for Cannock and Burntwood and is now the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, He cannot speak in the debate as he is a Defence Minister, but he wanted me to inform the house that when he was the Member for Cannock and Burntwood in 1983 to 1992, he tried to get the line to be upgraded, saying then:
“It would provide an invaluable alternative for occasions when the West Coast mainline between Rugeley and Birmingham International is out of action for repairs.”
It is even supported by the Government Chief Whip, himself a user of the Chase line in his former life as a councillor on Cannock Chase district council and as a coal miner in my own constituency. It also has the cross-party support of all the MPs along the route, including the hon. Members for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) and for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) and my hon. Friends the Members for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd), for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson), for Stafford and for Lichfield.
I know that the Minister, quite rightly, will not be persuaded simply by pleas from MPs. I am aware that such schemes require more than just special pleading; they require cold hard facts and benefit-cost ratios, and that is what I have tried to convey to the Minister tonight. As I have said, recent work by Network Rail this year has already established that this £30 million scheme has a positive business case with a BCR of 1:2 and the further research by KPMG commissioned by Centro shows that that can easily increase to more than two when the wider economic benefits are taken into account. An investment of £30 million will give the west midlands a regional gross value added benefit of £113 million and the regional employment impact will create nearly 1,400 jobs. That seems like a good return to me and one that meets the Network Rail investment criteria.
I am conscious that this bid would be in competition with other bids for electrification and must therefore be competitive. Before this debate, I listened to a recent Adjournment debate secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) to ask for electrification of the midland main line at a capital cost of a rather whopping £530 million, with more than 50 bridges needing to be rebuilt. The Minister, who is also replying to this debate, said then that
“we will need to strike a balance”
between different types of project and that what gets funding depends on a
“fair assessment of competing priorities elsewhere on the rail network.”—[Official Report, 16 April 2012; Vol. 543, c. 148-49.]
Given that this project would cost only £30 million and would need only two bridges to be slightly modified, I hope the Minister can recognise it as an easy win—a piece of low-hanging fruit that she can grasp. It is one of those different types of project that should be considered on its own merits next to the big boys.
In conclusion, if ever there were a time for this scheme to be delivered by the “greenest Government ever”, it is now. It has been in the planning stage since the early 1960s—20 years before I was born—and it has been pursued by former MPs for Cannock Chase of both political colours as well as by local councils and regional authorities. The local enterprise partnerships see it as essential to the commercial interests along the routes. They also think it essential to connecting the benefits of HS2 to the area and driving job creation and economic growth. KPMG’s analysis has demonstrated that this electrification and consequent passenger service improvements would dramatically improve accessibility to labour and goods markets, stimulating economic growth and job creation and increasing productivity for the west midlands as a whole.
The electrification of this 15-mile strategic missing link in the electrified rail network of the west midlands would create an alternative route to the north-west for passenger and freight services, relieving the existing congested Birmingham to Stafford main line, so this is not just a local rail scheme. It would offer regional and national benefits, but it is essential, if those benefits are to be realised, that these outputs form a key part of the Government’s July announcement on the high-level output specification. I therefore ask the Minister to reflect positively on the strong business case for this project. When she does, I hope she will reach the same conclusion as we have—that the electrification of the Walsall to Rugeley Chase line should be included as a named scheme for CP5 as part of the high-level output specification due to be published by her Department next month.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mrs Theresa Villiers)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley) on securing this debate on such an important issue. It is very timely because decisions on the Government’s high-level output specification are imminent. I have been impressed by the determination of the coalition of different organisations campaigning for full electrification of the Chase line, and I pay tribute to the work of my hon. Friend, who has this evening put the case for that improvement to the House with passion, clarity and detail. I also note the support of my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant), who is in his place, and the work done by many others, such as the Cannock Chase rail promotion group. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase, I think it is right to single out for praise John Morgan of Cannock Chase district council. As we have heard from my hon. Friend, Mr Morgan’s knowledge of the Chase line is unsurpassed. I am told that he has shown huge dedication over many years in seeking the upgrade he wants to see.
Subject to affordability, the Government support the progressive electrification of the rail network as a way of reducing the cost of running the railways, improving services for passengers and reducing carbon emissions from transport. Electric trains are more reliable, quieter and more comfortable than their diesel equivalents. They are also better for the environment and cheaper to operate. The Government believe it is essential that the cost of running the railways should come down. In March we published plans for achieving major efficiency savings in our Command Paper. We believe that further electrification can assist us in delivering our goal of a more efficient rail network. That is one reason why we are going ahead with significant electrification programmes in the north-west and on the Great Western line.
We accept that there is a positive business case for proposals to extend electrification on the Chase line. I also note the strong local support and the long-running nature of the campaign, as well as the regional support that has been outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase. I agree with him that considerable benefits could be delivered if it were possible to fund electrification of the line. That would allow more energy-efficient electric services to operate and would remove the existing inefficient and resource-intensive mix of diesel and electric services between Walsall and Birmingham. That could reduce the cost of running the service, which is always an important factor. An added advantage would be the release of the diesel rolling stock used between Birmingham and Rugeley Trent Valley for use elsewhere on the network. Electrifying the Chase line could also provide wider economic benefits, as my hon. Friend rightly identified—for example, by broadening access to labour and goods markets, and by boosting productivity and job creation in the area.
A key factor in considering the case for the further electrification that my hon. Friend wants is the fact that the Chase line is an entry point for trains to the nation’s second city. In recent years the line has become an increasingly important commuter service in and out of Birmingham. The electrification between Walsall and Rugeley could therefore be a way to strengthen peak capacity into Birmingham. Currently, as we have heard, the only electrified route from the west coast main line to Birmingham from the north is the Wolverhampton line. Electrification of the Chase line could offer a second electric route via Walsall from those destinations in the north.
That provides an opportunity for the development of services through Birmingham, Walsall, Stoke-on-Trent, Crewe, Liverpool and elsewhere in the north. It would deliver an electric diversionary route from the west midlands to the north for passenger services from Birmingham New Street and for freight services, relieving the line through Wolverhampton. As well as improving local and regional services, electrification could have a strategic national value.
The benefits of electrification could be considerable and I am clear that this project is a serious contender for funding. The Government are considering how much funding will be available for rail investment in the five-year CP5 period up to 2019 and how it should be allocated between competing priorities. We will announce our decisions on the HLOS 2—high-level output specification 2—statement by the end of July. The case for electrification of the Chase line will be considered as part of that process. I shall ensure that the deliberations and points made in this debate are fed into that process.
The project has been chosen by Centro and the west midlands regional rail forum as their No. 1 electrification priority for the west midlands, and it is supported by the business community and the local enterprise partnership. That local support is something that we shall take into account in our forthcoming decisions on what can go into the next HLOS. As we have heard, reference is made to the project in Network Rail’s initial industry plan, which sets out the options for funding in CP5. I note my hon. Friend’s concerns about the approach to the scheme by Network Rail in the industry plan but, like him, I am pleased that additional work has been undertaken since the plan’s publication further to develop the business case and respond to comments from stakeholders in the west midlands and achieve a clearer understanding of the underlying evidence and facts on what electrification would mean and what it would cost.
Mr Winnick
The Minister mentioned stakeholders. I am sure she will bear in mind the point that I made earlier that this has the support of all the Members of Parliament, and there is absolutely no political controversy whatsoever.
Mrs Villiers
I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s restatement and, yes, I am very much aware of that.
We recognise that there is a business case for a number of the schemes identified in the industry plan that are supported by Centro, including greater peak capacity into Birmingham and extra capacity between Birmingham and Tamworth and in the Worcester area. Whether we can give the go-ahead to Chase line electrification and Centro’s other aspirations depends on what is affordable within available budgets. We also have to weigh up competing priorities elsewhere on the rail network. Decisions on HLOS 2 have not yet been taken, but this debate will provide very useful input into the Government’s thinking on this important matter. It is worth remembering that Chase line passengers are in line to receive improved services with a £5.4 million package of improvements announced by Network Rail in 2011 to increase line speed on the Chase line from 45 mph to 75 mph, reducing journey times for passengers travelling from all stations on the line.
We fully understand that the aspiration is to go further, and we recognise the strength of support for electrification, which is something that we will consider with great seriousness in the weeks between this debate and the announcement that we shall make in the summer on which projects can receive funding in the CP5 control period between 2014 and 2019.
Question put and agreed to.
Petition
M4 link road (Kingswood)
Westminster Hall
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Piracy (Somalia)
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)
I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for North West Norfolk (Mr Bellingham), who has been dragged back at short notice, for reasons beyond his control, but it is to the benefit of the House that he is here today.
May I raise a point of order, Mr Sheridan? This is a debate on the report of the Foreign Affairs Committee, which I chair, about piracy off the coast of Somalia. One of the key recommendations was that the guidance for the use of private armed guards on British ships be revised. In its response, the Foreign Office said that the guidance would be coming out in April. Then we were advised that it was coming out in May. I have no quarrel about that, because it is important to get it right. I was informed at 2.25 pm today that the guidance was published at 11 am this morning and we do not have copies of it. We have not seen it. No effort was made to get it to us at 11 am. Would it be appropriate to adjourn for 10 minutes while the guidance is made available, so that we can have a quick look at it?
Jim Sheridan (in the Chair)
Unfortunately, we have to proceed with the business of the House. It is extremely discourteous of the Department to treat the Select Committee as it has done and I am sure that the appropriate people will be aware of exactly what has happened. However, I am unclear how that can be remedied at this late stage. Does the Minister wish to say something?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mike Penning)
I am the Minister responsible for the guidance, although it is not my debate. Clearance was delivered to us only this morning from the Ministry of Justice, and I published it as soon as possible. I apologise to the Chairman of the Committee because he was not given a copy of it. The Chairman is correct: the guidance has to be right, which is why we have published it today. Copies will be here for Committee members before the end of the debate.
Jim Sheridan (in the Chair)
Will the absence of the information impact in any way on the debate?
Richard Ottaway
I appreciate the Minister’s explanation. I gather that the delay was due to the need for clearance by another Department. However, a large section of my speech relating to this matter and posing questions is now, frankly, academic.
Jim Sheridan (in the Chair)
Unfortunately, I am advised that we have to keep going. I can only apologise.
Richard Ottaway
Thank you for addressing the point, Mr Sheridan.
The tenth report of the Foreign Affairs Committee is about piracy off the coast of Somalia, a major problem that costs industry and the world economy billions of dollars and threatens lives. The Indian ocean has become a no-go area for small vessels and is dangerous for large ones. The causes of the problem are many. First, at the heart of it is the fact that, despite the introduction of military forces and private armed guards, still the majority of vessels are unarmed. Secondly, there is a willingness to pay ransoms—a controversial point to which I will return. Thirdly, there are too few naval forces. Fourthly, the pirates are able to operate with relative impunity inside Somalia.
The United Kingdom Government are well aware of the problem and are taking a leading role and, although the Committee makes constructive criticisms of that role, we congratulate them on the steps that they are taking. Concerted international action is needed. The number of prosecutions has increased, but 90% of those detained are released. There is greater use of armed guards and we have regulation and guidance for armed guards. Vessels have been following best management practices. There are issues to do with tracing financial flows: the Committee’s opinion is that financial flows can be tracked—some of the most sophisticated equipment for that purpose is available in this country—and that more can be done in this regard. The Committee believes that there should be at least one UK vessel permanently on station. Of course, we have to support development in Somalia. I shall deal with those points in turn.
The UK is a big player in the world shipping industry, and our part of it is based just a mile or two up the road from here. Shipping and its management comprises 1.8% of gross domestic product. Piracy poses a threat to the UK’s economy and the security of British assets transiting through the area. Some 40% of world trade moves through the region of the Indian ocean, around the horn of Africa, into the Red sea. The danger zone now stretches over to the coast of the Indian ocean. Much of the cargo is insured here in the UK. The total cost of addressing the threat to Britain, the assets and the industry is believed to be in the region of $8 billion to $12 billion per annum.
Attacks on vessels in the Indian ocean have decreased in the last quarter. In the first quarter of 2011 there were 102 attacks, 16 of them successful, whereas this year there were only 43 attacks and only nine were successful. That downward trend is welcome. To give an idea of the sums involved, in 2011, ransoms amounted to $135 million. The opinion of some observers and witnesses who gave evidence to the Committee was that some of that money is going to al-Shabaab, which it is believed has connections with al-Qaeda.
Since piracy started in the region, some 3,500 crew members and officers have been taken captive and been held, and in the last four years 62 have been killed. Currently, 12 vessels are held and 178 hostages are still in captivity. That the figure is lower than it was reflects a welcome trend, but it is important to state that the level of detention remains unacceptable. It must not be believed that we have been successful and this situation must not become the status quo.
The peak from which we are coming down was reached in autumn 2011. I think the reason why the trend is now downward is that the self-defence mechanisms are beginning to make progress. The implementation of best management practices is clearly having a serious effect. It is too soon to see if this is a long-term trend, but it is promising. For the benefit of the House, I should say that best management practices involve self-protecting measures, including careful manoeuvring of ships, having safe rooms on ships and using detection equipment. I commend the industry on the implementation of these practices, as does the Committee, and on the results that this is achieving.
Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)
Does not this highlight a further problem, which is that it is not so much the cargo or the vessel but the crew that is the main financial inducement? All the measures the hon. Gentleman has mentioned apply to the large multinational, well organised modern fleets, but many smaller operators with smaller vessels are becoming more vulnerable. Those measures, welcome though they are, can therefore only be regarded as part of a package, because they deal with only part of the problem.
Richard Ottaway
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. For small vessels the region is, in truth, a complete no-go area. For the piracy of the 17th and 18th centuries, the prize was the cargo, and the crew walked the plank or went over the sides, but that has changed; now, the crew are equally valuable. That attitude of the pirates is causing the problem. That is not to say that the cargo is not still important—shipowners are paying substantial sums to get their cargo out—but as we see particularly when yacht crews are held, in international terms the yacht is worth nothing while the owners still have a high value.
The Government initially resisted the establishment of private armed security guards on board British vessels. When the Minister gave evidence to us during our inquiry, the Government’s position was that armed guards would not be welcome. However, the Prime Minister announced in October or November last year that we will now put armed security guards on board British vessels, and that view is echoed by the International Maritime Organisation. The Committee welcomes the U-turn.
The operation of a private armed guard on board a British vessel is subject to British law—the law of the flag applies on board any vessel. The Government published interim guidance, at the heart of which was a policy based on the Crown Prosecution Service policy of lawful self-defence. We were critical of that, because the CPS guidance was not written with piracy in mind. Indeed, it states:
“If a…firearm…was used…this may tip the balance in favour of prosecution.”
To me and to the Committee, that seemed to be off-loading responsibility for the use of armed guards on to shipowners. The simple question we posed in our report was: if armed guards on board a ship see an armed skiff approaching, can they open fire? That is the test. The initial interim guidance contained little to help make a judgment on the use of force.
In the Government response, as I pointed out in my point of order, clarification was promised by April 2012, which then became May, then June. I have no idea why there was a delay, but I like to think that it was because international co-ordination and consultation with the IMO were necessary. Indeed, earlier this year, at the invitation of the Department for Transport, I attended a particularly constructive piracy conference at the IMO. What is important, however, is that the UK plays a leading role in the establishment of any guidance, and that is why I regret the new guidance not being available for us to see, because we cannot really comment. We are in limbo—the guidance is out but we are unable to comment on it today. The UK should be playing a leading role, but the issue is current. I want to ask the Government whether they have been happy with the use of armed guards on ships from implementation up to now. How many applications have been received to establish armed guards on board a ship?
The House might be interested to know about the Italian ship Enrique Lexie, which was carrying two Italian marines on board. Though the facts are in dispute, there was an exchange of armed fire with small vessels and two fishermen were killed. For reasons that are not clear, the Italian vessel then went into an Indian port and the marines were arrested amid a dispute about whether the incident took place in international or territorial waters. The matter is unresolved, but the incident highlights the importance of the need for clear guidance and international agreement on the use of force.
We can see how easily diplomatic incidents can occur in the absence of proper guidance or internationally agreed standards. That is mainly because so many factors are involved in international waters, such as a British ship with a foreign crew going into another country’s waters; several jurisdictions are in play. I was interested to read that the IMO has called for an international standard for the use of armed guards, so I shall read the newly published guidance with interest to see whether such a standard has been established. I hope that a Minister might be able to summarise the guidance when he makes his contribution to the debate.
Jim Sheridan (in the Chair)
Order. I have every sympathy with the hon. Gentleman and his predicament, but I am reliably informed that document is winging its way towards us and should reach us in the next 10 minutes or so. At the end of the debate, he will certainly have the opportunity to sum up, by which time he might have had a chance to read the document, as will other Members. I am sure that my co-Chair will be sympathetic to his position as well.
Richard Ottaway
That is very helpful, Mr Sheridan, and I am grateful to all those involved in expediting the availability of the guidance.
To conclude on armed guards, I hope that UK rules can influence the international debate, to the benefit of everyone concerned.
Another issue that we identified is that there are no regulations on the movement of weapons, and in that part of the world, a lot of weapons are moving around. We clearly need to have a regime for such movements, and I welcome the UK’s introduction of a revised licensing regime in February this year, although that does not tackle the difficulty of floating armouries. Believe it or not, some ships out there will lend guns to ships that enter the danger zone and get them back when they leave. All that is outside the control of any organisation, and an international approach to that difficulty would be appropriate.
The naval response has been better than expected—possibly damned with faint praise—but the truth of the matter is that the Indian ocean is not safe, and to have a 30-minute response throughout the ocean would require the deployment of 80 warships at any given moment, which will clearly not happen. The strategic defence review under way in this country can only heighten the impact on the availability of British ships for deployment, but the UK could have a role to play in providing leadership in operations—we have a good record—perhaps with other countries supplying the ships. As reported by the Ministry of Defence, however, last month HMS Westminster foiled three attacks. Can one of the Ministers present tell us what happened to the suspects from those incidents? Were they detained, released or fended off with no detentions? As I understand it, there have certainly been no prosecutions.
What is needed is international co-ordination. We have the successful UN contact group on piracy and recently—established in February this year—the Regional Anti-Piracy Prosecutions Intelligence Co-ordination Centre in the Seychelles. The centre has to be welcome. It will co-ordinate information on ransoms and target the kingpins in the piracy world.
On the naval response, one of the unexpected side effects is how the international operations have been getting on quite well with one another. We considered a recommendation on whether they should be co-ordinated by a single organisation, but we reached the conclusion that there were bigger fish to fry, rather than having that sort of upheaval at the moment. We have Russian, Chinese, Indian, British and NATO ships there, and given the lack of a big umbrella organisation, the close co-ordination is very welcome.
Turning to convictions, it is difficult to obtain evidence in such situations. Our Committee recommended that more effort should be made, perhaps with the use of video links for witnesses. There are difficulties with various national laws because piracy is a crime in some countries but not others. Implementing such proposals can be expensive for poorer countries.
To date, no suspect has been brought back to the UK for prosecution. We have transfer agreements with Kenya and the Seychelles, and I welcome the new agreement with Mauritius, as I hope that it will result in more prosecutions of suspects. Will the Minister who responds on the memorandum of understanding with Mauritius indicate the conditions that suspects are held in and whether that is monitored. I wish the Government well with implementation of the memorandum of understanding, which sounds to our Committee to be a pragmatic solution. However, if it fails, I hope that the Minister involved will note that the French are now engaged in their second trial of suspects.
Mr Spellar
Will the hon. Gentleman, and later a Minister, clarify the position on bringing captured pirates back to the UK for trial, given the real risk of applications for leave to remain? Is it not better—this is why the Mauritius agreement is so welcome—to support efforts in the region?
Richard Ottaway
I cannot go to our precise conclusion quickly, but we believe that it would be a good idea if there were prosecutions in this country, if only to demonstrate that we mean business. The important thing is that there are prosecutions, and if a memorandum of understanding is working effectively, it is a pragmatic solution.
Turning to ransoms, I said earlier that $135 million was paid last year, and in our judgment the Government have been slow to track the flow of money. It might be an effective means of countering piracy if the flow of money were tracked. An international taskforce on ransoms has been established recently, but it is controversial because it attempts to prevent payment of ransoms. It is worth noting that the Chamber of Shipping has expressed concern that the international policy and that of the UK is to try to prevent the payment of ransoms.
The Foreign Affairs Committee is worried about that. In our view, the only way to recover vessels is to pay ransoms, which is particularly appropriate when the use of force is ruled out. In all honesty, there is no other way for shipowners to recover their property. The position can be likened to a mugging of a man in the street. If he were subject to a violent attack, no one would tell him not to pay anything because it will only encourage more muggers. I invite the Government to take a hard look at the matter and to say whether Government policy is unchanged.
British hostages have been taken as victims of piracy, and the Committee welcomes the release of Judith Tebbutt. We did not refer to her in our report because she was still in captivity while we were drafting it, and we concluded that it would be too sensitive to comment. We are delighted that she has been released. We understand that there are prosecutions in Kenya and that a ransom was paid. I would be interested to know from a Minister whether that payment was tracked and whether a prosecution is expected. We also took evidence from the Chandlers, and we are delighted to hear that only last week they set off to continue their voyage around the world, but I am reliably informed that they will avoid the Indian ocean.
At heart, the solution to the problem lies not offshore, but onshore in Somalia. There is no easy solution for that troubled country. African Union troops are clearly making progress. We have had two excellent conferences on Somalia. One was here in the United Kingdom in February, which I believe is producing results, and I congratulate the Foreign Office on putting it on. The other was in May in Istanbul, Turkey, at which I gather serious progress was made. The Department for International Development is putting in £83 million, of which £6 million will go on counter-piracy.
We treat the subject very seriously. Our report is important.
Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
I apologise for not having had the chance to read the Select Committee’s report, but I look forward to doing so. I take it that the hon. Gentleman did not have an opportunity during the Committee’s examination of the evidence to speak to welfare organisations such as the Mission to Seafarers and Apostleship of the Sea, which have dealt with some of the hostages before, during and afterwards.
Richard Ottaway
The hon. Gentleman will be pleased to see that we took written evidence from seafarers, and we quote some of it in our report.
In conclusion, I look forward to hearing how colleagues view this difficult subject.
Eric Joyce (Falkirk) (Ind)
I commend the hon. Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway) on his excellent report. I am not a member of the Committee, and I will not detain the Chamber for long, but I was interested in the recommendation in paragraph 27 of the Government’s response:
“We conclude that the Government should not pay or assist in the payment of ransoms but”—
crucially—
“nor should it make it more difficult for companies to secure the safe release of their crew by criminalising the payment of ransoms.”
As the hon. Gentleman said, the Chamber of Shipping sent a strong briefing to hon. Members here and elsewhere. There are many acronyms, concepts and ideas involved in the debate about using armed guards, the payment of ransoms and so on, and there have been recent examples of people being taken captive for a ransom elsewhere in the world on land and at sea. It is self-evident that if someone demands a large amount of money for a loved one, and that they will be killed or executed if it is not paid, everyone would want to avoid that.
The taskforce’s general direction of travel on ransoms, announced on 31 May, was to reduce or constrain payment—although I may be wrong, and a Minister may correct me. It is most unlikely that anyone could convince foreign Governments not to pay, and not to assist or facilitate payment. Indeed, there are examples of foreign Governments—it is probably best not to say which ones—possibly making payments, and certainly of Governments facilitating payments. Even if the UK obtained agreement from some members of the taskforce, it is most unlikely that the payment of ransoms would stop. Pirates would still be attacking ships and taking people hostage. They would not be taking people hostage on the basis that their country was one that would facilitate a ransom payment. The risk is that we could end up with a two-tier situation, and some people would be released eventually. As the hon. Gentleman said, Judith Tebbutt was released after payment of a $1 million ransom, and it was reported that someone, perhaps even a news agency, helped to pay £500,000 for the Chandlers. A sad recent example was a Scotsman, Khalil Dale, who was kidnapped in Pakistan. There was evidently and clearly a financial imperative in the demands of the people who kidnapped him, and his employer, the International Committee of the Red Cross, said that its policy, as the Government suggested, was not to pay ransoms.
There is a distinction between a Government who make a political policy decision not to pay ransoms, and an employer. For many different reasons, and given the scale of their work, the Government’s exposure to risk is far greater than that of any employing organisation, and seafarers belong to the latter group. It therefore seems quite improper to constrain employers who may have seafarers at sea from paying ransoms in cases when they could get someone released.
People are held in Somalia, having been captured off the coast. For example, MV Iceberg 1 is still being held; two people are dead and others have been held for more than 800 days. We know that the longer it takes to get a ransom paid the longer people are held in captivity, and that when a ransom is paid, they are likely to be released. Few UK citizens have been affected.
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)
The hon. Gentleman goes to the heart of the knotty moral problem of paying ransoms. Is not the problem that although paying a ransom may well save the life of an employee or a loved one, it encourages the taking of hostages and the risking of other people’s lives? Indeed, it pays for that to be facilitated. Surely we must encourage shipping companies, and others, to take a firm stand against the payment of ransoms.
Eric Joyce
The hon. Gentleman describes the point that we all regard as central to the question. Paying ransoms may encourage pirates, but my instinct is that pirates in Somalia are looking not at the policies of international Governments but at the fact that it is possible to get a ransom payment. I greatly doubt that Governments across the world will agree not to facilitate ransom payments. Indeed, I can list—we all can—the Governments who are highly likely to encourage the facilitation of ransom payments. Therefore, if we say that we will discourage such payments, British citizens will be affected but no one else. It is true that the UK has considerable influence because of its importance in the maritime industry and the presence in the UK of the International Maritime Organisation, but it is highly unlikely that other countries would agree not to pay ransoms.
If there was a billionaire whose daughter had been captured and was about to be shot, and there was a £2 million ransom, would they pay it or would they say, “No, I don’t think I will because it’s just going to encourage others.”? Of course they would pay it. If people are discouraged from taking up kidnap and ransom insurance, the risk is that we will end up with only rich people being able to secure their safety. We know of one or two cases, including that of Judith Tebbutt who luckily was able to secure a large amount of money—$1 million—to secure her freedom. If no kidnap and ransom insurance is paid, other employees will be at considerable risk of exposure.
The case of Khalil Dale in Pakistan is relevant, if perhaps only tangentially. The non-governmental organisation in question was described as “brave” for taking a decision that led inevitably to Khalil Dale’s death. I did not regard that as brave. I thought it was a businesslike decision that, in the worst case, saved the organisation money because kidnap and ransom insurance is expensive. Commercial companies can build insurance into their expenditure and planning assumptions, and it seems a bit too easy for employers to say, “Well, the Government say that this is the best thing to do.” If someone who works for an NGO is unfortunate enough to get captured and a ransom is not paid—imagine, for example, someone on land in Somalia—they are much more likely to be held for many months, or even killed. If they are lucky enough to be employed by an organisation that has paid kidnap and ransom insurance, there is a strong chance that they will be released. That is the realpolitik of the matter.
In conclusion, we should be cautious about assuming that just because we say, “This is a jolly good thing”, everybody else will agree. If we decide to discourage, or in the worst case, make it unlawful to pay kidnap and ransom insurance, employees—the people about whom organisations must be concerned—will be exposed to much greater risk. That is why in this dilemma I come down strongly on the side of paying kidnap and ransom insurance, and I think NGOs ought to do that as well.
Sir John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
I am pleased to follow in the wake of my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway). We have been the beneficiaries of his naval and nautical expertise over the course of this inquiry.
I start, Mr Sheridan, by wholeheartedly endorsing your comments at the opening of the debate about the gross discourtesy that the Government have shown to the Committee by failing to make available a crucial document that had been promised by the end of April. We are grateful to the Minister for trying to ensure that the document appears before the end of the debate, but you will be first to appreciate, Mr Sheridan, that in such a complex and technical area, the Committee should have seen the document days earlier in order to study it and, if necessary, take advice from the Committee staff before the debate commenced.
Piracy is emphatically not a marginal, peripheral world issue. In my view, it is wholly central, above all on humanitarian and human rights grounds. Piracy is one of the worst forms of human rights abuse that we see anywhere in the world. Thousands of innocent seamen and seafarers have been taken hostage and held in captivity under intolerable conditions. Many have died, and nearly 200 people are in captivity today, some of whom have been exposed to torture, and threats of torture, in order to increase the degree of pressure for ransom money. This is a vile humanitarian abuse.
Equally important are the international maritime ramifications of Somali piracy. A few years ago, most of us would have said that piracy was relatively confined in sea terms; it was a risk in the maritime choke points such as, for example, the Gulf of Aden. As Somali piracy has developed, however, pirates have become more and more audacious, and more and more skilled. They have acquired mother-ships and dramatically increased the range of piracy. Piracy now extends vastly further in geographical or sea terms than at the outset of this malevolent trend.
If we were starting the report today, I would suggest to my Committee colleagues that we call it not “Piracy off the coast of Somalia” but “Piracy in the Indian ocean.” Piracy is a form of criminality that, if allowed to take root, has the potential to expand beyond the Indian ocean. We already have what appear to be copycat attempts off the west African coast, and pirates are a risk in the Caribbean. We are talking about an international maritime threat, which is why the issue is so important and why I believe that the Foreign Affairs Committee has done a considerable service to Parliament and the wider international community by producing this weighty and well-researched report.
All the manifold briefings that I have had on Somali piracy, both in the course of the inquiry and as a member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly’s defence committee, have erred consistently on the side of considerable over-optimism and rose-tintedness. We have been told that we are getting on top of the problem, and figures are produced to indicate that that may be the case. We have been told that the numbers of merchantmen held hostage are going down, as are the numbers of ships that have been taken. However, those are not the key figures. If we honestly ask ourselves, “Is piracy paying?” only two statistics really matter. First, what is happening to the size of the ransom money being paid out? Secondly, what is the degree of risk to which pirates are exposing themselves?
The Committee, in our report, comes up unequivocally with the answers on those two key figures. With regard to the money, at the end of paragraph 111, we state:
“The latest information from Northwood HQ is that ransom payments in 2011 have already totalled $135m—a further substantial increase and a new record.”
On the ransom money test, we are losing comprehensively. The ransom money is going up; indeed, a new record has been set. On the risk test, there is a key sentence in our report at the opening of paragraph 74:
“Around nine out of 10 piracy suspects detained by forces engaged in multinational operations are released without trial.”
Nine out of 10 captured pirates are just released. Therefore, the honest answer to the question “Does piracy pay?” is yes, it does; it is a growing source of huge sums of money and it is largely risk free for those who engage in it. That is the point we are at, and it is singularly serious.
What do we do in this situation? Yes, in a perfect world, there would be an up-and-running criminal justice system in Somalia. There would be a splendid criminal justice system, with splendid courts, and those people would be put where they belong—in jail, for many years. However, that is an illusion. We will not be at that point for years.
On the naval side, as the Chairman of the Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South, rightly pointed out, the geographical scale of the sea operations is such that there is no conceivable prospect of being able to produce the massive armada of naval forces that would be in a position to respond quickly to a threat of piracy in such a huge area of ocean. Therefore, we are left with just one solution. We must put armed guards on the merchant vessels, and those armed guards must be in a position to ensure that not a single merchantman on the ship is taken hostage and the ship is not captured in any circumstances.
The Government, after a long delay—I have to say that they were continuing the policy of the previous Government—have performed what the Chairman of the Committee rightly pointed out is a complete U-turn, a very welcome U-turn, and have accepted the policy of placing armed guards on UK-flagged ships. However, that can be only half the policy. It is not enough to say that we will put armed guards on the ships and create a new form of arms export licence that enables weapons to be supplied to them. I have, not least in my capacity as Chairman of the Committees on Arms Export Controls, a number of detailed questions about that form of licence, but I shall be delivering them in writing to the Minister. I will not take up hon. Members’ time with them now.
It is not enough to say that we will allow armed guards and will have a licensing system to get the appropriate weapons and ammunition to them. We must have in place the right, requisite rules of engagement, and that is where I believe that the Government are seriously falling down in policy terms. The Government’s position appears to be that we state the policy—we say that we are in favour of armed guards—but we will not give any help or support with regard to the circumstances in which lethal weapons can be used. I refer hon. Members to what the Government say on page 5 of their response:
“It must remain for shipping companies and private security companies to agree between themselves upon the guidance on use of force within which armed guards are to operate.”
That, to me, seems to be a very serious cop-out. I do not believe that the Government can responsibly say that we have a policy of putting armed guards on British-flagged merchant ships and then refuse to accept any responsibility whatever for describing the circumstances in which those armed guards can use their weapons.
When I look at how the Government try to justify the policy, I have to say that it does not stand up as far as I am concerned. The Government’s justification, also on page 5 of their response, is that
“the introduction of government-prescribed rules on the use of force would blur the distinction between private maritime security personnel as civilians only acting in the context of self-defence, and military personnel who may be authorised to use force for other reasons.”
My first point is that armed military personnel are used and have been used with considerable regularity to board and to be on board civilian ships in a variety of circumstances, so the Government have ample experience of that; and in all those circumstances, those armed military personnel have rules of engagement, so the Government have in their possession rules of engagement that deal with the type of situation we are discussing.
I would question the Government when they say that the armed guards on British-flagged merchant ships are acting only in the context of self-defence. I do not know whether that is meant to imply the armed guards’ own self-defence. They have a much wider role. Their key role is, of course, to protect and ensure the safety of all the civilian crew members on board the ship and, in the process, ensure the safety and retention of that ship under the control of the crew’s master and the ship’s crew. That is their wider role.
In those circumstances, when the Government have abundant expertise in the area and, as a matter of course, have rules of engagement that they apply to service personnel who have to go on board civilian ships, and given that the Government now have a clear policy in favour of armed guards going on to British-flagged merchant ships, it seems to me to be wholly incumbent on the Government to accept the necessity of making clear what the rules of engagement are.
I come back to the conclusion that the Committee draws in paragraph 37. To me, it is the single most important recommendation in our report. It should be read in full, but I shall quote just the key sentences:
“The Government should not offload responsibility onto ship owners to deal with the most difficult aspects of handling private armed guards…The Government must provide clearer direction on what is permissible and what is not. Guidance over the use of potentially lethal force should not be left to private companies to agree upon. We recommend that the change of policy be accompanied by clear, detailed and unambiguous guidance on the legal use of force for private armed guards defending a vessel under attack.”
I urge the Minister to accept that recommendation.
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway) and his Committee on securing this timely and important debate and the whole Committee on the report, which is an authoritative and important contribution to British policy making in the context.
The problems associated with piracy are well understood by everyone here. It is conducted on a staggering scale in the Indian ocean, and I think that the report suggests that between 1,500 and 3,000 pirates are operating there. It affects trade through the Gulf of Aden worth hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars to the global economy. Any disruption of that trade certainly affects not just British companies, but companies all over the world, and the insurance and other markets that support it. There are disturbing trends, which the Select Committee drew attention to, including—and probably most worryingly—increasing violence against hostages, which was not a particular characteristic of Somali piracy a few years ago. On top of that, there is the fact that such piracy has been going on for decades. The international community despite, I think, nine United Nations Security Council resolutions and three multinational naval operations, has not remotely cracked the problem. As we have heard, the amount of ransom that is being paid is on the increase.
That is not to say, however, that there are not some positive signals. In Somalia, the situation on the ground seems more promising than for many years. That is partly due to the courage of African Union and other international forces, which have secured more territory than for many years. There is some evidence that progress is being made against forces such as al-Shabaab, although it continues to control huge swathes of the country.
Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)
Will the hon. Gentleman reflect on how serious or sustainable the progress in Somalia is? Is he confident that in three years’ time Somalia will be significantly better than it is today?
Martin Horwood
I cannot predict the future, but the fact that Mogadishu is now an overwhelmingly secure city, which was far from true only a few years ago, and that the Foreign Secretary and International Development Secretary can visit cities such as Mogadishu with a degree of confidence about their personal security is a quite dramatic shift, as I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would acknowledge. I do not say that securing a military solution is the only path forward, but the fact that African Union troops and others have made enormous sacrifices, displayed great courage and secured a large amount of territory should not go unnoticed.
There is also progress in the sense that areas of the internationally recognised territory of Somalia—mainly, in practice, self-governing areas such as Somaliland and Puntland—have achieved a reasonable degree of peace and security. The Government have shown wisdom in promoting a flexible attitude to territories such as Somaliland. The creation of the Somaliland Development Corporation, which the Government supported earlier this year, is a positive development. Trying to exploit the economic potential of the relative peace of areas such as Somaliland is a practical contribution to the provision of an alternative economic model to the chaos and piracy prevalent in other parts of the Somali territory. It is exactly right that the Department for International Development is prioritising development on the ground and the provision of economic alternatives to people in Somalia.
The convening of the London conference earlier this year was an important step, not just in relation to tackling war and conflict in Somalia and getting a co-ordinated regional approach, which the Select Committee asked for, but in making concrete contributions to progress on anti-piracy initiatives, including some things that have been mentioned: the taskforces on ransoms and the wonderfully named—let me get it right—Regional Anti-Piracy Prosecutions Intelligence Co-ordination Centre. I am sure that Hansard will report that I got that fluently right. The substantial financial commitment that the Government have made to RAPPICC is welcome, and we have provided its first director, Garry Crone. That support is welcome and exactly the kind of lead in international co-ordination that the Select Committee asked for.
On ransoms, Her Majesty’s Government’s instinct is exactly right. Briefings from non-governmental organisations such as Saferworld, which has talked to civil society in Somalia, make it clear that the economic model of piracy brings, in some cases, the most effective wealth provision into the local economy. If we can disrupt that business model and suggest that a peaceful, normal economy and society would be a more profitable way to develop—as we would obviously hope—we will have some chance of defeating the root causes of piracy. If we continue to fuel the ransom economy and pay money, that will be a massive incentive for Somalis to continue with piracy and to allow it to spread. If, as the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley) said, risk and reward are so imbalanced, why would piracy not spread down the coast of Africa? Why would not that model be emulated in other parts of the world?
Eric Joyce
Does the hon. Gentleman not think that the thing for a responsible employer to do, if two dozen employees are captured and a ransom is demanded—they may well be executed—is to pay it, as opposed to the view of NGOs, which appear on the whole to want to leave them to die?
Martin Horwood
No. I think that paying is profoundly irresponsible. There are even more extreme cases than that of an employer. It is difficult to tell someone whose loved one has been kidnapped—it would be difficult for me if one of my loved ones had been kidnapped—and other members of the family, “You should not pay.” That is a terribly difficult thing to say to someone, face to face. However, in the bigger picture, people are kidnapped because other people have paid ransoms, which paid for the boats and mother-ships and the lifestyle of the pirates that makes future ransoms, kidnaps and piracy much more likely. We must try to disrupt that business model. Trying to find a simple military solution is only half the answer. I am afraid that I think that the Government’s instinct is right.
Richard Ottaway
What does the hon. Gentleman think would have happened to Judith Tebbutt and Mr and Mrs Chandler if no ransoms had been paid?
Martin Horwood
As I said, it is a horrendously difficult thing to say to an individual family or a company, “You should not pay,” but Governments must consider the larger picture and the fact that ransoms fuel the whole situation and that every payment of a ransom supports future piracy.
Richard Ottaway
To use the illustration of a mugger, does the hon. Gentleman think that the best advice to give a mugging victim is, “Don’t hand over your wallet, because that will stop mugging in the future.”?
Martin Horwood
That is the police advice—[Interruption.] The police advice is to co-operate, I know, but that is where someone is at imminent risk themselves. The right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling set out the situation: it is a balance of risk and reward. The Government and the international community are addressing the risk element, because they are stepping up self-defence measures, and there is greater international co-ordination and increasing provision of private armed security forces and armed guards. The risk element is therefore increasing slightly, but the rewards are stupendous—hundreds of millions of dollars—and we must try to reduce the rewards or the economic model behind piracy will thrive.
I am afraid that this situation is the classic philosophical prisoner’s dilemma, where the individual action may be difficult to take, but the result on a larger scale is clear. Saferworld says clearly in its briefing, from its research on the ground in Somalia, that the continued payment of ransoms fuels and exacerbates the problem. We want to tackle those things and want people to be safer.
The hon. Member for Falkirk (Eric Joyce) asked what would happen to British ships in that situation and whether British hostages would be more at risk. I suspect that Somali pirates are quite good business men and can spot a red ensign, a white ensign or whichever British flag happens to be flying. If Britain acquired a reputation for not paying ransoms, it would balance out the risks and rewards of attacking a British vessel and they might think that it would be better to attack somebody else’s.
The principle has been established in other fields. It used to be more common practice for ransoms and payments to be made when hostages were taken in international terrorist situations, such as airfields. There was a concerted international drive to stop any hostage payments being made in those situations, and that form of terrorism has largely disappeared. It has sadly been replaced by many others. It is critical that we disrupt the business model of piracy. That was not the only issue that I was going to address; I will move quickly on.
On the military front, the moves towards international co-ordination are good. I note the existence of the European naval force. We ought to agree between these four walls not to tell the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) about it. It is very effective, and a British operational commander is in place. The rejection of the catch-and-release approach was rightly highlighted by the Foreign Affairs Committee. It is important that that approach is abandoned, so increasing the risk that pirates face. We need more effective action to prosecute, using every available international or national legal jurisdiction that we can find. The British Government are taking a lead in that.
The report highlighted other issues, rightly including the disappointing progress to date in tracking financial flows—tens of millions of pounds are being trafficked. The Government and, indeed, the international community have been slow to provide ways to track it down and disrupt the flow. It is an important step in disrupting the pirates’ business model. It will be interesting to hear the Minister’s view.
The Foreign Affairs Committee is a little inclined always to want Britain to be the country taking the lead. These are global problems. Likewise, it insists that Britain plays the leading role in the naval operation. Although Britain is an important naval power, perhaps given our financial situation and the fact that it is a global problem affecting global business and threatening the lives of nationals of all countries, it is not absolutely necessary to have at least one British naval vessel on operation all the time. This must be done through international co-ordination.
On the prosecution of pirates when they are visible, the report says:
“Gathering evidence to secure a successful prosecution for piracy is clearly challenging, but when pirates are observed in boats with guns, ladders and even hostages, it beggars belief that they cannot be prosecuted.”
That is exactly right. I will be interested to hear the Minister’s comments on progress on the international front.
I think that the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling was a little uncharitable in his comments on the use of force by private armed security forces. The UK legal situation is pretty clear. The Library briefing quotes an international law firm called Ince and Co., which says that
“the use of force in deterring or preventing what is a criminal act”
is justified. It continues:
“In the UK…lethal force is normally only allowed where there is serious and imminent threat to life. The decision to use lethal force must be reasonable and the force used proportionate.”
Further clarification on the exact definitions and terms will be obviously welcome whenever it arrives through the door today, and Government are working to provide that. Ince and Co. goes on to make the point that rules on the use of force need to be internationally agreed and as standardised as possible. That is required internationally. The IMO ought to be taking a lead, but it is possibly the slowest organisation in the world at doing almost anything.
In deference to other Members, because we were distracted, I will move swiftly to a conclusion. It is imperative to tackle the situation on the ground and provide different economic models. We should use the example of Somaliland positively to look at fisheries and try to present an alternative way of providing prosperity in the longer term for the people of Somalia, so that this appalling trade does still not offer the attractions that it does now.
Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)
The whole debate is a tribute to the astonishing attention currently being paid to Somalia. In fact, the increase in African Union troops from 12,000 to 17,730, and indeed this whole discussion, show how important Somali piracy is. I would like to sound a note of caution, however. The most important thing in the debate is not to get dragged in too deeply, or to be too ambitious in what we feel we can achieve on the ground in Somalia.
There are very grand theories going around about the importance of Somali piracy and linking it to theories of state building, economic development, regional stability and terrorism. The hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) made a number of those arguments. They are powerful, partly because a powerful industry supports them, trying to draw us ever deeper into Somalia. The components of that industry are various, but there are four.
The first is what I call the “forward school”, represented by people like my father, who quite like the idea of grand naval operations and keep talking about sending out Q-boats and remembering Julius Caesar attacking the shoreline. That is the naval “use it or lose it” approach, where a military complex likes to expand its area of operations to justify its existence.
The second is, of course, the Somali Government themselves, who find it very convenient to use Somali piracy to attract international attention and resources. They are increasingly adept at manipulating international sentiment on human rights and terrorism to attract more resources into their Government.
The third component is think-tanks. There is now a major industry, particularly focused on Islamic radicalisation and counter-terrorism, that is keen to connect Somali piracy with the obsessions of Washington think-tanks with the proliferation of al-Qaeda.
Finally, as the previous speaker pointed out, there are the aid agencies, which find it extremely convenient to use Somali piracy to argue for more investment in development operations in Somalia. Connections are perpetually made, and were made by the hon. Gentleman, with governance, failed states, economic development and alternative livelihoods, as they are in Yemen, Congo, Chad, Afghanistan and Sudan.
Martin Horwood
I recognise the hon. Gentleman’s long and genuine experience in the field, but having worked for a development NGO I think the suggestion that the NGOs are in some way fostering an image of Somalia in particular for the benefit of their business model and to encourage spending on development is rather extraordinary and, indeed, really offensive.
Rory Stewart
I am very happy to share endless statements from almost every major NGO and development agency that has attempted to draw links between their programmes on the ground in all the areas the hon. Gentleman and I mentioned and state instability, and indeed piracy itself. It is entirely normal. We have seen it all the way from Congo to Afghanistan. Somalia is absolutely no exception.
The problem with that kind of argument is twofold. First, there is a theoretical problem: the strong link between state instability, governance and developmental poverty and piracy is yet to be proven at any theoretical level. Secondly, the actual links, as Anja Shortland argued in a recent academic paper, are very fragile indeed. No link has so far been effectively established between the piracy and al-Qaeda, and very few substantial links have been established between piracy and the al-Shabaab movement itself. As for statements about development and state building, Anja Shortland argued that it is very doubtful whether the contribution of piracy to the Somali economy is anything other than marginally positive at the moment.
I am not saying that Somali piracy is not an evil in itself, or that poverty in Somalia is anything other evil. Both those things are true and important. Attempting to connect the two, however, draws us into a dangerous policy position. The solution is humility and context. Instead of endlessly inflating the problem of Somali piracy in order to draw in more resources, we need to acknowledge the reality of our situation.
We need to acknowledge first that, as many hon. Members have pointed out, we have made little progress on Somali piracy over the past five years. We have invested surprisingly little in the issue, despite an enormous amount of rhetoric. Despite nine UN resolutions and three multinational task forces, the reality on the ground is that there has been an increase in both the number of attacks and the amount of ransom money being paid. Moreover, despite an enormous amount of rhetoric and the idea that people read in The Daily Telegraph that this is the No. 1 priority of the British Navy, we have often only one ship or perhaps none at all in the region; in fact the matter does not actually classify at the highest priority level for our naval operations. Part of that may be due to mixed signals, influenced by the fact that the majority of the crews, unfortunately, are not citizens of OECD countries, and the majority of the ships involved have nothing to do with Britain itself.
However, there are much more fundamental limits constraining us and, unless we acknowledge those limits, we are going to get ourselves in trouble. Those limits are threefold. First, there is a limit of abstraction. Statements about governance, rule of law and economic development in Somalia are extremely vague and ill-focused. We have a poor understanding of governance and rule of law structures on the ground in Somalia, very little idea of what kind of country the international community could turn Somalia into, and few models to put forward. The isolated lives of our diplomats and other international officials, because of security issues and short tour lengths, and lack of linguistic expertise means that their understanding of what is happening at rural level in Somalia is extremely limited. All of that is disguised within a very optimistic language, which talks about a land-based solution, without any evidence that we have the knowledge, the power or the legitimacy to achieve that kind of solution.
Martin Horwood
I will resist the temptation to debate Anja Shortland’s conclusions, which I think demonstrate exactly the opposite of what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but on the specific point about the lack of a positive model, what about the example of Somaliland—he may regard it as a different territory, I suppose—and the British Government’s support of the Somaliland Development Corporation? Does not that look like a positive alternative model of development?
Rory Stewart
The problems in the al-Shabaab-controlled areas and in Puntland are completely different from those in Somaliland, and attempting to read from one across the other is highly misleading.
To conclude, the context needs to be put in place. The limited obligation that we have needs to be asserted: in other words, we do indeed have an obligation to the Somali people, as we have an obligation to the people of Congo, Sudan, Afghanistan and our own people, but the threat posed by Somali piracy and by Somali state instability to UK national interests is limited. It is a threat but it is one threat among many. Somalia is one of perhaps 40 countries in the world with which the United Kingdom and the international community needs to be concerned. We should not be raising the expectations of the Somali people through talk of our ability to deliver solutions that we cannot deliver.
This is not a recipe for pessimism. It is instead to suggest that we can make developmental progress, but we will not be able to achieve governance, rule of law, or state stability. We may be able to contain Somali piracy, but we are extremely unlikely to be able to eliminate it. Our objectives should be limited to ongoing counter-piracy operations, some development operations and an attempt to increase the likelihood of a political settlement and decrease the likelihood of civil war. Any attempt to claim that we can do more is likely to mislead the British people, disappoint the Somali people and draw us into a situation into which we should not be drawn.
Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)
I congratulate the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee and his colleagues on their report. The detailed work that has been undertaken and the drawing together of a number of difficult issues show the value of Select Committees. One does not necessarily have to agree with every line of the conclusion. We just need to see the thread of the work that enables a debate to take place, and I am pleased that it was acknowledged in the Government response.
Would you indulge me for a minute, Mr Sheridan, so that I can pay tribute to Lord Peter Archer of Sandwell who died today? He was my predecessor in the Warley constituency. He served for some 26 years in the House of Commons and 20 years in the House of Lords and made a considerable contribution to both Houses and to his own constituency. If there was anyone to whom the phrase, “A fine Christian gentleman” applied, it was Peter Archer. He was a man of formidable intellect. His father was a toolmaker in Tipton. Peter rose to high levels in the law, but never forgot his roots. He always served his constituency well. In some ways, he was a hard act to follow; his reputation as a Member of Parliament in the constituency stood very high, and I only hope that I have matched up to his standards in that regard. I am sure that the feelings of Members here who knew him will go to his wife and family.
I am pleased to see two Ministers here today. Let me briefly damage their careers by saying that they have played a proactive role in dealing with this issue. If some other Departments had been as forward leaning, we would have made progress, and today’s problems are an indication of that. I hope that we will improve the rate of our response to this evolving situation.
As the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley) mentioned, the problem began off the Somali coast. Then we saw it moving along the coast of Aden. Indian Ministers are extremely concerned about how close the problem is getting to India. We have seen the movement from skiffs to mother-ships, the involvement of spotters in ports and allegations of intelligence gathering elsewhere. We are now seeing imitation tactics in the Gulf of Guinea, and I have heard reports, which I have not validated, of similar problems off the coast of South America. We have seen changes in the levels and manner of response.
The hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) talked about Britain taking a lead, which is absolutely appropriate. A major part of our naval doctrine is to secure the world’s sea lanes not only for British vessels but for the world’s vessels. Maintaining free passage of vessels throughout the world is an important contribution and is core to our basic philosophy and our national interest. [Interruption.] I was wondering how long I would have to speak before the documents arrived. One hears a distant trumpet blowing over the horizon as the cavalry appears. I hope that the Minister will indicate whether that basic philosophy is still a doctrinal priority for the Ministry of Defence, our armed forces and the British Government.
Secondly, we have talked quite extensively about the impact on world trade, the amount of money that is being paid, the impact on the willingness of seafarers to go through these routes, the rise in insurance premiums and the potential risk to supply chain management for many countries. The effects of the tsunami in Japan and the floods in Thailand were felt right across Europe. Much of the British car industry and other industries experienced disruption in the supply of component parts because of those particular events. If the passage into the Suez canal became too unsafe for seafarers to risk using it, the additional journey would cause not only extra costs but considerable disruption for British industry.
We should not underestimate the impact of piracy on the countries in-region. I remember talking to the Kenyan Government about cruises. Cruise terminals are big business, providing a considerable amount of employment in many parts of the world. Up to about the middle of last year, the number of cruise ships visiting Kenya went down from about 60 to one—interestingly that one was from Saga, which shows the redoubtable spirit of British pensioners. We can imagine the impact on many workers in Mombasa and indeed on the tourist industry there. In the future, therefore, cruise liners and the yachting business will be affected, which will have a considerable impact. We have talked about development, but such an impact creates the conditions for further instability. That should concern us greatly.
It is fair to say that throughout the current epidemic of Somali coast piracy the Government have tended towards finding the right solutions but they have not necessarily always moved at the requisite pace. One of the images that we must get away from is that of the Somali pirates as mindless hooligans. I am not talking about the expendables who, for an extra few per cent, will want to be the first ones on to the vessel. I am talking about the people who are behind them—the people who organise the schemes and who are involved in the organisation of the money. The amount of money that we are talking about requires considerably sophisticated organisation, including the spotting of targets. We have seen the evolution of tactics; as we have managed to move, so too the pirates’ tactics have changed. That is not surprising.
What we need to see is Departments working together and not just individually. We were discussing the issue of armed guards and what are sometimes the problems of Government co-ordination, including in real time, as well as the other work we have to do. I fully understand the frustrations that sometimes arise from working through the IMO. We must also co-operate with other countries, and I join colleagues in paying tribute to the naval patrol; it is a very good example of international co-operation. We must get partners to work together and we have to recognise that time is of the essence. We cannot always be playing catch-up. I am not saying that military solutions are the sole solution; they are not. However, we must see a step change in operational tempo.
[Mr Graham Brady in the Chair]
In some cases, the response reminds me very much of when we were dealing with the foot and mouth epidemic in 2001. The civil servants in the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food were working extremely hard to deal with it, but it was only when we changed the operational tempo, by bringing in the Ministry of Defence and the armed forces, that we managed to deal with the spread of a virus that was outrunning our ability to handle it. The ability to focus on the outcome rather than the process is crucial. It is very important that we get that message across. Indeed, the Committee alludes to it in paragraph 63 of its report, which says that the Government must
“respond flexibly to changes in the pirates’ tactics.”
That is extremely important in this context.
The Government should also look much further at the issue of the pirate bases on land. The Minister and indeed other colleagues who have spoken to those of our forces that have been involved in dealing with the pirates, particularly the Royal Marines, know of their frustration at the restrictions they face when they see the pirates at the start of the piracy season—when the sea conditions become more favourable—assembling all their equipment on the beach, ready to launch an operation. Our forces are hugely frustrated at their inability to go in and destroy that equipment and disrupt the pirates’ operations. Would that solve piracy entirely? No. Would it change the balance of trade and disrupt the pirates’ operations? Absolutely certainly. It appears that there has been some evolution of doctrine in that regard; I merely say that it demonstrates the point, because it took far too long and therefore enabled the cycle of piracy to continue.
I realise that the Minister will be under some constraints in this regard, but can he give some indication as to how we could evolve our approach with international partners, for example on developing air surveillance? I appreciate that the area is very substantial, but I also appreciate that, for instance, the US is developing considerable military resources in the region, particularly in Djibouti and Yemen. Can the Minister say to what extent we will be able to utilise those resources to get a better picture of the pirates’ operations in the area?
I now come to the very thorny issue of ransoms. There has been a spirited debate between colleagues today and I fully understand why—it is inevitable. A number of us will have received representations from the shipping industry, and indeed from the trade union representing seafarers. Very properly—I do not say that in any disparaging way—they have outlined their duty of care to their members, including seafarers. However, I wonder if there is any doctrinal difference between paying ransoms for seafarers, kidnapping and hostage-taking. The same broad strand runs all the way through, namely that a company—absolutely understandably and rightly—is most importantly concerned with its duty of care to the welfare of its employees, the seafarers; there are some commercial aspects, but that is the most important consideration.
However, as the hon. Member for Cheltenham rightly said—my praising a Liberal Democrat makes this a historic day—the problem is that when someone pays a ransom, they put at risk the next vessel that goes through that region. Is it easy? Of course it is not. A Government that have traditionally taken a very hard line on hostage-taking—the Government of Israel—recently came to an agreement regarding an exchange of hostages for prisoners in Israeli jails. I do not underestimate the difficulty of the issue. Rarely do I regret losing office, and I must say that I do not envy Ministers involved in these sorts of decisions, when there is no self-evidently right decision to make.
Nevertheless, there needs to be a consistent level of policy. Regarding hostages and kidnappings, British Governments of all parties have had a long-standing consistent policy of not paying ransoms, for the reasons that I have outlined. We have done that even though the Governments of some other countries have taken a different stance. I recognise the difficulty; it is not a completely open and shut case. Equally, however, we have to recognise the good faith of those who have to make those decisions.
There is still considerable truth in the Kipling line that the problem with paying the Dane-geld is that you never stop paying the Dane. I fully acknowledge those who say, “Look, if a member of my family was involved or taken hostage, I would want to pay, or I would want the Government to make the concession.” But Governments have to look at the issue in a different light.
I therefore very much welcome the report, Mr Sheridan— [Interruption.] Sorry; Mr Brady. What more would one expect from the chairman of the 1922 Committee than the ability seamlessly to slip into the situation? The report is very welcome, because it provides a proper balance. As I have said, I congratulate the Ministers on their work on different aspects of this subject. My main point is that we need to ensure that we react to the changes—there will be further changes in tactics and problems—to improve the operational tempo and to speed up the pace of decision making. That might even mean that colleagues have the chance to read one or two words of the new guidance. I am sure that the Ministers will convey back the concerns raised in the debate.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Henry Bellingham)
It has been a great pleasure to listen to this wide-ranging, rich and varied debate. I pay particular tribute to the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway), for his work. As we stated in our response to the report, we are grateful to the Committee for examining this important subject in such detail. Obviously, we entirely accept that there is still a lot to do.
We welcome many of the Committee’s conclusions. We recognise the important contribution that the inquiry has made and we will continue a close dialogue and discussion. As the Committee has noted in its report, piracy is not new but a type of criminality that has existed for many centuries. Indeed, as the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), who is the Minister with responsibility for shipping, pointed out, it has been going on since about 2000 BC. However, the recent evolution of maritime piracy off the Horn of Africa has had a big impact both on the region and worldwide.
In this globalised world in which millions rely on the 23,000 ships that sail through the Gulf of Aden and the Indian ocean each year, the impact of Somali-based piracy is felt here and throughout the global economy. The World Bank has estimated that the total cost to the world economy, through extra costs placed on shipping and higher insurance premiums, is about $7 billion.
The right hon. Member for Warley (Mr Spellar) mentioned the impact on Mombasa. Recently, I visited Mombasa and saw the situation for myself. We had a seminar on board HMS Westminster, where many of those representing the tourism and hospitality industry made the point that no cruise ships visit Mombasa now. The right hon. Gentleman gave the correct figures, but he might have pointed out that the one ship that visited Mombasa last year came under pirate attack.
The cost of piracy is huge. Of UK gross domestic product, £10.7 billion comes from the shipping industry. Since 2008, Somali pirates have hijacked about 175 vessels, taken 3,000 seafarers captive and received more than £200 million in ransom payments. As my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South pointed out, the crisis peaked in autumn 2011. We cannot be complacent, but it is important to note that, although the tempo of attacks has not changed, the number of attacks resisted has greatly increased, so much so that only seven vessels and 214 hostages are currently under pirate control. Those figures come from research by EUNAVFOR—the European Union Naval Force Somalia.
I agree with the right hon. Member for Warley that it is essential that the UK continues to take a leading role in the international community and that the international community continues to work closely together to tackle and end the threat of attack by pirates. It is rarely the case that UK nationals are affected by such attacks, but one of the first duties of a Government is to protect our citizens. As my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South said, the Committee looked carefully at the handling of the case of Paul and Rachel Chandler, who suffered a terrible ordeal. I spoke to Rachel Chandler after her release, and I know how horrendous the experience was. As we set out in our response, we will continue to work on all the options available to us to ensure that those behind their ordeal are brought to justice. We have also conducted a full review of the handling of their case to see what lessons can be learned, including on the need to ensure that the early engagement offered by the UK mission responsible for co-ordinating our response on the ground is actually provided. The results of that review are annexed to our response. The Government are committed to providing the best possible support to those who fall victim to piracy and their families, tailored, of course, to the families’ wishes.
Similarly, the Government are committed to continuing to take a leading role in the international community, including through the Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia. We continue to lead the working group responsible for naval co-ordination and regional capacity-building activity, working with our partners to minimise duplication and encourage the widest possible participation by the international community. An unprecedented number of nations have engaged in the international naval response in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian ocean—sharing information, co-ordinating operations and remaining steadfast in the face of the challenge.
As I think two speakers today pointed out, an encouraging dimension of that activity is the number of non-aligned countries taking part, including China and Russia, for example. We have Operation Atalanta, NATO’s Operation Open Shield and the Combined Maritime Task Force. We welcome that, and we will continue to lead from the front by providing the operational commander for EUNAVFOR and the headquarters at Northwood of both the EU and the NATO operations for the duration of their mandates. To answer the question from the right hon. Member for Warley, this is indeed a key defence strategy. I share his belief that one of the most important responsibilities and duties of the Ministry of Defence and the Royal Navy is the protection of British interests, but not only from a little Englander perspective. When there are threats further afield, where we have the resources and platforms from which to tackle them, we will do so. That is why the Royal Navy has been prominent in providing vessels for the operations.
In Kenya, I had the chance to visit HMS Westminster when she was moored in Mombasa on a courtesy visit, and to be briefed by the captain on the operations that his forces had carried out. I can inform the House they had indeed intercepted three separate groups of pirates and were able to capture a lot of equipment—in fact, a skiff captured from the pirates was on board. Unfortunately, not enough evidence was available to guarantee a successful prosecution in those cases. One of the most important points to remember is that it is not only a question of having enough evidence to prosecute. Until now, we have taken a robust line on whether the evidence would stand up in court, but one of the drivers has been lack of detention and prosecution facilities in the region. I shall return to that in a moment, because we have made substantial progress.
Naval forces continue to have a positive impact. The recent action by EUNAVFOR to target onshore pirate logistics dumps was a welcome step forward in the evolving rules of engagement of our naval forces in the region. It was a further demonstration that those behind piracy cannot act with impunity at sea or on land. It was also a good example of how the EU is delivering concrete results in the implementation of a common security and defence policy. The action was short and sharp—I understand that it took seconds rather than minutes in terms of the firepower used—but it did substantial damage and took out a large amount of equipment. That sent a strong signal. On the other hand, there is no question of any logistics dumps being targeted unless there is sufficient intelligence—obviously, aerial photography and satellite intelligence are needed. As the right hon. Member for Warley pointed out, it is important that all countries engaged in the operations use their assets to the maximum possible advantage so that we can pool information. Indeed, that is what is happening. I very much hope that that action sent an extremely strong signal that there is nowhere for these people to hide. Although we will be very cautious to avoid loss of life or injury to people, when we can target assets onshore, we will.
The Committee has recognised the role that the industry can and does play in protecting vessels against pirate attacks, and the success of the self-protection measures in reducing ships’ vulnerability to attack. We continue to encourage the shipping industry to maximise adherence to best management practice, and welcome the high level of compliance that we see among the UK flagged fleet. I pay tribute to the work done with the shipping industry by my hon. Friend the Shipping Minister. As soon as he came into office, he made it clear to the industry that part of the solution lay in its hands and that it really had to drive forward best management practice and ensure that it was used absolutely uniformly. The statistics show that of ships that have been successfully attacked by pirates, very few have been those that adhered to best management practice, and none had private armed security personnel on board. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his work in pushing that agenda.
Following the Government’s announcement last autumn that we would allow the use of privately contracted armed guards on board UK flagged vessels, the Committee looked carefully at the issue. As the Chairman of the Committee pointed out, the Department for Transport published before Christmas last year interim guidance for UK flagged vessels on the use of armed guards to defend against the threat of piracy in exceptional circumstances. The guidance included a section on the use of force in the case of an attack. Since then, we have revised the guidance on the rules on use of force.
The revised guidance was published this morning, and I apologise to the Committee and the House for its not being made available earlier. That it was not published sooner is due to the fact that a substantial amount of extra work involving the devolved Administrations was needed, as was final sign-off from the Ministry of Justice. It was not for want of my hon. Friend the Shipping Minister pushing the matter very hard indeed. I am sorry that we did not let the Chairman and members of the Committee have a copy of the revised guidelines when they were made available at 11 o’clock this morning. There are lessons to be learned from that. I wonder whether it will be possible, perhaps in Government time, to have a further short debate specifically on the revised guidelines.
The revision published this morning provides greater clarity on what UK law says on the use of force. As the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) pointed out, the starting point must be our current common and statute law, which is pretty clear about what one can and cannot do. Obviously, companies must seek independent legal advice as necessary when developing the rules on use of force.
In the revised rules we go into a lot more detail, making it clear, for example, that it is
“illegal to use force for retaliation or revenge.”
That might be perfectly obvious, but the guidance continues:
“If the threat ceases, the defences of self defence, defence of another…no longer apply”,
and if a private security detachment
“believes a threat is imminent, it is not necessary for them to wait for the aggressor to strike the first blow before using reasonable and proportionate force to defend themselves”.
Again, that is clear. It is part of a graduated response. Earlier today, I was talking to experts in the Department for Transport and the Ministry of Defence, and they believe that we have struck a much better balance. We make a lot more information available. For example, we make it clear that if
“armed guards sighted a pirate skiff”—
a skiff that might be equipped to undertake acts of piracy—
“but there was nothing to indicate that the skiff was actively undertaking an act of piracy, it would be illegal for armed guards to use force against them.”
However, that would not, of course, preclude firing warning shots. All the evidence is that the pirates are cowards. They value their lives—they are not suicide merchants—and the indications are that when warning shots are fired they scarper off pretty quickly.
We have made it clear, and I say again to my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South that this is work in progress. The revised guidelines are an important step forward in response to his Committee’s work. We will listen to what people in the industry say about the revised guidelines, and we will obviously listen to what the Committee says, and if we need to make further amendments, my hon. Friend the Shipping Minister has made it clear that he will do so.
Richard Ottaway
The Minister has gone right to the heart of the changes to the guidelines, and has pointed out that paragraph 8.13 states that if armed guards sight a skiff but there is nothing to indicate that it is actively undertaking an act of piracy it will be illegal for armed guards to use force. Can he confirm the corollary that if there is evidence, that is effectively a green light to use force in retaliation and self-defence?
Mr Bellingham
Yes, indeed. It is about a graduated response, and about the members of the armed detachment using their intelligence. If they believe that they or the vessel they are protecting is threatened, they can of course use force. They would probably start by firing a warning shot. If the skiff then disappeared, all well and good, but if it came closer and it was obvious that there were weapons on board, it is perfectly clear from the revised guidelines that the armed guards would not have to wait until a shot was fired at them or in their direction. We go a long way to giving the clarification that is need.
Sir John Stanley
As the Minister is aware, his Department employs private armed security guards in a number of locations around overseas embassies and high commissions. Will he make available a copy of those rules of engagement to the members of the Committee?
Mr Bellingham
My right hon. Friend was a senior Minister and had a distinguished military career, and he has stayed in many embassies and high commissions. He will know the work done by the armed guards, who we often employ from companies such as G4S. I will certainly consider whether the document can be made available.
I want to make a few additional points. I think that the Committee was looking for clear but comprehensive rules of engagement, and we have not gone as far as it would have liked. That is, first, because companies must seek independent legal advice. Furthermore, merchant shipping can be subject to multiple jurisdictions. On board a UK flagged vessel, persons are subject to UK domestic laws; they may also be subject to different domestic jurisdictions and equivalent laws depending on the offence committed, the nationality of the person taking the action, the person against whom the action is taken, and whether such an action takes place in international or territorial waters. It is not straightforward, and it can be incredibly complicated. I do not like to see advice saying that it is up to the court to decide, because it brings to mind the debate in the previous Parliament on what force a household can use to defend its property: time and again Ministers would say that it was up to the court to decide, but actually we did not want householders dragged into court. However, in the unfortunate event of such a case going to court, it is up to the law of the land in that particular state or jurisdiction to determine whether the force used in the unique circumstances of the case was lawful.
That is why we have not gone into the level of detail that the Chairman of the Committee would perhaps like to have seen. We have not laid out rules of engagement and rules on the use of force that cover every single eventuality. There has to be a graduated approach, and we must take the realpolitik view that every single circumstance and occasion will be unique. To be too prescriptive would be a mistake.
In addition to producing our national guidance, we—I say “we”, but it is more or less my hon. Friend the Shipping Minister—have played a leading role in the development of international guidance on the use of private armed security personnel for our leading role in the contact group. After detailed work within that body, the contact group has handed its conclusions to the IMO to develop further, and such international guidance will be made available. As I said, this is work in progress and further work is going on, first, on the national guidance that I mentioned and, secondly, on the accreditation process. That is very important. I congratulate my hon. Friend on that work and I hope that he carries on working tirelessly on this agenda.
I think it has been widely accepted that a combination of more robust naval activity, industry self-protection measures and the use of private arms security personnel have all contributed to the reduction in the number of successful hijackings in the Indian ocean, but such activities at sea are only part of the answer. We should not lose sight of the fact that the way to combat piracy is obviously on the land. That point was made by the Chair of the Committee, the hon. Member for Cheltenham and the right hon. Member for Warley. We must look at the political strand, and I will come on to that in a moment in response to the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), but in terms of sustainable solutions on the land, one of the things I was very keen to discuss with the shipping industry—it also featured in the London conference on Somalia—was what we can do to reward those communities, villages and small towns that have driven the pirates out. For example, in Puntland and Galmudug, the local militia have taken control of coastal communities that have previously been subjected to pirate activities. Those communities need to be rewarded, and rewarded quickly. That is why we have worked very hard indeed with the shipping industry, which I am pleased to say has been very proactive on that score, and been able to make some progress.
I am very pleased to say that when the Secretary of State for International Development was in Garowe, he was able to open a new fish market for which money was provided by his Department. We have also, for example, established new youth club facilities in parts of Puntland and looked at projects to increase existing capacity for vocational training and help similar training facilities in parts of Puntland and Galmudug. I am delighted that the UK Government have come up with £2 million for those projects, which has been matched by a $2 million pledge by the four shipping companies that are also very concerned and interested in that agenda. We are very keen to ensure that money goes into those communities that have successfully driven away the pirates.
I should also point out that as well as those fast impact schemes on the land, it is incredibly important that those pirates who are caught are taken for detention, prosecution and then imprisonment. Part of the problem with catch and release was, first, the difficulty of getting a robust prosecution package and, secondly, the question of where to take the pirates. In answer to the point made by the right hon. Member for Warley about whether we would take pirates to the UK, yes, of course we would. If UK citizens or service personnel were injured by pirates, of course, we would look at the evidence and we would consider bringing them to the UK for detention and prosecution.
The most important thing is to ensure that we build up regional capacity for detention, prosecution and imprisonment. I am absolutely delighted that more pirates are now being brought to justice. We recently agreed a new memorandum of understanding with the Government of Tanzania, under which UK naval assets will be able to transfer suspected pirates caught at sea for prosecution in the Tanzanian courts. That has been followed as recently as last Friday with the signature of our Prime Minister and the Prime Minister of Mauritius on a new MOU between us and the Government of Mauritius, which will put UK money into Mauritian prisons and ensure that the Mauritian Government will be able to take more suspected pirates for detention and prosecution. Most important of all, the point being put to us by all these countries is that they will detain pirates and prosecute them, but they do not want to go to the expense of imprisoning them; they believe that those convicted should be imprisoned in Somalia or Somaliland.
Rory Stewart
Will the Minister reflect a bit on the gap that has emerged between the objective—governance, rule of law and state stability—and the programmes we are implementing, which are relatively small-scale development programmes, such as fish markets and youth clubs? There is a danger in trying to connect £2 million development projects to the much grander objectives of creating a stable Somali state.
Mr Bellingham
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for intervening. I was referring specifically to those fast impact schemes in the coastal communities. Of course, DFID has a very large development programme in Somaliland. It has also committed a lot of money to south and central Somalia. Much of the money in Somaliland will go into big ticket items around education, health and infrastructure. In Somalia itself—the south and central regions—one of the tragedies is that so much money has had to be spent on relieving famine and on humanitarian relief. If a fraction of that money had been put into building communities, infrastructure and public services, a lot of those services would be far more advanced.
I take on board what my hon. Friend said just now and in his excellent contribution about diplomats having limited reach, the shortage of language skills, the lack of attention being applied and, indeed, the fact that perhaps we are getting a bit too over-optimistic and giddy about what might be achievable. However, I say to him that throughout the work done since I took over this brief in May 2010—I have worked with the Foreign Secretary and received a lot of encouragement from our Prime Minister—I think we have been realistic about our expectations and we have been careful not to raise expectations.
On the other hand, the reason the London conference was well timed is that for the first time for a generation—almost since the events of “Black Hawk Down”—we are seeing areas of relative stability throughout Somalia. In Somaliland, a functioning Government, who were elected in a free and fair election, are becoming a positive development partner. As the hon. Member for Cheltenham pointed out, the African Union Mission in Somalia is making substantial strides in freeing Mogadishu from the curse of al-Shabaab. Progress is being made by Ethiopians in the west of the country around Beledweyne and Baidoa—indeed, AMISOM will soon be sending forces into the west of the country. We are also seeing progress by the Kenyans in the south, and they are about to re-hat as AMISOM troops, as soon as they sign an MOU with the UN.
We have got those areas of relative stability. The key now is to try to win the peace. We do have diplomats—in fact, our new ambassador to Somalia, Matt Baugh, is a brilliant linguist—so we are intensifying our engagement and involvement. When I was recently in Mogadishu, I had a chance to select the site for our new embassy. It is still just a building plot, but our plan is to build an embassy and to have more activity and presence on the ground, as security allows. Again, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out, the Foreign Secretary, the Secretary of State for International Development and I have been to Mogadishu. We are sending people in regularly and they stay overnight in the UN compound.
I also point out to my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border that it is all very well the international community doing its bit, but it is crucial that the Somalis also accept the scale of the challenge and make the most of the opportunities. That is why we must have an ongoing political process. The transition period of the Transitional Federal Government comes to an end in August. It is essential that we get new political structures in place that are more inclusive and more representative. We have recently had the international conference in Istanbul, which the Foreign Secretary and I attended, and there will be another international contact group meeting in Rome in about a month’s time. The whole international community is agreed that the transition will come to an end. The new constituent assembly will soon be in place and it will elect a new parliament and appoint a new Government. I suggest to my hon. Friend that when we have a new Government and a new parliament who are more representative and inclusive, and who carry more support among those areas of stability within Somalia, we will have an opportunity to move the whole process forward. If that is combined with the international community’s weight and effort in development and assistance on the ground, there will be grounds, not for getting carried away, but for cautious optimism and for confidence that it is worth our while to continue the investment and efforts we put in.
Returning to burden sharing in the region, we recently signed a statement of burden-sharing principles with the Governments of Tanzania and Mauritius, with whom, as I mentioned, we have new arrangements; the Seychelles, with whom we have an effective MOU; and Kenya, with whom we continue to work closely to discuss the prospects for a resumption of our bilateral arrangements.
I understand that when the Foreign Affairs Committee recently visited Kenya, it had discussions with Kenya’s Foreign Minister and, probably, Professor George Saitoti, who was tragically killed in a helicopter crash a few days ago, about whether we could get the bilateral arrangement for the transfer of pirates back on track. I am grateful to the Chairman of the Committee for the work that he has done, and I hope that Kenya will not only carry on accepting pirates, but reactivate the MOU, because it is incredibly important. Kenya is a big regional player and it is important that it does that.
Another positive development to come out of the London conference was the agreement between the Seychelles and Somaliland to start the process of post-trial transfers of prisoners, whereby pirates convicted in the Seychelles can be transferred to Somaliland to serve their sentences. The first such transfer of 17 prisoners took place in late March, and we understand that further exchanges are being planned for the coming months. Puntland is also in the process of agreeing similar arrangements with the Seychelles, and we are pleased that Mauritius has recently made progress in setting up a similar scheme with both Puntland and the Transitional Federal Government. All that important work means that pirates will be able to be taken to those areas for the purposes of detention and prosecution, and they will then be sent to either Puntland or Somaliland to serve their sentences.
The main criticism from countries in the region was that they did not want to bear the cost of imprisoning such people—many of whom are sentenced to long terms of imprisonment—and that they should serve their sentence in Somalia, so that problem is being addressed. I am very pleased that the UK Government have been able to put a lot of money into building up the judicial capacity. I thank the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, which is one of our key partners on that agenda.
This work must continue. Obviously, it will cost money and a number of countries have made a few contributions. So far, we have been the single largest bilateral donor to the programme, and we are calling on other countries to step up to the plate. A number of commitments were made at the London conference, with the promise of money to go into such work. We hope that that money will be forthcoming, particularly from those larger countries that have made such commitments.
As has been pointed out, the piracy business model is incredibly lucrative. The risk-reward ratio shows that the risks to the pirates have been minimal hitherto, but the rewards have been absolutely huge. We think that the figure that I gave of £200 million-plus paid out in ransom so far is very conservative and that the true figure could be far higher. It is important that we bear down on the kingpins of piracy. The London conference saw two developments in that area, and they complement our existing work on tracking the financial flows of piracy.
First, the Prime Minister announced the international taskforce on piracy ransom payments, which brings together experts from a number of countries with different experiences involving the payment of ransoms. It will look at what more could be done to tackle the growing size and use of ransom payments. The taskforce will consider the views of a wide range of key organisations, particularly our partners in the shipping industry, and will form recommendations that will then be put to the international community. We expect the taskforce to conclude its work by the autumn.
I say to the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee that nothing is predetermined and to the hon. Member for Falkirk (Eric Joyce) that we do not have any set, predetermined ideas. We hope to work with the shipping industry and carry it with us. Countries face dilemmas when addressing ransom payments, and we have heard today some powerful speeches outlining the arguments for and against. The bottom line is that the UK Government’s position is strong and consistent: we do not outlaw ransom payments—we have not banned them—but neither do we facilitate or encourage them.
Furthermore, it is worth pointing out that most countries that do facilitate the payment of ransoms have had more personnel kidnapped in Africa, more smaller vessels pirated and more people taken hostage than the UK. I do not think that it is an accident that we have a robust line on this. We as a Government will not facilitate it. If pirates or hostage-takers take a Brit hostage, they will know that the UK Government will not come up with a cheque, unlike some countries.
I agree entirely with the hon. Member for Cheltenham that if a Government condone and facilitate the payment of ransoms, that will only encourage more pirates and hostage takers. However, I entirely take on board the point made by the hon. Member for Falkirk, who touched on the tragic case of a merchant vessel that has been pirated and the ransom not paid. The crew members are rotting in hell, which is an appalling situation.
I assure Members that what has been said in this debate will be fed through to the taskforce. Nothing has been predetermined, and this is very much a work in progress. We will work with and listen to the industry. I have read the brief sent to the House by the Chamber of Shipping. It is a powerful set of representations, which, of course, we will not ignore. We are a great maritime nation and the last thing we want is for those companies in our shipping industry, which plays a vital part in our economy and is part of our growth programme, to go offshore, away from the UK.
Secondly, the Prime Minister signed an agreement with the Government of the Seychelles to work together to create the Regional Anti-Piracy Prosecutions Intelligence Co-ordination Centre, or RAPPICC—what an appalling acronym—in the Seychelles. The project will bring together a number of international partners to pull together the material that we have to create evidence packages to bring those behind the piracy business model—the negotiators, the financiers, the co-ordinators and the kingpins—to justice.
At the London conference, Holland announced that it would provide €300,000 and two members of staff to RAPPICC. Other countries have also promised money, and we hope that the United States will go firm on its promise to commit. Furthermore, as I think the hon. Member for Cheltenham pointed out, we have seconded a director to RAPPICC from the Serious Organised Crime Agency. While the new building is being built, the centre will start its work in temporary offices in the Seychelles from this week. We hope that the new building will be finished by the end of the year and that my hon. Friend the Shipping Minister will be able to open it.
The new initiatives will complement what we already do with our partners to track and tackle the financial flows of piracy. We are keen supporters of working group 5 of the contact Group on Piracy off the coast of Somalia—the working group is chaired by Italy—which is charged with co-ordinating and driving forward international activity to track and stop the money.
We are committed to the work of the financial action taskforce, in which we work with regional partners to establish effective regimes against money laundering and illicit financing. We continue to encourage a greater flow of information from our partners in industry to ensure that all possible levers can be utilised to follow and stop the money, and stop those behind the practice of piracy. We need to do more to understand those flows, to interpret them better, to intercept and disrupt them, and to use all mechanisms at our disposal, including examining money laundering laws in many different countries and the work of Interpol. I hope that RAPPICC will help us raise our game substantially.
In conclusion—I have probably spoken for too long already—Her Majesty’s Government will continue our multi-dimensional approach to tackling and undermining the different parts of the piracy model. Progress is being made. There is no question but that pirates have had a very tough time, because while the number of attacks has not been reduced, the number of successful attacks has reduced substantially. Navies have become more robust in their response and, as I have mentioned, action and logistics on land have sent a very strong signal. The industry is now incredibly professional, and the fact that not one single vessel with private armed guards on board has been successfully hijacked is a very strong and good sign of why we changed the guidelines and of our ongoing work.
As so many hon. and right hon. Members have pointed out, the problem is the result of a failed state. It is one of the symptoms of a country, Somalia, which has gone from bad to worse. On the other hand, as I have said, a number of strong indicators mean that we can be, not ridiculously, but cautiously optimistic that we can look forward to progress on the ground in Somalia. Indeed, if places such as Puntland have proper local government in place and their militias and police are able to drive pirates out of those communities, and if the same happens in Galmudug, the solution lies on the land. The African Union Mission In Somalia has taken control of Afgooye, which is north of Mogadishu; it is looking, through new consulate operations, to head south to Kismayo, and on the way, hopefully, take a number of villages and towns that have currently hosted pirates. If we can then reinforce that by building up stability and putting in substantial amounts of money—not penny-packet sums, which obviously are needed in some places to reward communities who have driven away the pirates, but substantial development—into services, infrastructure and building that community, the Somalis deserve nothing less, and by working with them we can give them a better future.
The Committee can be proud of its work in contributing impressively to the debate. We will go on working with it to find solutions to this scourge, this problem, this evil. I look forward to further exchanges with the Chairman and the members of his Committee; I thank them again for their work.
Richard Ottaway
I am grateful to the Minister for the very detailed response that the subject deserves.
I will not detain the Chamber for long. I have three quick points. The right hon. Member for Warley (Mr Spellar) intervened to ask about the Committee’s position on prosecution policy. I happily confirm that the Committee’s position is as I, and the Minister, set out. It is preferable for a prosecution to be successfully dealt with locally, otherwise it should come back to the United Kingdom.
We have had interesting divisions on ransoms. The truth of the matter is that there is no answer; both arguments are right. There is merit in both sides of the argument. Frankly, it is better to focus on preventing capture than on paying a ransom. There is a difference between corporate interest and the private interest of the yachtsman.
I will conclude with some comments on the guidance. I am grateful to the Department for Transport for providing the guidance during the debate. I have had a brief chance to look at it. There are clearly substantial changes, which are welcome. The Minister is right to say that it is not as much as we were calling for. It is probably best to say that in the preparation of our report, we have had legal advice and I will run the guidance past our lawyers. I recognise, however, that there are important changes. I also note that the Crown Prosecution Service guidance is still incorporated. I suspect that there is no alternative, because that is the law of Britain. Perhaps therein lies the problem—if we are to have a separate law out in the Indian ocean, it would require primary legislation that may not currently be in the coalition’s plan.
The guidance has also thrown up an interesting distinction in devolved law, distinguishing Scottish law and the law of England and Wales. I am not quite sure exactly which applies when the red duster is flying on a ship. However, it is interesting to note, under footnote 15 of paragraph 8.10, that the use of lethal force in Scotland will only be justified in defence of life, or by a victim resisting rape. That is quite a high bar.
Mike Penning
I am very proud to represent the red duster for the UK; this is not a devolved matter. If someone is on a British-registered red duster ship, UK law prevails over international law.
Richard Ottaway
I am grateful for that intervention, which begs a question about the need for a footnote about distinguishing Scottish law and the law of England and Wales. [Interruption.] That is very interesting; piracy off Scotland will have to be investigated.
Clearly, a lot of questions need to be considered, and the Committee will do that. The Minister’s suggestion that we have a further short debate on this subject is constructive. It may not be inappropriate for the Shipping Minister to debate it, but I leave that to others to decide.
Mr Brady, I am very grateful to you for chairing the debate, which has been particularly constructive.
Question put and agreed to.
Written Ministerial Statements
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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National Minimum Wage
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Norman Lamb)
I am pleased to announce that the Government have today written to the Low Pay Commission setting out the remit for their 2013 report.
The Government support the national minimum wage (NMW) because of the protection it provides to low-paid workers and the incentives to work it provides. Our aim is to have NMW rates that help as many low-paid workers as possible, while making sure that we do not damage their employment prospects.
The Low Pay Commission (LPC) is asked to:
Monitor, evaluate and review the levels of each of the different NMW rates and make recommendations on the levels it believes should apply from October 2013.
Review the contribution the NMW could make to the employment prospects of young people, including those in apprenticeships. As part of this review, the LPC is asked to consider the implications of the introduction of the raising of the participation age in England on the youth rates and the apprentice rate.
Review the accommodation offset.
Evaluate the regulations for salaried hours workers and consider whether there are any measures that the Government could take to ensure that it is as simple and easy as possible for employers to make sure they are paying at least the NMW and for individuals to be confident that they are being paid at least the NMW.
In evaluating and making recommendations in the areas set out above, the LPC is asked to take account of the state of the economy and employment and unemployment levels. There is also the wider policy context to consider, including pensions’ reform, the introduction of universal credit, the raising of the personal tax allowance, any implications of the proposed abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board for England and Wales (pending the outcome of the legislative process), and other Government reforms that may affect the NMW.
Timing
The LPC is asked to report to the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, and the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills by the end of February 2013.
Copies of the remit have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
General Affairs Council
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The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)
I attended the General Affairs Council (GAC) which met in Brussels on 29 May.
The GAC was chaired by the Danish EU presidency, Mr Nicolai Wammen, Minister for European Affairs. A provisional report of the meeting can be found at:
http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/EN/genaff/129266.pdf
Multiannual Financial Framework
The General Affairs Council focused on the proposed multiannual financial framework (MFF) for the period between 2014 and 2020. The meeting was the first discussion of all areas of the MFF and looking at all areas of the latest version of the “negotiating box text”. This text is not binding but will set the tone and the direction of future discussions on the MFF.
The version of the negotiating box text discussed at the General Affairs Council, which I have deposited in the Library of the House, contains positive language on the need to focus EU spending on areas that promote growth. It also explicitly states that,
“it is essential that the future MFF reflects the consolidation efforts being made by Member States to bring deficit and debt onto a more sustainable path”.
This is helpful to us; however there were less helpful parts of the text with options for macro-economic conditionality and reform to own resources, including the rebate and the possibility of a financial transaction tax.
I argued that text relating to the UK rebate should not be in the negotiating box for discussion, as any changes to the own resources decision, including those required to amend the UK rebate, require consensus among member states. The UK would not agree to any changes to the UK rebate or any new own resources such as a financial transaction tax and therefore their inclusion was pointless.
At the meeting I also reiterated points I have made at previous meetings of the GAC: that at least €100 billion of savings had to be made from the proposals made by the Commission and that reste à liquider (RAL or unspent commitments) remained an important issue to be resolved.
June European Council
There was also a presentation of the agenda for the June European Council which will cover the MFF, justice and home affairs, and possible foreign policy issues if the circumstances allow. The main focus of the June European Council however will be on the growth agenda, in particular the completion of the European Semester—which gives macro-economic and fiscal guidance to member states, and the ideas the European Council called for in March.
G20 Summit in Los Cabos
The presidency also discussed the preparations for the G20 summit in Los Cabos. The discussion followed the priorities for the EU set out in the joint letter from EU President Herman Van Rompuy and the President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso to member states. These were: growth and employment; strengthening the international financial architecture; progress on financial sector reform; and tackling food security and promoting development.
Croatia
Finally, I welcomed the Commission’s recent report on Croatia, underlined the importance of continued monitoring of the fulfilment of commitments, and noted that completing the process successfully and credibly was important for both Croatia and the EU.
Disclosure and Barring Service (Appointments)
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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The Minister for Equalities (Lynne Featherstone)
The new Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) will bring together the work of the Criminal Records Bureau and the Independent Safeguarding Authority, and represents an important element of the Government’s reforms to the disclosure and barring arrangements.
I am pleased to announce that the following senior appointments have been made to the DBS:
Chairman of the Disclosure and Barring Service: Bill Griffiths, formerly chair of the Forensic Science Service
Chief Executive: Adrienne Kelbie, currently deputy chief executive and corporate director of Business Support for Hull city council.
These appointments will take effect later this year.
Modern Workplace Consultation (Government Response)
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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The Minister for Equalities (Lynne Featherstone)
Today the Government are publishing their response to an element of the modern workplaces consultation. This is our proposal to require employers who lose an employment tribunal case on equal pay to carry out a pay audit.
We have considered the responses to the consultation carefully, and we intend to proceed with this proposal. This will mean that an employment tribunal which finds that an employer has discriminated on grounds of sex in contractual or non-contractual pay will be obliged to order the employer to conduct a pay audit in cases where continuing discrimination is likely. An audit would not be ordered if an audit has been completed in the last three years, the employer has transparent pay practices or the employer can show a good reason why it would not be useful. Micro businesses will initially be exempt from the proposals.
The Government intend to issue a further consultation later this year on the exact details of how the audits will operate and what publication requirements will apply. We will work closely with business organisations and other interested stakeholders throughout this process, and we will seek an opportunity to bring forward legislation when parliamentary time allows.
This proposal will supplement “Think, Act, Report”, which is a simple, voluntary, step by step framework to help companies think about gender equality in their workforces, on key issues like recruitment, retention, promotion, and pay. Between them, these measures show our commitment to use of voluntary measures in most circumstances, and to act firmly where there is need.
The response will be published on the Home Office website at: www.homeoffice.gov.uk/equalities and a copy will be placed in the House Library. Responses to other elements of the modern workplaces consultation will be published in due course.
Justice and Home Affairs Council
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
The Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) Council was held on 7 and 8 June in Luxembourg. My right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice and I attended on behalf of the United Kingdom. The following items were discussed.
The Council began in mixed committee with Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Switzerland (non-EU Schengen states) with an update on the second generation Schengen information system (SIS II). Commissioner Malmström reported that the delivery of SIS II remained on schedule for the first quarter of 2013. Initial feedback on the Milestone 2 tests had been positive, with a full report due in July. The UK supports the current SIS II project.
Next, the presidency led a political debate on Schengen governance based on the first biannual report from the European Commission. The Commission called for more accurate and current data on secondary flows within the EU; looked forward to the swift adoption of the visa liberalisation temporary suspension mechanism; and encouraged member states to make better use of the Schengen information system and supplementary information request at the national entry (SIRENE) bureaus. It also drew the Council’s attention to the non-binding guidelines contained in the report on temporary residence permits and travel documents and on the exercise of police powers in internal border areas. There was some agreement by member states on the need for more accurate data on secondary movements within the Schengen area and on the need to reach swift agreement with the European Parliament on the visa suspension mechanism. The UK also highlighted the importance of tackling criminality, human trafficking, abuse of free movement, document fraud and the need for an effective returns policy to combat illegal migration, including the readmission agreement with Turkey.
The presidency called on the Council to accept its compromise on the two legislative instruments: the Schengen evaluation and monitoring mechanism (SEMM) and the Schengen borders code (SBC). Where the evaluation of a member state showed persistent and serious shortcomings threatening public policy or internal security, the Council would be able to reintroduce internal borders for up to two years through the amended SBC. The only outstanding issue for the SEMM was the change in legal base from article 77 TFEU to article 70.
Member states agreed to change the legal base, which the UK welcomed as rightly reflecting the UK’s partial participation in the Schengen acquis. While the UK had yet to complete its domestic parliamentary processes, the Government position was not to opt out. The UK also noted that the compromise package on the SBC correctly reflected that it was for the Council to decide on the imposition of internal border controls rather than the Commission.
The presidency concluded agreement on the proposals and said that the European Parliament would be approached to launch formal trilogue discussions on the SBC and to hold informal discussions on the SEMM. The Commission issued a declaration reserving its rights under the treaties to challenge the legal base and balance of institutional competencies before the European Court of Justice.
Over lunch many member states acknowledged the case for revising the data protection directive, but raised concerns about the effect on the processing of information by member state authorities and about whether the proposals respected subsidiarity. Obligations on data controllers and the effect of the directive on existing international agreements were also discussed.
The main Council started with a discussion on the common European asylum system. The presidency updated the Council on progress in trilogue with the European Parliament on the Dublin regulation and reception conditions directive, with the asylum procedures directive to follow shortly thereafter, and noted the adoption by the Commission of its proposal for a revised Eurodac regulation. During the discussion the Commission reminded the Council of the need to ensure the new asylum package added value and was consistent with the case law of the European courts. In general, member states welcomed the new proposal on Eurodac. The UK has opted in to the Dublin regulation and is considering its participation in the new Eurodac proposal. The UK has not opted in to the two other directives.
The presidency urged the Council to maintain momentum on the solidarity measures being deployed to support member states under pressure and to ensure the necessary follow up was discussed at a political level. The presidency provided an update on the Greek taskforce and made suggestions to involve the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in the registration and processing of asylum claims; increase the necessary staffing for the three new services; and provide for further involvement by the International Organisation for Migration and Frontex on returns. The European Asylum Support Office presented a quick overview of asylum trends in the EU. The Commission supported constant monitoring of the solidarity effort but warned that asylum challenges would not be dealt with effectively by focusing on illegal migration trends. The UK takes the view that solidarity work should focus on preventative action and practical co-operation.
In a discussion on readmission agreements, the presidency hoped the Council conclusions on co-operation with Turkey would be agreed soon, which would allow swift progress to be made on the EU-Turkey readmission agreement. The earliest adoption date would be 21 June, at the Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council. It appealed to the two member states with outstanding reservations to agree the conclusions before that time. The UK supports the rapid conclusion of the EU-Turkey readmission agreements, which will be subject to a UK opt-in decision. On Pakistan, the Commission were in Islamabad on 12 June to discuss implementation of the readmission agreement and invited delegations to attend.
Presenting his biannual report, the EU counter-terrorism co-ordinator (Gilles de Kerchove) spoke of the importance of ensuring co-operation between EU agencies in combating terrorism and suggested Frontex could begin to play a role in combating terrorism at the EU’s external borders. He also highlighted the link between security and development and called for EU action to prevent the emergence of terrorist safe havens in Africa. The UK supports work being done in these areas of concern in the CT field and encourages future EU engagement on this work.
The Council adopted the Council conclusions on a global alliance against child sexual abuse online. The Commission noted they had been in close contact with the USA and would raise the global alliance at the 20 and 21 June EU-US ministerial. The UK supports this initiative.
The Council also adopted the Council conclusions on the Europol information system (EIS) in the fight against cross-border crime. The UK supports the increased use of the EIS.
A brief update was presented on legal migration proposals. Trilogue with the European Parliament had commenced on the directive on intra-corporate transferees while the seasonal workers directive was still under discussion at working group level.
The presidency informed the Council that negotiations were ongoing on the proposed visa reciprocity mechanism and visa liberalisation suspension clause. The UK has not opted in to these measures and does not take part in Schengen visa arrangements.
The Justice day began with presidency reaching a general approach on the directive access to a lawyer. This is the third proposal on the EU’s criminal procedural rights road map, and it sets minimum standards for the rights of defence. The UK did not opt in to this directive because the Commission’s proposal as originally drafted would have had an adverse impact on our ability to investigate and prosecute crime. The UK explained that the concerns which had led them not to opt in had been resolved in this text. Cyprus will take forward negotiations with the European Parliament during their presidency. The Government will consult Parliament on any decision to opt in post adoption.
The Council also reached a general approach on the regulation on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters (Brussels I). The UK noted it had not completed parliamentary scrutiny on the proposal.
Next, the presidency secured agreement for a multi-annual framework for the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) for 2013-17, which sets out the themes for its work. The presidency’s text excludes police and judicial co-operation in criminal matters. The UK supports the decision not to extend the remit and believes it should not be extended until after the FRA’s planned evaluation. The framework will be sent to the European Parliament for its consent.
The presidency reached a partial general approach on two draft regulations establishing two new funding programmes—the justice programme and the rights and citizenship programme, for the period 2014-20. These are successors to the existing funding programmes in the current Fundamental Rights and Justice framework. As the draft regulation for the proposed justice programme has been issued under title V of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union (TFEU), the UK opt-in applies. The UK has not opted in to this programme. The opt-in does not apply to the draft regulation establishing the rights and citizenship programme and the UK put down a scrutiny reservation on the article regarding the protection of financial interests of the Union.
There was an orientation debate on the Commission’s proposal for a common European sales law (CESL). The purported aim of the CESL proposal is to stimulate growth by facilitating cross-border trade, providing legal certainty and simplifying the process for businesses and consumers. The CESL would not replace existing national laws, but would be an alternative regime to the existing contract law regime in each member state. The Cypriot presidency will continue negotiations on the proposal. The Government are currently evaluating the results of their recent call for evidence on this proposal.
The presidency also reported on three other negotiations which were in trilogue with the European Parliament. They hoped to have a first reading deal finalised by the end of the month on the victims and cybercrime directives; regarding the victims directive the Government have written to both Houses requesting scrutiny clearance. The European investigation order was unfortunately proceeding much more slowly due to delays in the European Parliament.
Over lunch there was an orientation debate on the data protection regulation which covered public and private sector obligations and the balance of protection of personal data and administrative burdens.
EU Transport Council
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Transport (Justine Greening)
I attended the final Transport Council under the Danish presidency (the presidency) in Luxembourg on Thursday 7 June.
The Council reached a partial general approach on two multi-annual financial framework (MFF)-related regulations: a proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing the connecting Europe facility and a proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the implementation and exploitation of the European satellite navigation systems.
I made statements on both regulations saying that while we supported what had been negotiated so far in the text, we could not formally support the draft regulations ahead of the agreement on the overall MFF negotiations as this might prejudge the overall MFF budget.
On the proposal for a regulation establishing the connecting Europe facility, I supported an Irish proposal that would allow co-funding for road schemes where there were isolated (rail) networks as defined in the TEN-T regulation. I also stressed that our participation in the core corridors was subject to the provisions of Art 172 of the treaty that require member state approval and would be kept under review until we saw the final requirements in the TEN-T regulation before finalising our position.
The Council reached a general approach on a proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the establishment of rules and procedures with regard to the introduction of noise-related operating restrictions at European Union airports within a balanced approach and repealing directive 2002/30/EC. I was able to welcome the general approach text, which would reassure the public that at the local and EU level we were taking noise management seriously.
The presidency provided progress reports on two proposals to bring EU law in line with provisions of the 2006 (ILO) maritime labour convention, noting some of the outstanding issues following official level discussions.
A policy debate was held on the blue belt pilot project which had been initiated under the Belgian presidency to look at reducing administrative barriers to sea trade, especially in the area of customs formalities. The presidency concluded that there was support for the Commission taking initiatives to follow up the project, including legislation, though there would need to be analysis first to ensure benefits would justify costs. I noted that there would need to be much greater clarity on benefits before any consideration was given to setting the project in a legislative context.
Under any other business, the Commission provided an update on the inclusion of aviation in the emissions trading system (ETS): compliance with the 31 March emissions reporting deadline had been high, although Chinese and Indian airlines had refused to comply with the ETS following a direction from their respective administrations. The US Senate held a hearing on the ETS prohibition Bill on 6 June—DG Clima testified at the hearing. Discussions at the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) continued, the next significant meeting would be at the end of June, when the ICAO Council would discuss market based measures. I stressed the need to continue to maintain a united EU position to opposition. I highlighted that what we want is a global deal, with a target and specific measures.
Also under other business, the Commission reported on delays in the introduction of the European electronic tolling service (EETS) which should allow drivers to pay road tolls in any country with a single on-board unit and account. Finally, the Commission reported on the recent conference on piracy and maritime transport.
I also met with my French, Dutch and Italian counterparts to discuss EU and bilateral issues in the margins of the Council.
Careless Driving (Fixed Penalty Notices)
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mike Penning)
The Department has today published a consultation paper on changes to the treatment of penalties for careless driving and other motoring offences. This follows up key commitments from the Government’s strategic framework for road safety published in May 2011.
With careless driving, the current enforcement process is time consuming and inefficient. We are therefore proposing to make careless driving a fixed penalty offence and open to the offer of education training. We believe this will help the police to enforce against this offence more efficiently. It will also provide greater flexibility in dealing with those low level careless driving behaviours that fall below the threshold for a court summons, enabling the greater use of educational training.
We will also be consulting on raising the level of many motoring fixed penalty notices, including increasing the penalty levels for many (usually endorsable) road traffic £60 FPN offences to £90. We have broadened the scope of the measure and are consulting on other options including increasing the levels for non-endorsable offences, motor insurance offences, and graduated fixed penalties—all by a similar proportion.
Most of these penalty levels have not been increased since 2000 and are lower than other fixed penalties such as for disorder. This risks offences being perceived as minor infringements. In addition, increasing penalty levels will encourage the introduction of educational courses for other offences, such as not wearing a seat belt and the proposed careless driving fixed penalty.
There are no proposals to make any changes to penalty levels for parking restriction FPN offences.
These measures will play an important role in improving road safety for all road users as well as maintaining compliance with motoring laws.
The consultation documents can be found on the Department’s website. An electronic copy has been lodged with the House Library.
Draft Universal Credit Regulations
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)
The Welfare Reform Act 2012 sets out the overall framework for universal credit. The implementation of these arrangements will require the passage of detailed regulations.
The Department, as required by the Social Security Administration Act 1992, has submitted the following draft regulations to the independent Social Security Advisory Committee (SSAC) for formal scrutiny:
the universal credit, personal independence payment and working-age benefits (decisions and appeals) regulations 2012;
the universal credit, personal independence payment and working-age benefits (claims and payments) regulations 2012;
the jobseeker’s allowance regulations 2012; and
the employment and support allowance regulations 2012.
In addition SSAC will scrutinise the draft housing benefit (benefit cap) regulations 2012 and the draft universal credit regulations 2012. The universal credit regulations provide detail of the new single benefit, including entitlement, elements of the award, calculation of income and capital, and claimant responsibilities. I have asked the Committee to consider this set of regulations, which are not covered by the Social Security Administration Act 1992, for consultation over the summer in addition to those sent for formal scrutiny.
The Committee will decide today whether it intends to consult on these regulations and what form that consultation will take.
Draft universal credit regulations, along with other sets that are selected for consultation, will be published on both the SSAC and DWP website shortly along with details of any consultation process. I will place a copy of the draft regulations in the House Library. We intend to lay the final universal credit regulations before Parliament later in the year.
House of Lords
Death of a Member: Lord Archer of Sandwell
The Lord Speaker (Baroness D'Souza)
My Lords, I regret to inform the House of the death of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Archer of Sandwell, earlier today. On behalf of the House, I extend our most sincere condolences to the noble and learned Lord’s family and friends.
Animal Welfare
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, the Government will continue to ensure that the requirements of the EU rules regarding welfare during transport are applied robustly to all long-distance transporters of horses operating within the UK. We will continue to press the European Commission to introduce the recommendation made by the European Food Safety Authority that horses travelling for slaughter should not face journey times exceeding 12 hours.
Lord Dear
My Lords, the Minister will be aware of the suffering that is caused to around 65,000 horses each year as they are transported across Europe for slaughter, often over very long distances and in totally unsatisfactory conditions, with many of them ending up on the plates of southern European restaurants. Further, he may be aware that EC Regulation 1/2005 allows for proposals to be made to regulate those journeys if scientific evidence supports that change. In the light of that, can the Minister confirm that since evidence supporting that change was indeed presented to the Commission by the European Food Safety Authority last year, the Government have now pressed the Commission for a proposal to limit the maximum journey time for horses destined for slaughter?
Lord De Mauley
Yes, my Lords. I thank the noble Lord for the work he does in this area. I, too, need to declare an interest as president of the charity SPANA, which is concerned with working animals, particularly equids, in developing countries. We welcome the European Commission’s report of 10 November 2011 on its review of Regulation 1/2005, and agree that the first priority should be better enforcement of the existing legislation across Europe. However, we share the disappointment of many that the recent recommendation by EFSA that horses going to slaughter should not face journeys exceeding 12 hours has not been adopted by the Commission. While it would be illegal for us to act unilaterally in an area that is already covered by directly applicable EU legislation, we will continue to push for this recommendation to be adopted by the European Commission at the earliest opportunity.
Baroness Trumpington
My Lords, as a former president of the organisation that the noble Lord, Lord Dear, spoke of, and having taken a Bill through this House on this very subject and pursued this very distasteful European practice, if I may say so, may I ask the Minister whether he is aware of the trade from South America to Italy, with horrible conditions in the ships for the horses, which are then turned into sausages or whatever the Italians care to eat?
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, I am grateful for the work that my noble friend has done in this area. I think that noble Lords around the House share her horror, as do I, at the conditions in which these unfortunate animals travel. As I say, we are pressing the Commission to adopt the EFSA rules. I am not aware specifically of the position on the transport of animals between South America and Italy, and I will look into it.
Lord Knight of Weymouth
My Lords, the Government’s record on animal welfare is now in tatters, given that they are not listening to science on badgers, are dragging their heels on animals in circuses and have made a shambolic U-turn on shooting buzzards. [Laughter.] We can see how seriously the party opposite takes animal welfare from its reaction to that. Given that more than a million people have signed the petition on the long-distance transport of horses for slaughter organised by Animal Angels and that MEPs now agree that the limit should be eight hours, is it the Government’s policy that the limit should be eight hours or the 12 hours that the Minister talked about?
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, most animal welfare NGOs want an automatic eight-hour limit on all journeys for all livestock going to slaughter. The EFSA report did not recommend such an approach, recognising that different species can be transported over different periods of time without unnecessary suffering. Scientific research supports the argument that the quality of transport and the competence of the driver tend to be the major factors in the welfare of animals during transport and not necessarily the length of the journey time.
Lord Addington
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that, although government can do quite a lot, our own experience has shown that public opinion can change things quickly? Is the Minister encouraging our Government to talk to the rest of Europe about raising public awareness in those countries?
Lord De Mauley
That is a very important point, and it will form part of what we are doing at the European Commission.
Lord Donoughue
While it is commendable to press the European authorities for more action, will the UK Government not do more themselves especially to protect the UK horse population from threats to its health? In particular, will he commit the Government to increasing the levels of surveillance of this problem in British ports?
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, I have a lot of sympathy with the noble Lord’s words. We would prefer to see the export of meat or germ plasm rather than of livestock, and that animals are slaughtered as close as is practical to their point of production. However, the export of livestock for slaughter within the EU is perfectly legal. To ban it would be illegal under existing EU competition legislation. That legal position has been confirmed by rulings by the European Court of Justice and by High Court cases. The Government are committed to improving the welfare of animals. If animals are exported live, their transportation should comply fully with the necessary legal requirements as laid down in EU and national law.
Baroness Fookes
My Lords, the treatment of animals in transport—not only horses but all kinds of farm animal—is a long-standing disgrace, and I am sick and tired of all the excuses. If it is important that we have good transport and good drivers as the Minister has said, what action will he take to ensure that that is seen to? I should probably declare an interest in that I am involved with a good many animal charities.
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, enforcement provisions and procedures by which the various regulations are applied are in the Welfare of Animals (Transport) (England) Order 2006 and similar legislation in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. AHVLA and local authorities are responsible for regulatory and enforcement action under this legislation.
Schools: Admissions
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Lucas
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will allow independent schools, particularly those which were formerly direct-grant grammar schools, to join the state sector on the basis of needs-blind admission.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)
My Lords, the Government already allow high performing independent schools to join the state sector by submitting successful applications to become free schools. Free schools are independent state-funded schools that do not charge fees, must abide by the schools admissions code and are not able to have selective admissions criteria. It would therefore be open to the kind of schools to which my noble friend refers to apply to join the state sector.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am sad that my noble friend does not share my disappointment that, after so many decades of pontificating and after my right honourable friend Michael Gove’s speech on the need to rebalance the independent and state sectors, no party seems prepared to engage with an initiative from a trusted intermediary such as the Sutton Trust to take advantage of all the work done under the previous Government to improve the state system and relationships between the state and the independent sector and make a radical change to the balance between state and independent education. Can he offer no hope to the Sutton Trust in its ambition to make a change which will otherwise take 50 years on the best possible course?
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I am extremely keen, as are the Government, to encourage as much co-operation as possible between the independent sector and the maintained sector. The noble Lord will know better than me the number of examples of independent schools working with the maintained sector in a variety of different ways—whether through involvement in the academies programme, coming into the maintained sector or providing courses for children at local maintained schools, all of which I thoroughly applaud. However, the main priority of the Government is to do what we can to raise the standards for the vast majority of children in maintained schools. That is the focus of the work we are doing.
Lord Lea of Crondall
My Lords, does the Minister agree with the speech referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas? Are the Government backing the speech by Mr Michael Gove pointing out that apartheid in the British education system is causing great damage to our society and that the Government must do something about it?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am sorry, my Lords, I thought I had said that in overcoming that divide the Government are extremely keen, as is the Secretary of State, to pursue the goal of bringing the two sectors together in as many ways as we can. As I said, some of that is through sponsorship of academies. The free schools programme, to which I just referred, will welcome high quality independent schools into the maintained sector, providing a good quality of education free for children from all backgrounds. It follows from some of the initiatives that the previous Government took to bring some of those schools into the academy sector.
Baroness Walmsley
Will my noble friend reaffirm the Government’s clear statement that they do not want an expansion of selection among schools maintained by the state? In that connection, will he consider clarifying the law on expansion of existing grammar schools and, if necessary, change it if it is not meeting that objective?
Lord Hill of Oareford
Yes, my Lords, the Government’s position on selection is clear and we have no plans to change it. The existing legislation that governs the prohibition on the introduction of new selective schools remains in place. The only change that the Government have made since we came in is the ability of schools of all types to expand their number locally in response to parental demand, if they are popular schools, because we are keen to give parents more ability to get their children into local popular schools.
Lord Adonis
My Lords, will the Minister congratulate the growing number of independent schools which have joined the state system in recent years as academies by giving up both fees and selection? In particular, will he commend Belvedere School in Liverpool, William Hulme’s Grammer School in Manchester, Bristol Cathedral Choir School and Colston’s Girls’ School in Bristol, which are doing a fantastic job as state academies and are open to their population as never before by becoming academies, giving up fees and giving up the 11-plus?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I know that this subject is very dear to the heart of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and I am extremely aware of all the work that he has done for many years to pursue that goal. Those schools are making a fantastic contribution. I was looking at their results the other day. Since they have come into the maintained sector, without selective admissions, they continue to perform an extremely good job. A number of schools across the country demonstrate that it is possible to achieve outstanding results if they have high aspiration, high ambition, an orderly environment and work hard for all of their children to do well.
Lord Lexden
My Lords, does my noble friend recall that some years ago, when I was its general secretary, the Independent Schools Council put forward for discussion an ambitious set of proposals to provide open access to schools of all types in the independent sector? Under these proposals, government expenditure per pupil would be no higher than in mainstream, maintained schools. Pupils of a wide range of ability and aptitude would benefit, with families on low incomes being offered free places. Will the Government now give consideration to some such arrangement?
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I said in my reply to my noble friend Lord Lucas that the focus of what the Government are doing is to attempt to raise the standards in the bulk of the maintained sector, so that more schools are able to achieve for their pupils the results that the most outstanding schools in the maintained sector are already delivering. That is our focus and some of these other ideas, interesting though they are, are not where our priorities lie.
Libraries
The Earl of Clancarty
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they will take to protect public libraries from closure.
Baroness Rawlings
My Lords, DCMS Ministers have taken a number of actions to oversee and promote the public library services provided by the local authorities, including writing to authorities to set out ideas that they might consider before closing front-line public library services. Arts Council England, too, has launched the libraries development initiative, which is funding projects to explore innovative ways of working to help shape a resilient vision for future public library services.
The Earl of Clancarty
My Lords, the Minister may be aware that the Public Libraries News website has recorded 121 libraries as having closed within the past 18 months, while over 600 more are currently threatened with closure. This Government have chosen to close libraries while they promote literacy, cross the digital divide and allow children to explore their natural love of reading. Is that a choice that they can defend?
Baroness Rawlings
My Lords, I know that the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, has a great interest in this and we all have sympathy for many of his views, but we are aware that some libraries have found difficulties in the present climate. To help libraries to become more efficient and successful in every way, the Government have transferred the MLA’s responsibility for libraries development to the Arts Council, which is working with local government associations on its new libraries development initiative. For the many noble Lords who are interested, a long list of projects that the Government have supported and which are receiving funding is available on the Arts Council website.
Baroness Bakewell
My Lords, are the Government aware that there are 250 literary festivals in this country and that the numbers are increasing? There is an appetite among people and children for more books than they can afford. How is the declared ambition for improved literacy among children to be achieved if libraries are closing?
Baroness Rawlings
My Lords, I am fully aware of the interest of the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, in libraries and children because we have discussed this several times, and I know that the literary festivals are mushrooming all over the country. Children’s literacy, as we have said before, is vital. We know how important it is for libraries not to close—we have a wonderful Library here—but robust data on the libraries sector are published annually by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy. It is a local government decision if libraries are closed.
Lord Jones of Birmingham
Can the Minister please comment on the fact that, due to the successive policies of Governments of all parties over many years, one in five adults in this country now cannot read to the standard expected of an 11 year-old? Governments of all parties have then expected business to go out and compete in a globalised economy with a workforce that is not fit for purpose. Will she please comment on the fact that libraries make a considerable contribution to enhancing literacy in the adult population at a time when we in business need all the help we can get?
Baroness Rawlings
The noble Lord, Lord Jones, makes a valid point. We are fully aware of the importance of literacy in schools. My noble friend has just confirmed that we are giving high priority to children’s literacy. We are all aware of the importance of libraries not just for books but as a social and peaceful space for people. People understand that this is not just about the facilities. Libraries also provide a lot of electronic information, but it all goes together. As I said, we are fully aware of the importance of libraries.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
In view of the concerns expressed, particularly by the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, who pointed out how many libraries are at risk, will the Minister tell me in what circumstances the Government will intervene to stop a library closing?
Baroness Rawlings
The Secretary of State has a primary duty under the 1964 Act, but he must also make certain that local authorities uphold their statutory duty to provide a comprehensive and efficient library service. If the Secretary of State thinks that a local authority has failed in that duty, he may call a local inquiry to investigate, but it will not be for solely financial reasons.
Lord Borrie
My Lords, in an earlier answer, the noble Baroness indicated that this is essentially a local government matter. However, does she not agree that under the Public Libraries and Museums Act, central government must ensure that local government does its job of providing an effective public library service properly?
Baroness Rawlings
The noble Lord, Lord Borrie, makes a very valid point. The terms “comprehensive and efficient” are not defined in the 1964 Act. However, broadly speaking, the Act requires local authorities to provide free of charge access for people who live, work or study in the area to borrow or refer to books, printed materials and pictures in line with their needs and requirements.
Lord Stoneham of Droxford
In view of the importance of libraries, have the Government any plans to update and review the 1964 Act?
Baroness Rawlings
The Government are building on the future libraries programme and the libraries development initiative, which is run by Arts Council England and is designed to test new approaches to the library service. In February 2012, Arts Council England and the Local Government Association awarded £230,000 to fund 13 library projects across England. At the moment, these difficulties are being looked into further.
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall
I will come to my question but I wish to make the point that at 8 o’clock this morning I was reading How to Catch a Star with my two year-old grandson. Does the Minister agree that for children who do not have the good fortune to have a number of books in their house, libraries are very important and that the issue is not just that there are enough of them when you take the country as a whole but that there are enough of them locally for the people who are least able to access transport and who are most likely not to go if the difficulty of getting to the library increases?
Baroness Rawlings
Yes, libraries are vital for children, as is their school, which also has books. Transport to get to libraries or to any other public places where children learn is, of course, of paramount importance.
Environment: Rio+20 Conference
Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they intend to promote the inclusion in the outcome document of the Rio+20 conference of a commitment to the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right.
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, the UK has long recognised the right to water as an element of the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living and is now in a position to support the inclusion of commitments to the right both to safe and clean drinking water and to sanitation as a human right in the Rio+20 outcome document.
Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead
I thank the Minister for his response to my Question. The focus from the Government is very much on water and there is little concentration on the importance of sanitation, but it is indispensible to public health and vital for human development. Does the Minister recognise that the lack of sanitation is a major cause of diarrhoeal disease, which is the second biggest killer of the world’s children? Against this background, will he tell me when the Government will conclude their exceedingly long review, join the majority of OECD countries, really acknowledge that sanitation is a human right and, at last, ratify the UN right to sanitation?
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, I thought that that was what I had just said. The right to sanitation is not specifically provided for under any of the international human rights treaties. The UK has therefore waited until it was satisfied that there was sufficient basis in international law to recognise the right without undermining the international human rights framework. While placing a high priority on improving sanitation in development terms, the UK has, I think understandably, been cautious about recognising new rights under international law—as, presumably, were the previous Government, who, while recognising the right to water in 2006, did not recognise the right to sanitation.
Lord Roberts of Llandudno
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his reply to the noble Baroness. Of course, we realise that every fifteen seconds a child will die of cholera. Emergencies arise and we need to respond to needs in various places. What do the Government have by way of a supply of water purification units and tablets in order to meet any emergency demands?
Lord De Mauley
I cannot give my noble friend a specific answer now, but I will write to him. On a more general basis, on 20 April, at the Sanitation and Water for All high-level meeting, the Secretary of State for International Development committed to doubling the UK’s ambitions on water, sanitation and hygiene to reach at least 60 million people by 2015.
The Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells
My Lords, I declare an interest as an ambassador for WaterAid and acknowledge that the Rio+20 conference in June followed the Johannesburg summit at which world leaders agreed that the current millennium development goals on sanitation remain substantially off-track in terms of global development targets. Can the Minister kindly give some further information on what the United Kingdom is doing to help to reverse this neglect, which kills more than 700,000 people a year, 90% of them children under five?
Lord De Mauley
There are a number of questions within the right reverend Prelate’s question. He referred to the millennium development goals. We are committed to those goals. There is also the question, of course, of the link between them and the sustainable development goals. It is important to look to the framework post-2015, to which we are paying a great deal of attention.
Baroness Hayman
My Lords, access to sanitation and clean water is obviously a crucial health issue. Does the Minister agree that it is also an important issue in regard to that great driver of development, girls’ education? Girls who have to spend their time going long distances to collect water, or girls who do not go to school because there is no adequate sanitation there, are disempowered and debarred from access to that crucial education.
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, that is a very important point. One of the key principles of the Government’s response to the global crisis of water and sanitation is to increase our focus on women and girls. Women are more likely to fetch water and are at risk without proper sanitation facilities. By improving access to water and sanitation, we will get more girls and women into school and keep them there.
Lord McColl of Dulwich
Does the Minister agree that one of the problems in Africa, where I work, is that when people dig a well they often stop the moment they reach water? The essential thing is to go on several feet deeper. The well will then survive. It is very important to train people to keep the well in good working order.
Lord De Mauley
I quite agree with my noble friend. Training is at least as important as the dropping of the well in the first place.
Lord Geddes
Does my noble friend agree that water is already, and will increasingly become, the most valuable commodity that the world has and that its conservation is vital?
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, the Government made a commitment in the Queen’s Speech to giving 0.7% of gross national income to the developing world. Have they planned to legislate for an ongoing commitment to give 0.7% of gross national income to the developing world?
Business of the House
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
That the debates on the Motions in the names of Lord Adonis and Baroness Jones of Whitchurch set down for today shall each be limited to 2½ hours.
Examiner of Petitions for Private Bills
The Chairman of Committees
That, pursuant to Private Business Standing Order 69, Mrs K S Lawrence be appointed an Examiner of Petitions for Private Bills in place of Mr T V Mohan.
Joint Committee on Human Rights
The Chairman of Committees
That Baroness O’Loan be appointed a member of the Joint Committee in place of Baroness Campbell of Surbiton, resigned.
Youth Unemployment
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Adonis
That this House takes note of the level of youth unemployment and its social consequences.
Lord Adonis
My Lords, in opening this debate on youth unemployment, I cannot help observing that we have two and a half hours to debate one of the most critical issues facing the country, which is one-10th of the 25 hours that the House has spent debating House of Lords reform in the past two months alone. Perhaps our priorities are not in quite the right order, or in the right proportion.
I doubt that many Members of the House deny the urgency of getting young people into jobs. A lost generation is in the making, which could scar Britain for decades to come. On this, I agree with the Deputy Prime Minister, who described youth unemployment as,
“a ticking time-bomb for the economy and our society”.
I also agree with what he said needed to be done, which is to get every unemployed young person earning or learning again before long-term damage occurs. The question for this debate is how far actions match words.
However you look at it, the situation is dire. There are 954,000 people under the age of 24 who are not in employment, education or training. Most concerning of all, 167,000 of those aged under 24 have been unemployed claimants for more than six months, a number that has more than doubled since last April, while 61,000 have been claiming for more than 12 months—a number that has more than trebled in the past year. Young people have fared far worse than older people in the severe downturn. We can debate why this is the case but for the young people affected this is not an academic debate, it is a personal catastrophe—an immediate source not only of low income but of low self-confidence, poor health, damaged relationships and often extreme social marginalisation, all of which only further harms their job prospects and adds to the cost of putting it all right. I doubt that your Lordships will dispute any of this. The question is what we do about it.
Of the analysis that I have read in recent months, I have been most impressed by the report of the Commission on Youth Unemployment, sponsored by ACEVO—the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations. It highlights three priorities. First, young people need more job opportunities to be available here and now. Secondly, young people need better preparation and motivation for work. There needs to be a new vision for what ACEVO calls,
“the ‘forgotten half’ of young people who are not destined for university or a high-quality apprenticeship post-16”.
Thirdly, unemployed young people need the support of a far more active welfare state to help them to get into work and to stay there.
Let me take these three priorities in turn. First, on more jobs, almost everyone accepts that stronger incentives are needed for employers to recruit more unemployed young people. The present Government, after first scrapping the previous Government’s future jobs fund, have now recognised the need to do more; hence, the new youth contract offering 160,000 wage subsidies of just over £2,000 each for new private and voluntary sector jobs given to long-term unemployed people over this year and the next two years.
The youth contract represents 53,000 work opportunities over the coming year, which, in the face of 167,000 young people who have been unemployed claimants for more than six months, is not that many, even if they are all created. However, 53,000 would be a start, so I would be grateful if the Minister would tell us precisely how many young people have so far this year been recruited by employers from the Work Programme and what is the Government’s projection for the rest of 2012?
Will the Minister also tell us what progress has been made in creating the 100,000 work experience places also promised for this year in the youth contract? I strongly support work experience placements, provided the young people are treated properly, but they are of short duration—as little as two or three weeks each—and are not, of course, a substitute for real jobs paying real wages.
My party believes that we need to go further than the youth contract; hence our proposed real jobs guarantee for the under 25 year-olds who are long-term unemployed. For those who are out of work for more than a year, there would be six months paid employment with the state providing a wage subsidy for 25 hours of work and the employer covering the cost of 10 hours of training a week. I look forward to hearing from the Minister whether, if the youth contract does not rapidly reduce the number of the long-term young unemployed, the Government will consider adopting the real jobs guarantee and the bankers’ bonus tax which makes it possible. I urge the Prime Minister and the Chancellor to do so sooner rather than later if their concern about the young unemployed is more than crocodile tears.
The second priority is to prepare people better for work. Schools and further education colleges have a big job to do in this respect. Even with the rise in school standards over recent years, four in 10 16 year-olds are still not getting five good GCSEs including English and maths, which is all important in terms of their employability. Professor Alison Wolf’s recent report on vocational education contains a startling fact. Of the four in 10 16 year-olds who do not get five good GCSEs including English and maths, only 4%—I repeat, 4%—attain GCSE level English and maths in any vocational education and training that they do afterwards. As Professor Wolf rightly says, English and maths should be the essential building blocks in whatever courses are taken by post-16 year-olds without basic skills. Urgent reform is needed here.
Better still of course would be for teenagers to get English, maths and a good general education while they are still at school. School standards are still not nearly high enough, particularly in the many hundreds of comprehensive schools where a majority of teenagers are still not leaving with essential GCSEs. That is the reason why the previous Government concentrated the academy programme on the lowest performing schools—to give them a “big bazooka”, in the words of the Prime Minister. I urge the Government to focus new academies and free schools in disadvantaged areas and to do more to support the recruitment of highly motivated teachers into such areas by, for example, expanding more rapidly than planned the excellent Teach First programme.
The education system also needs to promote technical disciplines far better. That is why I strongly support the university technical colleges proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Baker. They are academies for 14 to 19 year-olds, each with a technical specialism—ranging from engineering and construction to the digital media—and each sponsored and managed jointly by companies and universities.
Then there are apprenticeships. Everyone now talks the language of apprenticeships, which is a welcome change, and the Government cite very large numbers for new apprenticeship starts. However, if you scratch the surface you find that most new apprentices turn out to be in their late twenties and all too many of them existing employees renamed apprentices because of the Government’s rebadging of the Train to Gain employee training scheme as an apprenticeship scheme. Large numbers also turn out to be on short-term training courses of less than six months’ duration.
There is a real danger that apprenticeships are being dumbed down as fast as they are being created. How many 16 to 21 year-olds were last year in apprenticeships lasting more than a year that had both an employment and college-based component, and how many employers offered such apprenticeships in that year? Is the Minister’s own department giving a lead and offering apprenticeships? Does he by chance have an apprentice in his own office? When I was Minister, I did not—and, looking back, I should have done.
This is not just tokenism. Unless central and local government give a strong lead, they cannot complain if the private sector does not follow. Public procurement has an important part to play here. For example, Kent County Council makes the creation of apprentices a procurement condition for contracts worth more than £1 million, with at least one apprenticeship required per £1 million spent on labour. The first such contract was recently awarded to a company delivering highways maintenance which, as a result, will take on apprentices to cover at least 3% of its jobs. The company, fittingly, is called Enterprise. We need to seek far more enterprising companies of that type across England.
Unless good-quality apprenticeships for the under-21s, leading to good-quality jobs, become far more numerous, we will never have secure pathways to employment for teenagers who are not on track to go to university. As the ACEVO report says:
“If the route to university is a well-signposted motorway, the route into work for these 16-to-18-year-olds is more like an unmarked field of landmines”.
In this respect, I am attracted by ACEVO’s suggestion that we set up an equivalent of UCAS for apprenticeships, with employers, national and local, large and small, advertising their apprenticeships through a single web-based system. The aim would be for this to become as near as possible a universal listing service.
We also need more and better work experience for teenagers while at school, and systematic mentoring of young people by young people themselves, including those in work mentoring those out of work or on their way into it.
Thirdly, on the welfare system itself, the Minister is a respected champion of an active welfare system, one far more focused on helping people into work and mobilising organisations which are good at promoting this to do so instead of relying just on a state bureaucracy. Is he satisfied that the current system is remotely active enough in helping young people into work and training, particularly those who are clearly in danger of long-term unemployment, or only casual employment, because they have few qualifications and virtually no work experience? The Minister’s flagship reform is the work programme, providing intensive and tailored support for the long-term unemployed. I shall read out the description I have been given of young people’s eligibility to be included in the Work Programme. It says that,
“some will be referred on a mandatory basis after 9 months of claiming JSA … some will be referred on a mandatory basis after 3 months of claiming JSA (if they are 18 and were NEET for 6 months prior to starting to claim JSA, or if they claimed JSA for 22 of the past 24 months … some can be referred at the discretion of Jobcentre Plus after 3 months of claiming if they fall into particular categories (e.g. if they are care-leavers, or homeless) … some will be referred immediately after their Work Capability Assessment to determine whether or not they should be on ESA as opposed to JSA”.
So that is all clear then. More to the point, I doubt that it is at all clear to the young people who need this support, many of whom need it a good deal sooner than nine months after going on the dole, or after they have notched up 22 out of 24 months on the dole. I know that as part of the youth contract more support within Jobcentre Plus is being provided to the under-24s, but I would welcome the Minister’s views as to how intensive support can be given to young people who are clearly in danger of prolonged unemployment before they have been unemployed for the best part of a year.
These are all vital issues and I look forward to what other noble Lords have to say. I end on a personal note. When I was 18, in 1981, I went to sign on in my local unemployment benefit office, which was the former Camden Town workhouse. I had a few months to go before university and in those days students on holiday were allowed to sign on. However, as I was filling in my form, the manager spotted me, came over, and said to me, “Oi, you look as if you can read and write. How about a summer job working here?”. Within 10 minutes I was on the other side of the counter. I was given precisely 10 minutes training and 20 minutes later I was taking fresh claims. I spent that summer and all my university holidays thereafter working as a counter clerk in the Camden Town unemployment benefit office. This was a life course in bureaucracy and all its glories, but, more to the point, it was a life course in unemployment and all its evils. This was 1981, when unemployment went over 3 million. We had them queuing round the block to sign on, often taking six or seven hours simply to get through the queue—young and old, many of them were in tears as they told their stories. Virtually nothing was being done to help them. I hoped then that that situation would never happen again, but it is happening again; it is happening now. We all have a duty to see that the resources of the state are mobilised to the full to bring it to an end as soon as possible.
Lord Bates
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord. I congratulate him on securing this very important and timely debate. His moving story of how he secured his first employment reminded me of the vital importance of human intervention. We often deal in schemes, numbers and bureaucracy and forget that these are real people who can be excited and motivated.
My interest in the unemployed is exercised in a practical sense through my role as a patron of Tomorrow’s People in the north-east of England, which works with hard-to-reach young unemployed people and tries to inspire them to get into work. There is no doubt that it can make a profound difference to young people to interact with people who believe in them—perhaps they are the first people to do so—tell them that they can achieve things and that they are a solution rather than a problem. Work is going on as we speak in that body’s Working It Out programme, which is taking hard-to-reach young unemployed people in the north-east of England, who often come from households who have been unemployed for generations, and is getting 75% of them into employment or training. Given that those people often have no qualifications, I find that inspiring, as is the transformational effect on their self-confidence of starting employment or training, which the noble Lord also spoke of.
I also completely agree with the noble Lord’s analysis of the vital importance of education in this area and applaud the work that he did when he was an education Minister to promote the academies programme. I know he will find it every bit as frustrating as do current Ministers that often areas where there is greatest need are the last to get the quality of education that they require. It is all well and good saying, “Wouldn’t it be great if more free schools and academies went to the areas where they are most needed?”, but, having tried to set up an academy and a free school in an area where they are most needed in the north-east of England, I found that they were fought tooth and nail every inch of the way by dog-in-the-manger local education authorities and trade unions, which blocked their paths. I find it deeply frustrating to see people wring their hands while talking about the young unemployed but then deny them the education which could provide them with a pathway into employment.
I also very much respect the way that the debate was introduced because it recognised that youth unemployment has been a long-term trend, as was set out in the helpful briefing pack that we received for this debate from the House of Lords Library. Youth unemployment was not invented in May 2010; it has been rising steadily. As Demos says:
“Before the financial crisis hit, youth unemployment had already been on the rise. In fact, UK youth unemployment has risen … as a share of total unemployment for the past 20 years”.
It also observes that from January to March this year the rate was 1.7% lower than the previous year. That is an important point. Although 1.02 million young people being unemployed is a tragedy, we must remember that before the last election the figure was 923,000 and on a rising track. Thankfully, that figure is now beginning to come down just a little, although of course not fast enough.
I want to devote my contribution to what is happening in the north-east of England. I think that there is something else missing from the debate here. It is more than a scheme or a government grant; it is telling young people that there are opportunities out there if they search for them and are willing to push for them. Before the last election, the north-east suffered a series of blows to employment, with the job losses at Nissan and the shelving of the Hitachi trains order. I know that the noble Lord, as Secretary of State, argued vigorously with his friends at the Treasury over that order, but it was shelved. That was followed by the closure of the Corus steel plant. However, over the past couple of years, we have seen the reopening of the plant; we have seen Nissan recruit 2,000 people directly or through the supply chain, and we have seen the £4.5 billion Hitachi trains order go ahead, and that will create 1,000 jobs in Newton Aycliffe. In recent weeks, we have seen Offshore Group Newcastle announce 1,000 new jobs building foundations for wind farms. Moreover, over the past year the number of jobs in the accommodation and food services sector in the north-east has increased by 9,000, up by 12.8%; jobs in science and technology in the north-east have increased by 8,000, or 13.6%; and the number of jobs in the arts and entertainment have increased by 22.4%.
I make those points not in any way to diminish the fact that there is a very serious problem but to stress that if we drum into young people that there are no opportunities, the situation is absolutely dire and there is no hope, we should not be surprised to find that that is the world view they take, asking themselves, “What is the point of applying?”. There are things happening.
Government have a role in this. It is not just about what the private sector is doing; the Government have a role and a social responsibility, and that is referred to in the title of this debate. I would argue that they are exercising that role in a number of ways. As the ACEVO report mentioned, what we need more than anything else is job opportunities—we need businesses to create more jobs. Therefore, it is very important that we see things such as corporation tax being reduced from 26% to 24% and then to 22%, and the freezing of business rates, and it is important that new start-up companies will not have to pay national insurance contributions for the first year when taking young people out of unemployment. These things make a difference. We have seen £1 billion going into the Youth Contract. In addition, the regional growth fund has invested £157 million in the north-east of England, with 33% of the projects that the fund has committed to being in the north-east. Get Britain Building was a programme announced in the Budget, with £28 million invested in the north-east, delivering 750 homes and supporting more than 1,500 jobs in the construction industry.
The north-east is home to two of the enterprise zones. Of course, there is also the element of making work opportunities—particularly low-paid work opportunities—attractive to young people. Raising the tax thresholds, which has taken 84,000 north-east people out of paying tax altogether, is making those positions more competitive and giving people a better wage than was the case before those thresholds were raised. We have seen the number of apprenticeships in the north-east rise by 87% in the previous year—up from 18,510 to 34,550. There is absolutely no doubt that more can be done, but my argument is that a lot is being done and the picture is not as dark as it is sometimes painted in the media. There are opportunities out there and we ought to encourage people to realise their dreams and use the full talents that they have been given.
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, I draw noble Lords’ attention to the fact that Back-Bench contributions are time-limited to 7 minutes.
Lord Bhattacharyya
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Adonis for securing this debate. As a former apprentice school governor, I declare my interest as chairman of Warwick Manufacturing Group and of being involved in industry all my adult life. This subject is very close to my heart.
My noble friend has set out the scale of the crisis. To take just one example, last year saw a 15% increase in long-term youth unemployment. It would be easy and largely justified to blame the Government for that increase, yet youth unemployment is not only a matter of fiscal policy and Work Programme funding. Young people in Britain are particularly exposed because of the structure of the British economy. We know this because youth unemployment was rising well before the financial tsunami.
Britain’s youth unemployment rate increased by a quarter in the three years to 2007, while the economy grew, so for long-term solutions we should perhaps look to countries that have low youth unemployment in good times and bad. Where do they focus? They focus on preparing young people for work. That is where we fail. We abolished our vocational technical colleges with the best of intentions. As technical colleges became universities, many lost their focus on employability for all. Vocational sub-degree courses went and work placements vanished. That was the wrong path to take.
We should look instead at fast-growing Brazil, where the number of students at technical colleges has quadrupled in 10 years, with one in four students doing a degree. Today, the Brazilian Government are building 150 more technical colleges. In Germany, the dual system of vocational education means companies pay to train the young, so they can hire the best workers after they get their Berufsabschluss. For Britain, the best example is perhaps Japan where youth unemployment has stayed incredibly low, even in the “lost decade”. Japanese technical colleges—the senmon gakko—educate a fifth of all school leavers in vocational courses. Tuition at senmon gakko costs more than in most universities, yet many students take a vocational course alongside their degree, such is their value in getting a job.
At secondary level, technical kosen schools which take students to higher education on a vocational path are massively oversubscribed. Both kosen and senmon gakko graduates have outstanding employment rates. In contrast, we in Britain fail too many young people not on track to “traditional” higher education. Employers report low basic skills and young people are too often left with qualifications of little value. I know that the company Jaguar Land Rover with which I am very closely involved cannot get youngsters to go there.
We have discussed this for 30 years and more, yet far too little has changed. As in Japan, we need better technical education at both secondary and post-16 levels. Of course, schools must first give all pupils the essential foundations of technical education, literacy, numeracy and science. We should also encourage innovation in technical education in university technical colleges, which my noble friend Lord Adonis talked about. I am delighted that we will have a university technical college in Warwick, but Britain needs more like it; we should have hundreds of them.
Next, we must transform vocational education after 16. There is huge demand for skills that are worth something in the jobs market. Young people apply for quality apprenticeships in huge numbers, but we have far too many useless skills providers. An easy way to make money is to set up as a training company, latch on to a funding body and provide some low-level vocational “qualification”. Sadly, we saw examples of this during the jubilee. To stop this, the Wolf report proposal of letting funding follow students rather than courses will reduce incentives to offer confetti qualifications.
Finally, we must introduce the values of the Japanese senmon gakko into all our higher and further education colleges. We need more flexibility, more modularity and more integration between courses and the jobs market. Some may protest at the factory floor arriving in the groves of academe. However, a law degree from Cambridge is also part of a well rounded vocational education. For apprentices as well as lawyers, vocational education must be a path to the top, not a dead end.
Young people are ambitious. We must be with them and create a route from apprentice to doctorate. I am a graduate. I did my apprenticeship and then a doctorate, which was paid for by the company that I worked for. Sadly, we see too many examples of where the Government have failed in this area. There have been many courses. I blame industry, too. It whinges left, right and centre that we do not have enough skills, but it should pay for them. In my case, industry paid. In all other countries, it pays. Of course, the Government must help.
Lord Roberts of Llandudno
My Lords, I, too, appreciate being able to take part in this debate, initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. What has struck me already is that we are all thinking in the same way. We are dreaming the same dreams and talking of young people not as statistics but as people with a personality, talents and skills that they can contribute to society. We are thinking about a generation of young people throughout the world who are without jobs and without a purpose in life. This can be a catastrophe not only for them but for society. I know from studying statistics on the Welsh valleys that with a high level of unemployment your level of health goes down, your dreams for young people change, and your whole attitude to society changes. We need to tackle this in a serious, cross-party way. I am glad that there has been no tribal discussion this morning.
The growth in youth unemployment between 2007 and 2012 was mentioned. It has occurred not only in the UK. In Denmark it is up from 7.1% to 15.1%; in the United States from 11.7% to 16.4%; in Poland from 18.5% to 26.7%; and in Spain from 19% to 51%. The problem is worldwide. In the UK it rose from 13.6% to 21.9%. We can see that the growth began before any talk of recession.
We can also see that unemployment is spread unevenly across the United Kingdom. The north-east has twice as many people out of work as the south-west. Birmingham has many areas where more than 20% of the population are out of work. In one constituency in Scotland, which happens to be held by the Liberal Democrats, only 1.2% of people are unemployed. There are dramatic differences. In Merthyr Tydfil and the Rhondda valleys, unemployment always touches 20%. It is unevenly distributed.
Areas that have already suffered from unemployment—I think of the Welsh valleys in the 1930s, where unemployment sometimes reached 40% or 50%—are again those that have been most affected. I suggest that one thing we could do is target areas in greatest need and make them areas of action on youth unemployment. We should target many resources to those areas.
Noble Lords have already mentioned the way in which structural unemployment in the UK has grown. In 2006 it was 13.6%, in 2010 it was 19.6% and today it is nearly 23%. This is a structural matter. I welcome the Government’s initiatives, but in a way they are like Elastoplast; they are not launching a big operation to treat a major need. Whichever Government take over at the next election, they will face the same problem of structural unemployment. Now is the time for us to forget party differences and for all of us to work together on this; otherwise we will be faced with a dilemma that could lead to serious consequences.
I think that I welcome the increase in the retirement age to 67 from 65. It does not affect me any longer, but it will create less opportunity for the younger age group to find work. Can we not have legislation that eases people out of work? When I was 65, I thought that I still had a few good years to go. Could we not reduce older people’s working hours to ease them out of employment while, at the other end, allowing youngsters to be tapered into it? Those who have many years experience in their job could mentor the young people entering that job market.
About a month ago I was with the Deputy Prime Minister in Llandudno at a meeting with apprentices. When we asked the apprentices what kind of careers guidance they had received in their schools, I was astonished to see that there was a thumbs down in nearly every instance. Careers guidance needs to be tightened. I know that there is legislation proposing to do that, but I would also like to ask the Minister how well we are doing in improving careers guidance so that youngsters are treated as people and not as statistics. When they go to Jobcentre Plus they should not be faced by some kind of mechanism or by the internet but by a person who takes an interest in them. Careers guidance should be there for them not only for their first job but for the years to come. It should be a lifelong experience of learning and talking over their problems, because people change and develop various skills and aptitudes as life goes on.
I have mentioned in this Chamber before that we need to have a Minister dedicated to tackling youth unemployment. Many strands need to be gathered together: the Department for Work and Pensions as regards retirement, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Department for Education and the devolved Administrations. We need to introduce a co-ordinated approach where everyone, perhaps under one Minister, can talk together and say, “Yes, we can bring those strands together more effectively than we do at present”.
I urge the Minister to agree that we should go for one Minister and establish action areas to tackle youth unemployment. We should consider easing in at the younger end and easing out at the older end. We should also ensure that personal skills and careers advice is given to youngsters so that they can look forward to a career that makes the best use of their talents and therefore contributes to the well-being of every one of us.
The Lord Bishop of Chester
My Lords, I gladly support what has been said in the debate so far. I particularly pay tribute to the brilliant way in which the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, introduced the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Roberts, is a Methodist minister and I hope that he will not find anything tribal in my contribution from these Benches. Indeed, at one point he might even find me singing the same hymn to the same tune, which will be wonderful.
I wish to approach the issue in not quite the same way as other noble Lords have so far but simply from its moral dimension. I shall try to tease out how to approach it in that way. Nurturing the next generation is arguably the most important task and challenge facing any society. Of course, this does not apply only to humankind but is true throughout the created world. In the animal kingdom it is rather hard-wired. One has to think only of the way in which a mother bird or a lioness will defend its young, or the incredible feats that birds undertake to migrate to their proper breeding grounds. As I say, it is hard-wired into the rest of the animal kingdom.
One of the problems of being human is that we have an ability to override our hard-wiring in a way that is not open to those who do not have the precious commodity of human freedom. Let me put this in terms which may resonate here and there in the Chamber. We have been placed in the garden of paradise, but we have eaten of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I could be tempted to add, “and there is no helping us”, but I shall leave that thought on the tip of my tongue. Let me put it in different terms. Human life, uniquely in the created world, for all its glory and beauty, is prone to a certain dislocation that is unique to human society. Nature red in tooth and claw is complicated for us by the moral possibilities, or indeed immoral possibilities, that human beings have uniquely to confront. That can produce the Mother Teresa, the Gandhi and the Mandela, or it can produce the Hitler, the Stalin and the Pol Pot in equal measure. I say this because I believe that the phenomenon of youth unemployment presents at its heart a moral challenge. Of course it has social and economic aspects on which we will probably concentrate in the debate, but unless it is regarded first and foremost as a moral challenge, I suspect that what we come up with will tend to be superficial, sticking-plaster solutions.
I shall address two of the moral dimensions which are quite tricky to get right, and I should like to hear the Minister’s response to these two issues at the end of the debate. The first is what I would call intergenerational equity, a point just touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Roberts. Let us not underestimate the great change that has happened. The younger generation of today is facing a much more difficult time than my generation did. This is a reversal after several generations where the younger generation had it easier than the preceding one. We have now gone backwards. When I left university 43 years ago—incidentally, at the same time and place as the Minister—the thought did not occur to me that there would not be a job when I graduated. It simply was not on our radar. How times have changed since then. The thought that, in my 20s, I might have to go back to my parental home because there was nowhere else to live would hardly have occurred to me then. Given the reversal we face today, life is tough for the younger generation in a unique way.
My question is this: does the older generation, my generation, feel a responsibility towards the younger generation to do whatever needs to be done to address and alleviate the deep social evil of large-scale youth unemployment? I return to the issue of the retirement age. I understand entirely the reasons for abolishing compulsory retirement ages, but as we have heard, there is a certain conflict between doing that and having a society with large-scale youth unemployment. Ideally, of course, there would be no conflict, but rights often have to be balanced. Indeed, the term “right” has an absolute sound to it and we do not think that it must be qualified and balanced against other rights. If we were in a period of good and steady economic growth, perhaps I would not be too anxious on this point, but if we are in a period of endemic low growth, my fear is that the rights we give to older people to work as long as they like comes into conflict with the proper needs of the younger generation. How, as a society, do we address this?
Other societies deal with this in their own ways. In other parts of the Anglican communion, young people are simply found work within the extended family—the village community—so it is managed. I know of communities in this country where young people in a particular ethnic group or community are found work, because that is what the community does through the ethos of the extended family. We seem to have lost that, so how do we gather it back as a society nationally? We are facing a very difficult issue.
My second and concluding moral question concerns what I call international equity—equity between nations—and I refer here to the free movement of labour within the European Union. Again, I am entirely in favour of it in principle, but because of the role of English in the international world now, there will tend to be more people wanting to exercise the right to work in England than in some other countries. That is simply the way the world is. What happens, then, if there is serious competition for jobs with our own young people raised in this country? What research is being undertaken to look at this problem, to see whether it is a problem and, if so, how to address it? We cannot simply carry on thinking that it is too difficult an issue to confront.
I will end where the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, ended, with vacation jobs. One of the tragedies today is that there are so few of those sorts of jobs available to students and other people just to get some experience of work. In my generation, we all learned so much from that sort of work, getting our foot on the ladder. In my case, it was being a dustman. It was the easiest thing to do: work for six weeks emptying the bins and then with the money I would go and have a holiday. I spent six months of my life being a dustman. It taught me a great deal—and language I do not use much these days. No doubt the Minister will have his own story to tell.
Lord Wood of Anfield
My Lords, the current downturn has now lasted longer than not only the recession and slow recovery of the early Thatcher years but the great depression of the 1930s. In both these previous cases, GDP—national growth—had returned to its pre-recession level by the 50th month, just over four years after the onset of the decline. However, today, in June 2012, UK GDP is still more than 4% below the level at the beginning of 2008. As well as the short-term impact on living standards and jobs, this depression, which is what I think it is, will create numerous problems, as we all know, for public finances, living standards, skills and business prospects. But surely primary among the concerns that we all have for the legacy impact of this depression is the effect on youth unemployment.
There is a traditional pattern to the debate about unemployment. Those who prioritise economic efficiency tend to caricature those with a concern about the human cost and the social consequences of unemployment as utopian bleeding hearts who do not have the interests of a strong, dynamic economy to the fore. Meanwhile, those concerned with the unemployed and their life chances tend to caricature their opponents as heartless Dickensians putting the interests of business above the interests of working people and their families. If there is a choice between caricatures, noble Lords will not be surprised to hear that my own sympathies tend to the latter, but both views strangely converge on a separation between the economic dimension of unemployment and the social and personal dimension.
I do not believe that this separation makes sense because the evidence strongly confirms that prolonged periods of unemployment not only have severe and long-term consequences for the individuals affected but are very bad for our economy as well. Labour mobility, including occasional transitional phases of unemployment, is of course a necessary lubricant to structural change in a dynamic economy, but seeing large-scale and sustained unemployment, particularly among young people, as a necessary price for the rebalancing of the economy, raising productivity, containing inflation or incentivising greater effort is just plain wrong. It is an economic mistake, it is not supported by evidence, and it is not just prompted by a lack of compassion.
Other people in this debate have talked, and I am sure will talk, about the considerable human and social cost of youth unemployment. For example, there is now overwhelming evidence that prolonged spells of worklessness are linked to significant increases in rates of suicide, cancer and divorce. There is also a transmission effect across generations; we know that unemployment among adults has been shown to have an effect in reducing the earnings of their children when they enter the workforce later. These considerations alone should give us cause to prioritise youth unemployment more than I fear is being done at the moment, whether in good or bad economic times, but I would like to spend three or four minutes looking at the economic effects of unemployment, which are often cited, wrongly I think, in mitigation against the social and personal effects.
From a macroeconomic point of view, the current economic crisis is a curiosity on the unemployment front because the labour market performed relatively well during the initial contraction in 2008-09. In that period, the recession inflicted a fall in GDP of about 6%, which was far worse than that in the recessions of the 1980s and 1990s, with a full six quarters of falling output. However, whereas in the previous two recessions the fall in employment was broadly in line with the fall in GDP, in this recession, the fall in employment has been much less, at around 2%.
The worrying side of unemployment is this: although the rise in unemployment has been less than might have been expected initially, large-scale unemployment has persisted far longer than previous recessions would lead you to expect. In the 1990s, Britain came out of recession at the end of 1991 and unemployment started to fall six quarters later. However, in this downturn we came out of recession in autumn 2009, but nine quarters later unemployment had continued to rise, to 8.4%. This was even before Britain entered a double-dip recession.
Unemployment has risen among all age groups, especially in the past 18 months. This is the result not just of economic stagnation but of policy change. The youth labour market has performed particularly badly in the most recent downturn, rising from 14% to 20%, then stabilising in the middle of last year, before deteriorating further and rising to 22%.
What are the economic effects of this? One consequence of prolonged high levels of unemployment is an increase in the rate of structural unemployment in an economy. We know that shocks that increase unemployment affect the structural rate of unemployment more the longer they persist.
Secondly, far from promoting more efficient labour markets, workers with a history of unemployment—in young people’s case, with little or no history of employment—are often offered less secure jobs because they lose valuable work experience or skills while they are unemployed, or because their unemployment experience is seen by employers as a signal that they are not good enough or are low-productivity workers. Youth unemployment takes people off the ladder of skill and career progression, or away from means that they can never get on to it.
Thirdly, economic evidence suggests that unemployed workers may lower the wages that they think they can get as time passes and accept poorer-quality jobs that are more likely to be eliminated, and so are more likely to experience further unemployment. Repeat spells of unemployment go hand in hand with jobs that are low paid and unstable.
Fourthly, we know that entry into the working population at the start of a recession is more than just bad luck; the longer you spend unemployed or economically inactive in your youth, the greater the prospect of longer periods of unemployment later in life. On average, each one of the quarter of a million or so young people who have currently been unemployed for more than a year will spend around a further year in unemployment and a further year in economic inactivity in the near future.
Lastly, we also know that a wage effect casts a shadow into young people's futures. As well as reducing employment prospects, youth unemployment means lower future wages than you would otherwise expect. Research suggests that someone who has had a spell of unemployment of more than a year in their early years of work will have average pay at the age of 42 that is more than £7,000 less than that of someone who has not suffered unemployment.
These considerations destroy the idea that what may be painful for individuals is beneficial for our society or economy, that the short-term transition impact of unemployment may somehow be a necessary adjustment for long-term efficiency, and that what is suboptimal from a social point of view is optimal from an economic point of view. It is depressing to hear people argue that youth unemployment is down to young people’s reluctance to take jobs. That is a misunderstanding of the economics of the moment. I find it more depressing still to hear the argument that, when it comes to unemployment, there is a choice between what is in our collective economic interest and what is in the interests of the more vulnerable in our labour market. Unemployment is not medicine; it is a sign that something is going wrong.
Baroness Sherlock
My Lords, I commend the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, on an incredibly impressive start to the debate. In case there is a noble Lord present whom I have not bored on the subject, I should declare that I serve as a member of the small, cross-party Riots Communities and Victims Panel, which published its final report in March 2012. We are still awaiting the promised government response, which will be any day now, I am sure.
In touring riot-hit spots around the country, we asked people why they thought the riots happened. Lack of opportunities for young people came up everywhere we went. I do not for a moment posit any simplistic causal link between youth unemployment and rioting, but the issue was raised so often that we felt as a panel that we had to look into youth unemployment alongside other issues, so we looked at the various steps that are being taken and the schemes that are being used to help young people into work, and made a series of recommendations.
With regard to the Government’s Work Programme, the panel questioned whether the payment structure built in enough incentive to those providing it to work with the most difficult cases. We were concerned that, for example, if someone was an entrenched NEET, to use that term, and the provider had not managed to get them into work after a significant period, there was not much incentive to carry on working with or investing resources in them. That suggested that targeted intervention was needed. The panel recommended that there should be a joint central and local government intervention after someone was unemployed for a year and that any claimant still unemployed after two years on the Work Programme should be offered a guaranteed job and additional support. There was a clear feeling that people should not be parked on the Work Programme and not moved on. My view is that we should intervene far earlier than that, but that was the shared view.
There are various ways to guarantee someone a job. The most common ones that we hear about are wage subsidies or incentives for employers, but I also want to highlight the use of intermediate labour markets. During my time as an adviser in the Treasury, I spent many happy hours discussing the cost/benefits of intermediate labour markets with officials, and I suspect that the Minister may have had similar experiences. I have always been rather a fan of ILMs, but as I am sure the Treasury has pointed out to the Minister, they are expensive and times are tough.
However, if we look at both sides of the account book, as my noble friend Lord Wood showed us so eloquently we begin to see the extent of the economic problem caused by having so many young people not in education, training or employment. For example, it is estimated that the cohort of 2008 NEETs will cost the UK economy £22 billion and the taxpayer £13 billion over their lifetimes. In three local authority areas alone, the estimated direct cost to support just 1,989 NEETs for one year is £14.8 million: almost £7,500 each. The extra costs to the public purse—for example, through benefit claims, crime or mental health-related issues—were estimated at another £40 million.
In other words, the costs of inaction are extremely high. ILMs have been shown to work well. Research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that, properly managed, ILM programmes can deliver more sustained progression from welfare to work than other programmes for the long-term unemployed. More than 90% who get a job are still in work after six months, compared with just 40% in other programmes, and their longer-term earnings tend to be higher. An evaluation of ILMs in Australia found that the benefits consistently outweighed the programme costs.
My second point is the regional dimension touched on by the noble Lords, Lord Roberts and Lord Bates. The touching optimism and commendable positivity of the noble Lord, Lord Bates, notwithstanding, my experience in my home town of Durham is that there is considerable unemployment among young people and considerable fear about the future. There is a growing challenge: as young people still in school look at their older brothers and sisters leaving school and not getting jobs, it becomes even harder to persuade them to stay on and work through to their full potential.
Has the Minister seen the latest edition of the Northern Economic Summary from IPPR North, which showed that the number of NEETs is highest in the north of England, at 19%, compared with just 16% in England on average. Furthermore, the amount of time people are spending on JSA is increasing. Almost half those claiming JSA in the north have been doing so for more than six months, with the average length of time for which people are claiming benefits more than double what it was during the 2008-09 recession. That goes to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Wood, about the risks of the depth of unemployment this time around and the consequences for the economy as well as the individual.
IPPR North suggested that unless targeted measures are introduced to help young people urgently, the gap between the north and other regions in the number of NEETs is likely to carry on growing. Interestingly, its solution was not dissimilar to that reached by the riots panel. It concluded that the Government should offer a guaranteed job paid at the minimum wage or above to anyone who has been unemployed and claiming JSA for more than 12 consecutive months. It proposed that the guarantee should be matched by an obligation to take up the job or to find an alternative that does not involve claiming JSA. It suggested introducing that on a targeted basis: for example, for people living in areas where the job density ratio is twice the national average.
Many noble Lords have commented that there is potential cross-party agreement in this area. Certainly we can agree on one thing about youth unemployment—we are all against it, but we would like a step beyond that from the Minister. I want to hear a sense of urgency in tackling the problem. There is always the risk that we feel that unemployment is always there, but the noble Lord, Lord Wood, made the case that it has not always been here on this scale. If we go back to the situation of the 1980s, as described by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, the country as a whole will suffer considerably.
The economic case for action has been made. I also agree with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester that there is a moral case. For me, it is simple; the core job of government is to so order society as to enable its citizens to flourish. I spend too much time going around the country meeting young people who, by the age of 19 or 20, already feel that they have no choice, that their life course is set and that they will never achieve the kind of things that other people took for granted. It is up to us today, and I want the Minister to take a lead. What steps will the Government take to ensure that those young people have hope and that we as a country can live with the consequences of our policies?
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, on obtaining this important debate and for the way in which he introduced it, which reflects entirely the motivation and determination he showed when he was a Minister in the education department.
While echoing many of the things that have been said around the House, I want to think outside the box. I do so because what has been said recently, particularly in connection with the riots, has stimulated three questions which have been in my mind for a long time. They are unconnected, but one was particularly stimulated by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham in our recent debate on the report on the riots. I have long believed that the only raw material that every nation has in common is its people, and woe betide it if it does not do everything it can to identify, nurture and develop the talents of all its people, because unless it does so, it has only itself to blame if it fails. That is a burden on all of us, not just our educators.
The second question refers to a visit that I paid to the Indian Army in 1973, including the state of Orissa in East India. That evening, we had an audience with the very impressive governor of the province. I said to her that I had noticed, driving around Orissa, that I had not seen a single agricultural machine, all I had seen were people with hoes and spades. She said: “You tell me which is best. Is it best to have machines producing more than you can use; or is it better to have everyone in employment?”. It is a question I have never been able to answer.
The third question refers to when I was commanding Belfast between 1978 and 1980. During that time, I used to see a great deal of a very interesting politician called Paddy Devlin, one of the founders of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, who was imprisoned in the 1950s as a member of the IRA but was a very distinguished Minister of Health in the short-lived power-sharing executive in 1974. During that time, there was a proposal that a car factory should be developed by a firm called DeLorean on the interface between the Catholic and Protestant areas, employing people from both sides, but the Catholics did not have a tradition of working with metals in that sort of industry. The Government established an employment centre in Turf Lodge, in the heartland of Catholic west Belfast, to start training people to get jobs in the DeLorean factory. That was objected to by the IRA, who sent in the 10 year-olds to try to burn it. They failed, so the 14 year-olds were put in. They did not do it, but the 16 year-olds made a much better job of it, which left a derelict site which I then took over as a base.
During that time, I had a long talk with Paddy about unemployment in the area, because I was concerned that there was nothing for people other than that. He explained to me that one reason why the IRA burned the DeLorean training centre was because it did not want people to be employed. He said that a man wants to earn enough money to feed, clothe and house his family, to have a holiday and, occasionally, to change the wallpaper. If society produces that, he will support it. If society does not, he will not. If there was therefore a possibility of that happening and driving people away from the IRA, it wished to bring them back in. At the same time, Paddy asked me if I knew how many unemployed there were in that part of west Belfast. I said that I did not but that I would try to find out, so for July 1979 we counted all the men of employable age and what they did during that time. We found that the unemployment rate was about 80%. I mentioned this to Paddy and he said, “I would not have been surprised if it was 90%”.
To echo very much what the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, said, it is therefore terribly important that instead of taking figures which represent an average over a whole area, we should identify hotspots. This brings me to there having been some figures in the report on the riots which struck me as being very important. They were perceptions: the 83% who felt that youth unemployment was a problem in their area and the 71% who felt that there were insufficient opportunities for young people. Only 22% felt that public services were doing enough.
In that climate, we then find talk of youth contracts, payment by results, career support guarantees, youth job promises and apprenticeship programmes but I am bound to ask: for what? Are the jobs actually there which can be operated by the young people to whom we are promising all these guarantees, supports, results and so on? Have we ever analysed exactly what the situation really is in terms of the availability of jobs? We live in an era when, as one found in Orissa, machines are taking over from men and labour-saving is the phrase, so where are these jobs? I ask that because it is hugely important that the Government should establish precisely what the job situation is going to be before making all these promises. There is nothing worse than to make promises that are totally incapable of being kept, particularly to the young. With the disillusioned young, they will lose not only this generation but other generations for the future.
Lord Giddens
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Adonis on having secured this debate and on introducing it in such a lucid and compelling way. To quote him, I say, “Oi! I would give you a job any time”, although my noble friend has held a lot of interesting jobs.
As the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, said, youth unemployment is a gigantic problem across the world. In the Middle East and north African countries, more than 90% of young people aged 16 to 24 are not in work. A high proportion of those young people are NEETS or, as they like to say in continental countries, ninis—neither in education nor work. Ninis is a slightly more compact way of putting it. Indeed, youth unemployment was one of the sources of the Arab spring, as we know. Twenty per cent of young people in the EU are ninis and, as has been mentioned and as is very familiar, the problem is especially acute in Spain.
I ask noble Lords to remember that measuring unemployment is very complex. Sometimes it is better to measure by rates but often it is better to measure by absolute numbers, as long as you factor in population growth and so forth. It is very important to be precise about the statistics that one is using. However, these statistics clearly show that in a global society, there is a structural problem of enormous significance with potentially long-term consequences. To summarise what other noble Lords have already said, it could be said that youth today, in industrial countries and in the UK, faces a perfect storm. I will mention three factors here.
First, this recession—it may be a depression, as my noble friend Lord Wood said—is no ordinary recession. It seems, to me anyway, to be in some part a crisis of competitiveness in western countries as a whole, which will be very difficult to repair and which will demand large-scale restructuring. There are no easy options for us here any longer and the processes of reconstruction will bear heavily on young people, even if only on the “last in, first out” principle.
Secondly, as the right reverend Prelate mentioned, the older generation now has a stranglehold on resources—for example, in the housing market or, in future, pensions. My source is in some part The Pinch by David Willetts MP, an interesting discussion of intergenerational inequality. Younger people are bound to struggle in such a situation. It implies that we must have greater intergenerational equality. I would dispute to some degree what the right reverend Prelate said about early retirement ages because countries that have those, such as the southern countries in Europe, also tend to have high levels of youth unemployment while countries in the north that have a very high proportion of older people in employment, such as Finland, also have low rates of youth unemployment. Those things are not necessarily oppositional.
Thirdly, it is very important that a major part of what restructuring will involve is that fundamental changes are happening in labour markets. There is a leap in the levels of job destruction, primarily as a result of the impact of IT and automation, as has just been mentioned. The lifespan of an average medium-sized firm today is only about one third of what it was in the 1970s and therefore young people today will face a very volatile job market. For that reason, I have some reservations about apprenticeships—at least, in how they should be structured—because life skills and adaptability are likely to be as important as technical skills. We just do not know when a technical skill will become obsolete. It could happen almost overnight as it did, for example, in the printing industry some years ago.
The level of youth unemployment in this country is lower than in many other EU countries but, as the noble Lord is especially prone to say, if you measure it in absolute terms its increase is perhaps not as great as some critics argue. However, it would be a great mistake to try to normalise these statistics because young people are going to face the very demanding structural conditions that I have just mentioned. For these reasons, the crisis is too deep to be addressed simply by active labour market measures. I am not necessarily against the youth contract, the Work Programme and so forth—they are mostly continuations of new Labour policy under other names anyway—but those are really palliatives, even if a lot of money is spent on them.
I have three questions for the Minister. Macrostructural intervention is likely to be far more important but here the Government’s cupboard is worryingly bare and their policies on job generation are alarmingly weak. First, where will new net jobs come from? In this country we have, as it were, a primitive policy of deregulation which I do not think any other country in the world is following today. Surely more active collaboration between government and business is needed, as are more long-term planning and a more active industrial policy than the Government have.
Secondly, how will the Government confront inequality of a structural nature, which has a massive impact on long-term youth unemployment, and what is their position on the need to further reduce child poverty where, after all, new Labour has been pretty successful? I am in favour of a tax that would switch from the very rich to the very poor. That is a sensible and, now, a feasible idea.
Finally, the Government should be boosting numbers in higher education rather than cutting back. Countries in the southern rim—Spain and so forth—have about 40% in higher education, like us. Successful countries such as Germany or the Scandinavian countries have 53% to 60%, which has the dual function of keeping people out of the labour market and getting them into jobs. I welcome the Minister’s comments on these points.
Lord McFall of Alcluith
My Lords, I am privileged to participate in this debate. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Adonis on his compelling and lucid exposition of the problem and the way forward. As my noble friend Lord Giddens said, this is a complex problem, and we have to see it in the wider context of inequality and global unemployment. According to ILO figures, there are 75 million unemployed people aged between 18 and 25. The first thing the Government should do is to look again at growth. That has been missing from this agenda, and it is very important that we look at it.
There have been recessions in the 1980s, the 1990s and now. After each recession, youth unemployment went up, but since this recession youth unemployment—those without work and not in education—has increased by 232,000. Mention has been made of the Labour Government’s target to eliminate child poverty by 2020. That was not fully achieved, but the figures today show that 900,000 young people have been taken out of poverty. That is a cause for some celebration, but there is much to do. I suggest that the Government copy the Labour Government’s 2020 target for child poverty by having a similar target for youth unemployment. The first priority should be to reduce it to pre-recession levels using jobcentres. The Labour Government used jobcentres, when they were revamped, very well to get people into employment. Establishing a youth employment and skills service would be very important in that area.
The Government need to be mindful of the welfare cuts of £2 billion that took place on Good Friday this year. There has been talk of an extra £10 billion of welfare cuts. It is very important that the Minister says that that will not happen, because the cuts that have taken place have already affected low-income families and people looking for jobs. Today’s Daily Telegraph reports the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions saying: “Get a job, IDS tells parents on dole; Working at least 35 hours a week is only way to lift children out of poverty”. We agree, so we are looking for government proposals to see how that is done. The overriding message today has to be that it is not the private sector that is going to do this. We are facing massive deleveraging. As the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, said, this recession is going to take many years to sort out. We are talking about a decade or more, so a government initiative and an active welfare state are very important.
The Government could illustrate their commitment on that by ensuring that each government department—indeed, each government Minister—has a number of such young people. If the Prime Minister were seen coming out of Downing Street into his car with a couple of young unemployed people behind him, it would send a powerful visual message that the Government were taking this issue very seriously. A Minister for Young People, particularly unemployed young people, is very important.
Education has been mentioned. Education is the way forward. I left school at 15 or 16. My second chance came by going back to night school, then to further education and then to university. For me, that was the pathway forward. It was my salvation. We cannot emphasise enough the need for education. The suggestions that have been made to the Minister today should be taken very seriously. We should use further education colleges, particularly in the technical skills areas and local areas, to foster that extra employment for young people. Above all, the economy needs to be rebalanced. There is a growing north-south divide. I know that from representing an area where employment has consistently been relatively high. I suggest that there are still lessons to be learnt from the Mittelstand in Germany and from the Fraunhofer Institute about how they integrate manufacturing and education. A lot could be made of that issue.
We are establishing a forgotten and invisible generation, particularly those without skills or qualifications. I saw that when I was a deputy head teacher in the 1970s in Glasgow. I was put in charge of a truancy unit, as it was called, for children who did not come to school. They were demotivated at such an early age. They were alienated, and it was very difficult to get them to engage. The message is that we should not give up. We need a more intensive approach in education. My noble friend Lord Adonis made a number of very valuable suggestions on education, which I think the Minister has taken on.
As a former teacher, I have also seen the long-term effects when young people leave school alienated and disillusioned. It has been my sad experience to meet some former pupils 10 or more years later. They have a partner or a wife and children, but when you ask them about their job, they say they have never had one. Between 18 and 25 are the precious six or seven years. Experience and statistics show that if we do not get young people at that time, we have possibly lost them for life. That is the message that we have to address today. The overriding question is how we address the insecurity in society. As the right reverend Prelate said, our generation feels that the next generation will not have the same chances. I suggest that economic progress and social stability go hand in hand and, if we do not tackle youth unemployment with vigour, we are destroying the future not only for young people in this generation but for all in society.
Lord German
My Lords, I too pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, for securing this debate. I shall say a few words later on about his opening remarks because he raised matters of great importance that lie underneath this important issue. As many noble Lords, including my noble friends Lord Bates and Lord Roberts, have said, this is not a new problem. We have seen the number of unemployed young people reaching ever upwards since 2002, but it is acerbated at the moment. Young people are especially badly hit by poor economic times. Employers are reluctant to hire new workers, more experienced workers compete for lower paid entry-level jobs and older workers hold on to their jobs for longer than usual.
As the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, said, this is not simply a UK problem. It affects the developed world and the developing world alike. Across Europe, the Americas, the Middle East and north Africa, the problems are the same. In its recent youth employment trend report, the ILO forecasts that the current high levels of youth unemployment around the world will continue for the next four years. The growth in the knowledge economy, globalisation and technological change have led to a fall in the demand for low-skilled workers. Entry-level jobs tend to be concentrated in the service sector, and many of them require people to have soft skills. We can think of the people who answer the telephone when you have a banking problem or an insurance problem. They require soft skills and a readiness to be available for on-the-job work from day one. It is regrettable that many of our young people without work are not coming out of the education system with these skills.
We have a long-term issue with a serious short-term spike, although the short term might extend over two or three years. As with all longer-term, deep-seated problems, a degree of political consensus is required if we are to tackle the long term. In his very interesting opening remarks, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, concluded that there were areas of great agreement, which is what we are hearing today. For the longer-term problems that we are going to have to deal with, which will span more than one election period, does he have any ideas about how we can promote that consensus over a number of years? Equally, does he have any idea how we can produce it for the UK as a whole? I was interested, and I know that my interest was shared by many people around the Chamber, in the way in which you have to handle the education system and make changes to ensure that we get the outputs that we need. However, I know that those views are somewhat in conflict with those of some of his colleagues currently holding ministerial posts in the country in which I live. If we have a requirement to provide UK solutions to problems of this sort, I wonder how we can best get together and reach that consensus, which cannot be achieved without the education and skills agenda.
My second point is about the underlying problem that we are trying to solve here. You could address different remarks to different parts of the problem, but I agree with the ACEVO commission on UK employment, whose conclusion was that there is a,
“lack of vision for the ‘forgotten half’ of young people who are not destined for university or a high quality apprenticeship post-16”,
and that the route into work for these 16 to 18 year-olds was,
“more like an unmarked field of landmines”.
That drives me to the conclusion that the issue that matters more than any other is those young people who are in the NEET category, a term we have used extensively in this debate. I suspect that that is too general a title but this group is the most difficult to reach, and early intervention is crucial if we are to make a change, which is why the pupil premium is so important in getting in early. In terms of intervention, those people are the most difficult to reach—the high fruit on the tree, if you like; the most tricky to find appropriate solutions for. They become even more important at times of economic difficulty, as more educated younger people enter the jobs market at the lower-skills end, so displacing the unskilled. All the figures now show that a growing number of people are moving into that category of core NEETs.
I shall give your Lordships examples of pre-NEET work being done in two areas that I know well. The first is at Newport High School in Wales and the second is Bedminster Down School in Bristol. Both these schools have taken pupils from the age of 13 out of the school environment altogether, put them into a community environment and worked with them on trying to raise their skills, with such a level of success that those pupils have achieved a pass rate of five GCSEs or more of about 50%, and about 50% of that 50% are going on to post-16 education. These experiments are probably being replicated around the country. Are we building upon those successful stories of local experience and local work, which may well be replicated by voluntary organisations and schools throughout the country? It is important that we try to meet the substantial needs of this group of young people who are so difficult to reach.
The youth contract contains a suite of measures, but does the Minister believe that they are yet of sufficient scale to deal with the problems that we are facing in both the short and long terms? I also believe that we will have to do more on the supply side. Most of the interventions that we have been talking about are on the demand side, but we have to work much more strongly with employers. The Chartered Institute of Personnel Development rightly says that employers can and should make a difference by building a relationship with young people from school to labour-market entry. What are the Government doing to support the institute in its campaign to engage more employers? On the demand side, it is really a question of whether the Government have done enough to rationalise the myriad relatively small-scale funded interventions. I know that the Local Government Association is keen that that should happen.
This debate has been a wonderful opportunity to work together in seeking common solutions, and I believe that it has gone a considerable way towards achieving that.
Baroness Howells of St Davids
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Adonis for raising this subject for debate and for the sympathetic way in which he has outlined his concerns.
Those noble Lords who have heard me speak will realise that my research is always from the school of life. I would like to take a few minutes to concentrate on the young black British male. From time to time, I meet young British men whose skins are black to discuss their concerns. I would like to share one such story. A 24 year-old with a university degree in quantity surveying has been seeking employment for the past two years. His question to me was: “If you were a young black man, would you go looking for work?”. It was a rhetorical question, so I waited. He continued: “I wake at 6 am and switch on the radio, and all you hear is that black boys are criminals—another killing, another raid on a black person's home. If you’re lucky, you have a hot drink, get dressed and set off to attend an interview. You take the bus or train, and the papers and the conversations are all about black boys—not black criminals, but all black boys. You sink into yourself and behave as though you were dead or deaf. You arrive for the interview and you feel exposed, you’re on show, and not as a quantity surveyor—no one in the room looks like you. You enter into an interview trying to sell yourself. No one is really listening. You want to shout, ‘I have the qualifications and all I need is the chance to show you that I can do it’. You see the red faces and what I think are their lying eyes. Would you bother to go for another interview, and another, and another? I have had 50 interviews in two years—no job”.
His story is not an isolated one. Others in the group nodded through everything that he said. What did I say? My answer was to try to convince the young man that he had done his bit and that his only failure would be not to try, attempting to get him to understand that over the past two years he has been experiencing the canker of racism, power and prejudice. Often we are in danger of blaming the victims. In effect, the victims are less blameworthy than those with power who fail to see their potential, beyond the colour of their skin. The excuses are numerous and I am sure we will hear a lot more about this as the debate continues. Most reports have highlighted why unemployment among young black men is higher than white unemployment and have made excuses such as lower educational attainment, attending less prestigious universities, living in areas of high unemployment, migration and sector clustering. All these reasons have some truth but at the base is institutional racism in this society. I refer the Minister to an April briefing by the Runnymede Trust on race and community because it poses cause, effect and possible solutions.
I return to where I began. Blaming the victim is unhelpful. It is often said that they do not want to work, but I can tell noble Lords that the majority of young black men want the same things as young white men. They want to work in a job that pays a living wage. Despite the failures in the education system, most have managed to prepare themselves for adult life according to ability. Like all of us, they want to be safe from criminals, safe from terrorists and have clear air and clean water. They want time for family and friends so that when they grow old they too can retire with dignity and respect. A life without unfair discriminatory practices, which cut across race, religion, class and language, is all that they ask. The Government cannot solve all these problems, but they should be mindful of how they deal with racism. The Stephen Lawrence report recommended certain steps that could be taken. I sit here and watch those steps being dismantled daily.
The Government need to take a good look at what has been achieved and stop cutting away at all the good practices that have been put in place—to unlearn the racism. Take a look at what is happening in football: employment for young people, whatever the colour of their skin. Take a look at what is happening in motor racing. Take a look at what is happening to the black teachers who have studied to enter our education system, and at how they, too, are victims of racism. Take a look at the police; they, too, are the victims of racism. How do the Government see them getting justice when these things happen and when the very road towards justice is being cut from under their feet every day?
We should be looking at what is really wrong with society. Getting a job is a good thing. Being denied a job because you are the colour that you are pervades the black community throughout this country. Some are lucky; some get jobs. Again, they always have to look at themselves in the mirror as a black person and then as a white person. The benefits of looking seriously at black youth may stop you from having to blame them for every evil when the next riots happen.
Lord Touhig
My Lords, I join all noble Lords in congratulating my noble friend Lord Adonis on this debate, which is most timely. I will concentrate my remarks on the challenges faced by young disabled people, in particular those with autism, when they seek to continue education or secure employment after the age of 16.
Young disabled people at 16 hold the same aspirations to stay in education and find fulfilling careers as their non-disabled friends—a point which was well made in the National Autistic Society’s publication The Undiscovered Workforce, which was launched as part of its campaign to increase employment opportunities for people with autism. We know that disabled young people are two and a half times more likely not to be in education, employment or training than their non-disabled peers. Furthermore, just 15% of adults with autism are in full-time paid employment. These are clear signs that the educational provision available to young people with autism is currently not allowing them to achieve their ambitions.
A host of reports in recent years has evidenced that the transition to adulthood for young people with autism and other disabilities is poor, and that there is a serious lack of educational opportunities for this group. An Ofsted report stated that,
“the real choice of education and training opportunities at 16 was limited for many young people with learning difficulties and/or disabilities. Inspectors found few courses available for young people with the lowest levels of attainment”.
For many young people with autism, particularly those with complex needs, the choices for post-school learning are very limited indeed. We know that young people with autism want to access employment and training. However, we also know that they need the right support in order to do so. While there is a dearth of education and training available for many young people, young people with autism have far fewer options. The lack of education and training for young people with autism is directly related to youth unemployment. Currently only one in four young people with autism continue their education beyond school, and so are adequately equipped to enter the world of work.
I am 64. When I was thinking what I should say today, I tried to imagine what it would be like to be 16 and autistic. What would it be like to face the next 50 or 60 years of my life staying at home with parents, family and carers, or living in a residential home? What of your Lordships—what if each of us was 16 and autistic? What if all the experiences, opportunities and achievements each of us has enjoyed in our lives had never taken place? That is the prospect for up to 75% of autistic youngsters: a cruel exclusion. The life experiences that we all take for granted are denied to them.
That is why post-16 education options are essential to support young people with autism into work and community life. Both of these outcomes benefit society as well as individuals and families. The social impact of unemployment for young people with autism is huge. Not continuing in education or training beyond school leads to a loss of potential for young people and for society as a whole. Failure to provide opportunities for education and training that will lead to employment denies young people with autism the right to fulfil their potential and to contribute to society.
In addition, there are huge social costs. Failures to provide for young people with autism also lead to higher long-term financial costs. In one of its reports the National Audit Office found that £1,000,000 per person could be saved by supporting young people with learning difficulties to gain life skills and be more independent. It also found that supporting a disabled young person to access work reduces lifetime costs to the public purse by £170,000 per person.
Is there a solution to this problem? Yes, there is. We can ensure that government initiatives such as the youth contract are accessible to young people with autism and others with disabilities. Can the Minister say how the Government will make the youth contract fully accessible to disabled young people? Can he confirm that the Access to Work funds will be available for young disabled people doing internships and voluntary placements? The raising of the participation age to 18 is most welcome. However, it appears that little thought has been given to what that might mean for young disabled people, many of whom are not in employment, education or training, not through choice but as a result of a lack of suitable provision. The raising of the participation age will only help young people if it coincides with the development of more and better educational settings. Have the Government invested the extra funding that is needed to meet the additional demands of young disabled people who are currently not participating? How have they calculated the level of this need? They must take into account all additional needs, not just those of young people with SEN.
The charity Ambitious about Autism produced an excellent document entitled Finished at School. It makes a number of recommendations in this document which I believe would improve post-16 education for learners with autism, which would have an impact on levels of employment. The document makes four key points: there should be a clear legal right to educational support up to the age of 25 for young disabled people; a funding system which gives young people and families more information, choice and support is needed; a cross-government focus on outcomes and destinations for young disabled people is needed; and, finally, a further education workforce with the skills to support young people with autism to achieve their ambitions is essential.
The Minister is a friend—he is a friend of all those who campaign and support people who want to improve the quality of life for people with autism. In my time in this House and in the other place I have certainly found that he has listened. I hope that he will listen to us on this occasion.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, and his passionate advocacy for autistic adults and children. I, too, am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, for securing this important and timely debate. I thank the Minister for organising a seminar recently on the employment support allowance. It allowed many of us the opportunity to speak to the manager of a jobcentre—to have the privilege of speaking to someone who had spent much of her life helping adults and young people into employment. It was a very helpful experience.
I will concentrate on the lack of employment for young people leaving care. They are especially vulnerable because of their poor start in life. They are heavily overrepresented in the NEETs group; a third of 19 year-olds leaving care are NEETs. One sees the consequences too easily. Half of the juvenile prison population have had care experience, as have a quarter of the adult prison population, while one in seven rough sleepers have care experience. The best chance to protect these young people from such poor outcomes and help them into the job market is to give them an excellent experience while they are in care—to seize the opportunity then to build the resilience that they need.
To concentrate on the most vulnerable group of children in care—young people in children’s homes, who are the neediest 7% of the 60,000 children in local authority care—we could do far better to give them that excellent experience. I highlight these children in part because recent child protection failures for girls, with 187 incidents of suspected prostitution coming from children’s homes in the past 10 months alone, have highlighted the need for reform. Your Lordships may have noted the reports regarding these children on the BBC news and “Newsnight” last night.
There is now an opportunity for the Government to ensure that, in future, young people leaving children’s homes are far more ready for employment or periods of unemployment. For instance, they might institute an independent inquiry into residential care which could look at the professional qualifications of staff and the possibility of emulating the success of the Scottish Institute for Residential Child Care, which is devoted to training staff. They could seek to emulate the success of initiatives in the teaching profession, looking, for instance, at the Training and Development Agency, the National College for School Leadership and the excellent programme Teach First, about which the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, spoke. That is now being stretched to Social Work First and could perhaps be applied to residential care.
In social work, the Government could consider copying the College of Social Work and the introduction of chief social workers in each local authority and central government. They might engage with the public in seeking funds and practical help. They might look to the great success of the charity Volunteer Reading Help, which, in partnership with the Evening Standard, raises funds and recruits reading mentors to work with thousands of our vulnerable children in primary schools. Surely many of the public would be moved to volunteer to help children in residential care with their reading. Some businesses might wish to support services for these young people as an expression of their corporate social responsibility. These are all our children.
The single greatest concern about children’s homes is the mismatch between the qualifications of the staff and the needs of the children. In England, we require staff to have a level-3 NVQ in childcare and a manager to have a level-4 NVQ. They are roughly equivalent to an A-level and the first year of a degree, respectively. On the continent, the norm is a bachelor of arts degree, yet as residential care is far more widely used there, the needs of their children—a mixed group—are far lower. Therefore, we have a perfect storm, with often poorly qualified staff caring for very needy, often very challenging, children.
A project that brought German residential childcare workers to work in children’s homes here was undertaken. Professor Claire Cameron evaluated this work and commented that the German social pedagogues,
“were also rather taken aback by the role of the residential worker in England. They”—
the pedagogues—
“had a range of professional qualifications, the majority of them graduates, and some were also equipped to be employed as social workers in their own country, or to work with other user groups as well in a range of other responsible roles. In contrast, in children’s residential care their English equivalents have low status and little influence. Their professional input is marginalised and they lack autonomy. They usually refer on to experts rather than take control of issues themselves”.
She went on:
“Our child care system is over-bureaucratic and risk-averse. History and policy have created this set of circumstances or not altered them. It is unsurprising that our continental visitors often felt bemused and deskilled”.
The author Paul Connolly grew up in a children’s home. He learnt to read and write in his 20s, and went on to found a successful business and to publish his best-selling autobiography, Against All Odds. When asked the secret of his success, when so many of his peers had died young, he said that he had always sought to surround himself with successful people. For him, the route out of an abusive children’s home environment was a local boxing club and the men there who took an interest in him and encouraged him to become a boxer. Mr Connolly has written to the Children’s Minister, saying:
“I attribute my success to the people who positively influenced me, and my avoidance of negative influences. My experience was that as soon as I left the care system I cut all ties with everyone that was connected, and I surrounded myself with people I could aspire to … It is so important that these vulnerable children can aspire to somebody that has achieved in life and presents a positive role model”.
There are many fine examples of good practice in residential care, and most of those who work there sincerely give their best efforts for these children. However, government action is needed if a consistent high-quality standard of care is to be offered to these young people, and if they are to develop the resilience to succeed in what is now—and will continue to be for several years, as noble Lords have said—a challenging employment market. For many young people, the best placement is in a high-quality children’s home. We need a strategy for this sector to prevent further drifting downwards. I look forward to the Minister’s reply; he may wish to write to me.
Baroness Turner of Camden
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for introducing this debate and for the manner in which he did so. We are all aware of the statistics. We know that more than a million young people are unemployed, in many cases without the hope of getting any kind of job. Moreover, they are surrounded by a culture in which far too much emphasis is placed on money and possessions.
It is now nearly 12 months since the riots—the 5 Days in August, to quote the title of the excellent interim report published in the aftermath of the riots. The panel conducting the investigation did not cite one particular cause, but the riots involved mainly very young people. Mainly male, they mostly came from relatively deprived areas and felt excluded. That is no excuse for the violence and arson that happened. However, if a generation of young people feels that it is not part of society, the social consequences for the rest of society are likely to be dire. Indeed, the panel felt that it was possible that there would be further riots in the future.
The Government have made certain cuts in public provision, which has not helped. It was wrong to dispense with the EMA, the allowance introduced by the previous Government, which was designed to assist young people taking on further education and training. Some of the rioters claimed that they had nothing to do; clearly, it is not a good idea to economise in youth provision.
However, the big problem is the lack of employment. Here, as many of us have said, the decline of the manufacturing base in this country has resulted in a lack of employment even for skilled people. This is now generally recognised. My own union, Unite, has long campaigned for more support for manufacturing. It believes that a diverse and thriving manufacturing sector is necessary and that the economy should never again have to rely on the service sector to generate employment and growth. It clearly has not done so. In this context, the provision of adequate training is very important. I am pleased to see that there has been a revival of interest in apprenticeship training.
In a recent document, Unite said that ensuring that there are sufficient workplace skills is a matter of shared responsibility between the Government, employers, trade unions and individuals. It believes that the Government must take action to ensure that employers train their workers. The only way to ensure that this happens is through the introduction of a statutory training levy. It quotes the example of the vocational education and training system in Germany, which offers qualifications in a broad spectrum of professions and skills, and can flexibly adapt to the changing needs of the labour market. Trade unions are involved and co-operate fully in the system, which is widely respected throughout Germany.
I have referred previously in debates in this House to the role that unions can play. The TUC has a department concerned with training and operates its own department called unionlearn. It also supports courses of further education for members at Ruskin College. I believe that the Government should provide the right conditions for employers to take on apprentices and must provide funding and support, particularly as regards SMEs. That is far more important than interfering with and removing employment protection, which has been suggested in some quarters. These are just some thoughts about youth unemployment, which we all find very troubling.
Ultimately, of course, it depends on the economy. There are many critics of the Government’s present direction, although it is to be hoped that there are some indications that that direction may change. Austerity as a policy is not providing the improvements sought. As a result there is much dissatisfaction among ordinary working people, with rising costs, stagnant wages and a general feeling of insecurity. This is unlikely to produce jobs for young people. A young person with a job, and perhaps a hope of advancement, has a stake in society and is unlikely to riot. But to deal with these problems we need a policy for growth, which is increasingly recognised. In the mean time, some of the measures supported by the unions, including my own, particularly the union policy documents that they have produced, are certainly worthy of consideration.
Baroness Prosser
My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Adonis for initiating this debate. As everyone has said, he introduced it in a very interesting and exciting way. Very many young people are waiting to hear what can be done to help them get a good start to their adult lives. There have of course been a whole range of attempts by various Governments to deal with the problem of youth unemployment. This problem has been with us through good economic times and bad. I agree of course that ameliorating steps must be taken to try to use all possible levers to make sure that young people become connected to the world of work.
Many others have spoken about the various schemes currently in place and I do not want to comment too much on that aspect of the problem. I want instead to address the two overarching issues which in my view have given rise to this problem, and which have also already been touched on. First, I shall turn to the vastly changed structure of the labour market, which has gone from a manufacturing, all-hands needed economy to a service-based landscape with high skills and high rewards for the relative few at the top to the lower skilled and certainly lower paid many at the bottom. Consequent to this change comes my second point; namely, the failure of subsequent Governments to recognise that this change calls for a major overhaul to the provision of education and training.
I am obviously pleased by the increase in the number of young people moving into further education and the increase in university numbers. I am also the first person to say that an all-round education is a good thing. I agree that access to quality literature and poetry is part of the stuff of life—although, perhaps I may say, not necessarily learning poetry by rote. I welcome the proposal that primary school children should learn a foreign language. I believe that discipline, good manners and timely attendance are essential steps towards becoming a good citizen. But I also think that education has to be provided within the context of “What is it for? Where will it lead?”. How does this stage in a young person’s life help them when they move to the next stage? Why is academic education valued so much more highly than vocational training and skills?
Recent research by City and Guilds, which looked at the views of 3,000 young people aged between seven and 18, showed that the link between education and employment is central to tackling youth unemployment. Some 69% of those young people thought that maths was very important to helping them get on in life. However, the 14 to 18 year-olds said that they found maths boring and irrelevant. More than half of the 16 to 18 year-olds said, unprompted, that taught maths should be geared towards real life and set in relevant or practical scenarios. In this country, we are in dire need of employees trained in technical and scientific subjects, the basis of which is a good appreciation of maths. Here half of our young people are turned off the subject before they have even reached the age of taking their GCSEs.
In the same research, it was found that of the 64% of 14 to 18 year-olds who had received careers guidance from their teacher only 14% had found it useful. They found the most useful source of guidance was visiting an employer. However, of the 16 to 18 year-old cohort only about a quarter had had the opportunity of a workplace visit. Why is there not an organised programme of workplace visits? Work experience can be a very good thing but taster visits well before a youngster has made exam or subject choices can help to clarify what is expected and needed, not only in terms of knowledge and study but in terms of behaviour and how to dress et cetera. I am sure that many schools do good work linking up with the local business community but far too many do not. Taking away the careers advice function from schools will only make this matter worse.
In 2010, I was asked by the Recruitment & Employment Confederation to chair a task force into the issues around youth unemployment. We produced a report with a number of findings, many of which were directed towards the relationship between education providers and employers. Subsequently, more than 100 employers have signed the REC charter, which commits them inter alia to develop links with local schools and colleges, to promote apprenticeships and to participate in specific initiatives developed by, for example, the Prince's Trust or Business in the Community.
While these ideas are aimed at employers, this does not let the Government off the hook. Reducing financial support for students is hardly the right message to be sending at a time when there is a skills shortage in the labour market, which is currently being filled by better trained and better educated workers from overseas. Intensive support is required to train our young people for all levels of employment. Vocational courses have for too long been the poor relation but we also need investment in research and high-level technical skills. Fiddling about with a short-term patchwork of schemes and programmes is hardly likely to put us on a footing with our competitors, never mind help us out of this recession.
It is not even cost effective. Research by ACEVO shows that in 2012 the £4.8 billion cost of youth unemployment to the Exchequer is higher than the budget for further education for 16 to 19 year-olds. Add to that the cost to society generally of a generation of disaffected young people and this is not a good picture. On one final point, I find it strange that this debate has been designated as falling within the purview of only the DWP rather than the Department for Education or the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. It is within those departments that the answers to this problem will be found. I hope that the debate will be brought to the attention of the relevant Ministers.
Lord Collins of Highbury
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Adonis for initiating this debate. The only thing I am slightly surprised at is that we occasionally meet in the local greasy spoon and I am getting bigger and he is getting thinner. I do not know what I am doing wrong.
To be unemployed is horrific, whatever age you are. Clearly, we cannot separate the rise in youth unemployment today from the country’s overall economic performance. However, as my noble friend Lord Wood said, research studies have shown that youth unemployment has risen more steeply than all-age unemployment in this and recent recessions. That has not always been true. Up to 1970, unemployment rates for people under 20 were below those of all ages. According to Paul Bivand, in his piece for the TUC circulated by the Library on the youth labour market, Britain’s structural youth unemployment is rooted in the recessions of the 1980s and 1990s. The recoveries from those recessions never saw the return to the norm of young people leaving school at 16 and immediately going into a job or getting a job. Even when the economy was booming, approximately 7% to 9% of all young people were headed for long-term worklessness from the age of 16.
The costs of long-term youth unemployment, now and in the future, are enormous. As my noble friend Lady Prosser said, according to the ACEVO Commission report, chaired by David Miliband, the cost to the Exchequer in 2012 of youth unemployment will be £4.8 billion, which is more than the budget for further education for 16 to 19 year-olds and will cost the economy £10.7 billion in lost output.
What are the long-term costs to the individuals who start adult life as unemployed or in a job with little scope for development? Unfortunately, the experiences of young people who are in work are not always seen as a policy concern. While many people will progress from lower paid jobs into better work, some are at high risk of cycling between unemployment and low-paid work. Of those young people who have left education, 17% are in elementary work, while 13% are in sales and customer service occupations. Without support to progress into better jobs and build their qualifications, these young people face uncertain labour market futures. There are also very high rates of under-employment among employed young people who are not in education, with 9% of those who are not in education and are working part time doing so because they cannot find full-time employment.
Things will change only when society, government, families and employers alike see that the transition from school to work can and should be a positive pathway to developing skills and life-long learning. Through the debate, I have heard many noble Lords refer to the importance of ongoing training. I am very sad at the demise of the industrial training boards, which ensured that all employers took responsibility. As many other noble Lords have said, the path from school to university is well known and supported, but 50% of our young people do not head in that direction. In my family in the 1970s, three out of the four children went into long-term apprenticeships and training. Now the job destination has little in terms of opportunities, is too often ad hoc and low quality, and sometimes chaotic and wasteful of public money.
Schools need to improve their relationship with the world of work. That does not mean right at the last moment; it means that on an ongoing basis relationships with local employers are incredibly important. On the subject of term-time employment, from the age of 15 I took a Saturday job working in the Swan and Edgar department store in Piccadilly. It taught me a lot of lessons, including the importance of being on time, because my pay of 19 shillings and 6 pence would be docked if I was not. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, and my noble friend Lady Prosser that what we need is to bring all aspects of government together in bearing on this issue. It cannot just be a matter of benefits. What steps will the Minister take to ensure that there is joined-up action by the Government?
Labour supports any step to help unemployed people back to work, but the measures in place and those recently announced provide no real guarantee of a job. Today, after nine months of unemployment, a young person will be referred to the Work Programme, where a young person can go for two years and fall out of the back of it with still no job, having been unemployed for 33 months. It was reckless to scrap the future jobs fund in May 2010 and, with the youth contract announcement, provide no help to young people until April this year. In effect we have had two years of inaction from the Government on this important issue. The 160,000 youth contract work subsidy placements over three years means just over 53,000 funded jobs every year, fewer than the future jobs fund, which provided 105,000 starts between October 2009 and March 2011. There is no guarantee that these jobs will be created, as it is merely an incentive rather than a guarantee. I repeat the question asked by many noble friends and noble Lords. How does the Minister think, in reviewing the scheme, that its scope and number can be advanced?
A central ambition of Ed Miliband and the next Labour Government will be to conquer long-term youth unemployment. As my noble friend Lord Adonis has already said, a policy towards meeting that objective was announced in March this year, which is a real jobs guarantee for young unemployed people out of work for more than a year. The scheme will ensure that after 12 months of unemployment, all young people aged between 18 and 24 will go on a six-month long paid job, preferably in the private sector. This would apply to at least 110,000 people. For that the Government will pay the wages directly to cover 25 hours of work per week at the minimum wage. In return—and again this is the responsibility issue—the employer would be expected to cover the training and development of the young person for a minimum of 10 hours per week.
The Government have a responsibility to provide opportunities for young people, employers have a responsibility to train them, and young people have a responsibility to make the most of those chances. I endorse what many noble Lords have said, including my noble friend Lady Sherlock. We need to give real hope and real opportunities to young people. Here I share the views of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester, who was right to stress the need to nurture young people, because it is a moral issue as well. It is in our interests as the older generation to do that for future generations.
In Spain I saw someone wearing a T-shirt on behalf of the Indignados. The T-shirt said: “Future of Youth—No job, no home, no pension, no fear!”.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, for the tone he set in introducing the debate, which noble Lords have followed. This has been a very thoughtful debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, got it right when she said that we are all against youth unemployment but the question is how we solve it.
Before I get on to some of the meatier stuff, I ought to deal with the moral dimension introduced by my erstwhile fellow student, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester. I reassure him and my noble friend Lord Roberts that there is good evidence to show that there is a positive correlation between having both more older people and more younger people in the workforce. The person who has done the best research in that area comes from the Benches opposite in the shape of the noble Lord, Lord Layard, who is not present but has done excellent research on this matter.
Clearly, the recession has had a major impact on the participation and unemployment rates of young people. As other noble Lords have pointed out, the relevant figures, having been broadly stable since about 1998, started to go up again in a very disturbing way from about 2004. I remind noble Lords of the underlying figures. In 1997, the number of youngsters who were unemployed or inactive was 1.14 million. By the time that this Government came in, the figure stood at 1.39 million and it has gone up a little since; it is now 1.42 million. Therefore, we are looking at something that stems from much more than a recession; we are looking at a structural factor in our economy and the failures of our education system to keep up with the changing economy and ensure successful transitions for all young people, as so many noble Lords have pointed out.
The noble Lord, Lord McFall, asked whether there should be a statutory target for youth employment. We do not think that that is the right answer. The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, asked where the jobs are coming from. The Government seek to turn round the economy to get those jobs provided by the private sector. Indeed, private sector employment overall has gone up by 45,000 in the quarter, a quarter of a million in the year and by 634,000 since the election.
The figure for youth unemployment is over the emotive 1 million mark. However, a lot of them—30%—are full-time students who are looking predominantly for part-time work. Rises in unemployment have been driven by longer-term factors. People who bear the brunt of those changes in the labour market are those who are trying to get into the market; that is a natural factor. However, joined to that is significant demographic change with a larger number of young people entering the labour market than was the case 10 years ago.
The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, talked about the Wolf report. Like him, I read that report with some astonishment and was shocked by its finding that at least 350,000 16 to 19 year-olds were getting little or no benefit from post-16 education. That report has been adopted in its entirety by the Government and we are trying to make the wholesale changes in the vocational education system that it recommends.
We also have lower productivity than many other nations, which is partly explained by the lack of skills in the working population. Increasing participation is designed to make a significant contribution to economic growth. However, it is easy to get too gloomy. A large number of youngsters succeed in education and make a successful transition into the world of work. The number of young people not in full-time education and unemployed is around 10% of all 16 to 24 year-olds, which is lower than after previous recessions. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, talked about the long-term unemployed in this age group. One of the things that was distorting the figures was the fact that as youngsters moved into the long-term category, they were taken off on to training courses and were not classified in that way.
When you look through the figures at the underlying position, you will see that there has been an increase in the number of long-term unemployed since the election, but it has not doubled. Today, it stands at 167,000. If you calculated it on the same basis, it would be some 153,000 at the time of the election. Therefore, there has been an increase, which is not satisfactory in any way, but it is not a substantial, horrific figure. If you look at the total number and not just the long-term figure, there are signs that there has been a small decrease—again, this is not good enough—in the number of young people on jobseeker’s allowance and other forms of temporary support.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester asked about the EU and the other moral question of the movement of labour. We are looking at this issue. Interestingly, over the past year, in contrast to before then, the employment rate of UK nationals has held up better in this market than that for non-UK nationals, which has fallen.
The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, and the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, asked whether we should increase the number of young people in higher education. We have not changed the principles that date from 1963: namely, everyone who can benefit from higher education should be able to get it.
Clearly, too many young people are not in education, employment or training. However, most young people spend only a short time in that NEET category. The ones to worry about are those who spend a long time in it. As I think the noble Lord, Lord Wood, said, the longer-term impact of spending too long out of the workforce affects many factors. I endorse all that he said about the economic effect. That clearly concerns us as a Government, just as it concerns him.
The programme of education reforms, including increasing the freedom of schools, will help to raise attainment for all pupils by the age of 16. This year, we are increasing our investment to a record £7.5 billion to fund education and training places for 16 to 17 year-olds. Regarding the question of my noble friend Lord Roberts on careers guidance, through the Youth Contract we are putting in place extra adviser support for 18 to 24 year-olds, including referrals to careers interviews delivered by the National Careers Service.
We are also implementing a £180 million scheme to target financial support to young people who need it. This will provide guaranteed bursaries of £1,200 a year to help young people to overcome barriers to participation. Our approach to supporting unemployed young people into work is based on an individual’s need for short-term or more intensive, long-term support. For those who are closer to the labour market, the focus is on engaging young people in real work with employers and keeping them active in looking for a job. The options are work experience, skills, advice on apprenticeships and support with job search. My noble friend Lord German asked about working with the CIPD. We are working closely with it, particularly on finding employers who can offer work experience. Jobcentre Plus is working in every part of the country, placing thousands of young people in work experience.
Regarding the youngsters who need more support, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, had a little bit of fun over how we are trying to make sure that the resources go towards the people who really need it by getting them into the Work Programme early. The aim is to get these people in at the three-month stage and the rest at nine months. As the noble Lord will be perfectly well aware, one way that we achieve efficiency through the Work Programme is by concentrating on payment by results. Clearly we will be able to improve the programme as it develops by refining the payments as we isolate those who are harder to help.
Last April we launched the new £1 billion Youth Contract, which has been discussed. Regrettably, the cost of intermediate labour market interventions is very high for what they achieve, and we think that there are other ways of going about this. In answer to my noble friend Lord German, who asked whether the Youth Contract is enough, I can say that it has a very good take-up rate.
We are pushing out a lot of apprenticeships, with 256,000 having started in the first six months of the academic year 2011-12. In answer to a question put by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, of those 256,000, 79,000 were for 16 to 18 year-olds, although I am afraid I do not have the data for 16 to 21 year-olds. We have introduced grants to encourage, particularly, smaller employers to take on youngsters in the 16 to 24 year-old age group.
Again in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, we have placements for work experience and apprenticeships in the DWP and across government. We have already put 49,000 people through work experience, and about half of them are now off benefits after taking part in the scheme. The success rate is virtually identical to that of the future jobs fund, but the difference is that the work experience scheme has cost £325 per placement, whereas the future jobs fund was running at around £6,000 a place.
Clearly, young people have borne the brunt of long-term structural and demographic changes in our economy and our society and also of failures in our education system. Noble Lords pointed out that other countries were rather more successful. Youth unemployment is too high and it has long-term negative consequences for individuals and for wider society. We are working across government to minimise the long and short-term impacts of young people being NEET and to ensure that they get the opportunities and support that they need.
We are determined to increase the participation of 16 to 24 year-olds in education, training and work to make a lasting difference to individual lives, improve social mobility and stimulate growth. We are interested not in quick fixes but in lasting change and we are changing the structures to help people on that basis. The change is aimed at helping young people to succeed in their careers and to make a much needed positive contribution to our future economic success.
Lord Adonis
My Lords, I have had my say. I just want to thank all noble Lords who participated in this important debate and to say that I hope it serves as a call to action in tackling what we all agree is one of the most urgent social crises of our time.
Schools: Well-being and Personal and Social Needs
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
That this House takes note of the contribution of schools to the well-being and personal and social needs of children and young people.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, I am very pleased to have the opportunity today to introduce this important debate, and I do so in the knowledge that there are a number of noble Lords on all sides of the House with very impressive records of campaigning on these issues. A number of them are here today and I look forward to learning from their contributions in due course.
I also approach this debate with a sense of sadness, because I genuinely feel that the Government opposite have lost their way on this agenda. Their concentration on education structures and exam results has overshadowed the wider contribution that schools make to producing well rounded, confident and thoughtful young people. As a result, the post-war consensus about the wider purpose of education is unravelling.
The White Paper that preceded the Education Act 1944 stated:
“The government’s purpose is to ensure for children a happier childhood and a better start in life and to provide means for all of developing the various talents with which they are endowed”.
Over the decades, through many iterations, these same principles have underpinned the provision of education in this country. However, if we judge the current Government by what they do rather than by what they say, the wider social, personal and health issues of children are no longer a priority. I would go so far as to say that, rather than our education policy being determined by the ideology of one man, there needs to be a national debate about the purpose of education to allow parents, teachers and young people themselves to raise their concerns and to seek to develop a 21st century consensus about the role of education.
While I would be the first to acknowledge that the previous Government did not get everything right, I am proud of our educational achievements. There was a sustained period of improvement in education outcomes in the UK from 1997 to 2010. At the same time, we recognised that pupils’ low achievement was only partly determined by their education. Factors such as levels of poverty, parental support, a stable home life and a lack of community aspiration all played their part. That is why we developed the Every Child Matters strategy. This sought to integrate children’s services so that every child had the right to be happy, safe, achieve economic well-being, enjoy life and make a positive contribution. This vision achieved impressive outcomes in tackling poverty, providing early intervention for Sure Start, improving nutrition and exercise in schools, providing programmes to tackle bullying and low self-esteem and providing improved sex education, to give just a few examples.
We took the view then, as now, that you cannot expect schools to do everything. To be successful there needs to be a comprehensive approach to children with schools and communities working together. Unfortunately this is not a philosophy that is shared by the current Government. As a result, many of the successful initiatives have now been undermined. In his speeches and his policy initiatives, Michael Gove has made it clear that the No.1 and only purpose of schools is to drive up performance in exam results. In fact he has gone as far as to admit that he can be criticised for having too strong a focus on testing. His view is that asking schools to play their part in addressing the wider social problems of their pupils gets in the way of rigorous educational achievement. As a result, policies that were proven to be working and have a positive effect on the well-being and learning capacity of young people have been dismantled, or become optional extras to be implemented when money and time allows. The starkest example of this is the Government’s decision to remove the ring-fenced funding for Sure Start centres, which has resulted in hundreds up and down the country being closed or merged.
However, the changes to the curriculum and school environment are equally far reaching. Let me give an example. Yesterday I tabled an Oral Question on nutritional standards in school food. Following the turkey twizzler scandal and Jamie Oliver’s excellent exposé of the poor quality of school food, the School Food Trust was set up to prepare nutritional standards that would underpin provision in all schools. The outcome was a great success. School food was transformed. There was increasing evidence that it was improving concentration and behaviour, and uptake increased. This Government, in their wisdom, decided that academies and free schools would not be obliged to adopt the nutritional standards. Now, not surprisingly, there is evidence that these schools are selling chocolates, crisps and snacks rather than healthy food; so all the health benefits of eating quality food will be undermined as more and more schools opt to become academies.
What about another example? The previous Government sought to tackle the growing rise of obesity and lack of exercise by setting up a comprehensive network of school sports partnerships, with a requirement for young people to have two, rising to five, hours of exercise a week. All the reports were that the partnerships were a great success, and that a generation of young people were now being given the opportunity to have regular exercise. The first thing this Government did was cut the funding for the sports partnerships, and although some funding has now been returned after a national outcry the current provision is a shadow of its former self, with many posts lost and many of the initiatives gone.
We believe that schools have an important role to play in tackling poor physical health and in supporting those with behavioural difficulties or mental health problems in school. We believe that by addressing these issues we will improve the capacity of children to study and learn. It is not either/or; the two things must go together. Similarly, there is a growing weight of evidence that many young children start school without the basic skills to learn. Poor parenting means that they do not have the vocabulary to take part in lessons and they do not know how to dress themselves or to hold a pencil. Schools have no choice but to deal with these issues before they can progress with the formal stages of learning. Assuming, for example, that every child is sufficiently school-ready that they can start to learn a poem by heart at age five just adds to the list of impossible demands with which teachers struggle daily.
Incidentally, do I detect something of a schism between David Cameron and his Education Ministers? The Prime Minister has been very vocal in identifying that children’s well-being is a key priority. It is a commitment shared by the World Health Organisation and the United Nations Children’s Fund. Since we are languishing somewhere near the bottom of UNICEF’s list of 21 developed countries with regard to children’s well-being, he seems to be on the right track. Yet Ofsted is no longer required to measure it, and both Michael Gove and Nick Gibb have described it as peripheral or a distraction from the core purpose of academic education, rather than recognising it as a foundation on which to build achievement. I look forward to hearing from the Minister whether he shares the views of his colleagues in the department or whether he agrees with the Prime Minister that schools should play an important role in contributing to children’s well-being.
I also want to say something about the fate of the specific PSHE courses which my noble friend Lady Massey has championed for so long. There are key elements of PSHE which it is vital for young people to learn about and discuss to prepare themselves for adult life. Learning about issues such as relationships, self-esteem, how to counteract bullying, personal health and finance, parenting skills and sex education should not be optional add-ons to the curriculum; they are essential life skills. I know that these have also been pursued by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, on the Lib Dem Benches, which is why we were so disappointed that she felt unable to support my noble friend Lady Massey’s amendment to make PSHE compulsory during the passage of the Academies Bill.
Since that time, my noble friend Lady Massey and the Minister have had a well rehearsed stand-off on the lack of progress in the review of PSHE education. I have to say to the noble Lord that this is not good enough. Most parents expect and want these sensitive issues to be covered in a systematic way within the school curriculum, so perhaps he will be able to give us some good news on this score if nothing else when he responds to the debate today.
We all want young people to achieve their maximum academic potential, and in the future a Labour Government will create an office of educational achievement that will provide a genuinely independent clearing house for research to learn from international comparisons and share best practice among teachers. We also believe that there are wider and softer social skills which young people should learn in school that do not have to be measured by exam results. It is a view shared in a recent Work Foundation report, which identified that the number of young people not in employment, education or training continues to rise with 954,000, or one in six now falling into this category. Its report identifies a lack of soft skills such as communication or customer service being increasingly quoted as a reason why these young people are unable to find work. These views are also echoed by employers who despair that young people are so ill prepared for the world of work. John Cridland, the CBI director-general, has criticised the Government’s obsession with GCSE grades, arguing that it encourages short-term cramming and frustrates teachers because it stops them delivering an inspirational classroom experience.
We share the view that good teaching by enthusiastic, motivated teachers lies at the heart of effective learning. In the end it is the teachers not the lessons that people remember most about their schooldays. That is why it is important to value the workforce in a way that is often overlooked by this Government and to empower it to be more creative in the way lessons are taught. Creativity should be at the centre of school life for teachers and young people, but increasingly schools are failing to nurture the creative talents of young people and we are losing global market share in the crucial creative industry sector as a result. As Steve Jobs of Apple said so eloquently:
“The Macintosh turned out so well because the people working on it were musicians, artists, poets and historians who also happened to be excellent computer scientists”.
Not all creativity can be measured by exams and not every child wants to sit an exam in a creative subject that they enjoy. There has to be space within the school timetable for children to pursue wider interests such as music, drama and art. However, the reality is that these subjects are being squeezed from the curriculum. We believe that our approach to joined-up children’s services, including schools, was the right approach in the past and our childcare commission, bringing together shadow Cabinet members from across the departments, will explore how we can learn from the past and provide even more effective integrated children’s services for the future.
In this context, we will continue to make the case for a wider role for education in contributing to the well-being, personal and social needs of young people, and for nurturing their creativity, confidence and life skills. We believe that this is what parents, children and employers want, and it is what educationists tell us is the bedrock of effective learning. If Michael Gove would join us in a national debate about the purpose of education, perhaps in time we would persuade him, too.
In the mean time, I am pleased to have had the opportunity to share our concerns and to give the Minister the opportunity to distance himself from the hard line of some of his departmental colleagues and to endorse our perspective of the importance of a wider well-being, social and personal role for schools. I beg to move.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, for introducing this very important debate and for her interesting speech. This Government’s objectives for children are very similar to those of her Government, but there is more than one way to skin a cat and we are skinning it in a slightly different way. I also point out that “Mary Had a Little Lamb” is a poem that most three and four year-olds I know can recite perfectly well.
It is a well documented fact that a child who is stressed, ill, emotionally disturbed, hungry or who does not have good general well-being will not be a good learner and is very unlikely to fulfil his or her educational potential. It is also accepted that those who do not fulfil that potential are less likely to lead happy and fulfilled adult lives, and certainly will not contribute as much to the general economy as they might have done. Therefore, I am sure that no one will disagree that we need to focus carefully on how well-being can be achieved.
Parents, of course, are the prime players in ensuring their child’s health and happiness, but schools play a pivotal role, especially where parents do not carry out their role as well as possible, for whatever reason. However, we must not expect too much of schools; I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, on that. No school, however caring and professional, can take the place of a loving, caring parent. I congratulate the Government on the measures they are taking to offer support to parents and to extend and improve the quality and flexibility of free nursery education offered to very young children. I welcome the fact that they have brought forward to this September the offer of free nursery education to disadvantaged two year-olds in some areas.
As we all know, children are born with their brains incompletely developed. Some experts have called babies “the external foetus” because of the great amount of development that happens outside the mother’s body in the first three years of life. Good-quality nursery education contributes enormously to a child’s emotional, social, physical and intellectual development. Therefore, when talking about the contribution of schools, we must not forget what has gone before.
The primary purpose of schools is the education of their pupils, but we should educate our children for a life, not just for a job. Schools help to develop citizens, husbands, wives, friends and parents—not just employees, employers or academics. Indeed, employees, employers and academics are all those other things, too. Therefore, I look to schools to get the balance right between fostering the health and well-being of children and developing their intellects. In the search for high academic standards, there is a danger of focusing too much on the child’s intellectual and skills development at the expense of their well-being and emotional maturity. That is a self-defeating strategy.
I heard an interesting interview on Radio 4 the other day with a spokeswoman from the CBI. She criticised schools for not turning out young people who were prepared for today’s workplace. She did not complain about the number of GCSEs or vocational qualifications they had. She asked for life skills. She said that business and industry need young people who have self-confidence, emotional maturity, the ability to work in a team, to negotiate and to compromise, and who are punctual and conscientious, have creativity and flexibility of thought, et cetera. That was not the first time I had heard such a plea from business leaders—it is fairly common. So where are we going wrong?
Noble Lords will know how keen I am on statutory personal, social, health and economic education. My enthusiasm for it is undiminished. I have talked to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, about why I could not support her amendment, and I think that she understands. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that such barbs are self-defeating. We have a duty to deliver this information, and the opportunity to develop skills in these areas, to every child. This should be done by high-quality specialists who are trained to do the job. Only then will we avoid the current postcode lottery in the quality of provision, and raise the standard overall. I have never felt that we should prescribe how schools should do this, preferring to leave it to their professional judgment. Every child should be entitled to have it delivered to a high standard.
There is much good practice. Some schools have PSHE elements as fundamental parts of their ethos and of everything that happens in them. Some have specialised teachers, and work with qualified people from outside the school to deliver elements of their programme. Others use some of the plethora of good-quality materials available to general class teachers. Many ensure that every lesson, throughout the curriculum, fosters these qualities and abilities in their pupils, not just special PSHE lessons. Some schools have adopted UNICEF’s wonderful Rights Respecting Schools programme, which fosters democracy and mutual respect in schools, both of which contribute to well-being. Children who have a meaningful input into decisions that affect them are usually happy.
It is important that the Government should make it clear that they expect schools to do this and that they will measure success not just on the number of A to C grades at GCSE but on the way in which schools foster well-being. Therefore, Ofsted plays a pivotal role. Schools and teachers are only human and will deliver the things on which they are measured. Parents expect schools to be happy places for their children to be, especially in the primary years. However, somehow the expectation often disappears in later years unless parents understand the link between well-being and academic success. Many of them do, of course.
I ask my noble friend the Minister whether schools will be allowed to use their pupil premium to provide the rich experiences that all children need to develop into self-confident young adults, as long as they can demonstrate a link between the use of this money and better performance by the most deprived children. Sometimes it is extra-curricular activities that have the most effect on these qualities. Outdoor pursuits, sport, music and the other arts, and heritage experiences and activities can all contribute. It would be a pity if, when a school is monitored on its use of the pupil premium, the range of activities for which extra money could be paid were too narrow. We rightly leave the decisions to the head and teachers, but they need guidance on the scope of the activities that would be acceptable to achieve the outcomes that we want.
Finally, I will say a word about the Government’s announcement today of a consultation on how we measure and address child poverty, because it is relevant to the debate. There is a clear link between deprivation and poor attainment at school, which must be addressed effectively. Ironically, as general incomes fall, the number of children in relative poverty will decrease, even though not one child’s life will have been improved. The Government do not want to be judged on such an anomaly. We want to do better and we will, despite the financial problems that we face. I hope that all parties will engage constructively with the consultation in the interests of the children we want to help, and I hope that my noble friend the Minister will confirm that the Government will welcome such engagement from all who have something useful to say.
Lord Wills
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Jones on giving your Lordships the opportunity to discuss some of the fundamental challenges facing our education system. I hope there will be general agreement on the proposition that schools can make an invaluable contribution to the well-being and personal and social needs of young people. I hope that there will also be general agreement that, as my noble friend said, the introduction by the previous Government of personal, social, health and economic education was a valuable addition to the curriculum. Therefore, the outcome of the Government’s review, when it finally emerges, will be important. Judging from what the Schools Minister, Mr Nick Gibb MP, said last year when announcing the review—that children “can benefit enormously from PSHE education”—it seems that the Government may at least pay lip service to its importance and its value. However, in considering how to proceed, I hope that the Government will make resources available to schools so that they can deliver whatever will be asked of them.
The national curriculum, for all its well rehearsed merits, has over time proved an irresistible temptation for Ministers to pursue their pet interests without always thinking through all the consequences for schools. The present Ministers seem to be no exception. I make the exception of my noble friend Lady Morris, who will be speaking later in the debate, who was an outstanding Schools Minister and an outstanding Secretary of State.
There are always compelling arguments for changing what is taught and how it is taught. Temptation is ever present for Ministers. Schools are now being told, for example, that they need to do better with basic numeracy and literacy; that they need to give young people a richer account of our national story; that they need to encourage greater take-up of foreign languages; that they need to stimulate more interest in maths and science; that they need to pay more attention to inculcating the soft skills that are increasingly important for employers; and that they must not overlook the importance of the humanities in producing well-rounded citizens.
Schools are being asked to deliver all this in the face of profound societal change which makes the task of teaching complex and demanding in a way that it was not a generation ago. Young people are exposed from an early age to an unprecedented amount of information and influences from a wide range of authorities. All this amplifies peer pressure in an unprecedented way.
This clearly creates new and demanding challenges for teachers. For example, the quickest way to secure a dramatic improvement in GCSE results would be to get boys to do as well as girls. However, there is a stubborn and intractable gender gap, with girls outperforming boys across the curriculum. This applies, to varying extents, across almost every social class, region and ethnic group. The precise reasons for this are unclear, but what is clear is that a significant cause must lie in societal change, which teachers are having to address on top of all the frequent and extensive changes that politicians demand of them.
Tackling these challenges might not be the problem it is for so many schools if sufficient resources of time and teachers were available, but they are not. Education, like everywhere in the public sector, is enduring tightening budgets which are not going to ease at any time soon.
Apart from budgetary pressures, there is the problem of trying to meet all these demands within an institutional framework which has changed too slowly to meet the new demands on it. The exam system, for example, is still based on the flawed premise that young people all mature, emotionally and intellectually, at the same rate, and so they are all due, more or less, to take exams at the same time. A system which allowed and encouraged young people to take exams as soon as they were ready to do so would create valuable flexibility which could help meet some of the challenges faced by schools.
Again, for all the waves of reforms launched by Minister after Minister to the curriculum, to the exam system and to school structures, far too little attention has been paid to methods of teaching. Schools still rely too much on the teacher acting as a sage on the stage even though new technologies and learning programmes could enable more flexible approaches, tailored more to the needs of individual students, with teachers acting more as a guide by the side. This is not to replace whole class teaching but to enrich it.
A longer school year would create more space for all the subjects that merit inclusion in the curriculum. It would allow more intensive teaching of core subjects; create the space to tackle the difficult transition between key stage 2 and key stage 3, where many pupils regress; and many parents would welcome shorter holidays. If we want improvement in educational outcomes, I can see no good reason against lengthening the school year, apart from resourcing it. Has the Minister’s department done any research into the returns from such an investment?
The Minister may well argue that the new freedoms the Government are giving to schools will enable them to meet these challenges—and so they may—but they can never be a complete solution. Our education system is one of the most important forces that bind us together as a nation. If the Government abdicate from their responsibilities to ensure an appropriate curriculum, an effective pedagogy with agreed outcomes and, crucially, adequate resources to deliver all this, the result will inevitably be uneven provision of varying quality—and those who are likely to suffer most from this uneven provision, whatever the pupil premium will deliver, are the most disadvantaged, those young people who have most need of a good education to get a better start in life. Such an abdication of responsibility by government can never be acceptable.
Schools can make an invaluable contribution to the well-being and personal and social needs of young people, but only if government enables them to do so. I hope the Minister can reassure us today that this Government will not walk away from their responsibilities to do so.
The Lord Bishop of Chester
My Lords, you would expect me to make a contribution to this welcome debate from the perspective of church schools. However, those who are expecting a learned discourse on sex education from these Benches will be disappointed. Some of my fellow bishops are much better qualified to speak on such matters.
While the church school movement has always given a proper emphasis to the three Rs, and is valued as such by parents and educational authorities, church schools have always aimed for a wider development of character in young people—the well rounded and thoughtful young people to whom the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, referred in her excellent opening speech. It is the notion of character as a virtue that encompasses the well-being, personal and social needs of which the Motion speaks.
Church schools would also wish to include a reference to the spiritual and moral development of young people as being an intrinsic aspect of being human. To be a human being is unavoidably to be a moral agent, for good or for ill. We see the spiritual and moral education of children as more than merely religious education as such, although it has a part in it. A proper excellence in religious education is of course one of the aims of church schools, but in the broader spiritual agenda. This is also implied in the Motion.
Perhaps I may say a word about a subject which has been much discussed in recent years but which has not been referred to yet in the debate—that is, the role of schools in promoting community cohesion. Since 2007, it has been a statutory requirement on maintained schools to promote community cohesion. There has been some criticism of church schools that they may work in the other direction by concentrating upon a particular section of society or by approaching education from a particular direction and point of view.
Fortunately, we have been able to commission an independent report into the issue which looked at the comparative outcomes of different types of schools in promoting community cohesion. This has been possible because Ofsted is now required to report explicitly upon this. We commissioned a report from Professor David Jesson of the University of York, using Ofsted data. The report was published a couple of years ago now and is entitled Strong schools for strong communities. It demonstrated that at primary level there is little difference in the outcomes of different types of schools, although church schools are as good as or better than other primary schools. However, at the vital secondary level, interestingly, the report showed that faith schools had a noticeably better outcome in the Ofsted report conclusions in promoting community cohesion. The report states that,
“there are relatively few Community or Foundation schools that are graded anywhere near those of Faith schools”,
in promoting community cohesion.
Ofsted also reviews the performance of schools in the promotion of equality of opportunity and the elimination of discrimination. Professor Jesson, in the report, also reviewed those outcomes in relation to different types of schools. The report states:
“Here again the contrast between Faith schools and Community schools is clear. Faith schools achieve higher gradings on this aspect of their contribution to their pupils and their community”,
than other types of schools. I hope that those who, for understandable reasons on the surface, are drawn to potential criticism of faith schools will pay attention to these hard research findings in this area.
Why is this the case? It is because schools are most effective when they avoid a sausage-factory mentality, when they are clear about their own distinctive values and the position from which they approach the task of education. That does not exclude others, but typically nurtures a shared sense of belonging to the wider community. When we know where we come from, we can more easily reach out and engage with other groups and sections in society, be that locally, nationally or, equally important, internationally and globally.
Let me offer a final quotation from the report:
“Promoting community cohesion is not about diluting what we believe in in order to create a pallid mush of ‘niceness’. Nor is it about trying to make all schools reflect exactly the economic or cultural make-up of the nation”.
There has been a temptation in recent decades to adopt a sausage-factory mentality in relation to maintained education, so there is a lot of promise in contemporary developments.
I have spoken rather generally about “church” or “faith” schools, and I believe that it is right to do so, but an interesting development over recent years has been the emergence of all sorts of partnerships and a greater variety in the sector itself. I welcome the range of schools now sponsored or supported by different faith communities and different combinations. In my own diocese we now have joint Anglican and Roman Catholic primary and secondary schools, whereas when I became bishop, we had none at all. Often the churches themselves are now in partnership with other institutions. My diocese is in partnership with the University of Chester in sponsoring an academy that will replace two failing secondary schools in a particularly difficult area. There is also potentially to be a new free school based at Chester cathedral with a music specialism. So the term “faith” school now embraces a wider variety of partnerships and activities, which is thoroughly welcome.
We also should not overlook the contribution of the independent sector. A lot of independent schools have either a faith foundation or to one degree or another a faith character. The work of chaplains in independent schools is often overlooked, but typically they are regarded as significant people in the school community because they help the community to look beyond the narrow academic focus. The thread that holds all this together is a commitment to the common good. Faith schools may have different outlooks—Roman Catholic schools tend to put a slightly closer focus on nurturing Roman Catholics, which is understandable—but, as I say, the thread is a commitment to the common good. That is what really counts. The common good lies, as we have already discovered in this debate, beyond a narrow academic focus.
Some noble Lords will have read in the press or heard on the radio discussions about Martin Amis’s new novel, which apparently is an exploration of the triviality of much of modern society. We live in a world that has a tendency to be too dumbed down, and that can easily affect our education. Alongside academic excellence, you need the soft skills we have heard about, the emotional intelligence that used to be nurtured primarily in families. With the decline of family life for various reasons, more pressure is put on schools, so it is important that in the future schools should look at the soft elements, including emotional intelligence in education.
Lord Layard
My Lords, if parents are asked what they want a school to do for their children, they almost always say two things: first they say, “I want my child to learn”, and then they say, “I want my child to be happy”. The question is this: are those in conflict? The scientific evidence is absolutely clear: they are not in conflict. In order to learn you need to be happy, with peace of mind and inner calm. Einstein once said that to make scientific discoveries, you need to be happy, and the same is true of children. Here is a recent analysis of a sample of American eighth graders who were tested at the beginning of the year on their IQ and their resilience. At the end of the year they were given their academic grades and, as a predictor of those grades, resilience was twice as important as IQ. You have to have the character as well as the brain.
Fortunately we now have a great deal more evidence about how to produce resilient, happy young people who do not engage in risky or anti-social behaviours. There have been hundreds of randomised controlled trials of highly structured programmes covering social and emotional learning, sex and relationships education and healthy living. I shall set out a meta-analysis of the effects of those programmes, each of which took about 18 hours of the child’s time. The effect on the emotional well-being of children was something like 11 percentile points up—from 50 to 61. The effect on behaviour was an extra 11 percentile points, and the effect on academic achievement was an extra 11 percentile points. These programmes are working on every dimension. So let us abandon the idea of a conflict between the objectives and ask schools to do exactly what parents want them to do. What a surprising suggestion.
What this would mean is complicated, so I want to make just three points. First, I turn to the whole school approach. Obviously, the whole school has to commit itself to making the happiness of its children one of its prime objectives. This should be a decision that is made after a great deal of debate involving teachers, parents and governors. I belong to a movement called Action for Happiness, which is preparing a code for schools that might wish to take a step of this kind. One would hope that every school will make the happiness of its children one of its prime objectives. That means going beyond what all schools are now expected to do—anti-bullying, anti-racism, anti-drugs—by trying to build up positive attitudes and adopting a positive lifestyle that children can enjoy, including replacing the desire to pass exams with the love of learning.
Secondly, I turn to explicit training in life skills, which is a particular part of the curriculum that is otherwise known as PSHE. Of course, this can be done very badly or very well. Undoubtedly, there are inspired teachers who can think it through for themselves, but these are very difficult subjects to teach. They can hardly just be given to someone who has a gap in their timetable. It is easy to teach these subjects in a way that makes no difference. We should not live in a Pollyanna world where we think that all this is easy and can be carried out successfully. It needs a great deal of thought and application. For example, the evaluation of the secondary SEAL programme, the only part of the programme that has been scientifically evaluated, shows that it makes no difference to anything. That is an important finding. The reason given—I must say that I foresaw this—was that the programme was not sufficiently structured to ensure that ordinary teachers could be guaranteed to achieve a result. We need to rely on much more structured, manualised programmes that have been scientifically evaluated to show that they make a difference. Perhaps I may declare an interest. I belong to a group that is aiming to put together a set of programmes from the hundreds I mentioned earlier in my remarks which could constitute the complete PSHE secondary school curriculum. If that was shown to work, we would be able to develop PSHE as a proper subject in schools and as a specialism within the PGCE.
I shall go back for a moment to the fundamental aim of all these programmes, which is to give children control over their minds. The idea is that we can all gain more control over our minds and our thoughts, which is particularly important because changing our thoughts can change our feelings and our behaviour.
This brings me to my last point, which is about mental health. This should obviously be a part of the basic training programme for every teacher and schools should become much better at identifying mental health problems among their children. In fact, the Good Childhood Inquiry that I was involved with suggested piloting a questionnaire tool to be used at periodic intervals over a child’s life, which would have the effect not only of helping to identify children who were in trouble—and many emotionally disturbed children do not show it; they are not always behaviourally disturbed—but of motivating schools to take the outcome of well-being much more seriously because they were actually measuring it.
Of course, once a child has been identified as having a mental health problem, there must be facilities available to treat them. I was appalled to read this morning that half of all mental health services are experiencing budget cuts at the moment, in many cases of 25% or more. This is an outrage. This is obviously such a big area of unmet need already in our country. We also know that mental illness among children has increased since the 1970s. A nationally representative survey has been conducted four times, supported by a local survey in the west of Scotland. Both these surveys found that there is twice as much emotional and behavioural difficulty among 15 year-olds as there was in the 1970s. The reasons given in subsequent questioning are, not surprisingly, more anxiety about looks, possessions and, of course, exams.
This brings us back to the question of whether we can shift our schools from exam factories to schools for life. I think we really have to do that and I really hope that the Minister can persuade his Secretary of State to open his powerful mind to that issue.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer
My Lords, I declare an interest as a board member of UNICEF UK. I am very pleased that the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, is going to speak this afternoon—as I would expect that she would, with her expertise—because I hope that she is going to talk about all her work with UNICEF on the Rights Respecting Schools Awards and the positive effect of that programme, of which she has been such a tremendous champion. I actually want to talk about food.
I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, on introducing this debate, and on her Question yesterday, which gave me some useful pointers on what I wanted to concentrate on today. The noble Baroness was a little bit down on some of the achievements of this Government. For example, I would point to my honourable friend Sarah Teather’s tremendous achievement in ensuring that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is really embedded and understood not only in her department but across government.
I want to concentrate on food because the quality and amount of food and how it is eaten has the most fundamental effect on children’s well-being. It is obvious: if you are hungry, you are just not able to learn. As a result of sugar-intense foods and drinks—not just sugar as we understand it from cane or beet but also the epidemic of corn syrup that has been pumped in to every sort of food, whether it is pizza, sausages or baked beans—children are becoming obese at an earlier and earlier age.
As also came out in the Question yesterday, in the comment made by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham—he was referring to young offenders but it applies to children too—young people are unable to control their behaviour and mood if they have eaten foods particularly high in sugar, caffeine or some additives that are implicated in bad behaviour. The point that a change of diet produces dramatic results in children’s ability to learn and concentrate is very important.
In Answer to the Question tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, the Minister referred to,
“inculcating extremely good habits of eating”.—[Official Report, 13/6/12; col. 1336.]
That is the key because it is at the primary age that we have a responsibility to make sure that those habits that set children up well for life are achieved. We are fighting quite a battle now because we are paying a very heavy price for the loss of school kitchens and traditional cooked lunches that swept across the UK in the 1980s. Many of today’s parents never really formed those healthy eating habits and now we are expecting schools to be at the forefront of trying to change diet, eating habits and attitudes to food.
However, there are some bright spots. We do not want to change habits back to the 20th century—that was not such a golden moment either—but to adapt them to 21st century possibilities. On the plus side, I point to the great rise of ethnic foods such as lentils, curries and couscous. I am sure that your Lordships can remember when garlic was an exotic food and there was a pretty boring range of vegetables. We have come a long way from that time and there is now a world of spices and herbs that can make carbohydrates such as a bowl of rice much more interesting and appealing.
It would not be right to talk about school food without mentioning all the organisations that are making a tremendous difference: the School Food Trust, School Food Matters, the Children’s Food Campaign, the Local Authority Caterers Association and Garden Organic. Earlier today I attended the launch of Going Hungry? Young People’s Experiences of Free School Meals, a piece of research by the Child Poverty Action Group and the British Youth Council. It reinforced what I had already heard, that out of 7.5 million schoolchildren there are 2.2 million living in poverty, of whom 1.5 million are eligible for free school means but only 1 million actually receive them. Half a million children are missing out and that really is a disgrace. I also strongly support the Children’s Society Fair and Square campaign.
There are lots of reasons why free school meal take-up is not what it should be. One of these is stigma, and take-up has been proved to be much improved where schools operate a cashless system that anonymises pupils who are on free school meals. A really decent aspiration for any Government would be that when the nation can afford it, all primary age children—at least—receive a free school lunch. It should be as much a part of education as teachers, playgrounds and learning materials. It is very strange that food became the optional extra in the education system.
However, in the mean time I hope the Minister can assure me that the Government’s priority is to increase free school meal take-up among the eligible and ensure that all the schoolchildren whose families are in receipt of universal credit, when it comes in, will be eligible for free school meals. Can he assure me that the introduction of universal credit will not mean that fewer children will qualify for free school meals?
The Food for Life Partnership has been working for some time on the issue of nutrition. According to its research, twice as many primary schools received an Ofsted rating of outstanding following their participation in the Food for Life Partnership’s work. School nutritional standards are highly important, as is Let’s Get Cooking, which runs the country’s largest network of cooking clubs. If you want to enthuse pupils and parents, cooking clubs are a great way to do it.
Baroness King of Bow
I thank the noble Baroness for giving way and commend her on an excellent speech. Is she aware that a third of academies have described school nutritional standards as a burden? Does she agree that the real burden is the heart disease, diabetes and cancer and other diseases that will afflict our children? Does she think that the Government could increase the urgency with which those nutritional standards are introduced for all schools, including academies?
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer
Yes, I think that children in all forms of education should expect the same standards to be applied to them when it comes to what is deemed to be healthy food.
I commend the work being done to encourage children to grow their own food. Making the connection between where food comes from and the effort that goes into producing it has other effects such as making sure that less is wasted.
Baroness Morris of Yardley
My Lords, I am glad to be able to contribute to this debate and congratulate my noble friend Lady Jones on bringing it to the Chamber. I do not think that anybody is going to speak against improving the well-being of children or meeting their personal and social needs. I shall wait to the end of the debate to see whether any noble Lord does—perhaps the Minister will. However, it is an area of contention, where there is genuine debate and some uneasiness about how we are progressing. The crucial thing is not to persuade the world, those in the educational system or politicians that those things are an important part of education; it is to try to understand why we do not do it very well and to overcome those barriers.
However, the world has moved on and we now have a better understanding of the consequences of not getting this right, which in some way increases our support for it. I shall refer to three areas, two of them being pretty obvious and the third being the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Layard. First, there is a body of knowledge about sex education, drugs education, physical education and physical well-being that needs to be given to young people. That comes under this area of learning. There is a set of skills and attitudes— resilience, teamwork, self-esteem and confidence—which children and young people need to develop if they are to do well in the world. We have come to accept during the past few years that schools have a role to play in that, because for some children all those things are developed at home. Some children would get all that knowledge and all those skills without going to school, but the truth is that many do not and everyone could contribute to good-quality education in that field. I accept the point made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester that, years ago, the church called it “character”; it was the same debate.
As my noble friend Lord Layard pointed out, we have become stuck because we have seen these things as competing forces—it has been an either/or. We have wanted either education for qualifications or a rounded education. We have pitted one against the other with terrible consequences when we come to evaluate our performance. What is new is the body of evidence and research that shows those approaches not as an either/or but as interdependent. If we can get social and emotional literacy right, children will improve their academic skills as well. More than that, we are now developing a pedagogy and ways of working in school that are beginning to lead to progress in how we teach SEL effectively in the way that we have been trying to make progress in how to teach literacy and numeracy effectively in years past. The pedagogy in this area is therefore slowly catching up. The more it catches up, the more powerful is the case for making it an integral part of what we would do.
I agree with my noble friend Lord Layard about the research coming out of America—Joseph Durlak and Roger Weissberg have done some excellent randomised control studies. I disagree with them slightly on the social, emotional, and academic learning programme. With the primary SEAL programme, the evidence about the effects of that sort of learning on academic attainment and well-being is far better.
This is a very important time. We have a choice: either build on these changes which are taking root and try to take what we can from them in delivering a good quality of education; or ignore those seeds that are shooting through. That is the crux of this debate. The Government of whom I was a member could be criticised for being top-heavy and too instructive, but we tried to put in place a structure on which these things could develop. Whether it was the PSHE programme, compulsory citizenship, SEAL, the sports partnerships, the creative partnerships or training teachers, it was a structure which allowed those things to flourish.
My great worry is this: I am seeing that structure decline and fall away. I do not think that this area of pedagogy and effective teaching is sufficiently strong to withstand that. The danger comes from two things that the Government are doing. First, if they hold true to their pledge to let teachers decide about curriculum and teaching methods, the risk is that this area of school activity is not well enough rooted to withstand that. Too many schools, often those which lack confidence or are in areas where children are disadvantaged and behind in basic skills, feel that they do not have time for these things. The second risk is that—even if the Government do not keep to their pledge, as seems likely, to leave it to schools to develop curriculum and pedagogy—the messages that they are giving are not about this area of teaching. I do not have much of a problem with poetry; I do not have much of a problem with literacy or numeracy; but I look at the utterances of Ministers and cannot find the speeches. I cannot see the press releases; I cannot read the leaked documents in the Sunday Telegraph and the Daily Mail that talk about this area of the curriculum. Quite simply, schools and teachers get the message inadvertently—because I do not believe that the Government take this view—that it is not valued.
We are at a vital time where it is for the Government to help us make the decision on whether we build on this growing body of knowledge, understanding what we did not know 10 or 15 years ago, and put some support in there for us to do better, or we go backwards and turn our back on the progress that has been made.
I look for three things from the Minister: first, an acknowledgement of what the research is telling us and how the Government might build on it; secondly, a clear signal, which the Government may give in any way they wish, that this area of teaching is valued and that schools are expected to do it, with the impact that it can have right across the academic curriculum as well as in its own right being explained to them; and thirdly—and this is where I am most likely to disagree with the Minister—the Government should provide some sort of infrastructure. If they do not like the structure that we had, that is fine, but they need something, because all the evidence and all the experience of past years tells us that, when the going gets tough, this gets left out. It deserves better than that.
Baroness Massey of Darwen
My Lords, it is always a great pleasure to follow my noble friend Lady Morris. I found myself nodding at almost every sentence she spoke.
I am delighted that my noble friend Lady Jones has given us the opportunity to debate these important issues today. I shall cover and echo some of the concerns of other speakers and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, anticipated, I shall refer briefly to Rights Respecting Schools as a trustee of UNICEF.
Research and observation by teachers has long shown that if a child lacks emotional and social strength and does not have protective factors with which to encourage good physical and emotional health, and to resist negative influences, then he or she will perform less well at school.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation report of 2010 pointed out that young people were more likely to do well at GCSE if they had belief in their ability, could examine their own behaviour and actions, avoided risky behaviour and did not experience bullying. Pupil well-being enhances academic achievement. As the right reverend Prelate said, it is not just about being nice; it is something a bit firmer—my noble friend Lord Layard echoed that.
As many have said, parents and families are vital in providing the foundations for well-being. Sadly, some families do not do that. Some children enter our schools deprived—materially, socially and academically—and schools have a hard job to make up that deficit. To their credit, many do. Families cannot provide all that is necessary to foster social skills. Being in a school sports team, singing together, playing in a music or drama group or creating a small business help social skills and self-esteem. Highly academic schools, such as Eton or Rugby, recognise that there is more to being successful than learning by rote. The deputy head of Rugby School said:
“As a parent, you don’t buy into a school like Rugby just for the academic education. You also want your child to develop skills for life. Personal social and health education is an important part of how the school measures that”.
I am very disappointed that the Government appear to have decided that personal, social and health education, PSHE, will not be mandatory in schools. It is not the only thing that develops well-being, as I shall discuss in a moment, but if the Government gave PSHE status, that would send a message that this area needs focus and organisation and is important for all children. PSHE would provide informed decisions about resisting pressure and working in groups. From that core, PSHE could radiate other aspects of well-being in school—for example on school policies such as bullying or school meals and the work of school councils and assemblies—in subjects across the curriculum and in programmes such as UNICEF’s Rights Respecting Schools.
I give an example. Bullying could be a focus of discussion in PSHE; it could be discussed by the school council; it could form part of an assembly; and it could be taken up in English or drama with a story about bullying or writing and role play about bullying. It is not just a body of knowledge, it is about the process of education and decision-making. Schools deliver education for well-being and personal and social needs in many ways. This delivery, like any school subject, should develop from simple concepts to more complex ones as the child matures. One-offs on diet, alcohol, relationships, safety and so on are not enough. They need to be reinforced year on year. That is why organisation is so important.
Many schools see the sense of that and are involved in the Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education Association’s charter programme, which draws on effective practice of PSHE as described in Ofsted reports and evidence from schools. A key to the success of programmes to foster well-being and personal, social and health education is their organisation in schools. Good organisation depends on school leadership taking it seriously and recognising that well-being is informed by self-evaluation and must be included in the school action plan. No child should be left to experience random, disorganised or non-existent education in personal and social development.
A positive ethos in school is, of course, also important: an ethos where bad behaviour is difficult and strategies implemented; where kindness and respect between everyone in the school is considered important; and where boundaries for conduct are clear and explicit. It is all very well to say that a school should have regard to well-being. It is another matter to make it a focus in the school.
That is why I believe that there should be a core subject of PSHE in schools and that it should not be isolated. I would be unhappy if a school had a programme that simply ticked off topics such as diet, safety, sexual relationships, drugs and alcohol. That should back up what is already going on in school, plug gaps and reinforce the development approach to learning for every child.
I go back to organisation and structure. Schools which take educational well-being seriously often have a senior member of staff to co-ordinate its aspects across the school: in the taught curriculum, in policies, in activities such as the school council and in out-of-school activities. Such a person can and does work with staff to deliver structured programmes. A school in Cheshire, the Sir William Stanier Community School, has created champions in each area that PSHE covers. That has motivated staff. Some schools have their own teacher training programmes. Some have a PSHE room where the school ethos and positive messages of that behaviour are reinforced. The Frederick Gough School in Scunthorpe has adopted a PSHE Association school charter and says that PSHE is regularly rated by parents and pupils as the most valued non-academic subject.
The Rights Respecting Schools evaluation said that school leavers were unable to identify specific investments that they had made in the Rights Respecting Schools programme because it is embedded in the school rather than separated from their other work. So it should be for the school’s contribution to personal and social well-being and development. It should be embedded in the whole school. All children can benefit from such an input from school. In particular, those children who do not have the advantage of caring and respectful homes may be encouraged to see life differently. It is an issue of equality as well as education.
I do not think that the Government understand what personal, social and health education is about. The Minister may; I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, does; but it is not about skinning cats it is about nurturing cats. The Government are placing too much emphasis on topics and factual information and not enough on whole school processes which foster the well-being of children. I think that they are nervous about sex education, not recognising that this is about relationships and well understood by most faith groups. I do not understand why there is such a delay in producing a curriculum review including PSHE. We have examples from research, good practice, inspection and teachers of what helps pupils achieve in schools. Children need a firm basis of confidence, self-esteem and support, all inherent in a school’s contribution to well-being. I look forward to the Minister’s response to some of the issues raised today.
Baroness Benjamin
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for securing this important debate because, according to the saying, school days are the best days of your life. But I have always thought that it should be changed to, school days are the most important days of your life, because the school experience can either make or break you. Childhood lasts a lifetime and the early foundation stages are the most important of a child’s life. That is when the billions of brain cells are forming connections, so good nursery and primary school teaching is essential to the foundation of a child's development. That is the time when they need the best teachers. A nursery or primary school teacher is just as important as a university lecturer; they do the same core job.
Teaching and learning should not be a box-ticking exercise for either teacher or pupil. We should be helping children to develop their problem-solving skills, to digest and analyse information, to be creative and original and to use their imagination through exposure to music, singing, dance, art, drama and poetry, as well as sports and exercise. Self-discipline is also important, but that comes with the confidence children gain from these types of experiences in the place they spend most of their time—school.
I loved my school days. Starting back in Trinidad, where I was born, we sang the national anthem at the beginning of each school day. It gave me a sense of national pride, which has served me well. Seeing young children waving their union jacks with pride during the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, it occurred to me that perhaps we should start each school day with the singing of our national anthem so that they have a sense of national pride embedded in their psyche—because the feeling of being proud of who you are is the best confidence booster, which in turn helps with learning.
I have spent a great deal of my life visiting schools around the country and over the past two decades I have witnessed many changes, mostly for the good. One of the most significant changes I have seen is the way in which schools and those who teach in them have adapted to the diverse society that Britain has become. Something which has developed from this is the way in which schools are nurturing the concept of a more tolerant and considerate society. I have for many years believed that we should, in addition to the core curriculum subjects, allow children from a very early age to delve into the psychology of life and encourage them to explore, discuss and develop fundamental life skills and interpersonal and social skills. Some schools are already doing so. I know a head in a deprived area of north London who invites students in years 5 and 6 to sit around a table in her study to have lunch with her and discuss current affairs—and to hear their views on issues that affect their lives. This helps to develop the children’s social and intellectual skills and build their confidence.
When I am invited to speak in schools, I often use the story of “The Three Little Pigs” to demonstrate simple philosophy. I am sure that noble Lords here are familiar with the story, so I will not tell it today, but when I tell it to young children I show them through the story that to build your life on solid foundation you need to work hard, to do a good job, to think ahead and analyse the situation—and never to give up. It all helps them to cope with life’s big bad wolf. The reaction I get is amazing. Children as young as five really get it and it shows how much teachers need external support from parents, as well as from visiting writers, artists and musicians.
That is why PSHE needs a place at the heart of the curriculum. Delivered creatively, it empowers children to have the moral courage to stand up for what is right; to learn to resist temptation; to say no to bullying, gang culture or drugs and alcohol; to have empathy for others, and to get a better understanding about morality, integrity and honesty. All this should be the foundation of every school’s philosophy, giving children the ability to make good long-term decisions in their relationships and lifestyles, which in turn they will pass on to their children. It is an indirect way of giving them the parenting skills that they might need one day. Schools need to be encouraged to make space in their timetables to offer these opportunities or to integrate them into their lessons—and to feel free and able to do so, not to be inhibited or feel pressured to do otherwise.
These may seem simple concepts but so many children have never had the opportunity to think in a philosophical way, to discuss moral issues or to project their imagination into the future and envisage what their lives may be like if they take a particular course of action. This is why we should seriously consider the teaching of life skills and encourage young children to explore basic philosophy.
Good teachers are so important in all this to help with the well-being and happiness of children, making them want to attend school. We as a society must demand this but we must also hold teachers in the highest regard. Parents and children must be aware that teachers deliver the special gift of education, which can change lives. The fantastic teachers I meet when I visit schools are aware of their responsibilities to every child in their care and that they must treat each one like a delicate piece of porcelain. However, we must continue to strengthen and develop the training of teachers and to continue to raise awareness, in all schools, of children who are in danger of slipping through the net for a variety of reasons. Holistic teacher training is most important, now more than ever.
Many children in our schools come from dysfunctional households, never having any family bonding or attachment, but play therapy can help emotionally damaged or abused children, as in the work done by the British Association of Play Therapists. I declare an interest as patron. However, many schools engage people who have taken a three or four-day part-time course in play work, believing that they are employing a play therapist, at a much lower salary than they would if employing a fully qualified play therapist. A fully qualified play therapist requires a post-graduate two-year course in play therapy plus one year for the MA. To safeguard vulnerable children and to make sure nothing is missed from the child’s play, therapy must and should be carried out by people who are highly trained and skilled in this work. I ask my noble friend to consider setting up a national register of play therapists and not just leave it up to local authorities or schools to engage play therapists who may not have the fully registered and necessary qualifications.
We are here to pay tribute to the tremendous work done in schools and to praise and encourage those who work there. No system is perfect, but as long as we all continue to work together to improve and adapt to the changes in society, we can ensure that our children are in good hands at school.
Lord Pendry
My Lords, I too begin by congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, on introducing this timely debate. In October 2010, the Secretary of State for Education made a statement informing the Youth Sport Trust and others that the previous Government’s policy on physical education and sports strategy was to be abandoned and that the ring-fencing of that strategy was to end by March 2011. The excuse was that he wished to encourage more competitive sport in schools by removing many of the requirements of the previous strategy.
We know from those who, unlike the Secretary of State, are genuine lovers of sport and know about its benefits just how unpopular and illogical his approach was, so much so that, following pressure from teachers, parents, sportspeople and others, including Members of this House and the other place, he was forced to make a mini-U-turn in December 2010 when his department announced that every secondary school would receive funding up to the end of 2013 for one day a week of PE teachers’ time to be spent outside the classroom. Although this was welcome, his approach in October 2010 should never have been undertaken. It was evident that he was completely out of touch with the good work that has been carried out under the previous strategy of collaborative planning across schools, which was highly praised by Ofsted for improving the capacity of individual schools, quality sport provision and strengthening the pathways from school into community sports clubs.
Clearly one of those most affected by the Minister’s stance was, and still to some extent is, the Youth Sport Trust, which has done so much under the leadership of the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Loughborough, to ensure access to high-quality PE in schools and to provide for young people to be active and healthy. As it has pointed out to me, sport helps ensure that young people make healthy choices as they move into adulthood and provides a framework for aiding their mental development, improving their self-confidence and self-image and enhancing their attainment across the curriculum. It seems inconceivable to me and, I am sure, to other noble Lords that this Government and this particular Minister do not recognise the correlation between the provision of sport and combating many of the problems that face our society today.
In the time I have available, I wish to dwell on a sporting activity which is very relevant to this debate. However, it is not a sport that I excel in. Just two weeks ago, I met Kate Prince, the choreographer and founder of the ZooNation Dance Company and ZooNation Academy of Dance. She has done an extraordinary amount of work to engage young people in physical activity. The ZooNation Academy of Dance works with children as young as four years old to help them get engaged and inspired about dance, music and fitness. The academy, situated in Islington, brings together young people from many backgrounds and works with them to teach fitness, discipline, confidence and teamwork through street dance. Young people today have wide-ranging interests that we need to recognise if we want keep them engaged and motivated in sport and education. Kate’s experience shows that street dance is a very popular form of dance for many young people and a favourite way to keep fit.
It is a great shame that we are not using the wonderful vehicle of dance to engage more young people in sport while they are at school. A recent survey by the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation showed that only 12% of girls and 25% of boys aged 14 are doing as much physical activity as they should be in schools. Many of these young people said that the lack of options available in school sports turned them off doing physical activity, and many, girls in particular, would have preferred to have had less competitive PE options like dance.
I am increasingly concerned that no real consideration is being given to the availability of wider sport and fitness activities in schools, including dance. Kate’s experience and national statistics prove it. If we are to get children interested in sport at a young age, schools should give them more opportunity with a wider choice of activities and a more flexible approach. As Kate Prince told me, our duty is to educate children in the round—their entire body, not just their brain. Alongside academic subjects, that is essential. Activities like dance that are creative and physically demanding help children express themselves, feel part of the team and valued by their peers. Children of the ZooNation Academy get the chance to channel their energies towards a positive and exciting goal, rather than spending it on the streets causing trouble.
Today we must not forget that school sports should be built on more and more, and supported by appropriate extracurricular activities being available for our young people. The Education Select Committee looked at services for young people last year, and reported that 85% of young people’s waking hours are spent outside formal education, yet each year local authorities spend 55 times more on formal education than they do on providing services for young people outside the school day. With cuts affecting sports and youth clubs around the country, there is a real worry that young people will be deprived of active and fun things to do, both inside and outside their school.
I hope that the Minister will have learnt something from what has been said in today’s debate. I hope that he will be able to give us some encouraging news that the Government have learnt something over the past few years, following the misguided approach of the current Secretary of State for Education.
Baroness Warnock
My Lords, in July 2011 the Office for National Statistics published a paper called Measuring Children and Young People’s Well-being, which showed that the belief that they were doing well at school was a crucial factor in the sense that children from the age of eight upwards have of the quality of their own lives. Given the many hours that children spend at school, as we well know, that is not in the least surprising.
I am sure that your Lordships will agree that a good school is a happy school. More than that, if, at the crucial age of 14, we could adapt the school curriculum more to the wants and ambitions of the children than we do at present, in the manner advocated by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, who is no longer in his place, we would find that far more children than do at present had the peculiar satisfaction of believing that they could succeed and the feeling that they were doing something that was worth doing. Nothing could be more central to personal and social well-being than that kind of sense of the worthwhileness of what you are doing. The Minister should give even more attention, and I am sure that he is, to the plans for changing schools and changing the direction of the curriculum at the age of 14.
I agree entirely with, among other people, the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, that the early stages of school are crucial. I ask the Minister whether the Government could not, even now, rethink the connections between the needs that children have at this age. I know that we have been promised an end to the concept of the statement of educational need by 2013. I know that the multiple assessments and long delays to which children are now subjected are to be replaced by a single assessment that will culminate in an education, health and care plan.
That holds some promise. But, in my view, it also points to something further, and I would be grateful if the Minister could tell me what he thinks of this. As long ago as 2006, the House of Commons Select Committee on education published a report that was highly critical of the present structure and framework of special educational needs and urged the then Government to start again and radically rethink the concept of special needs. More recently, in 2010, Ofsted reported on the inflated numbers of children who were classified as having special educational needs, suggesting that, for various reasons of self-interest, schools were wrongly so designating children, and sometimes masking incompetent teaching with claims of special educational needs among the pupils.
As a way to reverse this expensive and ultimately futile and damaging trend, I suggest that the idea of special educational needs, as opposed to other needs, should be dropped altogether—at least for nursery and primary school years. Instead, we should conceive of the duty of the school as to meet the needs of the child without distinction, by whatever means are available, through the skills and the training of teachers, the vigilance of the head and the governors, and, in general, the ethos developed within the school. After all, for very young children, every experience is educational. For children who are disadvantaged and, above all, for children who come to school with a poor vocabulary and poor communication skills, the most crucial need is that they should be enabled to develop these skills and thus to learn. Of course there will emerge—and probably will already have emerged—children whose special needs include specialised teaching of one kind or another, children who are perhaps profoundly and multiply disabled, and children who genuinely prove to be dyslexic. These children will emerge and can have specialised teaching. The rest of the children do not need to be scrutinised to see whether they have special educational needs. They have special needs. They need to be taught to communicate, to play, and to take part in dancing, music and drama. All these things are highly educational, but are absolutely crucial to the development of the child, and to his or her feeling that he or she can succeed. This is where the happiness that can be generated by a school really lies: the feeling that you are doing something at which you can succeed. The main task of the first years of education must be to enable children both to succeed and to learn to believe that they can. This is the basis of enjoyment.
The concept of SEN was introduced into legislation in 1981, more than 30 years ago. The inquiry that preceded the 1981 Act had been expressly forbidden to take any account of social deprivation in its consideration of what were then known as “handicapped children”. This is now practically unbelievable but it was the case. Therefore, the concept of educational need seemed to be the only way of grouping children together when they required something beyond what most teachers provided. We have come an enormously long way since those days.
It is time for us to change our attitude to the function of schools, and to put right at the front the function of making children believe that they can succeed. We should not designate them as having special educational needs unless they have some specific, sometimes very profound, difficulty that needs a different kind of education altogether—perhaps different teachers with different skills. We should change not only our attitude but our vocabulary accordingly. Therefore, I ask the Minister whether the Government will, after all, consider a fresh start in this area, which should be completely divorced from party politics.
Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Jones for introducing this debate. As she so eloquently reminded us, children’s well-being matters not simply to ensure that they have a good childhood but because it provides a solid foundation for their future well-being as adults.
The Good Childhood Report, published earlier this year by the Children’s Society, makes the point that fortunately many children in the UK are happy with their lives. However, substantial numbers of children do not feel so positive. It says that at any given time around 4% of eight year-olds and 14% of 15 year-olds have low subjective well-being—the term used to describe people’s assessment of, or happiness with, their lives as a whole. The society points out that children who report low levels of happiness are much less likely to enjoy being at home with their family, to feel safe when they are with their friends, to look forward to going to school, to like the way they look, and to feel positive about their future. The evidence shows that a low level of subjective well-being is associated with a wide range of social and personal problems. These include poor mental health through increased depression, social isolation through increased loneliness and the likelihood of victimisation, and involvement in risky behaviours such as running away from home and sexual exploitation.
The Children’s Society report is part of a growing body of evidence about children’s well-being that is based on responses from children themselves. This was given greater impetus here in the UK by UNICEF’s 2007 report, which placed the UK at the bottom of a league table of child well-being in 21 industrialised nations. Although there has been some progress, the UK remains within the lower rankings compared with other OECD countries. It hardly needs saying that education is core to this. All the studies show that learning is closely intertwined with well-being. The school environment, as a context of learning, plays an important role in children’s social, emotional and behavioural well-being.
This afternoon, I will focus on the contribution of schools to young people’s well-being at both the entry and exit points. Those are the nursery school years, or early years foundation stage, and the latter years of school life, as schools prepare their leavers for the next stage of their developing adult lives, including through careers advice or further academic study. I have spoken on the subject of early years education in this House before. It is very important that nursery schools are able to address each child’s individual developmental and cultural needs. I welcomed the Department for Education’s recently published document Supporting Families in the Foundation Years. It reminds us that the primary aim of these years is to promote a child’s physical, emotional, cognitive and social development so that all children have a fair chance to succeed at school and in later life.
Reforms to the early years foundation stage will take effect from September this year. I am glad that they pick up the recommendations made by Clare Tickell and others last year, and acknowledge the compelling evidence that high-quality early education is linked to children’s healthy progress through school and into adulthood. For example, studies show that nursery schools offer a secure environment in which children with special educational needs, or with English as an additional language, can flourish. A significant number of nursery schools are also children’s centres serving areas of social or economic deprivation. They therefore have a particular role to play in social inclusion.
However, nursery schools across the country are under threat due to cutbacks in council spending. Universal services are becoming more targeted. The loss of more early years’ grants will directly affect existing children’s centres. Further cuts threaten nursery classes within schools as nursery schools find it increasingly difficult to be financially viable within the LEA. What assurances can the Minister give that behind the welcome words about the importance of the reformed EYFS there will be clear directives to local authorities to raise the profile of nursery schools and to promote an understanding of their role?
A further point here is the importance of experienced, properly qualified staff. Work in early education and childcare is still widely seen as low status, low paid and low skilled. I therefore await with great interest Professor Cathy Nutbrown’s report on strengthening the early years’ workforce, which is due out this month. We must ensure that women and men enter the profession with the skills and experiences that they need to do the best work possible with young children and their families. What will the Minister do to encourage the promises made in the Supporting Families in the Foundation Years document to strengthen qualifications and career pathways in the foundation years? What assurances can he give us that there will indeed be continuing investment in graduate-level training in early education and childcare, and that early years education professionals will become a central part of the remit of the new Teaching Agency?
We can all agree with the Department for Education’s aim that children should start school healthy, happy, communicative, sociable, curious, active, and ready and equipped for the next phase of life and learning. The same aim should hold, of course, for when they leave school. Schools have a tremendous role to play in preparing young people in a whole range of areas as they enter the next stage of their lives. There is no doubt that advice and guidance on careers is needed. The latest statistics show that the number of 16 to 18 year-olds not in employment, education or training increased from 159,000 in the first quarter of 2011 to 183,000 in the same period this year. This means that the proportion of NEET 16 to 18 year-olds now stands at 9.8%, which is up from 8.3% from last year. Those are troubling statistics. We are in difficult economic times and the employment prospects for young people can seem bleak. It is all the more important, therefore, that schools are equipped to advise on the most appropriate next steps for each individual.
From this September, schools will have a statutory duty to provide independent, impartial careers guidance for pupils aged 14 to 16. While I do not think that that goes far enough, with no additional funding many schools will be unable to meet even this basic requirement. The Milburn recommendation to use the previous Connexions budget to allow schools to tender for careers services has not happened. What is more, the guidance was issued with little time for schools to commission careers services to start from this autumn. Will the Minister take steps to ensure that careers advice in schools does not miss the most disadvantaged pupils? Will he also give consideration to the call in the Milburn report to prioritise initiatives, such as a national mentoring scheme?
Schools also have an important role to play in giving accurate, up to date information on the diverse landscape of higher education. I believe passionately that a key part of a young person’s social and personal development can come through the life-enhancing experience of higher education, but they must have the right advice on their choice of A-level subjects and accurate information on the changing arrangements for student funding. There is little universities can do to counteract the impact of a student having studied the “wrong” A-levels for the degree course.
It is crucial that young people, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds and those with no family history of higher education, have access to first-class guidance about their options and on how to navigate the many choices offered by higher education. In conclusion, perhaps I may ask the Minister whether, if schools are to be charged with providing this, they will be given the means to do so. Without a ring-fenced budget, and without much clearer guidance to schools on what good careers guidance looks like and how to provide it, there is a real danger that the system will fail those who most need it.
Baroness Tyler of Enfield
My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, on securing this vital debate on a subject that is very close to my heart. It is in the nature of coming towards the end of a debate like this that so many things that I wanted to say have already been said, and said extremely eloquently, so I shall improvise a little and add one or two things that have not yet come up in the debate.
There is an increasing body of evidence that good emotional well-being is strongly associated with good educational attainment and improved employment prospects. More recently, a link has been shown between well-being and increased earnings potential. Of course, the reverse is also true. Drawing on my previous experience as chief executive of the charity Relate, I know very well from the work that we did in many schools across the country that when children and young people experience problems with relationships at home in the wake of a high-conflict family breakdown, it adds great difficulties to their ability to learn at school. That is one reason why high-quality relationship education for all is so critical.
There is so much that I would like to say, probably on another occasion, about sex and relationships education, or relationships and sex education, as I have always liked to call it, but I shall wait for another debate to discuss that in more detail.
On the whole issue of the importance of emotional well-being, it is little surprise that, as we know from James Wetz’s work and his visits to schools in the United States, the United States has explicitly devoted its efforts to turning out children with emotional well-being as well as academic achievement. We know from his work how those two have been so clearly linked, and how critical this has been for children in disadvantaged areas.
Closer to home, there are schools in the independent sector—we have already heard about this from the noble Baroness, Lady Massey—such as Wellington College, which has been a trailblazer for the principle of well-being and emotional resilience. It has done this by involving every aspect in their school of their ethos, design and teaching across the whole curriculum. It is not just a question of having a lesson called “emotional well-being” but about it running through absolutely everything that the school does—not least, as the principal would tell us, because it has helped to boost their academic results. If that is good enough for the independent sector, should such an approach not be good enough for the state sector? I very much believe that it should.
To try to bring in one slightly new angle to this debate, I wanted to mention the work that I have been involved in. I have been very privileged over the last year to be a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Social Mobility. On 1 May we published our interim report, Seven Key Truths About Social Mobility. Truth number seven was that personal resilience and emotional well-being are quite often the missing link in the chain for social mobility. I shall try to explain what we meant there. We already know, from all the work that we did, that young people’s expectations, aspirations, feelings about their own abilities and whether they have the power to control what will happen in their lives and their sense of agency affects behaviour and decisions.
There is an emerging body of fascinating research in this field that points to the importance of young people developing the social and emotional skills that in turn give them the confidence, self-esteem, resilience, persistence and motivation to deal with the stresses, strains and set-backs of everyday life and still come through. This capability, sometimes called a character trait, is increasingly being linked in the academic literature with the ability to do well at school, move up the social ladder and take advantage of second and third chances. These social and emotional capabilities range from the softer end of the spectrum, if I can use that term—skills around empathy and the ability to make and maintain relationships—to the harder end of the spectrum, which is discipline, application, mental toughness, for which people sometimes use the term “grit”, delayed gratification and self-control.
In policy terms—and this is relevant to this debate—it is really interesting that these skills can be taught not just in early years at school but into adulthood, and that effective interventions in this area, where schools have a vital role to play, can make a real difference to educational attainment, employability and job success.
The American Nobel prize-winning economist James Heckman has also shown that there is a good economic case with good economic returns for investing early in this area, particularly for disadvantaged children. He concludes that identifying and scaling up these sorts of interventions in school and elsewhere is fertile territory for tackling disadvantage and improving social mobility. In case this should all sound too academic, or indeed from the other side of the pond, it is interesting to observe that developing psychological or emotional resilience and mental toughness is seen as a very important life skill by many educationalists here. Indeed, as one director of children’s services has put it recently:
“Not only can we, in many cases, enhance a young person’s performance, these particular skills are useful for just about everything that a person is going to have to do in life”.
We have already heard many facts and figures on mental health and the UNICEF report. We also heard some interesting things about the Office for National Statistic’s recent report, Measuring Children’s and Young People’s Well-being, which was published in 2011, not least that it assessed the impact of a child’s well-being on a parent’s well-being, and said that,
“a parent is only as happy as their saddest child”.
We have also heard about The Good Childhood Report published by the Children’s Society, which emphasised the value of asking children how they feel about their lives to help to understand the key ingredients of a good childhood. Many factors came out of that and we have heard about many of them in this debate, so I will not repeat them. However, what I think was most relevant to this debate was the consultation with children, which found that they saw school as vital to their well-being, both at present and in the future.
What does all this add up to and what can schools do in this regard? I understand the argument that there is only so much that a school can do. At the very least it is absolutely vital that schools ensure that their staff understand signs of emotional and behavioural problems, and that there is someone in each school responsible for knowing what support is available from local services, be they in the statutory or voluntary sectors. It might be things such as increasing access to psychological therapy—I very much welcome its recent extension to children and young people—and ensuring that children can get linked in as quickly as possible. It is interesting to note that in both Wales and Northern Ireland but not in England there is a requirement for counselling services to be available in all secondary schools.
There is much that schools can do with universal approaches and targeted services. The experience in the USA and in private schools is particularly important. I very much look forward to hearing the Minister’s response on these issues.
Lord Griffiths of Burry Port
My Lords, when drawn at No. 15 out of 15, you never know what is going to be left—perhaps items from the rich man’s table—but I will do my best.
I thought dark thoughts when the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, spoke about food and took my pitch from me. However, I hope that she will think that what I have to say complements what she said so strongly and well. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch for pulling this debate out of the bag, especially given her background of the School Food Trust. I hope that I am entitled to add to what has already been said.
I was led to the subject of food because today I must be ultra organised in that I must go straight from the Chamber to a governors’ meeting at the Central Foundation School, where I have served in that capacity for a very long time. The May newsletter that we shall be looking at at the governors’ meeting concentrates on food, and therefore my subject was chosen for me. I was delighted to see that the newsletter states that detailed discussions between the school’s catering company, Alliance in Partnership, the school council and Islington Council have led to an improvement in the nutritional value of the school’s food, but that it has also smartened up the canteen so that it is a more agreeable environment within which to eat food. All of us know that when we choose a restaurant we want to go to a nice place with ambience as well as gastronomie.
The sort of menu that you now find in the school canteen in the basement of a Victorian building looks as though it might rival the Rivington Grill or L’Abat Jour—my favourite restaurants in my area. On offer are lamb meatballs in tomato sauce, Mediterranean vegetables with couscous, beef curry, vegetable balti, mango chicken baguette or wrap; for side dishes, country mixed vegetables, pasta, braised rice or side salad; and, for dessert, a fruit bag, home-based dessert selection or rhubarb crunch with custard. The mouth waters.
The great thing about this is that it is not simply what is on offer when you go with your tray to the cafeteria; everything is integrated in a more generic approach to food, and that runs through the whole school curriculum. We offer food technology classes throughout years 7 to 9 in which students learn how to prepare healthy meals from scratch. Food technology has proved so popular that we also offer an after-school cooking club.
As though that were not enough, the school has tried out a student-run restaurant called The Globe. Hospitality diploma pupils were given another opportunity to wine and dine guests in their very own food establishment, this time named Central Cuisine. From luxury student-run restaurants to French food tasting, the Central Foundation offers a whole host of ways to keep students excited about healthy eating. Along with a variety of extracurricular sports activities and classes, there is something for everybody. And as though all that were not enough, who needs to write speeches when they are written so brilliantly for you in this way? Top tips—there are seven of them—on page three of the menu reads:
“Drink plenty of water. Take iron. Eat breakfast. Include protein-rich foods. Optimise Omega 3s. Boost energy. Destress with salad”.
It is all absolutely fantastic.
Far from this being an esoteric and rather marginal thing to talk about, we should be making more of good and healthy eating as the basis for a child’s sense of well-being at school so that they are well disposed to receive what happens in the classroom and have the strength to undertake what happens on the sports field afterwards. I should have said that I was talking about the Central Foundation Boys’ School. Therefore, even better, all these things challenge gender stereotyping as well.
Although she is not in her place now, I want to pick up on the intervention of my noble friend Lady King regarding whether the freed, autonomous and freestanding academies are under the same sort of pressure to give the same prominence to food in their general delivery or whether, as she suggested, up to a third have given it very low importance. I ask the Minister to give me some kind of satisfaction on that point but not to take too long on it as I have to get to the school governors’ meeting presently.
As a child in far-away Wales in a poor home where I did not eat any meat until I was 16, it was in 20th-century school canteens that I was fed all my protein through school meals. There was very tough meat. It was not called lamb then; it was called mutton and it was not very nice but, goodness me, it seems to have given me enough strength to stand up in your Lordships’ House and to go on at noble Lords in this way.
In conclusion, from that menu, for me it would be the beef curry with braised rice, and I think I will choose the rhubarb crunch with custard, although that may be slightly counterproductive.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)
My Lords, I am the 15th speaker and the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port was 14th because we had a no show, but it is always a great pleasure to speak after him. He has reminded me how long it is since lunch and how long we still have to wait until supper. I will try not to detain him or the House too long in responding to the important issues that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, has raised this afternoon.
I am sorry to disappoint the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, but she will not find someone to disagree with her basic contention about the importance of the contribution that schools can make to the well-being and personal social needs of children. It has been an extremely good debate this afternoon, as is always the case. The noble Lord, Lord Pendry, said that he hoped that I would listen and learn from the debate; I always try to do that in your Lordships’ House. I always learn things when I come to the House and listen, whether it is about research that I had not heard of before or a range of other issues that provide food for thought along the lines referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths.
I very much agree about the contribution that schools can make and, as has been argued this afternoon, I think that schools do that in a variety of ways. They certainly do it through sport, for example The Government agree with the noble Lord, Lord Pendry. I know that we disagree about some of the mechanisms. I know what he has contributed in the past and of his disagreement on how we are now approaching it, but it is not the case that we do not value the importance of the contribution that sport makes not just to health and in tackling obesity. Those things are important, but it contributes in terms of character and learning about oneself. I agree with the noble Lord as well on the important contribution that competitive sport makes, but there are other ways, such as dance, for example. When I go around the country I am lucky to see the variety of ways that schools try to engage pupils in different physical activity. Often the boys do the dance as well. Contributions can be made through sport, music and diet, as we have already discussed, and as mentioned by my noble friend Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, and of course through PHSE, as once again set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey. They are all crucial in helping to improve well-being and in preparing young people for the world that they will discover when they leave school.
I agree with the point made early on by my noble friend Lady Walmsley about the importance of parenting. We cannot expect schools to pick up all the pieces. We expect a huge amount from schools and over the years they have become the repository of more and more of our concerns about social ills generally. We think, “Oh well, let’s get the schools to do it”. We must not expect them to pick up all the pieces but I recognise, as the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, reminded us, the important contribution that they make and how many schools help to make up for some of the deficiencies that too many children suffer with the decline of parenting skills and family life.
I very much take the point about the importance of soft skills that employers are looking for and the question of character, which was first raised by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester. Character and resilience are in a way much the same thing. I agree with him about the contribution that church schools make to community cohesion, and it was important that he reminded us of that. We have heard of some of the many excellent examples of outstanding teaching and pastoral care that brilliant teachers provide up and down the country, including, as the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, reminded us, in the independent sector.
All that having been said, I emphasise what I believe to be the core contribution that schools can make to a child’s well-being: to provide a decent education. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, said that in a way the Government sometimes seem too fixated on exam performance. In reply, I say that without literacy there is not likely to be a huge amount of well-being; without numeracy there is not likely to be a huge amount of well-being; and without decent qualifications, whether academic or vocational, there is not likely to be much well-being either. I agree that it is not an either/or situation but the reason why the Government are so concerned about tackling educational underperformance, particularly in the most disadvantaged areas, is that we see it as being central to helping improve children’s life chances. That is a broad goal that will include their overall well-being.
To state the obvious—this point has already been made—a well run and orderly school with high aspirations for all its children will not just equip them with better qualifications but will help them meet their other personal and social needs. The best schools that I visit do not just do well at exams; they care about music, drama, sport, the quality of food that they offer and how the children socialise. That point was made by my noble friend Lady Benjamin. Taking up the point of the noble Lord, Lord Layard, the schools care about the happiness and well-being of their children. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, that they do not see qualifications and well-being as being polar opposites.
We know that there are schools in this country with very challenging intakes that outperform schools in much wealthier areas with much more favoured intakes. Cuckoo Hall school in Enfield and Thomas Jones primary school in North Kensington do not have an attainment gap. In both schools, exactly the same percentage of children eligible for free school meals as those from wealthier homes reach an acceptable level in English and maths—and in both cases the figure is 100%. Therefore, I do not think for a moment that there is a difference between us on the importance of the contribution that schools make to children’s well-being. However, I accept that there is a difference between us in how best we can achieve that. My noble friend Lady Walmsley made the point that there are different ways of going about things.
I will set out as quickly as I can the Government’s overall approach, and some of the practical steps that we have taken. First, we have the overriding goal of reducing the amount of prescription from the centre and the number of central initiatives. This is not because we do not think that any of the policy objectives of the sort that we have discussed today are desirable but because we are trying, bit by bit, to increase the space for head teachers to exercise their professional judgment. Going back in time, Governments of all complexions have tended to shove the system first one way and then another to try to fix a problem or pursue a policy. I have a lot of sympathy with the points made in this regard by the noble Lord, Lord Wills. While one can understand the rationale behind any of the individual initiatives, the cumulative effect over time was to silt up the system, leading to governing bodies and heads struggling with paperwork and directives, and being pulled in all kinds of different directions. The old Ofsted framework was an example. Inspectors reported on a minimum of 27 areas. By contrast, we want a system that is more independent and autonomous, where heads have greater space to do what they think is right for the children in their care.
Secondly, we have recognised the importance, on which there is broad agreement across the House, of intervening early and of making sure that those from poorer backgrounds get more help. We are extending the 15 hours a week of free early education for three and four year-olds to the most disadvantaged two year-olds. We are keen for practitioners to intervene earlier with children who face difficulties. That is why we are introducing a new progress check for two year-olds under the new early years foundation stage, which was referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick. Our longer-term ambition is to introduce a fully integrated health and early years review in 2015.
We have introduced the pupil premium and are providing £1.25 billion for it this year. In answer to my noble friend Lady Walmsley, certainly the premium can be used to improve pupils’ well-being. That is precisely the kind of use to which we would want schools to put it. They should use their judgment on how best to spend the money; that is one of the principles that we are applying. We are publishing what-works evidence for schools to give them a sense of what works successfully in some areas.
As I said, we are working to raise standards of literacy and numeracy, which are the key skills that children need to succeed. From this summer our new check at age six will help make sure that children are making progress and will pick up those who have problems—for example, with dyslexia. We will get children learning poetry. I agree with noble Lords who think that this will enrich children’s learning rather than being a return to the narrow educational approach of the workhouse.
We are trying to slim down the national curriculum specifically to free up more time for the kind of activities that we have been discussing today. I agree with the point made by a couple of noble Lords about the importance of creativity in teaching. I would not argue that there is only one approach to pedagogy; we need creativity in teaching and I hope that one of the benefits of slimming down the national curriculum generally will be to free up more space for creativity.
We have spoken about the importance of an orderly environment in which children can learn and are free from bullying. A bullied and frightened child cannot learn and cannot be happy. We have introduced a number of measures to help schools provide a safe and secure environment. Some came in with the Education Act which a number of us debated last year. We are taking forward trials to improve the education of pupils who are at risk of exclusion from school. We have not talked today about that group of children that we want to help. It is important to remember that for those children who end up being excluded, the conveyor belt from educational failure to exclusion to, unfortunately, prison is too direct and horrible. It is important that we should try to break some of the links. The exclusion trials we are now taking forward are based on some good work that local authorities in Cambridgeshire have been doing where, by giving schools greater responsibility for their pupils, the number of pupils in their pupil referral units fell from 700 to 150 in only a couple of years. We can learn from that.
We are also taking action to improve the opportunities and well-being of our most vulnerable children and their families, those with special educational needs, through the Children and Families Bill, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, referred. I shall make sure that the views she expressed will be referred to my honourable friend Sarah Teather. She is in the lead in this area and her views always carry great weight. We are trying to give those children and their families more of a say and more of a choice, and to bring their health and educational needs together in a more co-ordinated way. If we can achieve that, we will have made a good contribution to the well-being of some of the most vulnerable children in the country.
As we want an education system that responds to the needs of all children, we are also working to improve the quality of vocational education alongside our efforts to secure academic rigour. I accept that sometimes it sounds as though we are only concerned about the academic side and qualifications, but that is a consequence, in some ways, of the nature of politics and how the media operate. However, the work we are doing in that area, the work that we have done with the Wolf review, the work we are doing to expand a couple of initiatives undertaken by the previous Government— university technical colleges and studio schools, of which I am a great supporter and trying to expand as rapidly as is sensible—and the increasing number of apprenticeships are all signs of our intent to cater for children who have a broad range of talents and aptitudes. We are also working to bring the worlds of work and education closer together.
We are also taking action outside the classroom to address some of the issues that we have touched on today. These include action on child sexual exploitation, the Bailey review, steps to speed up adoption, more support for troubled families and the introduction of the National Citizen Service, which will build up to 90,000 places a year, as a way of giving young people a chance to contribute more broadly to society.
That is a quick canter through some of the broad measures we are taking and I hope that it counters to some extent the picture that is sometimes painted of the Government as being interested in schools only as exam factories. I do not accept that that is an accurate picture of the aims and ambitions of the Government. I hope that some of the examples of the steps that we are taking across the piece will help to counter that.
I turn to some of the specific issues that were raised, and if I fail to pick up on all of them, which undoubtedly I will in the time available to me, I will follow them up. The noble Lord, Lord Wills, talked about the transition from key stage 2 to key stage 3, which I agree is important. It is an aspect that we are considering as part of the national curriculum review. Obviously, PSHE was a theme that we came back to repeatedly. The review, which is continuing, is looking at the kind of research we heard about this afternoon, as well as the kind of evidence that the noble Lord, Lord Layard, brought to our attention. That consultation is going on and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, knows, the review is being tied in with the broader national curriculum review that is under way. We are trying to bring the two together, but until we have done the second bit I am not able to go any further on the first bit.
An important point was raised by my noble friend Lady Miller about universal credit and eligibility for free school meals. It is certainly the case that the intention behind the reforms to universal credit is not to reduce eligibility for free school meals, so we will work closely with the Department for Work and Pensions to make sure that in the definition, the priority for families with free school meals is maintained. We have talked about dance.
Important points were raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, about early years. A number of her points are being considered by the Nutbrown review, and the report is due. Ten early years teaching centres are being funded to deliver professional development and leadership support to foundation years providers in their areas, but if there are some more detailed points I can follow up in order to update the noble Baroness on where we are on that, I will do so afterwards.
My noble friend Lady Tyler of Enfield talked about the importance of being able to spot mental health problems and general emotional and behaviour problems. I agree with her, and we are sharpening the focus on special educational needs in qualified teacher status. We have increased the number of placements for trainee teachers in special schools, up from 400 last year to 900 this year. We have provided funding for an additional 1,000 SENCO places this year. It is an important area and we will persevere with it.
Another important point that was raised concerned careers. I agree that it is important to provide good careers advice. As noble Lords know, one of the changes we made in the Education Act last year was to devolve that responsibility to schools, who we think know their pupils. I agree with the point that was made about the most disadvantaged. The statutory guidance we have issued makes it clear that schools should consider particularly the needs of their disadvantaged pupils in the guidance they give.
I agree strongly with the proposition that schools should educate the whole child. I also agree strongly that education is more than about learning facts and accumulating qualifications. It is about preparing children for the rest of their lives. As the noble Lord, Lord Layard, said, it is about inculcating a love of learning. But at the heart of that is the core task of equipping children well with the basic building blocks of education. We know of the terrible progression whereby illiteracy leads to so many other social ills. That is why the Government are so intent on raising educational standards, particularly in disadvantaged areas. I believe that if we can do that, it will make it much easier for us to achieve all the other desirable ends that noble Lords have discussed today and which I know we are all keen to achieve.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, I do not intend to detain the House much further. As has been said, we have had excellent contributions from around the Chamber, although I am sorry that the Minister was so unsupported by contributions from his own Back Benches.
As expected, the Minister has made a sterling effort to defend the Government’s record and intent. However, I fundamentally agree with my noble friend Lady Morris, who argued very wisely that it is easy to make reassuring noises about the Government’s intent but the lack of structure on which to hang the policies, and the lack of Ministers vocally championing some of these issues, is sending signals to schools that some of these issues are not really valued. Perhaps the Minister could take that message back.
Ultimately, we are arguing about the balance between well-being and educational attainment. We have a slightly different sense of that balance from the Government; we disagree on it and over the months to come we will continue to try to persuade the Government that they have got that wrong.
In a more positive spirit of cross-party co-operation, I will very happily volunteer to join forces with the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, to campaign for free school meals for all primary schoolchildren, and I can see a campaign developing from that.
I thank all noble Lords for their contributions from around the Chamber. This debate will be ongoing.
Banking Reform
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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The Commercial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Sassoon)
My Lords, I refer the House to the Statement on banking reform made in another place by my honourable friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, copies of which have been made available in the Printed Paper Office and the text of which will be printed in full in the Official Report.
Lord Eatwell
My Lords, having read the Statement, I am most grateful to the noble Lord for not repeating it. He has rescued the House from some tedium. However, I am concerned that the new procedures are having the unintended consequence of shielding the Minister from embarrassment, particularly the embarrassment of having watered down the Vickers proposals, and from a number of serious ambiguities in the Statement. I have not had the opportunity to read the White Paper. I hope it will provide a better vision of the future of UK banking than does the Statement.
We on this side of the House welcomed the Vickers report as a positive step along the road to making Britain’s retail banking system safer, in particular protecting households and small and medium-sized firms from the instability that, as we have seen to our cost, may well be generated in wholesale financial markets, by banks’ proprietary trading and by the complex interconnections that characterise today’s global banking.
The Statement suggests that one of the Government’s goals is,
“to curb risk-taking in financial markets”.
Can the Minister elaborate a little on this? As many have commented, a financial market without risk is the market of the grave. If Britain is ever to return to boisterous growth—something which under this coalition must be in increasingly serious doubt—financial institutions will need to take risks. Indeed, the expansion of credit is vital to recovery.
How does the Treasury intend to monitor the risk that is generated within the ring-fence system? What is the Treasury’s definition of “acceptable” levels of risk? What is the Treasury’s estimate of the impact of these measures on the supply of credit to households and to small and medium-sized firms? For example, what will be the impact on the supply of credit of the severe limitations on wholesale funding of the balance sheet, given the important role that wholesale funding has played in the British banking system over the past decade? What will be the impact of the new leverage collar on the supply of credit? All these issues refer directly to the ability of British industry to receive the funding that it needs for recovery.
What is the Government’s intention with respect to the substantial flow of liquidity into the UK economy from the Crown dependencies? Since large companies will be outside the ring-fence and the failure of those companies would impose unacceptable costs on the UK economy, is it not clear that the Government’s proposal has failed to deal with the issue of “too big to fail”? How would the Government deal with the failure of a non-ring-fenced bank that imposed destructive instability on large UK companies?
The Statement also reads:
“The deposits of individuals and their overdrafts, and the deposits and overdrafts of small and medium-sized businesses will, in general, be placed in ring-fenced banks”.
How can the Government be sure of this? What compels a saver to commit their savings to ring-fenced banks if those banks offer a lower rate of return than non-ring-fenced operations? Are the Government simply planning to force UK households to accept lower rates of return to secure the stability of institutions within the ring-fence?
The Statement also declares that,
“within certain constraints, firms may decide what to put inside the ring-fence”.
I presume, therefore, that they may decide what to put outside. What do the Government have in mind here? Why are they abdicating their responsibility to determine the boundary of the ring-fence?
We are told that the Government have decided that ring-fenced banks should be required to hold 10% capital against risk-weighted assets. Whence do the Government derive the belief that moving to a 10% capital-to-risk-weighted asset ratio will provide the resilience that the banking sector requires to head off a serious crisis? This belief is without empirical foundation. A little investigation would reveal that Allied Irish Bank, the collapse of which devastated the Irish economy, always had a capital-to risk-weighted asset that was higher than that which the Government now propose as the basis of security of ring-fenced banks.
More generally, it is well known that the outcome of regulatory actions—that they stimulate a creative response from the banks, creative in the sense that they work out ways to circumvent or evade the regulations—reduces the impact of regulatory innovation over time. How do the Government intend to keep the operations of the ring-fence under review? Would it not be appropriate to keep the Independent Commission on Banking in being and charge it with the task of reviewing regularly the performance of the ring-fence? Why not ask Sir John Vickers and his team to return to the issue—let us say—12 months after the ring-fence has been introduced?
What is to be done on the timing of this legislation? We have before the House a Financial Services Bill the structure of which, as has been recognised by the Government and throughout the House, is seriously deficient. Would it not be better for the Government to withdraw that Bill, go back and rewrite it in a way which corrects its deficiencies, and incorporate the new measures from the Vickers report and the White Paper in that revised Bill? The House would then have the opportunity of assessing in its entirety the new framework for financial services in this country, rather than this hotchpotch of measures being introduced one after the other without clarity as to the way in which they relate to one another.
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, has not yet had a chance to read the very detailed White Paper because, when he does, he will see that a lot of his detailed questions have been addressed.
I find it disappointing that the noble Lord comes here and takes such a picky attitude towards this fundamentally important reform being introduced by the Government. The previous Government had two years in which to act on the collapse of Northern Rock and then on the failures of RBS and Lloyds and did absolutely nothing about them. Did it not occur to them that there might be a problem with the structure of banking in this country? It seems not. For two years, they sat on their hands, asked no questions and did nothing. When this Government came into office, we established within weeks the Independent Commission on Banking under the chairmanship of Sir John Vickers. It has come up with a very fine report to government. We have considered it very carefully and have published our final response today. What we have before us is one of the most radical reforms of banking that I suggest the world has ever seen.
Why have we done that? We have done that because we face in this country something which my right honourable friend the Chancellor has characterised as the British dilemma: how do we continue to host a world-class financial services sector, a sector in which our banks are able to go out to compete vigorously, as they do, around the world with the best and biggest that the rest of the world has, without putting the UK taxpayer at excessive risk? That is what is encapsulated by our response to the Vickers commission, a response that picks up the essence of what Vickers recommended but which interprets it in a way that is appropriate, flexible, forward-looking and balances those key interests of ensuring that we have a world-class but safe banking system.
The noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, talked about risk-taking in the financial markets. The critical thing is that we want to make sure that the parts of the banks within the ring-fence, the parts of the banks in which the savings of the men, women and children of this country go, are properly ring-fenced and protected—the parts of the banks which service the SMEs of this country. We want to ensure that there is not inappropriate risk-taking within that ring-fence. The noble Lord asked how that is to be monitored. It is not for Her Majesty’s Treasury to monitor it; it will be up to the Financial Policy Committee to look at the system as a whole—as it already is in interim form—and it will be for the Prudential Regulation Authority, under the Bank of England, to supervise individual firms in future.
The noble Lord then talked about curbs on growth. That area is very important, because the flow of credit must go on, particularly at this time of challenge in the economy. That is precisely one reason why Sir John Vickers and the commission recommended that the implementation of the recommendations should be concluded by 2019, a recommendation that we have accepted. The numbers are set out in the document, but I suggest that the costs of implementation over that period and beyond on a running basis are very modest in relation to both the cost of the banking crisis over which the previous Government presided and the size of the UK economy.
The noble Lord then referred to the flow of funds in from Crown dependencies. He is clearly an expert on this subject. I believe that he is on the regulatory body of the States of Jersey. I am aware, as he is, that significant deposits flow from that and other Crown dependencies into the UK wholesale markets. That plays an important part of the funding of the wholesale markets and should continue.
The noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, then asked: what compels a saver to deposit his or her money in a ring-fenced bank? The fact is that 87%, or thereabouts, of deposits in the banking system at the moment are within banks that will be subject to the ring-fence. It is highly implausible to suggest that it would be wrong to protect 90% of the deposits of the British public but not to say that there are other places that are not ring-fenced that are accessible. What the noble Lord presents is not a realistic picture. Sir John Vickers and his commission raised the question of a de minimis limit and we set a limit that the ring-fence should not operate for banks with deposits below £25 billion. I suggest to the noble Lord that one thing on which we might agree is that we need more diversity, more competition and more new entrants in the banking sector. It is entirely appropriate, we believe, that the ring-fence should operate for only the biggest of our banks—those which account for some 90% of deposits.
The noble Lord then asked a number of technical questions about the way that the ring-fence will operate. I refer him to the details in the White Paper. If he has further questions that it does not answer, I should of course be happy to write on any supplementary questions that he may put, but there is a very full analysis there.
As to the capital ratios proposed here, the noble Lord talked about the Government proposing them but of course what analysis there was underpinning them was all the ICB’s analysis. The Government have done one thing in this area today, which is to put out a 3% rather than a 4% ratio against total unweighted assets. That is to create a level playing field with what is proposed in Europe. We want this measure to be not a front-stop but a back-stop, in line with what the ICB proposed, and we want to make sure that our banks have every opportunity to compete on a level playing field.
The noble Lord then asked whether we should ask the ICB to return to the operation of the ring-fence by keeping it under review and coming back to it one year after it comes into operation. Given that the implementation date is set by Sir John Vickers at 2019, it might be a little unreasonable to Sir John and his commission, who have done tremendous work on this, to keep them on the hook until 2020, or later, to ask them to come back to these issues. I am sure that there will be other ways of looking at the impact of these measures in due course.
Lastly, the noble Lord asked whether we should put these measures into one Bill with those in the Financial Services Bill, which is already before your Lordships’ House. This is to misunderstand the different nature of what is being addressed here. On the one hand, the Financial Services Bill deals with the structure of regulation and, on the other, the measures that we are talking about today relate to the structure of banking. I accept of course that the two things taken together are the measures that, combined, will make sure that this country has a world-class financial services sector and will not put UK taxpayers excessively at risk. However, they are two sets of distinct measures. Your Lordships will now have them in front of them so that they, can read across from one to another, but any suggestion of delaying the legislative process, which the noble Lord and others have constantly urged us to get on with, would be wholly inappropriate.
Lord Eatwell
Before the noble Lord sits down, I would like to press him on a question on which I am genuinely puzzled. The Statement refers to the idea that UK households will place their deposits in ring-fenced banks. Why should they do that if the rate of return is higher on non-ring-fenced banks than it is on ring-fenced banks, and why should not an innovative financial sector create devices whereby households can take advantage of a higher rate of return in non-ring-fenced financial institutions? We are not planning—or are we?—to reintroduce Regulation Q as it was in the United States, where there was a limitation on the return that households could receive on their deposits to force those deposits into the commercial banking system.
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, at the moment depositors have freedom as to where they place their deposits. It is certainly not the case that the vast majority of deposits go to the outliers, as there always are, in offering returns. When it comes to the future arrangements, I would anticipate that the vast majority of deposits will stay where they are. For better or worse, that is the system with a number of very large incumbent banks, which will all be ring-fenced. It will be very clear to people what the difference is between ring-fenced and non-ring-fenced banks. The Statement made by my right honourable friend was merely a clear statement of observed behaviour and likely behaviour into the future—not a Statement saying that people “must” or “are compelled to”, or that they do not have any choice. Of course they will have choice, but 90% of the deposits are where they are today and I anticipate that that is not somehow going to be magically changed overnight.
Lord Bilimoria
My Lords, building on what the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, has just said, if we look back at the financial crisis, the FSA was asleep on the job, and that is being addressed by the Financial Services Bill. There is no question about that. The organisations that have got away scot free in the banking reform and the Financial Services Bill are the credit rating agencies, which were so much to blame globally for the crisis, the credit crunch and the great recession. Will the Minister address that point? Secondly, does he agree that it is surely a question of balance? Have we got the balance right with the banking reforms? There is no question that the good point about the big bang is that it opened up the economy, but the negative is that it is probably too open and not regulated enough. Are we going too far here? Quite frankly, this looks like Groundhog Day to me. We have been here before in 1933 with the Glass-Steagall Act. What lessons have been learnt from that? Have we not learnt?
Lord Sassoon
The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, makes a very good point about the credit rating agencies. The Bill is about the structure of banking. Credit rating agency regulation is now essentially in the hands of the European Commission. The appropriate sub-committee of your Lordships’ European Union Committee produced an excellent report, which we debated recently, on this subject. Yes, we must keep the subject of credit ratings under discussion, but the competence is not primarily here, and it is not the subject of the Statement we are addressing.
On the lessons of history, Glass-Steagall and so on, this is a different model from the Glass-Steagall model and from the model that the US is implementing at the moment. The commission talked to a very wide range of people and, I am sure, studied the history very carefully. In the knowledge of the current and historical international precedents, that was its fundamental judgment about the high but flexible ring-fence. I believe it has come up with something that takes all those lessons on board, is appropriate for what we need now and is not going to impact significantly on the necessary driver for growth in this country, which is keeping credit flowing this year, next year and the year after.
Baroness Kramer
It is with real pleasure that I welcome the White Paper and the Statement by the Minister. He will be aware that my colleagues in both Houses, especially Vince Cable, have long called for the structural separation of vanilla banking from more speculative investment banking. We look at Vickers and the White Paper as a very acceptable and effective compromise. As a result of its structural nature, ring-fencing has far more possibility of resisting erosion over the years as the masters of the universe regain their confidence and begin to attempt to transfer risk back to the taxpayer.
The Minister mentioned the Government’s decision to stick with the 2019 timetable. Is that a really robust measure? He will have heard some of the major banks trying to put a bit of pressure on this. A long-grass strategy is clearly under consideration by those who are resistant to these changes.
I see no reason why the Financial Services Bill should be held up to make way for legislation that comes from this White Paper, but will the Minister and his team take a look to make sure that what is likely to flow from this can find a framework and that there will be genuine capacity within the Financial Services Bill? He will know that I am particularly taken with the section in the White Paper called “A More Diverse Banking Sector”. I am delighted to see that and the whole competition area in the White Paper emphasised so strongly. Will he make sure that the capacity for that exists comfortably within the Financial Services Bill when it leaves this House?
Lord Sassoon
Perhaps I might answer my noble friend first. I am grateful to her for welcoming these next steps as we implement Vickers. On the questions about timetabling, we are firm not only on implementation by 2019 but on sticking to our commitment to completing the passage of the legislation in this Parliament, which allows for time for pre-legislative scrutiny this autumn and a proper and full process. On her point about whether we have thought about the read-across to the Financial Services Bill, we have done so—for example, we have picked up the Vickers recommendation about the FCA having a competition objective, and that is already drafted in the Financial Services Bill. There will be other important elements, such as account-switching, that will come in from September 2013. Everything fits together. I appreciate her recognition that a more diverse banking sector has also been thought about; it is a very important element of this.
Lord Tugendhat
My Lords, I welcome the Statement and I congratulate the Government on the speed at which they are moving. I have one question: where one part of a bank is within the ring-fence and one part is outside, does the White Paper say anything about auditing? Would one expect there to be the same auditors for both parts of the bank, or would they expect to have different auditors? Does the White Paper take a view on that?
Lord Sassoon
As far as I am aware, there is no prohibition or restriction on the use of auditors. I am pretty sure that the audit position is not addressed, but if I am wrong about that I will write to the noble Lord.
Baroness Northover
My Lords, to be fair, it is actually the turn of the Labour Benches. If they are happy, then we will hear from the Cross Benches first before hearing from the Labour Benches. I think that the noble Lords have given way.
Lord Rees-Mogg
We were just brewing up to have a very satisfactory little argument about the Glass-Steagall Act. The important thing about it is how long it lasted; it was passed by the Senate in the 1930s and ultimately repealed by President Carter, who had been persuaded to do so by Wall Street. Its great virtue was that it identified more clearly than previous legislation, and more clearly than most subsequent legislation, the difference between retail bankers and what you could call casino bankers, and put different responsibilities on them. That protection worked. If one went, as I did, to Wall Street in the 1950s, one found that Wall Street had come to the conclusion that it was not going to have another slump, primarily because of that Act but also because of the wartime Bretton Woods agreement, which was masterminded by our very own Maynard Keynes. This is a consistent fruit. The set of ideas that were developed in response to the crisis of the early 1930s worked their way through the financial body and the intellectual body, and gave us what we are now looking for—a restabilisation of our own economy in its own terms.
Lord Sassoon
The noble Lord, Lord Rees-Mogg, of course speaks with great authority on these matters. All I do is to say that I listen with great interest to his historical analysis.
Lord Desai
My Lords, before we had the report from Sir John Vickers at the commission, there was talk of living wills that banks would make. Whatever happens, we are now to make quite sure that the taxpayer does not once again have to bail banks out. While it is all right to have ring-fencing and so on, we have to remember that Northern Rock was not a bank with investment banking divisions. It was a bank which failed purely because of misbehaviour. Are we sure that, whatever happens, if even a ring-fenced bank fails it will not be rescued by the taxpayer?
Lord Sassoon
The noble Lord, Lord Desai, as always, brings up important points. Of course, living wills are an integral part of the whole construct for better resolution of banks than we had before. Indeed, the FSA has been leading the project for a couple of years or more to make sure that all the arrangements are in place. The noble Lord draws attention to another important part of the construct.
Lord Bates
But can my noble friend confirm that the banking crisis actually cost the taxpayer, in direct cash, loans and guarantees, close to £500 billion—£465 billion pounds? Therefore, it behoves the Government to take some action to protect savers and the interests of the taxpayer in this regard. The introduction of the leveraging ratio is therefore welcome, particularly as it follows international norms rather than putting our industry at a competitive disadvantage.
I have one small, technical point. The Minister has an incredible grasp of the detail, but does my noble friend have understanding of whether there will be any implications of introducing that leverage ratio for the Government’s holdings in Lloyds Banking Group and RBS?
Lord Sassoon
I am grateful to my noble friend for pointing out the extraordinary cost of the banking crisis. He cites one figure; I think that the estimates ranged from £140 billion upwards. They are extraordinary figures, which, as I said at the outset, the then Government did not seem to think required any response. I completely agree with my noble friend Lord Bates that something needed to be done, and that is what we have brought forward.
As for the effect on the Government’s holdings in RBS and Lloyds, I am sure that your Lordships like reading, as I do, the fine detail of impact assessments. At the back of the White Paper, the impact assessment contains several paragraphs analysing the effect. It gives a number on a rather theoretical comparison of what the effect might be, but then points out that this is probably already priced into the market so that the price of the holdings today takes account of what is proposed.
Lord Jones of Birmingham
My Lords, I declare an interest, and refer noble Lords to the register of interests, advising both providers of finance and also those who consume it. I remember my Yorkshire grandmother when I was about 12 saying that it was a condition of my Christmas present that an account was opened at the Halifax Building Society, and it went in there. Little did Grandma Jones ever believe that that money and its successor funds would be used to be gambled by the Bank of Scotland on commercial folly, so I congratulate the Minister on a good start.
However, of course we have one or two problems. First—and I would welcome the Minister’s comments on this—I notice that the Statement includes SMEs inside this ring-fence as well as private individuals, the provision of retail, the taking of deposits and the provision of finance. The problem is: how do we get capital and liquidity back into the small business sector? Bigger businesses have balance sheets awash with cash but lack the confidence to invest it. At this moment, smaller businesses do not. One of the biggest reasons for this is that they have lost trust in the banking sector. If you had a good credit record in 2008 and 2009 but had your credit facility taken away and had to borrow from friends and mortgage your house, you are hardly likely to trust the bank the next time around. Today does nothing to help that unless you make a virtue of necessity and prove to small business that this will in some way free up capital towards the provision of liquidity. I am not sure that this measure in any way does that and would welcome the Minister’s comments.
Secondly, there is the enormous problem of how you get the balance right so that we are seen as a well regulated, safely executed and prosecuted banking environment, without encouraging the most successful of our globally competitive sectors not to leave these shores. It would not go elsewhere because of all the problems with salaries and bonuses and the vilification of banking but because it will just become too difficult to lend here and easier to lend in other markets. I ask the Minister, and I include his coalition partners in this—it would be nice to have a Secretary of State for Business who supported business for once—whether, just for once, some positive words might come from the Government about the financial services sector in this country, rather than constant smacking instead of encouragement.
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Jones of Birmingham, is always rightly concerned about the financing of British business, which is very important. Today’s measures are not principally about that. I could talk about the £21 billion national loan guarantee scheme or the fact that our 10-year sterling sovereign rate has been in the 1.5% to 1.7% range for the past few weeks, which is an unprecedented level. That all flows through. Here, we are significantly reducing the risk of another banking crisis. It was that crisis—the disruption and its aftermath—that caused such difficulty in the flow of loans to our businesses. Whatever we do here to minimise the chances of it happening again must be good for our businesses.
As for the UK being a competitive centre of banking, the Government are working incredibly hard. For example, only this morning I was at a very important meeting with businesses and authorities from the UK and Hong Kong, talking about how we would build the offshore RMB centre in London. That is an example of the forward-looking approach that we take to making sure that the UK and London continue to be the global financial centres of choice.
Baroness Drake
My Lords, I have only just had time to read the White Paper but I ask the Minister to elaborate on two issues. The Statement makes it clear that the strength of a country’s banking sector strengthens its stability and gives it a competitive advantage—a view that I endorse. However, that view clearly worried the European authorities, as evidenced by Mr Enria’s evidence to the Joint Committee on the Financial Services Bill. These are my words, not his, but he expressed the view that capital requirements for banks in Europe should have both a minimum and a maximum. However, the White Paper confirms that the Government support the ICB view that further buffers should be added to those of the Basel III international standards, and that the Government will, through the CRD4 negotiations, work to ensure that they can be implemented in accordance with EU law. Therefore, my first question is: how confident are the Government of securing the national regulatory freedom to impose the additional capital buffers that they would like to see?
Secondly, I am pleased to read in the White Paper that, for the first time, the position of pension funds in the ring-fencing will be important. The issue is to do with making sure that the regulatory framework for pension funding is not breached when dealing with the banking separation.
Lord Sassoon
In answer to the noble Baroness’s first point, we are confident, and we are absolutely on top of and watching her second point, which is important.
Baroness Wheatcroft
My Lords, I welcome the White Paper and the accompanying Statement. Separating risky banking from core retail banking is essential but we have to be careful that the ring-fence does not become a Chinese wall. It will take some policing. We also need to be very careful in watching to what extent the hedging that will be allowed within the ring-fence is monitored by the various authorities. I have some qualms about that.
I am also concerned about the timetable. I am delighted to hear that the 2019 deadline will stay but I am puzzled as to why that needs to be the case for more than the capital requirements. I would have thought that the ring-fence might have been installed sooner than 2019, which sounds a long time away. My final point is about why on earth households would put their money into a ring-fenced bank. I cannot see why their money should be guaranteed if they put it in a riskier institution. Perhaps the Minister will answer that.
Lord Sassoon
I would very much like to respond to those points but I see that the clock has reached 20 minutes. I do not like to do this but I had better write to my noble friend Lady Wheatcroft on these important points.
European Rail Market: EUC Report
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness O'Cathain
That this House takes note of the Report of the European Union Committee on Tunnel Vision? Completing the European rail market (24th Report, Session 2010–12, HL Paper 229).
Baroness O'Cathain
My Lords, this report is the result of the work of the sub-committee on the internal market, infrastructure and employment, which I chair; work that was carried out engagingly, energetically and, dare I say, enthusiastically by all members of the committee. I pay tribute to them and thank them for their sterling work. The work programme and the final report could not have been completed in such a professional way without our clerks, John Turner and, from October 2011, his successor Mark Davies, together with our policy analyst, Michael Torrance. I thank them most sincerely on behalf of the whole committee.
The members of the committee recognise that the most important challenge facing this country, and indeed facing other European member states, is ensuring strong and sustainable growth. Ensuring a strong internal market with a well developed transport network to connect trading partners is critical to that growth. The European Commission’s 2011 report, Roadmap to a Single European Transport Area, identified rail as being central to that objective. This guided our choice of topic. Our committee also determined that as part of our inquiry we should have a consumer focus noting that, sadly, the consumer is left out of a great deal of the discussions on the European Union.
The Channel Tunnel opened in 1994 as a means to give fresh impetus to relations with France and mainland Europe but also as an important step in expanding the internal market, easing the movement of both people and goods. As an aside, let us never forget that the internal market is an enduring tribute to the Government of my noble friend Lady Thatcher following the publication of the White Paper on completion of the single market in June 1985. The committee felt that an examination of the challenges facing the operation of the Channel Tunnel and the obstacles to the fulfilment of its potential should act as the lens through which we focused our assessment.
Our first findings rocked us somewhat. Capacity utilisation for freight was around 10% and that for passenger services was around 50%. Not making too fine a point of it, this seems an abject failure to utilise an undoubted asset. Our overall conclusion was that there were many obstacles which should be addressed. Those with a suspicious mind could wonder whether some of the obstacles were based on the status quo position—the idea that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Well, don’t fix it, it does work—but neither as efficiently nor as effectively as we think that it could. The continued fragmentation of the European rail market is a true barrier to trade. The remaining technical, administrative and legal obstacles must be addressed, and rapidly, as such action would surely encourage economic growth. The Government’s response agrees but there does not seem to be a huge sense of urgency.
I should like to explain briefly the nature of six of the obstacles. First, there is a need to establish strong and independent regulators. That does not mean more powers to Brussels. It simply calls for better use of existing powers. We did not recommend the creation of an EU-level economic regulator and the government response supports our view.
Secondly, we suggest that the actual governance of the Channel Tunnel should be reviewed. A figure on page 19 of the report shows the complicated structure. One of our witnesses, Professor Vickerman, was clear that the structure was,
“no longer fit for purpose”.
More than 25 years after the treaty of Canterbury, which established the model, now is an opportune time to examine it. The Government, though, are not convinced. They stated in their response that they see,
“no imperative to review the Treaty. Nor do we believe there is any appetite for renegotiation of the Treaty on the part of the French authorities”.
My third point is that there are almost certainly obstacles in the commercial operations of the tunnel. Obviously, the more operators running services through the tunnel, the greater the competition and the wider the choice both for freight operators and consumers. Although there is now more than one freight operator, Eurostar remains the sole provider of passenger-only services. Deutsche Bahn has applied to operate services, but I hear that there are further delays to the application process. That cannot be acceptable. We recommend that authorisation should be granted without undue delay. Many obstacles seem to have been put in the way, as detailed in the report, although I have to admit that I remain to be convinced of their validity based on the evidence that we received. I just hope that it is not one of those very old non-tariff barriers to trade that bedevilled my early career in both the motor and food industries.
The fourth obstacle we identified were the charges for use of the tunnel set by Eurotunnel, the company that won the concession to build and operate it. We appreciate that they comprise a significant part of Eurotunnel’s income, particularly as it is a private company that has to cover construction and running costs, but we concluded that a reduction in the medium term could serve as a powerful fillip for the development of passenger services, and a concomitant for growth. New entrants could be deterred from seeking authorisation to provide services if the access charges are not fair, predictable and more easily available.
For my fifth obstacle, we come to one of those words that does not exist in the very large dictionary that we have in the office upstairs—interoperability. Actually, it means what is says, I am told, and I suppose we will get used to it. The EU-wide technical standards for interoperability, known as TSIs, set out comprehensive safety standards, including for long tunnels. The Channel Tunnel, though, has distinct and unique standards. We were not convinced that the Channel Tunnel is a unique case. Two committee members, the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, who is sadly not in his place today and is unable to attend this debate, and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley—together they are the most knowledgeable train experts in Parliament—paid their own expenses to go to Switzerland to investigate the justification. They were not persuaded and, when we heard their comments, neither were we. The Government's response was to state that:
“Detailed work is underway to address the remaining issues. Where this work demonstrates that specific requirements are no longer necessary, we anticipate that those requirements will be rescinded”.
When does my noble friend the Minister anticipate that the work will be completed and how long afterwards will the requirements be rescinded? This exercise is delaying the ability of other operators to provide additional services, thereby inhibiting competition; competition which would almost certainly benefit the consumer. Of course, safety is paramount, but it should not be used as a smokescreen.
The sixth of the identified obstacles that I choose to deal with in this debate relates to security. It is an obstacle to expansion. Of course, we are much more security conscious today than we were when the Channel Tunnel first opened for business and, sadly, concerns in this area are unlikely to decrease. All areas of our lives are affected but there is a widespread feeling that the measures and methods employed in this area seem to be somewhat inefficient. The tunnel uses what are called “juxtaposed border controls”—yet another strange phrase—involving the checking by both UK and French officials before authorisation for departure. With the hoped for extension and expansion of services, this process could be unsustainable. The Government must look again at their approach here and their commitment to reviewing these arrangements is very welcome.
I return to the need for customer focus. Consumer interests must be brought to the fore. Chapter 6 of the report details all the current “irritant factors”, including through-ticketing problems and opaque information on passenger rights. These, coupled with some language difficulties, can make the wished for wonderful experience of travelling to and from the mainland of Europe a potential nightmare. We are unanimous that the customer should feel valued and hope that our report will make a move in that direction a reality.
Having touched the surface of the scale of the challenge ahead, I hope I have convinced noble Lords that something should be done. The Channel Tunnel could, should, and indeed must be an important part of a thriving European rail network—one that is popular, efficient, easy to use and promotes growth. There is much to do and we need a real sense of urgency to do it, especially when the possibilities for the Channel Tunnel fall into the win-win category.
I thank in advance all who are taking part in this debate and I am looking forward very much to their contributions. In particular, I look forward to the response of my noble friend Lord Attlee, hoping that he gives the report strong support and shows a commitment to adopting an urgent approach to the recommendations.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, on the excellent way in which she introduced this debate. I do not think that she said a word with which I disagreed. I also congratulate her and the other members of the sub-committee on producing a very impressive report.
As many of your Lordships know, I am a passionate supporter of the railways and I am keen always to see their role in the provision of national and international transport expand. It is clear that the sub-committee shares that view. Fifty years ago, the railways of Europe looked very different from how they look today, but common specifications set out by the International Union of Railways meant that rolling stock could cross the continent regardless of national boundaries, albeit with a change of locomotive at frontiers.
Some of us are old enough to remember the blue sleeping cars drawn up at Calais Maritime behind a steam locomotive ready to take British passengers from Calais to the south of France or to Venice. You could take a direct train from Paris to Istanbul or from Ostend to Moscow. Trains of fruit from Spain, motor scooters from Italy or manufactured goods from Germany and France crossed on train ferries, as did the night ferry sleeping car train each night from Paris and Brussels to Victoria. Then, in the 1970s, with the development of high-speed routes, new multiple-unit trains and the move to containers, this universal compatibility broke down. The market failed to deliver a common solution, national railways focused on internally set objectives and the European Commission was slow to react to those changes.
From being the odd one out in Europe in the 1960s, Britain is now at the heart of railway technical and operational development. Eurostar shows how trains can cross frontiers seamlessly, not just between Britain and France but on into Belgium as well, and soon further into Germany and the Netherlands. Far from changing the locomotive at the frontier, the train crews themselves work right through to Paris and Brussels. In this case, the different technical standards in each country have been overcome with the remarkable trains that can, at the turn of a selector in the driver’s cab, handle four different types of traction current and signalling systems.
Today’s debate is important because, as the noble Baroness said, there is scope to attract more people to use international rail services and because much more needs to be done to encourage rail freight through the tunnel. The sub-committee’s report makes an important contribution to moving this argument forward.
Cross-channel services are always going to be more complex to operate than domestic services because of the involvement of Eurotunnel, which has its own shuttle services to consider, and the fact that the only link to the rest of Europe requires the active co-operation of SNCF between Coquelles and the Belgian border.
On the freight side, international traffic via the Channel Tunnel seems not to be a priority for SNCF. In the past, this has been reflected in poor reliability and problems in arranging additional trains at short notice. Whatever technical or legal solutions are proposed, clearly a lot of work needs to be done to encourage a different approach by SNCF.
On freight, it is always going to be difficult to build rail market share when the cost of taking a container through the tunnel can be lower using a lorry on Eurotunnel’s shuttle compared with a freight train, and this reflects the usage charge. There needs to be a move towards charging avoidable costs for freight—as is the case on Network Rail at home—if market share is to have a chance to grow.
There is little in the way of fair competition between road and rail freight. European hauliers do not pay towards UK infrastructure costs, for example, nor do they pay fuel duty if they fill up before crossing to Folkestone. The choices are difficult: there needs to be either some form of subsidy or cross-subsidy for rail freight operators to use Eurotunnel’s infrastructure or a charge for other European hauliers to use the infrastructure that Britain currently provides at no cost to them.
The sub-committee is right to draw attention to the inherent contradictions surrounding Eurotunnel’s operation. This is Britain’s only fixed link to mainland Europe. It is a privately owned concession where the concessionaire also runs a shuttle service for freight and passengers, and, at the same time, it is the infrastructure authority for through trains, which themselves have to fit both Eurotunnel’s train paths and the available paths on Network Rail and its French equivalent.
Up to now, this process has been left to the market. The sub-committee’s report shows that this is not working and, as demand increases, action will be needed to optimise the use of the one pair of tracks that link the British and French rail networks. Our own British experience on the east coast main line is that the only way to optimise capacity on a constrained railway with multiple operators is by strong focused planning of the way in which that capacity is used. In the case of the east coast main line, this has been done by the Department for Transport as the specifier of franchised services on the route, but the needs of freight and two open-access passenger operators have been protected as well.
The question therefore is: can Eurotunnel perform that role or does this need action by the IGC or a specially convened group of train planners from Network Rail, Eurotunnel and the French infrastructure owners? I am advised by Eurostar that Eurotunnel declines to take part in any of the intra-European path allocation discussions and it has not been keen on changing passenger train paths, even when that would reduce journey times or allow more trains to use the tunnel at peak times.
Eurostar also makes the point that the current structure of access charges needs to be reviewed. The per-passenger toll is preventing new markets from being developed which would otherwise be able to cover the direct operational costs. There needs to be a lot more openness and transparency in the allocation and recovery of costs and there needs to be a proper policy for discounts.
As an example, if we compare a London to Paris journey, the total infrastructure charges—that is, terminal costs, handling fees and landing charges—for a flight are around £2,400; for a Eurostar train to Paris they are £21,500, of which the tunnel accounts for £12,500. Even taking account of the fact that a Eurostar train tends to carry two and a half times as many people as a plane, that is still a huge difference.
The sub-committee is right to draw attention to the spare capacity that exists in the Channel Tunnel, to which the noble Baroness referred, but it is not hard to see why that exists. It is my belief—I think that the Government share this view—that the future lies with longer-distance high-speed rail travel. I hope that the Minister will say that when he replies. The desirability of building a new high-speed railway obviously has not been part of the sub-committee’s remit for this inquiry, but I suggest that it is relevant when taking a rather longer view, particularly taking into account the Government’s decision to abandon the building of a third runway at Heathrow or to expand other capacity at other airports in the south-east—a policy that I support, as the Minister knows. The correct approach, in my view, is to manage demand for short-haul air travel and for us to follow other countries by building high-speed rail capacity. The central part of that approach will be to make proper use of the Channel Tunnel, which is why I think that the sub-committee is on the right lines.
Finally, I want to say something about another barrier to long-distance international rail travel that we have erected for ourselves in Britain. One weekend last month, I travelled by train from Budapest to Berlin and then back to Brussels, passing through five different countries. I was not subjected to a single passport or security check throughout the journey. When I got to Brussels and took the Eurostar to St Pancras, there were three passport examinations and my luggage was searched before I got on board. With great respect to the Government, it is not good enough for them to assert that these checks are necessary because Britain is not part of Schengen, and the sub-committee is right to draw attention to that. We are not searched when we board long-distance trains in Britain and I see no reason why the railway should be dragged down to the level of the airlines in this respect. I am disappointed that the Government’s response to the Select Committee report seems to be so inflexible on this issue.
I conclude as I began, by expressing my admiration to the sub-committee for producing a good report, which if implemented would be of real value to the railways, rail passengers and the country as a whole.
Baroness Scott of Needham Market
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, for so ably introducing today’s debate, and should like to say how much I look forward to being a member of EU Sub-Committee B as a refugee from my spiritual home of Sub-Committee G.
For much of its long history the Channel Tunnel was primarily thought of as an Anglo-French or Franco-English enterprise, and its construction pretty much entirely predates European Union rail policy. The report highlights very well how utterly that context has changed, and how poorly the single rail market functions across Europe because of what I would charitably describe as patchy compliance with the liberalisation agenda. It is interesting to speculate on whether the tunnel’s current operation itself is a hindrance to growth or a victim of the conformity of much of the rest of Europe to liberalisation.
Personally, although I have a scintilla of sympathy with the view of the Office of the Rail Regulator—which cautioned against revising the treaty of Canterbury on the understandable grounds that the protracted nature of the process would divert attention away from more immediate issues facing the railway—I believe that so much has changed in the quarter century since it was signed that a review is inevitable. The sub-committee has done a great service in highlighting some areas where the governance is working against passenger interests and those of freight. Of course an adverse EU ruling on the tunnel’s arrangements and whether they conform to rail legislation might force the matter, so perhaps I may gently suggest to the Government that they look at jumping before they are pushed.
The stated objective of the EU and, indeed, of the UK Government is to see a transfer from short-haul flights to rail. That is certainly understandable from a climate change point of view. However, setting that aside, it makes sense to make better use of the very limited capacity at our busy airports. Whatever we think about an extra runway at Heathrow or increasing capacity elsewhere—or even “Boris Island”—it will take years to get that sort of extra capacity. Therefore, making better use of rail is a sensible part of aviation strategy. The enthusiasm of Deutsche Bahn to develop routes between Amsterdam, Frankfurt and London is a good example. I hope that progress can be made on the scheme, which is currently mired in what look suspiciously like restrictive practices.
I was compelled by evidence given to the committee by The Man in Seat Sixty-One. It chimed with my personal experience that reducing carbon emissions is not a major incentive for people to switch to rail; they are deterred by the stress and time involved in airport checks, the delays to air travel and the extra charges that are often well hidden until you are a long way into the process. To that, I would add the time and expense of travelling to and from major airports. Heathrow Express is a lovely service but—my goodness—at £34 for a standard return fare, it is very expensive. The Man in Seat Sixty-One estimates that these factors account for 80% of the incentive to switch to rail, and climate change only 20%. What I conclude from that is that the desired modal shift will not just happen because people will have an attack of green consciousness but because it will be easier for them. We will have to work on that.
The good news is that clearly there is capacity in the tunnel. I was struck by that two years ago when the volcanic ash cloud halted air travel all over Europe. The Channel Tunnel provided a much needed and very valued way to move passengers at a difficult time. However, it was only able to do so because it was so underused. The initial forecasts of 17 million to 20 million passengers a year proved wildly optimistic, with today’s figure being in the region of 9 million to 10 million. As we have heard, the evidence is that less than 50% of passenger capacity is being used, and 10% of freight capacity. I am not aware of any capacity issues on the road network on either side of the tunnel that would prevent growth in usage, nor on the High Speed 1 side—although, as the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, said, there are issues in northern France. I hope that the Minister will say whether the Government are addressing these with the French Government.
Competition is undoubtedly the best way to get a good deal for passengers, and I share many concerns expressed in the report about the potential for the current arrangements utterly to distort competition. Access charges are high, and make freight travel in particular simply not competitive with travel by sea—or even, as we have heard, with travel through the tunnel. The access charge alone for a passenger on Eurostar is £32. That will severely restrict its competitiveness against air travel
The decision-making process is riddled with conflicts of interest. One is the involvement of the UK and French Governments through the IGC. The bureaucratic nature of decision-making makes change very difficult. The report is right to call for a more transparent system to determine whether high access charges can be justified, taking into account the fact that Eurotunnel is solely reliant on access charges for its income, and to deal with its historic debt. Of course, it gets no public subsidy. A more transparent system would give clarity about how charges are allocated between users, which is crucial given Eurotunnel’s role as both an infrastructure provider and operator. It may be that independent regulation is the answer.
Yesterday’s press carried reports of the ruling by a French commercial tribunal that approved Eurotunnel’s purchase of three ferries from the liquidated Sea France ferry company. Eurotunnel will continue to employ the 560 former workers and run the services. This may be welcome for the workers, but it adds another layer of complexity to the nature of the charging and competition regime. I would not be surprised if the EU competition authorities did not take an interest.
Like the noble Baroness, I am very concerned about the insistence that the tunnel maintain its own safety standards rather than the EU-wide TSIs. This is being used as a barrier to new entrants to the market, and I would like to see more evidence that after all this time the tunnel requires bespoke standards. The comparison with tunnels elsewhere is valid. My noble friend Lord Fearn recently received a Written Answer that stated that there were 64 accidents in the Channel Tunnel last year. Will the Minister say how this compares with tunnels elsewhere, and what it says about the operation of separate standards?
I was persuaded by the evidence that the so-called juxtaposed border controls should be looked at again in terms of the time and cost of operating them to both passengers and rail operators. The feasibility of on-board passenger and passport checks is an advantage that rail has over air which ought not to be lost. I am pleased to see that the Home Office, at least, looks open to it.
I have looked at this issue from the point of view of modal shift—there are many dimensions to it— and I look forward to the contributions of other noble Lords, although I can see that this will be one of those debates in which there is a huge amount of agreement.
Lord Freeman
My Lords, in common with those noble Lords who have already spoken, I warmly welcome the report. It is a good example of how your Lordships’ House can perform a real service in comparison with the other place. Here, we have a process of thorough examination on an all-party basis—often not on a partisan basis; the Government then respond and then there is a debate. There is no similar process in the other place.
The committee will welcome the attention to detail of the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, and I am sure that she will add a great deal to the work of the European Union Committee.
I particularly welcome the report because it is clear, extensive and comprehensive and has enabled the Government to respond fully and clearly. I add my thanks and congratulations to my noble friend Lady O’Cathain; she has done a marvellous job. I think that many noble Lords who are not in their places today and who do not serve on Select Committees do not fully appreciate the amount of work that a chairman, in particular, puts in. I congratulate her on behalf of my colleagues and, I am sure, on behalf of the whole House.
I pay tribute also to my noble friend Lord Roper. He is no longer chairman of the full committee but he performed a Herculean task with good grace, courtesy and thoroughness. We should not forget that a sub-committee reports to the main committee. The main committee then goes through its report with a fine-toothed comb and sometimes improves it. The whole House owes a great deal of gratitude to my noble friend Lord Roper.
I shall not repeat or comment on any of the excellent points already made. However, I note that three former colleagues of mine on European Sub-Committee B are in their places. They will be speaking in the debate and I look forward to their contributions. I shall focus on the passenger rail part of the report and also on the Channel Tunnel.
On a lighter note, I notice in the report that some evidence was taken from a frequent traveller—The Man in Seat Sixty-One—of Eurostar. I have to say that that is my favourite seat. I hope that it was not me, because I have now completed more than 100 journeys on Eurostar in the past 10 years.
My first point relates to capacity. I am somewhat sceptical of the comment in the report—I think that it comes from Her Majesty’s Government—that the tunnel is being used at only 50% of its capacity. I am not wholly convinced by that, because if there is to be a better, more frequent service for the passenger, as opposed to freight—and obviously that will also happen during the course of the day—we should not assume that there is a relatively infinite amount of capacity available. I am not asking the Minister to respond to that point; I am merely pointing out that there are limitations. Once you get an electrical fault or a train running slowly through the tunnel, traffic quickly backs up. I also believe strongly in keeping the fast Channel Tunnel service at two hours and 15 minutes from London St Pancras to Gare du Nord. That is a real prize and we are seeing more and more passengers, particularly business people, switching from short-haul air services to Eurostar.
My second point concerns Waterloo, which looks like a white elephant at the moment. Is it likely to be available for additional passenger services coming through the tunnel? I do not know what the long-term plans are so far as British Rail is concerned, but it is an asset which has remained empty for far too long. The reason for switching from Waterloo to St Pancras was the enthusiasm of my noble friends Lord Heseltine and Lord MacGregor for the possibility of linking into a through service to the Midlands and the north of England. Practically that is not possible at the moment, because you have to get off the train at St Pancras and catch a normal Intercity train. I will not ask the Minister to comment because it is a detailed operational point, but it could be a prize.
Like others present in the Chamber, I have suffered from long delays—particularly, it has to be said, at Gare du Nord. We should look carefully at ways of speeding up the process of looking at passports and, if necessary, examining luggage on the train. The police and the authorities have ample opportunity to detain anyone who does not have the correct papers.
I have two final points, although the Minister does not necessarily have to respond to them today, but perhaps he will be kind enough to do so in writing. First, I shall quote from the Government response to the report:
“We are currently considering with France”—
that means the French authorities—
“the most effective way of implementing the EU Interoperability directive in relation to the Channel Tunnel”.
Have events moved on and what is the present status? Secondly, is there any more up to date information on the proposed Deutsche Bahn passenger service, which I think we would all welcome? I am not clear as to why there is a delay on the part of the German railway authorities and Government in pursuing negotiations for access.
I conclude by taking this opportunity to thank our officials. It is quite rare to do so—certainly it is extremely rare in the other place. But we should be very conscious of the excellent work performed for all the sub-committees, and particularly the main committee, by civil servants. I would be grateful if my noble friend would communicate my thanks.
Lord Haskel
My Lords, serving on one of your Lordships’ committees is a wonderful way of getting to know your fellow Peers. The depth of knowledge and experience never ceases to amaze me. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, mentioned the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw. He really is a walking database on railways. He and my noble friend Lord Berkeley used to be walking encyclopaedias, but of course they do not exist any more. It was a pleasure to serve with my noble friend and everyone else.
Our chair, the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, has a special concern for the consumer, something that no doubt she learnt during her business career. It is that concern about the well-being of the railway traveller moving across European frontiers that is central to this report. An interest that we all share is to promote the environmental friendliness of rail travel. For my part, I find it more convenient and pleasant to travel by rail than by car or aeroplane.
We were very fortunate to have John Turner and Michael Torrance, and then Mark Davies, as our clerks and policy advisers. They were towers of strength and I thank them.
The conclusion of our report has been reflected in what a number of other noble Lords have said. A lot more can be done to make cross-border rail travel in Europe easier, quicker, cheaper and more convenient. What is required is a much greater sense of urgency and priority—in Whitehall as much as in Brussels. The framework is there, the talking goes on, but the action is slow. For instance, the principles are agreed but member states are not implementing the railway packages equally. For this to happen, the European Railway Agency needs to be a lot more effective. All this discriminates against new access to the rail infrastructure by creating technical and administrative barriers, which vary from nation state to nation state. This is what creates the barrier to international operations.
A recast of the first railway package designed to establish a single European railway area is being discussed. The UK National Parliament Office in Brussels reports that a fourth railway package has been drafted to make things even better, but it all depends on the agreement to be reached on the recast of the first railway package. In their response to our report, the Government are obviously as frustrated as we are that the Commission is not using its powers to enforce the first railway package. Have the European Commission and the European Parliament taken any further action to enforce this package? We were told that they were due to debate this.
The Independent Regulators Group seems to be working. In their response, the Government tell us that the group has a full programme of monitoring of work and developments. If I may say so, it at least is travelling in the right direction. The work is due to be completed this year. Can the Minister tell us how it is going?
It is right to ask why this is important. What is there to be gained? The answer lies in figure 3 on page 35 of our report: the core network map for 2030. According to this map, by then we will be connected to an impressive rail network throughout the European Union. If it is efficient, united and convenient, it will provide a service that will attract the consumer, help the single market and help cut fuel emissions.
As my noble friend Lord Faulkner explained, our connection to this network is through the Channel Tunnel, and this connection is crucial. The impression that we got from the witnesses was that the tunnel is not working well. First, our graph in figure 2 on page 28 shows that the number of passengers is levelling off. Incidentally, the volume of freight is decreasing, which is very worrying.
As other noble Lords have said, we were surprised to learn that there is unused capacity through the tunnel. My noble friend Lady O’Cathain gave us the numbers. The noble Lord, Lord Freeman, doubts this but the evidence we had from our witnesses was pretty definite: there could be a lot more passenger trains going direct to other cities in Europe apart from Paris and Brussels. Yes, a service to Germany is planned, but the start seems to be getting later and later. They are now talking about 2015.
Since our report was published, Eurostar announced that it was “eyeing”—whatever that means—adding up to 10 new routes from St Pancras to Holland, Germany, southern France and Switzerland. This is because with HS1 you can actually save time compared with flying when travelling from city centre to city centre. But it is talking about 2016 or even 2017, even though HS1 has now been operational for two years. This has come about through competition. It will only happen because Eurostar is going to lose its monopoly on high-speed services through the Channel Tunnel. Even so, I am sure that noble Lords will agree that this is disappointingly slow.
Are there any other reasons why this extra capacity is not in use already? The noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, gave us several answers. I agree with her that the impression that we were given is that access charges are high and unpredictable. My noble friend Lord Faulkner put the figure at £12,000 from some briefing that came from Eurostar, but I share with the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, the impression that they are unpredictable. As we say in our report, new entrants will be deterred if the access charges are not fair, predictable and readily available.
In their wonderfully bureaucratic response to the question of access charges, the Government recommend caution because of the complexity of making pricing judgments. All I can say is that other regulators make pricing judgments every day of the week, in water, electricity, gas and even within UK railway travel, so why not with the Channel Tunnel? This must be a major factor in the underutilisation of the tunnel and the lack of competition.
Other noble Lords have mentioned border controls. It is a question not only of immigration but of terrorism, both of which are important factors. Integral with this is the right to cabotage, which would help generate more demand and make international services profitable. Perhaps the Minister can say whether anything is happening about this.
Witnesses told us that interoperability is a major factor. The European Rail Agency really has to be more proactive in this area. The Government in their response agree, saying that the European Rail Agency’s work on interoperability is planned to conclude in summer 2012. Well, the calendar, if not the weather, tells us that it is now the summer. What is happening?
Ticketing is another barrier. You just cannot buy a through-ticket from one European railway station to another. That is understandable if it is from one minor station to another, but it applies also to tickets from one major terminus to another. You still have to buy different tickets for different parts of the journey and, of course, there is no consistency in price. Booking cross-border tickets on the internet is virtually impossible. We heard some wonderful evidence from the man from the website The Man in Seat Sixty-One, who explained the intricacies—his evidence also impressed the noble Baroness, Lady Scott—and he works full time advising people on how to book tickets across Europe, particularly on the internet. He makes a living out of it.
Passengers’ rights also need to be clarified, even though, as the Government point out in their response, passengers on international rail journeys within the EU are covered by specific conditions. However, it is still unclear what happens if you miss a connection because your train is late and the ticket price is different on the next train.
We have been assured that all these problems—and others which I have not mentioned but other noble Lords have—are being tackled by the intergovernmental committee which operates through the treaty of Canterbury, and that consumers’ concerns are paramount. However, I repeat that my impression, like that of other noble Lords, is that the whole thing must be speeded up. It is slow because there is little competition both through the Channel Tunnel and across international borders; it is slow because officials, by definition, are too distant from the consumer.
If the Government can find more ways of introducing competition, there will be a much greater sense of urgency initiated by the operating companies. Then we will all benefit from a fast and efficient passenger railway system across Europe that is both consumer-friendly and environmentally friendly. The potential is there; the framework is there; it just requires the effort.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, first, I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group and a board member of the European Rail Freight Association. I spent 15 years in my comparative youth building the Channel Tunnel, and I recall having many debates with the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, who was one of the best Transport Ministers I can remember. We dealt with a lot of local problems and, sometimes, national problems. It was a pleasure to work with him and is great to see him in his place today, because he started many of the things that we have today.
I am sorry that I was not involved with the forecasting, which many noble Lords have criticised, or negotiating the contracts, which I am about to criticise, but there we are. We have had one of the best informed debates I can remember. There is remarkable expertise in this House and remarkable unanimity of view, which we can probably sum up as saying: it is time that the Government got moving on this to make the changes that this excellent report has recommended. I support everything that is in it. Of course, I gave evidence as well.
I have just one issue on capacity before I get into structure, which is my main subject. The noble Lord, Lord Freeman, will remember lots of debate about capacity through the tunnel, but capacity in a line such as this depends on all the trains going at the same speed. The original capacity design was 24 paths an hour in each direction which, if the signalling was upgraded, could be increased to 30. You could not run 30 trains, but you could run with a few spaces. The noble Lord will probably remember that Eurotunnel announced a few weeks ago that it will speed up the shuttle trains to keep up to the same speed as the Eurostar to get more trains through the tunnel during the Olympics. There is plenty of capacity there and I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady O'Cathain, that very little of it is being used for the through services.
Another issue is immigration. I shall not speak about that for very long, because I said quite a lot about that during the Second Reading debate on the Crime and Courts Bill, and the noble Lord, Lord Henley, has agreed to meet me before Committee on Part 3. I sense that other noble Lords may wish to participate in such a meeting, and I shall be in touch, because I agree that the current situation is absolute chaos and, frankly, an insult to visitors coming to this country.
The report rightly states that the Channel Tunnel should be seen as part of the European rail infrastructure. As many noble Lords have said, it is good for economic and cost reasons that the tunnel should not be seen as a barrier to traffic and trade. There is a long way to go before that is achieved both in the tunnel and across Europe. The noble Baroness, Lady O'Cathain, rightly talked about fragmentation.
I shall speak primarily about the structure, which I think is blocking change at the moment. The first railway package, completed in 2001, set a structure and regulatory changes to make the European railways more competitive, cost-effective and interoperable. Thirteen member states are currently being infracted against by the Commission for non-compliance with legislation that they agreed to in 2001, which is incredible. They include the big ones: Germany, France—my noble friend Lord Faulkner referred to the problems in France; he is absolutely right—and Italy.
I was interested in the evidence to the committee from the Italian railways, who said with one breath that the freight in Italy has been liberalised and everything is fine and that the next thing will be international passenger transport, but in fact—this is happening in France as well—they are complaining bitterly about what is happening in other countries but making very sure that no competition can happen in theirs. As just one example, the Italian Government and the incumbent railway, FS, are trying to prevent other operators getting access to tracks and terminals. It is encouraging its Government to introduce rules saying that all operators must provide mobile rescue cranes every 500 miles—not one set of cranes around the country but each operator having to have his own set of cranes. This is of course because the incumbent has a lot of old cranes and nobody else has. Every train will have to have two drivers, because the FS ones have two, but nobody else needs them—the passenger ones do not— while no leased wagons may be used. They introduced this legislation at zero notice, so in theory if the independent operators were running a train on the main line with leased wagons, they would have had to put the brakes on, stop and block everything. This has been going on for the past two years, while the Italian authorities and the chairman of Italian railways go around Europe saying, “We are fully liberalised”. They are not.
Where does the Channel Tunnel come into all this and does it comply with the first railway package? The committee thought not but the government response said that it does. In paragraph 135 of the response to the report, the Government say:
“The UK complies with the First Railway Package in full”—
in full—
“both in respect of the domestic network and the Channel Tunnel”.
Well, they do on the domestic network but the Commission does not think that they are on the Channel Tunnel, because it started infraction proceedings against the UK and France in February 2011. It is odd that the government response did not mention this. When the Commission is infracting a member state, surely it is relevant to the Government’s response to a report. I have all the papers; I could have had a few more, except that they rejected my freedom of information requests, but I have quite a few. The first concerns the subjects of the infraction. I shall summarise them because they are rather long but they are important.
The first concern is on the “independence of essential functions”, which means that the infrastructure manager is not owned by the same company as the train operator because that operator otherwise gets preferential treatment, as happened in Italy. The second is that there should be separate accounts for infrastructure managers and operations and that has not happened, according to the Commission. The third is on rail access charges, which a number of noble Lords have mentioned and to which I shall come back because they are very high. The fourth is on an independent regulatory body. Until about now, it has not been independent because the regulator has been part of the Department for Transport, which owns parts of Eurostar. Our Government need to be congratulated because they are now moving the whole of the UK side of the intergovernmental commission to the Office of Rail Regulation—but of course the French Government have not done that yet. Finally, there is the issue of “capacity allocation”, which is again not independent. The Commission’s paper is called an EU pilot and it is digging very hard into the detail. I would be very interested to know from the Minister whether the Government are resisting any requests for information from the Commission or are being proactive in response. Similarly, do the Government accept that the first railway package applies in full to the Channel Tunnel?
Turning to the access charges which other noble Lords have mentioned, article 8 of directive 2001/14 is the relevant one. I was a little disappointed with the committee’s response. It seemed to think that because Eurotunnel is in the private sector it should be able to,
“set access charges at a market rate subject to their obligations under EU law”.
That is right; it should be able to set its charges under those obligations, which I will come to, but I would submit that its being in the private sector is not particularly relevant. In their response on Eurotunnel, however, the Government say in paragraph 140:
“EU legal requirements have been fully implemented”.
I would challenge that.
Other noble Lords have spoken about the charges, but there is more to it than that. If we look at the five issues the Commission has put in the pilot, Eurotunnel has not demonstrated that its infrastructure management is sufficiently separate from its freight operation, its passenger operation or from the freight and passenger shuttles. The shuttles are exempt from the legislation, but they have to be looked at separately. There is no separation of accounts. There is some progress in the network statement, but not enough. I have mentioned the regulatory body and that the access charges are too high, so basically the UK gets one out of five and France gets nought out of five, which is a pretty poor record 11 years after the first railway package came into effect.
I do not accept the committee’s view that access charges should come down in the medium term. There is much more to it than that. Several noble Lords quoted the charges. I shall quote some in a slightly different way. The charge per train kilometre for a Eurostar is £36 on HS1, £13 on the high-speed line in France and £225 on the Channel Tunnel. In the tunnel, it averages about 10 times the charge on the other side. For freight, the evidence that MDS Transmodal submitted to the committee was that the charge is about £3,000 a train—it varies quite a lot. It argued that it should be £1,000 to attract significantly more traffic, bearing in mind that there are about five freight trains a day going through at the moment. If you stand on the M20 at Ashford and count the number of trucks, you could fill 200 trains a day. I suggest that there is something wrong there.
How is the charge arrived at? This is the problem. There is a rail usage contract that dates back 1985. The noble Lord, Lord Freeman, may even remember it. It was designed to give a government guarantee to Eurotunnel from the two railways: British Rail and SNCF. The charges were based on full cost recovery—fine—fixed costs and variable costs plus a mark up. The problem is that the two companies that signed, which are now DB Schenker and Eurostar, pay the charges on the basis of the rail usage contract, which has now been turned into a network statement. If anybody else comes along, like Deutsche Bahn, it will be paying the same amount, but will also be paying a charge that reflects the fixed costs of the tunnel. Something in me says that Eurotunnel is going to get the fixed costs paid twice. That does not seem right. The whole thing is a complete mess and it needs completely restructuring on the lines of Article 8 of Directive 2001/14. There is a marginal cost, a fixed cost and an allowance for financing with a calculation of how much the market can bear, all supervised by the regulator, which is a joint regulator independent of government. I can go on about fixed costs and fire suppression, but I think that, in interests of time, I had better not.
What we have here is a wasted asset for passengers and freight that is, after all, the mode of transport supported by the Commission, the UK Government and, no doubt, the French Government. The committee recommended root and branch restructuring of the Channel Tunnel. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, referred to that. The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, talked about competition. She is absolutely right. We all believe in fair and transparent competition. This is what Sir Roy McNulty is saying about the UK, and it is no different. If you want growth, you need competition, but any competition to make it work must be fair and transparent. I hope that the Government will set an example to all the other member states that are failing and take this forward, take on the recommendations of the committee and let us see some urgent change.
Lord Walpole
Oh dear. All I can say is: how do I follow that? That is the expert. I will try. My family were Members of Parliament for Kings Lynn on and off since about 1350 until the end of the 19th century. I wondered what they felt about the possibility of a Channel tunnel, and indeed I know perfectly well what they thought: they preferred to use the Hanseatic League and did not want somewhere for the French to be able to march over to Dover.
The report and the Government’s response to it are an invaluable record of the position on 8 December 2011. That is my birthday. It is also the day of the Immaculate Conception. I do not know whether noble Lords ought to draw a line between the two. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, did not mention immaculate conception, did he? No.
Lord Walpole
Over certain distances, there is no doubt that the train should be better than the air. It should be cheaper, should be better for the environment, should be better for time and should be more comfortable, though whether or not that is true, I do not know. The report in front of your Lordships contains, in box 2, the treaty of Canterbury. Whatever anyone has said so far, after 25 years that treaty is out of date and should be looked at very carefully. I think that someone has already drawn attention to the fact that on page 28 there are unimpressive figures for passengers and freight; certainly those for freight are totally unimpressive.
On page 35 there is the core network map of what the railway is going to look like in 2030. Once again, there is no route to East Anglia or the West Country, nor any route to Scotland north of Edinburgh. Has anyone heard of Swindon, Bristol, Truro, Harwich or Felixstowe? None of those will be on decent railway lines. The present capacity, shown in paragraph 74 on page 29, of less than 50% of the amount of passengers that could be taken and less than 10% of the freight, is quite extraordinary. Perhaps it is too expensive per train per kilometre.
In our village at home, there is a gentleman, now retired, who owns his own articulated lorry and spent his life going all over Europe picking up trailers and bringing them back. He said that without doubt he would rather go on the ferry than through the tunnel. Why? Because it was easier to get on the ferry—not that there is any difficulty getting on to the train, but you then go and sit in some nasty little carriage up at the front, and a few moments later you arrive in France. If you go on a ferry you can have a nice little relax, you can fill your—you know what I mean.
Lord Walpole
Yes. You can get everything right. I like railways and I like the tunnel, but if you go from Norwich to Liverpool Street, you go to a place called Stratford. You cannot change at Stratford on to anything else; you have to get a train either to Ebbsfleet or to St Pancras. That is extraordinary. I should think that I have used the tunnel about four to five times a year—in other words, eight to 10 journeys a year—ever since it started, both by car and by Eurostar, and I must say that I have always enjoyed it because one has got the hang of how to enjoy it.
Through ticketing simply must be introduced. When my ancestor was 200 and I was 60 in the same year on the same day, we decided that we would go to The Hague. How many tickets did we need for that? Well, you work it out. We started on Eurostar and ended up on some Dutch train, which was superb—but, yes, we will not go into that.
Now, finally, I say thank you very much to the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, for being a very good chairman, bullying us all, making us speak, and helping us very much indeed. I also say thanks to our clerk and to Elaine Morgan, who were 100% behind the committee. We could not have acted without them.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
My Lords, I commence by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, for keeping us on the rails all the way through this exercise, and keeping us pointed in the right direction in a non-bullying way. I thank, too, our clerks, who gave us such great assistance during the course of the committee, and I particularly thank colleagues who have left the committee since we concluded the report, as well as the new ones who have joined us. I also express my gratitude to all the people who provided evidence to us, both orally and in writing, which was very useful indeed.
It is some months, of course, since we concluded the exercise, the report appeared and we got the Government’s response. It is quite interesting to see what has happened in the mean time. I have gone back and reread our report and the Government’s response, and I have also picked up on one or two things on the internet that have happened. I see, first, that there has been quite a major breakdown—a health and safety issue in April in the tunnel. Secondly, immigration, a topic which we touched on, has moved up the agenda significantly since we addressed the issue last year. I think we found that, in retrospect, the Minister’s response at that time was somewhat complacent. She said that we will have sorted it out by the time that we get round to Deutsche Bahn extending the run through to Amsterdam and into Cologne; whereas the reality is that, as has now been indentified, many people have been using the existing train system under current arrangements to come into the country illegally. This needs to be addressed with urgency from a variety of standpoints, as we have already heard.
Lord Berkeley
Is the noble Lord aware that Deutsche Bahn has said that it is not going to go ahead with its service until the immigration situation is sorted out?
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
I was not aware of that, my Lords, but it is a very important and significant point indeed. This will presumably be quite an obstacle to making progress and introducing the new extended lines for which many noble Lords have been calling.
More recently, and thirdly, we have seen the announcement—the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, mentioned it, and I think that my noble friend Lord Berkley may have said more on it—about allowing Eurotunnel to take over SeaFrance’s cross-channel vessels. This takeover occurred within a matter of days and raises, as the Financial Times says, significant implications for competition and, in turn, charges, which I will come back to in a moment. My major point is about the charges.
Fourthly—and this is good news—I see that the number of foot passengers travelling through the tunnel over the past few weeks has increased significantly, largely because of people wanting to come and participate in the Jubilee celebrations. All those of us who want this to be a successful venture will hope that that will continue into the Olympics and beyond. Those are the changes that have occurred since we concluded our report.
In two years, a major celebration will take place. In 2014 we will celebrate 20 years since the Channel Tunnel first opened and all the worthy work that my noble friend Lord Berkeley did on its construction. It was a truly amazing event when the tunnel opened. It was a great venture, a great vision and the fulfilment of the marvellous technical expertise that went into it. However, regrettably, as others have said, as yet we have failed completely to deliver the fulfilment of that vision. This came from the evidence of the people who came before the committee. They were almost unanimous in saying that the tunnel has not delivered all that was hoped of it and that there is still a long way to go, even though it is such an amazing piece of infrastructure that is capable of delivering such public good, not just for the UK and France but over a much wider front throughout Europe.
The witnesses—even those from Eurotunnel, with their projections—were also unanimous in saying that we still do not have enough foot passengers travelling on the train and we are well short of how much rail freight there should be. The figures are very low indeed in comparison with the original projections. Indeed, as my noble friend Lord Haskel pointed out, they have been falling off in recent years, which is of great concern. Interestingly, our witnesses all felt that this was not good enough. They all felt that we should be trying harder and going for growth. I was very pleased that the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, introduced the debate by pointing to the importance of growth in this context, both for this country and for Europe.
Our report endeavours to be constructive, to identify the areas in which performance has been falling down and to suggest a significant number of solutions to the problems. I regret that the Government’s response was not as positive as it might have been. I rather sensed that our chairman felt the same. Their response did not have the enthusiasm and energy that the committee showed in addressing the topic. This came through both in the public performance of Ministers and their supporters when they came before us and in the written document. No doubt the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, may put me right on that when he responds in his usual way.
I found it quite surprising that, when we took evidence from the Minister, she encouraged us by saying that our report would provide a push in the right direction. That hardly indicates a strong commitment. I hope that we will get some movement on this over the next two years, so that when we get to 2014 we will have seen some substantial changes.
In fairness to the Government, perhaps in retrospect we should have invited the Mayor of London to give evidence. He would have talked about growth, London and the importance of getting jobs for London. We would have pointed out to him that the Channel Tunnel has an important part to play in such growth. Had we persuaded him that it was an issue on which he should campaign, we might have made more progress with the Government, given the unusual way in which he can bring pressure to bear on them. Maybe that is something for us to bear in mind in future.
I come back to the importance of the report. The Government have made some progress in addressing the governance of the IGC. This has been slow but at least the introduction of representatives from the Office of Rail Regulation, and the enhanced role that is envisaged for them in future, is a step in the right direction and very positive. I was certainly very impressed by the evidence that we heard from those representatives who are now on the IGC. They identified areas in which questions were raised about the performance of Eurotunnel. Mr Kogan, in particular, asked whether Eurotunnel’s charges were justifiably high or inexcusably high. I believe that that is at the heart of the whole issue of whether we move forward with the tunnel. He also raised questions about the absence of a performance regime for Eurotunnel. In the UK, any company of that size that did not have a performance regime in place would be severely criticised. Again, this is an area where Eurotunnel needs to move forward and ensure that it is open and clean about where it is going. Mr Kogan told us that the IGC had been working on some of these issues for two years. As he appeared before the committee last October, now it is close to three years.
I have looked at the latest reports on the internet. The last report that the IGC produced related only to 2010 and did not appear until September 2011. We are still waiting for the report on 2011. In particular, I will leave the Minister with a question which he might not be able to answer today. The Government’s response to paragraph 141 states:
“The IGC is currently investigating the level and appropriateness of Eurotunnel's charges and its Joint Economic Committee published a report on the first phase of its work in October 2011. Further work is underway but will take some time because of the complexity of Eurotunnel’s accounting structures and financial flows. Until those investigations are concluded, and on the basis of the evidence currently available, we would recommend caution in assessing whether the level of the charges is appropriate”.
I have looked at the website but can find nothing about what is happening on that front. I have done some research elsewhere to find out what is happening. It is now close to three years since this work was first put in place. If the Minister cannot reply today, will he please reply to the committee in writing and tell us when we can expect that research to be concluded so that we can see it? On that basis, I believe that we will have a foundation on which we can move forward profitably.
Lord Davies of Oldham
My Lords, first, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, the chairman of the committee, on this report and acknowledge the enormous amount of work she has been involved in in producing this significant document. Proof of the success of this work is the extent to which she has been backed by noble Lords from her committee who have made such telling contributions today. I shall refer to those in detail in a moment.
Ordinarily, these debates tend to revolve around the participation of committee members as they see the conclusion of their work and want to see the Government’s response. The distinguishing feature of this debate is that there also have been contributions from noble Lords who are not members of the committee but who have made significant points which I hope the Minister has taken on board. In my short contribution, I want to dwell on one or two of those points in order to clarify the issues for the Minister and, therefore, aid him in his response to the committee’s proposals.
If I have one criticism of the report, it is probably in its title. It looks more like a statement of aspiration than a potential achievement. The report identifies two things. The first is that completion is a long way away when we do not have full implementation of the first stage with regard to the Commission. Secondly, it concentrates on the specific British dimension of this work—the Channel Tunnel—and is far from satisfied with the present arrangements as regards that significant enterprise. Of course, we all engage with the committee in its broad objective. There is a huge advantage and benefit for the country if we can extend cross-border rail travel. In terms of travellers’ convenience and the broad environmental issues, we all know the potential advantages of rail over aircraft. That underpins the aspiration behind the report.
The Minister will recognise that committee members identified that the government response is somewhat lacklustre. It is particularly lacklustre on the most trenchant part of the committee’s report, in paragraph 136, which says:
“In the long-term, we support direct governance of the Channel Tunnel by the UK and French national regulators”.
That is the objective for our part of completing a dimension of our contribution to the single market. I should be grateful if the Minister would address himself to those points, although whether he accepts that the treaty of Canterbury can be revised in such a dramatic form is an interesting question.
What has been identified in the debate are the frustrations born of the existing structure for the Channel Tunnel, to which my noble friend Lord Faulkner referred, along with the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, in mentioning the issue of access charges, and my noble friend Lord Berkeley with his particular expertise, in discussing the direct operations of the Channel Tunnel.
The other dimension also needs to be taken fully on board. It was my noble friend Lord Faulkner who dwelt most significantly on these matters. I refer to how limited the development of the single market is in so many countries in Europe, even those with railway systems that we all applaud. We should approach the European position with a little degree of modesty. After all, there are some excellent rail systems in Europe, and it is the case that the British system compares ill in some crucial aspects. On the one highly significant feature—the report demonstrates that the concern is about the customer—the passenger in Britain pays 30% higher fares than in many European rail systems. So we ought not to think that we can easily lecture other systems on improvement in circumstances where our own house is not entirely in order. It is very likely that we will be discussing these issues against the backdrop of ever-increasing fares in the British system.
There is one other dimension on which the Minister will need to tread with some degree of care. Of course, we all recognise the necessary emphasis in Britain on border controls to preserve the protection of the public, but it is also the case that the border controls at present work in such a way as to produce the maximum irksomeness for the average passenger without, from what one can see, very significantly enhancing the security dimension.
These are factors that should concern us. Tribute has already been paid to the noble Lord, Lord Roper, with regard to the European Union Committee over many years. From that work, we know that the reports of this House are taken seriously in Brussels. But on rail we will need to force the issue in a very sharp way indeed as it is clear that there is an awful backlog to catch up on. We must expect a more positive response from Europe, but that above all means that we must have government support and a government initiative that is clear on its objectives and determined to ensure that, even if we cannot complete the European rail market in the immediate future, we can take many more significant strides than we have done in recent years.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I start by congratulating the committee, which was so ably chaired by my noble friend Lady O’Cathain. The Government welcome the sub-committee’s thorough report on the European rail market and the role of the Channel Tunnel and have provided a full response. As ever, I am on a strict timetable.
We believe that a truly open, fair and liberalised market would increase competition in international passenger services across the EU. We support the Commission’s overall aim of clarifying and strengthening the regulatory framework for rail access through the first railway package recast. In particular, we endorse the need to ensure that there are adequately resourced and properly independent regulatory bodies in order to facilitate market entry and competition.
The Government recognise that the Channel Tunnel is a unique piece of international transport infrastructure and that it is in the country’s interests that it remains in operation. By virtue of the 1986 treaty of Canterbury and the ensuing concession agreement, the Government are directly concerned with the Channel Tunnel.
The UK strongly supports the growth of cross-Channel rail services. The provision of international services and their service patterns is a commercial matter for operators. In order for a train to transit the Channel Tunnel, the operator needs to comply with the relevant European, national and Channel Tunnel-specific requirements.
My noble friend Lady O’Cathain and other noble Lords talked about the proposed Deutsche Bahn service. DB applied to the intergovernmental commission in October 2011 to amend its Part B safety certificate, which covers management of safety issues, to include operation of passenger services through the tunnel. Since the intergovernmental commission has been unable to reach a decision, the application has now been referred to the British and French Governments for consideration. That process is ongoing. Deutsche Bahn will also need to obtain an interoperability authorisation to place its new trains into service in the tunnel. Although IGC officials from the UK and France have been working positively with Deutsche Bahn and Siemens to help them prepare the necessary dossier, as yet no formal submission for authorisation of new rolling stock has been made to the IGC by either Deutsche Bahn or Siemens.
The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, and, I think, another noble Lord asked me about the purchase of SeaFrance Ferries. It is a matter for the competition authorities, either DG Competition at the EU or the Office of Fair Trading, to determine whether any change in market dominance raises competition issues. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, also asked about the 2011 report of the IGC. I do not expect inspiration to arrive and therefore I will have to write to the noble Lord.
My noble friend Lady Scott of Needham Market talked about modal shift for passenger and freight. We recognise that modal shift from air and road to rail can generate important environmental and congestion benefits. However, rather than trying to force people away from car or air travel, we are working to support sustainable travel choices. A number of barriers can prevent behaviour change, including powerful ones such as habit.
Studies have indeed indicated that the Channel Tunnel has spare capacity to accommodate growth. Although there have been indications that the rail freight share of the cross-Channel market would be higher if rates were lower, pricing judgments are inevitably subjective and it is always difficult to make accurate volume and revenue forecasts. However, in partial answer to the question from my noble friend Lord Freeman, there is spare capacity for growth, as about 50% of capacity is being used at the moment.
The noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, suggested that access charges for Eurotunnel are too high, and other noble Lords said as much. We have no clear evidence that Eurotunnel’s charges are inappropriate. However, the IGC is currently investigating the level and appropriateness of Eurotunnel’s charges, and its joint economic committee published a report on the first phase of its work in October 2011. Further work is under way but will take some time. Until those investigations are concluded, and on the basis of the evidence currently available, we would recommend caution in assessing whether the level of charges is appropriate.
In answer to another question from the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, the Government support long-distance high-speed rail. At present, services on HS1 and the Channel Tunnel are relatively inaccessible for those outside London and the south-east. By providing direct access to the wider European network for services from Manchester, Birmingham and other cities, a link between a national high-speed rail network and the current HS1 could address this. In January this year, the Government announced that phase 1 of the HS2 network will include a direct link to the continent via the HS1 line to the Channel Tunnel. The Government’s view is that the strategic case for a direct link between the proposed high-speed rail network and the HS1 line to the Channel Tunnel is strong.
My noble friend Lord Freeman asked about the Waterloo International terminal. I had been briefed on this but, sadly, some time ago. My noble friend will recall that the connection to HS1 was slow, and there are also technical issues regarding bringing the platforms into domestic service.
I should like to say a few words about the role of the Channel Tunnel Intergovernmental Commission and the IGC legal framework and governance. The governance structure for the Channel Tunnel has been sufficiently flexible to accommodate subsequent developments in European, UK and French law and regulation, and it is expected to continue to be so. The Channel Tunnel Intergovernmental Commission and the Channel Tunnel Safety Authority are currently seen as providing an effective structure for regulating the Channel Tunnel in line with the European framework. If a need is identified to improve the effectiveness of the IGC or to adjust the powers available to it as regulator, the Government will promote any necessary legislative changes.
The speed of IGC decision-making is conditioned in part by EU regulatory processes and requirements and by the processes and responses of the concessionaires and other stakeholders. The IGC process with regard to the authorisation of proposed new services through the tunnel cannot start until the relevant documents have been submitted.
I think that I will have to part company with my noble friend Lady O’Cathain and the rest of the committee at Canterbury. The Channel Tunnel is a binational infrastructure and therefore needs some form of binational governance. This is necessary regardless of which authorities have, in law, the regulatory functions. Even when the IGC is exercising legal powers in its own name, its decisions are, in practice, informed by discussions between the French and British national authorities. In this connection, we are working with our French colleagues to conclude as soon as possible transposition of the revised railway safety and recast railway interoperability directives for the Channel Tunnel. We see no need to renegotiate the treaty, and I suspect that the French have no appetite to do so either, as observed by my noble friend Lady O’Cathain. The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, referred to the treaty and to direct governance of the tunnel but I do not think I heard him say what the policy of Her Majesty’s Opposition is.
I turn to the tunnel-specific safety rules for passengers and freight. The IGC has made significant progress in reviewing its rules to check that all the safety requirements currently in place continue to be justifiable on safety grounds and to remove those which are not. The IGC will continue to hold this view unless the evidence demonstrates otherwise.
The tunnel authorities and Eurotunnel are working together to address the consequences for the tunnel’s rules of the opening of the European rail market. This includes a programme of work to address the European Rail Agency technical opinion, which has already led to a number of requirements being removed. The UK Government accept the principle that the IGC must justify, by robust risk analysis, any requirements that are additional to the European harmonised technical specifications for interoperability.
The safety concerns that underpin the tunnel’s safety requirements reflect the difficulties of getting firefighters in and other people out of a 54-kilometre undersea tunnel in the event of a fire. My noble friend Lady O’Cathain asked when the work on the TSIs will be completed and whether the TSI requirements will be rescinded. The Safety in Railway Tunnels TSI is expected to be revised in mid-2013. Some specific requirements in the Channel Tunnel rules have been removed—for example, the 30-minute running time for freight locomotives. Other remaining tunnel rules are expected to finish in September 2012.
I turn to economic regulation of the Channel Tunnel. The UK considers that the Channel Tunnel’s regulator’s independence from any railway undertaking is properly preserved as regards the UK. No one in the UK IGC delegation or working at the Office of Rail Regulation in support of the IGC has any responsibility for Eurostar. Within the Department for Transport, policy responsibility for Eurostar is vested in a separate command that has no locus in or responsibility for the IGC.
My noble friend Lady O’Cathain, the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and many other noble Lords talked about border and immigration controls. Rail liberalisation presents a number of border control challenges which the Home Office and the border force are seeking to resolve with colleagues from across government, the police, rail operators and the Governments of other European countries. It is occurring against a background of rapid changes in border control technology, which will help to meet some of those challenges. But these challenges will only become more significant with the increase in international services. That is recognised in respect of HS2.
Lord Berkeley
Will the noble Lord explain what border controls are planned for HS2? That seems a bit odd as I thought it was within the UK.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I think the hope is that passengers will get on HS2 on an international journey further up the country, maybe from Birmingham.
The noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, asked about Schengen. The position of the UK outside Schengen means that exit checks also need to be completed for all passengers leaving the zone prior to immigration arrival controls in the UK. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, raised the UK’s possible infraction for non-compliance with the first railway package in respect of the Channel Tunnel. I am unable to discuss the infraction procedures with respect to the first railway package and the Channel Tunnel but we consider that the railway usage contract does not breach the requirements of directive 2001/14—the first railway package—for the duration of a framework contract, and complies with Articles 17.5 and 17.5a in that it relates to a uniquely large-scale and long-term investment which is covered by contractual commitments. The noble Lord, Lord Haskel, also asked about the Commission taking further action against member states for non-compliance of the first railway package. The European Commission is currently taking infraction action against those member states that have not correctly implemented the first railway package.
I am grateful for your Lordships’ comments and, where appropriate, I will certainly draw them to the attention of my right honourable friend the Rail Minister, Theresa Villiers.
Baroness O'Cathain
First, I thank everyone who took part in this debate. It has been a fantastic debate and the enthusiasm of every single Member, whether or not they are members of Sub-Committee B was palpable. I think that we achieved a lot in bringing the report to this state. However, as I said in my introductory remarks, we as a committee could never have done it without the help of the clerks and policy analysts. My noble friend Lord Freeman also paid tribute to their work. It was a great joy to have the noble Lord taking part in this debate because he was the previous chairman of Sub-Committee B and gently reminded the whole House of the debt we owe to the noble Lord, Lord Roper, for the gentle but firm way in which he guided us through paragraph after paragraph of all the reports that came before him. He is an amazingly hard worker and a very nice person to work with. I thank him.
Noble Lords spoke today in so much detail that I know I will learn even more about the Channel Tunnel by reading Hansard. I was particularly thankful for the history lessons we were given. The one from the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, was terrific. I was about to say that he was not in his place, but he is in a superior place—on the Woolsack. He took us back to 50 years ago and made me feel that perhaps there is nothing negative about being a techie. We also had a history lesson from the noble Lord, Lord Walpole, and I doubt if anybody in the Chamber will now forget the date of his birthday. In various meetings of Sub-Committee B, the subject of Norwich and the trains of East Anglia came up, and he was absolutely right—it is a disgrace that we do not get on and use and improve the railway system.
As the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, said, one has only to go across to Europe to see how trains can work. We in this country have the enthusiasm to try to get the Channel Tunnel to work properly. It is not doing so at the moment. That is not a destructive critical point; it is being absolutely constructive, and our report was written on that basis. I look forward very much to the redraft of the first railway package. Instead of talking about the fourth, let us get on with it.
I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, who has only just joined our committee but who has taken on board the report that was written long before she joined. She will be a marvellous member, judging by her contribution today. I thank and welcome her.
I referred to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, in my speech. The fact that he and the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, went across to Switzerland and did all that work was amazing. It was a clear example of how to motivate the experience and expertise of the House, and how noble Lords become enthused about something to the benefit of the country and of the Government. When they read the committee’s report and the report of this debate in Hansard, they will realise that there is great support for what they are doing to try to get the railways to work properly so that we can go for growth while keeping the focus on the consumer.
I know that the Minister will write to noble Lords, and probably I shall have to as well to ask for additional information on some points, because this has been a fascinating debate. I will mention also the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, who has a great ability to keep us on the rails and heading in the right direction. He does that at every meeting. I thank him for it and am so glad that he is still on the committee.
The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, paid us a gracious compliment by referring to the telling contribution of the members of the committee, and to the significant points made by non-members. His one objection was to the title of the report. We debated that. Certain of us—I will not say who—thought “Light at the End of the Tunnel” would be better. Others said perhaps not. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Roper, would agree that there has been quite a lot of discussion about the titles of reports. Perhaps one does all the hard work and then comes to a point where one can introduce a bit of levity. However, I do not think that our title is too cheeky; I think that tunnel vision is something we have experienced and will have to address.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, for the depth of his knowledge. He is so precise, which was obvious today in his contribution.
I am sure I have missed out someone; I have just been scribbling. No, I do not think I have.
I thank the Minister, who had a very difficult job to do. He knows where we are coming from and we know where he is coming from and that he supports us. We have got to try to get matters moving. It would be in order to have further discussions about the treaty of Canterbury but, in the mean time, I thank all noble Lords.