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David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)
1. What progress his Department has made on its objectives for water and sanitation set out in the bilateral aid review.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Stephen O'Brien)
As is made transparent in the Department for International Development’s annual report, since 2010 the United Kingdom has given 2 million people access to clean drinking water, 2 million people improved access to sanitation and 7.4 million people improved hygiene services. The right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) was candid in 2007 when he admitted that the Labour Government had taken their “eye off the ball” in relation to water and sanitation. I assure my hon. Friend that the coalition will not make the same mistake. In April, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced our intention to double our results by reaching 60 million people.
David Rutley
I welcome the fact that under this Government, 7.4 million people have seen improvements in their hygiene conditions over the past two years. That is testimony to the Government’s strength of commitment. What assessment has my hon. Friend made of the disparity in sanitation between rural and urban dwellings?
Mr O'Brien
My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. The Government see providing adequate sanitation for poor people in the world’s growing cities as crucial. We keep a record of the proportion of our results that are achieved in rural and urban areas. We have six bilateral water, sanitation and hygiene—or WASH—programmes in urban areas, including a programme to improve WASH service delivery in 31 slums in Freetown, including in Kroo bay. I volunteered there two years ago and went back last week to see the progress that has been made.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
What steps is the Minister taking to improve the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, given that 80% of water in the west bank is stolen by Israeli settlers and 90% of the water in Gaza is contaminated with sewage due to the blockades?
Mr O'Brien
Part of our contribution to the multilateral agencies goes towards that, not least through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Its work is important in the provision of water to the peoples of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, not least to provide fair access to drinking water.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Having visited the Gaza strip earlier this year, may I stress to the Minister the importance of the breakdown of the water and sewerage systems in that benighted territory? Some 20,000 children under three are suffering from avoidable illnesses because 90% of the water is contaminated. Whose fault that is does not bother the Gazans; they just need the systems to be sorted out. Britain could play an important role in doing that.
Mr O'Brien
My hon. Friend makes an extremely powerful point. Broadly, the answer is yes, not least because we make extremely strong representations at every opportunity on all the points that he has raised. Equally, we are working closely with UNRWA to provide a practical solution to many of these difficult problems.
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
There are still 2.6 billion people worldwide who lack basic sanitation. What are the Government doing to get the international community to meet its obligations in that respect?
Mr O'Brien
As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced, we are increasing our approach to water and sanitation to double our results and reach 60 million people. Indeed, we are seeking to match one person in the poor world who does not have access to water and sanitation to every single person living in the United Kingdom. In particular, it is incredible value for money that about $10—which is often provided by households themselves—can provide sanitation for one household.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
2. What progress he has made on enshrining in law spending on international development equal to 0.7% of gross national income; and if he will make a statement.
The Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Andrew Mitchell)
The 0.7 Bill is ready and is with the business managers. As the Prime Minister has said, the coalition Government will introduce the Bill when parliamentary time allows.
Stephen Timms
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for that answer. There was widespread dismay that the Bill was not included in the Queen’s Speech. Why has the commitment made in the coalition agreement not so far been fulfilled?
Mr Mitchell
The commitment was referred to in the Gracious Speech. The most important thing is to get on and fulfil the commitment, which has been made on both sides of the House and by all parties, to give development aid equal to 0.7% of our gross national income. That is what we are doing. The right hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. We must get on with the legislation. As soon as the business managers say that there is a slot, we will take it.
Sir Alan Haselhurst (Saffron Walden) (Con)
To those who continue to doubt whether, in this time of austerity, we should stick to our eminently worthwhile target, is it not worth pointing out that 99.3% of gross national income will still be available for all other purposes?
Mr Mitchell
My right hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. Many Members will agree that under 1% of gross national income is an incredibly good investment in the future prosperity and security of the countries in which we work as well as in Britain’s prosperity and security.
Mr Ivan Lewis (Bury South) (Lab)
I say to the Secretary of State that we can get on with it. My hon. Friend the Member for Preston (Mark Hendrick) has tabled a private Member’s Bill that would enshrine the 0.7% commitment in law. It has all-party support and is consistent with promises made in all three main parties’ election manifestos and the coalition agreement. The Secretary of State is fully aware that the success of private Members’ Bills depends on Government support. Will he confirm that that support will be forthcoming? If not, why not?
Mr Mitchell
I share the hon. Gentleman’s interest in a potential private Member’s Bill, but for the Government to comment on the Bill it will be necessary for the hon. Member concerned to publish it in the Table Office.
Mr Lewis
The Secretary of State is fully aware that my hon. Friend offered to take the Secretary of State’s Bill and use it as the basis of his private Member’s Bill, so let us get on with it.
Enshrining the 0.7% commitment in law is only one way of fulfilling our obligation to the world’s poor. Can the Secretary of State explain why he has done nothing to stop measures in the Finance Bill that will enable UK multinational companies to avoid paying approximately £4 billion in tax to developing countries? That could be called legalising tax dodging. Is he concerned that his Government’s legacy will be to increase aid dependency by reducing self-sufficiency in many developing countries?
Mr Mitchell
The hon. Gentleman is referring to the controlled foreign companies provisions of the Finance Bill and the ActionAid campaign on them. There have been discussions between Treasury officials and ActionAid, and there is significant disagreement about the effect of those measures.
Jo Swinson (East Dunbartonshire) (LD)
I warmly welcome the coalition Government’s commitment to spend 0.7% of gross national income on international development, particularly to help us make progress towards the millennium development goal on reducing maternal deaths, which we are furthest from achieving. Will the Secretary of State outline how UK aid money will be spent to save the lives of women and girls in light of today’s excellent family planning summit, where global leadership is being shown?
Mr Mitchell
My hon. Friend is entirely right to underline the fact that the coalition Government have put girls and women right at the centre of everything we do in development. She refers to the family planning summit, which the British Government are co-hosting with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. That summit has the power, if successful, to reduce by half the number of women in the poor world who want access to contraception but do not have it.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
As the UK emerges—hopefully—from recession over the next two or three years, 0.7% of GNI will represent a significant increase in spending. What is the Secretary of State doing to ensure that UK citizens see value for money?
Mr Mitchell
The hon. Gentleman rightly identifies the importance of being able to demonstrate to hard-pressed taxpayers that every pound of their hard-earned money is really delivering 100p of value on the ground. That is exactly what the Government are doing in the case of development policy. The 0.7% commitment to which the hon. Gentleman refers reflects the state of the economy, because the spending figure will go up and down with economic health. Many of us think that is what it should do.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
3. What humanitarian support his Department is providing for Syrian refugees; and if he will make a statement.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
6. What humanitarian support his Department is providing for Syrian refugees; and if he will make a statement.
Mr Sam Gyimah (East Surrey) (Con)
7. What humanitarian support his Department is providing for Syrian refugees; and if he will make a statement.
The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Mr Alan Duncan)
In addition to the support that we are providing within the country itself, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State recently announced that we were increasing our funding to £3 million to support the UN-led response for Syrian refugees, providing humanitarian assistance for up to 185,000 people in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq.
Jason McCartney
I thank the Minister. It is really important that I can show my constituents that we are supporting the Syrian people in these difficult times. How many people have fled across the border to Jordan, and does he think Jordan can cope with the influx of refugees?
Mr Duncan
Three weeks ago I was in Ramtha, on the Syrian border in Jordan, just 2 miles away from Daraa, from where we could hear the gunfire. Some 140,000 people have left Syria for Jordan since the start of the crisis, more than 30,000 of whom are seeking assistance. The Jordanian Government and host families have generously accommodated a great number of refugees. We are concerned, however, that they may soon reach capacity and that the UN may need to create tented camps to accommodate the increasing numbers.
Tim Farron
Amnesty International has reported that some refugee camps in Turkey are so close to the Syrian border that refugees have suffered injuries as a result of stray bullets from clashes in Syria. Have any representations been made to the Turkish authorities to relocate the camps and allow human rights organisations access to them to meet Syrian refugees?
Mr Duncan
The answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question is emphatically yes. More than 35,000 Syrian refugees are being assisted in Turkey and thousands more are fending for themselves. The Turkish Government are leading and co-ordinating the assistance to Syrian refugees, supported by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and other humanitarian agencies. Registered refugees are hosted in 10 camps, which are fully funded by the Turkish Government, but there is, by and large, no problem with access.
Mr Duncan
We have channelled significant funding through UN agencies such as the World Food Programme, the UNHCR and the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Some humanitarian agencies have requested us not to name them publicly as they are concerned that their staff and operations could be put at risk. We fully respect those concerns, and I can assure the House that all UK funding is nevertheless going to humanitarian agencies with a proven ability to operate in Syria.
Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)
As the Minister has said, we must be grateful to neighbouring countries such as Lebanon and Jordan. Is it correct that Iraqi Kurdistan and Switzerland are considering taking Syrian refugees because some of the neighbouring countries are already saying that they cannot cope?
Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)
The Minister mentioned Ramtha on the Jordan-Syria border. In drawing attention to my entry in the register, may I tell the Minister that I have also visited and endorse what he says about the generosity of the Jordanian people? What extra assistance can be given there? Refugees fleeing Syria is a humanitarian issue, and refugees should be treated equally whether they are Syrians or other nationalities, such as Palestinian.
Mr Duncan
A number of Palestinian refugees are indeed among those who have been forced to flee their homes in Syria and cross into neighbouring countries. We recognise that that raises difficulties, particularly in Lebanon and Jordan, and we continue to work with country Governments, the UNHCR and UNRWA to ensure that the needs of all refugees are met. Contingency planning for greater numbers is in place.
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
A number of my constituents have relatives who are refugees from Syria or who are trying to exit Syria, where there is shelling in cities such as Aleppo. What steps is the Minister taking to work with the Home Office to identify British people and people who have contacts in Britain to support them to return to the UK?
Mr Duncan
Discussions between Departments take place in the normal way. The prime responsibility of the Department for International Development is for the humanitarian need of people in Syria, but we will continue to work with other Departments to see what it might be possible to do to alleviate the suffering and plight of those who face such difficulty.
Sir Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)
It is right that the international community and the UK respond to people in need at a time of crisis, but does the Minister accept that, as the crisis intensifies, Syria will get poorer and the people’s needs will become greater? Does he agree with Kofi Annan that anybody who has an interest in the future of the region and the well-being of its people, including Russia, China and Iran, should have an interest in ending the conflict?
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)
4. What assessment he has made of the implications for his Department of the overseas territories White Paper; and if he will make a statement.
The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Mr Alan Duncan)
The overseas territories White Paper reflects the Government’s collective vision for the territories and our commitment to their future through good governance and economic growth. DFID fulfils its obligations primarily through its regular support to Montserrat, Tristan da Cunha, St Helena and Pitcairn Island.
Guy Opperman
I welcome a focus on increased support for our overseas territories as opposed to the bizarre focus we currently have, whereby support in aid goes to countries such as Argentina for bilateral relations and mutual understanding, which—I suggest—is clearly not working.
Mr Duncan
I assure my hon. Friend that DFID does not directly provide any such aid to Argentina. The World Bank has not considered any loan request from Argentina recently and the UK has refused to support recent loans considered by the Inter-American Development Bank. As well as supporting the four overseas territories that I have just mentioned, we are helping Turks and Caicos to turn around its previously dire financial situation. Any such needs in the overseas territories are, of course, a first call on our aid budget.
Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)
Can the Minister confirm that there are two banks, mutual funds or tax-dodging offshore companies for every citizen of the Cayman Islands? Will the new White Paper deal with the fact that around the world the overseas territories and dependencies are seen as the tax evader’s paradise network?
Mr Duncan
With respect to my ministerial responsibilities, I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that DFID is not providing any financial aid to tax havens. The UK recently signed agreements with the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands Governments, but those agreements set out what we expect of those overseas territories in how they manage their public finances.
Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)
5. What recent assessment he has made of the development situation in Nepal.
The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Mr Alan Duncan)
Nepal is the world’s 16th poorest country. As I saw during my recent visit, it faces enormous political and development challenges. We are tackling them by focusing on wealth creation, strengthened governance and security, health, education, and disaster risk reduction.
Mr Jones
According to WaterAid, only 31% of Nepal is covered by proper sanitation, and 7,900 under-fives die every year from diarrhoea. Following the high-level water and sanitation conference in April, can the Minister give me some assurance on what is being done to try to put right that appalling situation?
Mr Duncan
I assure my hon. Friend that things are just a little bit better than he says. The latest data from a highly regarded national survey suggest that 55% of people in Nepal have access to safe latrines. Despite total child deaths having almost halved in the past 10 years, child deaths from poor water and sanitation are still unacceptably high. Our programmes will help to avert 3,500 child deaths and should ensure that 110,000 more people have access to safe latrines by 2015.
Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)
In light of the fact that there will be elections in Nepal very soon, what assistance are we providing for good governance there?
Mr Duncan
The hon. Gentleman hits on a most important point. At the moment, there is constitutional and governmental deadlock in Nepal. When I was there, we were doing our utmost as an influential friend of Nepal—as I hope the UK can continue to be—to help to break the deadlock and ensure either that a new constituent assembly is formed or that there are elections, and each can facilitate and assist the other.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
8. What plans he has for future development assistance to Burma.
The Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Andrew Mitchell)
On 1 March we announced a doubling of British aid to Burma. We are supporting the World Bank in conducting an assessment of the development opportunities there following the remarkable changes which Aung San Suu Kyi underlined in her historic visit to Westminster last month.
Yasmin Qureshi
For the first time in decades, positive changes in Burma offer hope to refugees to return home. What is the Secretary of State’s Department doing to encourage them to return to Burma?
Mr Mitchell
We are engaged in Kachin and Rakhine states, both of which are receiving British humanitarian support. I can also announce today that a team of Members of this House, under the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, will be visiting the Burmese Parliament in Naypyidaw later this month.
Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
Despite the signs of hope, I am sure that the Secretary of State will share my concern about the recent reports of human rights abuses in Kachin state—Christians being persecuted, women being gang raped and internally displaced persons camps becoming pools of prey for human trafficking. Can he assure me that international aid with robust human rights protection will reach the Kachin people?
Mr Mitchell
My hon. Friend identifies a matter of great concern in Kachin. We have set aside £2 million for humanitarian support there, of which some £1.2 million has already been allocated.
Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Andrew Mitchell)
At the weekend, I represented the Government at the Afghanistan summit in Tokyo, at which Britain made long-term pledges to support the development of Afghanistan and called on the rest of the international community to do the same. Today, the British Government and the Gates Foundation are co-hosting a global summit that aims to cut by half the number of women in developing countries who want access to contraception but cannot get it. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I understand hon. Members’ excited anticipation of Prime Minister’s questions, but we are discussing extremely serious matters and it would be a courtesy to those people affected and to hon. Members if there were a reasonable level of decorum.
Tessa Munt
Thank you, Mr Speaker. What opportunities exist for pushing for financial transparency worldwide, including budgetary transparency and transparency in natural resource management? Will my right hon. Friend’s Department seek to promote financial transparency initiatives such as GIFT—the Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency?
Mr Mitchell
My hon. Friend identifies transparency as a most important aspect of development, and it is why Britain was a key leader at the launch and implementation of the international aid transparency initiative, and we continue to work hard with partners all around the world to ensure that the emphasis on transparency and good spending that was championed at the Busan conference in November continues.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
Today the Government are hosting an important summit on family planning, which we welcome. However, the brutal murder last weekend by the Taliban of an Afghan woman for adultery shows that women’s rights and freedoms remain elusive goals. Does the Secretary of State agree that the credibility of the summit will depend on women’s human rights being at the heart of the actions that follow it?
Mr Mitchell
I thank the hon. Lady for her question. The summit is about ensuring that women have the ability to choose whether and when they have children, and the spacing in between their children. We need to keep the focus of the summit on that issue. She will have heard the Government’s strong condemnation of the Taliban’s execution in Afghanistan. We set up the Tawanmandi fund last year specifically to empower women in the areas that the hon. Lady describes, and its work is ongoing. Three quarters of the grants from the fund have gone to organisations involved in protecting women.
Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)
T2. Conditions in Afghanistan after the external forces leave are becoming a matter of increasing importance to us. Will my right hon. Friend update the House on the outcomes of the Tokyo summit on Afghanistan that he attended at the weekend?
Mr Mitchell
The Tokyo summit was essentially a grand bargain between members of the international community to ensure that funding and support will continue through 2015 to 2017, and indeed throughout the decade of transformation to 2025. In return for that, the Government of Afghanistan need to continue to place a strong emphasis on governance reforms and economic reforms.
Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
T3. We have just marked the first anniversary of the creation of South Sudan, but 1 million people there require food aid, and along the border the situation is even worse, with between 15% and 22% of under-fives suffering from malnutrition. Will the Secretary of State ensure that the United Kingdom’s response targets the needs of those children, who are the future of that struggling country?
Mr Mitchell
The hon. Lady rightly identifies the plight of the many people caught up in that conflict. A girl born today in South Sudan is more likely to die while having a baby than to complete her primary school education. However, the position on the border, particularly in Abyei, is now easing, and there are some signs of optimism in the direct negotiations that are taking place between South Sudan and Khartoum.
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)
Will the Secretary of State join me in applauding the strong lead being given by the UK in the arms treaty negotiations in New York and, in particular, our support for provisions that will allow legitimate arms sales but discourage wholly disproportionate spending on arms that is detrimental to sustainable development?
Mr Mitchell
Yes. My hon. Friend identifies an important point. There is strong support on both sides of this House for the arms trade treaty. The Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr Duncan) will be going to New York to take part in those negotiations, and it is interesting to note that, even in the defence industry in Britain, there is strong support for a level playing field and for transparency in the sale of weapons.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
T6. I have another question about South Sudan. Thousands of children there are dying of diarrhoea. What are the Government doing to help with this urgent need, and will other countries be urged to help as well?
Mr Mitchell
The hon. Gentleman accurately identifies the position of children in South Sudan, which I set out in answer to his hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones). It is true that diarrhoea needlessly kills thousands upon thousands of children every day. That is one of the reasons why last year Britain led the replenishment for GAVI—the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation—so that Britain will be vaccinating a child in the poor world every two seconds and saving the life of a child every two minutes, precisely from these sorts of ills.
Mr Sam Gyimah (East Surrey) (Con)
T4. Further to my visit to Helmand with the International Development Committee, I would like to pay tribute to the hard work and dedication of our forces and DFID staff operating in extremely difficult circumstances. The Secretary of State is aware of the shocking execution in Afghanistan a week ago of a 22-year-old woman accused of adultery. What are the Government doing to mitigate the risk of a return to Taliban-style treatment of women in Afghanistan, post our withdrawal in 2014?
Mr Mitchell
The Government vigorously condemned the execution to which my hon. Friend referred. One of the key ways of transforming Afghan society to prevent the return of the Taliban’s evil practices is, of course, to get girls into school. When they are a critical mass, that will have a big effect on Afghan society. Nine years ago, there were no girls in school in Afghanistan; today, there are nearly 2.5 million.
Mr Gerry Sutcliffe (Bradford South) (Lab)
Q1. If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 11 July.
The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)
Before I list my engagements, I am sure the whole House will wish to join me in paying tribute to Police Constable Ian Dibell of Essex police, who was shot and killed in Clacton-on-Sea on Monday. Even though Ian was off duty at the time, he acted selflessly when he saw members of the public at risk. This is typical of the behaviour of our brave police force. His death is a reminder of the great debt we owe everyone in our police force. We send our deepest sympathies to his family, his friends and his colleagues at this tragic time.
This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others, and in addition to duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.
Mr Sutcliffe
May I associate myself and the whole House with the Prime Minister’s remarks about the brave police officer who lost his life? We all send our condolences to his family.
Will the Prime Minister explain why he is making it easier to amend copyright law by secondary legislation, affecting our creative industries? Does it have anything to do with the 23 meetings he and his Ministers have had with Google?
The Prime Minister
We are following the recommendations of the Hargreaves report, which we commissioned. It is important that we update and upgrade copyright law in our country, and that is exactly what we propose to do.
Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)
A report on the Yorkhill child heart unit in Glasgow conducted by Sir Ian Kennedy says that
“the provision of paediatric intensive care may be unsafe if critical staffing problems are not addressed.”
The safe and sustainable review conducted by Sir Ian Kennedy now suggests that Leeds heart unit, which is safe, be closed while Glasgow’s, which is not, is not affected. It is absurd. This review needs to be thrown out.
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend rightly speaks up for his local hospital, which is an excellent one. My local hospital has not been selected either under the safe and sustainable review, but I would say—as Prime Minister, but also as a parent—that we have to recognise that the heart operations now carried out on children are incredibly complex. In the end, this review was led by clinicians, and it is about trying to save lives to make sure that we specialise the most difficult work in a number of hospitals around the country. It does lead to difficult decisions, but I am sure that what really matters is that more parents do not suffer the agony of losing their children because we do not have the very highest standards of care in the hospitals that are chosen.
Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)
I join the Prime Minister in paying tribute to PC Ian Dibell. He demonstrated extraordinary bravery while off duty. His selfless act and his tragic death remind us what the police do for us right across this country. I am sure that the condolences of the whole House go to his family and friends.
At this last Question Time before the recess, may I remind the Prime Minister of what he said before the election when he was asked why he wanted to be Prime Minister? He paused, and with characteristic humility said:
“Because I think I’d be good at it.”
Where did it all go wrong?
The Prime Minister
It is this Government who have capped benefits, capped immigration, taken 2 million people out of tax, cut taxes for 25 million people, cut the fuel duty, increased spending on the NHS and cut the deficit by 25% in two years. I can’t read out the list of all the things he got wrong. We haven’t got time.
Edward Miliband
Government Members are obviously well whipped today. It is a shame it didn’t happen last night.
Last night the Prime Minister lost control of his party, and not for the first time he lost his temper as well, because we understand that it was fisticuffs in the Lobby with the hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman). I notice, by the way, that the posh boys have ordered him off the estate today, because he does not seem to be here. Who does the Prime Minister blame most for the disarray in his Government? The Liberal Democrats or his own Back Benchers?
The Prime Minister
Oh dear. If the best the right hon. Gentleman can do today is a bunch of tittle-tattle and rumour, how utterly pathetic. On the day we are introducing social care reform that is going to help people up and down the country, we get that sort of half-baked gossip.
Let me say this to the right hon. Gentleman. If we want to see House of Lords reform, all those who support House of Lords reform need not only to vote for House of Lords reform but to support the means to bring that reform about. He came to the House of Commons yesterday determined to vote yes and then to vote no. How utterly pathetic!
Edward Miliband
It is the same old story with the Prime Minister: he blames everybody but himself. The Government are a shambles and he blames the Leader of the Opposition. That is what it has come to, but his problems did not start last night; they started months ago with the part-time Chancellor’s Budget, because they make the wrong choices and they stand up for the wrong people. Will the Prime Minister remind us, after all the Budget U-turns, why he still thinks it is right to give a banker earning £1 million a £40,000 income tax cut next April?
The Prime Minister
It was the Chancellor’s Budget that cut taxes for 25 million working people, that took 2 million people altogether out of tax and that has left us with a top rate of tax which is higher than any of the times the right hon. Gentleman or his neighbour were in the Treasury, literally wrecking the British economy.
Edward Miliband
The Prime Minister has no answer on his millionaires’ tax cut, but we are going to keep asking the question between now and next April because he has no answer. He is raising taxes on ordinary families, he is raising taxes on pensioners and he is cutting taxes on millionaires—[Interruption.] They say that they are not raising taxes. Will he therefore explain what has not been explained—[Interruption.] An hon. Member says “Weak”, by the way. What could be weaker than having 91 people vote against you in the House of Commons?
Will the Prime Minister explain what has not been explained since the Budget? Why is it fair, when he is cutting taxes for millionaires, to ask pensioners to pay more?
The Prime Minister
What we did in the Budget was to increase pensioners’ weekly income by £5.30—the biggest increase in the pension in the pension’s history. But let me repeat: what the Budget did was to cut taxes for every working person in the country and to take 2 million people out of tax, and the change in the top rate of tax was paid more than four times over by the richest people in our country. That compares with what we were left by the Labour party: the biggest bust, the most indebted households, and the biggest budget deficit in Europe, and never once an apology for the mess that it left this country in.
Edward Miliband
No answer on the disarray in the Government, no answer on the tax cut for millionaires, no answer on the tax rise for pensioners. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman has an answer on the biggest issue of all. In his new year message he said:
“We’ve got to do more to bring our economy back to health.”
What has he delivered since then? A double-dip recession made in Downing street. Is not the reality that the biggest failure facing this Government is not the programme motion on Lords reform, but their whole economic plan?
The Prime Minister
It was under this Government that we got 800,000 more private sector jobs. Inflation is down, unemployment is down, and interest rates are at a record low. We are now a net exporter of cars for the first time since 1976. We have completed the biggest construction project in Europe, which is for the Olympics, and we have started the next biggest project, which is Crossrail. It is this Government who set up the enterprise zones, backed the apprenticeships, and are seeing business rebalance in this country.
We will never forget what we were left by the Labour Government. They were bailing out eurozone countries with taxpayers’ money, they were paying £100,000 for just one family’s housing benefit, and they presided over uncontrolled welfare, uncontrolled immigration and uncontrolled Government spending. Never has so much been borrowed, never has so much been wasted, and never have so many people been let down. This country will never forgive the Labour Government for what they did.
Edward Miliband
The redder the Prime Minister gets, the less he convinces people. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Members on both sides of the House now need to calm down. That is all there is to it.
Edward Miliband
It is the same lecture on the economy that we have had for the last two years, and things are getting worse, not better. Every time the Prime Minister gets up with that list of statistics, he just shows how out of touch he is. We have tax cuts for millionaires, a double-dip recession, and U-turn after U-turn after U-turn. Is not the truth that the Prime Minister did not just lose the confidence of his party last night, but he is losing the confidence of the country?
The Prime Minister
There is only one person who is red around here, and that is Red Ed, running the Labour party. Who backed Red Ken Livingstone? They did. Who backed Red Len McCluskey? He did. Who opposed every measure to deal with the deficit? Who proposed £30 billion more spending? Who has given the unions even more say—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I apologise for interrupting the Prime Minister. As I said a moment ago, the Prime Minister’s answers must and, however long it takes, will be heard.
The Prime Minister
Let us take what the Leader of the Opposition has done in the last year. He has opposed an immigration cap, opposed a welfare cap, opposed a housing benefit cap, opposed every single measure to cut the deficit. We know what he is against, but when on earth are we going to find out what he is for?
Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)
Q2. This Government have a great record on education reform. [Hon. Members: “ Hear, hear.”] Given the huge success of the university technical college initiative—more than 25 such colleges have been created—will the Prime Minister please confirm that he will support a further round of applications this autumn, and that funding will be available so that businesses, universities, carers and young people in Devon—[Interruption.]
The Prime Minister
It is good to see my hon. Friend on such feisty form. She is absolutely right to speak up for university technical colleges, which I think are a great addition to the schools that we have in our country. They are a really high-profile way of providing proper vocational education so that we can give young people the skills that they need in order to have a great career in the future.
Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)
On Monday 25 June, the Health Secretary announced the possible administration of the NHS trust that covers Bexley, Bromley and Greenwich. That night he met the hon. Members for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire) and for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill). However, although the Greenwich Members asked for such a meeting, at present there is no date in the diary and no date forthcoming. Can the Prime Minister explain why the residents of Greenwich are not given the same respect by his Minister as the residents of Bexley and Bromley?
The Prime Minister
The hon. Lady raises an important point. The situation at this NHS trust is very difficult, and it is quite right that the Health Secretary is using the powers put in place by the previous Government to deal with the issues. They are partly because of the completely unsustainable private finance initiative contracts. I take what she says very seriously and will see whether I can arrange a meeting between her and a Health Minister to discuss this important issue.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Q3. In my constituency, the average pre-tax income is just under £25,000 a year. Does my right hon. Friend share my incredulity that the Labour party still opposes a benefits cap of £26,000 a year after tax? Does this not demonstrate who really is on the side of hard-working families trying to do the right thing?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes an important point. The Opposition came to the House of Commons and said they would back a welfare cap but, when it came to the crunch, they opposed it. He is absolutely right. That shows who is on the side of those who work hard and want to do the best for their families, their country and their communities, and who thinks that people should be better off on benefits. We back the workers; they back the shirkers.
Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)
Q4. The 2nd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers is to be disbanded, which means that 600 soldiers face redundancy. These are a battalion and regiment with a proud history of service to this country. Will the Prime Minister reconsider the cut to this battalion?
The Prime Minister
We looked at this issue incredibly carefully and took our time—we were criticised for that many times—to ensure we got it right. The decision to have a smaller Regular Army of 80,000 but a much larger reserve force—Territorial Army—of more than 30,000 strikes the right balance. The Government are putting £1.5 billion into building up those reserves, and I hope that Members across the House will help with the process of encouraging employers to allow Territorial Army reservists to serve their country. It is the right decision. We have ensured that no existing regimental names or cap badges will be lost, so it is the right package for the future force of our country.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
Q5. On Sunday, independent observers hailed the first free elections in Libya for 47 years as broadly free, transparent and offering real hope for the future. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we should congratulate the Libyan people on the progress made since their successful struggle to overthrow a brutal 40-year-old dictatorship? Does it not also send a message to others, including Aung San Suu Kyi, who yearn for democracy in their countries?
The Prime Minister
I am sure that my hon. Friend speaks for the whole House and country in wanting to send our congratulations to the Libyan people on what looks like a successful set of elections. It is worth remembering that one year ago it did not look as if everything would turn out well in Libya, but I am proud that the NATO alliance and this country stayed true to the course and helped to secure the right outcome in Libya. The people there now have the chance of the successful democracy and prosperity that are denied to far too many in our world.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
Q6. NHS North West London is currently consulting on the closure of four out of nine accident and emergency units. The medical director has said that North West London would literally run out of money if these closures did not go ahead. What kind of consultation poses a choice between the closure of half the A and E units in north-west London and the potential bankrupting of the local NHS?
The Prime Minister
First, on the issue of money, we have put £12.5 billion extra into the NHS. That decision is opposed by her party, which says that extra money for the NHS is “irresponsible”. We will ensure that all consultations are properly carried out and that local people, clinicians and general practitioners are listened to. We want to ensure that we have good access to accident and emergency units for all our people.
Sir Alan Haselhurst (Saffron Walden) (Con)
Has my right hon. Friend’s attention been drawn to BAA’s advertisement claiming that the regular train service to Stansted takes 47 minutes, which is not universally correct across the timetable and in any case is too long? Will he commit to a major upgrade of the West Anglia line so that airport passengers can get the truly fast service they need and my constituents who regularly commute can get the one they deserve?
The Prime Minister
I quite understand why my right hon. Friend wants to speak up for people in his constituency who want a better train service. What I can say to him is that as part of the new rail franchise in East Anglia, which will be let in the summer of 2014, we will be asking bidders to propose affordable investment aimed at improving services. I am sure that they will listen carefully to what he has said today.
Jim Dobbin (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab/Co-op)
Q7. The Government rightly donate millions in overseas aid to developing countries, including India, to eradicate poverty and disease. Despite that, the Canadian Government, including the Government of Quebec, are to invest 58 million dollars in an asbestos-producing mine; this is not for use in Canada, of course, but to export to developing countries, including India, which will put thousands of poor people at risk from deadly asbestosis and mesothelioma. Will the Prime Minister and the International Development Secretary encourage international communities, including the World Health Organisation, to oppose this quite outrageous decision?
The Prime Minister
I will be seeing the head of the WHO later today, so I can raise this issue with them. As the hon. Gentleman knows, asbestos is banned in the UK, in the EU and in a number of other countries. We are totally opposed to its use anywhere and would deplore its supply to developing countries. The Department for International Development does not provide funding to projects that encourage developing countries to import asbestos from any country or for any purpose. We are not aware that DFID funds have been used in that way at all and I would take urgent action were they to have been, but he makes a strong point about the Indian situation.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
On 4 September, the European Court of Human Rights is hearing the case of Miss Nadia Eweida, the lady who lost her job at British Airways for wearing a crucifix as a mark of her Christianity. The behaviour of BA in this was a disgraceful piece of political correctness, so I was surprised to see that the Government are resisting Miss Eweida’s appeal. I cannot believe that the Government are supporting the suppression of religious freedom in the workplace, so what are we going to do about this sad case?
The Prime Minister
For once, I can say that I wholeheartedly agree with my right hon. Friend. I fully support the right of people to wear religious symbols at work; I think it is a vital religious freedom. If it turns out that the law has the intention as has come out in this case, we will change the law and make it clear that people can wear religious emblems at work.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
Q8. Does the Prime Minister accept the findings of the independent Action for Children report, which show that by 2015 the most vulnerable families with children in this country, including those in employment, will lose up to £3,000 a year because of this Government’s policies? At a time when millionaires are getting tax cuts of more than £40,000 a year, can he stand at the Dispatch Box and say that we really are all in this together?
The Prime Minister
I know that the report the hon. Gentleman quotes does not actually include some of the steps that we have taken, such as providing more nursery education for disadvantaged two-year-olds. Above all what I would say is that if he looks at universal credit and the design of it, he will find that we are actually going to be helping parents with the most disabled children to make sure that they get the help they need.
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)
Will the Prime Minister comment on the worrying stand-off between the Egyptian military, who are clearly trying to cling on to power in defiance of the Arab spring, and Mr Mohamed Morsi, who may not be a Liberal or a Conservative but is undoubtedly the democratically elected President of Egypt?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes an important point. I have been very struck by what the President-elect has said about how he wants to govern on behalf of everyone in Egypt and how he wants to respect religious and other freedoms. I very much hope that the current tension can be resolved, but I think that people have to respect the democratic will of the Egyptian people as they expressed it.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
Q9. At the last election, the Prime Minister promised that pensioners’ bus passes were safe. Will he today reject calls from the Liberal Democrats and now from his close ally the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), and categorically rule out the means-testing of bus passes, including in his manifesto for the next general election?
The Prime Minister
As the hon. Lady will know, at the last election I made very clear promises about bus passes, about television licences and about winter fuel payments. We are keeping all those promises.
Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)
As Melinda Gates has recently said, women in developing countries want to raise healthy and educated children who can contribute to building prosperous communities. Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the ways in which we can support that aspiration is to help those who wish to plan their family to do so?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and later today I will be speaking at a seminar event with Melinda Gates and a whole range of leaders from across Africa and other parts of the developing world about exactly this issue. We should be doing more to allow mothers access to birth control so that they can plan their family size. All the evidence shows that as countries develop, family size does reduce and populations become more sustainable, but we should help people to plan that process. It is not about telling people what to do; it is about allowing people the choice that in this country we take for granted.
Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)
Q10. Members will know that St Patrick, a Roman Briton respected by all traditions in Ireland, is a unifying figure. He established his mission in my constituency of South Down, where today many people of all faiths, drawing on his legacy, work unstintingly to build peace across the divide. When the Prime Minister is next in Northern Ireland, perhaps during the Olympics, will he come to St Patrick’s country and the Mournes, where he can meet these people and witness St Patrick’s unique heritage for himself—and where he will not find any rebel Tories?
The Prime Minister
I do not know whether the hon. Lady can guarantee that—we have an active branch in Northern Ireland—but that is an intriguing and very kind invitation. I hope the Olympics will bring the whole of our United Kingdom together. I think the torch relay has already helped to achieve that; I was very privileged to see it in my own constituency, and I know it had a very successful tour around Northern Ireland. If I can take up the hon. Lady’s intriguing invitation, I will.
Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)
Q15. One of the success stories of this Government has been their commitment to rural communities, and farming in particular. Today almost 2,000 dairy farmers are meeting in Westminster to fight drastic reductions in their milk prices at the hands of processors and supermarkets. Will the Prime Minister join them in their fight to get a fair deal for their product?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to speak up for British farmers, and he does an extremely good job in doing that. This Government are investing in our countryside, not least through the rural broadband programme, but we do want to see a fairer deal between farmers and supermarkets, and that is why we are going to be legislating for the adjudicator, which I know my hon. Friend supports. I can also tell him that today we are announcing £5 million extra in additional funds under the rural economy grant scheme, which can help to make our dairy industry—which we should be very proud of in this country—more competitive.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
Q11. What will the Prime Minister say to the 150,000 adults that the Government themselves estimate will be denied a second chance of education as a result of their plans to charge full cost fees to over-24-year-olds studying A-level and equivalent programmes and access courses?
The Prime Minister
There will be a full statement on this issue this week, but it is important that we expand further education opportunities in our country, and if we are going to expand them, we need to make it clear how we are going to pay for them. The hon. Gentleman’s question highlights what we repeatedly get from the Opposition: a complaint about this policy or that policy, but absolutely no idea of how they would pay for any of their policies.
Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)
The Government have certainly achieved a great deal in the last two years. Given that new issues are emerging as we enter the third year of the coalition, does the Prime Minister agree that now would be a good time for the political parties to review the coalition agreement for the future?
The Prime Minister
I absolutely agree that in a coalition we need to keep working out the next set of things we want to achieve. This coalition has achieved cuts to corporation tax, taking people out of income tax, a massive expansion in trust schools, and a huge contribution to our health service—which is now performing better than at any time in the past decade—and I am committed to making sure we now look at all the next steps we want to take to make our country a better place to live.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
Q12. A grandfather from Blaenau Gwent fears the dole for his grandson returning from Afghanistan; some 20,000 soldiers face losing their jobs. Labour has persuaded big firms, including John Lewis, to guarantee veterans a job interview. Will the Prime Minister get the public sector to do the same?
The Prime Minister
I welcome what the hon. Gentleman says. We should do everything we can to work with employers, whether in the public or the private sector, to help find ex-service personnel jobs. They are people who have been trained brilliantly and who have contributed incredible things to our country, and I am sure we can do much more to help them find jobs. For instance, in the public sector my right hon. Friend the Education Secretary has a programme of “troops to teachers” to try to get people who have served our country to inspire future generations. I think that is an excellent scheme.
Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)
On the Prime Minister’s watch, the Army will reduce to its smallest size since 1750 and will be half the size it was at the time of the Falklands war. Does he accept that history is not kind to Prime Ministers who are perceived to have left our country without a strong defence capability?
The Prime Minister
I know that, with Colchester garrison in his constituency, the hon. Gentleman speaks with great power about military issues. If he looks at the overall balance of what we are doing, with 80,000 regular soldiers and 30,000 Territorial Army fully funded, that will mean that the Army is a similar size after the reforms to what it was before. Much the most important thing is that we inherited a £38 billion deficit in our defence budget. We have closed that deficit and it is now fully funded. We have some huge investments going ahead for our Army, our Navy and our Air Force. This country under this coalition Government will always be well defended.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
Q13. Will the Prime Minister assist the House and tell us when the Chancellor of the Exchequer will take the advice of the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), admit that he made false allegations last week and finally apologise?
The Prime Minister
Let us look at what my right hon. Friend the Chancellor said. He said that the shadow Chancellor had some questions to answer. I am not sure that there is anyone in this House who does not think that the shadow Chancellor has some questions to answer. Perhaps before we break for the summer we should remember what a few of those questions are. Who designed the regulatory system that failed? Who was City Minister when Northern Rock was selling 110% mortgages? Who advised the Chancellor and the Prime Minister that there was no more boom and bust? Who helped create the biggest boom and the biggest bust and who has never apologised for his dreadful record in office?
Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)
Shrewsbury remains the only county town in England without a direct rail service to our capital city. When the new rail franchises are apportioned in August, will the Prime Minister use his good office to ensure that the Government do everything possible to ensure that Shrewsbury is connected to our capital city?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend always speaks up for Shrewsbury. He is absolutely right that when these franchises are considered, there are opportunities to make the case for more investment and more services. I am sure that the rail operators and others will listen very closely to what he has said today.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
Q14. My constituent is recovering from cancer but she has had her employment and support allowance stopped after 365 days. The Government’s consultation on changing the rule ended in March. When will we see justice for the 7,000 cancer patients in that situation?
The Prime Minister
I have looked carefully at that case and I know that the hon. Lady has now had a response from a Minister. As she knows, there are two types of ESA: one that provides permanent support that is not means-tested and another that is means-tested after a year. We are ensuring that more people with cancer are getting more help and more treatment, which is very important. It is right that there should be two forms of ESA so that those people who genuinely cannot work or prepare for work get supported throughout their lives.
Mr Speaker
Points of order come after statements and there is a statement now, but I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman.
Care and Support
(12 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Andrew Lansley)
With permission, Mr Deputy Speaker, I would like to make a statement on the future of care and support for adults in England.
The coalition programme said that reform is needed urgently. We inherited a system that too often let people down and was unfair; a system that was complex and confusing, and which responded to a crisis, but too rarely prevented it. For many years, people have called for a system fitted around the needs of care users, not the preferences of the service; one that puts people at the heart of the service and delivers high-quality care with dignity and respect.
We knew two years ago that we had to offer urgent support to social care. In the spending review 2010, we provided an additional £7.2 billion for social care over the course of this Parliament, including nearly £3 billion from the NHS to deliver more integrated care. This gives the current system resource backing, but not reform. We need also to build a better service for the long term.
The White Paper I am publishing today represents the greatest transformation of the system since 1948. The practical effect will be to give service users, their carers and their families more peace of mind. Services will be organised around each individual's care and support needs, their goals and aspirations. Intervention will be earlier, promoting independence and well-being.
The White Paper will support people to remain active in their own communities, connected to their families, friends and support networks. We will invest an additional £200 million over five years in the development of specialised housing for older and disabled people, so that people can stay independent in their own homes for as long as possible. The role of carers is critical, so we will transform how the system views and treats carers. We will extend rights for carers to have an assessment and for the first time provide a clear entitlement to the support they need to maintain their own health and well-being.
The measures in the White Paper will make it easier for people to understand how care and support services work, and what their entitlements and responsibilities are. To give people greater consistency of access, we will introduce a national minimum eligibility threshold, as the Dilnot commission suggested. We will require councils to start supporting people as soon as they move into a new area, so that it is easier for people to choose to move home, to be nearer, for example, to their relatives. Local authorities will be under a duty to ensure continuity of care, and that care users are able to take their assessments with them if they move area.
We will establish a single website to provide clear and reliable information about all care and support services for self-funders and local authority supported users and carers. As well as these improvements to national information, we will invest £32.5 million to ensure that there is better local information about the range of local care and support services available in each area.
We want people to be confident that the care and support they receive is delivered by a compassionate and caring work force. We will place dignity and respect for care users at the heart of a new code of conduct and minimum training standards for care workers. Alongside the new minimum standards, we will train more care workers, with 50,000 more apprenticeships by 2017.
A key requirement is for people to be confident that they will be treated with dignity and respect, and that providers deliver high-quality care at all times. We will rule out the crude practice known as “contracting by the minute” that can so undermine people’s dignity and choice. We should contract for quality and service, not by the clock. We will call on local HealthWatch organisations to make active use of their new power of entry, allowing them to visit care services in their local area, and to make recommendations to the providers and to local authority commissioners.
People should also be entitled to expect that services will be maintained if a provider fails. Working with local government and the care sector, we successfully handled the consequences of the Southern Cross crisis, but we also learned lessons, so we will consult on how we can anticipate and act to ensure continuity of care if a provider goes out of business. Care itself, not the provider of care, is the most important factor.
A key theme of the White Paper is that those receiving care and support know what is best for them. It is right that they must be in control of their care and support. We will make sure everyone is entitled to a personal budget, so they can be in control of their own care. We will offer all who want it a personal budget, and by 2015 support that with a legal right to request this as a direct payment. To make it easier for people to get the care they want, we will ensure that they have better access to independent advice. We will make it easier for people to see whether a care provider is good or not so that they can make real choices through an online “quality profile” for each provider. We will work with a range of organisations to develop comparison websites so that people can give feedback and compare the quality of care for themselves.
Integrated care is important for everyone, regardless of age or the reason they need care and support, but getting integration right is particularly important for those moving from one service to another. That is why we will transfer an additional £100 million in 2013-14 and £200 million in 2014-15, beyond previous plans, from the NHS to support social care services that benefit people’s health and well-being and promote better integrated care.
The White Paper will help people get better joined-up care at key points in their lives. We will legislate to give adult social care services a power to assess young people under the age of 18, and we will ensure protection so that no young person goes without care while waiting for adult support to start. We want people to receive the best possible care at the end of their lives, including a choice over where they die. The palliative care funding review recommended that all health and social care should be funded by the state once someone reaches the end of life and is entered on the end-of-life care locality register. We think that there is much merit in this and will be using the eight palliative care funding pilot sites to collect the data and experience we need to assess the proposal.
Alongside the White Paper, I am today publishing the draft Care and Support Bill. Many of the White Paper reforms need new legislation to make them work, but the draft Bill is also a major reform in its own right. The law for adult social care is complex and outdated. All those involved know how it has made the system harder to work in. The draft Bill sets out a single, modern statute for adult care and support. It brings together and simplifies provisions from at least a dozen Acts of Parliament, reflecting the recommendations of the Law Commission. It builds the law around people’s well-being and needs and outcomes—clear principles, clearly set out in law.
I am also today publishing a progress report on funding reform. In July 2010 I asked Andrew Dilnot to review the funding of the system of care and support in England. I can confirm today the Government’s support for the principles of the Dilnot commission’s report as the right basis for any new funding model: financial protection through capped costs and an extended means test. As Andrew Dilnot himself has said, that would enable people to plan and prepare so that they are not so vulnerable to the arbitrary impact of catastrophic care costs.
The progress report sets out a detailed analysis of the funding model, giving us a better basis for making decisions on how these changes can be funded. Of course, any proposal that includes extra public spending needs to be considered alongside other spending priorities, including the demographic pressures on social care services. The right and necessary time to do that is at the next spending review. Our talks with the Labour party were constructive, but no plan for funding Dilnot was agreed or, indeed, proposed by either side. A decision at the next spending review will allow time for continuing discussions with stakeholders and between the parties, and we can undertake open engagement on detailed implementation issues and options. These discussions will include the level of the cap, whether a voluntary or opt-in approach is a viable option in addition to the universal options and whether legislative provision is required.
However, as the report makes clear, we are also taking definitive steps now by accepting a number of the Dilnot commission’s recommendations. Most notably, we will introduce a universal deferred payments scheme. This will mean that no one will be forced to sell their home in their lifetime to pay for care. Provisions for this are included in the draft Bill.
The White Paper, the draft Care and Support Bill and the progress report on funding together set out our commitment to a modern system of care and support, one designed around the needs of individual people, one with dignity and respect at its heart, and one that brings care and support into the 21st century. These reforms are also the product of immensely helpful reviews by the Law Commission and the Dilnot commission and a positive and wide-ranging engagement with the care sector and the public, which is helping us to design the kind of care services and support that we would all like to see for ourselves and our families. We are determined to secure these reforms to achieve in this Parliament that which our predecessors failed to achieve in over 13 years. I intend to continue and develop an open and co-operative approach in developing these reforms. I commend this statement to the House.
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement—and, indeed, for the constructive cross-party discussions that we have held on these crucial matters.
First, let me say that we welcome many of the ideas in the White Paper that the right hon. Gentleman is publishing today. A universal deferred payment scheme would help to spare vulnerable people the agony of watching savings and assets being washed away. National standards on eligibility could help to bring some consistency to a care system in England that is today the ultimate postcode lottery. Stronger legal rights for carers are overdue, as are improvements to end-of-life care.
The proposals are important steps forward; they were also in my own White Paper, “Building the National Care Service”, which was published before the last election. I take the right hon. Gentleman’s decision to carry the proposals forward into his White Paper as a positive sign of the developing consensus between the parties, but there is one crucial difference between his White Paper and ours. Despite the obvious political risks of doing so, we faced up to the difficult issue of how to pay for care and support in the century of the ageing society. The Government have failed to do that.
With no answers on money, the White Paper fails the credibility test; it is half a plan. The proposals that the right hon. Gentleman has set out are in danger of appearing meaningless and may raise false hope among older people, their carers and families. The proposals have no answers to the immediate funding crisis that is engulfing councils and resulting in thousands of older people seeing support taken away or facing huge increases in charges for day care and meals on wheels—stealth taxes on the most vulnerable in our society. Furthermore, there are no answers on how we pay for a fairer care system in the long term. Let me take each of the two issues in turn. I shall start with council funding.
Today we have a promise of new standards, new services and new rights for councils to deliver. I fear that that will be greeted with sheer disbelief in town halls up and down England. Councils are already facing a major funding shortfall, estimated to be at least £1 billion. They cannot cope with what they already have to do, never mind their being burdened with additional unfunded pressures. What is the Government’s assessment of the extra costs that will fall to local authorities in England from the proposals in the White Paper? Will the Secretary of State tell us how and when he plans to pay for those costs, as well as make up the existing shortfall in council budgets?
There is simply no point in promising new ideas if they come on top of the crumbling foundations of inadequate care budgets. Councils need emergency support. The right hon. Gentleman has allocated just £100 million and £200 million today, but last week it was confirmed that the Treasury had clawed back £1.4 billion from the Department of Health budget. Surely it would have made sense to have reallocated at least half that clawback—£700 million—to council budgets, to relieve pressure on care. Does he not accept that such a move is needed if his plans are to have any credibility in local government circles?
Let me turn to the flagship proposal—the new duty on all councils to provide loans to older people so that people can pay care costs after they die. Before we judge that, we need more detail. Can the Secretary of State tell us what the upfront set-up costs will be to local authorities? Currently, there is a deferred payment scheme based on no interest, but we read that, when his scheme is up and running, councils will be able to charge interest so as not to lose money.
Will the Secretary of State confirm that that means that councils will have to charge close to commercial rates of interest? Does he not accept that, if that is the case, taking on such large amounts of debt might be very frightening for older people? Was it not for that very reason that the proposal really made sense only if it came as part of a package alongside a cap, as promised by the Dilnot commission? This is the problem with the Government’s White Paper: they are adopting a pick-and-mix approach to the Dilnot package, which was conceived as a coherent and complementary whole.
That brings me to my second issue. I hear talk only of a vague commitment in the progress report to the main principle of Dilnot, so are the Government not in danger of sliding back on their own independent commission, which had produced the best hope for years of a consensus between us? I know, perhaps more than anyone, how politically charged these issues are, but I also know that progress will never be achieved if politicians cannot put difficult options on the table for fear of being accused of political point scoring. That is why my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition made a genuine offer of cross-party talks to give the coalition the political space to look at those difficult options. I thank the Secretary of State for the way in which he conducted those talks—indeed, I thank the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow), too—and I have welcomed his idea of producing a joint progress report on funding.
I do not doubt the Secretary of State’s personal commitment to making progress, but I suspect that he was thwarted by the Treasury and a Chancellor who is making one wrong judgment call after another. The Government’s decision to change course at the eleventh hour and produce their own progress report, without input from Labour Members, reflects a Treasury decision to try to close these issues down—a mistake and a missed opportunity. Let me say this to the Government: if they offer a genuine, two-way discussion on the funding of care, with honesty about existing pressures and the difficult options, we will play our part, but they cannot expect us to provide political cover for a failure to face up to the scale and urgency of the care crisis in England. To do so would be to fail the millions of older people, their carers and families who have already waited long enough for politicians to get their act together.
The truth is that the Government are ducking one of the biggest issues of our time, with a White Paper that has today been branded a “massive failure” by the Alzheimer’s Society. Today’s announcements are designed to create a false sense of momentum and to disguise a Government decision to kick the funding of care into the political long grass. They have made their choice—they have placed Lords reform at the top of the agenda and shunted the care of older people into “Any Other Business”. That is the clearest sign yet of a Government who are losing their way and have their priorities completely wrong.
Mr Lansley
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for welcoming the announcements about access to universal deferred payments, national eligibility criteria, and the work that we are undertaking on promoting free care at end of life. I am surprised, however, that his final remarks seemed to be completely contrary to what he said at the outset. Let me be very clear: the White Paper is the product of the priorities of the people with whom we have engaged throughout the “Caring for our future” process. It directly reflects the priorities of the care and support sector, and I would therefore be surprised if anybody in the sector failed to recognise that and to support it. It is focused on delivering quality and promoting the work force. For the first time, it gives access to legal rights for carers in terms of support. It is very clear about the issue of personal budgets, where there has been a dramatic expansion over the past two years.
Let me deal with the right hon. Gentleman’s specific questions. Since we came into office, we have continually recognised the need for support for social care and for the funding of local authorities for this purpose. That is why we made provision for £7.2 billion of additional support, £3 billion of which comes from within the NHS. As he will see from page 64 of the White Paper, the £300 million of additional resources that it announces more than meets the cost of the White Paper to local government. We are continuing to support social care within the NHS. The latest figures from the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services suggest that only about 13% of total savings took the form of reductions in any service for care users, with the rest relating to efficiency savings redirected into the service that is being provided.
It is simply not the case that we are adopting a pick-and-mix approach to the commission of Andrew Dilnot and his colleagues. We are proceeding with some of its recommendations—for example, on eligibility criteria and deferred payments—and supporting the principles for a new funding model based on the capped cost and extension of the means test. The right hon. Gentleman said that we have to be able to pay for it; yes, indeed we do. That is why we will continue to engage with him and his colleagues and with the wider sector. It is very important that we take people with us on this.
It cuts no ice for the right hon. Gentleman to say that after 13 years of a Labour Government he published a White Paper days before the announcement of the last general election. If he wants to go back to the proposal that he made at that time, which was to impose a tax in order to pay for this and to means-test access to disability benefits, then let him say so, but that is not the basis on which we are proceeding. Andrew Dilnot considered those proposals and did not recommend them. We need a proposal that garners wider consensus and support than was evident for the right hon. Gentleman’s White Paper. I am determined to try to secure that, and we will continue to engage with the sector to make it happen.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Lots of Members want to get in and there is pressure on time. Brevity is in good order and I hope that we should then get everybody in. I call the Chair of the Select Committee on Health.
Mr Stephen Dorrell (Charnwood) (Con)
I welcome the package of measures that my right hon. Friend has announced, which represent important progress towards the delivery of many objectives that are, as we have heard, shared across the House. May I ask him two specific questions? First, he has published a welcome draft Bill showing that many of these aspirations can be brought into effect. Do the Government expect to be able to provide time to make that draft Bill law in the next Session of Parliament? Secondly, in the context of that Bill, does he hope that the continuing cross-party talks may yet provide the basis for answering the funding question that has bedevilled those talks for so long?
Mr Lansley
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. It was neglectful of me not to mention that the White Paper and the announcement that I have made also drew on the recommendations and work of the Health Committee, and I am pleased to have been able to respond to its report as well.
First, matters relating to the legislative programme for the next Session will be announced in the normal way in the Gracious Speech. Secondly, I am determined that we will not only, I hope, have continuing cross-party talks but that they will be conducted, as I think that the shadow Secretary of State himself would wish, with the sector in a more open, public debate. If we were able to arrive at a position whereby, notwithstanding the fact that funding decisions might be made in the spending review, there was scope to put in place legislative provisions that allowed that to happen and could be agreed in time for the introduction of the draft Care and Support Bill, then we would look to make that happen. However, that is conditional at this stage.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
The Secretary of State seems to forget two things. First, his Government did not implement the Personal Care at Home Act 2010, which would have made a difference to people. Secondly, they did not ask Dilnot to consider where the money was coming from, so he can hardly be blamed for not putting forward suggestions. The Secretary of State has committed to a few of Dilnot’s principles but ignored the fact that he advised the closure of the current funding gap in social care. Will he back Labour’s call for the Treasury to use £700 million of this year’s health underspend to close that funding gap, which is the cause of the crisis in social care?
Mr Lansley
First, it is ironic that the shadow Secretary of State said that local authorities would be aghast if they were asked to do extra things without resources given that we are providing those resources and that the Personal Care at Home Act was completely unfunded, which is why local government was desperate for us not to proceed with it. Andrew Dilnot and his colleagues are very clear, as are we, that there are, as I said in my statement, baseline funding pressures on local authorities in relation to social care. That will be addressed in the next spending review, as it was necessarily addressed in the previous spending review in direct response to recommendations that Andrew Dilnot gave us in 2010.
John Pugh (Southport) (LD)
I welcome the statement, which contains many good things, but without financial clarity we risk offering an unsustainable solution to an unsustainable problem. What can coalition Back Benchers do to get the Treasury to go further and faster?
Mr Lansley
The statement I have made is a Government statement. We are working closely with our colleagues across Government to secure these proposals. I know that my hon. Friend understands these things very well. He will know that if there are significant public expenditure implications beyond the current spending review period, they must be dealt with in the context of a spending review. All Government Members are committed to deficit reduction. Understanding where, within those constraints, our priorities lie is the essence of a spending review.
Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)
This is a much more important issue than Lords reform. It is important to millions of people in this country and I am happy to have the opportunity to discuss it. There is clearly a huge shortfall and a crisis of funding in social care. The Secretary of State is not hoodwinking anybody by suggesting anything other than that. What has changed since he walked away from the cross-party talks led by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown)? The Secretary of State dressed up the proposal made before the general election as a “death tax”, yet he has come back with a proposal that is broadly similar.
Mr Lansley
I am not attempting to hoodwink anybody. I have made the point very clearly that in this financial year the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services is making total savings of £891 million, of which only 13%, some £113 million, is being achieved through reductions in services. We are investing in and supporting such services. In 2012-13, £930 million of extra funding will go to local authorities through formula grant to support social care. The NHS is transferring £622 million and we are doubling last year’s figure so that £300 million will be available through the NHS for re-ablement. Those are major additions to the support for care.
On the other point that the hon. Gentleman made, even the right hon. Member for Leigh did not try to return to the debate that we had before the election, and rightly so. The right hon. Gentleman eschewed party political point scoring; the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) did not. I think he should have done.
Dr Daniel Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
I warmly welcome the statement. There is clear commitment in a number of good areas, including improving the portability of services, providing greater support for carers, improving respite care and having more joined-up working between the NHS and adult social services, which will save social services and the NHS money, and improve the care that is delivered to patients. Does the Secretary of State agree that when local government commissions services, it should do so with a view to improving the quality of care and moving away from the care-by-the-minute mentality to which many local care providers seem to adhere?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend is absolutely right in all respects. I know that local government will welcome the philosophy of commissioning for quality, rather than commissioning simply on the basis of watching the clock. That will also be welcomed by older people who are in receipt of care.
Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)
It is clear that the Secretary of State is moving on from causing chaos in the NHS to causing it in the care service. Given the crisis in the budgets of social services, will he set up an independent body to look at how much money local authorities require to provide high-quality social care?
Mr Lansley
I am sorry, but the hon. Gentleman simply demonstrates his ignorance of what is in the White Paper. Those who work in social care, those who represent care users, care recipients and carers want the changes in legislation and in support to focus on looking after people. That is absolutely our agenda. We know that there are funding needs. That is why, in the spending review, we have provided the sums that I have set out. That will enable local authorities to maintain their eligibility to care. This year, only six authorities have reduced their level of eligibility to care from moderate to substantial.
David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)
My right hon. Friend’s statement will be widely welcomed, especially the loans aspect and the emphasis on personal care budgets. Will he confirm that his Department’s trials are showing that personal care budgets are very effective in empowering patients, reducing costs and bringing in a wider range of services and greater patient choice?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. A study published in the latter part of last year demonstrated exactly what he has set out. There has been a major increase in access to personal budgets. When we came to office, about 168,000 people had access to a personal budget. The latest figures show that we have reached 432,000 people. We are aiming for everyone who wants it to have access to a personal budget by April 2013. The draft Bill that we have published today would give legal backing to that and to access to direct payments.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
On 5 December last year, the Minister with responsibility for disabled people said in a written ministerial statement that a consultation on the independent living fund would be published in conjunction with a White Paper on social care this year. Will the Secretary of State say how a consultation on a review of the independent living fund will be meshed with the proposals in the White Paper? Will he assure me that there will be a coherent approach in Government to deal with the ILF in the context of the proposals that he is announcing today?
Mr Lansley
I am grateful to the hon. Lady, because she gives me the opportunity to say that my colleagues at the Department for Work and Pensions will publish a document shortly. That will enable her and other hon. Members to see the relationship between the two documents.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, and in particular the recognition of the role of housing in helping people to live independently in their own homes. Will he elaborate further on how the £200 million extra may be spent by local councils? Does he support the recommendation of the Health Committee that we have a single commissioner for health, social care and housing?
Mr Lansley
The £200 million over a period of five years that I have announced today will be able to be leveraged, with the involvement of private sector investment and social landlords, to provide an opportunity for several thousand additional places in specialist housing for older people and those with disabilities. We are talking about the kind of extra-care homes that give people the sense that they are moving into their own home, but with care available. That will be available in people’s own communities to a greater extent if we can increase the supply.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
The Secretary of State says that he can give no commitments past the spending review in 2015. However, he said that by 2017—two years after that—we will have 50,000 more care workers. There is a big question over how that money will be found. He makes a big point of saying he has given local authorities all these extra resources to deal with the extra tasks that they will have. In the discussions on that, have local authorities said they are satisfied that he is providing enough money for them to carry out those extra tasks?
Mr Lansley
I know that the hon. Gentleman will not have had a chance to look in detail at the White Paper, but it makes it clear that the costs in the spending review period are more than adequately met by the additional resources. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman and his colleagues are confusing two different things. The White Paper looks at specific additional tasks—for example, in the provision of independent information and advice, including local information about access to care services. That is more than fully funded. The figure he mentioned referred not to the number of care workers but to the number of care apprenticeships that are being developed with the sector.
Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
As co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on carers, I welcome the new rights for carers that are proposed in the White Paper. However, a couple of things follow from that. First, GPs, social workers and others have a responsibility to do everything possible to identify carers, because unless people identify themselves as carers, they will not be able to access those rights. Secondly, we should support carers by developing training programmes for them, so that those who find themselves in that position are empowered to undertake their caring role.
Mr Lansley
I am grateful for the work of my hon. Friend and the all-party group. This is an important moment. If the House approves the draft Bill, the rights and entitlements of carers to assessment and support will be set out in law for the first time, in the same way as we have done for those for whom they care. He makes an important point. The draft mandate for the NHS that I published last week gives specific attention to the need to identify and support carers. I hope that these proposals will also enable the NHS and social care to join together in support of carers.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
May I return to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) made? Have local authorities confirmed that they are satisfied that the funding that has been made available will cover the new duties they have to undertake?
Mr Lansley
We have consulted not only the Local Government Association but my colleagues at the Department for Communities and Local Government, and I can assure the hon. Lady that that is indeed the case.
Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
There is much to be welcomed in today’s announcement. After so many years, people all over the country will be pleased that so much progress has been made, particularly for carers and in improving the quality of care and professional standing of paid-for carers. Will the Secretary of State confirm what I think I heard him say—that if the Opposition were to redouble their efforts and the whole country were to engage in the debate that today’s announcement will trigger, the mechanisms to solve the bigger problem of how the funding can be provided could be included in the forthcoming Bill within the next 12 months?
Mr Lansley
Yes, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I will not reiterate what I said in response to the Chair of the Health Committee, but I hope that as we make progress we will be able to see what legislative provisions are required and make them available at the earliest opportunity. She makes an important point, because we must not lose sight of the opportunity to improve quality. There are certain things that require resources, such as access to quality profiles of care providers so that people can make proper assessments of the quality of service that they will receive, increasingly using their personal budgets or direct payments. There is dramatic potential in that. Starting today, quality profiles of 12,000 care providers will be made available.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
A delayed solution to the growing crisis in social care is no solution. In Birmingham, there are none more noble than those who care and none who deserve our support more than those in need of care. Does the Secretary of State not recognise that in failing to act now he is both surrendering a historic opportunity for a new settlement based on Dilnot and letting down the most vulnerable in our country?
Mr Lansley
I know it is difficult for hon. Members when documents are published alongside a statement and they have not had an opportunity to read them, but when the hon. Gentleman does so he will know that what he has just said was utter nonsense.
Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)
I, too, greatly welcome today’s statement and congratulate my right hon. Friend on taking forward this important policy. Health and social care is devolved to the Welsh Government, but it is inevitable that statements, decisions and policy changes in England have a major effect on Wales as well, because some of the services provided to people in Wales are over the border in England. As well as cross-party talks, may we have cross-border talks to ensure that the system works well in Wales?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend makes an important point. We want people who move from England to Wales or from Wales to England to have continuity of care, so I will make it clear to my counterpart in Wales that I am entirely open to discussions about that. Given that it is a devolved matter, it is better in a sense if the initiative for those discussions comes from Wales, because I do not want to be interpreted as trying to impose any solution on Wales, but if the Welsh Government look for such discussions I will be open to them.
Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)
In response to the White Paper, the NHS Confederation has said that people are
“staying in hospital longer…because the right services are not in place to allow them to go home when they are medically fit to do so.”
Given that it is estimated that delayed discharges from our hospitals cost some £18 million a month, what action are the Government taking to get rid of that waste of public money?
Mr Lansley
The total number of delayed discharges is broadly the same as it was last year and, I believe, from memory, the year before—I will correct the record if not. Some 29% of the delays in discharge from hospital are due to the inability to access social care. Most of them arise because people are awaiting further assessment or treatment in the NHS. We have all the details of delayed discharges and are working actively to reduce them.
Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)
I very much welcome many of the measures that my right hon. Friend has announced, particularly on the improvement that he wishes to see in the dignity and respect accorded to those in our care homes and NHS hospitals, especially older people. Will he say a little more about the minimum standards for staff working in the care sector, and about the qualifications that people who apply for care apprenticeships might require to provide the right quality of care?
Mr Lansley
Yes, I am glad to do so. Through the work that we are doing with Skills for Health and Skills for Care, we will set out more clearly the training requirements for those undertaking care work and care assistance in the NHS. In addition, we set out in the White Paper that there should be a code of conduct, and I hope that across the service the philosophy of commissioning for quality, not simply commissioning or contracting by the minute, will help push us towards improvements in the dignity and respect with which care users are treated.
Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)
There are 800,000 people in this country with dementia, a devastating condition for themselves and their families. Many of them rely on the support of community-based services, which means that they are not admitted to residential care and may have a crisis that results in hospital admission. It is a false economy not to support community services. If the Secretary of State were really in touch, he would know that there are massive cuts across the country in exactly those services. Will he go back to the Chancellor now and say, “We need some money now to deal with the crisis”? Otherwise, the integration that he talks about in the White Paper will not happen and the crisis in local authority care will continue.
Mr Lansley
I am sorry that the right hon. Lady does not seem to recognise that in addition to what I have announced today, about three months ago the Prime Minister launched the dementia challenge. It provides resources in the NHS, through the commissioning for quality incentive, for the identification of patients with dementia and for follow-up assessments and support. It is doubling research into dementia and supporting a programme for the creation of dementia-friendly communities. As part of that dementia challenge, local authorities and the health service will work actively together to make communities far more dementia-friendly and more effective in treating dementia.
Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)
Like carers and many vulnerable people across the country, I warmly welcome the White Paper and the progress that is being made. People are keen to see a continued political consensus, which existed, and on which the Opposition were to be congratulated, until about half an hour ago. May I urge the Secretary of State to do everything he can to ensure that that consensus continues? Will he also set out a bit more about what the national minimum eligibility threshold will mean, so that people across the country know what they are entitled to?
Mr Lansley
On the latter point, my hon. Friend will be aware that the national eligibility threshold that we are legislating for will come into effect in 2015. We will of course make it clear before that at what level it will be set. I cannot provide that information at the moment, not least because we have reservations about the overall effectiveness of the classification of need under the fair access to care services system in the intervening period. If we can improve the eligibility framework, we will set out to do so.
I say to the right hon. Member for Leigh and his colleagues that I am very happy to continue to talk. I know that he did not want us to proceed on a unilateral basis from the progress report, but in truth what we published did not represent our making decisions unilaterally but instead reflected the point that we had reached. I am happy for further talks to take us beyond that point.
Tony Lloyd (Manchester Central) (Lab)
If we are to offer people the dignity and respect that the Secretary of State has talked about and prevent the type of abuse that both shocks the nation and frightens care users and their families, although training is very important, so is monitoring. Will he guarantee that the money necessary for monitoring will be available to HealthWatch, the Care Quality Commission and similar agencies? At the moment, people do not believe that those agencies are requested to monitor them properly.
Mr Lansley
The hon. Gentleman will know that we are making resources available for HealthWatch. It also has additional powers and a remit that extends in a way that the remit of LINks never did. There is therefore a patient and care users’ voice, and a much more effective power to enter, view and report. The link of HealthWatch England to the Care Quality Commission is important. We have increased the resources of the latter. I am sure that when he sees its annual report, he will appreciate the steps it is taking to extend its inspection more reliably on an unannounced basis, including into domiciliary care provision.
Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
I have a great deal of respect for the Secretary of State, but I agree with the chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Society, who has said:
“Every day without a funding decision is another day where people…with dementia…face huge costs for…substandard care.”
Will the Secretary of State therefore take this opportunity to assure the House that any new system of funding will end the current dementia tax, under which those with dementia are penalised as a result of their condition with some of the highest social care costs?
Mr Lansley
In this instance, I completely understand where the Alzheimer’s Society is coming from. We all want to achieve what Andrew Dilnot made very clear in presenting his report. Any of us or any members of our families could be subject to catastrophic care costs as a consequence of a diagnosis of dementia and several years’ need for care. We want people to be able to plan and prepare, and to protect themselves against that. From the Government’s point of view, and as I have said today, the Dilnot commission’s report is the basis for a funding model for that, but it must be paid for. As with anything else, we are not going to start promising things that we do not know we can pay for. We therefore have a job of work to do, and I am determined that we will do it as speedily as we can.
Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
The Secretary of State referred to deferred payments. In the time before the individual dies, who will pay for that care? Is there any estimate of how much the care will cost? It seems to be an extremely bad deal for the individual if they must also carry the interest rates of that loan. Will it be administered by local authorities? Who will fund that local authority?
Mr Lansley
From the care user’s point of view, it will be funded by local authorities. Central Government will back that up.
Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)
The residents of Thanet will be reassured by the paper, particular when it comes to caring by the minute, which shows so little respect and dignity for the elderly. However, I urge the Secretary of State to look at the culture of social care, in which funds go more to crisis management than to prevention. I urge him to understand that we could introduce many new measures that will keep people healthy as they get older rather than ambulance-chase after a crisis.
Mr Lansley
I agree with my hon. Friend. That is why we want the focus to be on maintaining well-being and independence. More specialist housing will help with that. The doubling this year compared with last year of resources from the NHS to support re-ablement—when people are discharged from hospital after, for example, a fall and a hip fracture—will directly enable people to be more independent. A lot of the resources that the NHS is putting in with social care is directed towards that kind of preventive work rather than to crisis response. I hope we can do more of that in future.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
Without underestimating the inherent challenges, may I welcome the statement and commend the approach of the shadow Secretary of State? The draft care and support Bill makes provision in respect of the portability of care packages between local authorities in England, but it does not yet provide for the “passportability” of care packages to Northern Ireland and Scotland. Historical migration factors mean that many Irish people are lonely and in remote care settings in England who would much rather be in a care setting in which they can enjoy the support and contact of their families—their families want them there too. When will that finally be addressed?
Mr Lansley
As I told my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies), I completely understand the problem. I will be entirely open to representations from, and discussions with, the Wales and Northern Ireland Administrations on the scope for achieving continuity of care for those who move between different parts of the UK. There are differing systems, but we can at least try to ensure that we build continuity of care around the needs of the individual care user rather than constantly being obsessed with the characteristics of our own systems.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
As the Member of Parliament who represents the area with the highest elderly population in the north-west of England per head, I welcome the statement and the importance that the Government place on care and support, which is the most challenging issue authorities such as Cheshire East council will face over the next few years. The Secretary of State is right to talk about working with local authorities, but how will this work on greater support for carers include greater support for, and, importantly, dialogue with, community and voluntary organisations, such as Crossroads Care Cheshire East, which does excellent work and provides real added value? It tells me that it could do so much more if it was given such support.
Mr Lansley
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I know how important the work of Crossroads Care is in my constituency and others. The “Caring for our future” engagement over a number of months was a major contributory process to the White Paper. I believe we have accurately reflected in the White Paper the priorities set out then. This is not the end of the process. We have important and positive messages to take forward, and further work to do, not least on funding. I hope we can do that equally in close co-operation with the Care and Support Alliance and its members.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
Given the scale of the care crisis in Wirral, I have listened to my constituents at a number of public meetings. They tell me that their priority is for loved ones to live at home with dignity, but local authority cuts make that harder, and—I am sorry—the NHS reorganisation is just a distraction. Contracting by the minute, which the Secretary of State mentioned, is far from the only problem. How will he tackle other problems in the care industry, such as older people being disrespectfully told what time to go to bed and get up?
Mr Lansley
As I said in the statement, we absolutely intend for care services to be responsive to the needs of patients, and to their goals, aspirations and wishes. That is not only a cultural shift, but a financial one—the availability of personal budgets and direct payments for everybody in the social care system will give patients the financial levers to make that cultural shift happen. However, the situation in the Wirral she describes is not how it was described to me when I was there in April. I was told that the health and wellbeing board brings together social care, public health and the NHS so that they are far more effective in the delivery of services locally.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for making progress on this problem, which is a worry for so many of my constituents. They will welcome the proposals, but does he agree that the proposals for paying for care fees by way of a one-off insurance premium, which are contained in the Conservative party manifesto, would have been far better in promoting personal responsibility?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend will see in the progress report that we need to discuss both the universal options for paying for the Dilnot model of care and voluntary, opt-in systems. The latter could have a character not dissimilar to that he describes.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
I welcome many measures in the paper, including on the transition from being a child needing care to becoming an adult needing care, and on allowing people to choose where they want to end their life in palliative care. I represent a coastal constituency. Many people retire to the coast to enjoy the benefits of the sea air. Will he assure me that Suffolk county council will not be penalised by the fact that, in bringing families together, they will not take on extra care burdens for which they had not planned?
Mr Lansley
I completely understand my hon. Friend’s point. We very much reflect the need for care and health care in the allocation of resources to local authorities through the formula grant, and the allocation of resources to the NHS through the NHS resource allocation.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
Councils have faced a £1 billion cut in their funding for care of the disabled and elderly since the right hon. Gentleman’s Government came to power. Without the cash, the White Paper will be meaningless. How confident can he and everybody else in the country be that the Treasury will cough up, given the track record so far of a £1 billion cut to councils?
Mr Lansley
I am sorry, but I simply do not recognise the figures that the hon. Gentleman is using. The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services has suggested—these are not my figures—that this year the service reduction in adult social care budgets on a monetary basis was £113 million and last year it was £226 million. The great majority of the figures he is quoting are actually not cuts at all; rather, they are service efficiencies, which are being reinvested for the benefit of maintaining eligibility.
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
My constituent who has been campaigning on portability of care packages outwith England will be extremely disappointed, because he was given to understand in correspondence from the Secretary of State that this would be covered in the White Paper and it clearly has not been. While we are thinking about Scotland, does the Secretary of State accept that the problem will not be solved even by shifting some of the costs of care from the individual to the state? We have had free personal care in Scotland for some years, but it has not resolved the problems because no additional money was put into the system.
Mr Lansley
I will not attempt—not least because of time—to give an analysis of the difficulties that have been experienced in Scotland. From my point of view, I had understood that what we have set out to do in the White Paper is very much to ensure continuity of care, so that when people move—certainly in England, for which I am responsible—local authorities have a duty to ensure continuity of support. If we can make it so that this happens across the United Kingdom, I am absolutely open to having the discussions necessary to do so.
Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)
The Health Secretary has spoken about the catastrophic costs that face some older adults suffering from dementia. My nan was one of those people. She had to sell her home and spent more than £100,000 on her care costs. Under the loan scheme proposed by the Government today, would somebody like my nan not just end up paying more for the costs of their care? Can the Health Secretary also clarify whether the interest payments would eat into the small amount of money that people like my nan can pass on to their families?
Mr Lansley
We are very clear—I hope I have been clear—that the adoption of a universal deferred payment scheme gives people an opportunity. We are not talking about something that people are required to do; rather, they can choose to do it. One of the things that has most distressed some of those who go into residential care settings is that, as a consequence, they are required to sell their homes—they are forced to do it. What we have announced gives people an opportunity for that not to happen, but as the White Paper and the progress report make clear, we would like to proceed on the basis of a funding model, based on the Dilnot commission, that enables people also to have a cap on their care costs. If we can do that, the combination of the two will be an effective solution.
Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
Without a cap on costs, which is what the Dilnot commission proposed for universal deferred schemes, will this measure not potentially leave some families with massive debts to pay when their loved ones die, far in excess of the £35,000 cap that the commission proposed?
Mr Lansley
I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman has read out the Whips’ question, but he did not listen to the last answer. We are both implementing the universal deferred payment scheme and proposing in the draft Bill that we should legislate for that. We are, as I have made clear, supporting the principle of Dilnot that we should implement a capped-cost model with an extended means test, but we have to demonstrate, as we know, that it needs to be paid for, and if those decisions involve public expenditure, they must necessarily be held for the spending review.
VAT on Fuel for the Air Ambulance Service
(12 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)
Further to the debate that we have just conducted on the air ambulance service, and in the light of the e-petition that has been presented to the Backbench Business Committee, it is my great pleasure to present on behalf of the citizens of Hexham and Tynedale a petition by several hundred residents who have submitted it via the good offices of my local newspaper, the Hexham Courant, and its editor, Mr Colin Tapping. This petition supports the e-petition.
The petition states:
The Petition of residents of Hexham,
Declares that the Petitioners believe that the Air Ambulance Service should be afforded a similar exemption from VAT on fuel to that enjoyed by the Lifeboat Service; and notes that the Air Ambulance service provides an essential service that is funded by charitable donations, saving successive Governments millions of pounds.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to review VAT arrangements on fuel for the Air Ambulance Service, and ensure that it is not subject to VAT.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P001108]
Points of Order
(12 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I would like to raise a point of order for which I have given prior notice. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) made clear in Prime Minister’s questions earlier, Ministers are poised to announce detailed plans to scrap direct financial support for more than 350,000 adult learners and replace it with a loan system. Their regulatory assessment suggests 150,000 adults falling by the wayside as a result, yet we are being told that regulations will be laid imminently, via the negative procedure, just before the House’s summer recess, offering no opportunity from the Government for debate. Is it in order for those changes to come into force, as they will, on 1 September, before we return, and is it acceptable that the further education sector should see the largest change in adult learning funding in a generation, with no opportunity offered to Members in this House to question Ministers or have a debate on the Floor of the House?
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for notice of his point of order. The matters that concern him do not appear to me to raise any questions about the rules of the House. Therefore, they are not a matter for the Chair. No doubt Ministers will have heard what he has just said. It is open to any Member of the House to table a prayer against a statutory instrument. Moreover, I would emphasise that it is Wednesday today. The House will not rise for the summer recess until next Tuesday, so there are opportunities for the hon. Gentleman to seek to debate the matter, whether in Government time, Opposition time or, indeed, Back-Bench time. I hope that that is helpful to him.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek your advice. I wrote to the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice on the important issue of firearms on 4 January 2012, and again on 27 March and 21 May, as well as making two telephone calls to his private office to ask for a response. Today I have still not received a response. I wonder whether you could advise me on whether there is anything further I could do to seek a response from the Minister.
Mr Speaker
The hon. Lady is an experienced and assiduous Member of the House. One thing she can do is to raise the matter on the Floor of the House, which she has just done. It is perhaps fortuitous for her that she has done so in the presence of no less a figure than the Deputy Leader of the House, who, together with the Leader of the House, attaches great importance to timely replies from Ministers to Back-Bench Members. This is a point I have made repeatedly: Ministers must answer to hon. and right hon. Members. I hope that the failure thus far to do so will be speedily communicated to the Minister and that he will make good in time. I hope that is helpful.
United Kingdom Borders
(12 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to allow subjects of Her Majesty’s realms to enter the United Kingdom through a dedicated channel at international terminals, to ensure that all points of entry to the United Kingdom at airports, ports and terminals display prominently a portrait of Her Majesty as Head of State, the Union Flag and other national symbols; to rename and re-establish the UK Border Agency as ‘Her Majesty’s Border Police’; and to enhance the Agency’s powers to protect and defend the borders of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Mr Speaker, thank you for the opportunity today to present my Bill, in which I propose a fundamental re-evaluation of how our national border operates as the gateway to the United Kingdom. The UK border currently orchestrates the arrival of more than 101 million people each year. Some 40 million are UK nationals, 28 million are from the European Union and European economic area, and a mere 2.5 million come from Her Majesty’s Commonwealth realms. It is on this point that I stand before the House today.
There is a great constitutional injustice occurring at our nation’s border. It is an injustice that is not known to too many UK nationals; however, it is well known to the 73 million people outside the UK who share Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II as their sovereign. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is one of a family of 16 Commonwealth realms, which form our oldest and closest union: Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, the Solomon Islands and Tuvalu. The loyal people of those nations have fought alongside Britain, defended us and worked with us to form a global family of like-minded countries that have much in common with our cherished history, heritage and traditions, our culture and identity, our constitutional arrangements and parliamentary democracy, our legal system, our language and, of course, Her Majesty, as our Queen.
It is all too easy to forget that Queen Elizabeth II is not an exclusively British sovereign. She sits at the heart of the respective constitutions of the 15 other realms and is intertwined into the very fabric of each of those nations. The Queen’s image appears on their coins and stamps, and her name and symbols are visible on the insignia and emblems of their Government institutions. Their politicians, judges and military officers swear an oath of allegiance to her on taking office, and she is technically charged with administering laws, issuing Executive orders and commanding the military within the sovereign realms over which she reigns. Only last year, the Government of Canada decided to restore the “Royal” prefix to the Canadian air force and navy, in recognition of the role of the monarch in Canada’s heritage and constitution.
However, the people of those nations have no special status upon arriving at the UK border where, sadly, they are treated without reverence. For example, it is a travesty that citizens from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Jamaica have to queue up in the foreign nationals channel at London Heathrow airport, while citizens from European Union countries that have never had any historical connection to the Crown or the United Kingdom—and that, in recent times, have fought against us in war—are allowed to enter alongside British citizens by virtue of their EU membership. We should surely extend that basic courtesy to all Her Majesty’s loyal subjects from the overseas realms that have enjoyed an enduring relationship with the United Kingdom and the Crown since long before the genesis of the European Union.
The Bill does not propose an immediate change to current immigration and visa requirements—although I hope that, in time, reciprocal arrangements can be put in place between the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth realms—but it will provide a visible, practical and relevant way to recognise those countries that have cherished and maintained a special relationship with the United Kingdom through the Crown.
I propose a dedicated channel at international terminals for those from the Commonwealth realms, operating next to the channel for UK, EU and EEA nationals, so that all Her Majesty’s subjects may enter the United Kingdom with appropriate decorum and not as second-class subjects. Of course, all 16 flags of Her Majesty’s realms should be displayed on signs pointing to this new entry channel, showing the whole world that being a subject of the Queen actually means something and is not just symbolic. That would have an added advantage for British passport holders, in that we could choose which queue to join. We would at last have the choice of whether to enter through the channel marked for Her Majesty’s subjects or that marked for EU citizens. I know which one I would choose.
I believe that categorising citizens of the Commonwealth realms as “foreign” is shameful—indeed, an insult to our collective history—especially for those with relatives who have laid down their lives in the name of the Crown. But that is not the only way in which our border falls short. Our international terminals are currently not obliged to display any symbols that proudly show our national identity. It is totally unacceptable that, when we land in the United Kingdom, there is often virtually no recognition that we have done so: no portrait of the Queen, no royal coat of arms and no Union flag or any other symbol that portrays our great British identity. I believe that when visitors arrive at UK passport control, they should be left in no doubt that they have arrived in a confident and proud British nation.
There is absolutely no excuse for not affording Her Majesty the respect that she deserves at our national border as the United Kingdom’s Head of State. The Queen’s portrait should be prominently on display at every entry point into the United Kingdom, without exception, alongside the royal coat of arms and the Union flag, together with the flags of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.
Just as perplexing is the nondescript uniform and politically correct image of the so-called UK Border Agency. Disgracefully, even the symbol of the Crown has been removed from its insignia. We should end the perpetuation of that bland, corporate and thoroughly ambiguous agency, and re-establish the body as Her Majesty’s border police. That would reflect the solemn duty of Her Majesty’s officials to protect and defend our national border, and give them the authority, standing and respect that they need to be effective guardians of the gateways to these islands.
In this, Her Majesty’s diamond jubilee year, my Bill would demonstrate the confidence, pride and bulldog spirit that the people of Britain expect Her Majesty’s Government to uphold in our nation today. I commend the Bill to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Andrew Rosindell, Mr Nigel Dodds, Rory Stewart, Bob Blackman, Steve Baker, Priti Patel, Jane Ellison, Mark Menzies, Kate Hoey, Ian Paisley, Mr John Redwood and Thomas Docherty present the Bill.
Andrew Rosindell accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 25 January 2013, and to be printed (Bill 59).
Backbench Business
(12 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Sittings of the House
(12 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
15:49 - The House divided: - Ayes: 241 / Noes: 256 - Question accordingly negatived.
16:03 - The House divided: - Ayes: 267 / Noes: 233 - Question accordingly agreed to.
16:17 - The House divided: - Ayes: 280 / Noes: 184 - Question accordingly agreed to.
16:30 - The House divided: - Ayes: 205 / Noes: 228 - Question accordingly negatived.
Mr Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)
I beg to move,
That no change be made to the time at which the House sits on a Monday.
Mr Speaker
With this it will be convenient to take the following:
Motion 2—Sittings of the House (Mondays) (1.00 pm to 8.30 pm)—
That this House should meet at 1.00 pm on Mondays, with a moment of interruption of 8.30 pm, and accordingly the changes to Standing Orders set out in the table be made, with effect from Monday 15 October 2012.
Standing Order no. | Line no. | Change |
|---|---|---|
9 (Sittings of the House) | 3 | Leave out ‘and’ and insert ‘at one o’clock, on’. |
20 | Leave out ‘ten o’clock on Mondays’ and insert ‘half past eight o’clock on Mondays, at ten o’clock on’. | |
10 (Sittings in Westminster Hall) | 12 | Leave out ‘be between half past nine o’clock and two o’clock’ and insert ‘begin at half past nine o’clock, shall be suspended from one o’clock until four o’clock and may then continue for up to a further one hour’. |
16 | Leave out ‘two and a half’ and insert ‘one hour, two and a half hours’. | |
15 (Exempted business) | 21 | Leave out ‘eleven o’clock on Monday or’ and insert ‘half past nine o’clock on Monday, eleven o’clock on’. |
17 (Delegated legislation (negative procedure)) | 2 | Leave out ‘half past eleven o’clock on Monday or’ and insert (‘ten o’clock on Monday, half past eleven o’clock on’. |
20 (Time for taking private business) | 26 | Leave out ‘seven o’clock on any specified Monday or’ and insert ‘half past five o’clock on any specified Monday, seven o’clock on any specified’. |
37 | At start, insert ‘half past five o’clock,’. | |
54 (Consideration of estimates) | 20 | Leave out ‘seven o’clock on Monday or’ and insert ‘half past five o’clock on Monday, seven o’clock on’. |
88 (Meetings of general committees) | 11 | Leave out ‘one o’clock and half past three o’clock in the afternoon on Mondays or’ and insert ‘five minutes to one o’clock and two o’clock in the afternoon on Mondays, between the hours of one o’clock and half past three o’clock in the afternoon on’. |
22 | At start, insert ‘five minutes to one o’clock,’. |
Motion 3—Sittings of the House (Tuesdays) (No change)—
That no change be made to the time at which the House sits on a Tuesday.
Motion 4—(Sittings of the House) (Tuesdays) (11.30 am to 7.00 pm)—
That this House should meet at 11.30 am on Tuesdays, with a moment of interruption at 7.00 pm, and accordingly the changes to Standing Orders set out in the table be made, with effect from Monday 15 October 2012.
Standing Order no. | Line no. | Change |
|---|---|---|
9 (Sittings of the House) | 3 | Leave out ‘and Tuesdays at half pasttwo o’clock, on’ and insert ‘at half past two o’clock, on Tuesdays and’. |
7 | After ‘a’ insert ‘Tuesday or’. | |
20 | Leave out ‘and Tuesdays, at seven o’clock on’ and insert ‘, at seven o’clock on Tuesdays and’. | |
10 (Sittings in Westminster Hall) | 4 | Leave out lines 4 and 5 |
6 | After ‘on’ insert ‘Tuesday or’. | |
10 | At start, insert ‘Tuesday or’. | |
15 (Exempted business) | 21 | Leave out ‘or Tuesday, eight o’clock on’ and insert ‘, eight o’clock on Tuesday or’. |
17 (Delegated legislation (negative procedure)) | 2 | Leave out ‘or Tuesday, half past eight o’clock on’ and insert ‘, half past eight o’clock on Tuesday or’. |
20 (Time for taking private business) | 26 | Leave out ‘or Tuesday, four o’clock on any specified’ and insert ‘, four o’clock on any specified Tuesday or’. |
24 (Emergency debates) | 28 | Leave out ‘or Tuesday, half past ten o’clock on a’ and insert ‘, half past ten o’clock on a Tuesday or’. |
54 (Consideration of estimates) | 20 | Leave out ‘or Tuesday, four o’clock on’ and insert ‘, four o’clock on Tuesday or’. |
88 (Meetings of general committees) | 11 | Leave out ‘or Tuesdays, between the hours of twenty-five minutes past eleven o’clock in the morning and half past one o’clock in the afternoon on’ and insert ‘, between the hours of twenty-five minutes past eleven o’clock in the morning and half past one o’clock in the afternoon on Tuesdays or’. |
Motion 5—Sittings of the House (Wednesdays) (No change)—
That no change be made to the time at which the House sits on a Wednesday.
Motion 6—Sittings of the House (Wednesdays) (10.30 am to 6.00 pm)—
That this House should meet at 10.30 am on Wednesdays, with a moment of interruption at 6.00 pm, and accordingly the changes to Standing Orders set out in the table be made, with effect from Monday 15 October 2012.
Standing Order no. | Line no. | Change |
|---|---|---|
9 (Sittings of the House) | 3 | Leave out ‘on Wednesdays at half past eleven o’clock and on’ and insert ‘and on Wednesdays and’ |
20 | Leave out ‘, at seven o’clock on Wednesdays and at six o’clock on’ and insert ‘and at six o’clock on Wednesdays and’. | |
10 (Sittings in Westminster Hall) | 7 | Leave out ‘half-past eleven o’clock until half past two o’clock’ and insert ‘half past ten o’clock until half past one o’clock’. |
9 | Leave out ‘two’ and insert ‘three’. | |
16 | Leave out ‘two and a half or three’ and insert ‘three or three and a half’. | |
15 (Exempted business) | 22 | Leave out ‘, eight o’clock on Wednesday or seven o’clock on’ and insert ‘or seven o’clock on Wednesday or’. |
17 (Delegated legislation (negative procedure)) | 3 | Leave out ‘, half past eight o’clock on Wednesday or half past seven o’clock on’ and insert ‘or half past seven o’clock on Wednesday or’. |
20 (Time for taking private business) | 27 | Leave out ‘, four o’clock on any specified Wednesday or three o’clock on any specified’ and insert ‘or three o’clock on any specified Wednesday or’. |
37 | Leave out ‘, four o’clock’. | |
24 (Emergency debates) | 28 | Leave out ‘, half past ten o’clock on a Wednesday or half past nine o’clock on a’ and insert ‘or half past nine o’clock on a Wednesday or’. |
41A (Deferred divisions) | 38 | Leave out ‘eleven’ and insert ‘ten’. |
45 | Leave out ‘eleven’ and insert ‘ten’ | |
54 (Consideration of estimates) | 21 | Leave out ‘, four o’clock on Wednesday or three o’clock on’ and insert ‘or three o’clock on Wednesday or’. |
88 (Meetings of general committees) | 13 | Leave out ‘, between the hours of twenty-five minutes past eleven o’clock in the morning and half past one o’clock in the afternoon on Wednesdays or between the hours of twenty-five minutes past ten o’clock in the morning and half past twelve o’clock in the afternoon on’ and insert ‘or between the hours of twenty-five minutes past ten o’clock in the morning and half past twelve o’clock in the afternoon on Wednesdays or’. |
22 | Leave out ‘, twenty-five minutes past eleven o’clock’. |
Motion 7—Sittings of the House (Thursdays) (9.30 am to 5.00 pm)—
That this House should meet at 9.30 am on Thursdays, with a moment of interruption at 5.00 pm, and accordingly the changes to Standing Orders set out in the table be made, with effect from Monday 15 October 2012.
Standing Order no. | Line no. | Change |
|---|---|---|
9 (Sittings of the House) | 5 | Leave out ‘ten’ and insert ‘nine’. |
21 | Leave out ‘six’ and insert ‘five’. | |
10 (Sittings in Westminster Hall) | 14 | Leave out ‘two and insert ‘one’. |
15 (Exempted business) | 23 | Leave out ‘seven’ and insert ‘six’. |
17 (Delegated legislation (negative procedure)) | 6 | Leave out ‘seven’ and insert ‘six’. |
20 (Time for taking private business) | 28 | Leave out ‘three’ and insert ‘two’. |
24 Emergency debates | 30 | Leave out ‘half-past’. |
54 (Consideration of estimates) | 22 | Leave out ‘three’ and insert ‘two’. |
88 (Meetings of general committees) | 15 | Leave out ‘twenty-five minutes past ten o’clock in the morning and half past twelve o’clock in the afternoon’ and insert ‘twenty-five minutes past nine o’clock and half past eleven o’clock in the morning’. |
23 | Leave out ‘ten’ and insert ‘nine’. |
Motion 8—September Sittings—
That this House considers that the Government should bring forward motions to provide for the House to sit in September from 2013 onward.
Motion 9—Sittings of the House (Tuesdays) (7.00 pm to 10.00 pm)—
That this House should sit on Tuesdays from 7.00 pm until 10.00 pm to consider Private Members’ Bills.
Mr Knight
I commend the Procedure Committee’s report on sitting hours—HC330—to any Member who has not yet read it because it will be helpful in determining the decisions to be made during this debate.
I have been surprised over the past two weeks to see reports in certain sections of the press suggesting that MPs were demanding shorter hours, and that at a “time of national crisis”, we were seeking to cut back on the number of hours that we work. That forced me to re-read my Committee’s report. As I suspected, I discovered no such proposition in it. In fact, the Committee concluded that the hours we spent at Westminster were broadly correct and should continue. I guess that the headline “MPs resolve to work as hard as ever but may choose different hours” does not have the same attraction for a sub-editor, even if it is accurate.
Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)
It is difficult to believe that all the media got it so wrong. Will the right hon. Gentleman clarify whether his amended press release was taken up and reported by any of the media?
Mr Knight
Rather strangely, two sections of the press that had misreported what we were doing have now made changes on their website. It could well be that the truth has finally caught up with them.
It is usual for Select Committees to reach a firm conclusion and to ask the House to follow it, for very good reasons, but this usual practice is against the background of a Committee identifying an issue that needs attention or discovering a defect in our law or perhaps a fault in ministerial practice that warrants a particular remedy. That is not the case today. Although the Procedure Committee has expressed its view in the report, I wish to make it clear that on the issue of sitting hours, the Committee appreciates that each Member of Parliament has a different way of working. That means that in considering the House’s sitting hours, there are no mainstream options that are “right” or “wrong”, “antiquated” or “modern”, “effective” or ineffectual”: the whole issue is a matter of individual preference.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
I take issue with the right hon. Gentleman when he says that it is all a matter of individual preference. I travel from the Hebrides, and if we had a 1 o’clock start on Monday the furthest I could get by that time is Glasgow airport.
Mr Knight
The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, and I shall come on to Mondays shortly.
The Procedure Committee accepts that our sitting hours are a matter of judgment for the House as a whole, which is why I have tabled motions to facilitate the majority view prevailing in respect of days Monday through to Thursday. Any changes made by the House will have consequences, which I hope Members will reflect on before they decide how to vote.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
I am sure my right hon. Friend would be the first to recognise that it is not just a matter of individual preference; the House does not sit only in the Chamber, because Select Committees have to meet, preferably at times when they are not interrupted by votes and when witnesses can come a long distance to attend the meetings. That explains why Tuesday mornings, for example, are extensively used by Select Committees.
Mr Knight
The right hon. Member has identified one of the consequences that would come into play if the House decided to change its sitting hours on Tuesdays.
It is not my intention on behalf of the Procedure Committee to cajole the House to vote in any particular way. I have tabled a number of motions to facilitate the House’s expressing a view, and if it wishes to make a change to sittings on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays, it can do so today by voting for the appropriate motion.
I shall deal with the motions in the order in which they appear on the Order Paper, starting with motion 1, which is to retain the status quo on Mondays. Many Members told the Procedure Committee they feel that earlier sittings would compromise the ability of Members from constituencies distant from London to make the journey to Westminster on Mondays—the point well made by the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil). Those with constituencies closer to Westminster also made it clear that they valued the opportunity to carry out some constituency business on a Monday morning. If this motion to make no change to Mondays is passed, no further proposals will be put forward in respect of Mondays. If it is defeated—but only if it is defeated—I will move motion 2, which proposes a slightly earlier start. As no further proposals relating to Mondays have been tabled by any other Member, this will be the only alternative the House will be asked to consider.
Motion 3 is to retain the status quo on Tuesdays, and I will move it at the appropriate time. Similarly, if this is passed, there will be no further proposals dealing with Tuesdays. As I understand it, the other Tuesday motions—4 and 9—will in that event fall.
Sir Bob Russell
In its deliberations, did the Procedure Committee take into account the fact that the House used to have earlier Tuesday sitting hours, but it quickly restored the afternoon start because of the consequences, some of which my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) has already alluded to?
Mr Knight
The Procedure Committee was well aware of why, having decided to sit earlier on Tuesdays as an experiment, the House subsequently failed to ratify that experiment. Speaking as a Member representing a northern constituency, I can point out other consequences. If we were to sit earlier on a Tuesday, some 750 people a day would not be able to have a tour of this building on Tuesdays, which is the day when most of my constituents prefer to visit Westminster. Denying them that opportunity would mean that they would have to come here on a Monday, when they would have to compete with commuter traffic in making the journey. That could force some constituents who can ill afford it to stay the night in London if they want to have a tour of this building. That may not be an overriding consideration, but it should be borne in mind before the House votes.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
I have two points on the debate so far. First, the House today is a different place—there are an awful lot more women, and more younger people with important family commitments. Members may well have wanted to change the arrangements back then, but it is important to understand that the House is different now. Secondly, we now have a different expenses regime under the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, and many more Members have to get back late at night. It is difficult, particularly for women, to make these journeys at 10.30 and 11.30 at night. That is another difference between the House that made the change previously and this House.
Mr Knight
The hon. Lady is quite right. That is why the Procedure Committee felt it important to have this debate today to test the mood of the present Parliament on what hours it chooses to sit. On her latter point, I have always been of the view that any expenses regime should model itself to fit the hours we choose to work, and not the other way around.
Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
I thank the Chairman and his Committee for the work they have done on this issue. I would like to follow up the point about how the sitting hours affect Members with family responsibilities. I first entered the House when I had a seven-year-old son. There is no change in the hours that could make the House more family-friendly to those whose children are hundreds of miles away. If we are to debate this issue, we should do so on the correct grounds. It is often said that a change in the hours is more family-friendly, but that is true only to those whose families live near the House.
Jo Swinson (East Dunbartonshire) (LD)
The right hon. Gentleman raised the issue of tourism here. It is important for our constituents to visit the House, but I think that his point about the expenses regime also applies to tourism—in other words, we should facilitate tourism around the hours the House sits. To address the problem he raised, perhaps we could look at other options, such as providing greater facilities at the weekend, which would be much more convenient for many of our constituents.
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
Following up the important intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones), does the right hon. Gentleman agree that for those fortunate enough to bring up their children in inner London, as I was, notwithstanding the fact that I have a constituency 225 miles away, there is no rule to say that a 7 o’clock finish on a Tuesday is more “family-friendly” than one at 10 o’clock? As I know for certain, having talked to younger Members today, it varies greatly according to the family circumstances. No one should presume to speak for those Members—men or women—who happen to have young children about what is “best for them”.
Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
The Chairman of the Procedure Committee is making an extremely good speech and balancing all the different factors. He says that “it depends on the whipping”, but I am sure that he will accept that often on a Tuesday night, when there is no Whip and Members are not engaged with a debate, one still finds Members in their offices until 9, 10, 11 o’clock at night—even when no votes are taking place and there is no engagement in the Chamber. That is the reality of this place.
Mr Knight
That is certainly true; I think we are all aware of that. It may not be a matter of any moment for Opposition Members, but, if the House were to decide to sit earlier on a Tuesday, it would in effect scupper many ministerial visits to different parts of the country during the daytime. Opposition Members might not be bothered about that now, but there might come a time when it does matter to them.
To return to the process, if the Tuesday motion on retaining the status quo falls, I understand that the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock) will then move motion 4, which I have also signed, recommending that our sitting hours on a Tuesday change to mirror those currently in force on a Wednesday.
I understand also that if the right hon. Lady is successful and the motion is passed, she might also move motion 9, at the end of this business on the Order Paper, recommending that private Members’ Bills be taken on a Tuesday evening after 7 pm. I have considerable sympathy for the House looking at whether we move the time for debate on private Members’ Bills, but, if her motion becomes eligible to move, I ask her again to reflect on not doing so—for five reasons.
The Procedure Committee has resolved to undertake a full report into private Members’ Bills and the procedure relating thereto. I have also been to see the Leader of the House, because it is important that the House, at an early date, decides whether it wishes private Members’ Bills to continue on a Friday or to move to another day of the week—not necessarily a Tuesday.
I am pleased to say that the Leader of the House accepted the strength of the necessity for an early decision on the matter, and he made it clear to me that he intends to provide time for the Backbench Business Committee, either in the September spill-over or shortly thereafter, when I hope that the Committee will allocate a debate for that purpose. So we have had a promise of time to debate the question of when we deal with private Members’ Bills, and it should be a wider one than just, say, moving them from Friday to Tuesday; the House should debate whether to take such Bills on a Wednesday—perhaps even a Thursday might be an option—or keep them where they are on a Friday.
There are consequences of just moving such Bills from a Friday to a Tuesday, not least that such business will be more likely to attract a payroll Whip if the Government of the day find it unpalatable.
Dame Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
The right hon. Gentleman indicates that the payroll vote may become a factor in any consideration of private Members’ Bills, but it would apply whenever such Bills were debated, and there are of course other mechanisms that Governments use to talk them out on a Friday. Specifically, will his thinking encompass running such Bills parallel to the sittings of the Chamber, or are we talking solely about putting them on at the end of regular business?
Mr Knight
As the Procedure Committee has only just resolved to look into the matter, I would not want to cut off any avenue of discussion. I think that it will be happy to look at both suggestions—[Interruption.]
I know that one other aspect of the matter which the Committee wants to look at is the steps that we take to reduce the likelihood of just two or three Members completely destroying a Bill that has the support of many. There are various ways of doing so, one of which is to put the Question on a private Member’s Bill’s Second Reading after a certain amount of time has elapsed, rather than Members having to get 100 people here to vote in the affirmative.
So we are seeking to be helpful; we have been promised an early debate about the matter; and on that basis I hope that the House will be prepared to wait until September for a wide-ranging debate about private Members’ Bills and where we allocate them within our sittings, rather than accept motion 9 today. I thought that someone else was seeking to intervene.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
My right hon. Friend made my point for me.
Mr Knight
I am most grateful to my hon. Friend. Apparently I made his point for him.
The short delay between today and September or the first week in October is not long enough to delay the implementation of any recommendation that we bring forward. Nothing will be lost by waiting, so I hope that on reflection the right hon. Lady will decide not to move motion 9 if it becomes possible for her to do so.
Motion 5 is to retain the status quo on Wednesdays, and again I shall move it at the appropriate time. Similarly, if it is passed no further proposals will deal with Wednesday and the remaining Wednesday motion will fall. If the Wednesday motion on retaining the status quo fails, I will move motion 6, which recommends that our sitting hours on that day change to mirror those currently in place on a Thursday, namely 10.30 am until 6 pm.
Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)
If we move sitting times on a Wednesday, my concern, which applies to Tuesday as well, is that we will curtail the time that Members have to arrange meetings with constituents and others in this place. It is very tricky to organise meetings when the House is sitting; I have had to cancel two appointments this afternoon to take part in this debate. So I have great concerns about contracting the time that Members have available to meet constituents and others.
Mr Knight
My hon. Friend makes a fair point, and I assume that those concerns will lead him to vote for the status quo when the time comes.
Motion 7 is to bring Thursday sittings forward by one hour so that the House sits from 9.30 am until 5 pm, rather than from 10.30 am until 6 pm. Any Member who wishes to see the status quo retained should vote against the motion.
Mr Gray
I am a member of the Procedure Committee and, therefore, I signed up to the report, which was of course unanimous, but since we produced it a number of people who live, for example, in Milton Keynes and similar places have brought to my attention the fact that, to get here by 9.30 am, it would be necessary to catch peak time trains, and that, given the strictures on our expenses, that might not be so good and, in order to accommodate them, might be a reason for leaving things at 10.30 am.
Sir Robert Smith (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (LD)
This is probably the best laid out Order Paper that we have had for any such debate, as far as making things clear goes, and I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on how he has set out the options—so that people understand them and know what they are voting for. I may have missed this earlier, but if people vote for any new hours when will they be implemented?
Mr Knight
I thank the hon. Gentleman for the first part of his intervention. This way of proceeding was not without controversy, but I am pleased that he feels, as I do, that it is the best way of doing so. I am obliged to the Government and to the Backbench Business Committee, and the reason we are having this debate today—as I understand it, and I stand to be corrected by the Deputy Leader of the House—and, in effect, debating sitting hours ahead of some of the other recommendations in the Committee’s report is that if the House votes for any change, the Government and the House authorities will be able to put the necessary changes in place for when we return in October.
Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)
Further to the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray), does my right hon. Friend not agree that, on sitting hours, we should set ourselves up so that the Chamber and the House work and we do our jobs in the most effective way, and that, although the point about whether someone travels at peak time is an interesting one, it should be a secondary consideration?
Mr Knight
That too is an interesting point, but I believe that it is for individuals to decide at what time of day they consider themselves to work most effectively, and that is why I have hesitated to tell the House in which direction it should go today. I think that this is a matter for the House itself: I think it right for this Parliament, elected in 2010, to make its decision—a decision with which the majority are happy—and we know that that will happen in less than two hours’ time.
Mr Burley
My right hon. Friend said that the House should reflect on what is the optimal time of day for Members to work, and I think that that goes to the heart of the debate. Does he accept that for many new Members such as me—those of us who arrived in the House two years ago—10 pm is not the optimal hour of the day at which to work? Back in the real world, the optimal working hours are from nine in the morning, when people are fresh, until about 6 pm.
Philip Davies
Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is plenty of work to be done that can easily see us through until 10 pm? I am not entirely sure why Members should have nothing to do after 6 pm, given all their constituency work. Does my right hon. Friend also agree that what we are being asked to do is choose between the competing claims of Select Committees, the House and Westminster Hall? At present there is plenty of time for Members to participate in all three, but a change in our hours would not allow that to continue.
Mr Knight
As I said at the outset, any change will have consequences. My hon. Friend has correctly identified one of those consequences, namely the clash with Committee sittings on Tuesday mornings.
Let me now, for the benefit of all Members, say something about the mechanics of the voting that will take place later. I have had a discussion with the Patronage Secretary, the Chief Whip, and because there is to be a genuine free vote for Government Members and also, I trust, for Opposition Members, and because there are differences of opinion in the Government Whips Office, he has agreed that the Government Whips will act as Tellers on motions 1 to 7. The right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock) will therefore not need Tellers for the vote on her motion to change Tuesday sittings, although if she wishes to push her later amendment, she will need Tellers for that. The Government have taken a view on September sittings, and if any Member chooses to divide the House on my motion on the subject, Tellers will also be needed then. I hope that that is helpful to all Members.
Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)
I congratulate the Committee on an excellent report which is thorough and very readable, and which makes some sensible recommendations.
Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that if, at the appropriate time, a majority voted against September sittings, it would be disastrous for the reputation of the House? It is quite wrong, and always has been, for the House not to sit for 10 continuous weeks, and I hope that when the motions recommended in motion 8 are put to the House, it will vote overwhelmingly in favour of continuing the September sittings.
Mr Knight
I hear what the hon. Gentleman has to say, but I must tell him that the evidence that the Committee received from Members was rather mixed. There was little, if any, enthusiasm for September sittings. Many Members felt that little of substance was achieved during those two-week periods, and that any presentational benefit was outweighed by the financial costs of setting up the House so that Members could be brought back for just eight or nine sitting days before the conference recess. Many also regretted the loss of opportunities for constituency work in September, particularly visits to schools.
However, the view in other quarters—including, I believe, the Government—rather reflected that of the hon. Gentleman, namely that any move to return to the long summer recess would be very difficult in presentational terms, and would also create a long period during which the House would be unable effectively to fulfil its task of scrutinising the Government and holding Ministers to account. Indeed, that may well be the view of the official Opposition.
Mr Straw
Under a Labour Government, when we were operating the old system of no September sittings, the House had to be recalled on three occasions. Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that the cost and disruption involved in recalling Members from their holidays, and the disruption of works in this building, far outweighs the cost of programmed, regular September sittings?
Mr Knight
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. However, I should add that the Clerk of the House has estimated that the additional cost of September sittings is some £1.5 million, mainly from the capital budget. That cost arises from the need to manage some projects within the tighter timetable that results from the breaking up of the long summer recess. Costs will of course vary from year to year. The key factor for the Parliamentary Estates Directorate is certainty about the parliamentary calendar to allow for effective planning. One reason for the Committee’s wish for the matter to be decided today, either way, is that at least it will bring certainty to 2013 and beyond.
The House has not had an opportunity since the general election to debate the question of whether September sittings should become the norm. We have had two years of September sittings since the election, and we think that the time is now ripe for all Members to judge the desirability of such sittings. The House has already agreed to a motion providing for a sitting in September 2012, and today we have an opportunity to decide whether we should sit in September from 2013 onwards. I have proposed that we sit in September, and any Member who opposes September sittings should divide the House and vote against motion 8.
We all have our own views on the sitting hours that we personally prefer. Today the Procedure Committee, above all else, wants the House of Commons, in the present Parliament, to have an opportunity to decide its own sitting hours. I hope that the motions that I have tabled will enable that to be achieved simply and with the minimum of fuss.
Dame Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
I congratulate the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight) and his Committee on their report, and on facilitating today’s debate. I also thank the right hon. Gentleman personally for the assistance that he has given me in ensuring that there was a proper range of options on the Order Paper.
When I entered the House 25 years ago, 40% of our sittings lasted until midnight or beyond and we were here five days a week. We had no computers, no mobile phones and no e-mail, and very little time was available for constituency work.
Dame Joan Ruddock
The hon. Gentleman says that it was Utopia, and indeed there were Members at that time who boasted about how infrequently they visited their constituencies. A few could recall the days when a brass band and the stationmaster greeted such an arrival.
I was determined to try to make a change. That is why, in 2001, I joined the Modernisation Committee chaired by Robin Cook which introduced the reforms that shape the parliamentary timetables of today. However, 10 years have passed since then. Everything has changed, and I believe that the House must change too.
Our constituents present us with a paradox. They despise us as a class, but individually and locally they value us. They are ever demanding—through e-mails, campaigns, packed surgeries, and constant invitations for us to support local events—and Parliament itself proceeds at a faster pace than ever under the glare of an all-pervasive media. As the Procedure Committee observed,
“This is an extraordinarily demanding role.”
The Committee found MPs working an average of 70 hours a week while the House was sitting, taking few holidays, and often remaining in touch even then and even when away with their families. For many Members, this life is very different from the one they led before entering the House.
Most telling was the Hansard Society survey that found that the effect of becoming an MP on personal and family life was universally negative. That is not a complaint. We are all volunteers and most of us fought very hard to get here, but the question is this: is that a reasonable state of affairs or could we improve how we work? Would it not make better sense, as the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley) said, for the House to sit earlier in the mornings, functioning more like the other institutions of our national life? Might we not make better decisions if we started earlier and finished earlier? Constituents are always amazed that we begin to vote at 10 pm on two nights of the week.
Personally, I would be more radical than the options on the Order Paper, but I think that the 11.30 am start and 7 pm finish on a Tuesday is where the greatest consensus for change lies.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend accept that talking about an 11.30 am start or, as a journalist did on Twitter this morning, a 2.30 pm start demeans the work of Members? I do not know of any Member who starts their working day at 11.30 am or 2.30 pm.
Dame Joan Ruddock
I have already said that we work 70 hours a week. Those were the findings of an independent committee and of the Procedure Committee survey, so we clearly are working all sorts of hours. I think my hon. Friend knows that I am talking about the formal sittings of the Chamber.
Dan Byles
As a new Member of the House with a young family and a seven-and-a-half-month-old daughter, I am open to the argument that more family-friendly hours might make it easier for Members with young families, but I also sit on the Energy and Climate Change Committee. It is a busy Committee that meets Tuesday mornings, and I do not see how such a change could be made to fit with Members’ other responsibilities, which we usually discharge before the House sits.
Dame Joan Ruddock
I am sympathetic to what the hon. Gentleman says, but in the past six weeks just 15 of the 35 Select Committees have met on a Tuesday morning.
Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
I agree with everything that the right hon. Lady is saying in her excellent remarks. The Treasury Committee, on which I sit, meets in private at 9.45 am on Tuesdays for a 10 am start. I take my daughter to school and am here by 8.30 am. Why not start then?
Dame Joan Ruddock
I share the hon. Lady’s enthusiasm for real change, but we have on offer what we have on offer.
Mr Gray
I am not certain what precise thesis the right hon. Lady is advancing. She says that we all work 70 hours a week—I suspect we do more—but is she saying that Members should work for fewer hours a week? If so, how would we deal with the constituency demands she described? Or, if we are to continue working that long, why should we necessarily change the formal sitting hours, given that we will still be doing other things in the evenings and before we sit?
Dame Joan Ruddock
He has indeed. The motions are concerned with the hours in which the House sits. That is all we are concerning ourselves with. What matters to most of us is that we have to vote on legislation that comes before the Chamber. The timings determine when we are obliged to be here, as opposed to our offices, our local offices, at home working or anywhere else. It removes choice. It is about the choice of when we are required to be here and voting. If the sitting hours of the day are moved forward, there will be no question of working fewer hours; we will simply work different hours.
Mr Straw
My right hon. Friend referred to the Hansard Society findings about the pressures on families when people enter the House. Those are undoubted. Does she accept, however, that the vast majority of Members have constituencies and families way beyond commuting distance from here, so whether the House finishes at 7 pm or 10 pm is irrelevant to whether they see their families? Moreover, as I know from talking to new Members, the pressures on families arise not from whether we finish at 7 pm or 10 pm but from the fact that Members are under increasing power to work on Fridays, during the day and in the evening, and on Saturdays and Sundays?
Dame Joan Ruddock
Again, I am sympathetic to everything that my right hon. Friend says. He is absolutely right, and if he is patient, he will hear that I have taken account of all his points.
Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
Will my right hon. Friend admit that she is not distinguishing between sitting hours and what we do in those sitting hours? She is conflating the two. Will she separate those two things, because the sitting hours are one thing but what we do in them is something completely different?
Dame Joan Ruddock
I think my hon. Friend is teasing me, because she knows exactly what I am suggesting. The sitting hours of the Chamber are the hours that condition the voting patterns, which most of us consider to be mandatory. I am talking about the opportunity for Members to consider bringing forward the mandatory voting hours to earlier in the day. Each person will choose how they vote during all the hours of the day and, indeed, all the hours of the night.
I do not claim that the proposed reforms are family-friendly. All families are different, and, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) said, nothing is family-friendly if the family are hundreds of miles away. To bring forward the sitting hours, however, would be more people-friendly and would give us more control over our own time and more choice about how to spend the remaining hours of the day. It is not just a London issue either. The gap in preferences for earlier hours between those in the London area and those outside it is not that great.
Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)
My right hon. Friend makes a series of excellent points, the most pertinent of which concerns the moment of interruption. The hour upon which we vote is clearly, for most Members, the most fixed moment of our diaries. It is clearly the most important decision that we can make. Although we can talk about the complications of Select Committees, where our constituencies are or our particular family make-ups, the point about flexibility is the most important one. That is why I advocate her position of making that hour as early as possible in the day.
Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)
I echo the right hon. Lady’s remarks. Although I cannot return to my constituency in the evening, I still think this issue says something about our institutional culture and what we think is a normal working practice.
Dame Joan Ruddock
The hon. Lady might also feel that if she gets home a little earlier in the evening, perhaps she has more time to talk to her family.
Sir Robert Smith
It is important to remember that we are talking about the moment of interruption. When we bring forward the moment of interruption, as we have done on Wednesdays, the business managers often find it convenient to schedule business for after the moment of interruption, because the House is sitting more normal hours. There is no guarantee that people planning their diaries will know what time is available after the moment of interruption until the week before, when the business statement is made.
Dame Joan Ruddock
I have looked at the figures. The coalition Government have been very bad about doing that, but the Labour Government were not. We were much more disciplined. I think that the hon. Gentleman should complain to those in charge, not to me.
In the survey of more than 500 MPs that my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) and I conducted over a year ago, the most frequent demands from Members were for more control over time, more predictable voting times and debates, and Friday to be recognised as a constituency day for everyone. A few recorded their difficulties in getting home on Thursdays, and I very much welcome the Procedure Committee’s motion to start and finish one hour earlier on Thursdays.
Kevin Brennan
On the matter of the moment of interruption on Mondays and Tuesdays, is it not the case that we are talking about 68 days in the year when Members are required to be here until 10 pm? The proposals being put forward would take away 34 days of the year when we might be required to be here on Mondays and Tuesdays—and we are not always required to be—because we meet for only 34 weeks of the year. Why is being here for 68 days until 10 pm—possibly—such a terrible thing?
Dame Joan Ruddock
I can only tell my hon. Friend that although this might not be something that people want to acknowledge in this public place, the vast majority of MPs say that they are perpetually tired, that they are stressed and that they find the late hours a particular problem. That is what people say when they are speaking in private. I acknowledge that having an earlier start and an earlier finish would make many of us feel better, think better and probably be healthier.
Mr Burley
The right hon. Lady is being modest in saying that this proposal is people-friendly and not family-friendly. Does she agree that were an MP with a family in my constituency in the west midlands, which is still more than 170 miles away, to finish earlier, at say 5 pm or 6 pm, they could drive up to their constituency, spend an evening with their family and then drive back? The argument that just because the constituency is far away an MP might as well stay here until 10 pm as they will never see their family is totally ludicrous.
Dame Joan Ruddock
The hon. Gentleman makes one of the key points: this is about choice and the fact that all families are different. As I said, some people will be able to take opportunities. I simply say to our colleagues: just because it does not suit you because you cannot do it, why would you prevent another person from being able to do it? We should be generous in our support of our colleagues. None of the proposals to be voted on today mean that MPs would work fewer hours. I am not advocating fewer hours, but simply a rearrangement within the day and the week; this is a very small attempt to make this workplace more manageable.
Dan Byles
A couple of times the right hon. Lady has alluded to the idea that what we do here is very different from what is done in other organisations. I just say to her that I have many friends in the private sector, and some in the public sector, too, who work until 10 pm, when they are busy and there is a lot of work to be done.
Dame Joan Ruddock
I could not agree more. I have a constituency of many very poor people and one of the things they do is work antisocial hours. They have several jobs and many of them work through the night, but believe me they do not want to do it. They would wish to be able to work in the hours of daylight and to do a normal and reasonable job. We owe it to ourselves to consider whether that would not work for us as well.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
Given that this debate is focused on the Tuesdays, because most people believe that the Mondays should remain the same, and because whether we finish at 6 pm or 7 pm on Wednesdays is neither here nor there, is not the way to solve this problem without major upheaval to keep the sitting hours as they are but just move one-line Whip business or Back-Bench debates, which tend to have a one-line Whip—or they do not necessarily have a three-line Whip—and private Members’ Bills to Tuesday nights? People would then have the option on whether or not to stay here in the Chamber.
Dame Joan Ruddock
That is an interesting suggestion, but the hon. Gentleman would have had to put it to his Government business managers before the debate to see whether they would have done it. We are too late for that now, because we have the motions on the Order Paper.
Andrea Leadsom
I want to reiterate, with the right hon. Lady’s support, that this is absolutely not about Members working fewer hours. Unfortunately, the media tend to focus on MPs trying to vote themselves fewer hours, but that is not the case here. This is, exactly as she says, about the precise moment of interruption, when we are required to be here 99% of the time. If that moment is at 10 pm, people are given very little flexibility. If it were to come earlier, we would be able to make the choice to be working at home or in our offices. I entirely support the right hon. Lady.
Dame Joan Ruddock
I am grateful to the hon. Lady.
I now wish to discuss the Friday sittings. I have heard what the Chair of the Committee has said and I will be considering that as the debate goes on. It is very important that we discuss Fridays. The Friday proposal appears to be the most contentious, because we have heard dire warnings of reputational damage to MPs and the suggestion that MPs are going to be skiving off. Those of us who want to see private Members’ Bills moved from Friday to earlier in the week are not advocating a four-day week. On the contrary, all the evidence shows that MPs’ hours are already, as I have said, double those of a standard working week. MPs are rightly in their constituencies working for their constituents on a Friday.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that there are a number of Members who, like me, have constituency advice surgeries on Friday? As a result of those, I have not been able to participate in debates on private Members’ Bills where I would have wanted to contribute. Friday is the only day when I can make sure that I am there for my constituents, and I do not want to have to choose between legislation and my constituents. This House is getting more powerful and private Members’ Bills can make more difference, and I genuinely think it ought to be easier for Back Benchers to participate in private Members’ legislation. This change would make that possible.
Dame Joan Ruddock
I absolutely agree. As I was saying, our constituents want us to be in our constituencies working for them on a Friday. It is also where we want to be, and the record bears that out. On the 17 sitting Fridays in the 2010 to 2012 Session, recorded attendance varied from 19 to 134. Indeed, according to the records, some of the strongest advocates of a five-day Westminster week have never attended a Friday sitting—I have all the names.
Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)
I can tell the right hon. Lady that she has completely won me over to her arguments, which she has made so powerfully. Does she also agree that Friday is the day when we go to see schools and hospitals—when we meet ordinary people who live in the real world and work normal hours?
Dame Joan Ruddock
I am very grateful to the hon. Lady because she is 100% right. As my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) said, the worst thing that can happen if a Member comes to a private Members’ Bill sitting is that they end up wiping out their entire Friday and, in particular, their surgery. I am convinced that we should move parliamentary business from a Friday, and if we bring Tuesday business forward by three hours we could accommodate private Members’ Bills on a Tuesday evening. Attendance for Back Benchers would be optional and voting would be guaranteed at 10 pm, thus ending the farce of talking out these precious Bills, as happens at the moment.
Any changes to MPs’ hours will, of course, require change to the working patterns of the staff and officers who make this place work for us. Care will need to be taken to ensure that they are not disadvantaged. If we sit earlier on a Tuesday, there will be, as on Wednesdays now, a continuing need for some services to continue beyond the time voting begins.
The reform proposals available to MPs today are modest; they involve no reduction in hours but an important rearrangement. The afternoon start on a Monday is, I believe, in the best interests of the House, enabling all MPs to travel from their constituencies in the morning and still do an eight-hour day. But on all other days I am committed to change. Not only will that benefit many sitting Members of this House, but it would help to bring into this House a wider range of future candidates, as they would believe that this is a place in which they could work. So I recommend voting against the no-change motions for Tuesday and Wednesday, and voting positively in favour of earlier hours on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and moving private Members’ Bills from Friday. This is a chance to make a small change and a small gain, but it is an opportunity that will not come to this Parliament again. I hope that Members will seize it.
Mr Speaker
Order. Many Members wish to speak, and a few minutes—not many—will at some stage have to be allowed for the Front-Bench Members’ contributions. There is not a formal time limit, but I appeal to Members to make brief contributions, in the interests of their colleagues.
Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)
I am a member of the Procedure Committee, and I must start by thanking its Chair, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight), for putting together these clever motions, which mean the House will get a chance to vote on these measures, and the Backbench Business Committee for giving us time to debate them.
It is an honour to follow the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock). She stated her case very eloquently, and I have enormous sympathy with it. I came to the House fully aware that this was not a family-friendly job, and I have to say that there is no family-friendly job; there is no job out there that allows people both to spend significant amounts of time with their families and to make a full contribution in their employment. I am not looking for more time with my family, therefore, but when we sit here at 10 o’clock on a Tuesday night—often tired and unable to think clearly because we have been working since 8 am or 9 am—I think that staying here until so late is, perhaps, not the best way for us to conduct our business.
Being an MP is a vocation, as was said on several occasions during Procedure Committee evidence sessions. It is a way of life; it is not a job. That was brought home to me by a text message I received from my dairy farmers at 8 o’clock on Sunday morning, letting me know about the summit they are currently attending in Central Hall in Westminster. I do not switch off. I do not have time off at the weekends. I do not have time to spend not doing this job—not having this way of life.
However, I do think that this House should sit—to debate what is, of course, very important business—at a time that is relevant and reasonable, and that works in terms of the outside world. That is a very important point. The outside world has no idea what we do. I have often had journalists come to shadow me, and they are astounded by the wide variety of different things we do, and that we work so late. When the hour of interruption comes at 7 o’clock this evening, there is nothing to stop anybody carrying on working until 10 o’clock if they wish. Nobody is going to be prevented from doing that, but at least with this change of hours Members can, if they want, do what their constituents do: read the latest book, see the latest film at the cinema, read their Committee papers—
Karen Bradley
My hon. Friend makes a very good point.
There is nothing to stop us working on into the evening if we have the hour of interruption at 7 o’clock on a Tuesday. If we want later sittings on a Tuesday, there is nothing to stop us deciding to have longer Adjournment debates, or more time for Back-bench business. This House can carry on functioning, but 7 o’clock is a perfectly reasonable time at which to set the hour of interruption when Government business should finish.
That is why I support the change in business on Tuesday. I will support the status quo on Monday, however, as I understand that many Members have to travel a significant distance or get things done in their constituencies on a Monday morning. Although I would be happier to start slightly earlier on Mondays, I would not wish to impose that on colleagues. We are all here in London on Monday night, however, so why not get started on Tuesday mornings?
In respect of Wednesdays, I have a point to make about Select Committees. I sit on the Work and Pensions Committee. We start at 9.15 on Wednesday morning, and we finish by 11.30 so we can come into the Chamber for Prayers. It is perfectly possible to have Select Committee business before 11.30—or for Committees to sit during House sitting hours on Monday afternoons, as we also sometimes do.
Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Does she agree that bringing Wednesdays forward to 10.30 would impinge on the sitting times of Select Committees, such as the Education Committee, which I chair? She makes a strong case in respect of Tuesdays, however.
Karen Bradley
I will not support the Wednesday change; I will support the status quo for that very reason. Wednesday is one of the most effective days in the week in terms of my business, as I have my Select Committee and then we come into the Chamber for House business. It is a very easy day to get things done.
I support the change by one hour for Thursdays. That is not particularly relevant to me in terms of my getting back to my constituency, but I am fully aware that some Members have very long journeys, and being able to get a 6 pm rather than a 7 pm train can make the difference between getting home in the evening and having to get on the sleeper train. In the interests of all Members, it would be appropriate for this House to move to a 9.30 start on Thursdays.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
I have read the Committee report, and I found the hon. Lady to be a pivotal member of the Committee. I, too, support the change for Thursday. However, are not the arguments for no change on a Monday, which I think she has accepted, just as valid as the arguments for change on Thursdays?
Karen Bradley
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, and I agree with him, which is why I will support the status quo on Mondays and the Committee’s recommendations for starting an hour earlier on Thursdays.
I will not support the motion on private Members’ business. The Procedure Committee has just started an inquiry into what might be done to improve private Members’ business, and I would like to hear the evidence on that before making a final decision. I appreciate what my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire said about our having a debate on that very soon. I am content to leave that matter for now, therefore.
I will support the motion for September sittings. It is important that we hold the Executive to account during September. We should not have a 10-week break when the Executive is not challenged.
I will therefore support a change on Tuesdays, and no other changes as things currently stand.
Mr Speaker
Order. There is no formal time limit on speeches, but there is now heavy pressure on time. I want to accommodate colleagues, so I call for brevity. We will be led, with great distinction, in this exercise in succinctness by a very senior Member of the House: Mr Jack Straw.
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
I shall stick to five minutes for my speech, Mr Speaker.
I am grateful to the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight) for the work he and other members of the Procedure Committee have done. I have no nostalgia for the old hours at all. Sitting into the small hours and going on until 11.30 pm was absurd. I also strongly support what my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock) said about Friday sittings. We should not move private Members’ business to a separate ghetto after normal business. There should, for example, be 13 days allocated to private Member’s Bills in the normal sitting week, which the business of the House committee that would be formed would allocate according to need, and there should be proper knives coming down for that business, as with any other business.
We would be in grave error if we moved to a 7 o’clock finish on a Tuesday, however. We tried that, based on the 2001 Modernisation Committee report, and it was found not to be workable. In the words of one of my hon. Friends—who is not known as a neanderthal—in the Tea Room earlier, it was a “nightmare to operate.”
Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)
When it came to the vote, 225 voted to retain the early hours and 292 voted against, so 225 Members of the 2001-05 Parliament thought the hours did work.
Mr Straw
I am afraid I will not take any more interventions, or I shall suffer the injunction of Mr Speaker.
I remind the House of what was said at the time in favour of those changes. We were told that the changes to the hours
“would bring us closer to the people”.
Extravagant claims have been made about changing the hours, which have all turned to dust.
I was glad that my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford did not push the family-friendly argument, as that was the argument that was made before and, as we have now accepted, there is no single rule about what suits families. As it happens, my family were brought up in London even though my constituency is a distance away. I did my best, like every other Member of this House, to meet my family obligations, including chairing the governing body of our children’s inner-London comprehensive. The old hours happened to suit that, because I could go and come back. The thing that made the biggest difference to family-friendly hours was nothing to do with the formal hours at which we finish; it was pairing. I was able to pair with Conservative colleagues who also had small children. If we wish to get back to sensible arrangements that take account of individual circumstances, we must put pressure on the Patronage Secretary and our own Whips to reintroduce a pairing system. A natural equilibrium results from a pairing system, as those like me, old stagers who do not have families to go back to, give way to those who do have families to go back to.
Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr Straw
I will not, if the hon. Lady will excuse me.
Finally, the reason we had to change back, as the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) pointed out, was that there was a clash with the meeting of Committees and with the meetings of Government in Cabinet and Cabinet Committees. I tell my hon. Friends that I do not wish us to stay in opposition as a perpetual state; I regard it as temporary. I wish to be on the Government Benches. The change would also be disruptive, as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition would find, to the work of the Opposition. The shadow Cabinet meets on a Tuesday morning and will find that all sorts of meetings cannot happen.
The hon. Gentleman who is the Member for Slough—
Mr Straw
One of those new towns, anyway he made some important points about Tuesday morning being the only time of the week when he felt safe about holding meetings.
I hope that, taking account of all those factors, Members will not make the error that they made in 2001 and that the House had to put right, by a big majority, just a few years later.
Mr Speaker
Order. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, who has done a great service to the House and been very considerate in speaking with such brevity. I know that we will now hear two extremely brief speeches from the two Front Benchers.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)
I will do my best, Mr Speaker. I ought perhaps first to apologise for the absence of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House who, as some Members will know, is in his constituency for the arrival of the Olympic torch today.
I thank the Procedure Committee for its work on the issues and the Government will respond to the issues that are not covered by today’s motions in due course. I can also confirm that the motions before the House do not cover changes to Standing Order No. 14, on the arrangements and timing of public and private business, but we will bring forward consequential amendments if the House decides to change the sitting times.
I also want to make it clear that the Government have not taken a position on the changes to the sitting days of the week, as these are matters for the House and each individual Member’s preference, including that of members of the Government. We welcome the starting point, which involves maintaining the current number of sitting days and the present pattern.
There is one proposition on which the Government have a strong view, however, and that is September sittings. We remain of the view that the House should continue to sit in September for precisely the reasons mentioned by the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick). I believe that Ministers should be held to account by this House and that a long break in the middle of the summer does the House’s reputation and its ability to scrutinise Ministers no good at all.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Some of us have been campaigning for a long time for private Members’ Bills to be moved from Friday mornings to Tuesday evenings because it would be a good idea if more Members could see their legislation not being dealt with capriciously but being allowed to enter on to the statute book. That would also require the Government, on occasion, to allow more than one Committee to sit on private Members’ Bills. Will the Government commit to do that if the House changes the rules?
Mr Heath
That is a curious intervention to make when I was talking about September sittings. I shall now move on to the days of the week, but let me just mention the fact that European scrutiny requires us to sit in September, too, if we are to make an effective job of it.
Let me now deal with the days of the week and make a few observations on the effects. On the question of an earlier start on Monday, as a west country Member of Parliament I share the views that will be expressed by many about the difficulties that might entail. We must be very careful not to make arrangements based on the interests of those who live within the M25 while ignoring those outside it. In passing, let me point out that changing the times for Mondays would also change the start time on Tuesdays and Wednesdays after recesses when they are the first day back.
I think the most contentious issue is the sitting hours for Tuesday and I hope I will not alarm the press if I say that there is a division of opinion between me and my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House on that question. He favours a change and I do not. I do not because of the arguments that have already been made about the difficulty in reconciling the priorities of Members of the House if we make that move. That was my experience when we last experimented.
Valerie Vaz
I shall be very quick. The Deputy Leader of the House mentioned a split, so will he confirm whether there will be a free vote for everyone in the House, including the payroll vote?
Mr Heath
Absolutely. I have made it absolutely plain that the only point on which the Government are taking a view is the September sittings. Everyone is at liberty to vote as they wish on everything else.
There will be difficulties on Tuesdays in finding ways to reconcile the interests of Select Committees and our other duties in the House. I do not like the idea of Members having to choose between one thing and another and I also have an interest in that I would like schools from my constituency to be able to visit the House occasionally. Others will take a different view, however, which has been expressed and it is for the House to decide on that point.
The proposed changes to Wednesdays are manageable and we could do it. There would be a knock-on effect on Prime Minister’s questions, but we would have to return to that point. Obviously, it is for the House to decide.
As for Thursdays, there is a travelling issue involved, but there are also issues for the workings of the House, including the tabling of urgent questions and other deadlines, and Members ought to have regard for the effect on Committees and House staff.
On the motion in the name of the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock), I must say that I agree with the Chair of the Procedure Committee, the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight). The Committee is carrying out an inquiry into private Members’ Bills and I think we should wait and hear what it has to say. I do not think that we should pre-empt it. She provides an option, but it is not the only option to deal with the long-standing issue of private Members’ Bills. I had to smile when the right hon. Lady was talking about Members talking out private Members’ Bills, because I remember our altercations on a Bill in my name when she was the Minister not so long ago. There are issues, but we should let the Procedure Committee do its work and come back to the House with recommendations rather than pre-empting that decision.
In conclusion, the Government will work with the Procedure Committee on whatever results from our deliberations today. We will try to facilitate with the Backbench Business Committee early consideration of Standing Orders if the House decides in favour of a change. I urge the House not to vote for a change to September sittings and, for the rest, Members will make up their own minds.
Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
I pay tribute to the work of the Procedure Committee and its Chair, the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight), and commend him for the very clear way in which he outlined the Committee’s position on various issues.
On the question of private Members’ Bills and Friday sittings, I acknowledge entirely the frustration and sense of futility felt by some hon. Members who are trying to introduce Bills with a significant level of public interest, which are talked out because the Bill at the top of the queue has taken all the time available. The challenges in moving our consideration of private Members’ Bills to one of the evenings in the week, however, are substantial and are outlined in the report. The report rightly asks the House to take a view. It is right that Members should make up their own minds on this important issue if my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock) seeks a decision on motion 9.
The report is also helpful in making clear the importance of our work here, that it has not diminished and that there is no room for any reduction in either the days or weeks that we sit during the year. We know that the House engages in a range of important activities in the passage of legislation. On occasion, it works as a Committee of the whole House, which depends on whether the appropriate committal and programme motions have been agreed. The House also scrutinises the Government at oral question and on statements, and urgent questions can be tabled. It guarantees opportunities for the Opposition to hold the Government to account and it enjoys the successful new innovation of the Backbench Business Committee. Overall, the work of the House is crucial in holding the Executive to account. That is why we support the report’s recommendation that September sittings should be maintained. That will guarantee that the House is not in recess for too long, incapacitating its ability to fulfil its task in scrutinising Government and holding Ministers to account.
I come now to sitting hours on Monday to Thursday. Our response is based on two principles: first, that we need decisions on hours that minimise the harm to families as much as possible, and, secondly, that we will always favour sensible reform. In other words, we need reform that works in how it fits the demands of the work load placed on the House and the role of individual Members in discharging their responsibilities here. That is why we favour the retention of the current sitting hours for Monday.
That is primarily because the current sitting hours allow a reasonable amount of time for Members who live in the constituencies that they represent to get to Westminster for the week’s business. In addition, many London Members find Monday mornings useful for constituency business. I hope that a majority of Members in the House today will concur with our view and vote to retain the current sitting hours for Monday.
On Tuesdays, we understand the argument put by both sides of the debate. It is true that an earlier start and an earlier finish, as recommended in motion 4, will create more opportunities for Members to have people time and to spend valuable time with their families.
Angela Smith
I want to give others a chance to speak.
The latter is not the case for those of us who are separated from our families during the week by virtue of distance, but that should not blind us to the fact that we should, if it is practical and sensible to do so, create opportunities for those Members who do have family with them in London to enjoy more opportunities to spend time with them. That would be the equivalent of saying that because I cannot have something, others cannot have it either. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) said, there is a precedent for this new arrangement. However, it was not made permanent and it was defeated in a motion in 2005. I remember that occasion almost to the day, as my predecessor, Helen Jackson, resigned in the wake of that decision.
The main reason for the reversal was the perceived clash between the new hours and the work of Public Bill Committees and Select Committees, and access to the House for members of the public. There are genuine concerns about any change in hours and we should not underestimate the importance of allowing our constituents access to the House. The arguments in relation to Tuesday hours are finely balanced and Members will have to make up their own minds. But in doing so they should be careful to balance the needs of Members to discharge their responsibilities effectively with the importance of allowing Members reasonable access to decent quality time and time to spend with their families.
The same arguments apply to Wednesday and Thursday sittings in terms of balancing family life and the work of the House. However, the tensions here are even stronger than in relation to Tuesday sittings, because of the difficulties of Public Bill Committees, particularly on a Thursday morning, and the access to the House of members of the public on a Wednesday morning. Members should be careful in making their decision and should balance the need for quality time and their responsibilities in the House.
Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)
My hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) persuaded me to vote for motion 4. However, having heard the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock), I have no hesitation in voting for motions 4, 6 and 7. She is absolutely right; we have to change the hours of the House. I speak with no self-interest. My daughters, at the ages of 20 and 22, are interested in seeing me only when I spend money on them. Equally, I am an absolute traditionalist. As a criminal barrister I was proud to wear my wig and gown because it served a function. I like tradition if it is functional, and that is the point of view that I come from when I say that unless we sort out this place we will have a crisis in our democracy. As my hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley) rightly identified, ordinary good, decent people will not come to this place unless we sort out our expenses system, so that it is more sensible, decent and proper, and we sort out our hours, the way in which we work, our procedures and our practices.
We must also be honest in this debate. With great respect, if the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) were representing a marginal seat now, he would not be able to have his family here in London. He would be bound to have his family in his constituency, because of what would be said by his opponents, be they Tory, Lib Dem or Labour—I speak with absolute authority because, as you know, Mr. Speaker, I have a very marginal seat. In this day and age, the stuff that is slung at Members in a marginal seat is such that one has to live in one’s constituency. If we do not, we will be punished by our opponents. It is a fact that some Members of the House—in many ways it is heartbreaking for them—cannot have their very young children here. They must have their family home and their very young children in their constituencies or they will be criticised consistently.
I worked as a criminal barrister, a job I loved very much. We would sometimes work 60 or 70 hours, absolutely mad hours, but as the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford absolutely identified, it was the certainty of the hours that allowed us to lead normal lives. Courts sat at 9.30 until 4.30, so we could organise our hard-working lives around those hours. That is why she is right and that is why I support motions 4, 6 and 7. If we do that, we can all get a life and that will make us better Members of Parliament.
Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)
We all work long hours in this place, and however we jig them that will remain the position. However, we should hesitate a little before complaining about the hours that we work. They are long, and most of us have weekend duties and will continue to do so, but other people do as well. We are not going to get a great deal of public sympathy if we go round our constituency complaining that our hours are long and all the rest of it. The obvious reaction will be: “If it’s so terrible, why do you stand for re-election?” We have to be a little careful about complaining. If there are lazy Members in the House, which I very much doubt—I do not know how they would get away with it—there must be very few indeed. All of us, wherever we sit in the Chamber, work long hours to carry out our duties here and in the constituency.
I am in favour of the present arrangements for Monday to Friday. As for Thursdays, I am not particularly concerned. I was and still am a member of the Home Affairs Committee, and when the House met at 11.30 on Tuesdays there was a clash. We had to decide where we should be. We had to decide whether to carry on in the Committee because we had further business, or come to the Chamber to participate in oral questions. There are bound to be strong feelings about the time we should finish, particularly on a Tuesday, but for the life of me I cannot see any advantage for the great majority of Members whose constituencies are hundreds of miles away in stopping at 7 o’clock.
The main reason I am on my feet is September sittings, which I am very pleased about. I do not often praise the Government, but I certainly praise them and my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) for supporting our sitting in September. I long campaigned for that in the 1980s and 1990s, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) may remember, because I simply could not understand why on earth we should break up for 10 weeks. As far as Governments are concerned, it is a tremendous advantage, because there are no oral questions, no statements and no points of order—it is almost a paradise for them.
Members talk about their constituency duties, such as visiting schools, holding surgeries and all the rest of it, and yes, they are very important, but we should bear it in mind that, apart from anything else, our job first and foremost is to be here holding the Executive to account. That is the first priority. If we break up for a continuous 10-week period, we are not doing our job. There might come a time when it is possible to rejig the conferences in such a way that we do not have to break up again after them, but in the mean time, as the Procedure Committee reported, there is apparently no opportunity for the parties to change the conference season. The September sittings are very important. I know that we are not conditioned by the media, but we can imagine what the press reaction would be: “MPs take 10-week holiday.” We call it a recess, but has anyone heard that word outside the Westminster village? The word that is bound to be used is “holiday”.
Mrs Grant
I have listened carefully to the hon. Gentleman and know that he has a lot of experience in this place, but does he not accept that it is also very important for Members to have some semblance of a family life, and not just younger Members with child care responsibilities but older Members who now face caring for elderly parents?
Mr Winnick
Of course. We all have responsibilities in our political and private lives. We are all accountable to someone or other, and that is very important, but with the greatest respect, I do not think that the hon. Lady’s point has a great deal of relevance to September sittings. The last time there was a vote on September sittings we lost it. I hope that this time we will win it, and win it with a decisive majority.
Mr Aidan Burley (Cannock Chase) (Con)
I am delighted that we are having this debate, because it is the only opportunity any of us will have to change this Parliament, so how we vote today is important. I welcome the spirit of the debate, which was exemplified by the contribution from my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight), who said quite rightly that every MP has a different way of working. I am sure we could all come up with a slightly different arrangement, so there is no right answer.
I approach the debate with a simple perspective this afternoon: I am a new MP, I have been in this place for only two years, and I am 33 years old. I have not become institutionalised yet, although I fear that every day I become a little bit more so. I hear comments by older MPs about a gilded cage and so on. We sit until 10 o’clock at night wondering whether waiting for the 10 o’clock vote while eating or drinking is work or not, because it is not really work as our constituents would understand it. Equally, we cannot leave so it is not private time. We start to get into the idea that it is a lifestyle, and one that we have chosen. It is a bizarre way of working. As someone who still remembers working in the private sector, I want briefly to bring to the debate the perspective of what it is like back in the real world.
Mr Edward Timpson (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)
Is my hon. Friend’s key point that our constituents want to know that the time we spend here is as productive as it could possibly be?
Mr Burley
I could not have put it better myself.
I want to give just one example from before I came to this place. One of the reasons that has been given for why we start so late on Mondays is that Members need to commute from their constituencies. I remember working on a project in Newcastle when I was living in London, and we were expected to be at our desks at 9 am. We got a 7 am flight from Heathrow, arrived in Newcastle at 8.10 am and were at our desks by 8.45 am, often before many of the local people. There is an article on the BBC news website today entitled “MP with… the longest commute” As some Members may know, he is the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), who commutes 1,400 miles each week. His 713-mile trip each way is astonishing, including two flights, three trains and two tubes. He still gets here for 12.30 pm, so even he can arrive for that time. Even accounting for the longest commute of any MP, we do not need to start at 2.30 pm on Mondays.
It has been said that we need to allow for Select Committees and therefore need to start at 2.30 pm on Mondays and Tuesdays, but as has already been said, Select Committees also meet on Wednesdays when the House is sitting and Tuesday afternoons. It cannot be the case that we have to say that every single Member must be able to attend every single minute of every debate. Members choose to be on Select Committees, to do other things and to go on trips, and that is fine, but we have to accommodate that into normal, productive working hours that are at the beginning of the day at 9.30 am onwards and not until 10 pm.
Mr Burley
They are already doing that, and that is my point. They are already making that choice because Select Committee meetings already clash with the working hours of the Chamber.
I am conscious of the time and so will make only a couple more points. We have a problem, and one in which I know you, Mr Speaker, take a personal interest: the late-night, boozing, alcoholic culture of this place. That is something that is made worse by having to wait around until 10 o’clock to vote—[Interruption.] I cannot hear what they are saying—[Interruption.] It is also at lunchtimes, they say. It is anti-family. Even if a Member’s family is 150 miles away, they can still talk to them on the phone, Skype them or drive up to visit them, or the family could drive down to visit the Member. They can do other things in the evenings.
We see how few women MPs there are in this place. How many women, especially those with young children, must look at the working hours of this place and think, “Yes, that is something I aspire to. I want to work those hours and to work until 11 o’clock at night, away from my family”? Frankly, we can see that there is not a very good mix of society here. There are not very many normal people in this place. If we want more normal people who have lives—[Interruption.]
I have two final points. Members have talked about tours. This place is closed for 20 weeks of the year; surely our constituents can go on tours in 20 weeks. The hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) has an understandably traditional view of this job and believes that we are here to be legislators and that we represent our constituents in Westminster, not Westminster in our constituencies. As a new MP who represents a constituency next to his patch, and a very marginal one, I have to say to him that that is not the reality today. As a new MP who represents a marginal seat, I am expected to run jobs fairs and business awards evenings, to hold many surgeries, to go to every fete opening and to visit schools— I am expected to do the lot. The job has changed, and it is old-fashioned to say that our job is to be down here legislating; our job is also to be in our constituencies.
I conclude with a comment on September sittings. I ask the Government whether they have considered the cost of September sittings. As we heard from the Procedure Committee, the cost of sending just the builders on the estate home for two weeks is £1.5 million because they cannot carry on their work. Then there is the cost of MPs commuting down here, the cost of all the staff and so on. Is spending up to £10 million keeping this place open for two weeks really the best use of taxpayers’ money? Many of our constituents would question that.
Mr Speaker
Order. We have only 30 minutes left and several Members are still seeking to catch my eye. I appeal to colleagues to make very short speeches to allow others to contribute.
Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
I welcome the Procedure Committee’s report and thank the Committee for allowing me to give evidence. I have only one point to make. My right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock) said that I teased her when I tried to draw a distinction between our sittings hours and what we do, but I was not teasing her. It is very important. The difference between what MPs do today and what they used to do in the past is dramatic. What we do in our constituencies has become much more important. Casework, campaigning, visiting schools and all the things the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley) mentioned have become much more important than they used to be, but we as individual MPs have to decide how to deal with that. It has nothing to do with sitting hours. The sitting hours are supposed to be arranged around what we do in Westminster, where we have Committees, all-party groups, meetings and any number of different things.
A variety of Members have spoken about the different kinds of constituency and the distances that they have to travel. There are inner-city and rural constituencies and constituencies far away and close by. We have also heard details from any number of Members about their domestic arrangements. The issue is that every single MP has different domestic arrangements. Some people have families and some have social lives—[Interruption.] Very lucky people have both.
The point is that we are not here to fit our hours around those families and social lives, but to make and change laws. We are supposed to be running the country; we are not here to look at sitting hours and fit them around my children’s bed times. In looking at the sitting hours, what we are doing today is wrong. We should be considering the changing role of MPs, because that is the issue. As individual MPs, we have to sort that out between ourselves and our constituents rather than looking at changing the sitting hours.
Jo Swinson
Does the hon. Lady not accept that in our roles as legislators, it is incredibly important that we should be able to work efficiently and make good decisions? Important decisions are made here. Sitting late into the night does not always guarantee good decisions. Having a bit more control over how we can arrange our working lives would make for more efficient and effective working.
Natascha Engel
I do not really take that point. If the problem is late-night sitting, people should get up later. The sitting hours are not the problem. The hon. Lady mentioned the efficiency and effectiveness of an MP’s work. The sitting hours are not the issue. The issue is what we do when we are here and what we do in our constituencies.
Natascha Engel
I do not. What I do accept is that there is a job of work that MPs do in Parliament and a different job of work that we do in our constituencies. How we manage that is down to us. We have to make sure that everybody can manage to work around our sitting hours. Although what we have at the moment may not work perfectly for everyone, I think it works for everyone. I will leave it at that.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
I will be very brief, because I am a member of the Procedure Committee; my voting record on the Committee will show my views on these matters.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for providing this debate, as we all know about the enormous pressure on its time. I also thank my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight) for opening the debate and setting out the issues so clearly.
Whatever the House decides today, there will never be enough time for any of us to meet all the demands on our time, both as individual MPs and in respect of debating the wide variety of subjects of concern and interest to us and those we represent. I ask Members, as they reach decisions today, to consider the effect of the different options on the staff of the House and their families. The issue is about not just what suits us, but the effect it will have on the staff of the House.
As a member of the Procedure Committee and having considered these matters at great length, I have come to a conclusion. If half a dozen MPs are sat around a table, they will finish up with at least six different ideas about the days and times when the House should sit. I caution hon. Members that, whatever change we decide to make to the current sitting hours, there will inevitably be knock-on effects elsewhere, which may well produce unintended and possibly unwelcome consequences.
I hope that hon. Members on both sides have found the report and the debate useful in trying to reach a conclusion and decision about this most knotty of matters.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
I thank the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight) for all his Committee’s work and the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock) for her eloquent speech. Notwithstanding the considerable progress made since the right hon. Lady first came into Parliament, we still have a long way to go before this institution is fit for the 21st century.
As I walked into the Chamber today, I noticed the snuff box still provided for MPs by the entrance. That is perhaps just a faintly amusing anachronism, which falls into the category, mentioned by the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), of traditional things that are not harmful. I would say that our late sittings fall into the category of things that are anachronistic and harmful. They are harmful to the health of Members—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I appeal to Members to show courtesy to those who are speaking, rather than wittering away as though their own conversations were somehow more important. Sit quietly—and if you are not interested in doing so, get out. We can manage without you.
Caroline Lucas
I was saying why I thought late hours were harmful. They also give out the impression that things here are suited to the workings of a gentlemen’s club, and that gets in the way of efficient working.
I hope that Members will take this opportunity to bring the Commons out of the snuff age and into the 21st century. We should not be afraid of change because we will all benefit from a more modern House of Commons. When I say “modern”, I fully appreciate that on some days the hours that help some families closer to Westminster will be different from the hours that help families in constituencies further afield.
We have to take on a system that takes the mix of constituency distance from Westminster on board, and there is a solution for Tuesday and Friday that could be an improvement for all Members. I shall come to that after commenting briefly on the other days. I share the commonly held view that the distances that many Members need to travel are a sound reason for leaving Monday’s hours as they are. Ideally, I would like a slightly earlier start time on Wednesday, but I could certainly live with an 11.30 start if Members felt strongly about it. As for Thursday, many Members share the view that the earlier we start and finish the better, so that those whose constituencies are far away at least have a chance of staying for important debates and getting home at a reasonable hour. I hope that the 9.30 to 5 o’clock Thursday will be adopted.
I turn to the case for the earlier start time of 11.30 on Tuesday, which I support. I want to address concerns that that is, apparently, just a measure designed for the benefit of MPs with constituencies near Westminster. To many who are promoting the change, it is about being people-friendly, allowing people control over how they organise their lives and work, and having greater certainty over how we arrange our working lives. Yes, it will directly help family access for some; as long as that does not make it worse for others, we should not be saying, “If it doesn’t help me, why should I help you?”
We should be mindful that, whenever possible, we also have a duty to lead by example with good working practices. Late hours are not good for House of Commons staff who have to clear up afterwards and keep the place running. We are also allowing an unhealthy working culture to prevail. If we do not reform where we can—and Tuesday is the obvious candidate for reform—we send the message that hard-working people are not entitled to a healthy work-life balance. People, and even MPs, are entitled to that. We are often characterised as taking long holidays when in fact most of us are working hard in our constituencies.
The issue is about creating a House of Commons that is both effective and people-friendly. Of course, family arrangements often differ depending on how far away from our constituencies we are here in Westminster, but that can be addressed if we combine an earlier start on Tuesdays with moving private Members’ Bills to Tuesday evenings. Starting Tuesday’s business at 11.30 am and giving PMBs the Tuesday evening slot would have three benefits. It would give PMBs the prominent midweek slot they deserve, it would deal with the problem of filibustering, and it would allow Fridays to become an official constituency day.
We need to send out a very clear message that the House of Commons is a reasonable place in which to work—a place where people can work even when they have family commitments both far and near. That is why we have to make this place a more friendly place for women. The House of Commons is 81% male, and that is a shocking figure. If we frame our sitting hours around modern life instead of allowing the continuation of a system based on hangovers from the snuff-snorting era, we can send out the important message that we are not happy with the status quo of 81% men and want to be a place where the population is properly represented. Changing sitting hours will not solve everything, but it will make things better. I very much hope that by supporting motions 4 and 9 we will take the opportunity to make this place more contemporary and even just slightly more appealing to those who are staggeringly under-represented.
Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)
I would like to put in a request for friendly working hours for grandfathers, who seem to have been omitted, and for grandmothers where appropriate.
The real losers in this proposal will be the 20,000 visitors, predominantly schoolchildren, who come here on Tuesday mornings. In supporting retention of the current hours, I bring to Members’ attention the views of the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick), and the Deputy Leader of the House, who spoke with their experience of the time when we had earlier starts on a Tuesday. This will not only rob 20,000 children of visits on a Tuesday morning but impact on the 15 Select Committees involving 180 right hon. and hon. Members. We have two late-night sittings on a Monday and a Tuesday and two earlier finishes on a Wednesday and a Thursday. That is a fair compromise that keeps most people content, and I suggest that we stick with the status quo.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
I recognise that for people watching from the Public Gallery and outside, this is clearly not the most important issue facing Parliament, but it is useful that we have found a short period to debate it. For those of us who can no longer describe ourselves as new MPs but are of the 2010 intake, it is the first opportunity to comment on our sitting hours.
I acknowledge, as have many Members, the thoughtful and helpful report presented by the Procedure Committee to provide a framework for this debate. I am surprised that the Chair of the Committee was surprised by the reaction of the press. We must recognise, sadly, that we have a press that all too often is willing to take every opportunity to undermine confidence in democratic politics.
The Chair of the Committee usefully made it clear in his opening remarks that this is not about the extent of the hours that we work but how we manage them to maximum effect. In that context, as a northern MP, I acknowledge the points that have been made by many Members. This is not, for me, about family-friendly hours—being away from home for four days a week is not an issue—but about how we can operate more effectively. An earlier start and end to Tuesdays would provide greater flexibility. It would not mean that we would not work late on a Tuesday but, as the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) said, it would give us more control over how we plan our work. It would mean that we could organise meetings inside and outside Westminster, at times when other people could attend, with greater confidence and without always having to pull out of them at the last minute. It would give us the opportunity, just sometimes, to have a night off. I must say that it would occasionally be good to be able to get away on a Monday or Tuesday in time to stock up the larder before the supermarket shuts.
As the Procedure Committee acknowledged, the main argument in favour of the current Tuesday hours was made by the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), in his role as Chair of the Liaison Committee, in relation to Select Committees. As a member of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, I place great importance on my participation in it and find it enormously rewarding, but it is not beyond the imagination to bring our sittings forward for a 9 am private start and a 9.30 am public start. The same applies to Public Bill Committees, where I understand that that already happens.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
The last time we did this, it created absolute chaos for Select Committees, not only as regards Members having to start at 9 o’clock but in trying to get witnesses here for that time. It did not work, and we will threaten our Select Committee procedures if we go back to that nonsense.
Paul Blomfield
I acknowledge the point that has been made, but contrary opinions have been expressed by others who were around in that period. Indeed, some Select Committees appear now to be—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Again, a large number of rather excitable private conversations are taking place. We owe Members the courtesy of a fair hearing.
Paul Blomfield
As has been pointed out, there are Select Committees that meet earlier and that seem to manage to arrange for witnesses to attend.
The argument for earlier Tuesday sittings, as well as standing on its own merits, provides the opportunity to move the debates on private Members’ Bills to Tuesday evenings. As a Back Bencher, I believe in the importance of our having the opportunity to drive change through the House. Although I acknowledge the other options that the Chair of the Procedure Committee shared with us, moving those debates to a Tuesday evening would give many of us a greater opportunity to attend.
Jim Dowd (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
When we first had sittings on Wednesday mornings, I was the Government Whip responsible for private Members’ Bills. I suggested then—this was before we had sittings in Westminster Hall—that we could move private Members’ Bills to Wednesday mornings. We opened up Westminster Hall to make that easier. The reason I made that suggestion was that if we debated private Members’ Bills during the normal sitting week, it would make it easier for the Government. Is that what my hon. Friend is proposing?
Paul Blomfield
Not for one moment.
As has been pointed out, there are options on how we deal with private Members’ Bills. It is unreasonable that at the moment, those of us who plan our diaries so that we have constituency time on Fridays have to choose between going to our constituencies and attending the House to support private Members’ Bills, whether of our own volition or because we have had representations from our constituents to be there. Over the past two years, I have done that on three occasions. Frustratingly, on each occasion the Bill was talked out. I fear that if we do not agree to change our Tuesday sittings, we will exclude one important way in which the Procedure Committee might address the issue, because the slot will not be available for private Members’ Bills. There are stronger arguments than that, but it is one dimension of the argument.
Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)
I rise briefly to support the options not to change our arrangements. As my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell) said, there is a good balance at the moment.
I will make two points. The first, and most important, is that nothing that we are debating today would change our work load. We can debate the order in which we deal with it, but our work load would not be diminished one iota by these proposals.
I have listened carefully to the argument that some hon. Members have made that an earlier point of interruption on Tuesday would give us greater flexibility in organising our business. I do not accept that. Tuesdays for me, and I suspect for many other Members, are the critical day in the week, when I have to cram in many competing requirements. My Select Committee sits on Tuesdays. This Tuesday, there was also a Westminster Hall debate that I wanted to fit in and there were various other meetings. Those bits and pieces could not be moved to the end of the day. If the main business in this Chamber was brought forward, the amount of time available for those other important matters would be restricted, to the detriment of our ability to do our jobs.
Mr Graham Stuart
I am torn on the proposals for Tuesdays, but I am quite clear that moving the sitting time forward an hour on Wednesdays would disrupt the work of Select Committees, such as the Education Committee, with very little benefit. Wednesdays work. Whatever else the House votes for, I urge it not to vote to change Wednesdays.
Iain Stewart
I concur with my hon. Friend.
My second point has not been made in the debate thus far. It concerns our friends at the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. I fear that if the point of interruption gets earlier, IPSA will deem that it is not appropriate for many Members to stay in Westminster overnight and will require them to return to their constituencies. I faced that problem in my first few months in the House, and three to four hours a day were added on to my work load. I ended up having four and a half hours’ sleep a night, which is not sustainable. I fear that if we moved the moment of interruption forward, IPSA would conclude that more and more Members should be forced to commute. That would not be helpful to Members’ health or their ability to conduct their business.
Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
I have been in this House for a long time—some people may think too long—and over the years I have found little more degrading than the aspect of the House staring into its own navel and discussing how this place should operate, which hours would be most family-friendly and convenient and which hours would allow Members to get home early.
My father worked in a factory, and he got up in the morning to get there for 7 am. He worked the hours he was told by his bosses to work, with the trade unions doing what they could to help him. Then he came home in the evening and spent the rest of his time with his family—unless he went out playing cards, whose winnings he would give to me.
I find it incomprehensible that the House should look in on itself in this way at a time of mass unemployment, when our constituents thank God if they have a job at all, regardless of the hours that they have to work. They thank God that they have somewhere to go and collect money to keep their families.
Barbara Keeley
One important consideration for me and my constituents over the next few months is that I have a private Member’s Bill on social care and carers. That is important to them and many other people. I believe it would be much better if I could have that Bill considered on a Tuesday evening and spend my Fridays where I should be, in my constituency.
Sir Gerald Kaufman
I do not understand my hon. Friend’s approach to this. When I first came here we had a five-day week, and Government business alternated with private Members’ Bills on Fridays. I do not want to be arrogant or patronising, but I think I look after my constituency as well as any Member, and I can do it in the hours that we used to have, let alone the current ones. I can get to my constituency and do my jobs. I had eight engagements last weekend, and I managed to fulfil them without having family-friendly hours at the House of Commons.
I have a duty to be in my constituency, but I was elected to come here and represent my constituents. I am a Member of Parliament, not partly a Member of Parliament and partly for hanging around.
Sir Gerald Kaufman
I agree totally. I have surgeries every weekend, and I have people coming to see me who have hardly any money to live on. I have just had letters from constituents in the same situation. It is my job to try to help them against a Government who do not care about them. The very idea that we should spend two days in this House of Commons talking utter and total rubbish about reforming the House of Lords, when people are anxious about their jobs, their NHS and their pensions is absolutely sickening. Now we are spending a whole day debating the House and hon. Members are absorbed by it, offering all kinds of different useful formulae to make this place more attractive to Members. When my father worked at Montague Burton’s tailoring factory in Leeds making suits and clothes, he was not given a chance to make his work more attractive for him. He was bloody lucky to have a job at all.
We are lucky to be here and to have this marvellous opportunity to speak for our constituents, and we are paid very well indeed. Millions of people cannot believe how much hon. Members are paid when they are paid so little—assuming they are not on benefits. It is therefore about time the House stopped this navel gazing. Our job is to hold the Government to account; it is not to say, “I want a tidier and more useful day. I want to be able to get home on a Thursday afternoon.” If hon. Members want that, I suggest they find another career.
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
I shall be very brief given that I have only about two minutes to speak.
I am astonished that the House is considering changing the moment of interruption on Tuesday and putting private Members’ Bills on the same evening for two simple reasons. First, the payrolls—the Front Benchers and Parliamentary Private Secretaries—will go in and tell loyal Back Benchers that they must stay here until 10 o’clock in the evening.
Secondly, the other group of people of whom there has been absolutely no mention at all are the staff of the House, who would have to stay here until 10.30 pm, 11 pm or later—I am talking about the workers of Hansard, the security staff and the Doorkeepers. They would then have to come back first thing in the morning for the earlier starts on Wednesday for Select Committees and Public Bill Committees. Not a single Member, when they have spoken of family hours and of supporting people, has recognised the fantastic work done by the staff of the House and the impact on their lives of such a change. For that reason and that reason alone, we must reject the proposition to change the Tuesday evening.
Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)
We have heard a number of insightful contributions and a number of anecdotes. I do not mean to add to the latter and want to add only to the former.
I make one, simple case: it is perfectly appropriate for this Parliament to express an opinion once about its sitting hours. That is not disproportionate. If all hon. Members would choose a different way to serve their constituents, surely the maximum flexibility is the best route to go down. Changing the moment of interruption on a Tuesday night would make a small difference, but it would be significant if we are to serve our constituents in the way they expect.
Mr Speaker
Order. Under the order of the House of Monday, I am now required to put the Questions necessary to dispose of proceedings on the motions relating to sittings of the House. I will put them in sequence. If any of the motions to maintain the status quo for Mondays to Wednesdays is agreed to, the alternative motion relating to that day will fall and will not be called. Before I put the Question on motion 1—Sittings of the House (Mondays) (No Change)—I remind the House that if the question is agreed to, motion 2 will fall.
Division 48
Ayes: 241
Conservative: 142
Labour: 70
Liberal Democrat: 21
Scottish National Party: 3
Plaid Cymru: 2
Independent: 1
Social Democratic & Labour Party: 1
Democratic Unionist Party: 1
Noes: 256
Labour: 140
Conservative: 87
Liberal Democrat: 22
Social Democratic & Labour Party: 2
Scottish National Party: 2
Plaid Cymru: 1
Independent: 1
Alliance: 1
Green Party: 1
Standing Order no. | Line no. | Change |
|---|---|---|
9 (Sittings of the House) | 3 | Leave out ‘and Tuesdays at half past two o’clock, on’ and insert ‘at half past two o’clock, on Tuesdays and’. |
7 | After ‘a’ insert ‘Tuesday or’. | |
20 | Leave out ‘and Tuesdays, at seven o’clock on’ and insert ‘, at seven o’clock on Tuesdays and’. | |
10 (Sittings in Westminster Hall) | 4 | Leave out lines 4 and 5 |
6 | After ‘on’ insert ‘Tuesday or’. | |
10 | At start, insert ‘Tuesday or’. | |
15 (Exempted business) | 21 | Leave out ‘or Tuesday, eight o’clock on’ and insert ‘, eight o’clock on Tuesday or’. |
17 (Delegated legislation (negative procedure)) | 2 | Leave out ‘or Tuesday, half past eight o’clock on’ and insert ‘, half past eight o’clock on Tuesday or’. |
20 (Time for taking private business) | 26 | Leave out ‘or Tuesday, four o’clock on any specified’ and insert ‘, four o’clock on any specified Tuesday or’. |
24 (Emergency debates) | 28 | Leave out ‘or Tuesday, half past ten o’clock on a’ and insert ‘, half past ten o’clock on a Tuesday or’. |
54 (Consideration of estimates) | 20 | Leave out ‘or Tuesday, four o’clock on’ and insert ‘, four o’clock on Tuesday or’. |
88 (Meetings of general committees) | 11 | Leave out ‘or Tuesdays, between the hours of twenty-five minutes past eleven o’clock in the morning and half past one o’clock in the afternoon on’ and insert ‘, between the hours of twenty-five minutes past eleven o’clock in the morning and half past one o’clock in the afternoon on Tuesdays or’. |
Division 49
Ayes: 267
Labour: 141
Conservative: 93
Liberal Democrat: 25
Social Democratic & Labour Party: 2
Independent: 2
Scottish National Party: 2
Plaid Cymru: 1
Alliance: 1
Green Party: 1
Noes: 233
Conservative: 139
Labour: 67
Liberal Democrat: 19
Scottish National Party: 3
Plaid Cymru: 2
Social Democratic & Labour Party: 1
Democratic Unionist Party: 1
Mr Speaker
We come now to motion 5. [Interruption.] Order. It would help the House if it was clear what it was voting on. Once again, I remind the House that if the question on motion 5 is agreed, motion 6 will fall.
Sittings of the House (Wednesdays) (No change)
Resolved,
That no change be made to the time at which the House sits on a Wednesday.—(Mr Knight.)
Mr Speaker
As the House’s short-term memory will enable it to recall, motion 6 now falls. We therefore come to motion 7. I remind the House that if this motion is negatived, the sitting times of the House on Thursdays will be unchanged.
Sittings of the House (Thursdays) (9.30 am to 5.00 pm)
Motion made, and Question put,
That this House should meet at 9.30 am on Thursdays, with a moment of interruption at 5.00 pm, and accordingly the changes to Standing Orders set out in the table be made, with effect from Monday 15 October 2012.
Standing Order no. | Line no. | Change |
|---|---|---|
9 (Sittings of the House) | 5 | Leave out ‘ten’ and insert ‘nine’. |
21 | Leave out ‘six’ and insert ‘five’. | |
10 (Sittings in Westminster Hall) | 14 | Leave out ‘two and insert ‘one’. |
15 (Exempted business) | 23 | Leave out ‘seven’ and insert ‘six’. |
17 (Delegated legislation (negative procedure)) | 6 | Leave out ‘seven’ and insert ‘six’. |
20 (Time for taking private business) | 28 | Leave out ‘three’ and insert ‘two’. |
24 Emergency debates | 30 | Leave out ‘half-past’. |
54 (Consideration of estimates) | 22 | Leave out ‘three’ and insert ‘two’. |
88 (Meetings of general committees) | 15 | Leave out ‘twenty-five minutes past ten o’clock in the morning and half past twelve o’clock in the afternoon’ and insert ‘twenty-five minutes past nine o’clock and half past eleven o’clock in the morning’. |
23 | Leave out ‘ten’ and insert ‘nine’. |
—(Mr Knight.)
Mr Speaker
We now come to the next Back-Bench business debate, on the motion relating to VAT on air ambulance fuel payments, which may continue until 7 pm. In a moment I shall call the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) to open the debate. I feel sure that Members leaving the Chamber will wish to do so quickly and quietly so that we can have an orderly transition to the next debate and the hon. Gentleman can be heard with the courtesy and attentiveness that we would all wish.
VAT on Air Ambulance Fuel Payments
(12 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House supports wholeheartedly the work and actions of the Air Ambulance Service nationally, and all the individual crew members and staff, who provide an outstanding service to people up and down the UK; notes that the Air Ambulance Service is a charitable organisation, funded by donations given by the general public, and without any direct funding from Government; further notes that the Air Ambulance Service has saved successive governments millions of pounds; notes that the Air Ambulance Service provides an emergency service similar to the Lifeboat Service, and that the Lifeboat Service has been excluded from the EU VAT Directive on fuel costs since 1977, whereas the Air Ambulance Service has been required to pay for VAT on fuel; notes that successive governments have failed to provide a rebate or exemption to the Air Ambulance Service for this VAT; calls on the Government to conduct an urgent review of this situation; and further calls on the Government, in the next 12 months, to consider providing for grants to the Air Ambulance Service commensurate to the sums incurred by the Air Ambulance Service for the VAT on the fuel they purchase, and to publish the outcome of that review within this timescale.
This is a cross-party debate arising from an e-petition that has approximately 150,000 signatures and is supported by many Members up and down the land. Our support for the air ambulances and the e-petition derives from a constituent of my co-sponsor of the motion, the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley), to whom I give my thanks. The constituent is Mr Ken Sharpe. I also thank the Backbench Business Committee for its support and Mr Speaker for finding time for it to be heard.
On 1 August the eyes of the world will be on London for the Olympics. For months I have been rigorously training my body to be at the peak of physical perfection. But I shall not be lining up against Usain Bolt. I shall be in the sleepy village of Edale, in north Derbyshire, where I, the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) and other hikers will be about to commence a 280-mile hike along the greatest walk in the world, the Pennine way. I shall not be walking for a gold medal. My goal is not gold, but hard cash to support the Great North air ambulance service, which is of course the finest of all the air ambulance organisations. Others may be cheering on Jessica Ennis and sipping the corporate champagne, but this ageing, fattening ex-jockey will be existing on a prime diet of beer and flapjacks as I wearily trudge my way north to Northumberland. Usain Bolt has nothing to fear.
This debate is supported not only by the e-petition, but by a petition run by my local paper, the Hexham Courant. Other newspapers up and down the land have also done a great deal to raise the profile of this debate. It is a cross-party debate, giving the Treasury a fantastic opportunity, over the next 12 months, to consider all the information to do with air ambulances, how they are funded and how VAT applies to their fuel, and to come back with a possible solution after the Budget next year.
What is certain is that the issue derives from Europe, an issue that may have been occupying some of our minds these past few months. When our illustrious forebears took us into Europe—purely, as we all understood, for economic reasons—there was a requirement to sign up to the EU VAT directive, which covers UK VAT legislation. In 1977, the lifeboat service was exempted from the VAT on marine diesel. However, as the air ambulance did not exist at the time, it was not exempted and has subsequently been required to pay VAT on fuel costs. We are in this situation today because of that anomaly. As we have learned since the Budget in March, the Government are keen to clear up VAT anomalies.
We Back Benchers are often asked by Whips to believe many outlandish things—that the European Union always makes sensible decisions or that we will one day win a penalty shoot-out or have a Wimbledon singles winner. Today I will ask the House to accept one basic principle: that there is no real difference between a lifeboat and a helicopter. The lifeboat services are exempt from the VAT exclusion but the air ambulance charities are not—but they are both, I suggest, providers of life-saving emergency services that deserve all our support and all the exemptions made available for their vital work so that they may continue.
My constituency is the second biggest in the country; it has schools with catchment areas almost the size of the M25. It has rough, rural country, often without roads. In the west of Northumberland, our nearest hospital is well over an hour away; sometimes the four-wheeled ambulance struggles to be with us within an hour, if at all.
When I was a thinner and better jockey, I met many other jockeys who had struggled after a fall when they needed to be airlifted to hospital. People frequently have to be supported and airlifted to safety from the A1. This is not just a rural issue, but one that affects cities and towns just as much, when there is a lack of access or urgent transfers are required.
Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)
I absolutely commend my hon. Friend’s argument. Devon Air Ambulance in my constituency is absolutely vital. There are very rural parts of the countryside and I entirely agree that it seems disproportionate that it should have to pay VAT, unlike the lifeboat services.
Guy Opperman
I endorse everything that my hon. Friend has said; she is a great supporter of that organisation.
Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on being fortunate enough to raise this debate. As he pointed out, urban areas are often as dependent on air ambulance services. The North West Ambulance Service, based in my constituency, is highly regarded right across the region.
Guy Opperman
The right hon. Gentleman mentions an exceptional air ambulance charity, which is supported not just by him but by all MPs concerned with the north-west.
Put simply, in my part of the world—and all others, for that matter—health care would be jeopardised without the charitable air ambulance service. I am not denigrating the providers of other emergency services, but we could not operate without the Air Ambulances. For example, the Great North air ambulance covers an area of 8,000 square miles, from the Scottish borders to North Yorkshire and from the east to the west coasts. The helicopters can be anywhere in the region within 15 minutes and on board are specialist trauma doctors and paramedics, who bring expert accident and emergency qualities to the scene. However, each mission costs £2,500, regardless of whether the patient is airlifted. That takes into account the cost of the aircraft, storage, paying the pilots and paramedics, and medicine and other equipment. There are hundreds of call-outs per month, and the same applies all across the country. Given that this involves paying in excess of £100,000 a year on fuel, of which VAT represents 20%, there will be a significant saving not only to the Great North air ambulance service but to several others, and that would equate to life-saving missions.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
I commend my hon. Friend for securing this debate. East Midlands Air Ambulance is based in East Midlands airport in my constituency. I have met the crew, and they are genuine professionals who, as he says, go out every day saving people’s lives, especially along the M1 and M42 corridor, where the roads are very dangerous.
Guy Opperman
At this stage, one has to acknowledge that only a fool would fail to see that the Government are in the headlock of a debt crisis, a eurozone meltdown and a struggling economy. Everyone accepts that they are short of a magic chequebook. However, I am pleased to point out to the Treasury that those at the air ambulance organisations are not difficult people. We do not seek a solution straight away. The motion asks for an urgent review and a study of the submissions and financial arrangements of the air ambulance charities, and for a long-term solution to be reached at some stage in the near future. On any interpretation, successive Governments have got a great deal from this free service. No Government have ever properly addressed this loophole, and we are giving this Government a chance, over the next year, to investigate and address the problem.
We may be divided on many things, but we should all support this wonderful organisation. The sums that the Treasury would have to find are relatively slight—considerably less than £200,000 a year. Given the amount that the charitable organisations raise from members of the public and the amazing service that is provided, at the end of this debate we should be able to agree that there is no fundamental difference between a lifeboat and a helicopter, because both services are invaluable and should receive our support equally.
Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)
Like the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), I congratulate my constituent Ken Sharpe and his wife Helen, who have got this important issue on to the agenda of the House of Commons by launching an e-petition that calls on the Government to refund to air ambulance services the VAT that air ambulances pay on the fuel they use. Ken Sharpe has promoted this issue with flair and passion. He achieved the 100,000 signatures needed to trigger a debate in this place within a record 39 days, and the petition now has 150,000 signatures. To any members of the public who are listening to this debate, I would say this: sign that petition now!
I have known Ken for some 20 years. He is an active member of the RMT union and served for several years on its national executive committee. The same principles of voluntary action and social service that underpin his trade union work support his passion for charities and the air ambulance service; it is what the Government call the big society. I know him to be a brilliant and effective campaigner. When this man starts a campaign—I hope that the Minister is listening—he never gives up.
Many people will be aware of the work of the Yorkshire air ambulance service from the BBC1 fly-on-the-wall—perhaps I should say fly-in-the-sky—series, “Helicopter Heroes”, a new series of which starts in the autumn. The Yorkshire air ambulance service made the national news in 2006 when it airlifted “Top Gear” presenter Richard Hammond from Elvington airfield in York to Leeds general infirmary after he sustained life-threatening injuries in a crash in a jet-powered car. I know that Richard would say that he owes his life to the Yorkshire air ambulance service. That is one of many cases. I can think of a case of a young boy who had his ear bitten off by a horse. The air ambulance got him to hospital in time for surgeons to sew his ear back on.
The Yorkshire Air Ambulance, like the 18 other air ambulance services, is a registered charity. The Government help it, for example by seconding NHS paramedics to fly in the helicopters to provide ambulance services to patients. The paramedics also provide services to the pilots. In Yorkshire, it is the paramedic who navigates for the pilot. However, Yorkshire Air Ambulance still needs to raise £2.6 million a year—that is about £7,200 a day—to keep its two helicopters flying.
As the hon. Member for Hexham said, the lifeboat service, unlike the air ambulance service, does not have to pay VAT on the fuel that it uses. We are calling on the Government to treat the air ambulance service in the same way as the lifeboat service. I recognise that EU Finance Ministers are unlikely to extend the exemption that applies to sea rescue services such as lifeboats to air ambulances. However, the United Kingdom Government could act on their own by refunding to air ambulance services the VAT that is charged on the fuel that they use.
Linda McAvan, the Labour MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber, recently asked a question on this matter in the European Parliament. The spokesman for the European Commission replied:
“Member States are free to address the problem of unrecoverable VAT by the introduction of so called compensation schemes.”
I am assured that that means, in EU-speak, that if the Government chose to provide air ambulance services with sums equivalent to the VAT that is raised from them, there would be no objection from the European Union. The Exchequer Secretary, who is responsible for VAT, accepts that that is the case. When the hon. Member for Hexham and I went to see him a week or so ago to discuss our motion, he assured us that if the motion was unamended, the Government would raise no objection to it. I hope that that is the case. We will hear whether it is from the Financial Secretary, who will speak for the Treasury this evening.
The motion calls on the Government to carry out a study over the year ahead into whether they can accede to the request in the e-petition. Members on both sides of the House hope that the study will be completed in time for the answer to be given as part of the Budget statement next spring.
I have been a Minister in a spending Department and know what it is like to get a dozen requests a day for new Government spending commitments. I also recognise that this is a time of austerity. So why do I think that the Government should agree to this request? First, the proposal has caught the public imagination. Ken Sharpe’s e-petition has been signed by 150,000 citizens. We agreed at the end of the last Parliament and confirmed at the start of this Parliament that when more than 100,000 citizens make a request, Parliament should debate it.
Secondly, as the hon. Member for Hexham said, the request is modest and affordable. Yorkshire Air Ambulance paid less than £6,000 last year in VAT on fuel. It serves a population of 5 million. The population of the UK is 60 million, so if all air ambulance services use the same amount of fuel per the size of the population they serve, the total cost will be something in the order of £75,000 a year. Even if I am out in my calculation by a factor of two—the Treasury will check that carefully when it conducts its study —and the cost is £150,000, it will still come to just £1 per person who has signed the e-petition.
The air ambulance petition has attracted more signatures than the e-petition pressing the Government for a change in policy on fuel duty. The Treasury estimates that the recent decision to postpone the August fuel duty increase will cost the Exchequer £550 million. If we divide that by the 148,000 citizens who have signed the fuel duty e-petition, it comes to £3,700 a petitioner, which makes the air ambulance request, at just £1 a petitioner, rather cheap.
Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)
I have spent my working life in the charity sector, and in fundraising in particular. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that groups such as the one that organises the Rawdon fun day in my constituency, which raises £14,000 a year for the air ambulance, find it objectionable that some of that money is going on VAT? If we lost the air ambulance service, the effect on the Treasury would be immense.
Hugh Bayley
The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point. It is important that the Treasury focuses on the fact that the air ambulance service is an emergency service that saves lives, just like the lifeboat service. I used to run a charity, and much as I would love every charity to be exempt from paying VAT, that would be a very expensive ask. This is a limited and specific ask of the Government. As I said, it would not be too costly. More importantly, as I am sure he will acknowledge, it is the right thing to do.
If the motion is agreed to, Ken Sharpe and the 150,000 members of the public who have signed the e-petition will move into a slightly difficult period. They will have got over the hurdle of securing the Government’s attention, but there will then be a period, at least until the Budget in the spring, when the Government are considering the position. It will appear to the public as though not a lot is going on. My advice to members of the public who support the cause is: do not let up on the pressure, and keep reminding the Government that this issue will not go away. The best way for a citizen to lobby the Government is through their Member of Parliament. I invite every single one of those 150,000 people to e-mail or write to their MP and ask them to contact the Treasury, asking how the study is going. In that way, we can continue to remind the Government that this change is both the right thing to do and has a high level of support from the public.
Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) and the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) on securing the debate. I was delighted to attend the Backbench Business Committee meeting at which the proposal was made. I know that the hon. Member for York Central was unable to be there, but I am pleased that we now have the opportunity to have this discussion in the Chamber. I want to make a short contribution in support of the motion.
The Kent, Surrey and Sussex Air Ambulance has a special place in the hearts of my constituents. It provides an invaluable service across the three counties, which have seven motorways running through them on which five serious accidents happen every day. However, road accidents account for only 41% of the emergencies that the local air ambulance attends. Medical emergencies such as cardiac arrests and strokes account for a further 25%, and both require a swift response and excellent, quick medical care if they are to be dealt with quickly and properly.
A quick news search on the Kent, Surrey and Sussex Air Ambulance shows how vital it is across the counties. Yesterday, it landed on the M20 motorway and took a lady who had fallen from a bridge not to the hospital at the next junction but to a specialist unit in London. A few hours later, it transferred from Ramsgate to King’s college hospital, again in London, a workman who had fallen 30 feet. That journey would have been very difficult to make by road. Last Friday, the helicopter took a 78-year-old man with serious facial injuries following a DIY accident from Lordswood in my constituency to hospital in London. As the local newspaper reported, the helicopter landed nearby at 10.25 am. Doctors gave the man emergency treatment at the scene before he was flown to the major trauma centre at the hospital in Denmark Hill.
Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)
This is a crucial issue, because the VAT money could be put back into the air ambulance, especially the London air ambulance, which serves more than 10 million people. We need a second air ambulance to serve those numbers.
Tracey Crouch
I completely agree. The Kent, Surrey and Sussex Air Ambulance has two helicopters to serve the three counties. I am sure that all money saved from VAT would be used effectively.
One great thing about the Kent, Surrey and Sussex Air Ambulance is that it transports a specialist doctor and a critical care paramedic directly to the scene of serious medical emergencies. They provide enhanced care at the scene of the accident, often involving medical procedures usually provided only in the emergency department of a hospital. Patients are flown to the most appropriate hospital for their needs, and many are transferred to county or regional hospitals. However, as the three shouts I described show, patients quite often require specialist treatment at a major trauma centre in London. Quite simply, the intervention of the air ambulance team saves lives.
The Kent, Surrey and Sussex Air Ambulance costs £5 million per year to fund and operates 365 days a year, responding to 1,500 to 1,800 medical emergencies per annum. It is funded almost entirely by donations. Its mission, objective and outcomes are as important to our country as those of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, another lifesaving service very dear to my heart. However, as we have heard, and as the motion states, the key difference between the two is that the air ambulance pays VAT at the rate of 20% at its base in Marden. It buys fuel in bulk and uses between 180,000 and 200,000 litres a year. Given that each mission costs around £2,500, zero-rating fuel for the helicopters would save the air ambulance a significant amount of money that it could reinvest in its life-saving functions. That is not a vast amount of money for the Treasury, but it would be directly available to air ambulances.
It has already been made clear that, under EU law, it is not possible to implement a new zero-rating into UK legislation relating solely to the air ambulance. Although I am not a VAT expert, let me offer the Minister a possible solution. Schedule 8 to the Value Added Tax Act 1994 refers to charities and outlines provisions that allow for the supply, at the zero rate of VAT,
“of any relevant goods to an eligible body which pays for them with funds provided by a charity”.
The Act also makes it clear that “relevant goods” includes “ambulances” and
“parts or accessories for use in or with”
ambulances. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs already accepts that “ambulances” includes specially equipped air ambulances or watercraft, and that “eligible bodies” includes charitable institutions providing
“rescue or first aid services”.
Under those provisions, therefore, and with guidance from the Treasury and HMRC, the air ambulance could purchase fuel in its own name for use at a zero rate of VAT. I am sure that, with proper discussion, air ambulance charities could certify the use of the fuel, making them liable for VAT payments if they misappropriate it for other purposes. Furthermore, I am sure the charities would be willing to appease any concerns that HMRC might have on claims for retrospective recovery of VAT incurred over the past four years, which would obviously lead to a greater cost to the Treasury.
The Treasury might be concerned about the reduction of revenue, but it should recognise how much the air ambulance saves the NHS. First, like others, the Kent air ambulance is not funded by the ambulance service or the NHS. Secondly, the speed at which it can transfer injured persons to hospital often means that they are treated and discharged more quickly, thereby saving the NHS money in the long term.
Throughout the debate thus far, Members have spoken highly of the air ambulances serving their constituents. There can be no doubt about the level of genuine support they enjoy, but as the motion makes clear, and as we have heard, there is potential for the Treasury to give additional financial support to help air ambulances up and down the country to carry on providing a vital service. It is for this reason that I urge the Treasury to review the current VAT arrangements and use this opportunity to recognise further the vital contribution that the air ambulance service makes to people’s lives.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) and my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) on securing this debate. I also want to echo the congratulations to Ken Sharpe on working so vigorously to get so many people to sign up to the campaign.
I want to focus on the contribution of the London air ambulance service, which is based at the Royal London hospital in my constituency. It was established in 1989 and does incredible work across London, providing critical care to those with serious injuries. The London air ambulance service has completed 26,000 missions since 1989. In March, I visited the service and heard about the amazing work it does. In 2006, the last Labour Government committed £1 billion of much needed funding to rebuild the Royal London hospital in Whitechapel, which included renovation of the helipad. In December 2011, the London air ambulance service moved to its new base, on the 17th floor of the refurbished hospital building.
Last Saturday we marked the seventh anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings, when terrorists detonated bombs on three underground trains, including one near Aldgate in my constituency, and a London bus. We remembered the 52 innocent people who lost their lives in the London bombings and the many more whose lives were changed for ever. It is difficult to forget the harrowing scenes of devastation and chaos across London that day. I would like to use this opportunity to pay tribute to our emergency services, whose response and professionalism following the 7/7 attacks saved the lives of many. In particular, I would like to focus on the work of London’s air ambulance service. Following the attacks, London’s air ambulance staff, who had been attending a monthly clinical governance day, were deployed immediately. London’s air ambulance service flew 26 helicopter missions to deliver urgent medical care and supplies to the scenes of the incidents across London, and the service’s medical teams treated or triaged more than 700 people. The service rightly received praise for its incredible work and quick response in the wake of the attacks.
At the coroner’s inquest into the 7/7 London bombings, Lady Justice Hallet recommended that London’s air ambulance should have its “funding and capacity” reviewed and said:
“Despite current financial constraints, London’s Air Ambulance has, since its formation, provided an invaluable service to the capital.”
The service has been deployed to numerous major incidents in London, including not only the London bombings but the Bishopsgate and Aldwych terrorist attacks, as well as the Southall, Paddington and Potters Bar rail crashes. Yet despite those recommendations, the London air ambulance service has received no increase in major incident funding. The service believes additional funding for major incidents to be a necessity, which would enable it to expand major incident cover.
However, responding to major incidents is just one aspect of the service’s work. It also provides pre-hospital emergency care to victims of serious injuries, attending road traffic accidents, industrial accidents, and stabbings and shootings. The service treats more than 2,000 critically injured patients on the streets of London each year. Without it, patients would not receive the critical care they need.
Mary Macleod
I applaud the hon. Lady’s enthusiasm for the London air ambulance service, which I share. The service is also supporting the Olympics and the Paralympics, on top of its normal work load, serving and supporting so many individuals—more than 10 million within the M25—as compared with many other air ambulances, which support far fewer people.
Rushanara Ali
I could not agree more with the hon. Lady. She has been working with me to highlight the work of the London air ambulance service. I will talk about the demands in the run-up to, and during, the Olympics in a moment.
The London air ambulance service has a doctor-led team that provides advanced medical procedures and leadership in situations in which a patient might otherwise die before reaching hospital. As London’s only helicopter medical emergency service, the team works incredibly hard to provide 24/7 emergency care services to the 10 million people who live and work in the capital.
Despite the incredible work of the London service, its funding is limited. Many people do not realise that it is a charity, as are many of the other air ambulance services around the country. At a time when it should be expanding its operational capacity, a lack of funding means that it is unable to do so. That will have an impact across London, and, as the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod) has mentioned, that is deeply worrying in a year in which millions of visitors will come to the city for the Olympics.
Compared with other cities in England and Wales and around the world, London’s air ambulance service lacks resources. It has just one helicopter and one team to serve 10 million people, compared with an average of one helicopter per 1.5 million people across the rest of the UK. Internationally, Paris has 12 teams and at least three helicopters, and Sydney has six helicopters.
London’s air ambulance service is currently funded through private donations and an NHS contribution, but much more work must be done to raise funds if it is to provide the level of service required to meet London’s growing needs. In these tough economic times, it is even more challenging for the service to achieve its funding objectives. As a charity, it relies heavily on donations from the corporate sector, and in 2011 donations and sponsorship made up 45% of the service’s overall income. The donations from organisations, charities and companies are welcome, and donors include organisations such as Virgin, Coutts and the London stock exchange. At a time of economic uncertainty, however, that funding is not stable, and it does not meet the funding needs of the service.
Contributions from the private and corporate sectors play a large part, but it is vital that the Government should meet their obligations to support the charity. The London service has received a long-standing donation of £1.2 million from the NHS, which represented 40% of its overall income in 2011, but I believe that the Government must do more. The impact of the Government’s VAT increase to 20% is being felt by services such as London Air Ambulance, which receives no support to cover the cost of VAT on aviation fuel payments. We are calling on the Government temporarily to reduce the rate of VAT from 20% to 17.5%, which would lessen the VAT bill for charities, including air ambulance services.
The London air ambulance service needs an estimated £3.9 million if it is to enhance and expand the service that it provides in the coming years. The necessity for the service to do that will only increase, and it is important that we take action now to ensure that the service can cope with future demand. The extra funding would enable the service to acquire and maintain a new helicopter in order to achieve 100% “up time”, so that if one helicopter required maintenance, another would still be operational. It would also allow the service to maintain medical and rescue equipment, fund medical innovation and invest in staff training, research and the charity’s infrastructure. That type of expansion would greatly enhance the service, benefiting Londoners and ensuring a sustainable model for the future.
The London Air Ambulance is a service that many of us take for granted. It is a service that many of us do not think of as a charity, and one that we would expect to assist us in an emergency. This is a call to the Government to reduce VAT to 17.5% and give charities such as London’s air ambulance service the support that they need. It is also a call to the private sector and the business community, in London and elsewhere, to invest in the air ambulance services and support their incredible work of saving people’s lives.
Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)
I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) and the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley). I am delighted and proud to have my name on this motion and to have signed the early-day motion and been a part of this excellent campaign. I echo their words in congratulating Ken Sharpe and the 150,000 people who have spoken out on this issue and enabled us to have this debate in this place—a clear example of the democratic e-petition process working to allow us to debate the subjects that matter to local people.
There are 18 air ambulance service charities up and down the country. As we have heard, each and every one does work that is not only vital but that can be done only by air ambulances attending emergencies that are difficult, and sometimes impossible, for road ambulances to get to. Speed is vital, too, with lives saved every week of every month of every year by air ambulance staff throughout the country. That would not happen if the air ambulance services were no longer there.
I am incredibly proud to be the MP representing one of our two Yorkshire air ambulances—the one based in my constituency at Leeds Bradford airport. Yorkshire Air Ambulance was set up back in 2000, with the helicopter introduced at Leeds Bradford airport, and to this day the YAA service has rescued 4,446 people. A second helicopter was added in 2007, and Yorkshire became the first air ambulance service in the UK to operate a dedicated air desk. Having recently added Airwave communication systems, it is now one of the most developed and highly sophisticated emergency services in the whole country.
Yorkshire Air Ambulance now operates these two helicopters, which, as the hon. Member for York Central said, serve 5 million people around the Yorkshire area, covering an incredibly diverse landscape of rural and suburban areas, as well as the great cities. But the YAA needs £7,200 every single day to keep both of our helicopters in the air. Last year, it used approximately 170,000 litres of fuel, which cost £5,800 in VAT. It is a simple, stark fact that if the YAA did not have to pay this charge on fuel, it could save a minimum of three extra lives each year. We can extrapolate from that that the number of lives that could be saved around the country by that change would be substantial. This is not just about money.
I would like briefly to mention a constituent of mine. We have already heard about the importance of fundraising for keeping these air ambulances in the air and functional. A lady from Cookridge, Mrs Val Pawsey, has attended shows, fairs and fêtes all around the Yorkshire area with her knitting. She knits all sorts of products—teddies, dolls, dolls’ clothes, babies’ clothes and so forth. To date, she alone has raised £8,500 for the Yorkshire Air Ambulance as a volunteer by doing this incredible work as she goes round the shows with her husband John. It is difficult to have to tell someone like Val Pawsey that the Government are taking £5,800 a year in VAT from the service for which she is working so incredibly hard, giving her own effort, energy, resources and time to raise money. That is why I sincerely hope we will get a sympathetic response from Ministers today and a commitment to look at this issue properly.
As other hon. Members have said, we need to give enormous credit to all the people involved in the amazing charitable work that provides the funding, but we also need to be clear that millions of pounds are saved for the Government and for us as a society when a service such as this is provided. If the air ambulance service did not provide it, it would have to be provided in another way through the NHS. Surely, therefore, we have a strong case.
People have already mentioned the example of the lifeboats and the complications with EU legislation, and our message is clear: we want Ministers to make the case very strongly in Europe; when things are wrong with European directives we all must say so; and we should say that the EU directive in question clearly needs to be amended. Until it is amended, however, we need Government action; we cannot simply wait and hope that it might be changed. That is why I am very happy to support the motion and to urge the Treasury to find a solution within its own means to the problem.
We have also seen a huge rise in fuel costs over recent years and, indeed, months, and it stretches even further the limited resources that arise from fundraising. That is why it is even more important that the Treasury mitigate the effect by looking at the VAT that is currently charged.
The Treasury can be sympathetic, and has been in the past. I was delighted to support my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) in his campaign for a VAT refund on the emergency services provided by our wonderful mountain rescue teams, and the air ambulance is another service that carries out a similar and equally important life-saving function. It therefore deserves similar sympathetic treatment.
I hope that Ministers have noted that 150,000 people have so far signed the petition, and have noticed the consensus among Members on both sides who have spoken and campaigned with passion on the issue. We are proud of our air ambulances throughout the country, and we know that the Government are, too. The Treasury, in its response in April to the petition, said that the Government noted
“the valuable role that the air ambulance services play in responding to emergencies.”
We believe that today should be the start of a process whereby they put their money where their mouth is. We believe that there is a solution to the problem, and we look forward to some good news in the Budget next year.
Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)
It is a real privilege to speak in today’s debate, and I too pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) and my close constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley), who alongside others have secured this important debate.
Whenever there is a debate in this place about our emergency services and personnel, it is humbling to think of the sheer number of lives that have been saved because of the dedication, bravery and professionalism of our firefighters, police officers, NHS nurses, doctors and ambulance drivers. But the emergency service family extends far further than we often appreciate. From our lifeboats and coastguards to countless voluntary agencies, our society is underpinned by the dedication of so many committed public servants.
In this debate, however, we are rightly focused on an area of the emergency services that plays a vital yet, sadly, under-acknowledged role in saving lives each and every day. According to the Association of Air Ambulances, an emergency air ambulance takes off every 10 minutes in the UK, collectively undertaking more than 19,000 missions in a year and serving 177 accident and emergency departments.
Today’s debate is focused on the VAT on fuel that several air ambulance charities are required to pay as a result of owning and operating their own aircraft. The e-petition that prompted this debate attracted, as many Members have said, about 150,000 signatures, and it calls on the Government to exempt the air ambulance service from paying VAT.
I will discuss that request later in my speech, but first let me join the hon. Member for York Central and my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) in praising the work of Yorkshire’s own local air ambulance service. It flies seven days a week, providing a life-saving, rapid service for 5 million people across Yorkshire. It is also an independent charity which, as was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West, must generate £7,200 a day—some £2.65 million a year—to keep our air ambulance operational. I think that the public will be as astonished as I was to learn that it has to find such an amount.
The need to raise awareness of the charitable status of the air ambulance service is undeniable. Its real strength lies in its ability to work throughout our county’s vast and challenging landscape, from densely populated urban centres to the rural and almost wild countryside in parts of north Yorkshire. It ensures that anyone in trouble can be reached and transferred to life-saving health centres within minutes. Without such provision, some people would die of their injuries and health complications. Let me put it simply: I truly believe that the Yorkshire Air Ambulance saves lives every single day.
The hon. Member for York Central has already given a famous example of the superb work of the service in action, but that is well worth mentioning again. I refer to the devastating accident involving the “Top Gear” presenter Richard Hammond in 2006. That almost fatal accident occurred in Elvington airfield, which is in my constituency. Mr Hammond was driving a dragster car while filming “Top Gear” when the vehicle crashed at terrific speed. I am sure that many Members recall seeing the sickening footage of the crash on the news at the time. The injuries sustained by Mr Hammond were life-threatening and required immediate medical attention. Like so many other individuals over the years, he received initial treatment followed by an immediate transfer to hospital. The speed of the transfer was crucial, and because of the work of the Yorkshire ambulance which flew to his rescue, Richard Hammond’s life was saved.
That high-profile case reflects the cases of many individuals who are saved every day by the air ambulance service. It brings to life the importance of the service and its work, and we should bear such examples in mind when considering the financial demands that threaten the sustainability of the service.
Many Members have touched on the technicalities of whether, and how, the Government can return VAT payments or make exemptions in the future, so I shall keep my remarks about the motion itself brief. First, there is an issue of fairness. At present, only charities that own their helicopters are required to pay VAT on fuel. The result of the status quo is clear: the more money is swallowed up in VAT payments to the Treasury, the less there will be to keep air ambulances operational and ready to respond to emergencies as and when they are needed.
Secondly, when considering cost, we must take into account the millions of pounds that the air ambulance service as a whole has saved successive Governments. A number of Members have already mentioned that. Any decision that we make should take into consideration the amount that the charity saves the Government by running the service at its own cost, funded by public donations. What would we do if these charities could no longer afford to operate? My hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) made a telling intervention on this point. Would the Government pay directly for an air ambulance service? Would they have to purchase all the helicopters and equipment? Or would such a service simply not exist?
Thirdly, comparisons to other services must be made. The lifeboat service has already been mentioned. I appreciate that Ministers have said that under EU law we cannot extend the scope of existing zero rates or introduce new ones, but perhaps this is the sort of nonsense that should be tackled in any forthcoming EU renegotiation. Regardless of one’s position on European matters, it is simply ridiculous that this elected, sovereign House lacks the power to decide such matters because of European red tape.
Naturally, I understand that the Government cannot do everything and that many requests are made for financial exemptions and tax cuts in many areas, but I believe that our air ambulance service is being unfairly targeted. It is told by countless politicians that its dedicated work is essential, but it is then told to make do with an unfair and expensive deal for paying VAT on fuel. We must make up our minds. If we are truly to back the service, let us fight for it in Europe and at home, and let us prioritise its financial needs higher up the agenda. I very much support the part of the motion urging the Government to review the matter in depth over the next few months. In the light of the work of the air ambulance service across the country, that is the least we could agree to tonight.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) for moving this debate, to my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) for ably supporting him and leading our campaign to support our Yorkshire air ambulance service, and to all Members, on both sides, who have spoken in support of their local air ambulance services. I pay particular tribute to Ken Sharpe, my hon. Friend’s constituent, who must hold the record for getting 100,000 names on an e-petition in the shortest possible time and who has helped provide the basis for this debate.
I say to the Minister that we are asking for a small contribution that will be a big boost to the efforts of those who support and keep our air ambulances flying across the country. The motion covers the interests of our 18 air ambulance services across England. All of them are sustained by the dedicated efforts of those who raise funds to help finance the costs and all are kept flying by the dedicated, skilled, professional staff who provide this vital emergency service. I am particularly pleased that the Yorkshire caucus is so strong in the House tonight, with not only my hon. Friend the Member for York Central leading the charge but the hon. Members for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) and for York Outer (Julian Sturdy), whom I am delighted to follow.
Like most other air ambulance services, ours is a charity. It is, so to speak, the airborne wing of the Prime Minister’s big society. It deserves the House’s support in deed, not just in word, and the sort of support that the motion is urging on the Government. It is funded by the public to provide a vital emergency service for the public across our county. Since the debate started, I reckon that our fundraisers in Yorkshire will have had to raise at least £300 as a contribution towards keeping our two helicopters and our service going. That is a total of more than £7,000 a day or £2.65 million a year. They do this because they understand, like we do, how vital this emergency service is and how essential it is in many parts of our county that patients requiring such help can be at their nearest hospital within 10 minutes. It flies more than 1,000 missions each year, which is a unique and essential service, of interest and concern to us all. As others have said, the fuel costs are about £10,000 a month and the VAT costs are something under £6,000 a year.
I say two things to the Minister in conclusion. We are not asking in today’s motion for the same sort of exclusion from VAT that the lifeboat service has. We are not asking today for the same sort of VAT rebate scheme that has been in place to support the cost of church repairs. We are asking simply for a review to look at the fairness of the situation and the case for making a small public contribution to the voluntary efforts of those who keep our air ambulances flying. I hope that, in responding to this debate, he will accept the terms of the motion and the review that is urged upon him. But I hope actually that he may stand up to tell us that the motion is not needed and the review is not needed because he will introduce that sort of compensation scheme to cover the costs of VAT on fuel and will do so on a similar basis to the one we have established with the precedent of helping with the VAT costs of church repairs.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
I join colleagues in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) and the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) on securing this debate. I contribute to it as the chairman of the new all-party group on the emergency services. We recently secured a Westminster Hall debate on the interoperability between the emergency services, including the role of the air ambulance, at which my hon. Friend spoke eloquently about his support for the air ambulance, on the basis of the motion before us. I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiments expressed by hon. Members and join them in putting on the record my support and thanks for the service that air ambulances provide up and down our country. They supply a crucial and critical service for which we should all be thankful.
Many hon. Members have given accounts of people who support the air ambulance service, and a friend of mine, Gill, was involved in a major road accident on a country lane. She suffered multiple breakages and was airlifted by the air ambulance to the local trauma centre and treated. Having been helped by our air ambulance, she, along with many others in the same position, is an effective and enthusiastic fundraiser for our local air ambulance. She trains as a volunteer, runs stalls, sells Christmas cards and collected funds at a rugby game played on “The Close” at Rugby school. This is a key feature of the air ambulance service: it is funded through donations and with the support of the community. That unique funding method not only encourages local people, but means savings to government.
Although I support the call for a Government review into VAT, I wish to raise one or two concerns about it, as I believe the House should hear them. I do this because of the approach taken by the air ambulance service, whose Warwickshire and Northamptonshire service covers my constituency. It argues that charities, such as air ambulances, should be working closely together and with the Government to make efficiencies within their organisations, and I have one or two suggestions as to how that can be done. In asking for caution, my case is based on the voluntary funding of the air ambulance service, depending, as it does, on the unique feature of donations from local and national companies. That key feature enthuses people to get involved because they know that currently the air ambulance service receives no Government or lottery funding. Most importantly, the Warwickshire service does not seek Government or lottery funding. In fact, it strongly argues that its independence from Government is what enables it to innovate and drive up service delivery standards.
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
The London Air Ambulance is based at the Royal London hospital, which is just outside my constituency, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali). People with serious trauma who are taken by air ambulance to the Royal London are much more likely to survive than those who are not. That underlines the point about the quality of service that this charitable money is delivering.
Mark Pawsey
That serves to highlight the unique nature of the air ambulance organisations.
On the payment of VAT, or any other tax, let me quote from a representation from Warwickshire and Northamptonshire Air Ambulance:
“Along with the rest of the world, we would welcome any reduction in taxation levels and in an ideal scenario we would pay no VAT on any aspect of our service.”
That is right, of course. In an ideal scenario—when we are enjoying periods of sustained economic growth and there is no pressure on Government finances—many different kinds of concessions can be made, but unfortunately this Government have been left with a structural deficit, so they may not be able to fund all the items of expenditure that we might want. The air ambulance service made this point to me:
“In the current fiscal climate we believe that charities and organisations like ourselves whose sole aim is to benefit our communities, should not seek further strains on the public purse.”
There is a contrary view, therefore, and it is held by the air ambulance service based in my constituency.
Hugh Bayley
I imagine that the hon. Gentleman’s points will be considered by the Treasury if the motion is passed tonight, and so they should be. However, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution has the VAT exemption, but that does not act as a bar to its raising funds for its services. Is he aware that the Association of Air Ambulances—which represents the 18 air ambulance services in the country, including his—put out a press release calling on the Chancellor
“to introduce a balanced and fair approach to the application of VAT and duty charged on Aviation Fuel where it is used in helicopter emergency medical services”?
Although his points are valid, could they not be considered as part of such a Treasury review if we pass the motion tonight?
Mark Pawsey
I shall support the motion, but I am putting to the House the contrary view, which is about the unique nature of our air ambulance services.
On the basis of the quote I have just read out, we should applaud the sense of public duty displayed by the air ambulance that covers the area I represent.
Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)
I warmly applaud the idea that there should be a strong focus on charitable fundraising, but the challenge we in Cumbria face is that the North West Air Ambulance is attempting to fundraise in exactly the same areas as the Great North Air Ambulance. They are both presenting themselves as the sole Cumbrian provider. We therefore have paid fundraisers fighting on the doorsteps, as it were, to get contributions from Cumbria’s very small population of 500,000 people. Does my hon. Friend agree that we will need a more disciplined approach to fundraising if these wonderful institutions are to flourish and survive?
Mark Pawsey
I accept that point of view. There needs to be some control. We do not want one air ambulance to be competing with another for what we all accept are limited funds. That takes us back to my point about co-operation and interoperability. There may be a case for interoperability not only between air ambulances, but between air ambulances and other emergency services.
Those who support the charitable structure are concerned that it is not very many steps from a grant to offset VAT on fuel to the full nationalisation of the service, and the absorption of air ambulances into the ambulance service more generally. There might be some hon. Members in the Chamber for whom that would be a desirable move, but I believe that it would materially change the unique basis on which the service is delivered. It was interesting that it fell to the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) to describe the air ambulance as probably one of the best examples of the big society.
There are other ways besides a VAT exemption in which the air ambulance can effect substantial savings. I argued in the Westminster Hall debate about the need for air ambulances and other emergency services to share assets. Earlier this week, I spoke at a Royal United Services Institute conference on the future operations of blue-light air assets. RUSI has produced research papers drawing attention to the fact that there is no co-ordination of air assets at this stage nationally or across agencies. If we investigate asset sharing we could effect savings that would be significantly in excess of the amount of savings that could be produced by reducing the costs of fuel.
Rory Stewart
On that specific point, one challenge we face in Cumbria is that mountain rescue finds it easy to co-ordinate with the police and the RAF, particularly when Sea Kings are involved, but very difficult to co-ordinate with air ambulances. Air ambulances appear to be reluctant to give information to mountain rescue as a standard operating procedure. Interoperability is a challenge, but I would suggest that it is a particular challenge with air ambulances.
Mark Pawsey
I certainly accept that point. One of the challenges for us, which is one reason why we have formed the new all-party group, involves trying to make the links that allow such interoperability. There is no point in having unused air ambulance assets dotted around parts of the country when they are badly needed in other areas. The point of an air ambulance is that a helicopter can move quickly between areas and provide such support.
A wide range of figures have been mentioned. The Association of Air Ambulances says that air ambulance charities across the country collectively generate an income of £46 million, with an average spend per helicopter of £843,000 and an average mission cost of £1,229. I accept that all those sums need to be raised through fundraising and that any savings that could be achieved would be welcome, but the cost of VAT on fuel needs to be seen in the context of some of the other significant costs, which put the total amount paid on VAT in perspective.
I fully support the motion’s tribute to our air ambulance services. They are worthy of more praise than they receive and I am glad that we have had the opportunity to pay tribute to them. I hope, however, that I have been able to put the cost of VAT on fuel in perspective and to suggest other, better ways of saving money through more efficient co-ordination of helicopter assets between air ambulance and emergency services. I hope that I have raised the concerns that the granting of a concession such as that asked for in the motion could be the start of a change to the unique method of funding our air ambulance services which involves the enthusiastic and active participation of volunteers up and down our land.
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey). I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) and the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley)—he might recall that I used to interview him as a fledgling reporter all those year ago—have brought this matter to the attention of the House.
First, like all other Members I want to pay tribute to the professionalism and bravery of our air ambulance crews. The A31 just outside my home is, sadly, notorious and I often see that yellow bird of mercy landing to rescue people and take them to hospital. It saves countless lives. In my constituency, the Dorset and Somerset Air Ambulance saves lives as we have no motorways as such, at least not in Dorset, and our roads are narrow, which means that getting down them is extremely difficult. It is especially important, therefore, for us to have that air ambulance cover.
Which air ambulances pay VAT on fuel and which do not—I hope I am being accurate because I know we like to be accurate in the House—is a matter of who owns and operates them. As has been said, owner-operators—those who own and operate the helicopter directly through their charities—are seriously disadvantaged. Because they are VAT registered they must pay VAT. In contrast, leased aircraft, operated through a third party, such as Bond Aviation, which is the case for the Dorset and Somerset Air Ambulance, which bills for a total service, including fuel, are exempt under an agreement with HMRC in 2005.
Tracey Crouch
It is worth pointing out that not every helicopter that is leased is done so with the fuel included. Some air ambulance helicopters are on a lease agreement, such as the Kent air ambulance, but that does not include the fuel.
Richard Drax
I totally accept that. I am not saying that they are all the same. I am looking for some harmonisation. I am not for one minute saying that we should not tackle the VAT issue. However, it seems from my research that there are some anomalies in the system.
Of the 18 charities, operating 29 helicopters, 12 operate such leasing agreements—admittedly, as my hon. Friend said, under different arrangements. For example, our Dorset and Somerset Air Ambulance pays no VAT, while our neighbouring Devon Air Ambulance pays £3,000 a year, which is about the cost of a mission, give or take a few pounds. The situation is clearly deeply unsatisfactory, with thousands of pounds of hard-raised money being squandered needlessly. I would have thought that some harmonisation would resolve the issue.
Overall, the Association of Air Ambulances must pay £100,000 every year in VAT. That rises with every increase in the price of fuel. That sum would pay for about 30 mercy flights to road traffic accidents and medical emergencies and for urgent hospital transfers. As has been said, this is not really about money; this is about saving people’s lives.
It is interesting how many of our valuable services in this country are charitable. Think of our armed services. These are men and women whom we send to places such as Afghanistan who are relying on charity to be looked after. That begs another debate altogether.
I hardly need point out that charging VAT on fuel for our air ambulances is an EU initiative. In a characteristic Catch-22 situation, the EU VAT directive allows no zero-rating provisions, except for those that were in place in 1975. Again as we have heard this afternoon, there were no air ambulance helicopters in the UK in 1975. Only the RNLI has been allowed exemption from duty charges on marine diesel due to its life-saving role—no different, in effect, from that of the air ambulances. With such a precedent already set, it seems an obvious and relatively inexpensive step for HMRC to extend this exemption to helicopter emergency air services.
The Association of Air Ambulances has suggested three solutions, each of which I would commend to the Minister. The first is a total exemption for all helicopter emergency medical services. The second is a refund arrangement provided by HMRC for air ambulance charities. The third is for new legislation to exempt air ambulances from VAT, as with the RNLI.
As all hon. Members have said, this is a worthy cause, and, frankly, the sums of money are a pittance when one looks at the Government’s overall expenditure. I cannot think of a better cause in the big society. That is not a phrase I entirely endorse, but I would use it in this case, because it conjures up the worthiness, bravery and dedication of those who crew the ambulances and the lives that are saved, and, importantly, the knock-on benefits to the families of those who have been injured and who can continue to live their lives with their fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters because they have been rescued by this exemplary service. I hope that common sense prevails today.
Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to speak in this debate and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) and the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) on securing it. The hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) has already spoken about the London helicopter, which serves not only her constituency but mine and, indeed, the rest of London, so not all the comments I will make are about London’s air ambulance because I do not wish to replicate the fine things she has already said.
I want to describe for the Minister some of my experience of one of the UK’s air ambulance services. He is probably unaware that I grew up in Cornwall, which was the first county to have an air ambulance. Indeed, I have quite some experience with that air ambulance. There was not a great deal to do in Cornwall when I was young, so one of the things I did was surf, which led me to become a lifeguard, and on several occasions we needed to make use of the air ambulance.
Before the air ambulance service was established, the RAF had to become involved if someone needed to be airlifted—I look to my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy), who talked about what would happen if there was no air ambulance. I remember one occasion when a Frenchman had fallen down a cliff and I could see that the back of his head was open. The RAF was called in from the royal naval air station at Culdrose and a helicopter came out to pick him up. That was the cost of not having the air ambulance, but it was a cost for the RAF, so someone did pick up the bill. The difference between the RAF helicopter and the air ambulance was what was on board.
On one occasion I had to call an air ambulance myself when I was a lifeguard in Crackington Haven. The chairman of my local Surf Life Saving club had managed somehow to cut his leg on his surf board. When we brought him to shore, we called the ambulance service, which sent the air ambulance. That necessitated that we clear the beach very quickly, which we did with the help of the Surf Life Saving club, so that the helicopter could come in. We loaded the chairman on board and got him safely away.
I had the foresight to pick up a loudhailer and ask all the tourists on the beach to put their hands in their pockets and fill up a bucket that I sent some of the nippers around with. That was a good way of raising money, and one of the points I made was that the people on the beach might one day need the air ambulance themselves, so I asked them to dig deep. However, I found having to do that quite demeaning. The air ambulance was an emergency service, but I was asking people who were visitors to Cornwall and who did not actually live there to pay for it. But they did the air ambulance very proud.
The air ambulance in Cornwall has continued. My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) spoke about an individual who raised money in his constituency. When I grew up in north Cornwall there was a lady called Pearl Cory who did the same. Pearl was well known for going around the pubs and clubs and selling her lottery tickets, which funded the air ambulance. Again, I look to the Minister and say that there are people such as Pearl who go out and do that kind of work, which is admirable. Pearl was well known in every pub for the work she did. She received an OBE for her service, for which I am grateful.
Tracey Crouch
As a Cornishman, my hon. Friend will understand the close links between the air ambulance service, RAF search and rescue and, of course, the RNLI, which has been mentioned many times. I think that we should take this opportunity to thank all the volunteers, particularly those in the RNLI—having grown up in Cornwall, he will know that, sadly, some lifeboat men have been lost over the years—for their great work and bravery.
Dr Offord
I certainly echo my hon. Friend’s comments, although I must correct her and say that I am not a Cornishman—I was born in Hampshire. I certainly acknowledge the work of the RNLI. As a keen yachtsman, I am always pleased that I do not have to seek their services, and hope I never will.
As a London MP, I know that air ambulance services are not valuable only in peripheral, rural counties such as Cumbria, Cornwall or Yorkshire; they are so important to my constituents and me in London because of what they can achieve. I mentioned the RAF helicopter that was manned by the pilot, the linesman and the navigator but had no medical equipment. The air ambulance in London not only has a trained paramedic, navigator and pilot, but a trauma doctor and an observer, who is often observing as preparation for being a trauma doctor.
The helicopter has qualified people and specialist equipment on board. As we know from accidents in our constituencies, the issue is not always about what the patient is suffering from, but about getting them medical assistance. Air ambulances can provide that quickly—the similarity between Cornwall and Hendon, for example, is that the air ambulance can be on site quickly. As my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) said, they can take the patient to the most qualified centre that they can find and the patient can get treatment that would not have been available if a road ambulance had taken them to the nearest hospital.
The Minister is many things, including a maritime MP. If, for example, the VAT exemption of the RNLI were taken away, how would the organisation feel? I appeal to the Minister to accept the review and put the air ambulances of London, Cornwall, Yorkshire and everywhere else on the same footing as the RNLI. That is not only the fair thing to do; it is the best thing to do for our constituents.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for bringing this important matter to the House. I congratulate my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), and my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley), both of whom paid moving tributes to their air ambulance services—the Yorkshire Air Ambulance and the Great North Air Ambulance Service.
The debate has been well considered and well informed. As hon. Members have said, it came about following an e-petition, signed by nearly 150,000 people, that calls on the Government urgently to review the amount of VAT paid on fuel for air ambulances and
“to return in the form of grants to Air Ambulance Service providers all the future VAT which the Treasury collects from them”.
I should like to put on the record my thanks to all those who have taken the time to sign the petition and bring this important matter to the Floor of the House.
We all now know that air ambulances play a key role in communities up and down the UK. They have been in use since the beginning of the 20th century. Early versions included the Red Cross’s “Florence Nightingale”, which began to carry vital medical equipment across the country in 1934. However, it was not until 1987 that the first UK air ambulance charity, the foundation of the modern air ambulance service, was established in Cornwall.
The most recent air ambulance charity was established in Hertfordshire in 2008. There are now 30 helicopters in service for the 18 air ambulance charities in England and Wales, with a further two run by the Scottish Ambulance Service. We have heard moving tributes to the work that the services undertake around the country. To give the overall picture, I should say that they undertake 19,000 missions a year, servicing 177 accident and emergency departments. On average, an air ambulance takes off every 10 minutes in the UK; every hour of every day, seven air ambulances may be attending accidents and medical traumas around the country.
The emergency teams have an enormous impact on our communities and play a vital role in supporting and extending the work of conventional land ambulances.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) for being unable to get to the earlier part of the debate because of a meeting.
The hon. Lady will know that in the remote rural parts of Northumberland such as my constituency the air ambulance is vital because, without it, it would be extremely difficult to get cases to hospitals, which are often closer to her constituency in Newcastle, where they need to be treated.
Catherine McKinnell
Indeed. We all know of very moving stories in our respective localities where lives have, without doubt, been saved by air ambulances.
As the hon. Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) said, air ambulances have come an awfully long way since their early days. They are now high-tech, mobile A and E departments carrying senior trauma doctors alongside paramedics and transporting state-of-the-art medical equipment to wherever it is needed.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
I recently met people at Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire Air Ambulance, to whom I pay tribute. They told me about some of the other problems they face, apart from VAT. Does the hon. Lady agree that there are other issues that we need to address, such as the fact that while some hospitals can accept air ambulances, others will need a land-based ambulance transfer?
Catherine McKinnell
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, and I am sure that the Minister will take it on board and deal with it in his response.
Only a few months ago, air ambulances proved that they are at the cutting edge of technology. As the hon. Member for Hendon pointed out, we are in an ever-progressing medical world where we need to keep constantly under review all the services that provide vital care to people, but particularly the air ambulance service. A few months ago, for the first time, an air ambulance carried blood supplies allowing a blood transfusion to be carried out at the scene of an accident. London’s air ambulance service believes that this innovation has been made possible due to a new refrigeration unit devised by the British military, and it could no doubt save hundreds of lives in the years to come.
It is no wonder that air ambulances continue to receive such outstanding support from members of the public and that over 150,000 people have been moved to sign the petition. I do not think that anyone would disagree that we have to support such services. However, as has been discussed, there are other issues relating to EU law and the harmonisation of VAT legislation across member states. Members have already mentioned the anomaly whereby fuel for lifeboats is VAT-free. As hon. Members and members of the public who have signed the petition have noted, there is no equivalent provision in these EU-wide rules to allow for fuel bought by charities such as air ambulances to be provided VAT-free, although various provisions such as medical equipment and first aid kit are VAT-free, and air ambulance providers that lease the air ambulance rather than buying it outright receive different treatment for VAT. Air ambulance services are put in a difficult position when there are anomalies within the VAT system and they are subject to change.
The motion calls on the Government to review the tax treatment of air ambulances and their fuel and to carry out the requested study on compensating them for VAT payments. I will be interested to hear the Government’s response to that, but there is more that they could do to try to help these life-saving services. As we all know, we are living in difficult times. Our economy is in a double-dip recession; borrowing forecasts are rising, not falling, and not only families and businesses are feeling the pressure and the squeeze but charities and organisations in the voluntary sector, which have been hard hit by the cuts that have been made. Collectively, air ambulances are one of the busiest voluntary services in the country. As charities, they rely on the support of over 1.25 million donors to keep them going. Air ambulances save hundreds of lives every year. They are expensive, but for those who benefit from the service they provide, they are priceless. The average spend per helicopter is more than £750,000. Put simply, without charitable donations and funding, these life-saving services would not exist. The men and women of these emergency teams work tirelessly. The Government should do all they can to support them.
There are changes that the Government could make immediately to ease the pressure on air ambulance services and other charities. As part of Labour’s five-point plan for jobs and growth, we are calling on the Government to introduce a temporary reduction in VAT to 17.5% to bring down the cost of fuel across the board. Air ambulances and motorists alike would benefit from that. Since the Government increased VAT, people across the country have been feeling the squeeze. Equally concerning is the impact it has had on charities. It has cost them an overwhelming £143 million.
With air ambulances using about 130 litres of fuel on every mission, a decrease in the rate of VAT would bring immediate relief to those services up and down the country—so too would clarity on the Government’s position on fuel duty, because it would allow services to plan for the future. The Labour party called for the 3p rise in fuel duty that was scheduled for August to be delayed to help hard-pressed motorists. Although we welcome the U-turn on that, it would be helpful if the Government explained what they will do in the long term on the price of fuel and how they will put it on a more sustainable footing for motorists and for air ambulance services.
As well as responding to the request in the motion put forward by the Backbench Business Committee, the Government could usefully respond to some additional questions to reassure air ambulance services that they have the support of the Government and that the Government are doing all they can in these difficult times to ease the pressure on them, so that these hard-working teams can continue to save lives and carry out their excellent work. What plans do the Government have to provide support to the thousands of charities that are increasingly performing vital services in our communities and that are struggling as a result of the increases in VAT and the cuts to funding? How do the Government intend to pay for the delay in the 3p fuel duty rise in August? What are the Government doing to put the cost of fuel on a more sustainable footing to help not just households and businesses, but vital charitable services? Finally, what assessment has the Minister made of the possibility of offsetting the cost of VAT on fuel payments by air ambulances through the use of other departmental budgets or anticipated departmental underspends?
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Mark Hoban)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) and the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) on securing this debate, and the more than 150,000 who signed the e-petition that triggered it.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali), and my hon. Friends the Members for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) and for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) for speaking. When the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) spoke, I was waiting to find out whether he looked at this issue when he was a Treasury Minister, but he did not share that insight. My hon. Friends the Members for Rugby (Mark Pawsey), for South Dorset (Richard Drax) and for Hendon (Dr Offord) also spoke.
The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) showed remarkable restraint in speaking for nine minutes before mentioning the five-point plan. Perhaps she should have shown more restraint and mentioned that this Government are deferring the fuel duty increase for which her Government legislated. She should be careful about the comments that she makes on this matter, because her Government’s record in introducing the fuel price increases that we have deferred or cancelled is nothing to boast about.
This is a good opportunity to explain the Government’s position on an issue that has generated a great deal of public interest. First, I want to reaffirm how much the Government appreciate the commitment of air ambulance charities. Since every other Member has named their local service, I will mention the excellent work of the Hampshire and Isle of Wight air ambulance service. We can all agree that, whether it is in Hampshire, Yorkshire, London, Cornwall or elsewhere, air ambulances play an important role in our society and we are very lucky to benefit from the valuable service that they provide.
I shall remind the House of the current position on VAT. It is a broad-based tax levied on final consumption, and businesses can recover VAT charged on supplies that will be used to produce products that will carry VAT. If a service is not charged for, the provider cannot claim back VAT, and that is the position of air ambulance charities.
Throughout the debate, hon. Members have mentioned their concern about the impact of VAT on air ambulance fuel and asked how it can be mitigated. One suggestion is that we seek an exemption from VAT for that fuel. Members, including the hon. Member for York Central and my hon. Friends the Members for Leeds North West and for Hendon, have drawn a comparison between air ambulance services and the provisions that apply to lifeboat services. The analogy between the critical life-saving services that both provide is clearly strong, but the relief from which the RNLI benefits relates not to charities or to life-saving services but to international transport. The RNLI makes good use of that, but it is not about life saving.
There is no equivalent provision for air ambulance services, or indeed for any other rescue services, and rectifying that would require a change to EU law. That would need unanimous approval by all 27 member states, and I am sure it will not surprise the House if I make the point that that is exceptionally difficult to achieve. The most recent discussions on reduced VAT rates took six years of charged negotiation to conclude. For that reason, I believe that there is little prospect of agreement on new zero VAT rates in the medium term, and the Government cannot legally introduce new zero rates without that agreement.
As my hon. Friends the Members for York Outer and for South Dorset noted, the air ambulance service comes in many shapes and sizes, and the VAT system supports different operating models in different ways. Charities that purchase their helicopters outright benefit from full VAT relief on the purchase cost, saving about £600,000 on the cost of a £3 million helicopter, whereas charities that lease their helicopters benefit from a similar relief on their leasing costs of about £86,000 a year for each helicopter. If the helicopter contractor makes no separate charge for fuel, the whole leasing cost is covered by the zero rate.
That situation has been likened to a zero rate on fuel for some charities and an unfair charge on others, but I disagree. Each charity is free to decide on the commercial operating arrangements it thinks best, so I would not describe the situation as an anomaly. Different operating models have different costs and benefits, and organisations of all kinds often lease their equipment because it is difficult, costly or risky to make a large up-front investment. I have seen no evidence to suggest that significant investment decisions are taken purely for tax purposes, given the many other substantial considerations that go into them.
The majority of air ambulances use aviation fuel rather than diesel, and aviation fuel for commercial flights is exempt from excise duties and taxed at a reduced VAT rate of 5% on each occasion when less than 2,300 litres is purchased. Although that is not specific to air ambulances, it represents a significant reduction in the cost of services for the majority of air ambulance charities, which use aviation fuel in their helicopters rather than diesel.
My hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford came up with the typically ingenious suggestion of using the Value Added Tax Act 1994. However, I have to disappoint her, because the exemption to which she referred relates to relevant goods and accessories for ambulances. Relevant goods cover parts and accessories, but not fuel, as fuel is neither a part nor an accessory. It was an ingenious idea for dealing with the matter, however.
The motion suggests that there should be an investigation into what should be done. There are many merits to reviewing the position of air ambulances to see whether some consistency can be achieved, and in that context it is useful to consider two separate reviews that the Government have already conducted. First, on the London air ambulance, which was raised by the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow and my hon. Friends the Members for Hendon and for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod), the Department of Health is working with other bodies to undertake a review of the capability and funding of emergency medical care of the type provided by the London air ambulance service. That follows the publication of the coroner’s report into the 7 July bombings. It is likely that the outcome of the review will have implications for other air ambulance services operating across the country. I can confirm that my officials will engage with the Department of Health on the review.
Rushanara Ali
Will the Minister indicate on what date we can expect the outcomes of the review and the publication of the report?
Mr Hoban
I do not have that information available but I will ensure that either my colleagues in the Department of Health or I write to the hon. Lady with it.
The second review that is being undertaken looks at the tax position of health care charities. The Secretary of State for Health is required by the Health and Social Care Act 2012 to lay a report before Parliament on matters that might affect the ability of providers of NHS services to carry out their activities. That report is expected to cover the full range of different providers, including charities, and will include taxation issues. Treasury officials will be actively involved in the review.
I therefore suggest that, rather than having a separate, Treasury-led review, the most efficient way forward is for the existing engagement to continue, and for the Department of Health and the Treasury to work collaboratively to consider the tax impacts of different funding models as part of the wider work already in hand.
John Healey
The Minister mentions the review under the 2012 Act, but it is a review of charities that carry out NHS services. The whole point about the air ambulance services is that they are not NHS services, although they play a great role in emergency health support. Therefore, they are unlikely to be covered by the second review. The Minister says that the review proposed in the motion is useful, but will he accept the motion and conduct the review it urges on him? I am still not clear about that.
Mr Hoban
I appreciate the right hon. Gentleman’s knowledge—he is a former shadow Secretary of State for Health—but my point is that the Treasury is working with Department of Health officials to ensure that the matter is covered by the review. I can confirm that, if it is ultimately not covered, the Treasury will carry out its own review. However, rather than having three reviews into air ambulances, I believe that two are sufficient if the second covers the tax issue. We are working with the Department of Health to ensure that that is the case. I can confirm to hon. Members that there will be a review and that the Government will not vote against the motion. Indeed, we believe it raises valid issues.
It would be possible in principle to introduce a refund system for air ambulance charities’ non-business activities, although it is important to consider that in the context of broader public spending, as I am sure my hon. Friends appreciate.
To refer to a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby, it is important for us to consider carefully how air ambulance charities can provide a better service by improving efficiency, and not just through refunds and tax breaks. Effective co-ordination of services could bring cost reductions that far outweigh the scale of a VAT refund on fuel. I am sure the House will join me in applauding such innovation and agree that we should continue to do all we can to improve this excellent service further. As my hon. Friend said, the air ambulance based in his constituency delivers a co-ordinated approach to providing the service across Warwickshire, Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Derbyshire and Rutland. It has made significant cost savings and earned the transformational change award at the Orange national business awards last year.
I hope I have set out clearly my reasoning on why a change to the VAT law is impractical. I believe the best review on a level playing field for providers is being done by the Department of Health, but, as I have made clear, if that does not fully cover air ambulances, the Treasury will conduct its own, separate review.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. The Minister has finished and is not giving way. I call Guy Opperman.
Guy Opperman
I suggest that the principle is the key. The proposed change would, without a shadow of doubt, potentially save lives. If anyone doubted the universal appeal of the air ambulance, we should look at who has spoken in this debate.
The debate was commenced on the Scottish border, in Hexham, but took in the constituencies of my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), my hon. Friends the Members for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) and for York Outer (Julian Sturdy), and the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley), as well as other Yorkshire constituencies, such as that of my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew). We then went down to the constituencies of my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) and the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland). Then we travelled down the country, taking in the constituencies of my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) and the right hon. Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth), as well as constituencies in London, such as those of my hon. Friends the Members for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod) and for Hendon (Dr Offord), before going down into Kent, to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch). We then went down to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax)—not forgetting my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey), whose constituency we passed on the way—before finally heading down towards the vast reaches represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris), and that is without taking into account the areas represented by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), and the Minister.
I am grateful that this has been a cross-party debate. My thanks go to all who signed the petition. The debate was also well informed, but it would have been helpful if the shadow Minister had remembered the 10 fuel duty rises from the last Government, which have had such an impact on the air ambulance service, and the fact that this Government have not put fuel duty up once.
To sum up, I want to give particular credit to two groups of individuals: to all the staff of the air ambulances, all over the country, and to all those who raise money for individual air ambulances. Last weekend I was at the Haydon Bridge beer festival, and I shall be at the Otterburn show raising money for these institutions this coming weekend. Anybody who has no plans for the Olympics in the summer can come and join me on the Pennine way odyssey, which is taking place in August, or give funds to the event. The principle is the key. The proposed change will save lives, and I commend the motion to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House supports wholeheartedly the work and actions of the Air Ambulance Service nationally, and all the individual crew members and staff, who provide an outstanding service to people up and down the UK; notes that the Air Ambulance Service is a charitable organisation, funded by donations given by the general public, and without any direct funding from Government; further notes that the Air Ambulance Service has saved successive governments millions of pounds; notes that the Air Ambulance Service provides an emergency service similar to the Lifeboat Service, and that the Lifeboat Service has been excluded from the EU VAT Directive on fuel costs since 1977, whereas the Air Ambulance Service has been required to pay for VAT on fuel; notes that successive governments have failed to provide a rebate or exemption to the Air Ambulance Service for this VAT; calls on the Government to conduct an urgent review of this situation; and further calls on the Government, in the next 12 months, to consider providing for grants to the Air Ambulance Service commensurate to the sums incurred by the Air Ambulance Service for the VAT on the fuel they purchase, and to publish the outcome of that review within this timescale.
London Local Authorities and Transport for London (No. 2) Bill [Lords]
(12 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
Very briefly, this is the revival motion for the Bill. I do not seek to prolong the House’s proceedings. The sponsors and promoters of the Bill have made a series of changes to various clauses, following Second Reading and the various stages in the House of Lords. I support the motion, and I trust that we can proceed with the Bill through its various stages and get it on to the statute book as fast as possible.
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
I will not detain the House any longer than is necessary—it is ironic that we have just voted for different hours for the House, so that we should be finishing more quickly. We generally support the Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Canterbury City Council Bill, Leeds City Council Bill, Nottingham City Council Bill and Reading Borough Council Bill
(12 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I support the revival motion for these Bills on behalf of the sponsors, who will be deeply grateful for their passing through the House again this evening.
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
We support the motion as well. There is nothing else to say.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That the promoters of the Canterbury City Council Bill, the Leeds City Council Bill, the Nottingham City Council Bill and the Reading Borough Council Bill, which were originally introduced in this House in Session 2007-08 on 22 January 2008, should have leave to proceed with the Bills in the current Session according to the provisions of Standing Order 188B (Revival of bills) (By Order).—(The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means.)
Transport for London Bill [Lords]
(12 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
This is a vital measure that I hope will progress rapidly through the House to allow Transport for London to order its disposal and acquisition of property as fast as possible.
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
I shall spare the House my 90-minute speech. We support the proposals.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House concurs with the Lords in their Resolution—(The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means.)
Business without Debate
(12 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
delegated legislation
(12 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
European Union documents
(12 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Business of the House
(12 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
petition
(12 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)
Further to the debate that we have just conducted on the air ambulance service, and in the light of the e-petition that has been presented to the Backbench Business Committee, it is my great pleasure to present on behalf of the citizens of Hexham and Tynedale a petition by several hundred residents who have submitted it via the good offices of my local newspaper, the Hexham Courant, and its editor, Mr Colin Tapping. This petition supports the e-petition.
The petition states:
The Petition of residents of Hexham,
Declares that the Petitioners believe that the Air Ambulance Service should be afforded a similar exemption from VAT on fuel to that enjoyed by the Lifeboat Service; and notes that the Air Ambulance service provides an essential service that is funded by charitable donations, saving successive Governments millions of pounds.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to review VAT arrangements on fuel for the Air Ambulance Service, and ensure that it is not subject to VAT.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P001108]
High Energy Caffeine Drinks
(12 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)
I am grateful to have secured this important debate on an issue of great concern to my constituents, and I very much welcome the opportunity to engage the House in considering the health effects of high energy caffeine drinks. At the outset, I must say that I have absolutely no intention of being alarmist about high energy caffeine drinks, as it is important to raise these issues in a temperate and moderate way. Furthermore, I do not intend to focus on any particular brand, because I am concerned with the issues and not with singling out individual brands; I shall mention them only in passing. When I use examples of specific brands, it will not be an attempt to target them; it will be because they will be useful to illustrate my arguments. It is my aim to bring to the House’s attention a serious issue that requires rigorous examination. It is my view that we need a sensible discussion on this topic in order to assess the availability of high energy caffeine drinks to at-risk people, their health effects and any risks or dangers associated with them.
This issue was brought to my attention by my constituent, Mrs Rebecca Rye. When I met Mrs Rye, she expressed her concerns about the availability of high energy caffeine drinks after she had discovered her son, Edward, then aged 12, buying a 500 ml can of a product called Monster. She suspects that he might have been drinking such products without her knowledge for some time while on his way to school. Fortunately, she was able to put an end to his drinking them. The point is that Edward was drinking them without his mother’s knowledge or permission because they were, and still are, so easy to get a hold of. After some challenges—I will not go into them tonight—Edward no longer drinks these high energy drinks and is aware of the health concerns: a happy conclusion was reached for the Rye family.
That is not always the case, however, and tragedy, with perhaps a connection to energy drinks, is no stranger to the Reading area. On new year’s day 2010, Shaun Biggs of Lower Earley lost his life as a result of sudden death syndrome. Shaun, who was 21, had been out celebrating the new year and was drinking the popular mixture of vodka and Red Bull with his friends. After a few drinks, Shaun collapsed in his hotel room and later died at Wexham Park hospital. Following the police autopsy report, toxicology results showed an alcohol reading of 76 mg in 100 ml of his blood—notably less than the legal drink-drive limit of 80 mg. The amount of caffeine in his blood told a different story, as it showed an excessive level. Consequently, the coroner found that Shaun died of sudden cardiac arrest.
Shaun’s parents are convinced that he died as a result of the caffeine he had ingested from the Red Bull. Peter Biggs, Shaun’s father, has founded the campaign SAFE, which stands for the Shaun Awareness Foundation for Energy Drinks. In memory of Shaun, Mr Biggs aims to raise awareness of the potentially lethal health consequences of high energy drinks. It is to raise awareness of that issue that I asked for this debate.
I believe it is time that the UK carried out an authoritative medical study into the health effects of these drinks. Perhaps this could be carried out by the NHS itself or by engaging a leading university’s toxicology or pharmacology departments. I therefore look forward to hearing from my hon. Friend the Minister about what can be done to facilitate an in-depth study here in the United Kingdom. As I will demonstrate, there is quite a lot of partial evidence from around the world, but a definitive UK study is needed so that we can have evidence-based Government policy in this area.
At present, the UK Food Standards Agency advises that
“children, or other people sensitive to caffeine, should only consume in moderation drinks with high levels of caffeine”.
This is sensible guidance, but apart from that, there is no regulation or any other particular guidance except for the wording on product packaging to emphasise that it is “not recommended” for children and pregnant women. In the circumstances, I do not feel this is sufficient for the dangers that appear to be present, particularly for vulnerable groups.
The Minister will be aware that EU regulations due to come into force in 2014 will require nutrition labelling and that this will have implications for the soft drinks industry and energy labels. That might be a good juncture significantly to improve labelling on these products and any additional warnings that might be deemed appropriate by the Department of Health.
At this point, I would like to give the British Soft Drinks Association credit for ensuring at least that information is available on the can as part of its code of conduct. Advising that a drink is high in caffeine content and therefore unsuitable for children under 16 or pregnant women is helpful. The industry deserves credit, too, for its precautionary policy of not marketing or promoting energy drinks to those under 16. We all know that energy drinks are popular, however, and are clearly branded to attract young people, but the industry needs to recognise that children under 16 are attracted to the manufacturers’ marketing as much as their older peers. I see these drinks all the time in my Reading East constituency, and nine times out of 10 they are in the hands of someone under the age of 25, including many clearly under 16. Regardless of the labelling due to arrive in 2014, the attractiveness of these products to young people will remain.
Energy drinks are now marbled into British youth culture. Their manufacturers claim the benefits of drinking them include increased mental alertness, wakefulness, attention, physical endurance and stamina. Indeed, one brand claims it “gives you wings”. Their caffeine content can vary significantly, from 50 mg to 240 mg, depending on container, brand and size. Some products contain a very high caffeine potency, some the equivalent of 12 cans of cola or of four to five cups of coffee. The typical caffeine measurement of a mug of instant coffee is 100 mg, and 140 mg for filter coffee, according to the BBC health website, but no sensible parent would hand their 10-year-old or 12-year-old child a mug of filter coffee, would they?
I believe that now is the time to make such assessments, asking whether those levels of caffeine in drinks are wise or acceptable, and whether there is a need to take action. We cannot undertake a proper analysis of the situation, however, without the required knowledge and advice, provided to us by professionals. Any action taken must of course be evidence-based, hence the need for a comprehensive study and for this debate.
It is worth the House noting that concerns about these drinks have been voiced for some time, but little has really been done to tackle the issue throughout the country. That is not a party political point; it is just a statement of fact. As a free-market Conservative, it is not my instinct to lunge for regulation or to ban things—quite the contrary. It is my view that informed adults should be free to purchase goods as and when they see fit, so long as they do no harm to others. Indeed, that is part of the reason why I sought election to this Chamber.
If a product is dangerous and proven to be, however, the state has a legitimate role to play in protecting consumer interests, particularly when vulnerable groups are involved. Indeed, we as Members of this House are duty bound to do so for our constituents, and I also believe that manufacturers have a responsibility to do so for their customers.
In considering the matter, it is helpful to look at the approach that is undertaken overseas. In Europe, Denmark and Norway did not authorise Red Bull for general sale for several years; in Sweden, energy drinks are not sold in major outlets to children under the age of 15, because of a self-imposed ban by companies; and in Argentina, not usually a country from which I take guidance, there is an ongoing debate about banning their sale in nightclubs. We can see the merit in that, as energy drink consumption is prevalent among young people having a night out. Pubs and clubs in Reading, including the university’s bars, sell plenty of drinks that include products such as Red Bull.
Across the Channel, France banned energy drinks in 1996, but its ban did not last and energy drinks are now on sale there. Sticking with the example of France, I note that awareness on the issue was raised when Irish athlete Ross Cooney, aged 18, died hours after drinking four cans of Red Bull, following a basketball match. His death prompted the French Government to ban Red Bull, but, following legal challenges from the European Commission in the European Court of Justice, the ban on the sale of Red Bull was lifted.
The ruling came about because EU regulations stipulate that a product made or sold in other EU countries cannot be banned unless a health risk is proven, and that is one of the key points—access to information and, importantly, awareness of the issue. That is where I believe a state-sponsored medical study could help us to understand energy drinks and their consequences for health, particularly among vulnerable groups such as children, adolescents and young adults.
In this country, energy drinks such as Monster, Red Bull and Relentless are readily available in shops and supermarkets and are sold like any other soft drink. Many people actually consider them a soft drink, but in reality they are not just any old soft drink; they are something very different. The average soft drink does not risk causing heart palpitations, hallucinations, seizures, mania, stroke, diabetes or sudden death.
That is not my list, but a list of findings in pockets of medical research and studies taken from numerous journals. Studies carried out in Canada, Australia and the United States warn of the health effects of energy drinks. Let us take, for example, a recent study from the university of Miami, published in February last year in Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
According to the report,
“these drinks have been reported in association with serious adverse effects, especially in children, adolescents, and young adults with seizures, diabetes, cardiac abnormalities, or mood and behavioural disorders or those who take certain medications.”
The report concludes:
“Energy drinks have no therapeutic benefit, and many ingredients are understudied and not regulated. The known and unknown pharmacology of agents included in such drinks, combined with reports of toxicity, raises concern for potentially serious adverse effects in association with energy-drink use.”
Those strong words pose serious questions and challenges. The need for more research, possibly leading to regulation, seems clear to me.
One of the ingredients that have been identified as needing further attention is taurine, an amino-acid commonly found in caffeine and sugar-laden drinks that jump-starts the metabolism. It is normally manufactured in the human body, and plays an important role in a good balanced diet. It is also found in, for example, meat and dairy products. However, some studies have indicated that synthetic taurine—the kind that is found in energy drinks—is linked to a range of illnesses, including high blood pressure, strokes, heart seizures and heart disease. Each 8 oz can of Red Bull contains 1,000 mg of taurine, and a can of Monster of the same size contains roughly same amount.
Given that taurine is such a prominent ingredient in energy drinks, it is surprising that we know so little about it. Researchers at Weill Cornell medical college in New York have said that
“Remarkably little is known about the effects”
of taurine in energy drinks, particularly on the brain, and other medical studies have indicated that it is linked to irritability and even hallucinations. Australian professor, Dan Lubman, director of the Turning Point Drug and Alcohol Centre, has said that it has been associated with self-mutilation in rats. Professor Lubman’s view on energy drinks is that
“just because they are freely available in our market does not mean they are safe.”
I am strongly inclined to agree with him.
Changes in behaviour have been linked to heavy consumption of energy drinks, again with tragic consequences. I am mindful of the sad case of 11-year-old Tyler Johns from Bolton, whose personality completely changed as he began to drink excessive amounts of energy drinks, according to a national newspaper report. Tyler hanged himself in his bedroom, and his parents allegedly blame energy drinks for his “addiction”. Described by his father as once a happy-go-lucky child, he changed when he began consuming those drinks, which were freely available and cheap. He was suspended from school and enrolled in a re-integration programme at another school. During that time he was not drinking energy drinks, and his behaviour improved. He even scooped several certificates. When he resumed drinking, the poor pattern of his behaviour resumed, and tragically ended in suicide. When his mother found him, a 1 litre caffeine drink was found near his body.
Following an open verdict at Tyler’s inquest, his parents remained convinced that energy drinks had claimed their son. After his son’s inquest, Lee Johns said:
“Tyler is so missed. These drinks did affect him. They should not be sold to those under 16. There is so much said about what children should eat and there are links between children’s behaviour and food. Yet these drinks are freely available.”
Picking up Mr Johns’s point, I urge the Government to consider a temporary ban on the sale of energy drinks to under-16s until research has been commissioned, or, at the very least, much clearer and mandatory labelling. Given the British Soft Drinks Association’s policy of not targeting the under-16 age bracket, I cannot see why they would object to that suggestion.
Behaviour change in the young following the consumption of energy drinks is painfully obvious. In yesterday’s edition of the London Evening Standard, the celebrity chef Jamie Oliver said that he would ban such drinks, remarking that parents
“might as well be giving them cocaine”
owing to the hyperactivity and disruption that they can cause in schools. Mr Oliver’s words ware passionate—that is his way—but he also made the point that teaching children who have downed a can of an energy drink is extremely challenging, and given his understanding of nutrition and his involvement with young people, I think that his opinions are well worth listening to.
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman’s comments and would like to support his argument. In my constituency, a group of parents is collecting a petition on exactly his points about sales to under-16s and investigations into the long-term effects. They have seen a marked impact on their children from these drinks, which, as he said, can contain the equivalent of up to eight or nine cups of coffee. Unfortunately, parents cannot control their children at the point of purchase and are not with their children every moment of the day. I support his objectives, therefore, and will listen carefully to what the Minister says.
Mr Wilson
I welcome that intervention and wish the parents collecting that petition the best of luck. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will speak up on their behalf on many occasions in the House, and perhaps we can work together to push this campaign through the House.
I understand that Oxted school in Surrey has banned these drinks, as has Chatsmore Catholic high school in Goring, and that Cardinal Newman school in East Sussex has asked local shops not to sell drinks to their pupils. Concern also extends to the police. I understand that in Whitchurch, Hampshire, the police have asked local shops to stop selling the products to under-16s on Friday nights. I urge the Minister to be mindful of the concerns of our police and schools.
I have also mentioned hallucinations. In 2010, a study published in the American Journal of Pharmacology and Toxicology found that taurine is implicated in hallucination. Closer to home, academics at the University of Durham have recorded increased likelihood of hallucination from high caffeine intake. Similar conclusions were drawn by Professor Simon Crowe from the school of psychological sciences at La Trobe university in Australia. High caffeine intake is linked to auditory hallucination, according to the professor.
Concerns have been relayed to me that the hallucinogenic risks of taurine are far more potent in the young. I am not a toxicologist—and as far as I am aware there are not many in this House or the other place—but it seems clear to me that we need a study into taurine in energy drinks and its effect on the human body. At present, it seems that we have a situation in which a form of Russian roulette is being played with energy drinks, sometimes with tragic consequences. An in-depth study would increase our understanding of these drinks and their consequences for health. Once we have that greater medical understanding, we can take appropriate action, if needed.
As I touched on earlier, energy drinks are targeted at the young. The drinks have become a sort of fashion status, a symbol, the trendy thing. It is not unusual to see their logos on T-shirts or baseball caps these days. As I said, these drinks are marbled into the youth culture in our country, and given the concerns surrounding their health effects a serious examination needs to take place here as well.
Stars in sport and the music industry are increasingly linked to energy drinks. For example, Relentless is a sponsor of 2013’s UK-wide tour from the music channel Kerrang!, Welsh international rugby player Jamie Roberts advertises Red Bull, and the Welsh rock band Bullet For My Valentine feature on the Monster website. The advice of the Food Standards Agency—that children should consume heavily caffeinated drinks in moderation—clearly does not seem to be working. If young people think it cool and trendy to consume the drinks and they are easily and readily available, there is little we can do about it.
The study from the University of Miami viewed young people with cardiac or seizure disorders as particularly vulnerable. We just have to look at the figures to see the overall vulnerability. The study highlights the fact that, in 2007, 46% of the caffeine overdoses in the US occurred in people under the age of 19. In Ireland, between 1999 and 2005, 17 separate incidents of specifically energy drink-related adverse events were recorded, including confusion, rapid heartbeat, seizures and two deaths. Similarly, between 2005 and 2009, New Zealand’s poison centre reported 20 energy drink-related adverse events, with 12 cases of vomiting, nausea, abdominal pain, jitteriness, rapid heartbeat and agitation referred for treatment.
The Miami report does not make it clear whether the Irish and New Zealand figures are those for young people, but we should hold this in mind: even if they are not exclusively younger cases and they apply solely to adults, the effects on younger people are presumably much worse. Polish research published by the European Society of Hypertension in May showed that energy drinks ranging in strength from 120 mg to 340 mg of caffeine have adverse effects for otherwise healthy adults aged between 20 and 35, including irregular heartbeats, anxiety and insomnia.
In February, Time magazine’s “Healthland” section was right to label the Miami report’s findings as “especially worrisome” for children suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, heart conditions or diabetes. Medical research has made a link—
Mr Wilson
Medical research has also made a link between energy drinks and the development of type 2 diabetes, but more work needs to be done on that. We must not lose sight of the fact that the treatment of type 2 diabetes cost the NHS £11.7 billion in 2010. When we include the cost to the economy, the total cost is roughly £27 billion lost to type 2 diabetes each year. I have few doubts that high energy drinks can claim some responsibility for adding to those costs. I shall be interested to learn whether the Minister can shed any light on this, so that we can see the economic as well as the health cost of these high energy drinks.
In summary, I believe that the case for a Government-initiated study is overwhelming—we should simply get on with it. But while the Government look at the research data with the experts, it would be wise to take a precautionary approach, particularly in respect of the under-16s. If we can prevent even one death with a temporary ban on shop sales to under-16s, we should do it. I urge the Minister and the Government to consider this very carefully.
As an absolute minimum we should ensure much clearer labelling on products, their ingredients and the dangers they pose to young people. That is not the nanny state at work; it would be a sensible and responsible Government intervention to inform the public of the scientific and medical facts on an issue that may well be costing lives. Similarly, it is not an attack on the soft drinks industry. In fact, I believe we should work with it on the issue, and I look forward to doing so.
Let me finish by saying that an evidence-based study, perhaps carried out by the Food Standards Agency and supervised by the NHS, will allow us to do our job in this place in making evidence-based decisions and ensuring that consumers, especially the vulnerable, are properly protected.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Anne Milton)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Reading East (Mr Wilson) on securing this debate and applaud his desire not to be alarmist, as it is easy to be alarmist on occasions such as this, particularly given the tragic stories he quoted this evening. I also applaud his desire to have an evidence-based approach. Such an approach always sounds simple, but it is not always that easy to obtain in practice, because the evidence is sometimes conflicting and confusing.
There is no doubt that nothing is more important than the food and drink we give to our children. Innumerable studies have been done on how it affects their education, their behaviour and their development. It is our responsibility as politicians, as adults and as parents to make sure that all children are eating a good and varied diet. My hon. Friend is clearly well aware that caffeine appears in many different foods, from various sources. It occurs naturally in things such as tea, coffee and chocolate, and is traditionally used as a component for the flavouring of cola drinks. In addition, of course, the reason for this debate is that it is also added as a stimulant to energy drinks. What is interesting for me in doing this job is that it is sometimes staggering how low awareness is. I think that most people are aware that caffeine is present in coffee, but they are perhaps not so aware that it is also present in tea and chocolate.
We need to recognise, of course, that in sensible doses caffeine is perfectly all right. However, as my hon. Friend will no doubt know if he has ever drunk one too many espressos, it does have its side effects. In 2003, the European Scientific Committee on Food specifically looked at high-caffeine soft drinks, finding that in its opinion those drinks did indeed cause increased excitability, irritability, nervousness or anxiety in some people who drank them, particularly if those people were normally low consumers of caffeine—that is where we get into the issue about children. Such effects were seen when someone consumed about 5 mg of caffeine per kilogram of bodyweight. That is the equivalent of about 300 mg of caffeine for an average adult and 150 mg for an average 10-year-old child. As a comparison, the amount of caffeine in a can of a typical high-caffeine energy drink is 80 mg, which is about the same as that found in a mug of instant coffee.
The committee said that caffeine appears to affect people’s heart rate and blood pressure, but it also said that those effects were short term and did not appear to have any long-term effects or cause heart attacks. I remind my hon. Friend that that study was conducted in 2003. The Committee did not at that time consider it necessary to establish a recommended daily limit for caffeine.
There are many anecdotal reports of young people having heart attacks after drinking too many energy drinks—my hon. Friend mentioned some of those cases—but those reports are not always complete, and these cases have often involved someone drinking such drinks along with consuming alcohol or drugs, thus clearly limiting the ability to draw conclusions. That shows why building up a good evidence base can be quite difficult.
The independent UK Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment is currently investigating the interaction between caffeine and alcohol, and is expected to report back later this year. My hon. Friend mentioned a number of tragic cases and the campaign started by some of the families who have been affected, and I want to applaud their efforts. It is always remarkable to see how families can turn a tragic incident into a campaign to do good for others. The committee’s study will be important in further informing us about the effects of caffeine.
Consumers need to be aware that there is information about caffeine content on the labels of high-energy drinks. Because some people may be particularly sensitive to caffeine, legislation was introduced across Europe in 2003 that stated that drinks with high levels of caffeine had to be labelled with the words “high caffeine content”. Those drinks also had to carry an indication of the actual caffeine content in milligrams per litre, so people can see exactly how much caffeine they are drinking. That labelling is not needed for tea and coffee, or drinks based on them, because it is generally accepted that people already know they contain caffeine. We do need to be much better at informing consumers, and persuading them to be better consumers and to read the labels of the products they eat and drink. The labelling requirement comes into play when a drink contains more than 150 mg of caffeine per litre. A typical high-caffeine energy drink would contain 320 mg of caffeine per litre, and therefore would have to be labelled.
In line with the May 2010 voluntary code of practice developed by the British Soft Drinks Association, many high-caffeine drinks also carry extra labelling to make it clear that such drinks are not suitable for children or people sensitive to caffeine. My hon. Friend praised the BSDA for its action and mentioned that recent changes at European level will make such labelling mandatory by December 2014. I am always pleased to see UK manufacturers acting responsibly by pre-empting legislation and making sure such labelling is already the norm. The code of practice also states that high-caffeine soft drinks should not be advertised, marketed or promoted to those under 16.
Finally, Government advice is that children and other people who are sensitive to caffeine should be careful with high-caffeine soft drinks, just as they should be with other products with lots of caffeine, such as coffee. Our advice is that they should be sensible and drink them only in moderation. If only it was that easy, and people just took the advice they were given; sadly, however, they do not always do so.
Mr Rob Wilson
My hon. Friend seems to acknowledge that children under 16 should not be drinking these drinks, and I think that that is even the advice of the industry. However, while a 12-year-old can go to their corner shop and buy those drinks there is no deterrent and nothing to stop them. What can the Minister say to me tonight about what will help to stop 12-year-olds going into local shops and buying these drinks unless we do something about it in this place?
Anne Milton
I thank my hon. Friend for his question and I will go into that point in a little more detail. We live in a world where children and adults are bombarded with information and it is not always possible to legislate our way out of a problem. I will say something more about that in a minute.
My hon. Friend referred to a report by the University of Miami on the possible effects of energy drinks on children and young people. Officials at the Food Standards Agency consider the study a useful review of a great deal of existing information, but it does not provide conclusive evidence to change the conclusions previously drawn by the EU Scientific Committee on Food. It does, however, add to our information base, to which we must continue to add.
I want to reassure my hon. Friend, just as I would like to reassure everyone, that the Food Standards Agency will continue to monitor the situation. It is extremely important that all Governments remain open minded and continue to look at any new evidence that becomes available. At the moment, the scientific advice is that the effects of caffeine are short term and information labelling is thorough and widespread, but, as I have said, that is not the end of the story.
My hon. Friend quoted extensively from the experiences of other countries. It is critical to remain open minded as new evidence emerges. I do not often have the privilege of being able to talk about this but I sit on the European Health Council, which gives me an opportunity to meet Health Ministers from other European countries and, indeed, such issues come up at those meetings. It is important to share experiences. He talked about raising awareness and I have no doubt that the opportunity he has taken to raise the issue tonight will play its part in doing just that.
The difficulty and the challenge in considering evidence, of course, is filtering out the impact of the particular ingredients in these drinks when there are so many confounding factors. That is why the Government need to be mindful of the research that is produced, particularly when there are also obvious and immediate commercial pressures. We are always battling against that.
I note my hon. Friend’s quote from Jamie Oliver. Passion is never a bad thing. It is good to feel the passion from other people and it helps raise awareness. The problem of the sale of alcohol to under-age children is not easy in itself. I note and commend the action taken by some schools that have taken a lead, presumably because they have had problems with the behaviour of children and are concerned about the quantity of high energy drinks their children are drinking. My hon. Friend has covered a lot of detail, particularly about the impact of taurine. Sadly, I cannot respond specifically on the question of that one ingredient this evening, but if there is any more information that I feel will be useful or helpful to him I will ensure that he receives it in a letter.
Responsibility for public health will move to local authorities. We are keen to achieve much better informed consumers, and that includes children. Smoking is taken up by 320,000 children each year, and we have a big battle on our hands. In my role as Minister with responsibility for public health, it is important that I understand that some of the choices that children face are very complex. We need to ensure that they have the skills they need to make good decisions about their life and that they have the information on which to base those decisions.
My hon. Friend strayed into type 2 diabetes, and there is a danger of my straying much further tonight. However, I finish by commending my hon. Friend for raising this issue and for the work that he has obviously done with some of those people and families who have been affected. I look forward to working with him in the future to ensure that we do all that we can to further the cause he has raised.
Question put and agreed to.
Westminster Hall
(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Hospital Services (West London)
(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to be here under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, and a pleasure to see so many colleagues from west London, of various parties, here for an important debate that concerns us all. It is a particular pleasure to see the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray), relieved of the cares and constraints of office and therefore able to speak. I am slightly surprised that she chose to be pushed over House of Lords reform rather than this issue, the third and fourth runways at Heathrow airport or the cuts to Sure Start, pensions and other things that are going into the next manifesto, but we all find our path to salvation. I also welcome the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field), who already adorns the Back Benches. I hope that we can see others, including the hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands), joining the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton soon in order to fight the appalling changes to our health service.
Members of Parliament for the north-west London NHS area represent 2 million Londoners, and I know that all of them, whether they can be here or not, are very concerned by the proposals in the consultation document, “Shaping a healthier future”, published on 2 July. I will primarily deal with that document today. I intend to confine my comments, as the debate’s title suggests, to the effect on the major hospitals in north-west London of the proposed changes. Given the time constraints and the fact that hon. Members with more knowledge of hospitals in their own constituencies are here to speak, I will deal principally with the risks to Charing Cross and Hammersmith hospitals, but I will try to put those in the wider context of what can only be called a crisis in the NHS in north-west London. That is in the light of the further decision last week to put the future of Royal Brompton hospital at risk by the closure of children’s cardiac services there and the failure by Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust to manage waiting lists and GP referrals.
The Minister will have seen the letter that I sent last week to the Secretary of State, asking for independent intervention to rescue the health service in west London before matters get more out of hand. I will expand on that and hope that the Minister can respond positively.
The other point that I will make in opening the debate is that the consultation should not be a Dutch auction. I do not think that any hon. Member will have come here to say, “Don’t close my hospital; close his or hers.” Every hon. Member and, indeed, every member of the public I have spoken to in the past few weeks wants to challenge not the detail or options that we are offered, such as they are, but the premise that such a major downgrading of the health service is sustainable, safe or sensible. If any hon. Member here felt a moment’s relief when they saw the schedule of closures—in particular, of accident and emergency departments—and realised that their local hospital was not on it, that relief was short-lived. The question immediately arose: how will the five remaining A and Es cope with the consequence of closing four busy departments and the consequent downgrading of other hospital services?
I am pleased to see here hon. Members representing, I think, all the north-west London hospitals, not only those under threat. Neither I nor my constituents are resistant to change in the NHS or unaware of the cost pressures that it faces. Indeed, it is the Government, not us, who need to be candid about both their failure to fund the NHS and the underlying financial motivation for these proposals.
The medical director for north-west London has been admirably frank. In approving the consultation two weeks ago, he stated that the local NHS would
“literally run out of money”
if the closures did not go ahead.
Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. Does he agree that whatever the shortfall in funding in London that he talks about, more funding has gone into the NHS from the current Government than ever before?
Mr Slaughter
Apart from the bit of fun that I had at the beginning of the debate, I am going to stay off party politics. I think the hon. Lady knows that the NHS was rescued under a Labour Government, and knows about the increase in funding then. She will also know from articles in the press this week and last that in fact, the promise made by the Prime Minister before the election to increase funding for the health service is not being kept. [Interruption.] I therefore think that that was a bad point to make. [Interruption.]
Mr Slaughter
There has already been significant change in hospital services in north-west London. That has been for clinical and financial reasons. It has involved within Imperial the centralising of services, including renal, paediatric, oncology and vascular specialisms. More of that was anticipated. Other proposals for savings have been leaking out of Imperial for the past six months. Further moves away from hospital to community or GP services were expected—but nothing on the current scale.
This review is driven by the need to cut costs and is unrestrained because the chaotic reorganisation in the NHS, for which the Minister must answer, means that there is no accountability on the part of those who are making decisions. The Joint Committee of Primary Care Trusts, itself a body artificially created to make these cuts, is neither their author, nor will it survive to see their execution.
I would like to say a little about the history of hospital services in my part of west London, the scale of the changes proposed and the flawed process under which they are being made. I would then like to summarise the emerging public and professional views on the proposals, before finally asking the Minister for his response. Given that many in the NHS see the north-west London proposals as a prototype for what will happen elsewhere, it is not satisfactory for him to disown interest. He must either justify or be prepared to criticise the loss of front-line hospital services.
Each of the hospitals now under threat has a long and distinguished history. I am afraid I am old enough to remember when Charing Cross was Fulham hospital and when Chelsea and Westminster was St Stephen’s. Hospitals have stood on the Hammersmith campus since 1905 and at Charing Cross since 1884. Originally, these were workhouse infirmaries, fever hospitals or military hospitals. They have evolved into the world-class treatment centres that they are today. I do not want to take up a great deal of time with the history, but while preparing for the debate, I did come across this interesting paragraph on the opening of Hammersmith hospital:
“Immediately on opening, there was an outcry about the cost of the…building…£261,000…and its lavishness. The vestibule was paved with mosaic and was surrounded with a dado of the most expensive encaustic tiles. The dining hall was ‘of baronial splendour’. The press dubbed it the ‘Paupers’ Paradise’ and the ‘Palace on the Scrubs’.”
I did not know the Daily Express was going in 1905, but clearly it was. I am not sure that that was a completely accurate representation of the hospital, because its annual report for 1957 illustrated a granite block—part of the last consignment to the workhouse for breaking up by the inmates of the casual ward. I do not want to give the Minister any ideas about reintroducing rock breaking for out-patients, but that does show that we have come a long way over that time.
The Minister may say that I am being nostalgic in looking at the history of Hammersmith’s hospitals or that it is evidence that change in the health service is nothing new, but that misses the point. These hospitals have grown up on their current sites and changed in response to local need. These are some of the most densely populated parts of the UK. There is intensive residential development in the area: tens of thousands of new homes are planned for the next decade. This is a population with complex health needs and high turnover. This is an area with major transport infrastructure—air, road and rail—and with risks ranging from major trauma accidents to tropical and infectious diseases.
The accident and emergency departments under threat are always busy. They are trusted by my constituents. They have evolved to work side by side with GP practices, walk-in clinics and urgent care centres. However, they work, because the level of clinical expertise available can be adapted to cases ranging from the relatively minor to the very serious. I understand the debate about having fewer major trauma centres—the trade-off between travelling further and losing critical treatment time against the quality of care on arrival. I do not think that that argument is settled, not least because of the unpredictable and congested road system in west London, but also because of the conflicting opinions as to how crucial minutes can be in reaching specialist care in different trauma cases. What is unarguable is that the vast majority of patients currently attending A and E will potentially receive a worse service. They will not be sure whether their condition merits a longer trip to a hospital that still has A and E services, or whether seeing a GP at an urgent care centre will suffice. There will certainly be confusion and delay, and overall standards in quality of care will fall.
Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
I apologise for missing the first couple of minutes of my hon. Friend’s remarks. Does he accept that, notwithstanding the proposed closure programme, there is already growing concern about the length of waiting times in A and E? Many of my constituents will be worried that their wait at Northwick Park hospital A and E unit will increase as a result of this closure programme.
Mr Slaughter
My hon. Friend missed the point that I made at the beginning: this affects all MPs and all communities in north-west London, not only those expecting the closure of services. The closures go against the thrust of the changes in the health service over the past five to 10 years, which have seen the huge pressure on A and Es relieved by the addition of urgent care centres, not the replacement of A and Es by them.
Mr Slaughter
I give way to my hon. Friend and will give way to the Minister in a moment.
Ms Buck
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He was with me when we met representatives of north-west London recently and were advised that the number of A and E attendances is rising by about 10% a year. Does he agree that, even for those of us who agree that in an ideal world, we would reduce unnecessary A and E admissions through the provision of quality care in the community, it is wrong to propose the closure of A and E units before we have a demonstrable improvement in the community facilities that would allow for that reduction in unnecessary A and E admissions?
Mr Slaughter
Indeed, and I will come on to that when I talk about the process and history of the closure of services.
Mr Slaughter
I am here to question the Minister, and I hope that in response he will not adopt the complacent tone that he has just shown.
Mr Slaughter
I will not give way to the Minister again yet. I want to make some progress. We shall see what happens in a few moments, but after I give way to my hon. Friend, I really must move on.
Mr Thomas
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. I do not know whether the Minister’s intervention was prompted by the recent answers he gave to my parliamentary questions. He will be aware of the approximately 180,000 people who waited more than four hours from arrival in A and E to departure. Will my hon. Friend ask the Minister for an assurance in his final remarks that the figure is not likely to rise for the 2011-12 period?
Mr Slaughter
I am happy to trade statistics with the Minister, but the debate is not about incremental performance, but the fundamental change to services.
Mr Slaughter
I am glad that the Minister is praising the standards of health care in Hammersmith. Saving the recent problems over referrals, we are all very proud of the standard of clinical care that people receive in our world-class hospitals under a world-class trust. The subject of the debate, which I hope that the Minister will address, is the fundamental changes being wrought on that and other trusts in north-west London, which will damage the standard of medical care and the health of my constituents. He has entirely missed the point.
The headline news from the consultation launched last week is the proposed closure of both A and E departments in my constituency, along with two of those closest by: Central Middlesex and Ealing. Clearly, that is a disaster for everyone living in the area, perhaps particularly for those in Shepherds Bush, White City and Old Oak, which include some of the poorest areas in London, with low car ownership, poor health outcomes and low life expectancy. The consequences for the two hospitals however are very different. Although neither will provide emergency care for my constituents, Hammersmith will remain a specialist hospital, but Charing Cross will be reduced to little more than an urgent care centre on an otherwise vacated site. Of the 500 beds, all but 30 will be closed or moved elsewhere. One of the largest and busiest hospitals in London will effectively become a clinic.
I want to move on to talk a little about the process of the review. I want to spend time on that, because it is the reason why there is so much disquiet and so much need for external intervention. Proposals for the closure of hospitals in Hammersmith have a chequered history. In my constituency office, I have a photograph of the former Health Minister, Ann Keen, standing on a chair with a megaphone outside Charing Cross hospital, when she was head of nursing there in the early 1990s and there was a massive community campaign against the then Conservative Government’s attempt to close the hospital. That campaign was successful, as I am sure this one will be. Over and between the past two elections there were, what I can only call scurrilous rumours that Charing Cross hospital would close either wholly or in part. That substantially muddied the waters, and was done, I think, purely for electoral advantage, in that there was no substance to those rumours at the time.
The rumours resurfaced last autumn in an article on the front page of The Independent, which speculated that either St Mary’s or Charing Cross or both would close. Following that, I, my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) and, I am sure, others, sought assurances from Imperial College trust that that was not the case, and we were given those assurances. We are now told in the documentation, which I have brought with me today and was approved by the Joint Committee of Primary Care Trusts two weeks ago, that, over the past two years, when we were being assured that there would not be closures of the type now mooted, a very close consultation was going on and we all knew about it.
To take one page from the documents, it tells me that I received five pieces of correspondence from the trust in relation to the closures, and that at a meeting in March, which I did not attend, I was represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North. She is in the room and may contradict me: I did not know about that meeting and I certainly did not authorise her to represent me at that meeting.
Although I do not rule out some of the documents having been sent to me, they are junk e-mails—I do not use the term offensively; it is accurate. They are electronic newsletters that go straight into the very efficient House of Commons spam system. If we retrieve the e-mails and look at them, we can read things like, “There will be major improvements at Hammersmith and Charing Cross hospitals in the near future.” Even the document sent on the Thursday before the decision was taken, which was hidden in another newsletter from the chief executive of the trust, did not spell out the proposals.
When we walked into the decision-making meeting at Central hall Westminster two weeks ago, we were handed a bundle of 18 volumes of documentation to look at, which I believe had been available online for two days before that—very generous. We were expected to understand and respond then. That is not consultation. We are now told that a thorough process has been gone through, in which opinion formers have been consulted, and therefore we can proceed to the public consultation. We are presented with a fait accompli. The medical director of NHS North West London, Dr Spencer, when asked whether it was worth people lobbying and petitioning as part of the consultation process, said:
“No. People are currently wedded to mediocre services. If we don’t do this then people need to realise that our hospitals will go bankrupt. We have already seen this in south London.”
That does not sound to me like open and reasonable consultation. What is taking place is a pretence of consultation.
The options are no options at all. There is a preferred option, which I am sure will be adopted, and two others. All of them involve closing the A and E department at Hammersmith hospital, and two involve closing the A and E department at Charing Cross hospital. We will get the usual farrago of road shows, boards and helpful-looking people standing around with clipboards asking for our views. I am told that there is a five-page document that will be delivered, doubtless summarising the much larger consultation document, to all households in the area. However, if someone actually wants to take part in the consultation, they either have to go online—a lot of my constituents do not have access to the internet—or request a questionnaire.
NHS North West London could not provide me with a copy of the questionnaire or indeed a copy of the consultation document for the meeting that I had last Friday. I managed to print one off the internet and Sir Humphrey would have a field day with it. Buried at question 15, it says:
“How far do you support or oppose our recommendation that we should use our high quality hospital buildings with spare space as elective hospitals?”
At question 17, it says, and this is the closest that the questionnaire comes to asking a clear question in all its 50 pages:
“How far do you support or oppose the recommendation that there should be five major hospitals in North West London?”
At the meeting where it was decided that there would be consultation, I specifically asked, “Will there be questions that people will understand? Will there be questions such as, ‘Do you agree that Hammersmith hospital’s A and E should close?’, or, ‘Do you agree that the hyper-acute centre should move?’, or ‘Do you agree that the A and E at Charing Cross should close?’” There are no questions of that kind. As far as I can see, there is no question that relates to Charing Cross hospital’s A and E department at all. The only question that relates to Hammersmith hospital says:
“All the options above include the recommendation that Hammersmith Hospital should be a specialist hospital. There would continue to be a maternity unit at Hammersmith. How far do you support or oppose the recommendation that Hammersmith Hospital should be a specialist hospital with a maternity unit?”
My constituents are supposed to take from that the fact that they are losing their A and E service. As I have said already, they are living in some of the most deprived communities in the country and many of them have English as a second language. So I do not accept that this consultation is a valid process.
I want to finish before 10 am, because I know that a number of Members wish to speak. However, I will just make two or three other points. First, there is professional opinion to consider. It is increasingly clear that this proposal does not have the support of the local GPs. At a meeting of Ealing GPs a week or so ago to which my colleagues—my hon. Friends the Members for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) and for Ealing North (Stephen Pound)—may wish to refer if they speak, there was universal opposition to the proposal from the 50 or so local GPs who were present. The only local GPs who did not oppose the process were those who are involved in it, and they abstained. I have written to Hammersmith GPs and they have expressed only questions, queries and doubts about the process in response to my inquiries.
Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)
Will my hon. Friend give way briefly on a point of information?
Stephen Pound
At that particular meeting of GPs, the voting figures, which I am sure hon. Members will want to know about, were 47 against and three for.
Mr Slaughter
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that information. I had thought that the vote was 47 against, with three abstentions, but I always stand to be corrected by him.
The bodies that have supposedly devised these proposals are indeed the commissioning groups. As far as I can see, the only people supporting these proposals on a clinical level among the GP community are those who are heavily involved and who perhaps have a vested interest in relation to those commissioning groups, which of course will not take control until April next year.
It is absolutely true that, unlike some other hospital trusts, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust is at best acceding to this process and at worst actively supporting it. It is very clear why it is adopting that approach and why it would see the closure of two of its own A and E departments. The Imperial trust is in deep and dire financial trouble. It has a deficit of more than £100 million and the ability to close down significant services and, perhaps more importantly, to free up one of the most lucrative pieces of real estate in London—in other words, most of the Charing Cross hospital site—presumably for commercial disposal will, it believes, allow it to see its way out of its financial difficulties. Therefore, I am afraid that its opinion is coloured by that judgment.
Let me move on to discuss public opinion briefly. At 48 hours’ notice, I called a public meeting by e-mail and 250 people turned up. I also put a petition online and within a day 750 people had signed it. We have set up a consultative committee under the banner, “Save Hammersmith and Fulham hospitals”, which involves 40 concerned local residents. They have no particular political affiliation; they simply care about their local health services.
All that is but the germ of what I am sure will be the largest campaign of public opposition across west London that we have seen. There will be no safe parliamentary seats in west London if the Government pursue this course of action; there will be no limit on the opposition to the proposals, and there will be marches, petitions and protests until they are withdrawn.
I am hopeful that there will be a debate—at least a partial one—next Tuesday on the Floor of the House about children’s cardiac services, and therefore I will not spend as much time today discussing that issue as I had planned to. All I will say now is that the same body that has been involved in the proposals about my area—the Joint Committee of Primary Care Trusts—has taken the extraordinary step of recommending the closure of the children’s cardiac unit at the Royal Brompton hospital, despite knowing that there were no risks attendant on keeping it open. On the contrary, it is a world-class unit with world-class doctors and surgeons. Moreover, the JCPCT also took that step in the knowledge that a range of other world-class services at the Royal Brompton hospital—the respiratory service, the cystic fibrosis service and the neuromuscular services—are also at risk. The Royal Brompton hospital is not in my constituency, but it is used by my constituents and indeed I substantially used it myself when I was severely asthmatic in younger life. It is unthinkable that it should be put at risk by this decision to recommend the closure of services and I am glad to see that there is opposition to the review by the JCPCT from around the country.
Let me also mention the concerns that we in Hammersmith have about the Imperial trust and its use of data. I will quote from an article in last week’s Fulham and Hammersmith Chronicle, a local newspaper:
“An investigation has been launched to determine whether data recording blunders by Imperial College NHS Healthcare Trust could have cost lives. The panicked trust…realised there had been major errors in the way it handled recording files for patients referred for cancer tests earlier this year. People suspected of having cancer are required to be tested within two weeks of being referred by their GP. But Imperial found its records of this treatment path was flawed, with many incomplete, giving no indication of whether the patient was tested or not, and others duplicated.”
Furthermore, as was widely reported in the press last week, there were 25 deaths in that period in the local area that are still under investigation.
The issue of the Imperial trust’s record keeping and referrals was first raised by me in February. I know that there has been some limited improvement in clearing the backlog of cases, but it is simply not acceptable that a trust serving such a large proportion of west London’s population can continue to keep data in this condition.
That brings me to my final point, which is what I am seeking from the Minister. The Secretary of State for Health wrote to me last week and said that the consultation process
“is a matter for the local NHS.”
However, he acknowledged that
“there is an independent scrutiny and review process…which is overseen by local Health Overview and Scrutiny Committees (OSCs). OSCs have the power to refer proposals…which I am then able to pass…to the Independent Reconfiguration Panel for advice.”
I have no doubt that will happen at some stage, because there is such overwhelming opposition to these proposals from local authorities as well as from MPs and their constituents across west London. However, given the farce of this purported consultation and the way that this matter has been handled so far by NHS North West London, it would be better for the Government to act now and call off this consultation, review the proposals and engage genuinely with MPs, clinicians and local authorities in reaching a sensible set of conclusions and proposals. We are not luddites; we do not oppose change in the health service for the sake of it. But our NHS and our local hospitals are very special places. People who have used those hospitals—sometimes over generations—have a unique relationship with them. I am sure that is true. I know that the Minister is familiar with the area and has past associations with it, so he will know what I am talking about. I know that he will also be aware of my constituents’ special and particular problems in terms of complex health needs.
I ask the Government in what I hope is an open-handed spirit to look now at what is happening, not only in the Imperial trust but in NHS North West London, because this situation cannot be allowed to continue.
Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) on getting this important debate, which affects all of us who are central and west London MPs. I am sure that he regrets the necessity of the debate. Our constituencies have a number of hospitals in common and, over some time, he and I have discussed health matters that affect them. New commissioning boards, run by local GPs, will come into play from next April. The Westminster board will share its management with Hammersmith and Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea, and Hounslow, and it is currently considering how the hospital configuration in west London should work. It is the soon-to-be-defunct primary care trusts, however, that will formally make the final decision.
As recently as 25 June, the North West London Joint Committee of Primary Care Trusts considered the business case for closing four A and E departments in the north-west London region. The plans are out for consultation until 6 October, and the results will, I think, be presented to the PCTs in advance of final consideration next January. As the hon. Member for Hammersmith pointed out, it is recommended that four departments in west London be closed, including those at the Hammersmith and Charing Cross hospitals in his constituency. The plan is that people can easily be steered away from A and E and towards their local health centres and GP services. There are of course a couple of fall-back options, both of which involve closing Hammersmith, though. One also involves closing Charing Cross, and the other affects the Chelsea and Westminster hospital, which, although outside my constituency—in that of my hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands)—serves a considerable number of my constituents. The joint committee seems to favour the closure of both Hammersmith and Charing Cross A and Es.
I agree with the hon. Member for Hammersmith that there is little doubt that if Charing Cross’s A and E is closed, we will see the end of a hospital there, because it would, I suspect, be only a matter of time before the majority of the Fulham Palace road site was disposed of commercially. I have two major hospitals in my constituency, one of which, Barts, serving the eastern part of my patch from over in the City of London, is not affected by any of the considerations. The other is St Mary’s, Paddington which, ironically, is probably more important to the constituents of my neighbour, the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), than to mine, although a significant number of my constituents in the Hyde park area and Marylebone use it as their local hospital.
The Department of Health has been mindful of the fact that hospitals in the centre of London, which serve large working populations as well as residential ones, give the NHS more bang for the buck. I have often observed that my constituency has been well served over the past decade and a half by new walk-in centres and the like. The joint committee might have been tempted to realise one of its most valuable assets on the St Mary’s site, which is, like Charing Cross, a prime piece of central London real estate. From the recommendations, it seems that that temptation has been resisted, and I am glad about that, but, like the hon. Member for Hammersmith, I am not going to take anything for granted until the whole process is over. There is, inevitably, a sense that there is an element of a zero-sum game here but, like the hon. Gentleman, I do not recognise that we should necessarily be in this place, for reasons I will set out.
My constituency next-door-neighbour, the hon. Member for Westminster North, and I would have vigorously fought any plans to close St Mary’s, because the hospital has a proud historical importance and is incredibly well served by public transport, which makes it a key local service for countless central London residents. Let us not forget, in this week of all weeks, the seventh anniversary of the terrible 7/7 bombings in London. One of the bombings was on the Edgware road, and St Mary’s, Paddington had pride of place as one of the sites that played an important part in ensuring that lives were saved. I have a great deal of sympathy, therefore, with the hon. Member for Hammersmith, as he faces two closures on his doorstep. If the closures went through, they would not, perhaps, cause me the same amount of political grief, but they would affect my constituents, many of whom receive hospital treatment from some of the institutions earmarked for closure. There would also be the ongoing effect of the substantial burden of increased pressure on the area’s existing hospitals.
I accept the clinical wisdom of trying to steer traffic away from A and Es as far as possible, but before we press ahead with closures, particularly in this part of west London, we must ensure that the alternative services are truly in place and that we are not operating on some naive hope that the pressure on A and Es will miraculously dissipate once four west London departments are removed. Until there has been a proper assessment of out-of-hours care, I question the wisdom of closing as many as four busy A and Es in this area of the capital. The plan is misguided because the population is transient, with huge numbers of non-residents spending time in central London as workers, visitors and tourists. The pressures on central London are very different from those in other parts of the UK. I can understand that the Minister does not want to hear all sorts of special pleading from different parts of the country, but I think that he will recognise that in my unusual constituency I have 70,000 UK nationals, but 920,000 people working there every day of the working week. That is an extreme example, but it is fair to say that around Ealing Broadway and Heathrow airport there are also huge clusters of people who work but do not live in the area, and that should play some part in the thought process about the closures.
I want to say a little about two slightly more parochial issues, because this is not the only health proposal that has caused my constituents alarm. One is the Royal Brompton hospital, which the hon. Member for Hammersmith mentioned. The hospital is just outside my constituency, in that of my hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham, but it serves a lot of my constituents. I have received many e-mails and other correspondence imploring me to fight the decision to close the specialist children’s heart surgery unit at the hospital, as I am sure have other central London MPs. I buy into much of the thinking on the issue of specialist care, not just by this Government but also from before 2010. In my view, it is better to concentrate specialist services in fewer and larger centres, rather than to hold on to a widespread but perhaps more mediocre service. I know that it is easy to make that case in a constituency such as mine, where services are in parts of London that are only 10 miles apart, and I appreciate that in more rural parts of the UK we are talking about distances of many dozens of miles, but I have great sympathy with the concerns that some of my constituents have highlighted. They are particularly worried that the review of the Royal Brompton has failed to consider what a difference having child and adult cardiac services in the same centre makes to the quality of care.
My constituents will point out that the Royal Brompton is one of only two hospitals in the country where four surgeons already handle well over 500 congenital cardiac cases a year, meeting, therefore, the standards expected by professionals and the review panel’s criteria. It is the only centre in the country to have undertaken more than 1,000 interventions in a year for such diseases, and the service has consistently been rated as excellent by the Care Quality Commission, the review team and, of course, Ministers. The campaigners fear that the decision to close children’s heart services will threaten the viability of the entire trust in the Royal Brompton area. The hospital hosts the country’s largest service for children with cystic fibrosis, which requires intensive paediatric care, and also anaesthesia teams to support the respiratory team with some of the most complex cases. I hope that the Minister will continue to listen to some of the concerns.
Finally, the other parochial issue, which the hon. Member for Hammersmith also raised, relates to Imperial College Healthcare, which has an important part to play on the St Mary’s, Paddington site. If the changes go ahead, the hospital looks set, rightly, to become ever more important in that part of London. I wish to touch on the recent negative press coverage, and give Imperial the right to reply, as it were. Following the deaths of some 25 patients, my local authority, Westminster city council, has expressed concern about Imperial’s poor record keeping, and the loss of a large amount of referrals data.
I received this week a missive from Mark Davies, Imperial’s chief executive, explaining that in January the trust took the rare step of taking a temporary break from reporting its performance in meeting the 18-week waiting time target for referral to treatment, and waiting times for both cancer and diagnostics. He contends that the break was necessary to establish new and robust systems for recording and reporting patient data. Reviews of that period have found that there is no evidence of the trust missing any cancer diagnoses, and the measure was a short-term one, allowing for new configuration. The trust’s view is that the negative press coverage rather overstates the case.
The matter we are debating affects us all as Members of Parliament. We understand that it will inevitably be a partisan, party political issue to an extent, but we all hold close to our hearts the area of London that we represent, and I hope that as far as possible we will work together to get the best deal for west and north-west London as a whole.
Mr James Gray (in the Chair)
Order. There are no formal time limits, but I intend to call the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman at 10.39, unusually, which gives us exactly half an hour to accommodate the five remaining hon. Members who want to catch my eye. If my arithmetic serves me right, that works out at about six or seven minutes a head. As a courtesy to each other it might be nice to attempt to achieve that.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
I associate myself with the sentiments expressed by the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field), particularly about the Royal Brompton and its specialist services. I will focus briefly on the impact of what is happening on my constituency, but I follow what my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) said: there has been an attempt to divide and rule Members over whether to save some A and E units and close others. Yet it is healthy that all Members across west London are working on a common cause to try to get a long-term view of the health care needs of our areas.
I was reminiscing a few weeks ago with one of our chief executives, who has been dealing with this issue in our area for about as long as I have—almost 40 years. I think that this is our ninth reorganisation. On average, a reorganisation takes place over roughly a two-year period and operates for about 18 months, and then we start all over again. I started off in my area with a network of GPs, a community hospital, a district hospital and specialist services. In the first reorganisation, we lost the community hospital. After that, I was promised five GP centres; I got two. Then we had the wonderful idea from Lord Darzi about polyclinics, which looked awfully like community hospitals, but I did not get one of those. By the time that they had been discarded, it was decided there should be a walk-in centre. After that, we lost a lot of the capital investment in relation to GP improvements, so I am left with some GP centres, but many GPs still working out of converted houses and many single practitioners. Many of them are about to retire. The walk-in centre is about to be closed and relocated to Hillingdon hospital, where I am told that all the basic triage will be performed. We seem to have come full circle but have cut out some of the basic elements.
I am now told that, under the present consultation, the coming plan is to devolve services into the community, with more community care and improved GP services, which will then reduce the need and desire to go to accident and emergency and make it possible for specialist services to be concentrated into fewer units. The problem with that form of devolution is that the walk-in centre in central Hayes is being lost; no further capital investment in GP centres is planned; many GPs, although they have given good service over the years, are ageing, will soon retire and, as I have said, are working in poor quality settings; and there are, to be frank, cuts in community care support as well, particularly those that are happening in personal budgets. Some bizarre judgments are being made at local authority and other levels about qualification for community care. People are winding up in my office to attend my constituency surgery because the care that they have had for years has been withdrawn.
The next stage of the proposal is the closure of Ealing accident and emergency. Ealing dealt with 84,000 people in 2010-11, with 12,000 urgent care cases and 30,000 serious in-patient cases. If even half that number transfer to Hillingdon, it will be swamped. My fear is that in the next round of cuts A and E performance at Hillingdon hospital will be examined and criticised, because it has been swamped, and that it will eventually become a target for further closure. I worry also because it appears possible to extrapolate from the numbers in the consultation reports the cutting in the next 12 months of up to 1,700 NHS jobs, with the prospect of 5,000 being cut by 2015. That could be yet another reorganisation that exhausts staff, confuses patients and the community, and wastes large amounts of resources. In the end, it will reduce the quality of services and might result in further cuts. I predict that, within four years, we will be back here again if we continue on this path.
All that my community is pleading for is an element of stability. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith that the consultation process has been tainted from the start, because information for the community and opportunities for engagement have been lacking and there has been a failure to disseminate information in a form that people can understand properly. I think that that has been done by what is now emerging in our sub-region as a group of elite GPs, who seem to control the process rather than engaging even with many of the other GPs. When, in our meetings with GPs, we ask whether they support the proposals, those at the grass roots say clearly they do not. They do not feel involved.
It is time to draw breath in the consultation, start a proper process of discussion and try to get some form of longer-term stability into the process. My hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) is here, and there is a 17-year difference between life expectancy in some wards of our constituencies and in some wealthier constituencies represented by hon. Members present for the debate. It is clear to me that the eight or nine, or perhaps more, reorganisations of the past 40 years have not dealt with the real health care issues and needs in our area. What is happening will be another exercise involving abortive costs, which will frustrate the provision of real health care to whose who need it.
Angie Bray (Ealing Central and Acton) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) on securing this important debate. He is right to extend its scope to hospital services across west London because the proposed imminent reorganisation of services—the “Shaping a healthier future” programme, led by NHS North West London—will affect all hospital users in the area. It is a hugely ambitious and, I am sure, well-intentioned programme, but none the less it presents perhaps more questions than it answers. It raises serious concerns, especially for my constituents in Ealing and Acton.
Mary Macleod
I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour for giving way. My constituents use the West Middlesex university hospital and Charing Cross hospital, and I was glad to see that the aim is to retain the West Middlesex as a major acute hospital with A and E and its award-winning maternity provision. Does my hon. Friend agree that the ultimate aim of what is happening, whatever decision is made—any constituent would find the closure of any part of a hospital a difficult thing—is better clinical outcomes, and the key issue is whether they are achieved?
Angie Bray
Of course, we all want better clinical outcomes for all our constituents. The question is how to get to that result, and how to provide services for residents. An unfortunate aspect of the way things have been done is the pitching of one hospital against another, with everyone being asked to decide on one or another. That has been a divisive process.
My constituents face the real possibility of Ealing, Central Middlesex, Hammersmith and Charing Cross hospitals all having their A and E departments downgraded —a result that would surely be disproportionately negative for them and that threatens to destabilise health care provision across my constituency. In making its three key recommendations for the current consultation, NHS North West London seems to have completely overlooked their needs. While the consultation document does at least mention the full list of eight possible options, the pressure on people to support one of its three main recommendations leaves the impression that minds have already been made up. Minds should not be made up when my constituents in Acton—a place with a rapidly expanding population—look set to be left without any local emergency cover.
The consultation and pre-consultation business case documents make bold predictions when calculating travel times to justify recommendations. One document even states that the
“geographic distribution is proposed to apply to the remaining sites to minimise the impact of changes on local residents”.
Tell that to the people of Acton, as they battle their way through traffic to Chelsea and Westminster hospital, or the people on the western edge of my patch doing the same to get to Hillingdon hospital, in the event of downgraded services at Ealing hospital. With London’s transport infrastructure as it is, I remain unconvinced that those bold predictions stack up.
The current recommendations take all my constituents further away from access to emergency health. That is why I am encouraging all constituents who get in touch with me on this issue to contribute to the ongoing consultation, regardless of my concerns. That seems to be the best way forward. After all, we all know that, for many people, their local hospital is more than just a physical structure. Attachments to hospitals are often incredibly emotional. Quite naturally, people want to know, when or if they or their loved ones fall ill, that they can access the care that they need in good time. It is all very well presenting a case for change based on facts, figures and statistics in a hefty document, but it is clearly important that local people—the people who use these hospitals—are given a proper chance to have a proper say on their future.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the hon. Lady agree that it is very important that the many people in our constituencies who do not have a car are able to get to a hospital quickly? Relatives also need to travel to hospital in a way that has a minimal impact on their families, particularly those with caring responsibilities.
Angie Bray
I agree. It is always important to bear in mind the impact on families who want to visit, because that is all part of the healing process. That is an important consideration.
The consultation is not made easy when the options to choose from are buried in such a heavy document. I have concerns about how that will affect the consultation process. The consultation document is itself a barrier to participation, as it is so huge and bulky as to be virtually impenetrable.
It would be helpful if NHS North West London were to encourage the GPs that it says support its proposals to actually speak out in support of them. The public are much more inclined to listen to their doctors than their politicians—we all know that, unfortunately—and I have urged those behind “Shaping a healthier future” on numerous occasions to do exactly that. So far, however, there has been a deafening silence. If the case for change is so strong, why are we not hearing more local GPs coming out publicly in support of the recommended options?
It is, of course, important to acknowledge that the NHS is set to undergo a series of improvements. The health reforms will fully kick in in April next year, crucially putting GPs in charge of decision making. It therefore seems extraordinary that, after the lengthy process of getting legislation through Parliament, we are now seeing a last-minute, top-down reorganisation of local health care pushed through by NHS North West London, instead of waiting for the GPs to take charge.
The “Shaping a healthier future” programme is a bureaucratically-led initiative by NHS North West London. As such, I urge my neighbouring MPs to accept that this is not about Government cuts. In fact, the Government are putting extra funding into the NHS in real terms year on year, and the Conservatives were the only party to pledge to do so in their 2010 election manifesto.
Mr Slaughter
I entirely respect the position that the hon. Lady is speaking from today, and I accept that the NHS locally is behaving very badly. However, does she not agree that the Government must take some responsibility and that, as local MPs, we all ought to be talking to the Government as well?
Angie Bray
I spend quite a lot of time talking to Ministers, who have been very generous with their time on this and other issues. Finance is at the root of the problem, but I suspect that the Government have decided to make the NHS a major spending priority; rather more so than some other Departments. We have to accept that there was a problem with funding relating to NHS London for a long time before the Government took power—a point that I was going to come on to in a moment.
As I said, we were the only party to make a pledge on extra funding in its 2010 election manifesto. Furthermore, any efficiency savings do not go back to the Treasury, but are instead ring-fenced for reinvestment in the health service. The latest figures from the Department of Health show that by 2014-15, there will have been funding growth of £12.5 billion across London. The problem is that NHS North West London has been struggling in the face of a huge £5 billion or £6 billion deficit in the past five years or so.
Clearly, we cannot stand against every proposal for change. All institutions occasionally need refreshing and reforming. The key to “Shaping a healthier future” is to work with local communities to establish clinical need that works for those who use the hospitals. This clunky consultation does not do the trick. Nevertheless, I urge people to persevere and wade through the massive document. My message to the Minister is that for my constituents to have all four of their nearest A and Es downgraded is absolutely disproportionate. I hope that, should the consultation go the way that I suspect is intended, the decision will be then called in and a fairer way forward will be found.
Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)
Thank you for allowing me to speak in this important debate, Mr Gray. It is important to my local constituents and to me personally. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) on securing the debate and thank him for allowing me to join him and speak in it. I agree with everything that my hon. Friends have said. As hon. Members have repeatedly said, this is not a scaremongering debate and we are not taking a party political line—these are the genuine concerns expressed by constituents and health professionals.
I will not repeat my colleagues’ arguments on whether the consultation is fair and transparent, but I hope that the Minister will take this one point on board about the way that people are being asked to access the document—by making a request, downloading and then responding online. I do not know about other areas, but in my constituency the people who are going to respond are those who are very keenly concerned because they have used the services before and they have lived in the area for many years. Many of my constituents will not have access to the documents and will not be able to respond.
I hope the Minister will take that point on board and understand the reasons for it. There are old people who do not have access to computers. Ethnic minority communities, whose first language may not be English, will not have the access to do that, either. It is not easy. There is always the response that they could ask friends, relatives and others, but it is not that simple to respond to the fear that the hospital services are going to close. Those people should be taken into account as well.
The future of all the hospitals in north-west London lies in the balance. I am particularly concerned about Ealing hospital, which is very close to my heart. My two grandchildren were born in Ealing hospital, my daughter worked there and I live just a short walk away. Many of my constituents depend on Ealing hospital for life-saving treatments.
It is therefore with shock and anger that I speak about the current proposals to close Ealing’s accident and emergency unit, maternity unit, paediatric services, intensive care unit and other acute services. If the proposals go through, they will mean the effective closure of Ealing hospital. It will cease to be a district general hospital and be little more than a glorified polyclinic, with the surplus land sold off for luxury flats. I am deeply concerned about the proposals, and fear that they will have a significant detrimental impact on the health care that my constituents receive. It is being said that the proposals are clinically led, but the House should be aware that Ealing hospital consultants and local GPs almost universally oppose them. It is clear to me that the proposals are financially driven and that clinical care for my constituents will suffer.
I have been warning for some time about the significant threat to Ealing hospital. I have had numerous exchanges on the subject with the Prime Minister at Question Time. In October 2010, in answer to my specific question about whether there were any plans to close Ealing hospital, the Prime Minister gave a broad answer. He stated that the purpose of the health reforms was to put decisions about A and Es in the hands of patients and doctors, and that decisions to close A and Es that did not do so were often wrong. I agree.
Seema Malhotra
My hon. Friend rightly raises the particular circumstances of Southall and the surrounding areas, where there is a distinct community that operates in a particular way. Decisions about health care must take into account not just clinical issues but how a community behaves and how its members access health care.
Mr Sharma
I am sure that the Minister will take note of that and will respond.
Ealing is a case in point, as the decision is being made by the unaccountable north-west London primary care trusts in their dying days before they are abolished, and not by patients and doctors. Patients and doctors are firmly against the proposals. I ask the Minister to listen to them and abandon the proposals.
After the Prime Minister visited Ealing hospital in May 2011 to deliver his keynote speech on the Government’s health reforms, I again asked him specifically at Prime Minister’s Question Time whether there were any plans to close Ealing hospital. In his answer to me on 8 June 2011, he said that he was impressed by what he saw, stated twice that there were no plans to close Ealing hospital and said that the maternity service was undergoing phased redevelopment. Those assurances and answers now seem hollow and almost worthless unless the Prime Minister intervenes to stop the closure of Ealing hospital.
The Secretary of State for Health has also said on the record that there were no plans to close Ealing hospital’s A and E, and asked where all the people would go who use it. My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) has given the figures on how many people use the services, and I am sure that the Minister will have taken note.
My constituents, local GPs and hospital consultants, local Members of Parliament and councillors of all political parties are totally opposed to the proposals, and there is a massive campaign against them. I ask the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State to listen to local people and intervene to safeguard our health services at Ealing hospital and other hospitals in west London. Lives are at risk and the future of the health service is at stake. With the support of Ealing Hospital SOS, Ealing trades council, Ealing council and West London Citizens, I will not stop campaigning, and neither will my hon. Friends and constituents, until the proposals are stopped dead in their tracks.
Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)
It is an honour and a pleasure to serve under you, Mr Gray. Like all other right hon. and hon. Members, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) on securing this debate. I assure him that although I was not present at the inauguration of the “Paupers’ Paradise” in Hammersmith, I was present at Queen Charlotte’s hospital on the same day that the national health service was born, having also been born on that day.
We have heard a great deal of extraordinary information that underlines the seriousness of the situation facing us. The hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray) put her finger on it: the root of the problem is finance. This is about money. It is not about clinical need, clinical determination or a reconfiguration of the health service. As many have said, there is no luddite tendency facing the health service. It has changed massively. I spent 10 years working at Middlesex hospital, which may or may not have been in the constituency of the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field), although he certainly knew that hospital. It closed because people realised that there was alternative provision at University college hospital.
The situation in north-west London has been dramatically illustrated by the range of geographical interests represented here. Although Ealing hospital is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma), it is the hospital used by my constituents. Those who do not use Ealing tend to use Northwick Park hospital, which is in Brent, although it is used predominantly by people from Harrow. We have extraordinary crossover. If the toothpaste tube is squeezed in one place, the shape changes in another.
This is the message that I want to give the Minister, who is a decent man. I have known him for a long time, and in many ways I respect his instincts on this matter. We must recognise that London is different. The days of “predict and provide” may have changed and we may not consider it a fashionable option any more, but the reality is that we in west and north-west London face health problems. We face the resurgence of rickets, tuberculosis and illnesses that we thought did not exist any more. We have a massively mobile population, but above all a growing population. Every single school in my constituency is having to expand. Looking around, I see colleagues on both sides of the Chamber whose schools are having to expand. The population is increasing.
What possible clinical case can there be for reducing accident and emergency services, which at Ealing provide succour for nearly 100,000 people every year, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell)? Those people will wash up at West Middlesex university hospital and Hillingdon hospital, with appalling, dire consequences.
Can it be that we have changed so much in terms of clinical delivery that an ambulance service is a mobile operating theatre and that it does not matter how far an incident or accident is from the hospital, because the ambulance service is now so brilliant? That is very different from when a former Conservative Health Minister referred to ambulance staff as lorry drivers with first aid certificates. I cannot believe that moving people at speed, however efficient the vehicle, will help the problem. In many cases, it will make it worse. How many times have we seen people on the blues and twos hammering through our streets, which at the moment are crowded, congested and dangerous? It can only make matters worse.
I have less than a minute left to speak. I say to the Minister through you, Mr Gray, that the public are not persuaded that there is a clinical case. The Secretary of State has said that there are four criteria. There should be
“support from local clinical commissioners; strong public and patient engagement; clear evidence of the clinical benefit; and reflecting current and prospective patient choice.”
Ealing Hospital Save Our Services has been mentioned, and Colin Standfield, the organiser, is here in Westminster Hall today. I say to the Minister that there is no evidence at any level that anyone is committed to the proposals to cut the A and E department. We heard earlier from the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster that there might be political grief. The Minister and I have both sat in the House for a while, and we both remember an Independent Member who represented one hospital anti-closure campaign. Hospital closures are a massively toxic issue. That is not a threat; it is a reality.
People are not with the Government on this issue, they are not with a shadowy PCT and they are not at all confident that the process is anything other than the biggest, crudest, roughest and most brutal rubber stamp. That is the impression that we in west London have. I implore the Minister to put our minds at rest and tell us that the consultation is genuine, and that there is a prospect of something other than an evisceration, an amputation without anaesthetic and a destruction of what we in north-west London hold so dear.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) on securing this important debate. As we have heard, there is widespread concern in his constituency and throughout the capital about the future of hospital services in west London. He has been doing a great job in raising the issues, and has done so again today.
NHS North West London claims that its proposals, as outlined in the “Shaping a healthier future” programme, will improve NHS services for the 2 million residents of the area and save lives. As we have heard, the proposals will lead to the loss of accident and emergency departments at Charing Cross, Ealing, Hammersmith and Central Middlesex hospitals. That means that people will have to travel further for treatment. I ask the Minister: how will that help save lives, and does he agree with NHS North West London’s analysis?
It is not only my hon. Friends who are concerned about the future of A and E departments in west London; the local authorities in Ealing and Hammersmith and in Fulham are also formally opposed to the proposals and committed to fighting the downgrading of their hospitals.
We all know what happens to hospitals after they lose their A and E departments. We have seen in other cases hospitals lose their A and E departments and, sadly, subsequently become glorified health centres without proper resources to provide immediate health care to the local community.
Charing Cross hospital has a 200-year history of providing a wide range of services and is one of the capital’s largest teaching hospitals. It has one of London’s busiest A and E departments, which had 69,300 cases last year. Under the proposals, it will be downgraded to a local hospital. Ironically, while in opposition, the Conservative party often produced and perpetuated unfounded scaremongering about the future of Charing Cross hospital—my hon. Friend mentioned it in his opening remarks—yet now seems content for it to be downgraded under its watch.
It is understandable that there is such widespread concern about the proposed closures in my hon. Friend’s constituency. The whole of the borough of Hammersmith and Fulham will be left without an accident and emergency department; facilities that both the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State had promised to save as recently as last year will close. Travel times to the nearest alternatives could be far too long. As we have heard from both Government and Opposition Members, journeys to the hospitals run by the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust can be subject to delays of up to an hour in heavy traffic. That could put the lives of many west London residents at risk. What action does the Minister’s Government propose to take to ensure the safety of my hon. Friend’s constituents and the residents of west London as a whole?
The Secretary of Sate has not, to date, taken a clear position on the proposals, and I understand that he wrote to my hon. Friend on 3 July to say that they are a matter for the local NHS. I appreciate that the consultation closes on 8 October and that, according to the Secretary of State, no final decision will be made until early next year. The plans, however, are not only unpopular with local people; other Conservative politicians, such as Councillor Joe Carlebach of Hammersmith and Fulham council, have not refrained from taking a position and have openly voiced their opposition to the plans.
Mr Virendra Sharma
My hon. Friend may recall that, during his visit to my constituency, many constituents voiced their opposition to any threat to Ealing hospital.
Andrew Gwynne
Absolutely. I enjoyed my visit to Ealing hospital with Ken Livingstone in the run-up to the London elections, although I am not sure whether my support did Ken’s campaign much good.
Andrew Gwynne
Yes, as my hon. Friend confirms, we did win the GLA seat.
Councillor Carlebach told the BBC in April:
“We have some serious concerns at closing that many A and Es in such a large region.”
The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) has expressed similar concerns.
The scale of the problem is easily grasped when one considers that NHS North West London serves a population of 1.9 million people in eight boroughs: Brent, Ealing, Hammersmith and Fulham, Harrow, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster. Does the Minister agree with the remarks made by his colleague on Hammersmith and Fulham council?
The chief executive of NHS North West London, Anne Rainsberry, has been clear on what is driving the decisions. She told the BBC in February:
“The financial challenges in London are pretty much unprecedented.”
The local Joint Committee of Primary Care Trusts has said that there will be a £332 million gap to plug by 2014-15 if no changes are made.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith, and the Labour party, are not opposed to change. He said a few weeks ago that there was
“nothing wrong with economies of scale if you can join forces and do something cheaper that provides more resources,”
and I associate myself with those remarks. The chief executive of the King’s Fund agrees that
“London’s NHS is in urgent need of change,”
but, he goes on to say,
“the risk is no-one will be in the driving seat”.
My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) also warned about the lack of leadership and the timing of the changes when she said:
“The question is how do we get there from here at a time of chaotic reorganisation in the health service, when planning is falling apart, when north-west London hospitals alone have to save over £120m between now and 2014.”
I am afraid that what we are seeing goes much further than, and is in direct contradiction to, the Prime Minister and Health Secretary’s general election promise to halt the closures of hospitals, A and E units and maternity departments. What happened between the general election and now that caused both those right hon. Gentlemen to change their position? Why does the Minister think that there is such widespread concern about the lack of leadership in the health service in London, at a time when the NHS is being put through an unnecessary upheaval?
It is obvious from what the Government have had to say to date that Ministers are hiding behind their new localism and are happy to blame the soon-to-be-abolished PCTs for the forthcoming closures. We all know what happened between the general election and now: the unpopular and, frankly, unnecessary Health and Social Care Bill—the biggest threat to the NHS in its long history—was introduced. It was a disastrous decision on the part of the Government to spend £3 billion on an unnecessary top-down reorganisation that has led to the loss of financial grip on the NHS.
In the case of west London, we are seeing another broken promise on the part of the Prime Minister, who spent millions during the general election putting up posters throughout the country reassuring the British electorate that, under the Conservatives, there would be a moratorium on hospital and A and E closures.
Does the Minister think that the proposals in the “Shaping a healthier future” document will save money in the long term? If all the closures go ahead, would that not leave Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust with just St Mary’s hospital as a single site, and pose huge financial and practical problems for the expansion of its services to cope with the extended case load?
The Opposition warned Ministers repeatedly during the Bill’s passage that it would lead to the break-up of the NHS, and the “Shaping a healthier future” proposals seem to be a missed opportunity to improve care by reducing duplication where it occurs and ensuring that hospitals work together for the benefit of patient care.
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Mr Simon Burns)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) on securing this debate, the importance of which is indicated by the significant number of Government and Opposition Members who have either taken part or listened. I also congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray) and for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) and the hon. Members for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma), for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) on their contributions.
Before I get to the nub of the debate, it is important to pay tribute to all those who work in the NHS in north-west London, including in the constituency of the hon. Member for Hammersmith, for the selfless dedication and determination that they put in day in, day out—whether doctors, nurses, consultants, porters or ancillary workers—to ensure that the people of north-west London get the quality of care that they deserve.
I am aware of the controversy and high emotions that surround any service reconfiguration, or proposed reconfiguration, and I respect the way that hon. Members, including my hon. Friends, rightly draw the attention of the House to their concerns about aspects of the proposed reconfiguration. I should like to give a general message to all hon. Members: I urge them to engage fully in the consultations, to the best of their abilities, and make their case and argument, which can be part of the information gathering and ideas that will be considered when the consultation process ends in early October.
The reconfiguration of services is a matter for the local NHS. I hope that the hon. Member for Hammersmith agrees that that should not be dictated or micro-managed by Ministers in Whitehall. Reconfigurations are affecting local services and should be determined by the local NHS in full consultation with stakeholders within the local NHS in north-west London and the local community.
Mr Slaughter
Given that the medical director of the NHS, who the Minister says has to make the decision, has said that the NHS is doing this because it would be out of money otherwise and given that he has said that it would not take any notice of the consultation, does not the Minister see a role for the Government?
Mr Burns
First, the hon. Gentleman has unintentionally only given the Chamber half the quote. Secondly, the medical director will engage in the consultation responsibly and fully. It is—hon. Members asked about this—a full, proper and valid consultation, which is why I urge all hon. Members to take part.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health wrote to the hon. Member for Hammersmith on 3 July—he mentioned this in his speech—on the process and the localism of the decision making, following the conclusion of the consultation, and to set out the process for service change that my right hon. Friend strengthened in 2010. For the record and for other hon. Members, I remind the hon. Gentleman of the position. The NHS in London, as elsewhere, has constantly to evaluate how services can best be tailored to meet the needs of local people and to improve the standards of patient care. The proposals in north-west London seek to do that, and the local NHS has now embarked on a full consultation with patients, the public and the local NHS. It is important to remember that no decisions have been taken.
On Monday 2 July, NHS North West London launched the full public consultation. It will last more than 14 weeks —two weeks longer than the normal period—to take into account that it spans the traditional holiday month of August. Patients, staff and the public will have the opportunity to review the clinicians’ suggestions, look at the evidence provided and have their say.
The hon. Gentleman knows that the NHS has always had to respond to patients’ changing expectations and advances in medical technology. As lifestyles, society and medicine continue to evolve, the NHS also needs to evolve. Reconfiguration is about modernising the delivery of care and facilities to improve patient outcomes, develop services closer to home and, most importantly, save lives.
As I said, the Government are clear that the reconfiguration of front-line health services is a matter for the local NHS, which knows the needs of local people and how to deliver services far better than Ministers in Whitehall. That is why we are putting patients, carers and local communities at the heart of the NHS, shifting decision making as close as possible to patients, devolving power to clinicians and removing top-down influence.
In 2010, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State set out four tests that all proposed reconfigurations had to pass. I trust that that will help to answer the point made by the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall about the decision-making process. Reconfiguration and the consultation process that accompanies it must have support from general practitioner commissioners, strengthened public and patient engagement, clear clinical evidence and support for patient choice. Without all those elements, reconfigurations cannot proceed.
The health needs of north-west London are changing as its health services are increasing. The local NHS does not believe that the way that it has organised its hospitals and primary care in the past will meet the future needs of north-west London. I understand that north-west London has 8% more internal hospital space per head of population than the English average, even after excluding the specialist hospitals. Indeed, when combined with the number of beds available, hospitals in north-west London have approximately 50% more space per bed than the rest of the country. However, much of that extra space is not suitable for clinical care and costs those hospitals more money to run and maintain every day.
Under the preferred option proposed for changes to hospital services, the NHS in north-west London will invest £112 million in capital that will add capacity for expanded services, develop local hospital sites in the community and address maintenance issues. For example, I am sure that hon. Members, particularly in the Westminster and Fulham side of the area, will be acutely aware that only two weeks ago the Earl’s Court health and wellbeing centre re-opened after having £2.7 million capital invested in it to serve the local community.
Emergency services have been mentioned a lot. The quality of care and the time taken for hospitals to see and treat patients varies. A recent study showed that patients admitted at weekends and evenings in London hospitals, when fewer senior doctors are available, stand a higher chance of dying than if they were admitted during the week. Clinicians in north-west London have agreed clinical standards for emergency surgery and A and E that include providing expert consultant cover 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Therefore, patients admitted in an emergency at the weekend will have the same standard of care as those admitted on weekdays. We would like that approach to spread throughout the country. Rationalising emergency care in five north-west London acute sites will enable the NHS in north-west London to meet these standards, address service variability and save an additional 130 lives per annum, on the basis of the number of lives expected to be saved across London.
Clinicians argue that, to provide safe and effective care, they need experience of the most acute cases regularly, which means centralising services on fewer sites. A good example of that is stroke care provided in London, in respect of which significant improvements in outcomes and the quality and safety of patient care have been made. I hope that hon. Members agree that that is the right way forward.
Mr Burns
I only have one minute left; I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me.
Trauma services have also been centralised, with a major trauma centre sited at St Mary’s and the two heart attack centres at Harefield and Hammersmith, which will continue to provide service.
Let me remind hon. Members of the process after the consultation is completed. As the hon. Member for Hammersmith rightly said, after the consultation has concluded, the responses have been considered and a decision taken, if the local authority overview and scrutiny committees do not agree and do not think the proposition is in the best interests of the local community, they have the right to communicate with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to request that he refer it to the independent reconfiguration panel. If my right hon. Friend does so, the panel will independently consider the proposals and advise him whether it believes that they are right for north-west London, and he can then take a decision accordingly. There is full consultation, full involvement and a mechanism to allow the matter to be pursued further after the consultation has concluded.
Oceans and Marine Ecosystems
(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray.
This debate is important for the opportunity not only to highlight in Parliament the plight of our oceans but to focus more on the international dimension of protecting them, including the high seas beyond national jurisdictions. Thankfully, the issue is now coming to the attention of international policy makers—it was not even raised at Rio in 1992, but became one of the most high-visibility issues at Rio+20 this year. Although Rio fell a long way short of the actions identified by scientists as crucial, its decisions were, in the words of Professor Alex Rogers of the International Programme on the State of the Ocean,
“urgent, important and game changing measures which should be immediately implemented by governments as a direct response to the oceans text.”
I hope today’s debate is timely in focusing on the role that the Government should play in making progress. Britain can make a real difference. The United Kingdom, through its overseas territories, is responsible for the world’s fifth largest marine area after the US, France, Australia and Russia, amounting to nearly 2% of the world’s oceans. We are, therefore, a major player, with a duty to act.
I will outline the scale of the crisis facing the world’s oceans. Oceans and seas are of course critical to sustaining the earth’s life support systems and to our survival. Covering 72% of the earth’s surface, oceans and seas moderate our climate by absorbing heat and around 30% of global CO2 emissions. They are the habitat of nearly 50% of all species and, as a result, are vital for global food security—providing 2.6 billion people with their primary source of protein—and for the well-being of many national economies, especially in developing countries.
The health of the oceans, however, is under threat. Organisations such as Greenpeace, with its “Defending our Oceans” campaign, the World Wildlife Fund—WWF—and many others have been campaigning to raise awareness of the findings of marine scientists, which I hope to give expression to in this Chamber. The findings in the IPSO report published last June are particularly shocking. It said that the seas are degenerating faster than anyone had predicted because of the cumulative effect of a number of severe individual stresses—from climate change and sea water acidification to widespread chemical pollution and gross overfishing. In particular, it said that the world’s oceans are facing an unprecedented loss of species, from large fish to tiny coral, comparable to the great mass extinctions of prehistory. Approximately 90% of the big predatory fish in our oceans, such as sharks and tuna, have been fished out since the 1950s. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that 85% of global marine fish stocks are fully exploited, overexploited or depleted, a subject to which I shall return.
Scientists are also discovering growing areas of the ocean that suffer from hypoxia—regions that are starved of oxygen—caused by warmer sea temperatures, which is also increasing sea levels and changing ocean currents. Whole species of fish are at risk due to the temperature rise. They simply cannot survive in the changed conditions. Pollution is also damaging our seas. Although oil spills from tanker accidents are among the more visible and more talked-about pollutants, their impact is less than that from other sources, which include domestic sewage, industrial discharges, urban and industrial run-off, accidents, spillage, explosions, sea dumping, plastic debris, mining, agricultural nutrients and pesticides.
Not only are there severe declines in many fish species, and an unparalleled rate of regional extinction of some habitat types, such as mangrove and seagrass meadows, but some whole marine ecosystems, such as coral reefs, could disappear this century in what has been described as
“a first for mankind—the extinction of an entire ecosystem”.
Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this vital debate. I do not want to anticipate the rest of her speech, but does she agree that the evidence shows that rigorously enforced marine conservation zones can make a real difference in starting to turn things around? The lesson is that we, internationally, and the world need to be more ambitious about the scale of such zones and more rigorous in restricting the activity that can take place in them.
Kerry McCarthy
I shall come on to marine conservation zones mooted in the UK and what we can do internationally to persuade and join up with other countries to have larger zones.
One of the reasons why I am interested in the issue is that I am a keen scuba diver. At an anecdotal level, I have heard stories about the decline in coral reefs. I was speaking to someone the other day who has been running trips from Bristol for about 30 years. He said that the Great Barrier reef is now almost unrecognisable as the place where he used to dive 20 years ago, because of bleaching and reef damage and disappearance.
Around one fifth of global coral reefs have already been damaged beyond repair, including catastrophic mass bleaching in 1998 when scientists watched between 80% and 90% of all the corals die on the reefs of the Seychelles in a few weeks. Professor Callum Roberts said that
“outside the world of marine science, this global catastrophe has passed largely unseen and unremarked.”
It is predicted that 90% of all coral reefs will be threatened by 2030 and all coral reefs by 2050, if no protective measures are taken.
That goes some way to outlining the scale of the problem, so I now want to discuss the solution. Although Rio was disappointing—I think most people agree—and it mostly reaffirmed existing commitments and promises, it marks a point from which countries should now focus on action and implementation. The High Seas Alliance and the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition have set out the key commitments that Governments now need to act upon. I hope that the Minister can make a firm commitment today to implement those decisions and to set out how the Government will do so.
The top commitment was
“to address, on an urgent basis, the issue of the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction”—
in particular through networks of marine protected areas—
“including by taking a decision on the development of an international instrument under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea”
before the end of the 69th session of the UN General Assembly.
More than 64% of our oceans are beyond the jurisdiction of any one country—the so-called high seas. UNCLOS, the UN convention on the law of the sea, provides the legal framework for governing such areas, but the current structure is highly fragmented and has huge governance gaps. It is widely acknowledged that an agreement under UNCLOS is needed to assist the creation and management of marine reserves; to set a framework for environmental impact assessments to be undertaken before damaging activities are allowed to take place; and to co-ordinate a highly fragmented structure of regional organisations that currently regulate human activities.
The Arctic ocean provides a strong case for reform of UNCLOS as it becomes accessible to deep-sea oil drilling and large industrial-scale fishing fleets with the melting of the permanent sea ice. Regulation of such activities is entirely inadequate. The Environmental Audit Committee has been hearing evidence as part of its inquiry into protecting the Arctic, highlighting grave problems with responses to an accident or major oil spill, which would have even more serious environmental consequences than a similar incident in warmer water.
The biggest disappointment at Rio was that an unholy alliance of the US, Venezuela, Russia and Japan blocked a decision on an agreement under UNCLOS for a maximum of two years, until the 69th session of the UN General Assembly in 2014. Although action is desperately needed now, that at least sets a deadline towards which Governments in favour of an ocean rescue plan can work. The 2014 deadline should not, therefore, be seen as a target date to start looking at how we protect and rescue our oceans, but rather as a deadline by which to have completely decided on the way forward for formal negotiations.
What steps will the UK now take, with the others that spoke in favour of an agreement—such as Brazil, Australia, the European Union, South Africa, India and the Pacific Islands—to move the agenda forward and to urge the UN General Assembly to convene, as a matter of urgency, a diplomatic conference to deliver a new implementing agreement under UNCLOS? What steps will the Minister take towards establishing marine protected areas and marine reserves, creating offshore oil and gas no-go zones in the Arctic, and agreeing a mandatory polar shipping code?
Marine protected areas, which have been mentioned, are underwater national parks that help areas to recover and rebuild, and help fish stocks to be replenished and marine ecosystems and coastal communities to have breathing space and better protection from the effects of climate change. Just before Rio, Australia announced its plan to create the world’s largest network of marine reserves, an area encompassing one third of its territorial waters, where fishing will be restricted and oil and gas exploration banned in the most sensitive areas.
In addition, all 1,192 of the Maldive Islands will become a marine reserve by 2017. The UK’s overseas territories provide an opportunity to designate large marine reserves, such as that created in Chagos under the previous Government. I would be grateful if the Minister reported on the progress the Government are making in supporting overseas territories in designating more large-scale marine reserves in the near future.
What discussions has the Minister and his ministerial colleagues in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office had with other nations that have overseas territories, such as France, about the creation of marine protected areas or about joint working with them to join up areas where our territories coincide?
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
I commend my hon. Friend on an excellent speech. Does she agree that it is important that the UK show leadership in this regard, and that it is very disappointing that our network of 127 marine protected areas is two years late? There are even suggestions that the Government might drastically reduce the number of such areas, thereby rendering them completely useless in environmental terms.
Kerry McCarthy
I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. He has done a great deal of work in this area and, indeed, has been trying to get a debate on the topic since Rio.
I was just about to come on to the subject of the UK’s marine conservation zones. If we are to try to encourage other countries to sign up to marine protected areas, we need to get our own house in order. The Government have delayed designating any new marine conservation zones until 2013, failing to fulfil the promise they made at the 2002 Earth summit to do so by 2012. They are now shifting the goalposts by raising the evidence bar for designation. There is real concern that the Government may be preparing the ground for designating between just 27 to 40 sites out of the 127 sites that were originally recommended. However, we are already committed to 127 sites, which have had buy-in from all marine industry stakeholders following the regional project consultation, and were recommended where they had the least socio-economic impact.
The Science Advisory Panel, appointed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, stated that all 127 marine conservation zones need to be designated if the UK is to follow its own guidance on delivering an ecological network. Without those 127 zones, the seas will not have the necessary chance of recovery. How will the Minister achieve such a network if he does not designate all 127 sites?
In the few minutes left to me before I ask the Minister to respond, I shall talk about overfishing, the one area of the debate that has been discussed in Parliament in some detail. There have been debates about overfishing and fish discards, so I will keep my comments fairly brief. Rio agreed to maintain fish stocks at levels that would at least produce the maximum sustainable yield and eliminate destructive fishing practices. I was pleased to see that progress was made on that at the recent EU fisheries council, with agreement to a ban on discards and to legally binding limits on fishing levels. The timetable for phased implementation of that agreement is too lengthy and the decisions were more politically than science-led, but some good progress was made. I hope that we can take that forward.
I would like to raise with the Minister his Government’s failure to protect marine protected areas by sanctioning destructive fishing practices, such as scallop dredging, in areas recommended for designation as marine conservation zones and special areas of conservation.
Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on a most powerful speech. In the part of the world I represent, scallop dredging is a significant problem. At one time in North Ayrshire there were huge numbers of fishing fleets, but we now have none. Does she agree that we need to consider that, but that we also need to look at other species such as dolphins and whales? Does she also agree that it is concerning that the Scottish Government are not including such species in their network of marine conservation areas?
Kerry McCarthy
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I was not aware of what was going on with the Scottish Government in that regard. It sounds like very disappointing news. Any of us who have seen films such as “The End of the Line,” which talks about the huge impact overfishing is having on species—particularly dolphins, tuna and some of the bigger fish that she mentioned—would regard that as very disappointing. Has the Minister’s Department assessed whether scallop dredging and trawling is in breach of the EU habitats directive, which states that site integrity, not features, must be conserved?
My final point is that commitments were made at Rio to eliminate illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. Some 15% of all sea catch is from illegal fisheries. I know that the EU is starting to play its part by demanding strict traceability on all fish sold in Europe, but, globally, more effort is needed to address suspicious consignments landing at ports. The Environmental Justice Foundation estimates that Sierra Leone, where coastal communities are dependent on fishing for their food and livelihoods and where fishing represents around 10% of GDP, is losing almost $29 million a year to pirate fishing operators.
There is also concern that illegal fishing off the coast of west African countries such as Senegal and Mauritania is contributing to growing levels of piracy in those countries, and that they could end up like Somalia, with armed pirates attacking ships. As the President of Puntland said at last year’s conference in London on piracy:
“the violation of Somali waters by foreign trawlers triggered a reaction of armed resistance by Somali fisherman, whose livelihoods were disrupted by the illegal fishing fleets. Over time, payment of ransom by the foreign trawlers to the poor fishermen of Somalia encouraged the escalation of pirate attacks to current levels”.
That obviously does not excuse piracy, but it goes some way towards explaining why it has increased to such dramatic levels.
Turning to my final questions to the Minister, what assessment have the Government made of the impact of illegal fishing on increased levels of piracy around the shores of Africa? What steps are the Government taking to help build the capacity of local communities in affected countries to end illegal unreported and unregulated fishing? What steps are they taking to collaborate internationally to develop national, regional and global monitoring, control surveillance, compliance and enforcement systems?
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr James Paice)
Good morning, Mr Gray. I start by congratulating, as others have, the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) on obtaining the debate. I apologise for my presence and, more importantly, the absence of the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), who the hon. Lady had presumably expected to reply to the debate. Unfortunately, he cannot be here this morning. I assure her that most of what I have to say addresses the points she quite properly raised. If I miss or am unable to respond to any points, I will ask my hon. Friend to write to her with more information.
The Government recognise, as the hon. Lady does, that marine ecosystems are central to human well-being as a source of several important marine ecosystem services. The sustainable management of oceans and seas is essential to achieve the goals of a blue economy in terms of sustainable economic growth, poverty eradication and job creation. As she has rightly pointed out, oceans are globally, regionally and nationally important.
That is why, as she has described, the Government are acting on all fronts, pressing for action on a global scale in Europe and nationally. The Government have been quick to realise that there is an urgent need for a governance structure for areas beyond national jurisdiction to ensure the conservation and sustainable use of those vast areas. In June 2011, in the White Paper on the natural environment, the Government committed themselves to working towards delivering a new global mechanism to regulate the conservation of marine biodiversity in the high seas. As she says, even though marine issues were not the main focus of Rio+20, there was tangible progress on them, which is good news.
Against a background of delay and intransigence that has dogged previous negotiations on the issue—and as the hon. Lady said, still persists in some quarters—agreement was secured that a decision on the matter should be taken by the UN General Assembly in 2014. I can assure her that we will continue to work to ensure that such an agreement provides a coherent structure for the conservation and sustainable use of those areas beyond national jurisdiction, including a globally accepted mechanism for the designation of high seas marine protected areas and the effective use of environmental impact assessments in so doing.
In the absence of such a global agreement, the UK continues to work through regional sea conventions such as OSPAR, which is the convention for the protection of the marine environment of the north-east Atlantic, and the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, which is known as CCAMLR, to protect those high seas. Following the establishment in 2009 of the world’s first high seas MPA under CCAMLR at the ministerial conference to OSPAR in 2010, the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury, together with fellow Ministers from OSPAR contracting parties, agreed to establish six marine protected areas in the high seas of the north-east Atlantic. A further site was added at the OSPAR Commission meeting in June this year. I assure the hon. Lady that the UK will continue to work within OSPAR and other regional conventions to consider other designations on the high seas.
There was also consensus at Rio on understanding and dealing with the effects of climate change and, consistent with the Government’s position and that of the hon. Lady, a more sustainable future for fisheries. We agreed on the need for better implementation of the UN fish stocks agreement and the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s code of conduct from countries to ensure that they ratify and implement the provisions quickly to demonstrate their international commitment to the protection of fisheries resources.
We welcomed recognition of the efforts made by regional fisheries management organisations to improve the management of resources for which they are responsible. As the hon. Lady said, illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing—IUU—is a blight on our seas. The regional management organisations have a key role to play in combating IUU fishing and in ensuring the sustainability of fishing stocks, and we will continue to work within those of which we are members to step up those efforts.
At this year’s International Whaling Commission meeting in Panama last week, we were successful in demonstrating the UK’s commitment to the IWC’s conservation work and our fundamental support for the moratorium on commercial whaling. The meeting delivered positive results for the conservation and welfare of whales. However, we must match our efforts on the global and regional stage with our own implementation.
It is surprising to some that the UK has established the world’s largest marine protected areas, including the world’s largest no-take zone—I speak of the vast biologically rich marine resources of our overseas territories—and in February an area of more than 1 million sq km around South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands in the Southern ocean was designated a sustainable-use marine protected area, establishing one of the largest areas of sustainable managed ocean in the world. That built on the equally impressive no-take marine protected area around the British Indian Ocean Territory of 640,000 sq km, designated in 2010. As the hon. Lady knows, it includes the protection of some pristine coral reefs, to which she referred. Further work is under way elsewhere.
The recently published White Paper on overseas territories illustrates the Government’s commitment to enhance our work in partnership with overseas territories so that we understand, value and preserve their rich natural heritage appropriately, and ensure that their resources are managed sustainably, building on measures already in place. However, as the hon. Lady and the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) said, the UK itself has a rich, diverse and economically important marine area.
“Charting Progress 2” was published by the Department in 2011, and shows the progress that the UK has made in achieving the Government’s vision of clean, healthy, safe, productive and biologically diverse oceans and seas, but our seas will remain sustainable, productive and healthy in the long term only if the right balance can be struck between conservation and economic activity. That will work only if marine conservation sits alongside other policies, such as marine planning and fisheries. That is at the heart of our recent consultation on targets for achieving good environmental status in our seas under the marine strategy framework directive. That consultation has now closed. We aim to publish our response in the autumn, finalising proposals for targets that are ambitious, but recognise the need to achieve sustainable use of our seas.
We remain committed to establishing a network of marine protected areas, but it is important that the right areas are designated and managed, as opposed to simply designating a large number of sites.
Mr Paice
Let me say what I was about to say because it relates directly to the right hon. Gentleman. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said in response to the right hon. Gentleman that we already have a network of 84 marine protected areas in English seas out to 12 nautical miles from the coast. We plan to complete the set designated under the EU habitats directive this year. In addition, we are working to designate more sites under the EU birds directive, and marine conservation zones provided for in the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009, for which he was responsible.
Mr Bradshaw
The Minister is quite right to say that such areas need to be properly designated, but two years of painstaking work went into identifying the potential 127 sites, involving all stakeholders: commercial fisheries, recreation fisheries, environmental groups and others. The fear among most of those groups now is that the Department is selling out to small but very powerful commercial fishing industries by dragging its feet in setting up those areas. We would be grateful for his reassurance that that is not the case.
Mr Paice
I am very happy to give the right hon. Gentleman that assurance. The information I have is that the problem is not, as he implies, special interest groups, but simply that there is insufficient evidence for some of those zones. That is not to say that they will be ruled out, and the delay is because of trying to find sufficient evidence to justify their inclusion. I hope to reassure the right hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Bristol East a little more.
More than 22% of English waters are protected by European marine sites, and we have set a target that at least 25% of these waters will be covered by well-managed marine protection areas by the end of 2016. By then, we expect the coverage of all UK waters to be consistent with the 10% target for marine areas agreed at the convention on biological diversity in 2010. The first tranche should be designated in summer 2013, after we have held our public consultation on recommended sites and examined all the evidence before us. We fully expect further tranches of sites to follow in future.
That MPA network is central to achieving good environmental status by 2020 under the marine strategy framework directive, and as implementation of management measures will take time, and biological recovery from pressures can be slow, early action, when possible, is a pragmatic approach. However, marine protection areas are only one tool we are using to deliver clean, healthy, safe, productive and biologically diverse oceans and seas.
Mr Paice
If the hon. Lady will forgive me, I want to deal with the fishing issue, which the hon. Member for Bristol East addressed. I believe, as did the right hon. Member for Exeter when he had responsibility for the matter, that only a very urgent change in European fisheries policy can ensure that our seas deliver a sustainable future, for both conservation of biodiversity and a viable fishing fleet.
The UK has been leading the way in trialling schemes to improve the selectivity of how we fish, and to tackle the waste of discards by managing fisheries by what is caught, and not what is landed. We have taken that experience into the current reform of the common fisheries policy. Hon. Members will know that the recent meeting of the Agriculture and Fisheries Council successfully made the case for measures progressively to eliminate discards. Not all member states shared our ambition, but a commitment to implement a landing obligation with a provisional timetable is a major step in the right direction.
At that same meeting, we also secured a responsible approach to setting fishing levels. Overfishing has been a central failing of the current CFP, and the UK was adamant that the text should include a clear legal commitment and deadlines to achieve a maximum sustainable yield in line with our international commitments.
Mr Paice
No, I am sorry. I want quickly to finish by answering the point that the hon. Member for Bristol East made about scallops. The use of bottom trawls or other types of gear and activity must be managed appropriately in European marine sites to ensure site compliance with, as the hon. Lady rightly said, the habitats directive. Appropriate measures must be considered by regulators and relevant authorities for their specific areas for activities that may have a significant impact. Banning an activity or type of gear, such as bottoms trawls, as the hon. Lady suggested, can be one example of management action for some scenarios. Orders prohibiting bottom trawling are already in place in areas such as Lyme bay, and we are committed to ensuring that appropriate regulation is put into practice where it is important.
The hon. Lady referred to illegal fishing off Africa and the link with potential piracy, and I confess that that has never been raised with me or my officials. If she will allow me to do so, I will write to her.
I have tried to answer most of the hon. Lady’s questions. I know that she is extremely diligent on such issues, and I respect that.
Child Support Agency
(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)
It is a pleasure, Mr Weir, to speak in the Chamber this afternoon with you in the Chair. I am not sure whether we are setting a record here, but women outnumber men by about five to one at the moment. That is an extremely good sign on an afternoon when Parliament is debating sitting hours.
This afternoon’s debate is about reform of the Child Support Agency. When I was elected, I expected to deal with a number of cases relating to welfare benefits, the United Kingdom Border Agency and organisations such as Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. What I did not expect was that one of my largest and most enduring case loads would relate to the Child Support Agency. In just over two years, my constituency office has dealt with 70 individual cases in which something has gone wrong, and I am just one Member of Parliament. In the borough of Charnwood alone, in December 2011 the CSA had a live case load of almost 2,600 cases.
Before I go into the details of some of those cases, it might be helpful if we consider why the CSA was set up in the first place. Back in 1993, when John Major’s Government introduced the agency, the aim was for it to pursue parents who failed to support their children financially. Savings were expected because parents claiming benefits from the state would instead find their income supplemented by a maintenance arrangement paid by the non-resident parent. I support that intention, but as I aim to show in this debate, it is clear to me and doubtless to other hon. Members that the system is not working and must be reformed, as children, through no fault of their own, are not receiving the financial support they need or deserve.
Despite an often heavy-handed approach, and costs of £440 million every year, half of children living in separated families in this country have no financial maintenance support in place. The CSA is expensive to run, with 40p being spent to collect each £1. Those costs often result from the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission running two separate, failing IT systems, and an additional 100,000 clerical cases—that is, paper cases—that the system cannot cope with.
Recent CMEC statistics show that 48% of complaints were from non-resident parents, and 50% were from parents with care, so it is clear that no one is happy with the current system. CSA data also show that more than 5,000 past and current CSA cases remain, with more than £50,000 in arrears. I congratulate CMEC on producing an excellent set of statistics. It should be congratulated on the transparency with which it produces its figures. It is a model for many other non-departmental public bodies and other arms of Government to follow.
Despite the statistics, there has been some progress, with deduction orders, under which money is removed directly from debtors’ accounts, having trebled since 2009. We need a simple and flexible system that supports families in making and sticking to their own arrangements, if that is possible, and that steers families through a tough time, keeping negotiations constructive and preventing a difficult family break-up from becoming worse or potentially destructive.
The problem with the current system from my perspective is, first, that it seems to invite conflict, and is often accused of being heavy-handed and far too arbitrary. The evidence shows that the most effective and enduring arrangements are ones that parents come to themselves. Secondly, the CSA does not offer value for money; and thirdly, enforcement may be ineffective, with huge arrears totalling nearly £4 billion in March 2012. A specific issue that I suspect other hon. Members will also speak about relates to self-employed partners paying child maintenance.
Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Does she recognise that at the moment the system seems to penalise those dads and absent parents who want to do the right thing and want to contribute to their children’s welfare, but the CSA seems to have no power to grab hold of those who want to avoid the system, and to make them contribute to their children’s lives?
Nicky Morgan
I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. He is absolutely right, and I will refer to a couple of constituency cases in which the non-resident parent, usually the father, is trying to do the right thing, perhaps by looking after the children on one or two days a week, but that is not recognised, when other people seem to be able to play the system. That is certainly something we in my constituency office have found.
I want to bring a human element to this debate. Numbers and statistics are all very well, but what I and other hon. Members—including the Minister—see in our constituency casework is the negative effect that the CSA is having on people’s lives, particularly children. I do not expect the Minister to comment on the individual cases I am about to raise—she has been good enough to see me twice with her officials to discuss two very difficult cases—but I feel that I owe it to my constituents, who often come to see me and my caseworkers in a state of some distress, to talk about their cases.
I shall start with poor enforcement. Karon Hollis is the mother of four children. All have the same father, who is self-employed and was using the accounting system to tell the CSA that he does not earn enough to pay her anything but the bare minimum of £5 per week—£5 for four children. Ms Hollis gathered evidence to show that his lifestyle could not possibly match what he was saying about his finances, but the CSA did not take her evidence, or lost it on the several occasions when she sent it in. Ms Hollis asked for our help with putting her evidence to the CSA, which has resulted in an assessment of £50 per week—10 times the amount she was originally getting. Why must ex-partners so often have to become detectives to get a fairer assessment?
My second case relates to Tracey Warren. It is currently with the adjudicator, who is carrying out a formal investigation. Ms Warren told the CSA 18 months before her ex-husband left the country that he was planning to go, and kept doing so, but nothing was done to get him to pay before he went. He has now moved to the middle east, and because Britain does not have a reciprocal arrangement with the country in question, the CSA cannot chase him for payment. The same issue has arisen in another case, in which the mother has moved to China.
Moving on to cases where paternity is an issue, I have had two cases in which the father queried the paternity of the child and, as a result, the whole CSA claims process ground to a halt. I cannot say whether that is a delaying tactic, but in one case, after a father had asked for a DNA test, he heard nothing further from the CSA for three years, when they contacted him to say he was £16,000 in arrears. Surely an efficient and effective system should not allow such a long period of silence to occur. Paternity should be swiftly established to allow the CSA system to proceed, or the CSA to cease involvement if paternity is not proven.
On arrears being allowed to accrue without the CSA seeming to notice, Mr B in my constituency had a deduction of earnings order so that maintenance was deducted from his salary every month. Unfortunately, the employer failed to pass that amount on to the CSA, and the CSA failed to notice. When the employer went into administration, my constituent, Mr B, was told by the CSA that he would have to pay the outstanding amounts all over again. He did eventually recover a percentage of the debt as part of the administration process. What I cannot understand is why the CSA failed to spot that it was not receiving the money from the employer in the first place.
An element of flexibility is needed in the system. My constituent, Christine Barrell, is claiming maintenance from her husband, who is self-employed. He has been “nil assessed”, which Mrs Barrell is challenging. Her husband’s business accounts, which will support her appeal, are not due until the end of the year, but the CSA needs her appeal within the next 28 days. Can that period be extended to reflect the particulars of this case?
Finally, I want to highlight those cases that I have already mentioned, thanks to the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer), in which the non-resident parent is trying to do the right thing and to maintain contact with their children by seeing them regularly. They often feed and clothe their children, as well as incurring transport costs to see them and to return them to the parent with care. But those costs are not reflected in the maintenance calculation, and the parent with care may not agree to the calculation being adjusted to help to meet those costs. In one case, the CSA recommended that the parent with care should share the child benefit they are receiving, but that was met with a flat refusal.
I hope I have shown that we have a system that no one seems satisfied with; so where do we go from here? In a recent survey carried out for CMEC, two thirds of parents with a family-based arrangement said they were happy with their situation. Only one third of CSA clients said they felt the same. Almost 90% of non-resident parents complied with their own arrangements, compared with just under two thirds of those who had payments assessed and enforced by the CSA. Most parents with family-based arrangements considered them to be fair, whereas only 42% of those whose payments were calculated and enforced by the state system did so. More than 50% of parents who use the CSA say that they could make their own arrangements if only they had the right help and support.
I welcome the Government’s proposed collaborative approach. Hopefully, it will mean that separated parents are able to avoid the conflict that often comes with CSA involvement by making their own, family-based maintenance arrangements whenever possible, and the Government have already committed £20 million to developing better co-ordinated local support services to help that happen. The money will be used to work with voluntary and community groups to make it easier for parents to navigate existing support, and to consider what additional help is needed.
There has been criticism of the charges that will be introduced to allow people to access the statutory system. The previous Government introduced a wide-ranging power to charge all parents as part of the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008, and the coalition is building on that legislation and on Sir David Henshaw’s report to the previous Government on the CSA, and implementing those charging proposals. I understand that there will be heavy discounts for those on the lowest incomes, and total exemption when domestic violence has occurred.
In her response to the debate, will the Minister say more about those charging proposals? Who will be affected, how will they work, and when will they be introduced? Will she also address an issue that has been raised with me by Gingerbread: what will happen to new and existing cases when the new system comes into force? We hope that parents who separate after the new system is introduced will be signposted to a range of support services and encouraged to make a private arrangement, but what about parents who are already caught up in the system? If, for example, a deduction of earnings order is in place, what will happen to that when the new system comes into force?
In conclusion, I hope I have shown that the current statutory child support system needs speedy reform. I appreciate, however, that it is difficult for any Government system to cope with the complexities of family life. Parenting is hard enough for both mothers and fathers, without having to make allowances for the access arrangements, work pressures and new relationships that make every situation unique, and that is why any child support system will, perhaps by necessity, be a fairly blunt instrument.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
The hon. Lady is making a powerful case and we all agree that changes to the CSA are needed. Does she feel that it is important that the new system works smoothly immediately—something that has foxed all previous Governments? At a time of cuts and rising living costs, child maintenance really matters to families. We must not risk making things worse by getting things wrong and making the situation even more difficult for those families who are on the breadline.
Nicky Morgan
I think the hon. Lady might have read the last sentence of my speech, and she is absolutely right. It will be interesting to hear speeches from all parts of the House, but we probably all want to get to the same place and ensure that families who cannot make arrangements receive help to do so, that children get the money they need in order to have the essentials required in life, and that families get the support they need. The hon. Lady is right to say that any transition must be as smooth as possible, and I am sure the Minister will address that point. We are talking about IT systems and family arrangements, and although things will never be entirely smooth, we do not want to see families put in a worse position than they are already in, or the unhappiness that I have already mentioned.
It is right to encourage families to make their own maintenance arrangements. However, the Government should consider how we can become better at getting assessments right in the first place and at enforcing arrangements when things go wrong, and how we can best help families to resolve such issues themselves. I hope to hear from my hon. Friend the Minister on those points.
As I have already hinted, it would be a terrible legacy if, in addressing all the problems I have highlighted, we were to introduce new instabilities into the new system. I look forward to hearing from the Minister about how lessons have been learned and how the system will avoid the situation—this is where I started my speech—in which half the children in this country who live in families that have separated have no financial maintenance support in place.
Mr Mike Weir (in the Chair)
Order. It is my intention to start the winding-up speeches no later than 3.40 pm, which gives us just under an hour. Six Members wish to speak, so I would ask you all to do the maths and tailor your speeches accordingly.
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) on securing this important debate. It is an issue that, even during our discussions on reform, often comes at the end of a lot of other matters and has sometimes not received the full amount of time that it deserves.
I do not for an instant pretend that the CSA has not had problems, but I am concerned that we are making a wrong analysis of them, and it is possible that we could again make a gigantic mistake. Many mistakes were made when the CSA was set up in 1993, and one reason for that was because at the time, the views of those who worked in the field were almost totally disregarded.
I had better declare an interest because I am a family lawyer by profession although I am not currently practising. The CSA was introduced to meet a need because the previous systems were not working well. Then as now, many children and families were not receiving the money that they should have been getting, and the Government did not invent the CSA simply to be difficult. When it was introduced, however, it was an all-or-nothing system that was not terribly helpful and produced a huge work load right from the start. That was probably the wrong end to go from. I am still convinced that the CSA should have been started, at least in the early stages, on a slower basis, perhaps dealing only with some types of situation, and that we should have listened to some of those who were used to working in the field.
Many of the problems that the hon. Lady mentioned are endemic to the situations in which people find themselves, rather than caused by the Child Support Agency. The hon. Lady mentioned self-employed people, and they are always extremely difficult to tackle. They were extremely difficult under previous legal powers when we went to court, or used the system in Scotland that did not involve going to court—I will mention that in a minute. Trying to get from the self-employed what we felt they ought to be paying was extremely difficult, and their ability to produce accounts that made it look as if they did not earn much was notorious. That was always a problem, as were people who disappeared and went overseas. I had a client whose husband worked on oil rigs. Every time we got an earnings assessment for him, he would simply give up that job and take another. He was a scaffolder and very well paid, and his ability to thwart the system, as it was then, was great. I do not, however, believe that that situation would have been any easier for the CSA. We must address the real problems, and not necessarily blame the CSA.
Mr Spencer
Surely the hon. Lady will acknowledge that within her constituency there will be people who experience enormous frustration when trying to communicate with the Child Support Agency. People get moved between different offices around the country; the CSA loses information and does not acknowledge the simple facts that are happening in people’s lives. That is the fault of the CSA rather than the lifestyle of those individuals.
Sheila Gilmore
I must say that my case load on this matter is not as large as some people’s appear to be. Some of the cases are almost a legacy because they come from the previous system. I have some long-standing cases, and in my experience, although I do not seek to defend the CSA, it is not necessarily much worse than dealing with other large Government agencies.
I am worried that we are in danger of making another big leap based on a wrong premise. The Minister’s assumption—this also came through in the opening speech by the hon. Member for Loughborough—is that the statutory child support system is the cause of discord and bad feeling between parents. However, if we start off with a wrong premise, we will come to a wrong conclusion.
The hon. Lady cited research that indicated that two thirds of people with family-based arrangements were happy with them, whereas only one third of CSA clients were happy. Some 74% of those with family-based arrangements considered them to be fair, compared with 42% of those with CSA arrangements. However, the crucial point missing from that analysis is that the people who end up using the CSA are those who cannot reach family-based arrangements. Those who can reach such arrangements do so, and we are not comparing like with like if we come to that conclusion and decide that we should basically shrink the existing statutory system. If I understand the situation correctly, those currently within the system will be asked to close their cases and restart the process by trying to get a family-based arrangement. If they cannot, presumably they will come back through the process. The idea is to shrink the system due to the analysis that the CSA is what causes discord between parents.
My experience as a family lawyer is that separation is a very difficult situation. People do not separate because they are getting on well. They do not usually separate because they can communicate well. Often they are angry and often they have good cause to be angry. That anger is not something that is just stirred up either by the courts, which is one of the assertions that we hear, or by the Child Support Agency. People are angry. They do have difficulty getting money, and there are reasons why that will always be quite difficult.
Generally, when people separate, both partners lose financially. It is a financially difficult situation for them, and often it does not get better after a few weeks, months or even years of separation, because new liabilities come into play. People form new relationships and they find it even more difficult to cope. These things influence people’s attitudes to one another, and some people clearly are not willing to come forward to make an agreement. My concern is that we are making the wrong assumption—that having a statutory system is causing discord—and if we start from the wrong point, we will reach the wrong conclusion, and the solution will not be the one that cures the problem.
I would like to make a practical proposition to the Minister. It is drawn from Scots law and could fill a gap. The Government should think seriously about it, especially if they are determined to shrink the child support arrangements. In Scotland, it is possible to have not just the vague, family-based arrangement that everyone talks about, but a legal minute of agreement, which is enforceable in the same way as a court order would have been under the previous system. These minutes of agreement are usually negotiated with the assistance of solicitors. Many people have them drawn up, and they have worked extremely well. As I said, they are directly enforceable. All the same steps can be taken to enforce them as could have been taken with a court order. That model would enhance the system here tremendously. I offer it up, from Scotland, as something that perhaps the Minister will want to discuss with the Ministry of Justice. They may want to discuss how something such as that might be introduced into the English legal system to enable people to have something that, yes, is agreed—it is negotiated and agreed—but also has legal enforceability.
There is one minor point about minutes of agreement that the Minister might also want to consider. Under the previous CSA arrangements, after one year of having a minute of agreement, it was possible to go to the CSA and renege on it—that was possible for either partner, in effect. The Law Society of Scotland suggests that it would be better if that were a four-year period, and I concur. I think that if people have been properly advised and a minute of agreement has been drawn up—people can ask for a minute of agreement to be reduced in certain circumstances, such as if they have been coerced—a four-year period would be sensible.
Another couple of issues have been raised about how the much-diminished statutory scheme will work in the future. These have to do with finding out about the earnings and assets of some of those who are the most difficult to deal with. Under the present regime, the CSA can have regard to evidence about people’s assets and lifestyle that suggests that their income is not what they say it is. My understanding is that the Government propose to remove the effect of two regulations that achieve that at the moment. I believe that they are regulations 18 and 20 of the child support regulations. That, too, would be a mistake, because it would enable people to construct their affairs in a particular way. Regardless of gender, it is very frustrating for the parent with care, who is struggling, to see the other parent living what appears to be a fairly affluent lifestyle, yet able to present official records suggesting that they do not have the money to pay for their child. That makes people angry, but it often has to do with the attitude of the partner. The Government should reconsider that.
Fundamentally to take away the system and say, “We want people to make their own arrangements,” especially if they will not be legally enforceable, is a mistake and underestimates the difficulty of making those arrangements. Furthermore, that is happening at a time when changes to legal aid may make it harder for people to obtain legal advice so that they can turn the arrangements into more formal ones, and to obtain advice on what their rights are. Sometimes—perhaps not always but sometimes—informal agreements are not very good ones. Let us say that one parent says to the other, “I’ll give you 20 quid a week. That’s fine. Just don’t shop me to the CSA.” I know people who have been through that. The weaker partner, the one who has perhaps traditionally been quite afraid—I am thinking not just of domestic violence as it is narrowly defined—may well accept that when actually it is grossly unfair. People need proper support. I am not convinced that the £20 million that is talked about will be sufficient to put in place for people the level of advice, support and mediation that will be required if the Government press ahead with their proposals.
It is regrettable that, because the Government have framed the question in the way that they have and made this assertion—created this straw man—about the CSA being the cause of so much family discord, that will lead them into a situation in which even fewer children will get maintenance.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
The hon. Lady is touching on a very important point. Obviously, the position will differ throughout the United Kingdom, but I have found through experience that the turnover of staff at the Child Support Agency is pretty significant, given the difficult task that many of them face. Does the hon. Lady agree that additional training of staff coming into the agency would go some way towards trying to deal with what are very emotive and difficult problems and could help alleviate the issues to which she has just alluded?
Sheila Gilmore
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I agree. Obviously, we want staff to be well trained, given that they are dealing with very difficult situations. My point was that, if the official agency is to be shrunk to the extent that appears to be the case and people are to be largely discouraged from going down that route, on the assumption that it will be relatively easy for them to reach family-based agreements, that flies in the face of the reality of the situation that many people find themselves in after separation. I am referring to the fact that it is very difficult to conduct these negotiations and that that will allow people who just want to walk away to do so even more easily than they can at the moment. If the answer is to put in support services, they have to be put in at a level that will be effective. Up and down the country, people know that there are often waiting lists to get support and advice and that mediation is not necessarily easily available—and mediation itself has a cost. Not all mediation services are offered free to users.
It is important that we do not throw the baby out with the bathwater and that a generation of children do not lose out as a result of these proposals.
Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Weir. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) on securing this exceptionally important debate. It is on an issue that spans all constituencies. I cannot imagine being able to find an hon. Member who has not had many letters and e-mails about the Child Support Agency. The issues that parents face when claiming or being claimed against are massive; this is such a complex issue on both sides of the coin. I am sure that all hon. Members will agree with me when I say that one answer does not fit all, as every incident is so case specific; and it is near impossible to attain the best solution for everyone, especially when one law applies to all. I agreed with the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Maria Miller) when she said that the child maintenance system was “broken”. I am pleased that the Government are taking action to reform the system, which is unworkable in most cases.
Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that a frustration our constituents often face, whether they are the parent with care or the non-resident parent, is that they find it very hard to make their voices heard by the CSA, or indeed anyone?
Sheryll Murray
I thank my hon. Friend for highlighting that important point. I would like a formal mechanism through which parents can share experiences and suggestions with the Government and the CSA. A kind of CSA users forum or a panel made up of non-resident parents and those with care could be initiated to feed back their experience regularly to Government. That would enable the CSA to improve its performance for parents with care and non-resident parents.
A major issue seems to be the CSA’s use of the deduction of earnings system. Non-resident parents complain that the CSA does not adequately monitor changes in their income or give them sufficient notice that a deduction of earnings is taking place. Deduction of earnings comes out of the non-resident parent’s pay before they see it, and the payroll department cannot make changes if anything is incorrect. Nothing can be done if an error has been made; the person paying the money has to claim it back and prove that errors were made, which can take years.
An absent father who lives in my constituency has never missed a payment. He was following the old rules, and then the departure was granted and he went on to the new rules. The CSA now says that he has arrears of £8,000, although he has never missed a payment. There appears to be a catalogue of errors, which are being investigated, including putting the wrong child’s name on correspondence, which causes unnecessary angst. The CSA is now taking £400 out of his wages per month for one child, which is ridiculously high. Because that money comes out of a deduction of earnings, the father has no say over the amount taken out—at one point, it increased considerably with no explanation. The situation has caused untold stress to him and his family, especially when the paperwork says that he should pay £42 a month.
Outstanding child maintenance arrears increased by almost £1 billion between December and March. If net weekly profit is over £100, £5 plus a percentage of weekly income in maintenance is payable. That may help to explain the complaint that non-resident parents often try to avoid paying child maintenance. The Government recognise that, and the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission has recommended a new scheme, which is at consultation stage. It would use HMRC-sourced gross annual income for the income child maintenance calculation. That method would reduce costs to business by £0.8 billion.
A major difficulty for the CSA occurs when the non-resident parent is self-employed. Self-employed status means that it is much more challenging to obtain accurate figures. Money cannot be taken at source or from a deduction of earnings. A case in my constituency has taken approximately 14 years. The parent with care is owed a considerable amount of money. The absent parent owns a number of properties, and a charge should be taken on his properties. Allegations have been made—I cannot confirm or deny them—that the absent parent has put his accounts into his partner’s name, so it appears as if he has no assets. I obviously do not know whether that is true, but it is clear that it is not a straightforward case.
Sheila Gilmore
The circumstances the hon. Lady describes are familiar to me, but would she not concede that such difficulties existed before the CSA and there would undoubtedly be difficulties whoever enforced decisions? Such cases were always hard to pursue, because people could do exactly as she describes.
Sheryll Murray
I accept what the hon. Lady says, but I am sure that we can do something with the system to ensure that there are not such anomalies and long-standing cases. It has been 14 years and there is still no conclusive result. The situation needs to be addressed.
I must express my concern that in such circumstances, the only option left open to parents with care is variation mechanisms, such as lifestyle inconsistency tribunals, and the Government have announced their intention to scrap them. If the last line of defence for parents with care is removed, what hope is there for justice to be done and for children to get the money they are owed? Some non-resident parents are engaged in practices that, if this were income tax and not child maintenance, would be seen as tax evasion. I urge the Government to think again and ensure that parents with care have adequate opportunities to appeal against obviously perverse CSA assessments.
In another constituency case, the absent parent lives in a caravan, which is not an official registered address. That completely throws the normal process off balance, because the CSA has to send out officials to identify the tenant. In that case, the non-resident parent denied their identity to the CSA and had to be photo-identified by the parent with care. That process has taken months. The CSA should be equipped to deal with unusual situations. The person concerned has asked for face-to-face meetings, but is being ignored. I have even visited the regional CSA centre with my caseworker to discuss long-standing cases—the regional manger of my centre was a classmate of mine from school.
The CSA costs the public £450 million, and a typical case costs the taxpayer £25,000. Reform is desperately needed, but we must be exceptionally careful because botched reforms by the previous Government cost almost £1 billion, left thousands of families in hardship and were deemed one of the greatest public sector disasters of recent times. I am glad that we have a Minister and a Government who understand that reform is necessary and a priority, and that we have learned the lessons from the previous Government’s time in office.
Mr Mike Weir (in the Chair)
Time is marching on. There are four Members left to speak. I recommend trying to keep to seven minutes each.
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) on securing the debate. I will not repeat the excellent points made by the speakers so far, but will simply use a couple of examples from my casework to illustrate two recurrent problems from which the CSA suffers and which need to be addressed as part of the reform process, as we move to 2013 and that all-important change.
More than 4,000 families in Swindon use the CSA to recover maintenance payments. In my constituency, £6.9 million is owed in arrears—the highest figure in the south-west—so the number of parents, either with care or non-resident, who come to me, as a last hope in many cases, because of the problems they are experiencing, is no surprise. I will use two examples: one of a non-resident parent and one of a parent with care.
First, Mr D, the non-resident parent, was on tour with the Army in Afghanistan for six months. Prior to his tour of duty, he informed the CSA that it meant that he would be away and therefore would technically not be a shared carer, because he would see the children for fewer than the required 52 days. By way of a court order, he has the children for approx 70 days a year with split holiday time. He told the CSA, went on his tour of duty and came back to find that the CSA had finally acted and presented him with a large bill for arrears.
That is not acceptable. The least courtesy we can offer to serving members of the armed forces is to deal promptly when they provide information to the CSA, rather than reward them with a massive bill on their return. Mr D accepts that his tour of duty means a reduction in shared care and that consequences follow, but really, more must be done to improve the quality of how we deal with cases such as his. I do not believe that he and many others should be penalised in that way for serving and representing their country. Active service should be taken into consideration when such issues are being determined.
There is a broad-brush approach that does not help anyone. I find it hard to believe that no mechanism can be found to deal more sensitively with payment changes for serving military personnel. This is an ongoing problem, not just for Mr D but for countless serving military personnel, because they never know when they might be redeployed. I urge the Minister to consider a more flexible approach in those circumstances, so that we can do better by our armed forces. I have already raised Mr D’s case with the Minister and I am grateful to her for corresponding with me about it. Today I make a heartfelt plea, not just on Mr D’s behalf, but on behalf of thousands in the same position.
My second example illustrates what I regard as a poor use of enforcement powers. Miss C is a parent with care of a young child. She first contacted the CSA in 2006, but is yet to receive any money. She has had liability orders and has had the non-resident parent taken to court on two occasions, but still she has received nothing. Her bitter experience has taught her that the powers available to the CSA are not being used strongly enough. Those powers include the removal of driving licences and, yes, imprisonment. At the moment the maximum sentence for non-payment is six weeks, but there are clearly cases where that is an insufficient deterrent and maximum term, and it seems the courts are slow to remove driving licences or impose such sentences. There must be stricter penalties for evading responsibilities. More people are being imprisoned for animal cruelty—itself a serious offence—than for non-payment of child maintenance.
Miss C’s former partner is of no fixed abode, as in the example cited by my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray), and works in what I shall describe as an irregular way, for cash payment. I understand that it is proving very difficult for the CSA to trace and track activities of that nature, but other powers are available in such circumstances and they are not being adequately used. I urge that a different approach be taken with persistent non-compliance of this nature—we are talking about six years. There should be more automatic powers available to the successor body to the CSA to freeze and remove money from bank accounts, where available, and to impose restrictions on holding passports and driving licences, without the need for costly and cumbersome court proceedings.
In the years since its creation, the CSA has become an organisation that, despite the best efforts of many of its employees, is still failing far too many parents with care and non-resident parents. I urge the Minister to do everything she can to ensure that the reforms address some of the issues raised today.
Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir. I will endeavour to keep my comments as brief as possible, so that colleagues may also contribute.
As has been pointed out, the Child Support Agency is a recurrent issue in every MP’s mailbag. I would like to raise one key aspect of the reforms with the Minister: the family-based arrangements. We know from past failures that parental responsibility is key to any workable CSA reform. Parents should be encouraged to make their own arrangements, with minimal interference either from the CSA or from the courts, which of course should be the last resort for those whose separation is so rancorous or potentially violent that private arrangements are not possible.
Like the Government and Resolution, an organisation representing 5,700 family lawyers, I support the concept of family-based arrangements wholeheartedly. However, many family law solicitors are concerned that the Government’s objectives will not be achieved unless those arrangements are enforceable. That is not because lawyers are looking to feather their own nests, but because they have a duty of care towards their clients—a duty of care that the CSA sadly lacks and which unenforceable agreements simply do not fulfil. Lawyers will therefore be obliged to recommend that clients refer themselves direct to the agency or pay for a court order. Family lawyers assure me that, if the agreements were enforceable, the duty of care would be fulfilled and their uptake might be vastly increased. However, there is a risk that the number of couples making such an arrangement will be pitifully small, due to the inability to provide security or certainty.
One might be tempted to argue that a parent who wants an enforceable arrangement should simply pay the fee and use the agency or the courts, but I would argue that logic is flawed in both its economic and social consequences. In terms of social policy, while the fee could be sufficiently high to discourage or even prevent those who most need CSA assistance from getting it, in economic terms the fee makes no substantive contribution towards the real cost of agency services. That cost will not fall, as levels of case load will remain near constant, prompting one to ask what the purpose of the fee is.
The logical and pragmatic answer is to establish agreements that, if possible, bypass the CSA and the courts, yet are none the less enforceable. There are several ways to establish that. Perhaps the simplest option would be to lodge the agreement with the CSA and rely on the agency for enforcement, passing the full cost of collection on to the defaulting parent, not the parent with care. One would hope that would be a significant disincentive to default. Secondly, the arrangement could be lodged with the court, so that in the event of default, the parent with care would look to the court for enforcement. However, as with the CSA option, that has cost and, most important, significant time implications for parents in financial difficulties.
It is with some trepidation that I follow the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore), who not only is a family lawyer but has significant experience of Scotland, because I am about to launch a suggestion that a further option could be to replicate the system north of the border. I will not repeat her comments, but will add to the information she has already provided. I contend that the system in Scotland is far superior to anything thus far proposed in England in terms of simplicity, cost and speed of recovery of moneys due. It might also hearten the Minister to know that it also avoids the need to have an argument over who should be charged.
As we heard, Scotland has long had the benefit of a registered minute of agreement, which does not need to go before either a court or the CSA, and works because it is summarily enforceable. Minutes of agreement are easy to draw up, so they are cheap; and when it comes to default on child maintenance payments, the parent with care does not need to go to the CSA, with its long-winded collection processes, or return to court to seek an order. When the money does not get paid, the parent with care merely asks the sheriff’s officers—roughly the equivalent of an English bailiff—to enforce the agreement. The defaulting parent then has his or her assets frozen in a process that a Scottish lawyer described to me as being “quick and muscular”. They then have a choice: pay the maintenance or go to court to try to have their assets unfrozen. The reality is that, due to its enforceable nature, the minute of agreement rarely has to be enforced, as parties know the harsh measures that can be deployed in the case of default.
I do not suggest that we can expect the entire legal system south of the border to be turned upside down and made to replicate Scottish law. There are certainly different understandings about the use of bailiffs, but we can surely import the key principle: that the agreement is enforceable, and is enforceable quickly and cheaply. How could we replicate the Scottish system? Changing and improving the collection powers and methods of the CSA is an option and should be looked at, but the courts will ultimately use bailiffs anyway, so replicating the quick and muscular nature of a Scottish minute of agreement within English family-based arrangements, perhaps by making them summarily enforceable, would enable solicitors to recommend them and, most important for the Government’s objectives, it might make parents actually want them.
I can see no better way to reflect the spirit of the original legislation and meet the Government’s objectives than with a family-based arrangement that is speedily enforceable. If someone is destitute and has hungry mouths to feed, an arrangement that is not enforceable is useless, and an arrangement that is enforced many weeks or months after default is next to useless. The best solution is an arrangement that is enforceable speedily and, best of all, at no cost to the parent with care.
Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir. I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) on securing the debate—so much so that I have ripped up half my speech; but here we go. Hon. Members have given excellent examples and covered key issues in the debate, so I shall go straight to the heart of the two things that I think changes to the CSA should deal with, to make the agency truly effective. There are two loopholes that need to be addressed.
The first is undoubtedly the 12-month rule, which 87% of family lawyers say causes difficulties, because it enables the CSA to overturn court orders after just 12 months. What is the point of going to court to seek an order, when after only a year—and without the need for any substantive change in circumstances to be demonstrated—the order is void? As my hon. Friend the Minister has said before, the rule is open to abuse, and has become a tool whereby non-resident parents, especially the self-employed, can hide income to avoid paying the full level of support. Furthermore, family lawyers tell me that the existence of the rule skews divorce negotiations, with solicitors increasingly relying on spousal maintenance as a backstop because of the inevitable consequences of the CSA’s ability to scupper a court order after 12 months. The rule likewise promotes hostility, as after 12 months the parent with care returns to court to seek a pound-for-pound increase in spousal maintenance to compensate for what has just been lost through child maintenance under an agency review.
Finally, the 12-month rule is used as a tool for blackmail. I have been shown a shocking but sadly typical case, evidenced by the e-mail exchanges between the parties, of a woman who, having spent considerable sums in legal costs to secure a financial settlement, was threatened with having her children’s maintenance halved unless she agreed to dispose of a joint overseas asset that remained unresolved from the divorce. Her lawyers advised her against short selling. At exactly the same time as her ex-husband, a wealthy accountant working in risk management and financial services, was funding private education for his other children, he was threatening to use the 12-month rule to reduce his maintenance payments by 50%.
The rule was not designed to be used as a tool for blackmail. Indeed, correspondence between the lady in question and the Minister, which I have seen, showed that the Minister regarded that use of the rule as abusive. Therefore, I have to agree with the findings of Henshaw on the rule. It is used as a means of securing a better outcome for the non-resident parent, not the child, and the Government should consider scrapping it, or at least extending it to four years. That would give security and certainty for both parents, and prevent the current abuse.
The second issue that reforms must address is that of spurious zero assessments. It is perfectly illustrated by the case of a lady whose ex-partner, a Porsche-driving former executive who lives in a luxury docklands apartment and who she says has an extremely luxurious lifestyle, is assessed as having to pay less than someone on benefits. Despite his extravagant lifestyle, he simply claims he lives entirely on his new wife’s earnings. The mother however, forced to provide evidence to the contrary, lives in poverty, works full time in low-paid work, and last winter, at the height of the cold snap, was forced to accept charity food parcels and to beg £300 from a friend to put heating oil into her boiler when the tank ran dry. Often the only way the parent with care can attempt to secure some maintenance is through a lifestyle inconsistency appeal, where they can demonstrate that the lifestyle of the non-resident parent is inconsistent with his declared income.
It therefore causes me considerable dismay that the Government have now made clear their intention to scrap the only two effective measures—including the lifestyle inconsistency appeal—by which parents with care can secure support for their children from non-resident parents who seek to hide their real income and capital. Curiously, in the case I have just mentioned, despite claiming to have no income or assets, the child’s father is still able to fund expensive legal proceedings against the mother on a separate issue. It is bizarre.
The CSA needs to be reformed. That is self-evident just from the three examples I have given. I therefore ask the Minister to consider extending the 12-month rule to four years; to examine the issue of zero assessments; and, in particular, to maintain the right of parents with care to mount a lifestyle inconsistency appeal. Lastly, we need to ensure that the CSA has a duty of care. In this era of increased accountability, we need to ensure that Government agencies are held to account.
Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir. I add my praise to that of other hon. Members for my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan), for obtaining this valuable and important debate. My hon. Friends and other colleagues have also made useful and admirable contributions. Many of the comments I wanted to make have already been made, so I will briefly voice the concerns of parents in my constituency.
Like many hon. Members who are present, I am contacted all too often by single parents who have struggled with the system and do not receive the support they need for their children. It is a tragic fact that up to half of UK children of separated families live in poverty, but it is one that is borne out by many of the cases I have assisted with in Gosport. The failures in the Child Support Agency, whether they arise from poor administration or bad decisions, have had a direct impact on the well-being and security of children throughout the country.
The hugely valuable Gosport citizens advice bureau has dealt with almost 100 CSA problems in the past year alone, and that highlights the instability caused by the CSA’s failure to secure payments. Most frequently, parents fall into arrears with their rent or mortgage, and then face the threat of losing their home, which of course gives rise to many other issues. One disabled lady in my constituency was advised by the CSA not to bother applying for child support at all, as her two children were 15 years old. That meant that she could not afford to stay in her home, in spite of her significant care needs.
As my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) mentioned, the often irregular and unpredictable actions of the CSA also cause problems for non-resident parents. In one case, the CSA took payments ranging from £400 to £600 over a number of months from one of my constituents, without any notice. While it is without doubt the duty of both parents to support their children, such actions mean people suddenly find themselves unable to pay their own household bills.
I am also frequently left baffled by the catalogue of errors in the administrative handling of CSA cases. By the time many constituents approach me, they have endured months or even years of inaction, as other hon. Members have said. When contacted by my office, the CSA often, to its credit, gets things sorted relatively quickly, but that raises the question why it should be necessary for things to get to a stage when someone needs to contact their Member of Parliament.
That is why I welcome the Government’s reforms to the CSA. So much time and money is lost in its complex, creaking bureaucracy and the Government are right to do all they can to empower parents to come to family-based arrangements. However, in the light of my experiences in Gosport, I seek reassurance from the Minister that the Government will not neglect those for whom family-based arrangements, negotiation and collaboration are sadly not an option. Many people in my constituency have ex-partners in the armed forces, for instance, which presents greater challenges as their long periods of absence from the UK mean that they are not around to take part in the negotiations, which take time.
My hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough mentioned—as, indeed, did virtually every hon. Member who spoke—the problem of those whose ex-partners earn very little on paper, although the new car on the drive and frequent sunshine holidays belie that, and suggest more cash in hand. It may take significant joined-up thinking between Departments to address that, but we must do so in the interests of fairness, and for children’s long-term well-being. I wonder if the Minister has any thoughts on how to address the issue. It is vital that the Government’s far-sighted reforms should put vulnerable children, and, indeed, common sense, at the heart of all we do.
Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)
I echo the comments made by other hon. Members: it is a pleasure to be here under your chairmanship today, Mr Weir, for this short debate on the Child Support Agency. I congratulate the hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) on securing the debate, and hope she will agree that she was well supported in the contributions made by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) and the hon. Members for South Derbyshire (Heather Wheeler), for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray), for South Swindon (Mr Buckland), for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) and, last but not least, the hon. Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage).
What we have heard today shows how complex child maintenance is. I listened carefully to the various cases with which MPs illustrated what they were saying. Frankly, no two of those cases were the same. If we multiply that by 650 MPs and multiply that again by the number of families who find themselves in a period of stress, perhaps we will appreciate the challenge that all of us face in trying to design a system that reflects all those individual situations. They range from the example that the hon. Member for South Swindon gave of the soldier in Afghanistan to the example that the hon. Member for Gosport gave of the disabled parent trying to keep her children. How do we come up with a system that deals with all those situations?
We should encourage more people to make voluntary arrangements. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East—who is an expert on these issues—indicated, the people who make the voluntary arrangements are not the ones who need the state to intervene or facilitate. They are the people who come to what we could call an amicable separation and who understand that parenting, and the responsibility for parenting, is a joint effort, in terms of providing both emotional support and financial support. Sadly—and it is sad—not every couple can separate in that way. I think that it was the hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North, who I understand may also have some experience in—
Mrs McGuire
If the hon. Lady is not a lawyer, she should get a Bachelor of Laws degree, because she certainly sounded as if she had that sort of hinterland; studying an LL.B, perhaps part-time, might be an opportunity for her to take. Anyway, she highlighted some of the issues about how people try to manage these things.
Having said that, I must say to hon. Members that some of the situations that have been described today are hopefully not quite indicative of the changes that have happened in the CSA. I will just refer to a comment from a former Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, which I think some hon. Members will probably agree with. The BBC reported:
“The public accounts committee said the CSA had a catalogue of complaints, a backlog of cases, and poor enforcement of uncollected payments”
and that the PAC said the CSA was one of the
“greatest public administration disasters of recent times”.
That was the view of the PAC in 2007, when it was under the chairmanship of the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh).
In May of this year, the PAC said:
“The Commission has made real progress in recent years but the challenges it faces”—
and hon. Members have illustrated some of those challenges today—
“in supporting separated families and securing maintenance payments for children are serious.”
So there have been significant changes, and the hon. Member for South Swindon remarked on the range of enforcement actions that exist and that were supported across the board; the Minister was in the House at the time. We had to realise that sometimes the carrot might not work and that sometimes it is about the stick. We can argue about whether six weeks is an adequate sentence, but the difficulties that people would face if they had their driving licence withdrawn, as well as all the other issues relating to enforcement, would really focus the minds of many people.
As a constituency MP, I have had nothing like the volume of CSA cases recently that I previously had. Ten years ago, I would have had a little queue of parents—both with care and non-resident—complaining about all the issues that have been highlighted today. I can now count on one hand how many live cases about the CSA that I have. I do not know if there is a particular problem in Loughborough, but I am just being frank with hon. Members in saying that I have seen a significant change. That is not to say that I do not occasionally have cases where somebody has had a wage deduction charge that has been wrongly applied—
Heather Wheeler
I am sure that my constituency of South Derbyshire is as fragrant as it always is, but I get three CSA cases a week—three a week.
Mrs McGuire
Mr Weir, I hope that you will agree with me that there must be a change in the atmosphere in Scotland, although I have to say that it is nothing to do with your political party. My experience is not the same as that of the hon. Lady. I can only put my experience on the table, in the same way that other colleagues have done.
Since the range of enforcement actions have been introduced, I have seen a significant downturn in the number of CSA cases. That is not to say that there have not been occasions when people have come to me and complained about the administrative errors at the CSA, which are unforgivable, or about the fact that the wrong assessment has been made. Those are the types of problems that have been highlighted in the debate today.
The comments that I quoted from the two distinguished Chairs of the Public Accounts Committee are intended to show that there have been changes in the CSA. The reality is that all of us have to wrestle with the legacy of a flawed initial approach; that includes the Minister, who is doing so quite admirably. The introduction of the CSA had joint-party support at the time, but it was rushed. The technology was not up to it and the scale of the problem in those initial years was grossly underestimated. Perhaps because we always want to believe the best of humankind, the idea was that if we suddenly introduced the CSA, everybody would conform. That was not the reality, as we know from individual experiences.
I am sure the Minister could tell us how many connections have to be made just to reach a conclusion in a single CSA case. Reaching a conclusion is quite a complex business; everything has to be tested. As MPs, we all know that someone can have a perspective on a particular case that might not fit with what another person thinks, whether that case is about the CSA, a housing complaint or any other complaint. So, all those checks have to be made in each case. I am trying to illustrate that this problem is not easy to solve, and there are some questions that I hope the Minister will address, which have been raised by colleagues in her own party as well as by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East.
I echo the advert that the hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North gave for the Scottish legal system. Minutes of agreement are a good vehicle for getting parents to come to an understanding and to recognise that such an agreement is not something they can sign off and then just park; it is legally enforceable. That makes a significant difference to how those agreements are seen in Scotland.
The hon. Lady also suggested that such an approach could be exported, or perhaps transferred—I do not think we are quite into exports yet, Mr Weir, from Scotland to England—into the English legal system. I echo that suggestion, which the Minister might like to consider, although I appreciate this issue is not totally within her domain. Such an approach is an excellent example of how the legal system can formally—but almost informally—make something happen. Things are done between lawyers, and as a lawyer yourself, Mr Weir, you will know that in Scotland one always trusts the word of a Scottish lawyer. The Minister should look at that issue, which I know the Law Society of England and Wales and the Law Society of Scotland have highlighted in their response to the consultation. Interestingly, the Law Society of England and Wales has said that family-based agreements are unable to command support because they are not enforceable, and that they add to the existing uncertainty.
We have all seen examples of how difficult it is to pin somebody down about their lifestyle and what they tell the CSA is their income. Before there was investigation and enforcement within the CSA, I had a long-standing case involving a woman who was married to a high-profile person who was returning an income of almost zero. Frankly, everybody and their dog knew that that was not the case, but the woman had difficulty in dealing with the situation. I think that is why there is some surprise that, given the Minister’s views on trying to get a consensual approach to arrangements, regulations 18 and 20 will, I understand, be withdrawn, and I hope that the Minister can throw some light on that.
I thank the Law Society of Scotland for its excellent comments in highlighting this problem. It is concerned that a change in the regulations, whereby the parent with care, and the CSA, could challenge the lifestyle of the parent without care,
“could allow non-resident parents with well-informed advisers to be navigated out of the child support system to the detriment of the children concerned.”
I suppose that that is the flipside of the lawyer. The lawyer will act in what he or she sees as the best interests of their client and, in those circumstances, that might be to try to navigate their way around—that is the sort of neutral term I would use.
Finally, I have one or two points to put to the Minister, which have arisen out of the recent Public Accounts Committee report. One is on the charging of parents, and a Member has already asked: if it is only £20, what is the point, because it will not even cover the costs, and there could be an element of tokenism? I certainly agree that that aspect would perhaps have been better left as it was. There is a view that the introduction of fees might well make child poverty worse, and that it might act as a deterrent. Given that some people will be on extremely low incomes, £20 might just be the deterrent that will put them off.
The Public Accounts Committee also identified that the IT system that has been introduced to save money is already running late, and every month’s delay will cost £3 million. [Interruption.] The Minister smiles in that enigmatic way that most Ministers before her have smiled about IT and Departments. Given that IT systems have been the bane of the CSA’s life, we need some—any—reassurance that she has this under control. The other related issue is whether a new IT system can be installed and tested while an existing programme is still being delivered. Those of us with accounts in the Royal Bank of Scotland and NatWest have perhaps seen an example of things going wrong when an incident happens during the running of a new system. I seek the Minister’s reassurance on that matter.
My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East asked what would happen to the case load. Is it a zero-sum game? Will the current case load just be wiped, and will people have to say, “I want the CSA to be involved again”?
I hope that this has been a good discussion for everyone here. We have constantly to monitor the CSA. This is not an easy problem, and none of us should ever think that we can invent an IT system or an organisation that will solve the complexity of the emotional problems resulting from the break up of a relationship where children are involved. We only need think of our own families’ and friends’ experiences to see exactly what the pressures are, even in the most amicable of circumstances. In some ways, we are asking the CSA staff to work miracles in very difficult circumstances, and although they have come in for some criticism today, I think the majority of them work efficiently, to a high standard, and as compassionately as they can, within the parameters set by politicians.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Maria Miller)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir. You have a tendency to chair a lot of our debates on welfare.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) on securing the debate. It is difficult to do justice to the wide range of issues raised by Members on both sides, but the debate has left me with the overwhelming feeling that the system is broken much more fundamentally than just a broken IT system. I may have smiled wryly before because, when the right hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire) referenced IT systems, I had a vague recollection, which officials have just confirmed, that the new future scheme was supposed to have been introduced under a Labour Government but has been delayed considerably since its inception—hence the wryness of my smile.
Mrs McGuire
Does the hon. Lady accept that the first system was rubbish anyway?
Maria Miller
I think the right hon. Lady misunderstands me. I mean the introduction of the future scheme, which was considerably delayed under the previous Administration.
I am also somewhat surprised that Stirling seems to be atypical. Although the right hon. Lady might have only a handful of cases or fewer troubling her postbag, the statistics say something considerably different, which is that the Child Support Agency receives more than 20,000 complaints every year. I know that the agency’s chief executive is absolutely unhappy about that and is doing a great deal, working with staff, to do something about it, but it is indicative of the situation facing us.
Heather Wheeler
I hope that my hon. Friend will get around to talking about the duty of care, because if the CSA mucks up, there is nowhere else for the parent to go.
Maria Miller
My hon. Friend is right that as a Government we have a duty to ensure that we have a system that operates correctly for families. I would like to take her back a step, though, to look at the fundamentals.
The reality is that every child in this country has two parents who have a commitment to that child for life. For too long, the evidence has been conveniently ignored that children who live in a stable family do better than those who do not, and the most stable families that we have are married ones. This Government do not ignore the evidence. My hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer), who is no longer in his place, was right to say that both parents have a right to stay involved in their children’s lives. I applaud the work being done by my colleagues in the Department for Education to make sure that that will happen more readily in the future.
Children thrive when both parents take an active role in their lives, and evidence from elsewhere in Europe underpins that. If adult relationships break down and parents do not work together to ensure that they both continue to play an active role in their children’s lives, it is the children who suffer. For me, that is the starting point for today’s debate. Having the opportunity to reframe the subject is important for all of us here.
The hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) got it wrong, I think, when she said that we are trying to say that the CSA causes animosity. The Government are not saying that; we are saying that the CSA is making the situation worse not better, and at a cost of almost £500 million a year that is completely unacceptable. For too long, the child maintenance system has played a one-dimensional role—pretty badly—focusing almost exclusively on money transfer. IT breakdowns apart, perhaps that is why it has fallen so short of the mark and why so many Members have taken part in today’s debate. In the past, the Government have spent almost 10 times more on the CSA, its IT systems and administrative processes for money transfer and enforcement, than on supporting families to work together to fix their relationship problems, which the evidence indicates is a more successful approach. We have to change that.
As right hon. and hon. Members have said, more than half the parents who use the current system say that they would like to make their own arrangements if they had the right support to do so. That is not to say—
Mr Mike Weir (in the Chair)
Order. There is a Division in the House, and I understand that there may be several. The sitting is suspended until the series of votes ends.
Mr Mike Weir (in the Chair)
The main players are all here, so we will resume the debate. Minister, you have 10 minutes.
Maria Miller
What I have said so far is the basis for the reform that this Government are putting in place. I pay tribute to the 8,000 staff at the Child Support Agency and all that they do, with the difficult system they work with, but I share the view hon. Members have expressed today that the current system is not working well enough for the people who need it the most. We inherited two sets of rules, three IT systems and more than 20,000 complaints every year, and reform that has failed to date. It is time to change the role of the child maintenance system and set it in context of the Government’s broader family and social justice policy, which is founded on the evidence that children have a better life with their parents providing support and protection throughout their childhood.
My hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) was right to say that parents need support from each other. Indeed, we have recently set up a customer panel to do just that and we are considering how to develop it further.
The hon. Member for Edinburgh East was right to say that we have to take into account the views of those who work in the field. They are indeed vital, but I caution her against focusing simply on the views of the legal profession, because as MPs who deal with such issues day in, day out, we all know that many people have more grass-roots experience, and we need to draw on that. Indeed, we as a Government have drawn on such voluntary and community sector experience in making our plans for the future scheme. A group of experts in the sector have worked with us to set out how we can ensure that parents have the right information and support, particularly early on, to work together post-separation and to make sure that both parents remain actively involved in their children’s lives. We have already announced £20 million to make that happen—that is in the current spending review. That £20 million, previously spent on IT systems and the rest, will now be used to support charitable organisations, which we all know do so much effective work with families. That funding adds to some £45 million that the Government are already spending in 2012-13 alone on supporting families and relationships.
The money will provide the sort of tangible help that makes a real difference to families’ lives when separation is involved, and it will do so in a way that supports children. It will cover the provision of an online distributable web application; training for voluntary and community organisations to provide telephone support and improved face-to-face support; and up to £14 million for the recently launched innovation fund, which will help innovative ideas to get off the ground and measure their success in supporting parents during family separation.
I reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage) that we know that not everybody will be able to work together. She is absolutely right about that. The hard work that she does in her constituency proves that not everybody can come to their own arrangements. That is why we will also introduce a new statutory child maintenance service for parents.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) has immeasurable experience, and on a number of occasions I have had the benefit of his wisdom regarding reform in this part of my ministerial portfolio. He is right that tough enforcement action is needed. The Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008 contains tough enforcement powers and we are committed to ensuring the implementation of the new statutory scheme, which will be introduced this year, along with powers to manage arrears of maintenance payments that have been accumulated under the existing scheme and are not collectible. We want to make sure, first and foremost, that we have the right statutory scheme before we take on those forcible powers that my hon. Friend thinks—and I agree—could work so well.
I will try to deal with the main issues raised in the debate. One that troubles many Members is that of non-resident parents whose lifestyles are inconsistent with their declared earnings. That is often coupled with being self-employed and other ways of playing the system that hon. Members have said some parents may be exploiting. The problem is not new and we think that our reforms will start to address it. We will use information from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs about taxable income alongside other data to calculate the amount of maintenance that a non-resident parent is required to pay, and that information will be updated every year.
That is an important innovation, because we will no longer have to rely on declared income and will move instead to a system that relies on data provided to HMRC. Of course, some individuals may not declare all their income to HMRC, but that is a different matter. We are working closely with HMRC to do as much as we can to ensure that such income estimates are accurate and kept up to date, which, under the current system, they are not. The right hon. Member for Stirling is probably aware of all those issues from her time in government, and I hope she agrees that this is an important step forward.
Mrs McGuire
Given that we are dealing with people who put in a self-employed schedule D return, as opposed to the pay-as-you-earn, can the Minister give us any indication about where she will be taking the declared income figure from? Will it be from declared income, or will it be from income after all the other legitimate deductions come off—car use, boots for work and so on; all of the things that can be taken down—so that the taxable income at the end is far lower than what the person actually draws in?
Maria Miller
The right hon. Lady will know that we are looking at those sorts of details right now. I take from her comments that she wants to ensure that we are dealing with an income that is representative of the income that an individual has, rather than an income that may be depressed for the purposes of the calculation that is being made. I assure her that those are exactly the sorts of conversations that we are having.
The change to using HMRC data will also give us a much more efficient system, getting money to children quicker and more effectively tracking down parents who fail to pay. On that note, my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon raised an important issue regarding armed forces personnel. We are reviewing how to provide a service to assist service personnel in this respect. I hope he finds that reassuring.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Heather Wheeler) raised an important issue relating to the 12-month rule. Since I became a Minister, I have looked at that in some detail. We are looking for the evidence needed to quantify the scale of the problem and to ensure that we understand it fully, but I understand her point. I have received other representations on the matter and officials are working with the legal community and with the Ministry of Justice to consider how we can resolve the problem. It cannot be right to have a system in which people can play the rules to their advantage. We must have a system that works equitably across the piece. I undertake to write to my hon. Friend in more detail about the actions we are taking and to keep her fully informed of how we move forward.
My hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) and various Scottish Members brought up the minute of agreement, which I have looked at in some detail. We do not feel that we can take that forward as part of the child maintenance system for which the Department for Work and Pensions has responsibility, but I know that my colleagues are well aware of it. If time were to permit—it does not today—I could talk a lot about the important innovations being made in the Ministry of Justice on mediation, which may well deal with some of the issues that the minute of agreement deals with.
In the few minutes that I have available, I wanted to address some of the other detailed points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough, who is an assiduous constituency MP—
Mr Mike Weir (in the Chair)
Order. We have run out of time for this debate.
Local Authorities (Cumbria)
(12 years, 5 months ago)
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John Stevenson (Carlisle) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir. I appreciate this opportunity to debate local government in Cumbria in the Chamber. Before specifically discussing Cumbria, I would like to make a few comments on local government generally. I believe that there is a growing acknowledgement that local government is more important to the success of this country than many previously thought or accepted. I commend the Government for their interest in local governance and for their pursuit of the localism agenda, which is greatly welcome.
However, there is more work to be done. I am delighted that there is a growing cross-party view promoted by many different MPs, councillors and think-tanks that local government matters. However, it is in need of reform. I fully accept that the Government have other priorities—primarily the economy—and it is right that that should be the case. Nevertheless, reform should not be put off or delayed. Indeed, local government reform could be a vital weapon in the Government’s battle to improve the economy and they could carry out those reforms relatively simply.
The Government could call for a commission to review local government. I am aware that Select Committees are already looking at a possible settlement between local and central Government. That commission could look at two key reform issues, namely restructuring local government—in my view, moving towards unitary local governance up and down the country—and furthering the localism agenda that has already been initiated by the Government in respect of passing further powers, particularly tax raising, to local authorities.
Sir Tony Cunningham (Workington) (Lab)
May I first put on the record the apologies of the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), who would have been here but is giving evidence to a Select Committee? Does the hon. Gentleman agree that whatever decision comes out of this, it must have the ownership of the people of Cumbria? Whatever way we divide up Cumbria—whether we have one, two or three unitaries—there has to be the fullest and broadest consultation with the people of Cumbria, so that they feel a definite ownership of the final decision.
John Stevenson
I will come specifically to that point later in my speech, but, as a general observation, yes I have sympathy with what the hon. Gentleman is saying.
The commission could report in due course and the Government and Parliament could consider its views. The advantage of that is that it would not distract the Government from their current business of policy implementation and it would avoid distracting Ministers from their priorities. I have digressed somewhat, but it is important to state that, although the debate is about Cumbria, I and many others believe it is important to address wider issues.
I have had the good fortune to live in Cumbria for 20 years and I was a councillor on Carlisle district council for 11 years before my election to this place in 2010. Over that time, I have become all too familiar with the structure of Cumbrian authorities, as well as with their politics. Back in 1974, when local government was last comprehensively reorganised, Cumbria county council was created along with six district councils within the county council boundaries.
Arguably, that was the most sensible approach at that time: it suited the nature of local government and the needs of the different parts of Cumbria in the 1970s. However, life has moved on. We live in a different world, and government at all levels has increased and become far more complex. It is also true that the role of councillors has changed dramatically. Since 1974, there have been attempts to modernise and improve the arrangements, structures and roles within local government. Yet, I question whether the role of local government has truly modernised and kept up with the times. That is especially true of Cumbria.
A report on governance in Cumbria that was published a few years ago said:
“Cumbria is a county which is over-governed and under-led”.
It was true then and it still applies today. In Cumbria, we have seven councils—eight if the Lake District national park, which has considerable authority, is included—and there are nearly 400 councillors, with seven chief executives and seven senior management teams. In the county, six authorities are responsible for collecting council tax, at a total cost of more than £4.2 million. There are six different departments for planning, environmental and property issues. All that administration serves a total population of around 500,000 people.
The structure of Cumbrian local government needs to be reformed for two reasons. First, any substantial restructure, if done properly, would lead to considerable savings for the county. When the possibility of a unitary in Cumbria was discussed a few years ago, the county council believed that it would make substantial savings running into millions. That point is even more important and relevant given the economic backdrop against which we are having this debate. Any savings, particularly from amalgamating senior management teams, unifying departments and reducing the number of councillors, could ensure that front-line services that are vital to the everyday lives of the people of Cumbria are safeguarded and, in some cases, even enhanced.
Mr Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman is making a very concise and overdue case for looking again at the structure of local government in Cumbria. I am grateful to him for securing the debate. He talks about the cost savings, which is an important point to recognise, but do we not also need to look at and be very mindful of the effectiveness of local government? A current problem—whether with education, health care or roads—in my constituency and I am sure in many others, including that of the hon. Gentleman, is not only saving money from the front line but the effectiveness of local government doing what it is supposed to do.
John Stevenson
I 100% agree with the hon. Gentleman and, funnily enough, that is what I am about to come on to. I take his point—he is absolutely right—and that is the second most important part of a reformed structure in Cumbria.
However, the second issue, better governance, is the most important in many respects. The reform of local government in Cumbria would in itself lead to better government, and the benefit for our county is potentially enormous. Currently, people often have no idea which council is responsible for the services that they need; they do not know the difference between the roles of the district and county councils; and the political parties on one council are often fighting the parties on another. Indeed, too often, we have the absurd situation of councillors of the same party but different councils battling each other. That can extend to the officer corps of the councils, with the officials of each feeling the need to defend their council’s position rather than pursuing policies that are in the interests of the local population. However, the ultimate absurdity is with individuals who are councillors on both councils. They might vote a particular way on policy in one council, but then go the other council and vote a different way in exactly the same policy debate—that takes place across the political divide, occurring among Conservative, Labour and Liberal councillors.
All that does nothing for the reputation of politicians in Cumbria, of councils or of political parties and, most importantly, it does nothing for the people of Cumbria. Over time in Cumbria, there has been a growing consensus in the political and business worlds, in local communities and among council employees and other organisations that a change is needed. Many organisations are utterly frustrated by the lack of decision making and consensus within the various councils. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor said that if are to pursue successful growth in the British economy, we need to remove the obstacles to growth. Worryingly, in Cumbria the business community sees the current structure of local government as an obstacle to growth. It is imperative, therefore, to remove the obstacle so that we can see a better performing economy in Cumbria.
One problem I acknowledge is that while everyone—I like to think—agrees that change is needed and that something must be done to streamline and improve the current arrangements, many say that a consensus on how reform should go ahead is impossible. The solution, in my view, is relatively simple: Cumbria should move towards a unitary system of government. My personal preference is for two unitary authorities in the county. The simplest way to achieve that is to ask central Government to request the Boundary Commission to come in, review the arrangements and produce a proposal. Such a proposal could go out to consultation before a final decision.
I take on board the comments of the hon. Member for Workington (Sir Tony Cunningham) that we must ensure a consensus in Cumbria. Whatever structure that the Boundary Commission came up with should have support in our different communities. I take that on board fully.
Sir Tony Cunningham
Does the hon. Gentleman accept, given that the Boundary Commission came up with whatever it came up with on the parliamentary seats proposals, that there ought to be a way to input into the process and to change the proposals, if necessary? The way in which the commission dealt with the parliamentary boundaries has been ludicrous.
John Stevenson
If the Boundary Commission were to agree new boundaries in Cumbria, I like to think that it would come to Cumbria, go around the place physically to see what it is all about, meet the communities, MPs and councillors, and then come up with proposals, rather than what happened with the parliamentary boundaries.
The advantage is that the politics would be taken out of the issue—at least, primarily, at the beginning—and the unnecessary squabbles that would inevitably arise if a decision had to be made by the various parties in Cumbria would be avoided. I therefore ask the Government to accept that there is a need for change in Cumbria, to acknowledge that the current arrangements are an obstacle to growth and to ask the Boundary Commission to come up with proposals for restructuring Cumbrian local government with a view to introducing unitary councils.
I am fully aware that there is general reluctance in Government to get involved in local government changes, and I understand the reasons for that. I fully support Government policy to give greater control to local authorities. I ask this: if there is sufficient support for reform in Cumbria, from local politicians of all colours, local organisations and the local population, will the Government consider exercising their powers under the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 to initiate a review into the local government of Cumbria? If the Government agree, it will simply be up to Cumbrians to request such a review, and I hope that MPs across the county would support it.
The legacy of a reformed structure in Cumbria would be huge. It would lead to better local government, better management, better services, and, I like to think, a more vibrant economy. Instead of being over-governed and under-led, we would be a county properly governed and effectively led. The businesses, communities and even councillors of Cumbria are asking for the removal of unnecessary layers of bureaucracy and the streamlining of a currently cumbersome system. I hope that the Government are willing to give them, and us, the tools we need to see proper government in Cumbria.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Robert Neill)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson) on securing the debate and on giving us the opportunity to debate local government structure in Cumbria. I am grateful to the hon. Members for Copeland (Mr Reed) and for Workington (Sir Tony Cunningham), who intervened during his speech.
I very much sympathise with many of the sentiments and views expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle. Like him, my background is in local government. I spent some 16 years as a councillor in a London borough and another eight or more on what we would regard as a top-tier authority, so I understand the point that he makes. The Government recognise the importance of effective local government and how it can significantly contribute to economic growth in the local economy. I recognise the importance not only of delivering local services in the most effective and efficient way, but of effective local leadership—both officer and member leadership. Sweeping away the unnecessary bureaucratic controls, regulations and processes that could lead to over-government and stifle initiative and growth is also important.
I part company with my hon. Friend on the belief that changing the structure is the answer. Having looked at, and on one occasion lived with, local government reform and restructuring in London, I do not believe that the cost, disruption and delay, which attended past attempts at enforced unitary reorganisation, are justified. It is not the right means to deal with the problem that he identifies.
Mr Reed
Although I have sympathy with the case made by the hon. Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson), I agree that now is not the time for local government reorganisation in Cumbria, given the huge costs necessarily involved at a time of financial distress for local government, not only in Cumbria, but across the country.
I would like the Minister to take on board the fact that, when the previous Government tried to address local government reorganisation in Cumbria last time, the proposal failed due to the national strategic interests in Cumbria, principally those surrounding the nuclear industry in west Cumbria and my constituency. That needs to be addressed. There were doubts about what might happen to the nuclear industry under a unitary Cumbrian authority. I ask him to bear those considerations in mind.
Robert Neill
I am happy to do so. It is a perfectly fair point; we cannot look purely at narrow structural issues in isolation from the impact that a local authority has on the wider community and economy or the national and sub-national considerations that flow from it. I therefore agree with that proposition.
The Government do not intend to instigate centrally imposed local government reorganisation, but reform and change are necessary. We should concentrate on how local government works and delivers the services that residents need. That is where we could fruitfully apply our minds and our time, and it can best be delivered in today’s circumstances of dealing with economic growth, with the financial constraints facing us and with the pressure on public finances. That points clearly to councils working closely together when that makes sense, as it often does. I accept that the boundaries may often be somewhat artificial when looked at in the economic context or in terms of the practical geography of delivery for some types of service. It is not necessary to change the boundaries and the names on the map to achieve such aims.
We should encourage local authorities to work more and more together, to pool and share their staff and their buildings and to discharge their functions jointly with other councils and other public service providers. Much work has already been done on community budget pilots and how a multi-agency approach can deliver better public services for us.
John Stevenson
I understand the Minister’s argument, and I sympathise with it. If councils work together, savings can undoubtedly be made and local government can be more efficient, but what happens when councils do not agree and are unwilling to co-operate?
Robert Neill
First, increasingly that culture is changing. Secondly, the Government have made it clear that, when we look at how we finance local government in future, innovative councils will benefit because those that seek to attract economic growth to their areas and to make homes provision and so on will benefit through business rates retention and the new homes bonus. Often, it makes good sense to work jointly together. There is an obligation on councils to work together to prepare their planning policies under the duty to co-operate, so there are specific levers to give a firm nudge to local authorities to co-operate.
In most parts of the country, electors will be able to see authorities not far away and sometimes of different political persuasions working jointly together. My Conservative-controlled London borough had some joint working with the Labour-controlled council in Lewisham. Party politics need not get in the way. It is the mindset that is important, and we must all work to change that. That is the way forward, and separate chief executives, separate legal payrolls and so on are not necessary.
An example close to here is Westminster council, Kensington and Chelsea council and Hammersmith and Fulham council, which have pioneered a radical approach whereby they share all their services. They still have individual councillors with democratic accountability, but all their services are effectively now being shared and are delivering efficiencies of about £100 million every year. It is called the tri-borough approach, and it can be, and is being, adapted in rural areas. I suggest that that model is the way forward.
Since March 2010, East Devon district council has been sharing a chief executive with South Somerset district council, and they are looking to expand that sharing process. Significantly, that collaboration is across a county boundary. An enforced unitary arrangement in the county would not have helped their situation and would have been needlessly constraining. It indicates that where there is a will for authorities to collaborate, they can achieve real savings. We are seeing that in many places. Sharing senior staff, as well as back-office staff, shows that more can be done for less, and such an approach can work with the business community, which is important. That is why it is important to ensure that local economic partnerships work effectively and efficiently. We must continue to ensure that that is delivered.
Such innovation does not need permission from central Government. It does not have to wait for us to say so. Given the new general power of competence under the Localism Act 2011, councils have the ability to do that without reference to central Government. I agree with the point made by the hon. Members for Workington and for Copeland that, whatever the form of the arrangements, they should be locally developed and locally owned to meet the specific needs of local areas. The right way forward is for councils to consider what is best for their residents, rather than preserving the current means of doing things and the institutional interest in any area.
Mr Reed
The Minister is being very patient and accommodating with his time. On the point that he raised earlier, will he undertake to write to me about the prospects of business rates from the nuclear industry going to my local authority?
The hon. Member for Carlisle mentioned the effectiveness of local government. The system that we have in Cumbria severely impinges on the effectiveness of our local government structure, and whatever our political persuasion, we would all like to make that work better now, in advance of any future reorganisation. How can the Government help us to ensure that local government is more effective, particularly, as I said, in education?
Robert Neill
We will consult on further technical details about the operation of the business rates retention scheme in the summer, and I will, of course, write to the hon. Gentleman. Improving ways of working together does not always require a central Government intervention. The Local Government Association has done a lot of pioneering peer-improvement work within the sector, and there are many examples, including in other parts of the north-west, of experienced members and chief officers going in to mentor and encourage joint working.
I hope that the authorities in Cumbria will look at the opportunities that are open to them and that people are benefiting from elsewhere. That will require a cultural change in the way of thinking, and that is sometimes the biggest challenge to get over. I think that there is a way to achieve that objective without the up-front costs and potential disruption of enforced reorganisation. There are also opportunities where councils come together and form a joint authority that is responsible for certain services. The obvious example, although in a more urban context, is Greater Manchester, which deals with transport and related issues. It is a combined authority that has voluntarily pooled a measure of sovereignty. It is driven from the bottom up and locally owned, and that is its advantage.
I accept that there can be arguments for the merger of districts within a two-tier system, but again we would regard anything in that direction as having to be locally driven. If local authorities—this has been mooted in some parts of the country—want to come together voluntarily, that would be a different consideration from our imposing it from above, provided that there was clear evidence of public support and that it could demonstrate that it represents value for money and would result in better services for local people.
There are ways in which we can deal with the situation as it is. Reference was made to the number of councillors, and I will touch on that issue by saying that local government electoral arrangements, which include the number of councillors on a council, are the responsibility of the Local Government Boundary Commission and are not something that the House has decided should be in the Government’s hands. The commission is responsible directly to Parliament for its work. There are circumstances in which local authorities can request a review of their arrangements, and the Local Government Boundary Commission, which is well staffed and expert in these matters, is always willing to talk to local authorities in such situations.
Having looked at everything in the round, I hope that our arrangements will enable the legitimate objectives, which my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle rightly seeks to achieve, to be met without the consequences that flow from an imposed top-down approach that is not consistent with the spirit of localism. I submit that he and I were both elected on that issue in our manifestos, and I hope that localism is generally accepted as the right approach across the House.
Co-operative Housing
(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir, and to debate the potential effects of the Berrisford v. Mexfield Housing Co-operative Ltd Supreme Court judgment on the future of co-operative housing in the UK. Many of us who believe that the co-operative model has a significant part to play in the UK’s current shortfall in affordable housing think that this case has raised some important issues. I am grateful to have the opportunity to discuss them today.
The court case, which I will refer to as Mexfield, or Berrisford and Mexfield, has had a profound effect on the tenancies issued by many housing co-operatives. Among other things, it has reinforced the need for a new legal framework to define the relationship between a housing co-operative and its members. Instead of applying feudal landlord and tenant law to co-operative housing projects, we would have a law that recognises the right of occupancy as a result of membership of that co-operative, as defined in the members’ agreement.
I made that argument last year when I introduced a ten-minute rule Bill that would have recognised co-operative housing tenure in UK law for the first time. Before I continue, I should say that I am grateful to the Minister for Housing and Local Government, who cannot be here today. He took time after that ten-minute rule Bill to meet me to discuss the matter further. I appreciate his interest in these matters.
The ruling of the Supreme Court in the Berrisford and Mexfield case highlighted the problems caused by the absence of this specific provision for housing co-operatives in law. I hope we can explore the implications of the court case and the actions that need to be taken in the short and long term to deal with them.
Before examining the specifics of the court ruling, I will turn to housing co-operatives more generally. I see here several colleagues from the Co-operative party, who will be well aware of the merits of housing co-operative schemes. For others less familiar with them, let me explain how they work. Like any co-operative organisation or business, fully co-operative housing projects are owned and controlled by the people who use their services, in this case, the residents.
The co-operative model gives residents democratic control of the property in which they live, giving them a greater say over the management and maintenance than they would otherwise have as tenants. Residents also decide codes of conduct and rules of membership. In brief, the co-operative model is based on a combination of rights with responsibilities and a respect for mutualism. I believe it is a model that builds strong communities, with the potential to increase the supply of affordable housing, and I would like to see it flourish.
Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate and on his ten-minute rule Bill on housing co-operatives, which I was proud to support. Does he agree that, in addition to the points he just outlined, co-operative housing can be an important way to help some people obtain their first home?
Jonathan Reynolds
I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention; I see that as a major benefit and will say more on that later. There are already a number of housing schemes across the country that are run to varying degrees in accordance with the co-operative model. Because UK property law acknowledges only the legal states of freehold, ownership and tenancy, co-operative housing schemes do not have full legal recognition. A definition of fully mutual housing co-operatives does exist and slightly different legal rules apply. For instance, under the Housing Act 1988, fully mutual housing co-operatives are not permitted to grant either secure or assured tenancies. Instead, co-operatives grant non-statutory contractual tenancies. The case involving Ms Berrisford and the Mexfield Housing Co-operative shows that the currently available tenancy agreements are not wholly appropriate for co-operative housing organisations. In fact, although I appreciate that this sounds like a very technical point, the issue of contractual tenancies is crucial to understanding why this case has caused concern.
Currently, the majority of the members of a co-operative housing scheme are issued with what is known as a periodic tenancy. A periodic tenancy is regularly renewed at a specific point; it is usually granted from week to week, or from month to month. It can be brought to an end unilaterally, by the tenant or landlord.
As co-operatives are not legally capable of granting secure or assured tenancies, the rights of the landlord and the tenant are defined by the tenancy agreement. So, instead of statutory security, co-operatives ensure that tenants have security through the decision-making practices and policies, of which the tenants are a part. In addition, they usually give tenants an additional degree of security by inserting a clause in the tenancy agreement specifying the circumstances in which they would end the tenancy, such as non-payment of rent. The tenancy can still be ended if either the tenant serves notice or the co-operative issues a notice to quit, but the clause in the agreement specifies that the co-operative can serve notice to quit only in certain specific circumstances, such as non-payment of rent, which I have already mentioned, or antisocial behaviour or some other pre-defined breach of the tenancy. By and large, that system has operated effectively for co-operative housing projects in the UK for some time.
However, the Supreme Court’s Berrisford and Mexford ruling has thrown that practice into doubt. Ironically, the ruling has stemmed from the clauses in the agreements that are designed to offer greater security to tenants. The Supreme Court ruled that the clauses in the co-operatives’ tenancy agreements that specified particular circumstances in which the tenancy could be brought to an end actually created an uncertain term, and as no tenancy can be for an uncertain term, the Supreme Court ruled that it should instead be considered as a tenancy for life. That means that, instead of a periodic tenancy that was routinely renewed at regular intervals, the Supreme Court said that the tenancy should be considered as a form of tenure that is more commonly associated with home owners, because under the Law of Property Act 1925 a tenancy for life lasts 90 years or for the lifetime of the resident.
Again, that decision might sound technical, but it potentially has very wide-ranging implications for housing co-operatives, bringing in a wide range of legal provisions that are primarily aimed at home owners and that are therefore inappropriate for co-operatives. First, that is because, unlike periodic tenancies, fixed-term tenancies such as the ones I have mentioned cannot be ended with a notice to quit. Instead, they must be ended through mutual agreement or, where there has been a breach of tenancy, a legal process that is again usually associated with home owners. I understand there has already been a case in which a co-operative member has successfully argued a “Mexfield defence” against possession proceedings, arguing that in effect, he had a 90-year fixed-term tenancy that could not be ended with a notice to quit.
There are concerns that this ruling could open the door to potentially complex and costly legal processes. Determining whether co-operative tenancy agreements are periodic or fixed-term tenancies is not easy, and co-operatives across the UK are waiting to see how the county courts interpret the Supreme Court’s ruling on possession orders. They are scrutinising their tenancy agreements to consider what they can do to eradicate any uncertainty, while avoiding costly legal disputes. They know that currently, the only real way to determine the status of these tenancy agreements may be through the courts.
I have already outlined the impact this ruling might have on housing co-operatives in the unfortunate circumstances where possession proceedings are needed, but its implications could also impact on the day-to-day running of housing co-operatives for residents. For example, I understand that residents will no longer be able to rely on the so-called “right to repair” outlined in section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, because that only applies to tenants with a short tenancy.
Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on raising this very important issue. I was very pleased to be one of the people helping him out on his ten-minute rule Bill. When I speak to housing co-operatives, it strikes me that one of the issues they are concerned about is the implications of this ruling for housing benefit. Can he say a few words about that?
Jonathan Reynolds
Absolutely, and I too am aware that this issue is causing significant concern. The concern stems from the understanding that co-operative tenants would be entitled to claim housing benefit only if clarification was sought. As I understand it, housing benefit is not usually payable to people with leases over 21 years, so this ruling would cause a significant problem to those people. Can the Government confirm as a matter of urgency whether co-operative tenants, like other tenants, would still be eligible to claim housing benefit?
When making the judgment, Supreme Court Justice Baroness Hale highlighted the fact that the rule about certainty was invented long before periodic tenancies. Others, including the retired Law Lord, Lord Browne-Wilkinson—back in the early 1990s, I believe—have acknowledged that this area of the law is not in a satisfactory state. I understand that CDS Co-operatives, the largest co-operative housing service agency in England, is already seeking to bring a test case before the Supreme Court. That case will ask the Court to consider whether the principle that a tenancy cannot be for an uncertain term can be overturned. However, that process will be long and costly, and even if CDS Co-operatives succeeds, the Supreme Court may rule that it is the role of this House and Parliament, not the Court, to change precedent derived from an interpretation of centuries of feudal law.
The Supreme Court ruling has raised serious questions for the co-operative housing sector. It would be wrong to leave the sector to deal with that fallout alone, so today I ask the Minister whether he can offer urgent assistance to housing co-operatives as they try to navigate their way through the implications of the judgment. However, I still firmly believe that Parliament needs to change the law in this area.
As my hon. Friends the Members for Luton South (Gavin Shuker) and for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) said, last year I introduced a private Member’s Bill that would have acknowledged co-operative housing in law for the first time. I argued that existing landlord and tenant law assumes a fundamental conflict of interest between landlord and tenant and that that was inappropriate for the co-operative model. I suggested that the new form of tenure would open the way for the expansion of co-operative housing schemes at a time when the UK faces a significant housing crisis. The change in the law would formally have acknowledged the nature of housing co-operatives for the first time, but it would also have had the potential to increase access to affordable housing and would have enabled members of housing co-operatives to build up financial equity at a time when people are finding it harder than ever to take their first step on the housing ladder. That point is in response to what my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South said, because if that Bill had become law, it would for the first time give people a real option between ownership and renting. By virtue of being a member of the co-operative, they could pay an amount of money appropriate to their income, giving them an equity stake that would grow. They would not face the financial hurdles of buying for the first time, but they would have a greater stake than if they were simply renting.
In many countries, co-operative housing tenure is already recognised as a distinct way for members to acquire the right to occupy their homes. For example, in Sweden, where 18% of the population live in housing co-operatives, that has been part of the law since the 1920s. I am delighted that, in Wales, the housing White Paper, “Homes for Wales”, gives due prominence to the need to support co-operative schemes through legislation, committing to create co-operative housing tenure in Welsh housing law. I congratulate the Welsh Labour Administration, the Welsh co-operative movement and the Minister for Housing, Regeneration and Heritage, Huw Lewis AM, on Wales being the first part of the UK to do so.
The importance of the issues highlighted by the Berrisford v. Mexfield ruling is inextricably linked with the seriousness of the growing housing crisis in the UK. I am sure that I need not remind hon. Members here today that in the private rented sector, rents are increasing more quickly than wages, and at a time when living standards for working families are being squeezed and people are under huge pressure. Local authorities and housing associations own 1 million fewer homes now than in the late 1970s. Families can no longer rely on social housing. With the average price of a property in the UK in excess of £165,000, it is now harder than ever for first-time buyers to step on to the housing ladder.
We urgently need to find solutions to the problem. Co-operative housing schemes do provide an alternative solution. They can offer affordable, quality accommodation to residents, while empowering them to play a key role in the decisions that relate to their property. What is more, they have the potential to attract new investment into the provision of much-needed housing. We should be doing all we can to support the growth of the co-operative housing sector. We need to do more and we should start today by supporting existing co-operatives in the wake of the Berrisford v. Mexfield judgment.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Andrew Stunell)
It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Weir. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) on bringing this matter to the attention of the House today. I want to establish my own credentials in two ways—first, by geography in saying that he and I have adjacent constituencies, which have some common problems and issues. I also want to establish my credentials in relation to the co-operative movement. My first paid job was with the co-operative movement in Manchester, and it seems to have stood me in good stead as a foundation for my career, such as it is.
The hon. Gentleman has been a very assiduous supporter of the co-operative movement. This debate, coming in the international year of the co-operative and following his private Member’s Bill, is relevant and timely.
The hon. Gentleman also referred to the fact that after the demise of his Bill—at least at its first attempt—he met my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Local Government to discuss in some detail his proposals and how they might move ahead. The Government have no hesitation in agreeing with the hon. Gentleman about the importance of the co-operative principle. It is certainly in tune with the Government’s thinking about decentralisation and democratic engagement and with our view that powers should be returned to local communities, local neighbourhoods and local tenants’ associations. Tenant empowerment is a notable feature of the Localism Act 2011, which came into law earlier this year.
Overall, we aim to rebalance power from central Government to local authorities and local people and to deliver the housing that communities want and need and that, as the hon. Gentleman made clear, is certainly urgently required. We are doing a lot to achieve that and to create new models to deliver additional housing. I am sure that he recognises that co-operative models of delivery and development would be welcome in that pattern; I do not think that they could ever be an exclusive, or probably even a substantial part of the sector. It is important to distinguish some of the fundamental differences between the history of the housing market in Scandinavia and in this country. We are all prisoners of our own history and models of development. Nevertheless, co-operative models can make an important contribution.
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will also recognise that this Government, in investing £4.5 billion in developing social and affordable homes, are responding strongly and positively to the need for low-cost housing. We will deliver 170,000 new social and affordable homes by 2015. I must say for the record that that is somewhat in contrast to the outgoing Administration, which in 13 years reduced the stock of social rented homes by more than 400,000. We are turning back that figure.
Jonathan Reynolds
Just for the record, the Minister mentioned our neighbouring constituencies. I know that he knows my area well, as I know his. When the Government give statistics like that, it does not reflect schemes such as one that he will be aware of that was pursued in Hattersley in my constituency. It fundamentally turned around the housing market in that area. Yes, it reduced some of the stock, but it resurrected the market and invested a great deal. That must be reflected. It is not just about housing; it is about homes and quality of life for the people who live in those homes.
Andrew Stunell
Indeed. I can look over my constituency boundary at Hattersley. I fully understand the work being done on regeneration there. We have continued it with investment that will deliver 150,000 additional decent social homes in this spending review period. The hon. Gentleman and I have some shared objectives, but I thought that it was important to put on record what has been achieved so far and what our aims are.
I turn to some of the hon. Gentleman’s specific points. The Government believe that getting people involved is the key to making healthy, strong communities and places to live. That is encapsulated in the empowerment White Paper, which the Government recently published. We recognise that members of housing co-operatives are more likely to be active members of the community and engage in other areas of governance in the community. For instance, they are school governors, and so on. In other words, people in co-operatives and with co-operative tenancies are often the joiners and doers of a lively community.
Gavin Shuker
The Minister makes a compelling point about the involvement of many people in housing co-operatives. Will he outline what specific work has been done at the Department for Communities and Local Government with reference to the implications of the Berrisford v. Mexfield case that we are discussing?
Andrew Stunell
Indeed, I shall come to that shortly.
The Government, working with the Homes and Communities Agency, is engaged with the Confederation of Co-operative Housing as the lead member of the Mutual Housing Group, which is considering how we can develop an investment fund to support the co-operative sector. I understand that a meeting this autumn will take that forward. I hope that that shows the Government’s earnest intent to ensure that the sector is not left out of the investment and development that we have in mind.
I recognise the uncertainty that the judgment may have created for housing co-operatives and welcome the Confederation of Co-operative Housing’s issuing guidance to its members. I am sure that Opposition Members will know that that guidance makes it clear that co-operatives need to think carefully about how they word their tenancy agreements in future. However, if they get that right, co-operatives should still be able to end tenancies in a straightforward way, through service of a notice to quit. Even if a lifetime tenancy is deemed to subsist, a co-operative landlord can still rely on a breach of a term of the tenancy, for example, failure to pay rent, to obtain possession. That is broadly the same position pertaining to most other social tenants.
It is important to recognise—I am sure that co-operatives do—that there is no standard model tenancy. Therefore the Mexfield judgment has to be taken as a case relating to a particular form of tenancy. I believe that the co-operative movement has received advice about different tenancy agreements in different areas, saying either that they are subject to the Mexfield judgment or, alternatively, that a particular version is not. It is certainly a fine legal point and I would not set myself up to judge that. In short, we do not need a new form of co-operative housing tenure. We need existing tenancy agreements to be in accordance with best practice—Mexfield avoidance compliant, if I can put it that way—to avoid any of the consequences that the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde mentioned.
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will have received the message from my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Local Government about his proposed Bill. We are not clear what a new co-operative housing tenure would look like or what benefit it would bring in practice. His Bill might have the perverse effect of giving occupiers of co-operative housing fewer rights than tenants in social housing, local authority or housing association properties. I am sure that he would not want that to be the outcome.
Jonathan Reynolds
I understand how the advice that the Minister received may have come to that, but will he acknowledge, for the record, that the rights and obligations of the members of a co-operative are democratically determined by its membership? The Minister’s argument could be based on the fact that some tenants in social housing have statutory rights to defend them, but the whole point of a co-op is that decisions are made democratically by a co-op’s membership, so in practice they would not have fewer rights. They would probably have many more rights than people in equivalent forms of social housing.
Andrew Stunell
I would certainly hope that that is right. One would expect a high level of mutual respect between tenants who form the co-operative. However, as the current example shows, that is not always the case. The Mexfield case went to court because that fundamental appeal to common sense and common rights broke down and the individuals saw fit to challenge the basis on which the contract had been formed.
That makes a point that is highly relevant to the work that the House does when it considers legislation. Legislation is not primarily for the use of people who have common sense; it is to regulate people who have not got a great deal of common sense. In developing a new tenure system, one has to be very aware of any perverse consequences that might be brought to light. It is also quite—in fact, very—important to make it clear that, even if the hon. Gentleman’s Bill were suitably amended and then passed, it would not apply retrospectively. The measure cannot unilaterally and retrospectively change the terms of tenancy agreements already in force. It is therefore still important for co-operative associations that believe that they may have a kind of tenancy agreement that falls foul of the Mexfield judgment to take appropriate steps at their level to amend it and to seek to get their tenants and members of that co-operative to sign up to that.
There were perhaps a couple of other points that it is worth my mentioning to try to deal with the issues raised—although I want to make it clear that both I and the Department are more than ready to enter into a continued discussion with the hon. Gentleman and his supporting colleagues if they feel that more work still needs to be done.
The outstanding point related to the applicability—or eligibility—of a tenant who had been affected by the Mexfield judgment to apply for housing benefit. First, sensible and workable solutions are certainly available locally through the tenant and the co-operative agreeing to a suitable amendment to the tenancy to ensure that there is no room for doubt. As far as I can see—if I can make an appeal to common sense—that would overcome any difficulties that might theoretically arise in that circumstance. I take it for granted—as I hope Opposition Members do—that, from more or less the day of the Mexfield judgment onwards, all future tenancies let by co-operatives will avoid this rather strange detour in contract law as established by the High Court.
Co-operatives are keen to work with the community sector to attract private sector funding, which was a point made by the hon. Gentleman. I have already mentioned that the Homes and Communities Agency, which acts as the mediator of the Government’s social and affordable housing programme, is in discussion with the co-operative housing societies and I very much hope that a fruitful outcome will be produced in the months ahead. Again, I am more than happy to share with him the progress made, although he might well have his own sources of information on the other side of that discussion.
I hope that my response was full, but I know that the hon. Gentleman will be assiduous in telling me if it was not. The Department is more than happy to engage in further discussion, if appropriate.
Question put and agreed to.
Written Ministerial Statements
(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Employment Tribunals
(12 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Norman Lamb)
In November 2011, Mr Justice Underhill, outgoing president of the Employment Appeals Tribunal was asked by Government to lead a fundamental review of the rules of procedure for employment tribunals. I am publishing Mr Justice Underhill’s recommendations ahead of a formal consultation exercise on their implementation, particularly given its interest to members of the committee scrutinising the Employment and Regulatory Reform Bill currently before Parliament, and placing copies in the Libraries of both Houses.
Mr Justice Underhill was asked to carry out a fundamental review of the rules of procedure for employment tribunals following the Government’s response to the Resolving Workplace Disputes consultation in November 2011. This was in response to feedback from stakeholders that the existing rules were overly elaborate and poorly drafted as a result of piecemeal change over recent years. Employers, particularly smaller businesses told us that a fear of employment tribunals was affecting their decision to take on new staff. Mr Justice Underhill was therefore tasked with ensuring the rules were simplified and provided the framework to manage cases flexibly, efficiently, proportionately and where possible, consistently, providing certainty to all parties who participate in the employment tribunal process.
I would like to thank Mr Justice Underhill for the time both he and his working group have given to this important piece of work. He has cut the length of the legislation by more than half, and has simplified the language substantially. He has suggested a number of significant changes that he believes should bring about a better functioning employment tribunal system.
His procedural changes include: new rules on the way that weak cases that should not proceed are managed; a new rule to provide for a lead case mechanism in multiple case or where cases raise the same point of law, which brings employment tribunals in line with other types of tribunals; a combining of the separate case management discussion and pre-hearing reviews into a single preliminary hearing; and simpler procedures to conclude claims that are withdrawn. The combined effect of these recommendations should be quicker disposal of cases, and an overall legislative framework that is simpler for all parties to understand.
Mr Justice Underhill’s new rules also give employment tribunals a more formal role in promoting alternative forms of dispute resolution. He has also proposed a greater role for presidential guidance, designed to give all parties involved a better idea of what to expect at an employment tribunal, and what is expected of them, while also promoting consistent case handling by employment judges.
We intend to launch an eight-week consultation on the substance of these changes later in the year, before bringing forward amended rules for consideration by both Houses.
Fire and Rescue National Framework for England
(12 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Robert Neill)
I have today published the fire and rescue national framework for England. The framework resets the relationship between fire and rescue authorities and Government. One of the key principles of which is to acknowledge the proficiency and experience of fire and rescue authorities; and to allow them the freedom and flexibility to deliver the services for which they are respected and renowned without Whitehall prescription.
The priorities in the framework are for fire and rescue authorities to:
identify and assess the full range of foreseeable fire and rescue related risks their area faces, make provision for prevention and protection activities and to respond to incidents appropriately;
work in partnership with their communities and a wide range of partners locally and nationally to deliver their service; and
be accountable to communities for the service they provide.
Fire and rescue authorities face new challenges: the need to deal with the continuing threat of terrorism, the impact of climate change, and the impacts of an ageing population, against a backdrop of change and the need to cut the national deficit. The framework enables fire and rescue authorities to efficiently deliver their services; including working collaboratively with other fire and rescue authorities, or with other organisations, to improve public safety and cost effectiveness. Principally, it is to local communities, not central Government, that fire and rescue authorities are accountable.
The framework delivers on the Government commitment in their response to the fire future reports, to clearly define national resilience and to set out clear roles and responsibilities in relation to national resilience. The framework also sets out arrangements for fire and rescue authorities to collectively engage with Government on national resilience issues through a new Fire and Rescue Strategic Resilience Board. Through this board, we will take a collaborative approach to national resilience that is based on and drawn from local capability, expertise, knowledge and leadership.
The framework has an open-ended duration which gives fire and rescue authorities greater certainty. The high-level, strategic nature of the framework should mean that it will remain unchanged for the medium to long term.
A copy of the fire and rescue national framework for England has been placed in the Library of the House.
Afghanistan Autumn 2012 Roulement
(12 years, 5 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Philip Hammond)
The next roulement of UK forces in Afghanistan is due to take place in October 2012. The UK’s current framework Brigade in Helmand, 12th Mechanised Brigade, will be replaced by 4th Mechanised Brigade. The forces deploying include1:
4th Mechanised Brigade Headquarters and Signal Squadron (204) |
Headquarters 104 Logistic Support Brigade |
40 Commando Royal Marines |
Elements of 847 Naval Air Squadron |
857 Naval Air Squadron |
The Royal Dragoon Guards |
The Queen’s Royal Lancers |
4th Regiment Royal Artillery |
Elements of 5th Regiment Royal Artillery |
Elements of 16th Regiment Royal Artillery |
Elements of 32nd Regiment Royal Artillery |
Elements of 39th Regiment Royal Artillery |
21 Engineer Regiment |
Elements of 28 Engineer Regiment |
Elements of 36 Engineer Regiment (Search) |
Elements of 42 Engineer Regiment (Geographical) |
Elements of 101 Engineer Regiment (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) |
Elements of 170 (Infrastructure Support) Engineer Group |
2nd Signal Regiment |
Elements of 10th Signal Regiment |
Elements of 14th Signal Regiment (Electronic Warfare) |
Elements of 15th Signal Regiment (Information Support) |
Elements of 21st Signal Regiment (Air Support) |
1st Battalion Scots Guards |
The Royal Scots Borderers, 1st Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland |
1st Battalion The Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment |
1st Battalion The Mercian Regiment |
1st Battalion The Royal Gurkha Rifles |
Elements of 1 Regiment Army Air Corps |
Elements of 3 Regiment Army Air Corps |
7 Theatre Logistic Regiment, The Royal Logistic Corps |
Elements of 6 Theatre Logistic Regiment, The Royal Logistic Corps |
12 Logistic Support Regiment, The Royal Logistic Corps |
Elements of 9 Regiment, The Royal Logistic Corps |
Elements of 11 Explosive Ordnance Disposal Regiment, The Royal Logistic Corps |
Elements of 17 Port and Maritime Regiment, The Royal Logistic Corps |
Elements of 23 Pioneer Regiment, The Royal Logistic Corps |
Elements of 29 Regiment, The Royal Logistic Corps |
3rd Medical Regiment |
1st Close Support Battalion Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers |
Elements of 7 Air Assault Battalion Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers |
Elements of 101 Force Support Battalion Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers |
150 Provost Company Royal Military Police |
Elements of 101 Provost Company Royal Military Police |
Elements of Special Investigations Branch (United Kingdom) |
Elements of The Military Provost Staff |
Elements of 1st Military Working Dogs Regiment |
Elements of 1 Military Intelligence Battalion |
Elements of 2 Military Intelligence (Exploitation) Battalion |
Elements of 4 Military Intelligence Battalion |
Elements of The Military Stabilisation and Support Group |
Elements of 15 Psychological Operations Group |
Elements of The Defence Cultural Specialist Unit |
Elements of The Honourable Artillery Company |
Elements of The Royal Mercian and Lancastrian Yeomanry |
Elements of 101st (Northumbrian) Regiment Royal Artillery (Volunteers) |
Elements of 75 Engineer Regiment (Volunteers) |
Elements of 32nd Signal Regiment (Volunteers) |
Elements of 52nd Lowland, 6th Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland |
Elements of 3rd Battalion The Princess of Wales’ Royal Regiment |
Elements of 4th Battalion The Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment |
Elements of 4th Battalion The Mercian Regiment |
Elements of The London Regiment |
Elements of 148 Expeditionary Force Institute Squadron, The Royal Logistic Corps (Volunteers) |
Elements of 150 (Yorkshire) Transport Regiment, The Royal Logistic Corps (Volunteers) |
Elements of 159 Supply Regiment, The Royal Logistic Corps (Volunteers) |
Elements of 204 (Northern Irish) Field Hospital (Volunteers) |
Elements of 243 (The Wessex) Field Hospital (Volunteers) |
Elements of 102 Battalion Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (Volunteers) |
Elements of 103 Battalion Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (Volunteers) |
Elements of 5th Regiment Royal Military Police |
2 (Army Co-operation) Squadron, Royal Air Force |
31 Squadron, Royal Air Force |
9 (Bomber) Squadron, Royal Air Force |
15 Squadron Royal Air Force Regiment |
Number 7 Force Protection Wing Headquarters, Royal Air Force |
Number 2 Tactical Police Squadron, Royal Air Force |
Elements of 47 Squadron, Royal Air Force |
Elements of 30 Squadron, Royal Air Force |
Elements of 5 (Army Co-operation) Squadron, Royal Air Force |
Elements of 32 (The Royal) Squadron, Royal Air Force |
Elements of 28 Squadron, Royal Air Force |
Elements of 216 Squadron, Royal Air Force |
Elements of 39 Squadron, Royal Air Force |
Elements of 27 Squadron, Royal Air Force |
Elements of 18 Squadron, Royal Air Force |
Elements of 99 Squadron, Royal Air Force |
Elements of 78 Squadron, Royal Air Force |
Elements of 90 Signals Unit, Royal Air Force |
Elements of 1 Air Control Centre, Royal Air Force |
Elements of 33 (Engineering) Squadron, Royal Air Force |
Elements of Tactical Supply Wing, Royal Air Force |
Elements of 1 Air Mobility Wing, Royal Air Force |
Elements of Tactical Medical Wing, Royal Air Force |
Elements of 2 (Mechanical Transport) Squadron, Royal Air Force |
Elements of 93 (Expeditionary Armaments) Squadron, Royal Air Force |
Elements of Engineering and Logistics Wing Royal Air Force Odiham |
In addition to the list of formed units, individual augmentees from each of the services will continue to deploy as part of this integrated force package. In total we expect 1,138 individual augmentees to deploy on operations. This will be comprised of 168 Royal Navy personnel; 344 Army personnel and 626 Royal Air Force personnel.
Volunteer and ex-regular members of the reserve forces will continue to deploy to Afghanistan as part of this integrated force package, and we expect to issue around 575 call-out notices. On completion of their mobilisation procedures, the reservists will undertake a period of training and, where applicable, integration with their respective receiving units. The majority will serve on operations for around six months. As part of this commitment, we expect up to six members of the sponsored reserves to be in theatre at any one time.
In accordance with previous statements the UK’s conventional force level will draw down by 500 in 2012.
I shall make a further statement on 4th Mechanised Brigade’s planned replacement formation, 1st Mechanised Brigade, nearer the time of their deployment.
1Where the contribution is 10 personnel or more.
Managing the Impacts of Flooding
(12 years, 5 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mrs Caroline Spelman)
In 2008 it was agreed that the current statement of principles on the provision of flood insurance between the Government and insurers would not be renewed following its expiry in June 2013.
In order to make sure that insurance for homes at risk of flooding remains widely available and affordable, work is underway to establish a successor arrangement to the statement of principles. Recent events have once again underlined the importance of safeguarding the widespread uptake of affordable insurance.
The central objective of this work is to reach an agreement with insurers whereby insurance bills remain affordable without placing unsustainable costs on wider policyholders and the taxpayer. There is the potential to deliver a new approach that is a step change better than the current statement of principles, by for the first time directly addressing the affordability of flood insurance.
This is a complex issue, as insurers themselves recognise, and we have undertaken to work with the Association of British Insurers (ABI) to look at ways of providing safeguards. A number of proposals have come forward from the industry and we are continuing to consider a range of options.
These discussions have made significant progress. The Government are considering with the industry’s support a way of formalising existing pricing arrangements and maintaining the current cross-subsidy in place between policyholders. This would be by means of an internal industry levy, as proposed by insurers themselves. By reflecting existing arrangements, the levy would avoid increasing costs for those not at risk whilst helping households to continue to afford insurance in flood risk areas.
This work is taking place against a backdrop of significant advances in flood risk mapping and forecasting which in turn is giving insurers the ability to more accurately ascribe the level of flood risk to individual properties.
As this knowledge base expands it will bring considerable benefits, not least in terms of helping Government, local authorities, households and businesses plan for and mitigate the risk of flooding. Investment by all in preventing flood damages from occurring will remain the best and most sustainable way of achieving affordable insurance over the long term.
The Government and insurers are determined to see insurance premiums remain affordable and widely available, particularly in light of the pressure household budgets are currently under and the pattern of flood events we have seen over recent years.
The priority is now to resolve detailed design issues including how support would be targeted. We are looking to develop with insurers a model that delivers benefits to households in need of support whilst avoiding poorer policyholders subsidising wealthier ones. We are looking for an approach which also encourages individuals and communities to consider the actions they can take to keep future premiums down.
This measure would be intended to facilitate a gradual change in the market but would still mark a step change in Government’s role in the management of flood risk. As such any proposal will require detailed scrutiny before it could be introduced.
Meanwhile, this Government are continuing to fulfil their role in reducing flood risk by spending more than £2.17 billion on flood and coastal erosion risk management in England over the current four-year spending period. Sixty new schemes are moving into construction this year under our new partnership approach to funding which has already brought forward £72 million in additional investment from other sources. We expect that the benefits of our investment in risk management will be reflected in reduced insurance premiums going forward.
The recently published national planning policy framework fulfils the Government’s commitment to avoid unnecessary building in floodplains and this outcome has been welcomed by the ABI and others. We are helping insurers incorporate the protection afforded by property-level protection measures into their pricing models and, with the industry’s help, are publishing a guide to help households find the best means of accessing insurance in flood risk areas. We are also working with local authorities and other partners to look at the extent to which communities, through acting together, can help to manage the costs of flood insurance.
Intensive discussions with the insurance industry are continuing and we will announce further details in due course. I undertake to update the House at the most appropriate points.
Stephen Lawrence
(12 years, 5 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
In response to an urgent question by my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) on 24 April, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire) made a statement on my behalf about the continuing allegations that have appeared in the media over recent months of police corruption in the original investigation into the murder of Stephen Lawrence. As my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup said at that time, allegations of police corruption must always be taken seriously. It is essential we ensure that the actions and behaviour of corrupt police officers do not undermine public confidence in the police’s ability to respond to, investigate and fight crime. I undertook to keep the House updated.
On 31 May, the Home Office announced that I had decided to call for an independent, QC review of the work the Metropolitan Police Service has undertaken into allegations of corruption in the original investigation into the murder of Stephen Lawrence.
I have asked Mark Ellison QC to carry out this review and he has agreed. Mr Ellison was the lead prosecutor in the successful prosecutions of Gary Dobson and David Norris for the murder of Stephen Lawrence. He will be supported by Alison Morgan, the junior counsel from the prosecution of Gary Dobson and David Norris.
The review team has agreed terms of reference with the Lawrence family and I will arrange for a copy to be placed in the Library of the House. The review will begin in July 2012 and will aim to complete its findings by July 2013. The team will report to me and I intend to publish the review’s report.
The review will address the following questions:
Is there evidence providing reasonable grounds for suspecting that any officer associated with the initial investigation of the murder of Stephen Lawrence acted corruptly?
Are there any further lines of investigation connected to the issue of possible corrupt activity by any officer associated with the initial investigation of the murder of Stephen Lawrence?
Was the McPherson inquiry provided with all relevant material connected to the issue of possible corrupt activity by any officer associated with the initial investigation of the murder of Stephen Lawrence? If not, what impact might that have had on the inquiry?
The review team is calling for evidence to be submitted to the review for consideration alongside the significant amount of material made available by the Metropolitan Police Service. Evidence should be sent to SLMEQC@qebhw.co.uk or by post to Stephen Lawrence Review, PO Box 70744, London, EC4P 4DT.
I am grateful to the Commissioner for the support he has offered to the review. I know that the Metropolitan Police Service will co-operate fully with the review team.
European Union Act 2011 (Section 8)
(12 years, 5 months ago)
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The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Kenneth Clarke)
A parliamentary statement has been laid before the House today, 11 July. This has been laid under section 8 of the European Union Act 2011. In the opinion of the Secretary of State, the Council decision establishing a multi-annual framework for 2013-17 for the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, published on 13 June 2012, relates to an exempt purpose within the meaning of section 8(6)(a) of that Act.
Copies of the parliamentary statement are available from the Vote Office and Printed Paper Office. Copies of the draft Council decision have been deposited in the Libraries of both Houses.
Workplace Pension Reform
(12 years, 5 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)
On 12 July 2012, we intend to publish the Government response to the consultation “Revised implementation proposals for workplace pension reform”, which began on 23 March and closed on 4 May 2012. I am grateful to all those who responded with views, thoughts or suggestions.
The response confirms the Government’s timetable for bringing small and micro employers into the workplace pension reforms in the next Parliament and this is reflected in the accompanying regulations.
The Government’s response to the consultation, the amendment regulations and an impact assessment will be available on the Department’s website in due course.
I will also place copies of the consultation and impact assessment in the House Library.
“Bereavement Benefits for the 21st Century”
(12 years, 5 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)
Today my noble friend Lord Freud, the Minister for Welfare Reform, is publishing a Command Paper, Government response to the public consultation “Bereavement Benefits for the 21st Century”. This sets out the Government’s strategy for providing effective support after the loss of a spouse or civil partner, and includes a summary of the responses to the public consultation on how to achieve this.
Our strategy reaffirms the Government’s commitment to providing financial support after spousal bereavement as an important part of the state safety net. Our primary aim is to improve an out-of-date system, targeting additional resources on bereavement benefits over a Parliament, to ensure that existing recipients are protected, and that those who claim the new benefit get the help that they need when they need it most.
We are shifting the focus of bereavement benefits, to provide a short-term intervention, helping people deal with the more immediate costs caused by the death of a spouse or civil partner, and to provide some breathing space to start to come to terms with the emotional and practical upheaval caused by this loss.
It will be paid as a lump sum with monthly instalments to avoid the risks associated with making a large lump sum payment. This period is not intended to reflect the time required for “recovery”, but instead to provide a buffer for the immediate financial impact of bereavement. Payments will be disregarded from universal credit and the benefit cap for a period of 12 months.
This refocusing will improve the targeting of bereavement benefits, providing greater support in the period that social research tells us is particularly challenging financially. The strategy also involves ongoing support being provided through other parts of the welfare system, such as universal credit, and contributory jobseeker’s allowance and employment and support allowance, depending on circumstances.
Recipients of the bereavement support payment, who also receive universal credit, or contributory JSA or ESA, will be able to access Jobcentre Plus support on a voluntary basis from three months after bereavement. They will not be subject to conditionality for a further three months. This means that those who need to start work, or change their working patterns after bereavement, receive the support they need to do so.
The Government acknowledge the value of simplifying the rules that govern conditionality easements for bereaved people across the benefit system, so that they are consistent, supportive and easy to understand. These exemptions from conditionality will therefore also apply after the death of a child or partner, where there is no entitlement to bereavement benefits.
Contribution conditions will be simplified and people will be entitled to receive the full payment as long as their late spouse or civil partner paid national insurance contributions at 25 times the lower earnings limit for any one year prior to their death.
This builds on changes to bereavement benefits in 2001, and on recent fundamental reforms to the welfare landscape. In the same way that universal credit has been designed to create a simpler system of support, the proposed simplification of bereavement benefits will make it easier for people to understand their entitlement, and to be able to plan accordingly.
In order to effect these changes, after legislation has been introduced, existing bereavement benefits will be replaced with the new bereavement support payment. This will not impact those already in receipt of bereavement benefits at that time or payments made under the war pensions scheme or armed forces compensation scheme.
Grand Committee
(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Arrangement of Business
(12 years, 5 months ago)
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The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Fookes)
My Lords, if there is a Division in the House, as noble Lords know very well already, we shall immediately adjourn for 10 minutes.
Behaviour Change: Science and Technology Committee Report
(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Neuberger
That the Grand Committee takes note of the Report of the Science and Technology Committee on Behaviour Change (2nd Report, Session 2010-12, HL Paper 179).
Baroness Neuberger
My Lords, I wish to thank the members of the Science and Technology sub-committee, many of whom are here in the Moses Room, for their excellent contributions to this inquiry and to the report and for making it such fun. I also thank our specialist adviser, Professor Charles Abraham, for his advice and our secretariat, who were superb throughout.
The Science and Technology Committee chose to begin an inquiry into behaviour change because understanding behaviour and how to influence it is an integral part of effective and efficient policy-making. So much of what the Government do or want to do involves influencing human behaviour, so their success will depend on their ability to change people’s behaviour in ways that will help them bring about their goals.
We know, of course, that government can influence behaviour in many different ways using a broad set of tools, from the provision of information at one end of the scale, through persuasion, be it by a GP or a marketing campaign, the provision of financial and other incentives and disincentives, to regulation, including taxation, at the other end. We were prompted, in particular, to start the inquiry by the rise in popularity of nudging, and the considerable interest in the book of that name, Nudge, by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, which draws on findings from behavioural economics. The committee sought to explore how understanding better the sciences of human behaviour and disciplines including neuroscience, psychology, sociology and behavioural economics can help Governments choose the best tools for the job.
I shall try to give an overview of our principal findings, and I know that many of my colleagues will say more, and I will say something about our reaction to the Government’s response to our report. Perhaps the single most striking thing to come out of this inquiry was the discovery that although scientists can tell us quite a lot about the theory of behaviour—the interaction between different internal and external influences which causes people to act in different ways—there is very little hard evidence about how to develop this into policy interventions that will influence behaviour on a large scale.
It seems that this lack of practical understanding is a result of barely any properly evaluated large-scale behaviour change interventions. The notable exception to this is smoking cessation services in the United Kingdom, which are not only very successful but, because of good evaluation that has been there since the beginning, are continually improving. Insufficient allocation of departmental budgets to research is a big part of the problem, but the problem has also arisen because previous government policies that have aimed to change behaviour have often not been evaluated to a sufficiently high standard. You might argue that the rollout of government policies is perhaps the most obvious location where applied research in how to change behaviour can be carried out. It became increasingly clear to the committee, however, that there simply is not a strong enough culture of evaluation within government. A number of our recommendations were targeted at rectifying this fundamental problem.
Of course, there is some evidence available about how to change behaviour. That evidence points very strongly to one important, though perhaps unsurprising, conclusion: usually the most effective means of changing the behaviour of the population, or a significant group within the population, is to use a whole range of policy tools in order to influence a number of the many factors which impinge on or cause our behaviour simultaneously. Each intervention must be designed based on what we know about the different factors that influence the behaviour we are seeking to change.
As part of our inquiry, we undertook two case studies, the first into changing behaviour to reduce obesity and the second into reducing car use. Other members of the committee will speak in more detail about these.
On the whole our findings in these more specific areas reflected what we had heard more generally. Strong disincentives to discourage particular behaviours and changes to the environment in which decisions are made will often be required in addition to other interventions in order to effect significant behaviour change when important societal challenges, which require a change in the behaviour of the population at population level, are being addressed. Although the use of disincentives or restrictions are more controversial than nudges and have to be justified to, and accepted by, the public we believe there is a need for a proper debate within wider society about how to intervene appropriately to change behaviours in order to tackle some of society’s biggest challenges.
We were pleased to read in their response that the Government agree with the majority of our conclusions and recommendations. I much look forward to hearing from the Minister about how the Government will be taking them forward. The committee welcomes the coalition Government’s attempts to raise the profile of behavioural science. We hope that their efforts, together with our report, will result in a greater emphasis on social science research within a whole range of departments. We were particularly comforted to note that the Government agreed that nudges in isolation will rarely, if ever, achieve the desired effect. We hope we will begin to see this translated into policy. We were told in terms by Ministers that nudging is good because it is cheap, and therefore efficient. We would argue that, however cheap it is to roll out, a policy is only good value for money if it works.
I hope that the Minister will be able to clarify in his response just how the Government intend to ensure that policy-makers are aware of the range of interventions available to them, not just nudging. There are, however, some outstanding areas of concern following the Government’s response. In particular, I would ask the Minister to explain more fully the Government’s decision not to make traffic-light food labelling mandatory, nor to reconsider their position in relation to extending the ban on marketing unhealthy food to children. I also seek some clarification on the outcomes expected of the public health responsibility deals.
We have also thus far heard nothing about the recommendation to appoint an independent government social scientist to champion the importance of social science research and to improve the quality of social science advice across government. I look forward to hearing from the Minister what progress has been made towards this appointment.
Regarding obesity, excess weight costs the NHS more than £5 billion a year. A study by Cancer Research UK published in December 2011 showed that nearly half of all cancer cases could be wiped out if we followed healthier lifestyles. The Government published their strategy on obesity, Healthy Lives, Healthy People in October 2011. We were delighted to see that the Government’s strategy was grounded in the available evidence on changing behaviours to tackle obesity, and that it emphasised the importance of evaluation and building the evidence base on the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of different interventions. We will watch with interest to see how these initiatives develop.
However, we were really disappointed that the Government still failed to address the wider environmental issues that affect obesity, or to outline how the effectiveness of the responsibility deals would be assessed. Many witnesses felt, as Dr Ian Campbell, medical director of Weight Concern put it, that,
“confronting the real commercial and environmental stimuli of obesity has not yet been achieved”.
We found two areas in particular in our obesity case study where there was promising evidence about how to change the obesogenic environment: food labelling and marketing to children. We were particularly struck by what we heard from Asda and Sainsbury’s on food labelling, and it is really important that people realise just what was said. Justin King, the chief executive of Sainsbury’s, told us that on the introduction of multiple traffic light labelling, against a comparable 12-week period during which fresh ready meal sales grew by 26.2%, sales of a Be Good to Yourself salmon meal, mostly green labels, grew 46.1% and sales of a moussaka, mostly red labels, decreased by 24%. Even over a relatively short period, the majority of the evidence at the moment shows that people definitely understand labels with traffic lights far better than percentages of recommended daily allowances and other such information.
It is important to note that not much research has yet been done on the extent to which better understanding translates into different behaviour for any labelling, but better understanding in the first instance is arguably more likely to result in success. We thought that was really important and were surprised that not more is being done about it. The Government do not appear to be acting on this evidence, or seeking to carry out further research to test these potentially important effects. In fact, their response to our report did not engage with the question of why they failed to pursue these policies around labelling. We were particularly disappointed to see that traffic light labelling was not adopted throughout the EU in the new EU regulation on provision of food information to consumers. We were pleased to see that the Government are currently consulting on the inclusion of traffic light labelling, but it is as an additional form of expression under the regulation. As the Government themselves note, business will not be compelled to follow the recommendation, if adopted. How is that supposed to work, and what plans do the Government have to ensure that such labelling is used consistently across industry?
On marketing of unhealthy products to children, the Government again fail to justify not expanding the current restrictions on such advertising. For instance, they did not say why they had not accepted NICE’s report on the prevention of cardiovascular disease at the population level and its recommendations to extend the regulations restricting advertising during children’s programmes of products high in fat, salt and sugar to cover a greater number of programmes and types of advertising. Why are the Government not putting more effort into tackling the behavioural issues surrounding these preventable diseases, interventions which would save them money in the long term in costs of NHS treatment?
Our other big concern was voluntary agreements to help tackle obesity, particularly through the public health responsibility deal network. Certainly, the evidence suggests that getting businesses to change what they do will make a real difference to our behaviour; we know that our environment is a major influencing factor in our behaviour and that, in turn, businesses have a significant impact on shaping that environment. But concerns were raised by a significant number of witnesses about attempts to change behaviour through agreements with businesses when potential conflicts of interest may exist. We recommended that to guard against conflicts of interest. First, we said that engagement with businesses should be on the Government’s terms and should outline specific outcomes that are expected within any given timescale. Secondly, agreements should be evaluated properly to establish their effect. Thirdly, agreements should be backed up with contingency plans for further intervention if the voluntary approach does not work after a given length of time.
We received a disappointing response from the Government about how this will be taken forward, and perhaps the Minister can clarify what measurable outcomes the Government have agreed with participants in the responsibility deals, how their success will be measured, and over what timescale.
In the committee’s report, the Government were criticised for their policy on minimum alcohol pricing. It was stated that there was good evidence about the effectiveness of alcohol pricing on reducing alcohol-related harm but that it had not fed through to government alcohol policy. Subsequently, the Home Office announced a ban on the sale of alcohol below the rate of duty, plus VAT. This policy has been criticised, because NICE guidance on preventing harmful drinking published in 2010 shows that at the minimum price level proposed by the Government of 21p per unit for beer and 28p for spirits, a reduction in consumption of between 0.1% and 0.4% could be expected. However, a minimum price of 40p per unit would reduce consumption by 2.4%, while minimum prices of 50p and 60p would reduce consumption by 6.7% and 11.9% respectively.
In March this year, the Government published their alcohol strategy, which stated that they would,
“introduce a minimum unit price … for alcohol meaning that, for the first time ever in England and Wales, alcohol will not be allowed to be sold below a certain defined price”.
The Government committed to consult on the level in the coming months with a view to introducing legislation as soon as possible, and to consult on a proposed minimum unit pricing of 40p. This is to be welcomed, but is at a level below that passed in the Scottish Parliament, which will introduce a minimum unit price of 50p per unit. Could the Minister respond and clarify whether the Government are also considering a minimum unit price of 50p per unit, given the situation in Scotland?
The last point concerns organ donation. One nudge recommended by the Behavioural Insights Team in government has been to opt out of organ donation rather than opt in. Once again, I am puzzled by the lack of evidence base for this because it is clear from the House of Lords inquiry into organ donation in EU Sub-Committee G, and other evidence that is around everywhere, that it is the organisation of organ donation, harvesting and transplant services that are the key elements in changing behaviour, rather than opting out or opting in. It would be good to know whether the Government’s Behavioural Insights Team at the heart of government is subject to peer review in respect of its policy recommendations as the key to much of this is evidence, or indeed the lack of it. I commend the report to the House. I beg to move.
Lord Giddens
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, and her colleagues on the production of this report. It is excellent work and right up there in the top echelon of reports produced in your Lordships’ House. It is a shame that it has not drawn in more noble Lords to discuss it. However, the saving grace is that the ones who are here are notably distinguished and therefore we can anticipate a high-level debate.
The topic is manifestly extremely important as there are so many areas in which Governments want to promote behaviour change. Public health, as mentioned in the report with the case study of obesity, is a good example, but there are dozens of other fields. Today one might want to include bankers, for example, as all parties now want to produce a new culture of responsibility in the City. If that is not a massive behaviour change, I do not know what it is.
The work of Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein is quite rightly given central place in the report because of the impact that their work has had, especially the book Nudge, which has been mentioned, which was a bestseller in the United States—it was right at the top of the New York Times list. Since then, Cass Sunstein has been working in the Obama Administration trying to debureaucratise American business, among other things. As noted in the report, the book has had a strong influence on the coalition Government here.
I find Sunstein’s work, in particular, interesting and I have followed it for many years. As most people here will know, he is a distinguished legal theorist. For example, he wrote a devastating critique of the precautionary principle in environmental politics which, for anyone who is interested in that, shows why there is no such thing as a precautionary principle.
I think everyone here will agree that the book Nudge is packed with provocative ideas and vignettes. For example, there is one about estate agents. If you are buying a house you should watch out because one of the things that estate agents do is first of all show you two rather crummy properties before they show you the one they want you to buy. This establishes a frame of tolerance, in Sunstein’s language. It demonstrates what they are writing about because it implies some degree of covert behaviour influence. In other words, if you knew what the estate agent was doing you would be in a position to block off that influence. The covert element of their work has received a great deal of critical attention in philosophical literature, as has the notion of their philosophy, which they describe as libertarian paternalism. Many people think that that is an oxymoron but they vehemently deny that it is. I do not share that political philosophy, even though I recognise the wealth of examples that have developed in their writings. I agree with the fairly heavy objections to it, which are developed in the report. They are more consequential for the Government than the noble Baroness implied, for reasons that I will come back to.
The report took a lot of evidence and concluded that the Committee,
“were given no examples of significant change … having been achieved by non-regulatory measures alone”.
The report also rightly questions whether non-regulatory measures are more respectful of the freedom of the individual than ones involving regulation.
The Government have often taken an activist and interventionist role to secure beneficial behaviour change. The one thing that we can all agree on is that purely informational approaches—this is documented in the report and many other sources—do not really work. For example, ads or literature spelling out the dangers of unhealthy diets do not work by and large, or they have only a marginal impact on those whom they are supposed to help. The report is lacking in a kind of analytical pattern, so I offer my own on why it is so difficult to change lifestyle habits, as it is almost always difficult to do so.
I have three points to make. First, most lifestyle patterns are not individual traits; they are embedded in wider cultural settings. We cannot persuade people to change their behaviour without altering the cultural traits that drive it. This is often extremely hard to do and almost always takes time. To my mind it universally involves regulation. If we go back to the case of corporate culture in the City when talking about a big deal, it is obvious that you will not do much nudging there; you need systematic restructuring of what happens in the City and it has to be pretty penetrating. It is true that in lifestyle patterns such as alcohol consumption or smoking there are ordinarily strong cultural factors involved in the groups in which the individual is a member. Not many individual traits of behaviour are individual at all.
Secondly, some forms of behaviour that Governments may wish to change are deeply addictive. As someone who has a long–standing interest in addictive and compulsive behaviour, I know that these elements apply to many lifestyle traits in contemporary culture. It is true, for example, of most harmful eating habits. Some are involved in obesity, or in its opposite, anorexia in which I have had a lot of interest through all the phases of my career. People starve to death in the middle of a society in which there is too much food to go round. The compulsive element of that habit system is very apparent. It means that the underlying emotional sources of such lifestyle forms of behaviour have to be grappled with. For that reason nudging might be useful in certain specific contexts, but it will not allow someone to change such behaviour. In my view, obesity has a strong addictive as well as a cultural component to it. It is true of many traits of behaviour that a Government might want to try to change.
Thirdly, in trying to change behaviour we often have to confront systems of power and established interests. By and large only Governments can do that. Smoking is an interesting example as it is one area in which we have made a difference. There has been a substantial reduction in the proportion of people smoking—not in the world, where it still goes on, but in several of the industrial countries. However, it took 30 years to achieve that and about 24% of the people in this country still smoke, nevertheless. One reason for this is the resistance of the tobacco industry and the long-standing battle that it fought, and that is very true of a whole range of areas where we need to secure behaviour. If we do not confront established interests and do not recognise that there is a power system involved, we are not going to get very far.
The report calls for more effective connections between policies in the social sciences. As a social scientist, I very strongly support that and this leads me to a couple of questions for the Minister. First, I repeat the question that was asked: what happened to the famous chief social scientist? It seems to be an important position to reinstate, as I understood it would be. Secondly, in spite of what the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, says, this report demolishes a good deal of the Government’s ideological position in that the reason why Nudge was so attractive to the Government was that it seems to indicate that you can downplay the roles of government and legislation and yet achieve significant change by other means. The report shows that, by and large, this is not the case and I do not therefore see how the Government can really endorse it with equanimity.
Finally, on obesity and other dietary concerns, I return to the issue of power. We live in a society where there is highly developed corporate power, which takes the form of corporations influencing people through advertising, especially children. Corporations do not pick up the social and medical costs of what they do. It is the NHS that picks up the costs of the obesity epidemic, which is staggering in its consequences for type 2 diabetes and a whole range of other disorders. Should not the food industry be taxed more substantially, in order that it makes a bigger contribution to the very harmful forms of behaviour over which it has so much influence?
Lord Alderdice
My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, I pay tribute to the chairman of our committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, for her enthusiasm and for keeping us to the task, which was not easy because it wa s a very broad task. As she did, I also thank Professor Charles Abraham and the secretariat, who served us extremely well. I also declare my own interests as noted in the register and in the report: as a retired consultant psychiatrist and as president of ARTIS Europe, a research and risk analysis company.
One could pick up on many things in the report itself, but I would like to pick up two or three of its broad principal outcomes and apply them to areas that were not referred to in the report. In particular, I will look at the important work of government in foreign and Commonwealth affairs and in the Ministry of Defence. My reason for doing so comes out of the very principles that emerge from the report.
First, there was remarkably little research into how one might affect population behaviour change, as distinct from the behaviour change of individuals. I came to understand this over a number of years. My own background and training was in the understanding of individual psychology and psychopathology and in attempting to bring about behaviour change with individuals, but when I tried to apply some of those understandings to the political field, particularly in conflict resolution, while there were important elements of read-across there are also differences in the way that groups function. One of these was referred to in passing by the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, when he said that culture was an important element. Culture is important for the individual but it is essentially a shared phenomenon. I sometimes liken culture in the group to the personality of an individual, but the same rules do not apply in an absolute read-across. Unless we do research that demonstrates an evidential outcome, we simply operate by our own prejudices and rule of thumb. I will come back to that, because we may come to wholly wrong conclusions on that basis.
The second thing that the report pointed out was that it is unlikely that change can be brought about by non-regulatory interventions on their own—that regulation is relevant and important. That is clearly true and cannot be ignored. That takes me to the question of defence and foreign and Commonwealth affairs. Why? One thing that has become manifestly clear, if it was not clear before, is that the capacity of this country and others to create real change in the international community by the use of force is limited, at best, and ever more limited. It is not at all clear that we yet have an international process of law that can enforce itself, despite considerable efforts which I very much hope continue.
The capacity of the most powerful country in the world, the United States of America, to bring about its wishes by the use of hard power has been strikingly unimpressive in a whole series of events. Even if they had been successful, the strategic defence and security review and the more recent announcement of the reduction of our armed services to something like 80,000 full-time persons demonstrates that even if it were possible to make those changes, those possibilities are no longer open to this country because we do not have the capacity to enforce. That means that, however much in principle we would like to include regulation and force, in matters of defence and particularly in diplomacy and foreign and Commonwealth affairs, we are forced to look at non-regulatory methods—nudge, sometimes weaker than nudge, sometimes stronger than nudge but certainly non-regulatory and non-force elements must be brought to the fore.
I found it surprising when I started to look at these matters that the United States of America, which has much the strongest capacity to use force, spends enormous amounts of money—directly through the Department of Defense and through the various establishments of the navy, the air force, the marines and the army—commissioning external research. I remember, when I was training, being struck by the attributions at the bottom of many psychological papers that they were paid for by American defence organisations. However, in this country, where we do not have the capacity to use force, almost no money is spent on commissioning external research by the Ministry of Defence or other organisations. At best, it is modest and, in many cases, it is internal. One thing that we know scientifically is that if we do the research internally and do not share it with the rest of the scientific community, validation is doubtful.
It is critical, particularly in those areas of governance where enforcement is at its weakest, that we undertake research to find out what is the best that we can achieve in that way. Here I come to the non-intuitive outcomes of the limited research that has been done. Let me give a couple of examples.
In the Middle East, there are those who believe that change can be brought about by economic improvements for the population. For example, if we take Palestinians who seem highly unlikely to be able to achieve right of return, if they were given some resource—perhaps even a lot—would that help them to get over their problems? A couple of my colleagues went to do some research on the matter. They interviewed people at all levels of the community on the Palestinian side and the Israeli side and inside and outside the community and asked them some questions. First, if they did not get right of return, would some economic reward pay them for that? Secondly, if they did not get right of return, would lots of economic reward help them? Thirdly, if they did not get right of return, but the Government of Israel said: “We understand the pain that you have gone through as a community because of the decisions that we have taken and felt that we had to take”, what would their response be?
The realpolitik—those from outside such circumstances—would likely say, as they frequently have, that economic development in such a circumstance is bound to be helpful. The results of the research, however, were that when economic betterment was offered as an alternative to right of return, the response was anger; when substantial economic benefit was offered instead of right of return, the anger was much increased; and when no economic benefit was offered but there was a degree of apology and understanding, the response was that that was the basis for a conversation. There are many other examples of research that have demonstrated that the rule-of-thumb, rational approach that we might adopt may not always be correct and may even be counterproductive.
I know that the Minister has a particular interest in defence, development and foreign and Commonwealth affairs. Given the report’s clear indication that research into how we change populations rather than individuals is lacking and should be funded, and that in the areas that I am speaking of, force and regulation are not serious options, are the Government prepared to look more thoughtfully at how the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office might address questions of population and behaviour change?
Lord Krebs
My Lords, I, too, wish to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, for chairing the committee and for leading us to produce an excellent and important report.
The idea of using insights from behavioural science to affect public policy is by no means new. Back in the middle of the last century, the influential American psychologist, BF Skinner, wrote a utopian novel, Walden Two, in which he described a society in which, to use a phrase often quoted by the Prime Minister, everyone was persuaded to do the right thing through what Skinner called behavioural engineering. So we are not talking about new territory but about a different approach to the territory of using insights from behavioural science to affect public policy.
As has already been mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, a traditional approach, apart from banning activities, is to use financial incentives, taxes or subsidies to persuade people to do the right thing—carrots or sticks—or to use information campaigns to appeal to our sense of reason. If we are told it is bad to smoke or bad to drink and drive, the reasoning human being will perhaps stop doing so. Certainly taxation, in the right setting, has an effect; information campaigns have a rather limited effect, as has already been said.
However, the newer approaches that we looked at, as the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, said, draw on insights from disciplines such as marketing—how companies persuade consumers to buy more of their products—insights from behavioural economics and insights from psychology, all of which converge on tapping-in not to our thinking mind but to our reflexive, semi-automatic responses and inbuilt biases. For example, all of us in this Room have a bias discount into the future: rewards now are more valuable than rewards in the far distant future. All of us are more averse to losses than we are to gains. It is more painful to have someone take £100 away from you than to have someone never give you £100 in the first place.
All of us are influenced by social mores. Why did I buy an iPhone two or three years ago? It was not because I needed an iPhone but because all my friends had an iPhone—apart from my noble friend Lord May—and I felt that I had to have one.
Another aspect on which this new area of research into human behaviour has focused is identifying barriers. We live in a society in which we are confronted with choice, but choice is often illusory. Going back to mobile phones, how many noble Lords in this Room know whether they have the best phone tariff? The answer is that none of them does. There are estimated to be at least 7 million possible tariff combinations, so how can you possibly make an informed choice? We therefore use simple rules of thumb such as opting for a brand that is familiar. The question is whether these insights into human behaviour are effective in influencing public policy.
At lunchtime, I went over to talk to David Halpern, the head of the Behavioural Insights Team at No.10, informally known as the “nudge unit”. There are two bits of good news that I have to convey. First, the nudge unit is carrying out proper, randomised control trials through different government departments. One point that we drew out in our report on lack of good evidence is beginning to make progress. Secondly, there are some clear successes using these insights into human behaviour, such as increasing the proportion of court fines paid and positive responses to requests for income tax, as well as encouraging people to relicense their cars and take up loft insulation. So there are some success stories as a result of using these new insights into human behaviour.
I want to talk about one of our two case studies to which the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, has already referred, on obesity. Will the softer approaches using our subconscious biases, preferences and rules of thumb help to tackle this massive health problem? I do not need to repeat the facts, but I will. It is estimated by the Government that 40% of adults in this country will be obese by 2025; the estimated cost to the NHS, already referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, is £2 billion a year by 2030. Of course, the reason for that is that many non-communicable diseases are influenced by obesity, and in the United States it is considered the second largest cause of preventable premature death after smoking. So it is an immense public health problem, not just in this country.
Our report highlights two things. First, not just this Government but successive Governments have made little or no progress in tackling this major health problem at the population level. So it is a huge challenge, which we have not yet managed to conquer. Secondly, on a point that has already been summarised by others, we saw little or no evidence that the softer approaches—the nudges—will really have an effect on their own.
I refer to two examples that have been alluded to by the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger—traffic lights and advertising to children. When I was chairman of the Food Standards Agency, I was involved in trying to persuade the Government and industry to behave responsibly on food labelling and advertising food to children. The mere fact that the food industry was averse to traffic lights gave me the answer. If the industry does not like traffic lights, they must tell consumers something that consumers would like to know but that the industry does not want consumers to know about its food. We did a review at the Food Standards Agency into the impact of advertising and promotion of food to children, and the food industry commissioned its own review to show that advertising has no effect. I said to people in the industry, “Then why on earth are you spending all this money doing it if it has no effect whatever?” I rest my case.
So what does work with obesity, if it is not going to be nudging and the softer approaches? There are three recent reviews in the British Medical Journal. One is on the effectiveness of different kinds of nudges, or providing information. One that may have some effect is the one that we have alluded to—simple nutrition labelling. Another that may have some effect is portion sizing. There is good evidence that if you serve smaller portions people eat less. Since part of the obesity problem is eating too much, that would be a good thing to do. There is some modest evidence on positioning, and that if you put sweets low down at the checkout counter, as Marks and Spencer does in Oxford, it encourages young children to eat sweets. There is some evidence that priming, or giving people alerting signals before they start to eat in a restaurant on what their dietary goals might be, can have modest effects. But all these are relatively modest.
Another review looks at a measure that does have a significant effect and is exactly parallel to a measure alluded to by previous speakers on alcohol—namely, taxation. Eleven countries have now introduced taxes on fattening foods that contain a lot of sugar or fat. These include Denmark, Hungary, France, Finland and 23 states in the United States. The review in the BMJ suggests that a tax level of at least 20% is required to have an effect, rather like the minimum price for alcohol to which the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, referred. One advantage of taxing unhealthy foods is that it would drive the industry to reformulate foods to avoid the taxes, just as the campaign that the Food Standards Agency started and the Department of Health has taken over to reduce salt in food has caused companies to reformulate their processed food to take salt out of it. Is the taxation of unhealthy foods a regressive tax? After all, those who consume these high-fat, high-sugar foods tend to be the poorest in our society. One could argue that if it dissuades them from eating such food, we are helping the less well off and furthermore, the Government could use the revenue to support the poorest in society. So measures could be taken to tackle the obesity crisis but they are tougher than nudging.
The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, referred to smoking. The change of prevalence in smoking in this country has been brought about by a combination of taxation, legislation and education. There are two other success stories of government policy in changing behaviour in the population, the first of which is drink-driving. When I was a student at Oxford University we would go to a pub in the country and the landlord would say, “Would you like to have one for the road, sir?”. That is inconceivable today. Why has our drink-driving culture changed? It is because of the introduction of legislation and the breathalyser as part of that legislation. The third example, on top of smoking and drink-driving is the wearing of seat belts. It was not just “Clunk Click, Every Trip” from Jimmy Savile, but people could be fined or penalised for not wearing a seat belt. Now most people when getting into a car wear seat belts without thinking about it.
Does the Minister consider that stronger measures will have to be taken to deal with the problem of obesity and would the Government consider following the 11 other countries in introducing a tax on unhealthy foods as an instrument to achieve change? Nobody has yet talked about transport but that is the other case study in our report. Does the Minister agree that softer approaches such as nudging will not really move people out of their cars on to public transport, their bikes or their feet? Success stories from other countries show that Copenhagen spent £40 per person year on year to achieve a modal shift in transport to get people on to bikes or walking. The average local authority in this country spends one-fortieth of that—£1 per person per year in providing alternative forms of transport. I hope that the Minister will answer those questions for us.
Lord Hunt of Chesterton
My Lords, I welcome this report and the discussion with esteemed colleagues. Outside colleagues are also quite impressed with this. I am sorry that I did not give evidence. I was asked whether I did not hear about it—I am not asleep all the time—but I wonder whether all Members of the House of Lords receive e-mails requesting evidence. I have never had an e-mail requesting that I give evidence to the committee.
Many branches of central and local government will use this report from the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee on how policies can be more effective in considering and influencing how people can change their behaviour. I commend the committee for taking a broad scientific look at this approach to developing and implementing policy. As always, a new catchphrase can usefully draw attention to old ideas, as we saw with tipping points and now see with nudge. Innovative decisions always show that quite small changes to governmental commercial practice can have quite large effects. Sometimes they can be predicted; sometimes they can be beneficial; sometimes they can have unintended adverse consequences.
The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, commented, as did outside colleagues, that this report has all sorts of worthy things in it, but there is a slight lack of an intellectual theme. Curiously, for the modern day, it does not particularly emphasise how data are an integral part of this whole approach, nor the use of modern telecommunications, the internet and so on.
From a scientific point of view, behavioural change can be considered as one component of the system dynamics approach to policy-making, to which behavioural scientists have contributed greatly, as have natural scientists, mathematicians and so on. For example, Sir Alan Wilson—a fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society, and a former vice-chancellor of Leeds University—showed how system approaches could work for commercial purposes and many others.
The methodology referred to here—as is so common in Whitehall—is evidence-based decision-making, which is just one component of system analysis. The noble Lord, Lord May, might touch on this. From the first studies of models and statistics of complex systems, including societies, species and countries, such as the one in the 1930s by Lewis Richardson on conflict using statistics and modelling, it was clear that behaviour can change quite suddenly. An example is when some threshold is reached or barrier is formed, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, pointed out, or a particular disturbance is introduced.
To give a parliamentary analogy, I have an Icelandic friend who tells me about the Icelandic Parliament: it is the earliest in the world, founded in 1000. A bored parliamentarian used to throw gold coins in the air. He was blind and getting bored in the debate so everybody got out their sword and had a tremendous sword fight on the floor of their House of Commons. He enjoyed that. The trouble is that now they do not know where he stored all his gold coins—that is still a problem for Iceland. That example is not totally dissimilar to changing expenses rules in this House, but that is another point.
To come back to systems thinking, many of the recommended policies here involve people in networks,— for example, WeightWatchers. Networks, as we can see, lead to beneficial effects or problematical ones, as we saw last night with the secret Conservative vote, which is a new network that suddenly appeared on the scene. Therefore, networks are an important part of this process.
I wanted to emphasise that the European Commission is sponsoring several projects around Europe about the use of system thinking and system dynamics as a general framework for governments and organisations. I hope that we will have more connection in that way.
I want to make four points and to illustrate them from my own experiences as a scientist acting variously as a city councillor, an environmental consultant and an executive. The first is how to find good ideas for economical ways to encourage behaviour change for the purposes of policy-making and implementation. This is also particularly valuable in developing countries, as the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, pointed out, where local innovation can be very effective and indeed extremely ingenious methods are often found. DfID should be part of the discussion taking this forward.
The next point concerns obtaining effective data and the communication of data to the public, and from the public, to help policy through behavioural change, which is not much emphasised in the report. With modern electronic methods you can give information and receive it back and the many possibilities of social media are only just beginning to be used. The other important point that is touched on in the report on page 49 is the use of pilot schemes to explain in a sort of vivid, practical way how behaviour change can work, particularly in local areas, and then to demonstrate the effectiveness of unfamiliar ideas. Local pilot schemes often enable people to understand the wider implications of policy. We should make a greater connection between local pilot schemes for energy saving and the global importance of climate change.
Here is another story. In Cambridge in 1971 we had double-decker buses in tiny medieval streets. They knocked bits off the buildings as they went down the road and were responsible for incredible levels of pollution. What could be done? As a scientist I suggested we first measured the air pollution in these narrow streets and publicised it. That got people interested and then, being a scientist, I said there would be arguments about it and that we should have an experiment. The city council closed the street for a month and then, following the instructions of this report, we did a survey. The survey was done by students and we had a Stalinist result of 99% in favour and so the process went ahead. The other point made by the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, was that culture changes slowly. It took the taxi drivers in Cambridge 20 years before they decided that pedestrianisation with preferential arrangements was a good idea. That was a top-down initiative, but surveying was essential.
Over the past 40 years, many small initiatives in local communities in Britain have transformed family life, particularly on housing estates—which are, after all, probably where most people live. My wife is a landscape architect. One curious thing is that by the choice of planting schemes—having prickly bushes in some areas and green grass in others—you can guide or move people. That can transform the behaviour level and behaviour patterns on housing estates, as can the use of roads and dead ends. That is remarkable. You can go to many areas of Britain where you see quite different social behaviour as a result of those small, extremely inexpensive and economical methods.
The other important point is that many of those small changes can now be tested electronically. You can ask people on the internet. There was a good example in the east end of London, reported in a book that I edited on London’s environment, which noble Lords can find in the House of Lords Library. Increasingly, communication of information in a timely and local way changes behaviour and is a vital part of public policy. London leads the world—other countries are following—in providing detailed forecasts of air pollution sent to individuals. For example, adverts on the No. 73 bus say that if people are having breathing difficulties and want information about air pollution, they should ring this number to obtain it. That is an example of using sophisticated data, coming from satellites, models and fine linear data. It enables people to use their drugs appropriately and change their exercises. Some of those ideas have also been tried in the United States.
Now that approach is being extended to local temperatures. Another important example is the question of heatwaves in cities; that is not a problem for us this summer but, in 2003, 20,000 people died in France. Mortality varied from one kilometre to another depending on the exact temperature in an area of Paris. It is therefore important to be able to inform people about the temperature but also to find ways in which you can control it. The Lord Mayor of Westminster, who is a green Tory—I admire her greenness—explained to me how, on very hot days in the street where she lives, she draws her curtains so that, when she comes back in the evening, her house is cool. Most people do not draw their curtains and they remain very hot. That is an example where the nudging process can have a considerable effect. Now that such people all have air conditioning, it is a question of whether you turn your air conditioning on. That is an example where energy behaviour could be changed.
Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, mentioned transport, which is covered by the report. I have had very unsatisfactory communications with the Department for Transport on the question of nudging of information. The UK Government are much less ready than those in France or Germany to use information on roads to change behaviour. On French motorways, the electronic notices inform drivers that excessive speed is not only dangerous but leads to greater carbon emissions. In Germany, notices on motorways near housing inform drivers about noise. The DfT refuses absolutely to put environmental data on our screens. Indeed, it does the reverse: it encourages drivers to go at 70 miles an hour. It says, “If you go at 70 miles an hour, you will get to Bristol in 25 minutes”, or some damn thing. Excuse me, that is unparliamentary language. That is a case of negative behavioural change produced by government. I hope that that can be changed.
My conclusion from those examples and those in the report is that there could be a more systematic approach to optimal behaviour change: first, by studying through models and experience how different nudges and types and levels may be effective—or ineffective, if not dangerous; secondly, by evaluating the data provided and the feedback of information; and, thirdly, by assessing what kind of pilot schemes are necessary and how best to design them.
Lord May of Oxford
My Lords, the idea of government seeking to change our behaviour is inherently controversial. I should begin by saying what a pleasure and privilege it was to be associated with this inquiry, so ably led by the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, with that expression being no less sincere for its conforming to established ritual. The report begins by asserting that, in any instance, the Government should always explain why and what the problem is. They should then go on to make it clear what the evidence is about the problem—what we know and what we do not know—and to make it equally clear what the evidence is for the efficacy of the proposed actions, which is perhaps the most important and difficult thing. All that is a lot easier said than done.
Some of the difficulties have been exposed in an interesting report by the MORI poll organisation, which although it was begun in 2010 was published after our report. It was a study of 18,500 people in 24 different countries and found some paradoxical things. For one, and this is not surprising, public support for intervention is much higher if it is seen to be a problem that directly affects lots of other people—for example, smoking in public places. There is much less support if the problem seems personal—for example, obesity, which is so often seen, although inaccurately, to have just a personal cost as distinct from the large cost that there is to the National Health Service. In another kind of paradox, it found large majorities of public support for many different kinds of specific interventions. However, more than half of those same people then said that they did not think governments should get involved in people’s choices.
To give another example, about one in three of those 18,500 people who filled out the study said that governments should take tougher actions. Yet they also said that the state should not get involved in individuals’ choices about the four particular things being surveyed: eating/obesity, saving for retirement, smoking or sustainability. The report had a wonderful phrase for this, which I was unfamiliar with. It called it cognitive polyphasia, which is more simply summarised as saying that people want their Government to stop the bad behaviour of other people but not necessarily their own behaviour. I should emphasise that there was in those 24 countries a good deal of variation. For example, distinct affirmation for outright prohibition as a measure commanded assent at a level of 87% in Saudi Arabia and India, while at the other extreme it was less than one-third in the United States. In the UK, it was intermediate. In all countries, there was more support for actions and policies aimed at businesses and corporations than those aimed at individuals, forgetting ultimately that businesses and corporations are made up of individuals.
I turn briefly to the report itself to reiterate some things that have already been said and one that has not. As the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, reminded us it is often hard to get good evidence at the population level for how effective an action will be. Such information as we have is often ambiguous and cloudy. That should not stop us from rigorously following the advice on scientific advice in policy-making that was formally articulated in this country in 1996. It was subsequently reviewed in a report that has grown from a few pages to a semi-fat book and reaffirmed several years later by a Select Committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin.
The advice emphasises that you should always make it clear what the evidence is and how you have consulted widely and openly, and that you acknowledge openly the uncertainties as well. It points in the direction, as the report does, that this should always deliberately involve the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser and the chief scientific advisers in the individual departments. In particular, it points out that we should renew the position of the chief social science adviser—and with a really good person this time. These people have to be outsiders who are now insiders, not cosy appointments of civil servants from within, as happened with the Treasury.
The Government also have an obligation, as the report emphasises, to explain how the proposed actions relate to the science advice. This is made especially difficult when they do not. We had some examples of that recently. The dissonance between the expert scientific advice on drug classification and the political decision, with which I have some sympathy, should have been handled much better. The policy direction we are heading in with badgers and bovine TB is basically in flat contradiction of the best scientific advice, so it is very difficult for the Government to explain how they have taken the advice and why they are doing what they are doing when in that case too many people were after policy-based science rather than science-based policy.
Against this background, I re-emphasise how you need to be aware of the state of the science, which often is very partial and incomplete, and, even more importantly, you need to be aware of and explain the evaluation that you are planning for the intervention. One of the things that we found in the inquiry is that all too often the ex post facto evaluation of the measure set in train was not carefully planned in advance. It has to be part of the initial plan.
Finally, a point that deserves revisiting yet again is the question of partnerships between government and business in pursuit of particular interventions. We need to be much more frankly aware of the conflicts of interest involved. In the report, we identified a particular example, the public health responsibility deal network—a wonderful example of the networks my noble friend Lord Hunt referred to—where the pledges that were mooted about marketing alcohol gave explicit priority to the industry’s views, as a result of which six of the health organisations failed to sign up as they were explicitly dissatisfied with that issue and, frankly, I think more health organisations should have refused to sign up.
Rather than end on a rousing peroration, I thought I would read Recommendation 8.24, to which many speakers have already alluded, verbatim because it is a particularly important recommendation about which nothing much has happened yet:
“We invite the Government to explain why their policy on food labelling and marketing of unhealthy products to children is not in accordance with the available evidence about changing behaviour. Given the evidence, we recommend that the Government take steps to implement a traffic light system of nutritional labelling on all food packaging. We further recommend that the Government reconsider current regulation of advertising and marketing of food products to children, taking a more realistic view of the range of programmes that children watch”.
I look forward to the Minister’s reply to this point, and I have sympathy for him. I spent five years of my life as chief scientist in the strange culture of the Civil Service and five years in the Royal Society. I dealt with good conscientious people, but I never ceased to marvel at the confusion that you find there between having a report and lots of committees and actually doing something.
Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, our special adviser and, of course, the secretariat. This was a complex report to get together. The evidence was unusually disbursed, and I cannot say that we got together all the sorts of disbursed evidence that would be relevant. Here and there, I caught a note of disappointment that certain sorts of evidence had not been covered. I think that that is right. We took, if I may put it this way, a dipstick approach. We were looking for evidence and where it has not been collected there is no systematic picture of evidence. We did not look at what is delightfully called “renorming”, where you tell people what is the proper thing to do about something—what is the norm. For example, noble Lords have no doubt stayed in hotels where they are informed that their guests use their towels on average X number of times, as opposed to throwing them on the floor for the laundry. That is said greatly to reduce the demand for laundry and reduce laundry bills and energy expenditure because people think that the respectable thing to do is use their towel for three or four days and not throw it on the floor immediately.
In one way the Government’s response to the report is rather gratifying as they agree to a fair number of the central recommendations, but in another way it is not at all gratifying because, although they agree, they do not then explain clearly what they will do or suggest a timetable. The disappointment is that the Government have not specified what action they will take on the very measures that they agree are relevant within a specified timeframe. I have every sympathy with the Government on one point. Behavioural changes might—I say “might”, not “will”—provide an excellent solution to many problems from smoking to obesity or the excessive use of cars to the excessive drinking of alcohol. The question addressed by the Committee was the rather sobering one of whether and how well they actually work. We should remember that behavioural solutions are nevertheless appealing because if they work individuals will change their behaviour to some degree without the need for enforcement or penalties and the problem goes away. Choice is preserved, harms and ill health are avoided and costs are minimal—if it works. It is said that all that is needed may be a nudge, a minimal intervention that leads people to view a different, less harmful or healthier way of behaving as the default option—indeed, ideally as their preferred option—and they will change their behaviour accordingly. However appealing it may be it is not very useful if it does not work.
The patchy evidence that the committee heard, and the two detailed case studies of obesity and car use that it undertook, repeatedly showed two things. First, there was a dearth of evidence about the effectiveness of many behavioural interventions and, with that dearth of evidence a lack of robust evaluation. Secondly, there was insufficient evidence of the staying power of behavioural interventions, either taken individually or in interaction with other interventions. That was particularly marked in some of the evidence about the efficacy of exercise in addressing obesity.
The Government have pointed out in their response that they are funding the Policy Research Unit on Behaviour and Health, based at the University of Cambridge and directed by Professor Theresa Marteau to undertake rigorous evaluations. This work is admirable, but it is on a small scale. Often an intervention shows promising results but unless its cost and its efficacy are carefully compared with other approaches across various contexts in combination with other interventions, and its staying power after the intervention is monitored, promising initial results may turn out to have limited staying power. I hope that we will find policies that use behavioural interventions but provide robust and generalisable evidence of the efficacy of those interventions across situations. We need a broad and systematic approach, as other noble Lords have said.
Moreover, as others have also said, the report did not find much evidence of the efficacy of behavioural interventions taken in isolation. I make no apology for quoting that it noted that,
“the evidence supports the conclusion that non-regulatory or regulatory measures used in isolation are often not likely to be effective and that usually the most effective means of changing behaviour at a population level is to use a range of policy tools, both regulatory and non-regulatory”.
I suppose that that is hardly surprising. We have huge experience of the sheer difficulty of changing entrenched behaviour when we consider the more than half a century of strenuous efforts to reduce smoking. So far they have had a marked yet still incomplete effect, despite deploying a complex combination of behavioural, fiscal and regulatory interventions. This difficulty of achieving change, even using a mix of measures across a long time, is despite the reality that, as an editorial in the Journal of Public Health of February 2011 nicely put the matter:
“Tobacco is clearly an exceptional product; no other consumer product kills one in two users when used exactly as intended”.
Many of the changes in behaviour that the report discusses are of comparable complexity to giving up smoking. Although the harms they address appear less straightforwardly lethal, they are very significant harms. The same editorial in the Journal of Public Health suggests that while smoking and alcohol in combination account for fewer than 20% of deaths in high-income countries, the six most serious diet-related risk factors account for 17.5% of deaths in high-income countries. The figures are not as different as you might expect. This is not an area in which there is reason to hesitate about using fiscal or regulatory interventions if behavioural interventions are known not to be sufficient. The matter is urgent, and rising obesity and diabetes are heralds of a public health tsunami.
The Government’s response argues:
“It is not a question, therefore, of the use of regulation being ruled out altogether, rather that regulation is only used when satisfactory outcomes cannot be achieved by alternative approaches, or where alternative approaches would involve much higher costs”.
Evidently the Government are pinning quite a lot of hope on the efficacy of behavioural interventions or on finding effective ones, but they have also pinned quite a lot of hope, as others have mentioned, on the so-called responsibility deal with the food industry, by which it agrees to reformulate products to make them healthier. Yet the committee was told by Mr Justin King of Sainsbury’s that voluntary agreements were sometimes unsatisfactory. He said:
“There was an attempt by the industry to coalesce around a voluntary agreement together with the FSA … and we felt very strongly that it was coalescing around a lowest common denominator, when our customers had clearly told us they expected something more and better. And when we made the change”—
because Sainsbury’s did make a change—
“we were not the most popular people in the industry”.
How long are we to wait to establish whether behavioural approaches work? How much faith can be put in responsibility deals that have to be sold to the least as well as the most responsible companies in the food industry? The public health problems created by overeating an affluent diet are grave, and delay in taking effective steps to prevent these problems would be serious.
I shall finish with two questions for the Government. First, what steps are Her Majesty’s Government taking to ensure that food served in public institutions, where the available menu in any case limits consumer choice, does not contribute to the obesity and related epidemics? In particular, what steps are they taking to ensure that meals in schools, in prisons, in the armed services and in canteens catering to public services do not contribute to these epidemics? Will they rely on behavioural interventions in these contexts where more direct interventions are readily available and are, in effect, being made every day when menus are chosen? If not, what reasons can they give for offering unhealthy meals when healthy meals can provide equivalent choice, and need be no more expensive? A lot of meals are eaten in public canteens in this country every day.
Secondly, what steps are Her Majesty’s Government taking to evaluate the efficacy of the public health responsibility deal with the food and retail industries, and what benchmarks and timeframe have they set for the industry to demonstrate that the deal is effective? It would be unfortunate if the responsibility deal turned out to have created one more last chance saloon, in this case for the food industry rather than for the media, allowing the less scrupulous performers to spend a decade pretending to produce healthier food while continuing to peddle excess fat, sugar and salt.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
My Lords, I think I should start my contribution with a confession: I arrived at this debate as both a novice and a sceptic, to start with. I found the report and the debate itself absolutely fascinating. It has been extremely enjoyable and interesting. When I first heard about the Government’s new Behavioural Insights Team, I was very sceptical—partly, as today’s debate has drawn out, because it is very difficult to assess what factors influence behaviour. First, on an individual level, which I appreciate is not what the Behavioural Insights Team is about, what people say the factors are that influence their behaviour are often not the ones that influence them but the ones that they want the questioner to think influence their behaviour. Because any policy initiative is unlikely to involve just one intervention, it is also difficult to isolate different policy interventions and decide which one has had the impact and what that impact has been.
For this nudge theory to have any real credibility and weight it needs effective evaluation, as the report makes very clear. I pay tribute to the committee chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, and to her team because I found this report to be very readable and enjoyable. It illuminated as much in what it did not say as in what it did, which I think was the point that the noble Baroness drew out a moment ago. The committee has been extremely helpful to the Government on behavioural change in its recommendations, and helpful also to the Government’s Behavioural Insights Team or nudge unit. Clearly, the Government were very attracted by the Thaler and Sunstein book, Nudge, which argued that a range of non-regulatory interventions can influence individual and public behaviour. Given that the Government have set up the unit, this is an extremely welcome contribution and not just to a debate, because it has to be more than that. It has to be something practical. The report brings a kind of detailed scientific analysis to what can become a very theoretical debate.
Part of my scepticism at some of the press reports that I read before on the value of Nudge—or nudge alone, which the report drew out as well—was the problem of evaluation. When the National Audit Office was looking at this even the Minister, Oliver Letwin, told it that it was,
“open to question whether any of this will have any effect whatsoever”.
He continued,
“I don’t want to pretend that behavioural science is a sufficiently developed science to give us complete confidence or even sort of 95% confidence that any given technique will produce given results”.
I am pleased to hear that the BIT is now looking at evaluation, because to move any further forward without evaluation would be a big mistake. However, the National Audit Office itself found that there was no evidence that government departments were taking up the theory or the background of nudge, so this debate is very timely and will bring some clarity to the issue.
For me, the report emphasises that the need for evaluation has to be evidence-based. There are recommendations on the way forward, but I have to confess to your Lordships that part of my scepticism is about what is meant by a nudge and how it is defined. I appreciate that the debate has different facets on different issues. However, if I have understood correctly, it is essentially about what the levers are that drive and lead behavioural change, and what the relative merits or otherwise are of rules and laws to lead and force that change—as regulatory intervention or as campaigns, provision of information, et cetera, which is non-regulatory intervention. My understanding is that the provision of information, advice and knowledge can lead individuals or society as a whole, or groups in society, to make those changes.
That is the nudge concept theory, if I have understood it correctly. But in all that I have read, including this report and other information that I have sought there is still no definite answer as to what constitutes a nudge and what counts as a regulatory intervention. What does it really mean? I have seen different interpretations but, for me, if it is to be a non-interventory way of changing behaviour, it has to be about providing information, leading by example and giving the individual a free choice while seeking to influence that choice. It could be argued that it is more empowering for the individual to make that choice than for a wider group in society to make choices. I looked at table 1 in the report, where Nuffield takes the view that a regulatory intervention that is not directly aimed at the individual whose behaviour they are seeking to change is a nudge rather than regulatory change. I do not know whether noble Lords have looked at table 1, but I had some issues because of the examples used. It argues that changes to the physical environment would be a nudge, and gives the example:
“Altering the environment e.g. traffic calming measures or designing buildings with fewer lifts”.
To me that is more like an intervention, because action has been taken to change behaviour. The behaviour change is not a free choice—it is making one choice more difficult than another choice. If we install speed humps cars will go more slowly in that road. If we have fewer lifts in buildings, more people will walk. So it might be a nudge in changing an individual’s behaviour, but in making a collective difference I struggle to see that as nudge behaviour rather than something more interventory.
I have a new theory. I think that it is more like a shove; it does not give the individual the opportunity to opt in or out. I cannot see that it is giving information or empowerment to make a choice, but by regulation it limits choice to influence behaviour. So it is not a nudge but a shove, because I lean towards a nudge being about giving power for choices to be made. An intervention, whether targeted at an individual, a community or business, such as speed humps, removes choice. I am not saying that that is bad in any way, but I am trying to acknowledge the difference. I am not saying that one is less effective, but we have to clear up what a nudge is.
Business has to have legislation to inform customers, and we have heard about the traffic light system—and then there is information about obesity, which the report looks at as well. It has to be presented in a way that is easily understood, showing the potential danger of problems from a product. That becomes an intervention. When the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, was making the argument about phones, I looked at my iPhone. I have no idea whether I have the best tariff for my iPhone; I had a choice, but I was certainly nudged to make a certain choice. I suspect that I have not got a particularly good deal.
The issue of smoking was raised, as well, by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill. I am more likely to agree with her on that issue. Various warnings on packets of cigarettes over the years and numerous advertising campaigns have had a marked but incomplete effect, as she said. There have been interventions, saying that, “Smoking can damage your health” and “Smoking kills”. They are all interventions, however mild, to try to influence behaviour. We can argue that they had a limited impact or effect, but we cannot consider it a success at this stage, because we are still talking about what interventions to take. Although it was not referred to as a theory at the time, various evaluations that have taken place over many years have not said that those interventions on their own were a success because further interventions had to be taken. There has been initiative after initiative, and it is still going on. What really did influence and drive change was something that was very much an intervention from Governments banning smoking in public places. You could argue that levels of taxation have had an impact as well. It is far more regulatory than nudging.
The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, referred to drink-driving. The seriousness of the problem was recognised long before any significant action was taken; there were various awareness campaigns. I am told that when the breathalyser first came in, by those who were drivers at the time—I hasten to add that I was not—they were told that three or four or even five pints would put them within the breathalyser limits. So what was the influence on behaviour? It could be the thought that drivers could be prosecuted and lose their licences. That is what made a collective and significant difference. Part of the difficulty is that there needs to be a significant change in collective behaviour to make an effective assessment of whether an intervention is effective. It is also very difficult to isolate one specific aspect of a range of interventions to try to say which intervention was successful. We need a critical mass of change to indentify cause and effect.
I worry, and this was mentioned by other noble Lords, that at a time when the Government are making huge and very significant cuts in public expenditure the proposal of a nudge theory to change behaviour, without other interventions and without any real evidence base of success, could be a cheap alternative to effective and efficient actions by Government that could really make a significant difference. That is why I think the recommendation in the report for a social scientist is very important. Unless the Government make an assessment and know what works, then nudge interventions really have no value.
The report was very clear that to affect behaviour and make a difference, a range of interventions is needed, not nudge or even shove alone. The key points I took from the report were that non-regulatory intervention should be used when there is evidence that it works, not because it is cheaper or easier. It should not be used without any assessment of its effectiveness, nor because it fits somehow with the Government’s philosophy or policy to cut expenditure and look at ways of changing behaviour rather than having formal regulatory interventions. There has to be an independent, quantifiable, evidence-based assessment of the value of any non-regulatory intervention, particularly if the Government intend to use it to replace regulation or regulatory intervention.
I did not get from the Government’s report— I would not have expected it in the S and T report—where they see the balance, if they have ascertained that yet, between regulatory and non-regulatory intervention. The Government have to look at it and it is quite a serious issue for them—it is a wider issue than across one department. If the Government are seeking to influence behaviour in one area they have to recognise that actions taken across government as a whole, and other agencies, all contribute to the result and can often be contradictory. The reason for taxation on fuel has been to support the environment and to try to reduce car use. However, at the same time the Government support significant above-inflation increases in train fares and many people who would go by train are forced off the train and into their cars because it is cheaper for them. Governments have to work across departments to have a holistic policy that makes a difference rather than one department acting against another one.
We can accept that nudge does have some impact. Commercial organisations have used it for years alongside other strategies. However, they also recognise, as the Government have to in public policy making, that different problems require different solutions. One size does not fit all. One thing that I saw in this was the carrot-and-stick approach, I think the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, referred to that as well. If we look at traffic in London and our numerous attempts over the years to reduce the congestion, what has worked, it seems to me, is the carrot—ensuring that there are more buses and better public transport. That has an impact. The congestion charge had an even bigger impact initially. One of the problems with fiscal interventions is that their impact reduces over time as people get used to them. There has to be an assessment of whether regulatory interventions lead to long-term behaviour change or whether once the impact of the intervention is lost the impact lessens. We have to look at new ways of trying to influence behaviour.
I appreciate that I have added a new concept and am perhaps making it slightly more complicated, but at what point does a nudge become a shove and does it matter? If an intervention works does it matter if it is a nudge, a shove or a regulatory intervention? There seems to be an assumption, and I am not suggesting for a moment it was from the committee, that a nudge to influence behaviour is better than regulatory influence. I am not sure whether that works or is relevant. What matters is what works. If a change in behaviour is necessary, what is the best way to achieve that change? Without an evidence-based evaluation of the different approaches it is very difficult to make that judgment.
Several noble Lords referred to the fact that this is not new. Perhaps articulating the concept of nudge is new and different, but the idea that we are inventing a nudge theory is not: Governments have been using it for many years. The noble Lord, Lord Kreb, made a similar point about seeking to use it in a different, perhaps more conscious, way, but it has been used in the past and will continue to be used. However, the willingness to try to understand what works, and why is new.
I congratulate the committee and the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, in particular. The report brings clarity and common sense to the debate, which is welcome. The danger for the Government—I am looking forward to the Minister’s reply—is that this matter should not be allowed to become an academic discussion. There should be a practical response about whether or not there are interventions through nudge that the Government can make. I am not clear from the printed response about the degree of determination and clarity with which the Government intend to take this matter forward.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I thank the Committee for giving me the opportunity to read further and in more depth about this fascinating subject. I have met the team on many occasions; I know its director and admire a good deal of his work, much of which I have read.
I start by declaring an interest. I am a social scientist and I have spent my career between universities and think tanks arguing with others of my own discipline about how they needed to pay attention to their relationship with government. I remember as a young academic going to a meeting in Chatham House—it must have been 30 years ago—in which the chief inspector of the Diplomatic Service was asked to address the question of the relationship between the study of international relations and government. He began his speech with the wonderful statement, “I am not quite sure what the discipline of international relations—if indeed there be such a thing as a discipline of international relations—might contribute to the practical business of diplomacy”. Happily, in terms of government attitudes to social science, we have moved on some way from there and most, but not all, academic social scientists have become a little more open to having a constructive two-way relationship with government.
We see here an attempt to build on academic insights and government efforts to widen the use of evidence in policy-making by the establishment of the Behavioural Insights Team. As several noble Lords have said, this is not new—there is a reference in the report to the NICE report of 2007—but is something that Governments have been doing in practice in the past. What Thaler and Sunstein did, as did many social scientists, was to make more explicit what people were doing implicitly, make us think about it more systematically and, therefore, use it more systematically.
I am glad that the academic community is working with government and I note that the British Academy held a seminar with the Behavioural Insights Team last month on how we might take this further. We are now into the whole question of the relationship between science, broadly defined, and government and how evidence gathered by government-sponsored research in policy-making can be used.
There are a number of obstacles to this. I have taken part in debates on several occasions in the past year about how far you can allow the Government to use the data they collect across different departments for other purposes. On organ donation, for example, there have been some very delicate discussions on how far you can use evidence collected by the DVLA for Department of Health purposes. Happily, the Government have now secured a protocol for sharing the relevant data between the different agencies of government. We look forward to publishing our findings in this area, which we routinely do in each of our major work areas, as soon as we are able decisively to establish the impact of each of a number of changes that have been made to questions about organ donation on the DVLA site.
We also recognise that social science is softer than a number of other sciences. The problems of experimentation and evidence collection are often a good deal more complicated, and on obesity, the timescale over which one will establish that interventions have worked has to be measured in decades rather than in months. So there is a range of problems in assessing the utility of the evidence even when one has collected it.
There are a number of other obstacles. We have the most highly educated electorate we have ever had but it is often very resistant to evidence, as we see in the debate on climate change and in the resistance of the car-owing public to everything told to them about the greater benefits of walking and about why paying more for your petrol is good for you. It is not something that the public are particularly keen on. Road pricing is, of course, a highly desirable development. I well recollect that the previous Government left it to Ken Livingstone—and then pretty well hung him out to dry—to try road pricing in London, and only when it succeeded did they at least take it on. Local government elsewhere has been hesitant about imposing road pricing in cities because it is not popular.
Much of what we want to do in regulation is not popular, so part of what the new unit is doing is to expand on what the Nuffield Council on Bioethics calls the “ladder of intervention”. If there is an ideology for this Government—and I am not at all sure that I recognise a single ideological position for any Government, whether this Government, the previous Government or their predecessors—it is that you should look at the ladder of interventions, see how far voluntary measures can take you and only then move up to the harder end of the spectrum, regulation—the hardest end being prohibition—and financial disincentives when your voluntary interventions do not work. So limited government, working with social and economic actors as far as possible and recognising that all of those share responsibility, is the position from which we come.
As the noble Lord, Lord May, said, the idea of government seeking to influence behaviour is inherently controversial. Two generations ago, there were other moral leaders in society who helped to set the social norms. Part of what has happened in our society is that as the traditional moral leaders outside government have lost influence, so advertising, the media and the corporate sector have come to set social norms rather more strongly. That raises the difficult question of how far government should be attempting to prescribe and enforce behaviour. That is the area we are in. It is a fundamental issue about the role of government and how far it should be an active interventionist and an enforcer. I recognise that in the health area most of all—smoking, obesity and so on—there is a very strong lobby for enforcement among the professionals and a very strong resistance among the public to that.
The ladder of interventions and a range of policy tools are what this is all about. We are not saying that we do not want regulations; we are saying that where possible we want to investigate what works. In the debate, I was asked, I think by the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, whether there are any examples of behaviour being changed by non-regulatory interventions alone. There is the example of HMRC letters that were redesigned to say “most people pay their taxes”, which improved the extent to which people made their returns. We are having a debate in another context about electoral registration in which it is being urged on the Government that if you put at the top of each letter, “You must fill in this form. £250 fine”—I will not go into the fine—it will radically improve the number of people who fill in the form. This is a debate we are about to have in another sector but we all recognise that the way you design forms and convey messages has a positive or negative impact on behaviour.
Loft insulation is another instance in which you discover that, if you ask people why they have or have not gone along with the policy, there are interesting obstacles on the way. If you volunteer to empty their loft they are much more likely to say, “Fine, now you can insulate it”.
The Behavioural Insight Team is now looking at energy tariffs and mobile phone tariffs because it is clear that most people simply give up long before they have begun to investigate which tariff is best for them. It intends to work with industry and to talk about how simplification of tariffs might make choices easier.
I defend the attempts by the Government to limit how actively they intervene and the number of prohibitions we impose on society. That is a debate that we have all had to have, in the previous Government and in this one. We are talking about the range of intervention.
I was asked a large number of questions about obesity and the traffic light issue. As noble Lords will know, that is partly a question of what can be done compulsorily at EU level. If the EU has not passed a regulation that everyone must have traffic light interventions, we have to work voluntarily with the supermarkets. The Government are talking to supermarket companies and others, and some have responded differently from others. As a believer in limited government, we had to demand that companies behave responsibly. That is part of the dialogue that we must have. One way in which we change social norms nowadays is by having Commons committees which pull the heads of banks and companies up before them and ask them what are their social norms and acceptable behaviour. Not all of that has to be done by government prohibition.
I was also asked how the Behavioural Insights Team is itself monitored. It has an academic advisory council which monitors how it behaves. It was set up for a two-year period and is now coming up to its two-year review. It was entirely appropriate that it should be set up for a limited period—we do not necessarily want something that goes on forever—although I think that it is likely to be extended. On the question of the use of evidence, I hope that some Members of the Committee may have read the recent publication, Test, Learn, Adapt: Developing Public Policy with Randomised Controlled Trials.
Lord Hunt of Chesterton
The Minister has talked a lot about evidence and performance but there are people in Whitehall who say: “What has data got to do with policy?”. Data and information are very important. We receive very little information from government. They want to give us a good form but does not the Minister think that the programme of examples that I tried to give him of telling people much more about the information will help to make decisions? That is largely absent from the government response?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I take the noble Lord’s point that perhaps the government response should have taken more care with the question of data. There is another debate to be had—I encourage all Members of the Committee to participate in it more actively—about government data collection, government data sharing and access to government data which relates to the census and questions of privacy. We all need to engage in that debate because government is now collecting a great deal more data, as are private actors. Government behaves with much more caution about the use of that data than Tesco or Marks and Spencer. As with obesity, there are important questions as to how far we lower privacy issues in government in order to gain benefits in public health and elsewhere.
I mentioned the White Paper Test, Learn, Adapt, which has been recommended by Ben Goldacre and Tim Harford. That suggests to me that there are those in the media who recognise the importance of government data and at least think we are attempting to move in the right direction.
The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, talked about corporate power and how to confront it. That is also part of a much larger issue. We are left with business and the media setting a large amount of what becomes the social norm. The power of advertising—and advertising is absolutely about covert nudging as opposed to overt messaging—is an issue that again we cannot answer here. It is fundamental to our debate about the balance between government, society and market, in which that we all need to engage. I look forward to the noble Lord’s next written contribution on that fundamental issue.
The noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, talked about the international dimensions of behavioural influence and cultural change and whether we should be following US research. There is a fair amount of independent research in this area. The German Marshall Fund does some very good research, which I follow. There are some mildly puzzling outcomes. From the surveys that I have seen, the most pro-Western public in the entire Middle East is the urban population of Iran. Whether or not that suggests that the behavioural impact you should be having is to impose sanctions on the regime, it raises some very large questions about what policies and interventions you pursue and what you get back in return. I will feed that back in.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, raised a number of questions about transport, which I have touched on. Government studies have shown that cost, time and reliability are clearly very important factors. There is some evidence for providing better, simple information. The new signs at bus stops which tell you when the next bus will arrive increase the number of people who wait for the bus. That is another nudge if you like. Information helps.
David Halpern, the head of the Behavioural Insights Team, is very interested in the built environment and how far it impacts upon behaviour. That is a really difficult, long-term issue, the sort of thing that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, was talking about. Redesigning public spaces and how you design footpaths and cycle ways help with this, but part of the answer to improving the urban environment and encouraging people to walk rather than use cars is persuading them to live more closely together and not to wish to live 10 to 20 miles from where they work.
Another area in which the provision of information would help—and here government has a great deal further to go—is on the concreting of front gardens, which over the past 20 or 30 years has contributed very substantially to the problems of urban flooding. The provision of information about the utility of digging up your front garden again and providing green spaces through which the water can drain is clearly something that government can do without enforcing it.
I love the term “cognitive polyphasia”. We are all stuck with that. As someone who, when in opposition, campaigned for the pedestrianisation of further squares in London and, in particular, of Parliament Square, I am conscious that there are a number of people who think that it is very good to have pedestrianisation so long as they can still get their limousine to take them to St Margaret’s for weddings and do not have to spend two to three minutes longer in their taxi from Smith Square. Individuals often resist things that in the long run will be to their advantage.
This is a broad initiative of government—I stress of government because it is not a partisan move from this Government. We all want to find ways in which the range of government interventions—from information through to pressures and financial disincentives to tighter regulation and, in some cases, prohibition and penalties, as in seat belts and some areas of health—will help to change behaviour. That is not something that the Government can do alone. We have to work with publics whose attitudes are often highly contradictory and whose willingness to accept evidence when presented as mediated through the media is sometimes relatively limited.
What I hope that the Committee is persuaded of, into which the report provided a useful insight, is that this is one of the many tools available for government which helps government to be more self-conscious. The Behavioural Insights Team is in the Cabinet Office to provide a resource across government and its many departments to encourage them to use more of those interventions to affect behaviour. On that basis, I give way to both noble Lords.
Lord Krebs
Will the Minister respond specifically to my question about the 11 countries that have introduced taxes on foods that specifically contribute to obesity—high sugar, high fat foods? Might the Government follow the lead of other countries in tackling the obesity crisis by that measure?
Lord May of Oxford
My question was going to be the same but adding the encouraging rider that, as I mentioned, studies show that the public is much more amenable to asking corporations and business to do something than to asking individuals to do something. In the specific case of Recommendation 8.24 about marketing garbage food to children, I should like to hear that something is to be done.
Lord Reay
The Minister said that the measures we want to take for public health are not popular and that is one reason why we do not have to do that. A lot of regulatory measures that have been taken have been popular by the time they are taken. You may have to work to get that popularity, as others have suggested. You have to give the public information as to why things are being done.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
This is turning into more of a seminar than a debate. I felt when I was getting my briefing from the Behavioural Insights Team that I was attending a seminar rather than receiving a briefing. Let me attempt to answer the question on sugar, salt and so on. That is certainly an issue that the Government are considering. We have not yet come to any conclusion. Having a public debate on the options helps to considerably further the debate, so I encourage all those interested to pursue the issue and aid the Government in making our recommendations.
On the question of school meals, we are all aware, again, that we need a mixture of interventions. We need Jamie Oliver out there campaigning. We need schools that are experimenting, often against initial parental opposition. We can all remember the parents who came to bring chips for their children because the school was giving them this nasty healthy food. There, we are slowly moving things around
One final point and then I will have to sit down because I am well over 20 minutes. When I first joined the House of Lords, if I went into the Lords restaurant at breakfast time I saw many of our security staff eating enormous English breakfasts. I was in there the other day and I saw our security staff eating light breakfasts. In small ways, attitudes are changing and some of the message is beginning to get through. The full English breakfast is still provided in the River Restaurant but fewer of our security staff are taking it. That is an interesting example of where social norms are evolving in one way or another, but all of us in our position as social scientists or scientists, as well as politicians, need to address the question of how we shape the public debate and public attitudes in a range of different areas. Government has a role in that but not everything which government does should be done through taxation or prohibition. Where government can encourage and inform, it should do so first before it moves up the ladder of intervention.
Baroness Neuberger
I thank all noble Lords who have spoken. There have been some memorable phrases. I am particularly interested in behaviour change for bankers and interventions will clearly be programmed as a result of today’s debate. I was slightly disappointed with the Minister’s response, particularly given that he is a social scientist. He did not answer the question put to him about when, if ever, a chief social scientific adviser will be appointed within government. I hope that he will deal with and answer that point.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I apologise. I should have answered it but so many points were made in the debate that it was extremely difficult to cover all of them. This question is being discussed within government and will shortly be decided on. It is not a dead question; it is a live one.
Baroness Neuberger
I thank the Minister very much indeed. We are much encouraged to hear that and I hope that we will continue to be brief on that subject. Will he perhaps take back the question on traffic light labelling of food, which was asked again and again, particularly as evidence came from some corporations that they were doing something about this? It is something that could be pursued through a business network and the Government could lean harder on that. We would still like a serious response on advertising on foods harmful to children. I hope that the noble Lord will write to me and other Members of the Committee. I thank everybody who spoke and the Minister for his response. I beg to move.
Financial Transaction Tax: European Union Report
(12 years, 5 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Lord Harrison
That the Grand Committee takes note of the Report of the European Union Committee on Towards a Financial Transaction Tax? (29th Report, Session 2010-12, HL Paper 287).
Lord Harrison
My Lords, I am delighted to have the opportunity to introduce this debate on the report of the European Union Committee entitled Towards a Financial Transaction Tax? This report was based on work undertaken by the Sub-Committee on Economic and Financial Affairs, which I chair. The report was published in March and was based on evidence received from campaigners, representatives of the financial sector, academic experts, think tanks, MEPs, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury Mark Hoban MP and Algirdas Semeta, the EU Commissioner for Taxation and Customs Union, who appeared before the committee in February. I also thank all our witnesses who contributed to this inquiry and my clerk, Stuart Stoner, for mastering, as ever, a complex subject with consummate skill.
Since the global financial crisis erupted in 2008, there has been a continuing debate about the role of the financial sector within the economy. As recent events here in the UK have again brought into focus, many have criticised the perceived light-touch regulation of financial practices and of the markets. There is also a common perception that the financial sector does not pay its fair share, as well as widespread anger at the level of pay and bonuses in the sector at a time of economic austerity. In this context, there is an understandable desire to see the financial sector make amends for its perceived mistakes and shortcomings.
The proposal for some form of financial transaction tax is nothing new. Indeed, were the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, here, he would doubtless tell us the thoughts of John Maynard Keynes in that direction. In the early 1970s, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, James Tobin, brought forward an eponymous proposal to levy a tax on every amount exchanged from one currency to another to reduce short-term currency speculation. The idea was not adopted at the time, but it has returned to the agenda on a regular basis ever since. In the aftermath of the recent financial crisis, the European Commission has been actively considering the case for a financial transaction tax, or FTT. In September 2011, it published its proposals for a tax on the value of single transactions of a broad range of financial instruments, including equities, bonds, currencies and derivatives. EU leaders including Germany’s Chancellor Merkel and the former French President Nicolas Sarkozy advocated such a tax, while the Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso promoted it as a question of fairness. A wide-ranging campaign, spearheaded by the Robin Hood tax campaign here in the UK, has also called for a tax in order to tackle poverty and climate change.
Yet support for an FTT is far from universal. Leading economists have criticised the proposals, and several world economic heavyweight Governments, most notably the USA, remain implacably opposed to its introduction. The UK Government, while stating that they do not oppose a global tax, have remained consistently opposed to its introduction at EU level. The Prime Minister has called the tax madness, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer described it as,
“a bullet aimed at the heart of London”.
Even after we have published the report, we are still getting information, for instance from the City of London Corporation. It drew its own analysis of the tax, highlighting concerns and worries, and concluded that:
“This is not helpful to the European recovery and the jobs and growth agenda”.
It was in this febrile atmosphere that the committee’s inquiry into the Commission’s proposals took place. We were disappointed in what we discovered. We found the Commission’s proposed model wanting in many respects and unlikely to fulfil the objectives that the Commission had outlined. We found key elements of the Commission’s model to be fundamentally flawed, and advised the Government that they should refuse to agree to the proposal.
Why did we come to such a stern conclusion? We began by examining the Commission’s five stated objectives. The first was to avoid fragmentation in the internal market for financial services; secondly, to ensure that financial institutions make a fair contribution to covering the costs of the recent crisis and to ensure a level playing field with other sectors; thirdly, to create appropriate disincentives for transactions that do not enhance the efficiency of financial markets; fourthly, to create a new revenue stream for the EU budget; and, fifthly, to contribute to the continuing international debate on financial sector taxation and, in particular, the development of an FTT at global level.
We were not convinced that the Commission’s proposals would meet any of these objectives. Given the opposition to an FTT in the USA, the suggestion that the Commission’s proposal would pave the way for a global tax was, in our view, wholly unrealistic. We noted that the case for using an FTT as a new revenue stream for the EU budget was contentious even among its own supporters, many of whom favoured revenue being put to other uses, such as tackling global poverty and climate change. While we found there was a stronger case for asking the financial sector to make a contribution to the cost of the crisis or, indeed, for seeking to deter certain capricious transactions, in neither case did we find the Commission’s arguments persuasive. While we acknowledged the strength of public anger directed against the financial sector and the widespread view that those who contributed to the current financial crisis should contribute to its clean-up costs, we found that this FTT was the wrong way to meet such demands.
We next considered the detail of the Commission’s proposals. We concluded that the Commission’s model was impractical and unworkable. For instance, the proposed residence principle, defined as taxation in the member state of establishment of the financial institution regardless of where the transaction took place, was subject to widespread criticism, including from advocates of an FTT. There was, in our view, a significant likelihood that a tax so designed would lead to financial institutions relocating outside the European Union in order to avoid the tax. Only an FTT implemented on a global scale would prevent EU-resident institutions being placed at a significant competitive disadvantage in comparison with other leading global competitors. Yet, for the reasons I have outlined, the chances of a global tax being introduced are extremely thin.
We also concluded that it was uncertain who would shoulder the burden of the tax incidence. We pondered what the impact would be on consumers who might have the tax passed on to them. In addition, although the headline rate of the tax was relatively low, there was a danger of a potential cascade effect increasing the potential tax burden by the tax being levied at each stage of the financial instrument’s journey.
Much criticism focused on the Commission’s impact assessment, which indicated that the proposals seemed destined to have a substantial detrimental effect on the EU-wide GDP. In the context of the current financial crisis and the economic pressures being faced by many member states, we found this undesirable. We concluded that if a proposal of such importance as this is to be seriously contemplated, it is imperative that any such proposed tax is as well designed as possible. In our view, the Commission’s proposal failed this test.
The consequences of such a poorly designed tax, both on the United Kingdom financial sector and the EU financial sector as a whole, could be very serious indeed. Divergent views were put to us concerning the potential impact. We found such uncertainty about the outcomes alarming and so, I repeat, we were deeply concerned that an EU-wide FTT could have a serious detrimental impact on the United Kingdom, in particular by giving financial institutions an incentive to relocate away, principally from London. We heard evidence that over 70% of the revenues from an FTT could come from the United Kingdom, and we questioned the appropriateness of a proposal that would have such a disproportionate effect and impact on one member state above all others.
The United Kingdom Government have made it consistently clear that they would oppose an EU-wide tax. Given that EU-wide taxation proposals require unanimity among member states, we found the likelihood of such a tax being introduced extremely remote. Speculation has therefore grown that an FTT might be adopted by a smaller group of member states centred on the euro area from which the United Kingdom would almost certainly stand apart. However, the impact of such a tax on the United Kingdom cannot be ignored. If, as is likely, a directive covering a smaller number of member states equates the UK with third countries, there would still be a significant effect on the United Kingdom financial sector. UK financial institutions entering into a financial transaction with euro area financial institutions would still be liable for the FTT, which could be collected through EU mutual assistance for the recovery of tax or as a result of the regular provisions of joint and several liability. We urged the Government to work to ensure that UK financial institutions are not so damaged and that the United Kingdom tax authorities’ workload is not increased by an FTT introduced by an advance pioneer group of member states.
The Government’s response to the committee’s report has been received, for which we are grateful. However, we found the response to that point complacent. It merely states that the Government,
“will continue to contribute to discussions on the proposal with these issues in mind, and will continue to highlight that unless applied globally, FTTs risk relocation of business activity to countries not applying the tax”.
The deleterious impact of a euro area FTT on the UK could be very serious. I should be grateful if the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, could provide us with a more considered response to those concerns. How are the Government seeking to address them? Who are the Government currently talking to and canvassing? Which MEPs and fellow Council members inside and outside the euro area are the Government talking to?
We were dissatisfied with the Government’s position on an FTT in one other respect. In his evidence to us, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury argued that the Government do not support an EU FTT but do not object in principle to a global FTT. The Government’s support for a global tax has been lukewarm at best. If the Government support the introduction of a global tax, they should make a sound case for it. If, however, their true position is that they oppose a financial transaction tax in principle and in practice, they should say so in thunder. The Government’s response argues that their position is clear, but we found it as clear as mud and acting to the gallery of those who seriously believe in the benefits of a Robin Hood tax.
Beyond all that, it is imperative that Her Majesty’s Government remain fully engaged in the debate. Discussion on whether and how the financial sector should be taxed cannot be ignored. In our report, the committee considers other models, including a financial activities tax or an EU-wide tax on the model of UK stamp duty, which appeared to be gaining traction when the report was published. We found that such models may bear further exploration. Since the report was published, the debate has moved on further still. The Compact for Growth and Jobs annexed to the conclusions of the European Council meeting on 28-29 June states at paragraph 3(j) that the,
“proposal for a Financial Transaction Tax will not be adopted by the Council within a reasonable period. Several Member States therefore will launch a request for an enhanced cooperation in this area, with a view to its adoption by December 2012”.
What update can the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, give us on the current state of negotiations on the adoption of an FTT?
The leaders of Germany, France, Italy and Spain are reported as remaining in favour of an FTT. Which member states are expressing an interest in pursuing its adoption under enhanced co-operation? Given the implications for the United Kingdom, to which I have referred, what role are the Government playing in seeking to influence these discussions? I look forward to hearing the contributions on this important proposal, not only from the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, but also from noble Lords on all sides of the Committee. I beg to move.
Baroness Randerson
My Lords, I speak in this debate not as someone who participated in the production of this report and the discussions which took place among the committee, but simply as an interested and keen observer of the problem that the committee examined and as someone who has, of course, read the report and considered the matter in great detail. My noble friend Lady Maddock, who was a member of the committee, is unfortunately unable to be here this afternoon.
This is a very impressive report. I have rarely read a report where the committee appears so united and strong in its condemnation of the topic it was asked to examine. The report makes a compelling case for the Government to do all in their power to resist this tax, even if it were to be applied only to the euro area. It is understandable at a time of deep financial crisis—a world crisis where emotions are running high against the bankers, particularly in this country—that there are proposals to tax the financial services industry. The FTT or Tobin tax, or the Robin Hood tax—that last name giving you a flavour of how this tax is viewed—is that rare kind of tax, one which easily wins the hearts and minds of the public. Very few taxes are popular with the public but in the public mind, for many people, the Robin Hood tax will solve the problem they see. In my view, and I am very persuaded by the report, it is the wrong tax at the wrong time and in the wrong place.
It is the wrong tax because its design is so flawed. For example, the residence principle is, as the committee says, impractical and unworkable. We all know how difficult it is to stop companies moving out of this country and relocating to the country they see as being of most tax advantage to them. One company which has recently made the press in this respect is Amazon, locating its headquarters in Luxembourg and paying very little tax in this country despite doing billions of pounds of business here. That same principle applies to the financial services sector, especially where the companies concerned will have everything to gain and nothing to lose by locating outside the EU.
I felt that there were some extraordinary aspects to the details of this tax: the double incidence, for example, if both parties in the transaction are in the EU. It is an unusual tax if you pay it twice simply by accident of location. It is important to remember that FTT is not the only option. As the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, has stated, there are realistic alternatives, including the UK stamp duty option and the financial activities tax, so the urge to tax the financial sector can be achieved in other ways.
I stated that this is a tax at the wrong time. The Commission’s own impact assessment states that there would be a long-term total decrease of EU GDP of between 0.5% and 1.76%. I note that the Government’s letter in response to the committee’s report points out that, at the top end of that range, that would equate to a reduction of more than €200 billion in EU GDP and would mean the loss of nearly half a million jobs. Possibly the Government’s estimate of jobs is quite light—it could be more than that. Therefore, it is pretty extraordinary that the Commission is proposing what is, effectively, a tax on growth at a time when the EU is uniformly suffering from very low growth and, in some cases, negative growth. If you could identify the problems of the EU, at the very top of the list would be its problems with growth at this moment. It is a fairly extraordinary proposal to come forward with in this situation. Imposed suddenly—and by its nature it must be imposed suddenly—it could reduce liquidity and have the adverse effect of increasing market volatility. The Commission is talking about using it to reduce the high-velocity trading, but it could increase market volatility. The noble Lord has already referred to the cascade effect, which could intensify these problems.
One point of concern is that the FTT is being seen as all things to all men. Different groups are clutching at it to fund their own, individual pet priorities, mostly things that we would agree are very worthy and worthwhile, and which need funding. However, out of one tax you cannot fund the EU’s main revenue stream at the same time as funding international development, assisting with international poverty or counteracting global warming. It is unrealistic and ill thought out not to have a clear process for deciding where this funding would go. Clearly, it cannot do all those things, but the danger would also be that the relocation of businesses out of the EU as a result of the tax would mean that the yield is much lower than expected. In any event, the government response argues that the incidence will be passed on to manufacturers and therefore, ultimately, to consumers.
Finally, I stated that this is a tax in the wrong place. I am an enthusiastic pro-European and sometimes get irritated that we in Britain always say that it is all right for the rest of Europe but we are different. However, in this case I am firmly convinced that this is a tax that will have particularly adverse consequences. The committee points out, absolutely rightly, that the impact on the City of London and the UK financial services sector in general is so disproportionate that it must be revisited. There is a great deal of concern in the coalition Government, and rightly so, at the unbalanced state of the economy and that we as a nation rely far too much on financial services. Yet one has to accept that that is where we are in our economy and that turning it into a different shape will take decades.
We want to grow the rest of the economy. We do not want to destroy the financial services that are so important to us. Therefore, the threat from this tax to the pre-eminence of our financial services sector is considerable. I remind noble Lords of the Commission’s own figures. If you derive the proportions from them, the revenue raised in the UK would be 4.6 times higher than the revenue raised in Germany and 10.9 times higher than that raised in France. That is how we get to the figure of 71.3% of all revenue from this tax coming from the UK, to which the noble Lord referred. This effectively means that it is a UK tax masquerading in EU clothes. Eighteen per cent of the revenue that would be raised from this tax within the UK would be transferred to other EU states if it were to be divided up in the process that the Commission suggests. That would not be fair, effective or wise.
I hope that this excellent report assists the Government in their efforts to resist this tax, whether it is proposed for the whole of the EU or simply for the euro area. Can the Minister assist us by giving us an updated assessment of whether the Government consider that the financial transaction tax is likely to go ahead in the way envisaged when this report was written?
Lord Hannay of Chiswick
My Lords, I pay tribute to the work of the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, and his colleagues. In recent months, their sub-committee has produced a string of reports on these financial issues that are so troubling the whole world but, in particular, Europe and the eurozone. We owe a debt of gratitude to them.
The Commission’s proposal for an EU financial transaction tax seems, alas, to have as many lives as Rasputin. No sooner is it pushed under the ice, as it was at a recent ECOFIN council, than it pops up again in the conclusions of the June Council, this time as a possible tax in the eurozone alone or perhaps, in the eurozone-plus if countries, such as Sweden, which burnt their fingers so badly on a single-state version of the tax in the 1990s are not more cautious on this occasion, so we certainly cannot afford to be complacent and assume that the problem has passed us by nor, as the Government seem to do—here I join the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, in his view—to assume that such a tax levied by the eurozone countries alone would have only positive consequences for us, no negative ones.
I should make it clear at the outset that, unlike noble Lords who have spoken before me, I am not a fan of even a genuinely worldwide FTT, such as the Tobin tax idea, to which the Government pay lip service without, it must be admitted, much sign of enthusiasm. Like the taxation of tobacco, its protagonists never seem able to decide whether they are really trying to to deter a nasty habit or to raise the maximum amount of money for good causes. In any case, a worldwide FTT remains a pipedream. Can anyone seriously foresee the US Congress, either the present one or one likely to be elected this November, voting in favour of an FTT? If that is the correct judgment, we need to face up, as the Commission lamentably failed to do, to the risk of displacement, of transactions simply moving off to New York, Geneva, Tokyo or Singapore, leaving Frankfurt, Paris and perhaps even London deprived not only of the proceeds of the tax but of the employment and corporate revenue tax benefits from the businesses carrying out the transactions.
Experience shows this to be no idle risk. Not only did Sweden, which I have mentioned already, suffer in this way in the 1990s, but the whole episode of the euro-dollar market which sprung up in London almost overnight when the Americans made an unwise fiscal decision is there as an awful warning. Europe needs a stronger, deeper capital market if its economy and single market are to prosper, not a shallower, feebler one, which it would be all too likely to end up with if any variant of an FTT on a Europe-only basis were to be introduced.
The Government are right to resist the Commission’s proposal for sound European reasons, not only British reasons. I wish that the Government would put the argument in those terms, not depict it simply as a heroic defence of the City of London. When the Minister replies to the debate, I hope that he will explain why the Government are so confident that there will be no negative consequences for the UK from a eurozone-only variant of the FTT. I am no banking expert but that proposition looks to me to be not entirely convincing.
As to whether there are alternative, less harmful ways of taxing at least some financial transactions—here I follow the course of the previous two speakers—of course there are. The stamp duty on share transactions such as we already levy in this country is one such. I do not see why the Government, in their reply to the excellent report of the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, felt the need to be so negative about such an approach at the EU level. I do not even see why we should jib at having an EU minimum rate for such taxes, as our rate is well above the level which any member state which currently does not have one is ever likely to impose. After all, that is what we have for value added tax.
The need to avoid a race to the bottom, or the creation of tax havens within the EU, deserves to be taken seriously. As long as the Commission’s even more unwise initial suggestion that the proceeds of an FTT should be earmarked as a resource for the EU budget—an idea which must, in any case, be dead in the context of a eurozone-only FTT—is not revived, would not the stamp duty on share transactions route be worth encouraging more?
The Government can rightly feel, from the trend of this debate and from the report we are discussing, encouraged by the support from the EU Committee of this House for their resistance to the Commission’s proposal for an FTT. That case would be all the more persuasive if it was not so often linked to references to Britain having a veto and being determined to use it. We would do much better to advance the case on the grounds of compelling logic and for the reasons that previous speakers have mentioned, such as the loss of GNI to the European Union at a time when it needs to gain it, and many other arguments of that nature.
Lord Giddens
My Lords, I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, and his colleagues on the report. However, I have some disagreements with it and therefore my position is different from that of previous speakers.
A tax on currency transactions, as was noted by the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, was mooted by James Tobin in 1972 in a now famous lecture at Princeton shortly after the US dollar was no longer tied to gold. Tobin’s proposal was a tax operating on a global basis that would dissuade speculators from trying to profit from very short-term rate fluctuations. In perhaps one of the most famous phrases in economics, he said that the point was to throw some “sand in the wheels” of currency markets—a quotation that has been repeated many times since.
It is important to recognise that the notion of a Tobin tax has gone through many different versions since then. We are discussing one such version now, which has surfaced in the form of a generalised financial transaction tax—the FTT. It is a big mistake—although I recognise the motives involved—to call it a Robin Hood tax, because it was produced by a Nobel prize-winning economist with a view to having an impact on world financial markets and we should keep that in view.
There are basically two reasons why an FTT has come back on the agenda. The first is obvious—the need to cope with systemic weaknesses in international financial markets. I know that I am not a substitute for the noble professor of economics who was referred to, the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, but JM Keynes made this point very well when he said:
“Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation”.
He was very good when writing about such issues.
The second contextual reason is obviously the one that we are here to discuss—the specific problems of the EU after 2008 when financial markets had homed in on real or perceived weaknesses of the euro. The report, as has been said, levels an array of criticisms at the proposals for a European FTT made by the Commission a while ago. The report was produced a while ago; it still refers to President Sarkozy, and so on, and a few things have happened since then. As such, it is a valuable contribution to the ensuing debate over those proposals and their subsequent elaboration within EU circles. However, I do not think that it is as conclusive in its critique as the noble Lords who are its authors seem to think.
It also worries me that, in the report, the views of individuals and groups who have clear special interests seem to be given the same weight as those who are likely to be more impartial. For example, in the summary near the beginning, it says that
“leading economists have criticised the concept—
of a European FTT—
“as fundamentally flawed”.
It then says that,
“the financial sector has been fervent in its opposition to the idea”.
Those two statements do not have the same status in my eyes. Moreover, many leading economists, such as Joseph Stilitz, have endorsed the idea of a European FTT, or have certainly stressed that it should be taken seriously.
I would therefore argue in contradistinction to the report that consideration of a European FTT will and should stay on the agenda. President Hollande and Chancellor Angela Merkel both endorse it, as do a number of other eurozone states’ leaders. It is right that the proposals should be further considered and developed and the risks and benefits scrutinised in detail before a decision is taken by the interested eurozone countries who might very well participate in such a tax. The issue of the FTT still needs to be scrutinised but it will stay on the agenda and it is still possible that it could be instituted.
I have one or two questions for the Minister in respect of these observations. First, near the beginning of the report, high frequency trading is discussed. What is the Government’s view on the desirability—which, after all prompted the original work of James Tobin—of throwing some sand in the wheels of high frequency trading? I found the discussion in the report rather inadequate. It does not offer evidence either way; it simply quotes one or two opinions. In my view, high frequency trading is, as the noble Lord, Lord Turner, says, largely socially useless and creates systemic risk in financial markets. I not think that the report discusses this adequately.
Secondly, there is the issue mentioned by the noble Baroness and stressed strongly in the report that if an FTT is introduced, businesses will move away from Europe. I spent some of my academic career studying this issue and I am not at all convinced that the evidence for it is strong. One has to look at it systematically, not just take specific examples. There are many reasons why it would be difficult for financial companies to move away from Europe and get a better financial position, wherever they went, because certain other taxes exist in other areas of the world to which they might move. In June, the Commission looked at this issue in detail and rejected the idea that there would simply be an outflow of companies from Europe. Speaking as a social scientist and an economist, I think that the issue is still much more moot than in the casual opinions which are mentioned in the report. I would like the Minister to comment on that. It is plainly part of the Government’s position but I do not see that there is systematic evidence either way, when one spends some time studying it.
Finally, I ask the Minister to respond to the same question that the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, raised. Do the Government support a global Tobin tax? That was where we started in 1972; Tobin said that it should be a global tax. There seems to be a certain contradiction, as the report says, between the Government’s view of this in regional and in global terms. It is obviously possible not to support a regional tax but to support a global tax but, as the noble Lord said, the Government should decide whether they are a strong advocate of a global tax of some kind. My view is that this debate still has a long way to go and that a lot of work is needed on it from academic economists. We have to look at the whole thing with more scrutiny before deciding on these issues, either regionally or internationally.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard
My Lords, the national debate on the Commission’s proposal operated at a lower level of academic rigour than what we have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Giddens. I thought that three myths infected the national debate. First, there was the myth that this was an EU tax, in the sense that it was a tax the proceeds of which would be used to help fund the EU budget. That was widely believed in this country and is completely untrue. There was a gleam in the Commission’s eye but it is clear from the preparatory text and the background that the proposal itself was for a series of national taxes collected by national tax authorities and going into national budgets. That myth produced a very adverse reaction in this country.
The second myth produced a strongly positive reaction. That was the Robin Hood myth: that it was to be a hypothecated tax, which was to be used for international development or to combat climate change. This was completely untrue and it was a bit implausible that at a time of concern about deficits, to put it mildly, Governments would be so altruistic. Anyway, no Government said that they would and the Commission did not propose that they should.
The third myth produced a strongly negative reaction in this country. It was the myth—fed a bit, I fear, by government—that the FTT proposal was a dagger aimed at the heart of London and that it was a malicious proposal from a malign commissioner and designed deliberately to damage the City. Usually, the Commissioner was said to be Barnier, although in fact he was not the commissioner involved at all. This was completely untrue but it was encouraged a bit—possibly because the more ferocious the dragon looks, the more valorous St George must be when he slays it. There was absolutely no doubt that we could slay this dragon whenever we chose, because unanimity is required for tax proposals.
I disagree slightly with the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, on his criticism: “Some FTTs could be quite good, so why were we so against an FTT?”. The members of the committee—I was lucky enough to serve under the noble Lord, Lord Harrison and we were unanimous in producing this report—were not attempting to argue that all FTTs are by definition bad; what we were unanimous about was that this proposal, this FTT, was unwise and unworkable, for reasons that are, to be fair, set out in some detail in the report.
The motivation of the proposal was none of those in our midst; it was, I think, a general wish to see the financial sector contribute in part to the cost of the crisis that it had caused and a particular wish to discourage high-frequency trading as inherently evil. I do not want to cross swords with the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, on high-frequency trading and whether it is indeed inherently evil. I do not think the committee reached a view on that. In fact, I do not think we attempted to reach a view on that issue in this report.
Lord Giddens
The report quotes someone from the Treasury who says that it is not harmful and it appears to endorse that. It is just an opinion from someone in the Treasury.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard
I do not think we addressed the issue of whether high-frequency trading is or is not a good thing in this report, but there is no doubt that in the Commission’s mind it is a bad thing and that one of the purposes of this tax is to reduce it.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said, the proposal was extremely oddly timed. I do not need to repeat the argument she made so eloquently. Setting out deliberately to reduce EU GDP by, it says, 0.5% seems an odd thing to do at a time of sharp recession. I think that 0.5% seriously underestimates the effect on GDP because the relocation effect was not taken into account in that part of the calculation.
Where are we now? First, I would like to consider whether St George fought well. I fear that I am in the school of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, on this. I do not think we fought terribly well. I think the arguments we should have used were European Union arguments: arguments about the possibility of having one great financial market between the Asian market and the American market; arguments about London being the candidate; or arguments about damage to London being damage to the EU. I find such arguments play pretty well in many parts of Europe, although not in all. The best argument against a financial transaction tax that we should have used was the EU argument. Instead, we tended to wave the Union Jack, invoke Dunkirk, denounce Barnier and then, on 9 December, tried to make a UK opt-out from an FTT that the others could have if they wanted, a carve-out for us, a condition for our agreement to their move to the fiscal union to which we were urging them to move. It struck me as a really odd position to have got ourselves into.
However, that is all in the past. What do we do now? The dragon is not dead. I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, on that. The dragon is alive and well. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, has read out the European Council conclusions. Since the proposal would not be adopted EU-wide, several member states would instead seek to bring it in among themselves under the enhanced co-operation procedures—that is Article 20 of TEU and Article 329 of TFEU. So the Commission will produce a new proposal, presumably very similar to the one it produced for the Council as a whole. Those who wish to introduce such taxes will aim to agree a common scheme, and they have set themselves a target of the end of the year.
Should we mind? If they succeed, will they just damage themselves? Will the London market benefit at the expense of Paris and Frankfurt and anybody else who joins in? Should we, in the Prime Minister’s phrase, simply roll out the red carpet and cheer? I do not think so. Although our report was written some time ago, the Select Committee thought not. We noted that if the situation, which is now foreseen by the European Council, came about, UK financial institutions entering into transactions with institutions in FTT levying states would still be liable for the tax and if financial institutions from FTT levying states conducted transactions between themselves but in the City of London, they would be liable for the tax. In both cases, it would be for the UK authorities, HMRC, to collect the tax and forward it to the appropriate national fiscal authorities. We did not much like the sound of that. We would land the costs of collecting the tax but no revenue from it and, more seriously, the relocation effect would still be real. There would be a deterrent to transactions here and hence damage to the City. That is why, in our report, we said:
“We urge the Government to work to ensure that UK financial institutions are not damaged, and that UK tax authorities’ workload is not increased, by an FTT introduced by certain EU Member States”.
That seems to me to be the key message we should still be conveying to the Government. It was a point not really addressed, as the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, has noted in the reply we had from the Financial Secretary to the Treasury. In particular, he did not address our concern at the UK having to collect in London a tax from which we would not benefit. I hope the Minister will deal with that point more substantively tonight.
Is the die cast? Are we now out of the game? Is it all over? Can we go home? No. Under the enhanced co-operation procedures which they intend to use we have a seat in the room. Only those proposing to introduce the tax will have a vote but everybody will be entitled to speak and if we want to we can seek to influence what we do. In my view, provided we make EU arguments, not exclusively UK ones, they are likely to listen because the health of the City, as a lot of them recognise, matters to them too. We need to be there, sounding constructive, influencing the debate. I hope the Minister will assure us that is what the Government intend to do as this enhanced co-operation is pursued. I really hope we do not just climb onto our charger and ride off.
I have one additional point. Under Article 20 we do not have to leave the others to devise the tax without any advice from the representatives of the biggest financial market. As the others, possibly a slightly different group of others, go ahead with trying to work out some form of banking union, and they are proposing to do that under Article 127, precisely the same arguments apply. Article 127 is the Council as a whole. We would not be able to vote but we would be able to speak. We could be there. We cannot be the banking capital of Europe and let a negotiation about a banking union in Europe go on without our being there. You have to be in to win. We have got to be there.
The other day, Mats Persson of the Open Europe think tank—who is slightly more Eurosceptic than me and whom I would not normally cite—said of the risk of a eurozone banking union that it,
“is probably necessary in the long term, but is also a potential minefield for the UK. First, will it create barriers to UK financial firms doing business in the eurozone in turn fragmenting the single market? Secondly, will supervision spill over to regulation, with the eurozone effectively writing the rules for all 27 countries?”.
These are extremely good questions and the only way of making sure that the answers the European Union comes up with are the right ones is for us to be active participants. I was worried by the Prime Minister’s delight that he had he managed to strike out from the European Council conclusions all references to a common supervisory structure. They pop up in the eurozone annexe to the conclusions but they are to be discussed and negotiated in full Council with everybody there. I really hope we will occupy our seat and use it well.
Lord Monks
My Lords, I shall refrain from giving my usual congratulations to my noble friend Lord Harrison and his committee because this comprehensive demolition of the case for a European FTT is a demolition of the more general case for FTTs other than national ones. I am normally an admirer and fan of the work of the European Select Committee, but not quite so much of one this time.
After reading the report, with its relentless attacks on all the points made for a European FTT, I was reminded of a time in the Ministry of Labour during the Second World War when Ernest Bevin asked for a paper which set out the case for minimum wages in a number of key industries. He received a report from the Civil Service which gave 36 good reasons why it was totally impracticable. He said to the key civil servant, “You are a very clever person. Now give me 36 good reasons why this is a good thing”. He got his way in the end.
I do not know whether or not there are 36 good reasons for this proposal but the case is rather better than the one which is acknowledged by the committee. As others have said—I shall not repeat it—the FTT is not a new idea. After Tobin and as the century went on, the idea was put to one side. Things were going well—financial services were booming in the British and United States centres in particular—and “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” was very much the maxim.
However, the world changed in 2008 and that financial model has had a cardiac arrest. At the present time, much of the sector is kept on life support, courtesy of the taxpayer, with the cost of what has had to be done currently estimated at £20,000 per taxpayer and rising. It will cause problems for our children—and perhaps our grandchildren even—in years to come, and what were widely praised innovations and examples of Britain’s creative genius look rather more like seedy scams in the cold light of the experience of the past four years or so. A prized national asset is currently in danger of looking more like a liability.
I will not mention the scandals which seem to arise with some rapidity at the moment, but the sector must expect to come under close, intense, tough scrutiny and pressure. As Vince Cable recently acknowledged, we must recognise the strength of the lobbying that the City and other financial institutions are able to command, which is the subject of various newspaper reports at the moment. However, their trophy room is full of bright ideas that they have shot down which might have had an effect on the way in which the financial sector in London is regulated and works at the present time. I do not want the concept of a financial transaction tax to be put in that trophy room by the successful lobbying for which the City is noted.
Recent examples of successful lobbying include the weakening of the Vickers proposals, the cuts in UK corporation tax and taxes on banks’ overseas subsidiaries, and even the Financial Services Authority has been deployed to oppose the idea of a financial transaction tax.
I concede that the arguments are well set out in the report but perhaps I may address one or two of them briefly. There may be no chance of a global tax, but is there any chance of a global agreement on the environment? Are the United States Congress, the Australians and the Canadians likely to give in on that? I am not sure. They certainly were not at the start, but you have to keep on raising the issues and keep the pressure on. US supporters such as Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and so on continue to make the case for a global tax. I know it is very difficult, but do not give up, because things can change. It is important that we take a positive approach to the idea of a global tax, not a negative one.
The next point is: do not use the US Congress’s position as an excuse for European inaction. Europe still constitutes 30% of world GDP; it may be shrinking as other countries grow at a much greater rate than we do, but it is still the biggest single part of the world economy, if we can call it a single part. Giving a lead, as the EU can do, when it is well judged and well supported, is important. We in this House should not dismiss the argument with contempt but encourage its development in more practical ways.
There is already some development on the argument about how to spend the money raised, some agreements between President Hollande and President Barroso on global solidarity—it is a vague phrase, but we begin to see where it might go. Of the countries concerned, nine are committed, 10 are likely or possible and, as others have said, if we are not engaged they can go ahead without us. That poses all the problems which are the continuing story of the UK in the European Union: are we better inside trying to influence things or do we stand aside through opt-outs? I mention one area which is rather uncomfortable for the Labour side of the House, which is that when Britain was inside the social chapter, it was far more difficult from the union point of view to get anything through than when Britain was outside. I make that point with some discomfort about those years.
The next argument is about the role of London, which could lose a lot of prosperity and work through such a tax. That is a pretty powerful argument against any national tax or regulation. Those winning work are those with the least regulation and taxes. This week, my football club, Manchester United, located itself in the Cayman Islands. Thank you very much to the Glazers for that. They are the latest of many doing that. The search for the cheapest and least regulated jurisdiction is relentless. The concept of the Tobin tax or FTT is to stop that by having a world level playing field, at least to some extent. The quest needs to go on.
The final argument to which I shall labour some opposition is that such a tax will affect growth. That depends on its level. If it is a small tax, I agree that it may not be very effective in raising revenue, but if the levels are modest initially, I do not think that the effect on growth will be as lurid as painted in the report. The FTT is a good, simple idea—very complex to introduce, for sure. I hope that we will encourage work on that good idea rather than add to that list of moribund good ideas on display in some trophy room in the City. Where there is a will, there is a way, and we should not turn back in the search for a scheme that can work globally and that takes on the tax havens which are undercutting nearly all of us in the European Union. There may even be one or two in the European Union who are in the undercutting business.
I finish with a question which is similar to others which have been asked. In the Minister’s view, if there is an FTT in several big countries—Germany and France in particular—does he think that London will lose or gain?
Lord Flight
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, for having chaired the committee so effectively and for having produced a clear report on a difficult and—dare I say it?—somewhat tedious subject. It is interesting that the membership of that committee has differing views on the whole Europe issue, but they were unanimous in their view on the FTT proposal. I think that most speakers, though not all, echoed that today, but I particularly appreciated the robust contributions of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and the noble Lords, Lord Hannay and Lord Kerr.
In summary, it is economically flawed as a way of raising taxes, which John Chown, our tax expert, explained very clearly. It does not meet any of its five targets. We know what the residence issue is, and not all but many of the objections there are to a global version as well as to a particular country version. I think that it has now become part of what one finds in parts of Europe—blaming the Anglo-Saxon economic model for all the world’s horrors, such as the banking crisis and the collapse of the eurozone. This is an emotional stick with which to beat the UK. It is mistakenly seen as a form of moral cleansing when people know that the loss of GDP and tax revenue is greater than the FTT would raise, which is surely a foolish position.
It is ironic that the UK has stamp duty which, although it is not an FTT is a tax on securities that works. I happen to disapprove of it because it is simply a tax on everybody’s pension savings. Some time ago, in better days, the Government had a commitment of sorts to abolish it, and I wonder what the thinking is when better days return. There is the irony that the most efficient way of raising tax, at least from the banking sector, is bonuses, where income tax and employer and employee national insurance are a 62% tax charge and where banks are obviously paying little or no corporation tax, given their historic losses. I am not recommending that, but it is a great irony in the whole debate.
The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, made the most important point that this is unfinished business. The proposals for an EU-adjoined country-by-country tax seem to require that the UK, as a third country, collect and pay over the tax when an EU resident in a country that had this was the counterparty in London. That is absolutely not on. I understand that the USA would be treated as a third party in the same way and I think it would tell Europe where to go. I rather doubt that this will ever proceed because I do not think that individual member countries will want to sustain the loss of employment and GDP for very modest tax revenues. It is substantially a propaganda exercise, but the most important issue on which we have not had satisfactory responses from the Treasury is: how are the Government dealing with the potential proposal that there would be a burden, a liability, on the UK to collect the levy on qualifying EU parties?
Lord Dear
My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords for allowing me to speak in the gap. I had intended to speak at greater length, but I knew that I would be detained in a committee elsewhere in your Lordships’ House, which was indeed the case. I shall keep my remarks very brief, as is the convention. I should also say that I am a Member of the European Union Committee which produced this report, and my thanks go to the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, for heading that inquiry and writing the report.
I will confine my remarks very much to headlines, bearing in mind the time constraint by speaking in the gap. First, I agree that the financial transaction tax design, as proposed by the Commission, is seriously flawed. It smacks of being hasty and not well thought through, and it is contradictory in places. It leaves us with doubts about its viability.
Despite the very strong case put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, I believe that there is a likelihood that financial institutions could migrate and relocate away from the EU to avoid paying the tax. Personally, I am especially concerned that the proposal might lead to a reduction in the GDP within the EU. In fact, the Commission forecast a negative impact of 1.76% of the total GDP in the EU, which it says equates to a loss of €200 billion or half a million jobs. That is not something that one should put aside lightly.
Moving from the general to the particular—and this is a point already made by noble Lords—the implications for the City of London are considerable. As we know, it is the largest financial sector in the whole of the EU and it is a core element in our own economy. In the Minister’s response, I believe that the Government should declare their position on this tax with greater clarity. There is already some ambiguity in this country and elsewhere in Europe; people have talked about “supporting the tax in principle”, and different variants of the FTT have been discussed which leads to confusion and doubt. I turn to the Minister to reassure the Committee that the Government will continue to play a constructive role in this debate. The implications for the EU in general and the UK in particular are too great to allow less than full attention to be paid to this issue. Here I echo the concluding remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, in asking the Minister to reassure the Committee that that is the approach that the Government will pursue and that they will pursue it with greater clarity and vigour.
Lord Davies of Oldham
My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, for his chairmanship of the committee, which has produced such an incisive report, and for his opening speech today, which covered accurately the committee’s conclusions on the issue of the tax proposed in Europe. As has been said, some aspects of the presentation by the Commission on the tax have been clumsy in the extreme, giving the committee a fairly straightforward and easy target. But I side with those noble Lords who have spoken today who have indicated that we ought not to drown the concept of this form of taxation, usually termed the Tobin tax, because this particular proposal has relatively few merits.
The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, mentioned the emotion in Britain about the financial and economic situation in which we find ourselves. She even indicated that it was more intense in Britain than elsewhere. Are we really saying that we are not aware of the emotional responses of the Greeks, the Spaniards and the Italians, just to cite three countries where enormous popular concern has been shown—in Italy leading to the imposition of a Government on a democratic country? Is it surprising that from Europe comes an attempt at a condign punishment on bankers and a challenge to the financial system that has produced these circumstances?
Baroness Randerson
The noble Lord is really taking my words out of context. My very first sentence of significance related to my understanding that there was an emotional attachment to this tax. At no point in my speech did I say that I was opposed to it on a worldwide basis. I explained very clearly that I understood that there was a public popularity for this tax.
Lord Davies of Oldham
I accept that entirely from the noble Baroness. I am grateful for her intervention—but let me respond, if I may. I am merely indicating that this is not just a British reaction but is Europe-wide, which is why we have to put these proposals into some kind of context. People are responding to the crisis that was visited on us four years ago, for which all our fellow citizens, both here and elsewhere in Europe, are paying the price today.
Lord Flight
Does the noble Lord not agree that the problems of the eurozone are down to the faulty design of the euro, that the problems of public finances are largely about Governments having been spending too much and not taking a circular view of public spending, and that the problems of the banks are largely the result of money having been too easy for too long in the UK and elsewhere? History shows that banks always start doing foolish things if there is too much money.
Lord Davies of Oldham
If the noble Lord is suggesting that the banks carry no responsibility for the economic and financial crisis that we have suffered since 2008, I am surprised at the proposition. Is he really saying that we do not understand that the massive increase in short-term transactions that rendered the banks so very vulnerable when some of the debts began to be called in—those developments in which bank balances far outweighed the whole resources of the British GDP—did not create a situation of colossal instability? When the financial crisis broke, it is clear that Governments were caught out too and some had somewhat overreached themselves, but as for the British position the problem was the massive drop in tax receipts after the crisis rather than extra spending before it.
Lord Flight
The noble Lord seems to be accepting my point that mistaken monetary policy led to bank balance sheets and lending being excessive. These things can happen only when monetary policy is wrong.
Lord Davies of Oldham
Well, my Lords, then the noble Lord has to say that of each and every Government, because each and every society has suffered from this financial crisis and each and every Government were equally guilty of pursuing exactly the wrong framework of monetary policy. I have no doubt that it was the case that from deregulation onwards, Governments lost the capacity for some kind of control of the financial sector. I have no doubt at all that Governments rode the good years with light regulation, which was wished upon them by every area of political opinion in the countries involved. Certainly, that was the case in the United Kingdom. If it is suggested that Labour in government was too enthusiastic about light regulation, we have only to look at what the Opposition were saying to us at that time—that regulation was too tight.
Of course, I accept the strictures of the committee on the limitations of the proposals from the Commission. In particular, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, for demolishing some of the myths around that mistaken proposition by the Commission. A passing reference to the fact that the resources would go to the European budget was certainly not the core of the proposal; it was much fairer than that towards the Governments who would collect the taxation.
It has not been mentioned in the debate that the tax would produce vastly greater resources to the taxpayers of each country and the Governments representing them than the existing structures of taxation. Taxpayers think that the financial sector owes them a great deal in terms of the direction of resources. Given that we have had to rob money from our taxpayers in order to sustain banks that are too big to fail, it is obvious that taxpayers expect the Government to take the kind of action which will help to restore those resources to the taxpayer.
The financial transaction tax is at this stage a distant objective. We all know that it cannot be introduced in one country and that it is not likely to succeed within a limited framework of countries—certainly if it were within only the eurozone countries and certainly if it was based upon the principles that the committee has so effectively criticised. The likelihood of it being effective—and looking anything other than being directed at the City of London—would be fairly remote. However, that does not alter the fact that the arguments may change. The United States may change its perspective on this issue. If it were to do so, and if Europe reflected on the concepts of which the committee is critical, the United Kingdom would look very odd indeed if we said that, because of the significance of the City of London and our financial institutions to our economy, we were staying outside any framework for the development of such a tax.
I congratulate the committee because it has identified a rather forlorn initiative which I cannot see making successful progress in Europe because of the faults that have been accurately identified. However, I would be dismayed if the work of the committee led to a position where the whole concept of a financial transaction tax was regarded as completely outwith any government interest or action. I hope the noble Lord replying on behalf of the Government will at least give some hope in that respect.
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, and the Economic and Financial Affairs Sub-Committee for its work and its comprehensive report into a proposed financial transaction tax. I thank all noble Lords for their, in some cases unexpectedly passionate but in all cases interesting, contributions to the debate.
The United Kingdom remains firmly opposed to the European Commission’s proposals for an FTT. It would have significant negative economic impacts on the EU, damaging growth and employment at a time when it is critical for the EU to pursue policies which enhance the opportunities for that very growth and employment. The Commission’s own analysis suggests that relocation of the sector out of the UK, and therefore out of the EU, would, as the committee pointed out, be very significant. That is why we believe that broad-based financial transaction taxes could be contemplated only at a global level. As the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, said and the committee concluded, the proposal is flawed. It would damage our economy at a critical time and it would, as several noble Lords have said, damage the economy of the EU.
The Government agree with the EU that creating employment and delivering economic growth must be a priority during these difficult times. If an FTT were introduced, it would undermine the competitiveness of the EU. It would increase costs for manufacturers, savers and insurers. It would damage up to half a million jobs across the EU according to the Commission’s own analysis.
As several noble Lords have observed, the UK has the largest financial sector in Europe, so this EU-wide tax would disproportionately impact us. The UK would indeed face the most severe impacts, so we cannot support it. Supporters of the tax argue that it will stabilise financial markets and raise significant revenues, but both claims are flawed. As my noble friend Lady Randerson said, there is no evidence to back up the claim that an FTT would reduce market volatility or that it would effectively target the most speculative, risky activity. Like the committee, we are also doubtful of the revenue-raising potential of this tax. Its very significant negative growth impacts would lead to losses in other taxes. Income tax would raise less, as would corporation tax. The proposal requires the abolition of our stamp duty, so £3 billion would be lost to the Exchequer immediately. Overall it is possible that the tax might raise no money at all for the Exchequer. Not only that, it is inefficient. Based on the Commission’s own figures, every pound raised would cost 93p.
For these reasons the Chancellor said no to this proposal, and we will not accept it. Some member states wish to introduce an FTT through enhanced co-operation, as several noble Lords said. We will not join any such move, but before coming to a firm view about whether we should try to block it, we would need to see the detail of any proposal, what the scope of it will be and what would happen to the revenues.
The noble Lord, Lord Harrison, thinks we have been a bit mealy-mouthed in our response. The Government have been clear in our discussions with our EU partners. The UK does not and will not agree to the Commission’s proposal. There has been no ambiguity on the UK position. In answer to the question asked by my noble friend Lady Randerson, it is now accepted, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, said, that unanimity on this dossier will not be achieved, which is why there are moves by some member states to seek the introduction of an FTT through an enhanced co-operation procedure, to which I will return in a moment.
The Government fully believe—and perhaps in this, at least, I am in line with the noble Lords, Lord Monks and Lord Davies—that banks should make a fair contribution in respect of the potential risks they pose to the UK financial system and the wider economy. In his first Budget, the Chancellor introduced a bank levy with effect from 1 January 2012 that is designed to raise £2.5 billion each year. The UK has no objection to financial transaction taxes in principle. We have one in the shape of stamp duty, to which my noble friend Lady Randerson referred. We continue to be engaged with international partners on this issue. We would consider any proposal before forming a judgment. However, we think it is unwise to institute any FTT unless it is done globally due, as the noble Lords, Lord Hannay and Lord Davies, said, to the risk of activity relocating to jurisdictions not applying the tax, but it was clear from discussions at G20 meetings last year that the necessary international consensus does not currently exist.
The noble Lord, Lord Harrison, explored the impact on the UK of a euro area-only FTT. As I think I have said, no proposal for a euro area FTT has been tabled, but we are aware that France, Germany and Austria have outlined their support for using enhanced co-operation. Before taking a firm view, we would need to see the detail of any proposal, including its scope and what the revenues would be used for, so the Government continue to discuss this through the relevant EU fora. FTTs have been on the agenda at recent ECOFIN and European Council meetings. The UK has taken a full and proactive part in discussions, and yesterday the Financial Secretary affirmed the Government’s opposition at ECOFIN. Specifically to the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, I say, yes, we will continue to engage in a reasonable way. Nine or more member states can submit a proposal for enhanced co-operation to the Commission. We cannot assess how much the UK would be affected until we see what any proposals are. It is important, as ever, for us to be involved and to engage with the process to ensure that we are not disadvantaged.
The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, asked why the Government were so confident that there would be no negative impact on the UK and the noble Lord, Lord Monks, asked a similar question. The Government accept that a euro area FTT would impact the UK economy but, as I have said, no proposal has been tabled so we really cannot speculate yet on how it would impact on us.
I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, and it was certainly my noble friend Lord Flight, who asked whether we could be forced to collect a euro area FTT on behalf of other Governments. No, we could not be forced to administer a tax on behalf of another Government. As with any other tax, the UK tax authorities could be asked to assist other EU tax authorities in collecting known tax debts from specific taxpayers.
The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, asked whether such a tax would impact on market volatility or could be used to reduce it. There is no evidence that FTTs effectively reduce market volatility. In fact, a 2011 report from the Institute of Development Studies, reviewing academic studies on FTTs, concludes that they may in fact contribute to market volatility. He also asked about high-frequency trading, which is a very important and complicated area. In general, the evidence is mixed about the impact of algorithmic trading on financial markets; in fact, research identifies both risks and benefits. Early conclusions from the Foresight programme’s project on computer trading suggest that liquidity has improved, transaction costs are lower and market efficiency has not been harmed by computerised trading in regular market conditions. The project has so far found no direct evidence that high-frequency trading has increased volatility. However, the early work identifies various risks to market stability posed by potential positive feedback loops, as they are called. The Foresight programme’s final report is expected in the autumn of this year.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard
I want to be clear that I have understood the answer that the Minister has just given to the point in paragraph 128 of the report. I drew attention to that and I was supported by the noble Lord, Lord Flight. In paragraph 128, the report says:
“UK financial institutions entering into financial transactions with euro area financial institutions”—
those that were applying the FTT—
“would still be liable for the FTT, which could be collected through EU mutual assistance for the recovery of tax or as a result of the provisions of joint and several liability”.
I recall that the committee took legal advice. That was not simply our view but our view on the best legal advice of the House. Is the Minister saying that that statement is untrue?
Lord De Mauley
No, my Lords, I do not think I was addressing that point but rather than delaying the Committee this evening, I will look into it and write to the noble Lord. It is a complicated area.
Lord Giddens
I would like to disagree, quickly, on high-frequency trading and what the Minister seemed to say about it. There is simply an ongoing debate among economists about how you best model it. I do not think it is at all the case that, as he said, the issue is resolved. It is still a matter of ongoing modelling and economists are reaching different conclusions about it.
Lord De Mauley
I hope that when the noble Lord reads my words, he will not see that I said that anything was resolved. In fact, I said that we are expecting a report this autumn, which is not quite the same thing.
Lord Flight
Could I mention that the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, the chairman of the committee, in fact wrote to the Financial Secretary on 20 June, posing precisely the question that the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, proposed and which I echoed? However, we have had no reply yet.
Lord De Mauley
I think I am aware of that. I apologise; the letter is still working its way through the system and a response will be sent.
I move on to the issue of relocation, on which the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, specifically challenged the concept that a tax, unless applied globally, would force relocation. The noble Lord, Lord Monks, gave a rather graphic example of how such things can happen—but I am being slightly frivolous. The committee’s report, at paragraph 64, itself refers to the experience of Sweden as an illustration of the risk of relocation. Sweden introduced a 0.5% tax on the purchase or sale of shares in 1984. By 1990, 30% of all Swedish equity trading had moved offshore—more than 50% of it had moved to London—and the volume of bond trading had declined by 85%. That is an interesting answer.
The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, asked about our approach to banking union. That is wide of these evening’s debate, but I will ensure that his comments are heard at the Treasury. I think that my noble friend Lord Flight asked whether we would do away with stamp duty.
Lord Flight
There was a commitment at the time of the Conservative Party’s policy considerations a few years ago which proposed to abolish stamp duty—not on property but on transactions—as a tax on savings and pensions.
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, we keep all forms of taxation under review, but compared to the proposed EU FTT, stamp duty is easy and cheap to collect and raises £3 billion a year.
We firmly believe that the financial sector should pay its fair share. That is why we have introduced a permanent bank levy. Our bank levy raises more than the bank levies in France and Germany combined and, as discussed, we already have stamp duty on shares. During these difficult times, the focus should be to deliver growth and jobs. The Commission’s proposal is inconsistent with that objective. It would damage growth and jobs in the UK and the EU; it would risk business relocating outside the UK and Europe; and we therefore continue to be clear in discussions.
I add my sincere thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, the committee and all noble Lords who have spoken this evening. I am very grateful for the points raised in the debate.
Lord Harrison
My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for answering all colleagues who joined the debate this evening. I am particularly grateful to two of my colleagues from Sub-Committee A, the noble Lords, Lord Dear and Lord Flight, for speaking in the gap. It is one of the joys of the House of Lords that no sooner is one professor of economics unavailable then another springs to his place and offers an adumbration of the points I was making about John Maynard Keynes and James Tobin. Therein lies the reason why this interesting examination of the FTT proposed by the Commission fell at the first hurdle, because in each case—that of Keynes and Tobin—a single objective was being attempted, not the suite of five ideas we were offered by the Commission.
Let me bring joy to the heart of my noble friend Lord Giddens and tell him that in our most recent report, published on Monday, Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II, on which I am sure that the Minister is looking forward to answering later, we analyse the question of high-frequency trading and algorithmic trading and make a distinction between the two. I am pleased that the Minister gave us some prior information about the Foresight group, from which we will hear later. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, made the point that the committee rejected the proposition for FTT. Others may come to the fore which we will examine.
Finally, if noble Lords are interested in this area, they should read the Commission’s impact assessment, which was dreadful in the way that it castigated and condemned the proposals before us. In the mean time, I am particularly grateful to all those who have contributed to a debate to which we will need to return.
House of Lords
Farming Regulation Task Force
(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Byford
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress they are making on implementing the recommendations from the Farming Regulation Task Force report.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lady Byford, and with her permission, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in her name on the Order Paper. I declare my noble friend’s and my own farming interests on the register.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Taylor of Holbeach)
My Lords, in February, we published our response to the Farming Regulation Task Force recommendations. This set out how we will address each recommendation. We are making good progress on meeting our priority commitments, which include reducing the burden of inspections and paperwork, and we have appointed an independent-led group to hold us to account in delivering them. However, this work cannot be rushed. It is important that standards in the farming industry continue to be maintained.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, on a day when over 1,500 dairy farmers are coming to London because of the crisis in their sector, should not more progress have been made by now on the implementation of the excellent Macdonald report? How can that best be achieved? Does the Minister agree that a culture of partnership and proportionate regulation is far more productive than a regime of excessive regulation?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I totally agree with my noble friend. It is a partnership arrangement. We can deregulate only in partnership with the farming industry. The dairy industry is no exception. However, it has a particular problem at this time. At Parliamentary Questions today, my right honourable friend the Prime Minister announced £5 million from the rural economy grant scheme to support innovation in the dairy industry for dairy farmers at this particular time. We understand their concerns and anxieties, and we need to strengthen their position in the marketplace.
Baroness Trumpington
My Lords, will that cover the cost of milk in the retail market? Why do some supermarkets appear to be happy to keep prices as they are while others put prices up? Surely this is the time for some form of regulation about milk prices, particularly in view of the extra costs to dairy farmers in other directions concerning their cattle.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I understand my noble friend’s question, but we are talking about deregulation rather than trying to regulate the market. The key thing, if I may say so, is to strengthen the role of the dairy producer in the dairy market, and that is where the Government’s efforts are going. I hope that my noble friend will understand that I want to stick to the principal theme of this Question, which is about deregulation.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, will the money which I understand the Prime Minister has been offering get quickly to the farmers? This is extremely urgent at the moment. One of the problems is, of course, that the wet weather means that the cattle are indoors and the food for the winter is being used now.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I have to emphasise that this is not direct income support and therefore it is designed to strengthen the productive capacity of the dairy industry. The scheme will be launched in the autumn, so this is not immediate relief and I do not want to mislead the House by pretending that it is. I understand the difficulties that a lot of dairy farmers are facing with the very poor weather that we have had this summer.
Lord Grantchester
My Lords, while Defra has accepted the majority of recommendations that outline the new partnership approach between government and industry, we ignore the far more important matter of relationships in the supply chain between sections of the industry. Today, as we have heard, we see turmoil in the dairy sector. Surely regulation must have the objective of improving the workings of the industry. Regulatory proposals must make a difference to those on the ground. How will the Minister and his department measure and evaluate their success?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I hope that we can measure success by having a prosperous and successful agriculture in this country that is capable of expanding its market. There are huge opportunities for our high-quality agricultural products within the European Union and I hope that we can encourage the industry to look in that direction.
Baroness Parminter
My Lords, given the price cuts, which mean that many farmers are losing 4p per litre, can the Minister outline the progress in securing a voluntary code of practice to secure fair milk contracts, which the Government agreed to in their response to the Farming Regulation Task Force?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My noble friend is quite right; part of our strategy is to agree a voluntary code of practice with the dairy and the retail industry and to work with them to ensure stability within the market. Having said that, there is no market control or price control; the market is based on voluntary contracts between producers and the industry.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
My Lords, will the Minister ensure that his department takes great care when deregulating agriculture? Does he not recall, as many in this House do, that the changes to regulation in heating food for pigs were one of the factors that were identified as a great risk for foot and mouth disease? Will his department ensure that it never again deregulates at the expense of the consumer?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
The noble Baroness is quite right to remind us of our responsibility in undertaking this project. I said in my opening response that we need to work with thoroughness to ensure that situations such as she describes do not happen again.
Lord Morris of Aberavon
My Lords, what advice will the Minister give to the thousands of dairy producers who are leaving the industry? When I was a young man working for the farmers there were 6,000 milk producers in Carmarthenshire alone. Now there are probably fewer than 3,000 in the whole of Wales. He talks about strengthening the industry. How will the industry be strengthened, as opposed to the buyers?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
The fundamental problem is currently that the productive capacity of the dairy herd has greatly increased. Until the industry is capable of expanding its market beyond the liquid milk market, which in itself is fairly inelastic, to use an economic term, we will not actually solve this problem. I hope that the answers that I have given today have given the House an indication of my view that the solution lies in creating new markets for processed milk and the infrastructure to provide that.
British Time Harmonisation
Viscount Montgomery of Alamein
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to harmonise British time with that of the United Kingdom’s main European trading partners.
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, the Government have no current plans to harmonise British time with that of the majority of the United Kingdom’s main European trading partners. Nevertheless, following a debate on a Private Member’s Bill in the other place in the previous Session, the Government have commissioned an evidence-scoping study on advancing the clocks by one hour, to inform debate. However, the Government would not propose any change without UK-wide consensus.
Viscount Montgomery of Alamein
My Lords, that is quite interesting as far as it goes. However, has the noble Lord considered the benefit that lighter evenings would have for road safety and recreational activities?
Lord De Mauley
Yes, my Lords. A change of the sort proposed would create lighter evenings during the winter months and could therefore increase the opportunities for sport and outdoor recreation—although of course some people prefer to exercise in the mornings rather than in the evenings. Some research suggests that the adoption of daylight saving could also lead to a reduction in road traffic accidents, resulting in fewer deaths and serious injuries. However, evidence is needed, including evidence concerning the potential psychological effects involved. There are concerns, for example, that the impact of prolonged darker mornings during the winter may potentially see an increase in cases of seasonal affective disorder.
Lord Jopling
My Lords, does the Minister recall that this experiment was tried out around 40 years ago and proved so massively unpopular, not only in Scotland but right across the north of England and elsewhere, that it was terminated and thrown out by a vote in another place? Does he agree that it was a mistake then and it would be a mistake now?
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, there are arguments in both directions. Not only, as my noble friend said, did this country try it in the 1960s and then change back again three years later, but Portugal tried it in the 1990s and changed back again too. These are complex matters. The Prime Minister has said that there needs to be consensus before any change.
Lord Maclennan of Rogart
My Lords, when working on Wall Street I had to clear share offerings in five different time zones within the United States in 24 hours. Does the Minister agree that time zones are more appropriately determined by geography than by commerce?
Lord De Mauley
I think that I would, my Lords. On the subject of trade, it seems likely that there could be benefits for some businesses that trade with European states particularly that are not in our time zone, and indeed with other parts of the world further east. There could also be some losers from the trade perspective. One of our most important EU trading partners, the Republic of Ireland, shares our time zone, of course, so a rigorous analysis of all the overall impacts would be needed before any conclusions could be formed.
The Earl of Erroll
Does the Minister agree that the people who trade with Europe could get up an hour earlier, and that this would spread the load on the transport infrastructure and create less congestion on the trains and the road network? The more that we can spread start times at work, the better it will be. There is a lot of merit in that.
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, the point about that is that people who trade with Europe are already getting up an hour earlier.
Lord Jones of Birmingham
Will the Minister please comment on the fact that everything should be done, in this House and the other place, to ensure that at this time business has every single break to allow us to create jobs and make profit to pay tax? Will he reflect on the fact that, at the end of the day, if we are going to be internationally competitive, we have to be internationally attractive? That would mean that we could get the reward from the infrastructure investment in high-speed rail and in Eurotunnel. For once, let us sink a little bit of nationalism into the better cause of actually making money for the country.
Lord De Mauley
That was a wide-ranging question, my Lords, but I always listen to the noble Lord with great respect and interest.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, will the Minister develop his idea on how consensus will be achieved? I reflect on the fact that, in theory, we are in summer time at the moment; perhaps we ought to change its name after the current spate. Seriously, can he give us some indication of the positive impact for business if we made this change? My recollection of the change 40 years ago is not quite that there was such an overwhelming rejection. It might have been less welcome the farther north you went, but it would still have some benefits.
Lord De Mauley
We have already had a bit of a discussion about the effects on trade and I do not think that I have a great deal to add. However, if I detect a sense of hesitancy in the noble Lord about going for a change, I can quote to him what the Prime Minister said:
“I want us to have a united time zone. It's up to those who want to make the change to make the argument to try to convince people right across the country that it's a good thing”.
Baroness Corston
My Lords, I recollect the experiment 40 years ago, which was voted for overwhelmingly in another place as an experiment and then voted against overwhelmingly at the end of it. Bearing in mind what was said just now about industry, will the Minister recall the damaging effect on the construction industry, with late starts in the morning?
Lord De Mauley
Yes, my Lords, I am aware of it. That and many other things would need to be taken into account.
The Duke of Montrose
Does my noble friend agree that there is a great danger of introducing permanent summer time without total agreement? The outstanding example is China, which has imposed a uniform time zone across the whole country, with the net effect that the western end of China has to quote both in Chinese time and in western time. There is a chance of everybody getting totally confused.
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, I am aware of the situation in China; I lived in that part of the world for nine years. Everything that my noble friend said is absolutely right.
Carers: In Sickness and in Health
(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Pitkeathley
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they intend to address the issue of the health of carers in the light of the report In Sickness and in Health, published on 18 June.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)
My Lords, we welcome the report and its focus on important health issues for carers. This echoes the priority that the Government attach to supporting carers to remain physically and mentally well, as set out in the coalition Government’s carers’ strategy, Recognised, Valued and Supported: Next Steps for the Carers Strategy. The department published its draft mandate to the NHS Commissioning Board for consultation on 4 July. It includes an objective about improving the support that carers receive from the NHS.
Baroness Pitkeathley
I thank the Minister for that Answer. In view of the shocking statistics in the report—that more than 80% of carers have found their health, both physical and mental, adversely affected by caring—does the Minister consider that there is perhaps an increasing risk of carers simply ceasing to care and the cost therefore falling on social care services or resulting in increased emergency hospital admissions? How will the announcement that the noble Earl is about to make ensure that the prospects are better for the health of carers and for the continued willingness of families to go on providing the vast majority of social care?
Earl Howe
I shall have to ask the noble Baroness to be patient for a few more minutes regarding the Statement I am about to make. However, I can tell her that the White Paper and the draft Bill will make a reality of our vision for transforming care and support both for carers and for the people they look after. As for the noble Baroness’s first point, she is absolutely right to flag this up as a concern. In the last financial year, we provided funding of almost £1 million to the Royal College of General Practitioners, Carers UK and the Carers Trust to take forward a range of initiatives, of which I am sure she will be aware, to increase awareness in primary healthcare of carers of all ages, including better training for GPs, and also to look at how we can build on that for the future with the medical colleges and nursing organisations and in hospitals and community health services. The NHS Health Check programme could be a very important ingredient in making sure that the health of carers is monitored and taken fully into account.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
The Minister is aware of the great debt that we all owe to carers, particularly family carers. Can he assure me that respite care for those people, or those for whom they are caring, will be possible and will continue? It makes a very big difference if people can have even a small respite break.
Earl Howe
My noble friend is quite right. My department has allocated an additional £400 million to the NHS over four years, 2011 to 2015, to provide carers with breaks from their caring responsibilities. The 2012-13 NHS operating framework makes it clear that PCTs, local councils and local voluntary organisations should work together on plans to support carers. Those plans have to be published by 30 September at the latest. They must make clear the amount of money to be made available to support carers and separately identify the amount to be made available for carers’ breaks.
Baroness Greengross
My Lords, have the Government developed any plans to support carers after the person for whom they are caring dies? Many carers spend up to 20 years doing the caring job. Once the person for whom they are caring dies, they are stranded. They have no job to go back to. They have lost most of their friends and are totally isolated. They suffer bereavement in a different way from the rest of us and need long-term support. Are there any plans to deal with this problem?
Earl Howe
As ever, the noble Baroness makes a really important point, and it is one that we fully recognise. In our plans to roll out psychological therapies, carers are very much within the scope of our thinking. As the noble Baroness will know, last year we published a four-year plan of action. We are investing around £400 million—the same sum of money that I referred to but additional to the other sum—in talking therapies: the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme. I am sure the noble Baroness will be glad to know that that investment is already making marked improvements, and there is a substantial increase in the number of people receiving the benefit of IAPT.
Baroness Barker
My Lords, in view of the Government’s stated intention to increase personalisation, can the Minister tell the House what happens when the expressed wishes and needs of somebody being cared for are in conflict with the expressed wishes and needs of a carer? Whose needs take precedence in that case, and how is the conflict resolved?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, the Minister will be aware that in Grand Committee we are currently discussing the Local Government Finance Bill, which will reduce council tax benefit for a wide range of people, including carers. Given that he is concerned about financial support for carers, will the Minister talk to his colleagues in the DCLG to ensure that the same support which we hope will be extended to disabled people will also be extended to their carers?
The Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells
My Lords, in recognising the purpose of this report in relation to the health of carers, I ask the Government what action they are going to take, particularly with regard to the welfare and health of young people who may not formally be regarded as carers but who nevertheless undertake a vital role.
Earl Howe
The right reverend Prelate refers to an often unseen aspect of caring. My department and the Department for Education are encouraging children’s and adult services to work much more closely together to adopt whole-family approaches to identifying and supporting young carers. We are investing in the identification and sharing of tools, resources and good practice, and we have worked with key stakeholders to develop online training modules on young carers for GPs and school staff in particular.
NHS: Private Finance Initiative Costs
(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Harries of Pentregarth
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ease the burden of Private Finance Initiative costs falling on healthcare trusts.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)
My Lords, a lot has been done. All PFI schemes are having their contracts reviewed for potential savings, following a Treasury-led pilot exercise last year. We are providing the seven trusts worst affected by PFI schemes access to a £1.5 billion support fund over a period of 25 years, which will be available from 2012-13 directly from the department. We have worked with another 16 to address their long-term sustainability.
Lord Harries of Pentregarth
I thank the Minister for his reply and I am glad to hear about the support fund. Is it not the case that the contracts at this time of national financial crisis need to be renegotiated in order to bring them more in line with the austerity being suffered by the rest of the nation? Not only are they being required to pay 14% or 15% interest, they are having to pay maintenance charges such as those quoted to me of £500 to put in a new lock and £80 to change a light bulb. As the Minister knows, there are now 20 healthcare trusts responsible for 60 hospitals in serious financial trouble.
Earl Howe
The noble and right reverend Lord is right. We believe that a number of the PFI schemes from the previous Administration were not soundly based in terms of their sustainability. As part of the work that we are doing on the Foundation Trust Pipeline, we have had to work on long-term sustainability solutions to help NHS trusts with PFI schemes, hence the direct financial support that I have referred to.
We have also organised PFI trust forums to disseminate the lessons learnt and to share experiences. We have earmarked resources to support the front line in ways to secure savings and we are currently in negotiation with people who have experience in the NHS and private sector to form a new team to support existing contract managers and, where necessary, to support negotiations with private sector PFI companies.
Baroness Wall of New Barnet
Will the noble Earl agree that in addition to the detriment suffered financially by PFI hospitals, as the noble and right reverend Lord Harries described, they suffer from a stranglehold as regards the movement of services, which means that they have to hold services back? Is not such power to stop the increased movement of services preventing trusts modernising and developing?
Earl Howe
The noble Baroness makes an important point and it is one that I was aware of some years ago when I visited a PFI-funded hospital. She is right; it does sometimes depend on the relationship established between the contractor and the hospital management but many of these contracts do result in exactly the kind of sclerosis that she has described. It is a lesson that we need to learn for future PFI schemes.
Baroness Wheatcroft
Will the Minister tell the House whether the Government have investigated the possibility of clawing back fees from those private sector advisers who helped the previous Administration construct those PFI contracts?
Earl Howe
My Lords, I am not aware that we are doing that particular thing, although I understand my noble friend’s concern. There are contracts in place which are legally binding. Nevertheless, within the framework of those contracts there is often scope for looking creatively and flexibly at their provisions. We are endeavouring to do this in order to help the trusts work their way through their problems.
Lord Warner
My Lords, what role is the Treasury playing in trying to mitigate the effects of some of those PFI contracts, given the part that it played in particular at its official level in agreeing and signing them off under the previous Administration? Indeed, many are still in place in the Treasury today.
Earl Howe
My Lords, the Treasury has been very helpful in advising my department on the kinds of flexibility that we may have in these difficult situations. It has also been helpful in refining the current PFI model so that, as and when we use PFI again, we have a tighter structure which strikes a better balance between risk and reward to the private sector.
Baroness Jolly
My Lords, many community health schemes were funded using the LIFT programme. What is the Government’s view of their affordability now?
Earl Howe
My Lords, LIFT is one tool that we have in financing capital schemes in the community, many of which have been successful. Such schemes promote integrated services, which I know my noble friend will welcome. All LIFT schemes have been and will be assessed for affordability and value for money. It is not a universal prescription by any means, but we look constructively at LIFT as one way of delivering capital schemes.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I refer noble Lords to my health interests in the register. Will the Minister confirm that, under PFI, more than 100 new hospitals were built by the previous Administration? Will he also confirm that the annual expenditure on those schemes is less than 1%? In fact, does he agree that the real financial problem of the NHS is the £20 billion that his Government are taking out of it in a four-year period?
Earl Howe
We are not taking £20 billion out of the NHS; we are redeploying an increasing budget so that we get better value for money for the taxpayer. I say in answer to the noble Lord’s first point, which I think was more serious than his second, that we have confirmed that we remain committed to public/private partnerships. We think that they can continue to play an important role in delivering the country’s future infrastructure. However, it must be on the right basis, with tighter conditions attached.
National Minimum Wage (Amendment) Regulations 2012
Lord De Mauley
That the draft order and regulations be referred to a Grand Committee.
Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill [HL]
Lord De Mauley
That the amendments for the Report stage be marshalled and considered in following order:
Clause 1, Schedule 1, Clauses 2 to 4, Schedule 2, Clauses 5 to 9, Schedule 3, Clauses 10 to 26.
Care and Support
(12 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement made earlier in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health on the care and support White Paper, the draft Bill and the progress report on funding reform for social care. The Statement is as follows:
“With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a Statement on the future of care and support for adults in England. The coalition programme said that reform is needed urgently. We inherited a system that too often lets people down and is unfair, a system which was complex and confusing and which responded to a crisis but too rarely prevented it.
For many years, people have called for a system fitted around the needs of care users, not the preferences of the service—one that puts people at the heart of the service and delivers high-quality care with dignity and respect. We knew two years ago that we had to offer urgent support to social care. In the spending review 2010, we provided an additional £7.2 billion for social care over the course of this Parliament, including nearly £3 billion from the NHS to deliver more integrated care. This gives the current system resource backing, but not reform. We need also to build a better service for the long term.
The White Paper I am publishing today represents the greatest transformation of the system since 1948. The practical effect will be to give service users, their carers and their families more peace of mind. Services will be organised around each individual’s care and support needs, their goals and aspirations. Intervention will be earlier, promoting independence and well-being.
The White Paper will support people to remain active in their own communities, connected to their families, friends and support networks. We shall invest an additional £200 million over five years in the development of specialised housing for older and disabled people, so that people can stay independent in their own homes for as long as possible.
The role of carers is critical, so we will transform how the system views and treats carers. We will extend rights for carers to have an assessment and for the first time provide a clear entitlement to the support they need to maintain their own health and well-being.
The measures in the White Paper will make it easier for people to understand how care and support services work, and what their entitlements and responsibilities are. To give people greater consistency of access, we will introduce a national minimum eligibility threshold, as the Dilnot commission suggested. We will require councils to start supporting people as soon as they move into a new area, so that it is easier for people to choose to move home to be nearer to their relatives. Local authorities will be under a duty to ensure continuity of care and that care users are able to take their assessments with them if they move area.
We will establish a single website to provide clear and reliable information about all care and support services for self-funders and local authority-supported users and carers. As well as these improvements to national information, we will invest £32.5 million to ensure that there is better information about the range of local care and support services available in each area.
We want people to be confident that the care and support they receive is delivered by a compassionate and caring workforce. We will place dignity and respect for care users at the heart of a new code of conduct and minimum training standards for care workers. Alongside the new minimum standards, we will train more care workers, with 50,000 more apprenticeships by 2017.
A key requirement is for people to be confident that they will be treated with dignity and respect and that providers deliver high-quality care at all times. We will rule out the crude practice known as “contracting by the minute”, which can so undermine people’s dignity and choice. We should contract for quality and service, not by the clock. We will call on local Healthwatch organisations to make active use of their power of entry, allowing them to visit care services in their local area and make recommendations to the providers and local authority commissioners.
People should also be entitled to expect that services will be maintained if a provider fails. Working with local government and the care sector, we successfully handled the consequences of the Southern Cross crisis, but we also learnt lessons. So we will consult on how we can anticipate and act to ensure continuity of care if a provider goes out of business. Care itself, not the provider of care, is the most important factor.
A key theme of the White Paper is that those receiving care and support know what is best for them. It is right that they must be in control of their care and support. We will make sure that everyone is entitled to a personal budget, so they can be in control of their own care. We will offer all who want it a personal budget and, by 2015, a legal right to request this as a direct payment.
To make it easier for people to get the care they want, we will ensure that they have better access to independent advice. We will make it easier for people to see whether a care provider is good or not, so that they can make real choices through an online quality profile for each provider. We will work with a range of organisations to develop comparison websites so that people can give feedback and compare the quality of care for themselves.
Integrated care is important for everyone, regardless of age or the reason they need care and support. However, getting integration right is particularly important for people when they may be moving from one service to another. That is why we are transferring an additional £100 million in 2013-14 and £200 million in 2014-15, beyond previous plans, from the NHS to social care, to support social care services that benefit people’s health and well-being, and promote better integrated care.
The White Paper will help people get better joined-up care at key points in their lives. We will legislate to give adult social care services a power to assess young people under the age of 18 and we will ensure protection so that no young person goes without care while waiting for adult support to start.
We want people to receive the best possible care at the end of their lives, including a choice over where they die. The palliative care funding review recommended that all health and social care should be funded by the state once someone reaches the end of life and are entered onto the end-of-life care locality register. We think that there is much merit in this and will be using the eight palliative care funding pilot sites to collect the data and experience that we need to assess the proposal.
Alongside the White Paper, I am today publishing the draft care and support Bill. Many of the White Paper reforms need new legislation to make them work and the draft Bill is a major reform in its own right. The law for adult social care is complex and outdated. All those involved know how it has made the system harder to work in. The draft Bill sets out a single, modern statute for adult care and support. It brings together and simplifies provisions from at least a dozen Acts of Parliament, reflecting the recommendations of the Law Commission. It builds the law around the well-being, needs and outcomes of real people—clear principles, clearly set out in law.
I am also today publishing a progress report on funding reform. In July 2010, I asked Andrew Dilnot to review the funding of the system of care and support in England. I can confirm today the Government’s support for the principles of the Dilnot commission’s report as the right basis for any new funding model; that is, financial protection through capped costs and an extended means test.
It would, as Andrew Dilnot himself said, enable people to plan and prepare, so that they are not so vulnerable to the arbitrary impact of catastrophic care costs. The progress report sets out a detailed analysis of this funding model, giving us a better basis for making decisions about how these changes can be funded. Of course, any proposal which includes extra public spending needs to be considered alongside other spending priorities, which include the demographic pressures on the social care service itself. The right, the necessary, place to do this is at the next spending review. Our talks with the Labour Party were constructive, but no plan for funding Dilnot was agreed, or, indeed, proposed by either side.
A decision at the next spending review will allow time for continuing discussions with stakeholders and between the parties, and we can undertake open engagement on detailed implementation issues and options. These discussions will include the level of the cap, whether a voluntary or opt-in approach is a viable option in addition to the universal options and whether legislative provision is required.
However, as the report makes clear, we are also taking definitive steps now by accepting a number of the Dilnot commission’s recommendations. Most notably, we will introduce a universal deferred payments scheme. This will mean that no one will be forced to sell their home in their lifetime to pay for care. Provisions for this are included in the draft Bill.
The White Paper, the draft care and support Bill and the progress report on funding together set out our commitment to a modern system of care and support—one designed around the needs of individual people; one with dignity and respect at its heart; and one that brings care and support into the 21st century.
These reforms are the product of immensely helpful reviews by the Law Commission and the Dilnot commission and come from a positive and wide-ranging engagement with the care sector and the public, helping us to design the kind of care services and support that all of us would like to see for ourselves and our families. We are determined to secure these reforms—to achieve in this Parliament that which our predecessors failed to achieve in over 13 years. I intend to continue and develop this open co-operative approach to developing these reforms. I commend this Statement to the House”.
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Baroness Wheeler
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for the Statement. I am sure the House will agree that we have all waited a long time for this spring White Paper, and now the Government have finally managed to publish it by the skin of their teeth, with just 10 days to go before the Recess. Notwithstanding what is actually in it, we can at least take comfort that the White Paper’s publication at last fires the starter gun for the nationwide debate on the future funding of social care that we on these Benches and key stakeholders in the public, voluntary and independent provider sectors, as well as care professionals and service users—many of them forming part of the excellent Care and Support Alliance—have all been calling for.
The stakeholders know only too well the scale of the problems that have to be faced and the solutions that are needed on the full package of social care law and current and future funding. However, there is also an urgent need for social care to be pushed to the forefront of public debate and understanding as one of the biggest challenges facing Britain today. This public debate could and should have started much earlier if the Government’s stated momentum behind pushing the Dilnot commission into doing its work in six months had been maintained, and if the Government had put more energy and commitment into the cross-party talks and had seriously tried to address the critical funding issues. After all the delays, prevarication and speculation, those of us who were hoping against hope for some sense of an overall strategy, vision and action in the White Paper for dealing with the current and growing crisis in social care are sadly disappointed and let down. There is no vision of how a reformed system will work in practice or how it is to be sustained in the future in the face of growing demand and need.
At the minimum, we hoped for an outline programme and process for making key decisions on funding, including timescales and milestones for moving forward on addressing the full package of reforms that are needed. Instead, we have further consultation on issues, many of which have already been consulted on and on which there is already broad consensus. We have the failure to address the funding crisis, the prospect of the proposed care and support Bill not coming into effect until probably April 2015, and any implementation of the Dilnot options effectively long-grassed until after the next election.
The White Paper shows that the Government are completely out of touch with the scale and urgency of the care crisis. Across the country, elderly and disabled people are failing to qualify for basic personal care in their homes, or their package of care has been cut back to home visits of less than 15 minutes, or they have faced home care charges rising by 11% in some local authorities. We know, too, that the cost of residential home care is rising substantially in excess of what local authorities can pay, and people are spending their lifelong savings to pay for long-term care. The funding issues need to be faced and addressed now.
Of course we welcome the implementation of a large number of the much-needed changes to social care law proposed in the Law Commission’s excellent report of 2010. Social care law is in urgent need of reform, which is why the Labour Government set up the review in 2008. We welcome the proposals and consultation on reforming and simplifying the legal framework and ensuring that patient-centred services are better fitted to people’s lives and fit in with their need for choice and control. We strongly support new laws which help to make clear what people are and are not entitled to, and which help them to plan for the future.
In the time available, I have managed only a quick look through the documents, but it is worth pointing out to the House that an overwhelming number of the proposals were contained in Labour’s own White Paper on care, published before the last general election. Naturally, we welcome their reappearance, but it begs the question: why it has taken the Government nearly two years to regurgitate our proposals into their new draft Bill?
I stress that we also support proposals in the White Paper that take forward Labour’s personalisation of care agenda—again, as set out in our care White Paper. We support legislation to ensure the portability of social care packages, and we of course support proposals to extend carers’ respite breaks and their legal entitlements, as well as the extension of key information and advice services which we introduced through our landmark National Carers Strategy.
However, from these Benches we have repeatedly stressed that, unless these new social care laws are reformed in the context of also addressing the current and future funding problems, they will be ineffective and inoperable, and will lead to even greater unmet demand and suffering. Local authorities facing £1 billion of cuts will just not be able to afford to respond to laws designed to make care provision and eligibility consistent and more accessible across the country.
It is deeply disappointing and frustrating that the White Paper does not take the key step of recognising that there is not enough money in the system now. Not only is Dilnot implementation pushed into a further consultation and engagement process—despite the much-hyped promises of accepting Dilnot “in principle”—but the proposed transfer of funds of £300 million from the NHS to social care over a two-year period in 2013 and 2014 continues to support this fallacy: in other words, that it is all down to local authorities needing to better manage their finances and get their priorities right. Those councils are desperate for a new settlement on funding for social care, but the White Paper holds out little prospect of this happening and provides no answers to the funding crisis currently engulfing them. I cannot see any reference in the White Paper to how the Government propose to help councils to fund what seems to be their flagship proposal: to provide loans to older people so that their care costs can be paid for after they die. I should be grateful if the Minister could flesh out any of the details on this.
On long-term funding, the Alzheimer’s Society best summed it up when it said that accepting a cap on the funding contribution “in principle” is just an “empty promise”. People want to know what the contribution cap will be, when it will come in and how it will be funded. It is downright cruel to dangle in front of people the prospect of raising the savings threshold from £23,250 to £100,000 without a positive commitment and date for implementation when those people are currently struggling to self-fund their care, or part of it, and are seeing their life savings disappear now.
Labour has always been in earnest about the need for meaningful cross-party talks and entered into these last year in good faith. We meant business when we made the offer last year, and we mean it now. I ask the Minister whether his understanding of meaningful cross-party talks involves joint, two-way discussions on strategy, policy and options, and regular meetings, discussions and negotiations to reach a consensus, or whether it means irregular meetings, the last one of which was cancelled by the Government, who instead offered the Opposition a briefing just a few days before the White Paper was due to be published on what they intended to do—or not do, in this case. We know that that is what happened, although I welcome the behind-the-scenes signs over the past couple of days that the Government regret not putting more effort into making cross-party progress. For our part, Andy Burnham has pledged that if the Government offer a genuine, two-way discussion on the funding of care, with honesty about existing pressures and the difficult options, Labour will play its part.
I ask the Minister the following further questions. First, why was it not possible to reallocate to pay for social care a major part of this year’s £1.7 billion NHS underspend, which was clawed back by the Treasury? Would this not at least have been a start, providing real money behind the White Paper’s reform proposals? Secondly, will the Government be involving Andrew Dilnot himself in the implementation discussions once the consultation is completed? Does the Minister recognise that Mr Dilnot’s involvement would go some way towards building confidence among key stakeholders that the whole issue has not been long-grassed? Thirdly, can the Minister tell the House when the Government will publish an impact assessment of the cost of the overall changes proposed, and how they plan to implement the changes with no extra money and council budgets being slashed? Finally, in today’s Daily Telegraph NHS managers are warning that the NHS is at risk of collapse as cuts to social care budgets are leading to a huge rise in the number of admissions to hospital of older people who could be treated at home but cannot afford to pay for care. How do the Government propose to deal with this, and how will the White Paper proposals help to alleviate this alarming trend?
The White Paper reflects a positive sign of consensus on many of the key issues facing social care today, and some good promises about how social care should change. However, until these promises are backed by a recognition of the current scale of the crisis and proposals on how Dilnot can be implemented in the future—with firm commitments, timescales and milestones—schemes such as deferred payments and loans and pilots for end-of-life care can in effect be only interim, stopgap measures. They do not address the overall need for fairness, transparency, more resources across the whole system and long-term sustainability. Implementation of Dilnot must be the basis for that.
As a carer myself, I hope that the House will forgive me if I end by quoting the carer husband of a woman suffering from dementia who was movingly interviewed on Radio 4 this morning about his life as a 24-hour carer and the impact of social care cuts. He said:
“It’s the unknown that really gets to me … in the back of my mind is the constant feeling of uncertainty”.
In-principle decisions for implementation at some unspecified date in the future are no solution and offer no comfort, solace or relief to people who need help, care and support today.
The Government promised that they would legislate on a new legal and financial framework for social care in this parliamentary Session. The noble Earl promised that the Government would not shy away from or duck the funding issues—but I am afraid that that is exactly what they have done.
Earl Howe
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her comments and questions. While she levelled a number of criticisms at the Government, I was glad to hear her positive comments—although I would characterise her speech as a glass half empty speech rather than the opposite. Nevertheless, I am grateful to her for recognising that this package of proposals represents progress. In many areas it is progress that her party and mine fully sign up to. However, she said at the start of her remarks that there was a lack of vision and strategy in these proposals. I was sorry about that because I do not share her view. The White Paper and the draft care and support Bill undoubtedly form the most comprehensive overhaul of care and support since 1948. They respond directly to the concerns that people have raised with us time and again.
I hope that when the noble Baroness reads the White Paper she will agree that the whole flavour is about creating a system that keeps people independent and well. There are many major commitments in the White Paper, including more support and equality for carers, housing investment, better information and personal budgets. Those things all combine to set out a new vision that tailors care around people’s well-being, rather than expecting people to conform to a system, which is what we have at the moment.
The noble Baroness criticised the Government for delay. I gently point out that more than 13 years ago there was a royal commission chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland. The previous Administration had 13 years to respond to it but did not do so. Nevertheless, progress was made in certain areas. We have gladly picked up on some of the areas of progress that the previous Administration put in place, not least in the area of carers. However, it is not true that since the present Government came to office we have seen no action. One of the first decisions that we made was to protect care and support in the spending review through an additional £7.2 billion over four years. That was an explicit recognition of the strains that local authorities were expected to come under. I announced through the Statement today further funding in recognition of those strains at local level.
It is true that some of the changes will take longer than others, but progress will be made within 12 months. It will include introducing quality profiles for every provider so that people have comparative information on the quality of different organisations, investing £200 million over the next five years to develop specialised housing, publishing a code of conduct and minimum training standards for care workers, and launching a new national information website at nhs.uk. I hope that the noble Baroness will welcome those innovations.
On the deferred payment scheme, there is a lot of discussion to be had. Our proposals are that deferred payments will be available in all local authorities. Currently they are available in some but not all. As the noble Baroness knows, the social care means test requires people to use their housing wealth when they go into residential care. We are announcing that we will allow people to pay later, giving them more time to sell their home at their convenience or even for it to be sold after their death. We are not confirming now exactly who will be eligible or the rate of interest that will be attached, but we have said we will consult on these issues with the care sector.
As regards the cross-party talks, I should like to put it on the record that we fully intend to continue to engage with Her Majesty’s Opposition and with the sector on options for implementing the Dilnot model as well as with Mr Dilnot himself. At this stage, we are open-minded as to what form that engagement should take. As has been the case to date, discussions on funding reform will be led by the Department of Health on behalf of wider government. We wish to continue what I believe has been a very constructive series of discussions, with the Opposition in particular. The disagreements and criticisms that blew up over the weekend were regrettable and we wish to draw a line under that. I hope the noble Baroness will appreciate from the correspondence that has flowed between our two lead spokesmen that that is indeed the intent.
The noble Baroness is not correct as regards the NHS underspend. It was not lost to the NHS. The overall year-end surplus of £1.6 billion for PCTs and SHAs last year will be carried forward and made available in 2012-13. That represents a 3% increase in funding available to the NHS relative to last year. As I mentioned earlier, we are allocating further funding on top of the £7.2 billion that we previously announced in support of local authorities.
There are many questions to answer in this package. I do not hide from that, but it is right that we take time to work through this, including engaging with all stakeholders to ensure that any reform is sustainable and fair.
Baroness Northover
My Lords, before we get into the session where all Peers can contribute, I remind noble Lords that the Companion states that ministerial Statements are made for the information of the House and that, although brief comments and questions are allowed, Statements should not be made the occasion for immediate debate. Perhaps I may emphasise brevity and therefore the courtesy of allowing as many noble Lords as possible to contribute.
Baroness Campbell of Surbiton
My Lords, I must briefly declare an interest. I am a 24-hour social care service user, and long may it last. Temporarily ignoring the social care funding elephant in the room, I feel there is much to welcome in this White Paper, which concentrates on independent living, empowerment strategies, and supporting people to stay at home and contribute to their communities instead of the current safety-net crisis interventions. That has been my life’s work.
I am also pleased to see that the Government are obviously keen to incorporate my Private Member’s Bill on social care portability. Naturally, I must ask the Minister whether the Government intend portability to offer an “equivalence of support” outcome so that disabled people feel confident that they can continue with their chosen occupations, responsibilities and lifestyle wherever they go, because this will put an end to the postcode lottery.
Earl Howe
My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Baroness for all the work that she has done in this area, particularly on portability. This is a good news story. We are committing in the White Paper to breaking down the major barrier to portability: that people’s care is disrupted when they move local authority area. The draft Bill contains a clause that puts a duty on to local authorities to ensure that when a person—and their carer, if applicable—moves local authority area, their needs continue to be met until they are reassessed by that local authority. The clause also sets out that local authorities are under a duty to share information, and the receiving local authority has the power to assess the individual—and carer, if applicable—before they move. This seeks to ensure that the move is as seamless as possible. I do not doubt that this is an area that we shall debate over the coming months.
Lord Lipsey
My Lords, I emphasise the extraordinary importance of all-party consensus on this matter. Without that, older people and their families will not know what to plan for in the long term, and indeed insurance companies that could help out will not be able to design policies to help them do so. Will the noble Earl deplore the leaking of the documents in front of us this afternoon? The leaks greatly exaggerated the benefits that the actual policies announced will deliver, and have derailed the all-party talks. These policies should have been floated with the Opposition before they reached the public domain. I am not saying that he did it, but will he apologise as a way of getting those all-party talks back on an even footing?
Earl Howe
My Lords, I fully agree with the noble Lord about the need for cross-party consensus. If we are to have a long-term sustainable solution for the funding of social care, we must have that political consensus. Indeed, that was the intent behind the cross-party talks. I very much regret the leaks. These were not our doing, but they did create an impression of bad faith. Again, I regret that. No bad faith was intended from our quarter or indeed from any other quarter in government. I think there was an element of misunderstanding about our intentions, but I agree with the noble Lord that the cross-party bonhomie has been disrupted. We very much wish to put the whole process back on track, and I hope that his party will respond accordingly.
Baroness Jolly
My Lords, I am a glass half-full sort of person, so I heartily welcome the White Paper and the draft Bill on care and support, and note the progress report on funding reform. We are certainly looking forward to pre-legislative scrutiny. Can the Minister give the House some indication of the timetable and the process? Will he also tell the House what the Government’s view is on including enabling clauses in the draft Bill to allow the Dilnot-based scheme to be implemented?
Earl Howe
My Lords, my provisional understanding —and I stress that—is that pre-legislative scrutiny will begin in the autumn, probably in November. Between now and then, plans will be put in place to decide the composition of the pre-legislative scrutiny committee so that the process will conclude by the end of this Session of Parliament. In principle, there is no reason why enabling clauses should not be inserted into the legislation. As I have emphasised before, it would be preferable if they were clauses on which we could all agree.
Lord Howard of Lympne
My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of Help the Hospices. I welcome both the extra money that the Government are making available for the palliative care pilot projects and the Government’s acceptance in principle that end of life care should be free at the point of delivery. Can my noble friend give the House some indication of the timetable by which this very desirable objective might be achieved?
Earl Howe
My Lords, the short answer to my noble friend is that we need to look in detail at the funding implications. At this stage all I can say is that our intent is to introduce this at the earliest opportunity. However, I am afraid I have not been given the green light to give him chapter and verse at this stage. As soon as I am able to do that, I will gladly do so.
Lord Laming
My Lords, may I ask the Minister two quick questions about domiciliary care? First, do the Government accept that during the past decade, there has been a marked deterioration in the availability and quality of community care? It has deteriorated so much that, as the Minister said, it now often seems to be measured in minutes, depriving very vulnerable people of dignity both in feeding and in toileting. Secondly, if that is the case, what mechanism are the Government going to employ across 150 local authorities to make sure that they deliver the standard of domiciliary care about which he spoke?
Earl Howe
The noble Lord is quite right; there is huge concern about the sometimes tick-box attitude to domiciliary care, very often resulting in nugatory time spent by care workers with those they look after, which one is tempted to say is hardly worth while in some cases. We are very aware of this. Part of the answer lies in our plans for personal budgets, which should give service users much greater scope to define what they want and what their needs are. The service should then work around those needs and requirements. However, we are also talking about the workforce here.
We are clear that the minimum standards for health support workers and adult social care workers in England that are being developed by Skills for Care and Skills for Health will set a clear national benchmark for the training of support workers and their conduct when delivering care. We expect that the standards produced will inform proposals for a voluntary register for adult social care workers in England, which could be in place by next year. This will allow unregulated workers to demonstrate that they meet a set of minimum standards and are committed to a code of conduct.
All those things combined should move us away from the kind of culture that in some places, although not in all, is degrading the quality of care that is delivered.
Lord Warner
My Lords, I congratulate the Minister, and pass these congratulations on to his right honourable friend, on making progress on the Dilnot commission recommendations, as well as on the other measures in the White Paper. I declare my interest as a member of the Dilnot commission.
I also congratulate the Minister and his right honourable friend on extracting his documents from the dead hand of the Treasury. In that connection, I ask him to confirm two things. First, it will, I believe, be impossible to deliver a deferred payment scheme by April 2015 without a clear decision on the cap that will be required to underpin it, and the extended means test. Can he confirm that decisions will have to be taken on these two issues in order for a deferred payment scheme to go ahead?
Secondly, his right honourable friend rightly said that he was in the market for open cross-party discussions on the way forward. Does this mean that the Treasury will participate in these and will not blackball politically contentious proposals that may be found for funding and sustaining the implementation of Dilnot, even where those proposals may recoup some money from the very population groups that are going to benefit from a better adult social care system?
Earl Howe
First, I thank the noble Lord for all that he did as a member of the triumvirate of the Dilnot commission. There is no doubt that we owe him and his fellow commissioners an enormous debt. I am grateful to him for his kind remarks about this set of announcements. We propose to introduce deferred payment without the cap necessarily being in place. We believe that that can be done. I understand the direction from which the noble Lord comes, but a system that obliges local authorities to offer deferred payment where certain eligibility criteria—yet to be defined, admittedly—are met is deliverable in the absence of a cap. That is not to say that we do not wish to work hard to define what that cap should be.
On the noble Lord’s second question about the dead hand of the Treasury, I would not characterise my esteemed colleagues in that venerable department as dead hands. However, I acknowledge his central point about affordability. That is why we have felt it necessary to defer final decisions on how the funding of the Dilnot principles will be worked through until the next spending review. That inevitably means that my colleagues in the Treasury will have a direct interest in the result; it would be strange were it otherwise. Nevertheless, that does not preclude creative and constructive discussions between our two parties.
Baroness Browning
I welcome my noble friend’s Statement, but does he accept that there is still a significant challenge in providing appropriate packages of care, particularly for elderly people, on discharge from hospital following an emergency admission? This relates to the type of care required when there is a significant change in needs and people are unable to return to their home, or sometimes even to a residential home. There is a transition, but some of those people could make more progress in their recovery. I am thinking of stroke patients in particular. I hope the Minister will be able to reassure me that these changes will include looking again at this group.
Earl Howe
I agree with my noble friend. Only last week, I talked to people at the Norwich and Norfolk University Hospital who emphasised that very point. Very often, the absence of packages of care that are tailored to the needs of the individual results in delayed discharge from hospital and often a deterioration in the condition of the patient. That helps no one. There is therefore a burning need for commissioners, providers and those providing care in the community to work together to define appropriate packages. I fully agree with my noble friend that those who have had strokes are particularly in need of the kind of packages that can best assist them when they move back into their own homes. This is an area that is crying out for further work. We hope that it will flow from the creation of clinical commissioning groups and health and well-being boards at a local level.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
My Lords, I am very happy to welcome the ministerial Statement as one of the first distant tweets of a swallow, perhaps announcing some hope of spring. However, as we all know this year, summer does not inevitably follow spring. I do not take the view that the glass is half-empty; I take the view that it is currently about 20% full. The real question is about how you put the other 80% in. That has to do with money—there are no two ways about it. Until that is confronted, I will not be convinced that the Government or—even more so—the Treasury understand the scale of the issues facing us. Demography has been announcing them for 15 or 20 years and they will get more and more urgent. There is a requirement not just for an incremental change but for a reassessment of priorities, as the Statement suggested.
One suggestion in the Statement is the importance of the integration of care. I thoroughly agree with that but have a question for the Minister. Can he reassure us that it will at least be considered that the integration of care be followed by the integration of budgets between health and social care? Many of us believe that that is one element that has to be put in place. I would not want it ruled out as an issue.
Earl Howe
I am grateful to the noble Lord and thank him for all his work in this area over the years. However, I am sorry that he regards the glass as only being 20% full. I would regard it as much more full than that, bearing in mind the contents of the White Paper that I outlined earlier. No, we are under no illusions about the scale of the issue, its importance or the need to get it right if the NHS is not to bear the brunt of serious strain within social care. It is an urgent matter. We are determined to fill the glass to its fullest at the earliest opportunity.
On integration, as I am sure the noble Lord knows, we have options open to us already to ensure that budgets can be pooled at a local level. This is happening in many areas. It is a very useful device to enable the NHS and social care to share responsibility for delivering care to patients and service users, who after all do not mind very much whether the service is delivered by the NHS or by social care as long as the right service is delivered. We need to work much harder on that area, too.
Baroness Bakewell
Can I draw the Minister’s attention to the characteristics of the very old? Time speeds up when you are old. Christmas comes round more regularly and the years pass faster. Coupled with that is increased anxiety about what those years will bring. The timescale of these matters that concern funding have a particular poignancy for people who have only a few years of life left. I urge the Minister to persuade his colleagues that the nature of defining these sums of money will give a lot of ageing people who are worried peace of mind—a phrase used in the White Paper.
Earl Howe
I pay tribute to the noble Baroness for all her work on behalf of the elderly. Of course she is right in her perception of the way that the elderly view time passing. We have yet to sort out the precise funding mechanism for Dilnot. However, in the mean time, as I have emphasised, we are channelling significant extra funds to local authorities to tide them over. We believe that that will be of help in the short term. Also, the deferred payment scheme should deliver considerable peace of mind to many elderly people who find that they need to move into residential care and, for whatever reason, do not wish to sell their houses. I hope that that proposal will find favour with her.
Justice and Security Bill [HL]
(12 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Butler of Brockwell
Lord Butler of Brockwell
My Lords, I beg to move Amendment 35 and will speak to Amendment 38, standing in the names of my colleague the noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, and myself, and to which the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, have added their names. These two amendments invite the Government to look again at the drafting of Clause 3(3) and (7).
Subsection (3) says that the committee must send a draft of its report to the Government. This may reflect the old, rather patriarchal attitude, if I may describe it as such, that the Government took towards the committee. The committee submits its report; it is independent. It does not submit a draft report to the Prime Minister; the report is the report is the report. It submits its report and then the Prime Minister may insist on redactions: that is how the procedure works, so the reference to a draft report is technically incorrect, and impugns the independence of the committee.
Subsection (7) refers to matters that would be excluded from the ISC’s report to Parliament when it reports to the Prime Minister. Again, the words “the ISC considers” that they would be excluded under subsection (4) are necessary because, at the time the committee makes its report to the Prime Minister, he has not seen the report; he cannot decide what would be redacted in a report submitted to Parliament. So, again, the committee would submit a full report to the Prime Minister and when it comes to excluding things it would have to be the ISC which considers it, rather than anybody else.
These are two drafting amendments which would make the position clear.
The Marquess of Lothian
I shall add to what the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, has said on these two amendments, to which my name is also attached. On the second one he makes the short point that it is for the committee to decide whether the report should be published to Parliament or to the Prime Minister. He makes it clear that it is only the committee that can make that decision. There is an additional factor, in that until the report is completed, only the committee knows that that report is being drafted, so no decision could be made before the committee had finished drafting its report. That is one reason why it is a necessary amendment.
With respect to the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, I think that Amendment 35 is more than a drafting amendment. It is asking to remove subsection (3), the only drafting element of which is the word “draft”. It is an incorrect statement as it stands, because it suggests that the committee submit a report to the Prime Minister which is capable of alteration or amendment—that is the definition of a draft. In fact, it is the opposite that occurs. The report that is made to the Prime Minister can only be changed in respect of inserting asterisks—by redactions where there are matters which should not be seen in the public report submitted to Parliament, but of necessity are in the report that is sent to the Prime Minister. I suggest that, rather than being a drafting amendment, the removal of the subsection is the answer. The reason I say that is because, if the Government accept that this is not a draft, the whole subsection becomes otiose because the following subsection makes it clear that the report goes to the Prime Minister before redactions are made. I hope that, on this occasion, the Minister will feel able to consider very seriously the points we are making in this amendment.
Lord King of Bridgwater
I agree with my noble friend Lord Lothian. I do not have it in front of me, but I do not recall that “draft” ever appeared in the original 1994 Act that set up the Intelligence and Security Committee. For some reason it has crept into the drafting; he is absolutely right. It seems to me that subsection (7) then becomes redundant.
Lord Rosser
My Lords, we support the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell. Frankly, I cannot add anything to the points that have been made in support of them. The wording in the Bill does not do a great deal to show a degree of independence for the Intelligence and Security Committee from the Executive. That independence would be enhanced if the Government accepted the amendments.
Amendment 36 is basically a probing amendment. Its purpose is to seek to change the definition of the basis on which the Prime Minister may redact information from an ISC report. The Bill states that the Prime Minister may do so if the information is,
“prejudicial to the continued discharge of the functions of the Security Service”
and the other organisations mentioned. The amendment would provide that information should not be disclosed in the interests of national security or on the basis that the ISC report contained sensitive information as defined in Schedule 1(4). The reference in Schedule 1(4) to “sensitive information” refers to the basis on which a Minister of the Crown may decide under paragraph (1)(b) or (2)(b) that information should not be disclosed if the Minister considers that it is sensitive information, which is then as defined in Schedule 1(4), or information that, in the interests of national security, should not be disclosed to the Intelligence and Security Committee.
The criterion proposed in the Bill is either the same or basically the same as in the Intelligence Services Act 1994. The reason why this is a probing amendment is to try to find out why it is felt necessary to have what appears to be a fairly wide definition and not in fact to have a definition that would bring it in line with the criteria permitting the Government to veto the disclosure of certain information to the Intelligence and Security Committee, as set out in Schedule 1(4), which defines sensitive information that is referred to in Schedule 1(3)(a) and relates to the circumstances under which a Minister of the Crown may decide that information should not be disclosed.
Why does the definition need to be broader for the reports to Parliament from the Intelligence and Security Committee than it does for the disclosure of information to the Intelligence and Security Committee? It is not clear why there is that difference or indeed what its significance is. What, for example, would my amendment not include that would be included in the wording in the Bill? As I say, that appears to be a wider definition, and I am hopeful that the Minister will be able to explain why there is that difference in definitions and whether, in the Government’s view, what they are proposing in Clause 3(4) is wider than the definition of sensitive information that appears in Schedule 1(4) and relates to the definition that would be applied and that a Minister of the Crown would have to take into consideration if he was going to decline to agree that information should be released to the Intelligence and Security Committee.
In the amendment there is a further addition beyond the sensitive information; namely, that information should not be disclosed in the interests of national security.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, this amendment should be of great interest to present and former members of the committee because there is a problem in the legislation which they should be well aware of. As I read it, Clause 3(4) is a catch-all, whereby if one cannot block the provision of information to the committee under paragraph 3(4) of Schedule 1, one can block the information under the catch-all provision of it being,
“prejudicial to the continued discharge of the functions”,
of the services. This is a catch-all provision whereby the Prime Minister might want to block certain information which does not necessarily meet the criterion set down under sensitive information in paragraph 4 of Schedule 1. To my mind, the only defence for the committee under such arbitrary arrangements is the extent to which the committee is consulted. Clause 3(4) states:
“The ISC must exclude any matter from any report to Parliament if the Prime Minister, after consultation with the ISC”.
What form would that consultation take in the event that he wished to exercise a veto on the provision of that information under what I call this catch-all provision? I suppose that, in theory, it could be looked at the other way. The Prime Minister might, in certain circumstances, not wish to be tied down to the detailed criterion in the sensitive information provisions of Schedule 1. He might want to release information that was sensitive but would not be prejudicial to the services carrying out their functions. It will be interesting to see what the Minister says in response.
The Marquess of Lothian
Before the noble Lord sits down, I would like to raise a question with him. He has been a member of this committee and I have been on it since 2006. My understanding is that once the report is complete there are matters, such as the amounts of money spent on various parts of the services, which have to be in the report, but which should not be in the published version and therefore are redacted. That is the difference between those two types of information and it is quite right that they are redacted.
I am sure the noble Lord remembers that the process of redaction is that the full report goes to the Prime Minister and comes back with suggestions for redactions. The committee then goes through them with a great deal of care and independence. Certainly, in my recollection, we have never had a redaction without the committee having consented to it.
Lord Campbell-Savours
Yes, but the thrust of the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Rosser is that for some reason, which I cannot understand and he clearly does not understand either, the Government have picked another set of criteria for refusing to provide information to the committee, instead of simply using the provisions set out under Schedule 1. Again, I shall be interested in the Minister’s response.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
My Lords, the reason why I am sympathetic to Amendment 36 has already been explained. My difficulty with the Bill as it stands is that its wording is very subjective with regard to the Prime Minister. I like the way in which Amendment 36 seeks to spell out some criteria which are echoed in the Bill itself rather than leaving the matter entirely at large.
When I spoke last time in Committee, I briefly mentioned Humpty Dumpty to the Minister. I am not sure whether he got the import of what I was saying. I was referring to Liversidge v Anderson, the famous case in which the late Lord Atkin referred to Humpty Dumpty. The emergency legislation said, “If the Minister thinks”. The late Lord Atkin said, in dissenting in Liversidge, that that was similar to Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty. I, on the whole, prefer criteria to be spelt out in the Bill and I like the way in which that has been done in Amendment 36, unless there is some very good reason for the contrary.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Henley)
My Lords, I will deal first with Amendments 35 and 38 standing in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Butler, and my noble friend Lord Lothian, supported by noble Lords on the Front Bench opposite. The noble Lord, Lord Butler, described these amendments as purely drafting amendments. My noble friend, a self-described simple Scottish lawyer, thought that they went beyond that. I take his point in that one of the points of the noble Lord, Lord Butler, is that using “draft” in Clause 3(3) could be seen to impugn the independence of the committee. I give some assurance that we will look at that in due course and whether “draft” is necessary. However, it might be worth my setting out the current arrangements and then the arrangements in the Bill
Under the current reporting arrangements, I think that I can give my noble friend Lord King an assurance that “draft” does not appear in the Intelligence Services Act 1994.
Lord Henley
It does appear in it. Well, I got that wrong. Under the existing Intelligence Services Act, the ISC makes an annual report on the discharge of its functions to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister lays before each House of Parliament a copy of that report, together with a statement as to whether anything has been excluded from it by the Prime Minister on the grounds of its sensitivity. Under the Bill, the ISC will for the most part report to Parliament but will still be able to report to the Prime Minister on matters that would be excluded from any report. It would remain for the Prime Minister to decide whether grounds exist for excluding matters from the report after, of course, consulting. That is the important thing: the consultation with the ISC. That will continue to happen.
If, as I said, the word “draft” is not appropriate, I am sure that we can make arrangements. I am obviously not a draftsman. One way of doing that would be just to delete subsection (3) from Clause 3. We will have a look at it. We have, as we know, any amount of time because we have a long summer ahead of us with other matters to deal with.
The second amendment in this group of three, Amendment 36, spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, changes the criteria—or definition, as the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, put it—whereby the Prime Minister might exclude any matter, if that report without that matter excluded would contain sensitive information as defined in Schedule 1, or information which should not be disclosed in the interests of national security.
The ISC must be able to report candidly to the Prime Minister on sensitive matters. Inevitably, the full contents of its reports cannot always be published because of the nature of the material contained within them. We are all agreed on that; it is quite clear. It follows, therefore, that there must be an ability to redact information before the ISC reports can be published or laid before Parliament. I must make it clear that the test in the Bill is modelled on the one in the 1994 Act. That has worked well and it is well understood by both the committee and by the Government. It has allowed material to be excluded where it should be excluded but it has also allowed the Government and the ISC to ensure that as much of the ISC’s reports that can be published are published. I do not believe that it is overly restrictive but it does cover certain categories of information which would not be covered were the Bill to be amended as is suggested in the noble Lord’s amendment.
The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, from a sedentary position, and the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, have put this point. They want to know why the criteria are different. If the noble Lord will allow me, I will explain that in due course. There is no need for him to make an intervention as he has already asked that point. The ISC needs to know what can be published and there are two different tests—one for publication and one for disclosure to the ISC. The tests therefore should be different. Tests for withholding from the ISC should be at a much higher threshold.
As both noble Lords will be aware, the functions of the agency are not solely exercisable in the interests of national security. It also has functions exercisable in the interests of economic well-being, United Kingdom fraud protection or prevention of serious crime. For those instances where including a matter in an ISC report to Parliament could cause prejudice to those functions of the agency but not to its functions in relation to national security, the existing Clause 3(4) would give the Prime Minister the power to require that that matter should be excluded from the ISC’s report whereas, unless the information in question fell within the definition of sensitive information under paragraph 4 of Schedule 1, the formulation of the clause proposed by this amendment would not.
With that, the noble Lord’s amendment is not necessary and in fact would not take us much further. I hope therefore that he will consider not moving it when it is called. I trust that my assurance that we will consider Amendments 35 and 38 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Butler, and my noble friend Lord Lothian will enable the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Butler of Brockwell
I am grateful for the Minister’s assurance that the drafting points raised in Clauses 35 and 38—or a little more than drafting points, as my noble friend Lord Lothian said—will be looked at. With that assurance, I am happy to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Campbell-Savours
“( ) The ISC shall consider any request from a Select Committee of Parliament to the ISC to make a report on any particular issue related to national security and shall report to Parliament whether it has agreed to make such a report.
( ) The ISC shall consider any request from a Select Committee of Parliament for the transfer of information which that Select Committee of Parliament has stated it needs to carry out its functions as a select committee.”
Lord Campbell-Savours
Amendment 37 derives directly from conversations I had with the former MP Chris Mullin, a good pal of mine, while he was chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee in the House of Commons and also conversations with members of the Defence Select Committee in the Commons. They were denied access to the agencies for reasons that at that time I was able to accept. But there were occasions when they felt that we could secure on their behalf access to material which, following discussion with the agencies, could under certain conditions possibly be made available by the ISC to those parliamentary Select Committees. It was their way of trying to ensure that questions would be asked of agencies where they were unable to ask those same questions themselves. It was not that they always sought to have access to the material, but that they wanted to be assured that the ISC was prepared to ask the questions.
I recognise that in the past 11 years since I was a member of the committee the relationship between the Select Committees and the agencies has changed, although the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, in his two interesting interventions on Monday, raised difficulties that his committee had experienced with the Joint Committee on Human Rights—no doubt he will wish to speak during this debate.
My amendment is only a modest attempt to clarify the relationship. There are two parts to it. The first part would place a requirement on the ISC to consider a request from a Select Committee for it to make a report to Parliament. It would not require publication of that report or its transmission to the Select Committee which had made the original request. The only requirement would be for the ISC, if it had complied with the request, to report to Parliament that it had made such a report—in other words, that it had carried out an inquiry.
The second part of Amendment 37 would place a requirement on the ISC to consider a request from a Select Committee for information to be given to that committee where it could show that it needed the information to carry out its functions as a Select Committee. Both parts of the amendment have been carefully crafted—although I am an amateur in these matters—so as to avoid either intentional or inadvertent breaches of national security. I beg to move.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
My Lords, I support the amendment for the reason indicated by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours; that is, it seems to be a very practical way of solving the problem that I raised when we last discussed the Bill. It treats the ISC quite properly as within the inner ring of confidence and the best judge at that stage of the relationship between Parliament through its committees and the Intelligence and Security Service. I find the amendment attractive because it would mean, for example, that if the Joint Committee on Human Rights wished to be helped by the Intelligence and Security Service it could go to the ISC with a request instead of the awkwardness of writing and seeking direct help. The ISC could then act as the intermediary, decide what was appropriate and then come back to that committee. That seems a practical way of dealing with what would otherwise be an awkward situation. I am glad that the Minister has indicated that he will anyhow reflect on the points that I raise before Report, but the amendment seems an ingenious way of producing a practical answer which should not damage the work of the ISC, the Security and Intelligence Service or the public interest.
Lord Henley
My Lords, I assure my noble friend that I will always reflect on all points that are put to me in the course of these debates between now and Report. I appreciate the intention behind the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, which is simply to create stronger links between the ISC and other committees. I appreciate that he has discussed this matter with former chairmen of the Home Affairs Select Committee such as Chris Mullin, whose diaries I have recently been reading and greatly enjoyed, as I imagine all of us have.
It is certainly our intention that the ISC should be a strong and effective committee and cover in its work matters of public and parliamentary interest and national importance relating to the agencies. Equally, an important feature of the committee is that it is party, as I have said on many occasions, to the most sensitive material and will scrutinise matters that are secret, some of which Parliament and the public will not have sight of for very good reasons.
While on the face of it the proposed changes seem helpful, I have some concerns about them. At the moment, obviously it is open to any Select Committee to write to the ISC and request that it focuses its work on a particular area. There is nothing in the new arrangements to prevent it from doing so and I am sure that the ISC will continue to take any such requests seriously, particularly if the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, was a member of the ISC, although I imagine it would be equally true with any other membership of that committee.
My concern is really about the idea of creating a formal statutory mechanism for making and considering these requests, with a requirement on the ISC to report on its decision-making process, which is what the noble Lord is seeking to do. I will give three very brief reasons why I do not think it is necessary to create a formal process, although, as I say, we shall take this away and consider it. First, I am concerned that the ISC could become overwhelmed with the number of requests to report on particular matters. If it acceded to all requests, its programme of work could be overwhelmed with matters that are of interest to other committees, taking its focus away from its core work of scrutinising matters that it alone should identify itself with.
Secondly, there is the question of what the ISC would be able to say in response to those requests, given the highly sensitive nature of the agencies’ work. Thirdly, if the ISC did not accede to all requests from Select Committees, tensions could develop between the ISC and those committees. That could undermine and damage the ISC’s reputation when the reality is that the ISC is carrying out important scrutiny, determining the priorities for that scrutiny in the light of its expertise and access to the relevant information in line with its remit.
With my assurance that other committees are welcome to make requests to the ISC, along with my explanation as to why I do not think it is necessary to make this into a statutory obligation and the fact that I have concerns about setting it down in that way, I hope that the noble Lord will be more than happy to withdraw his amendment. However, as I said at the beginning in response to my noble friend, we are always prepared to reflect on such points.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
I quite understand the Minister not wishing this amendment to be in statutory form, but would it be beyond the wit of man or woman to embody the idea behind these amendments in a protocol, a memorandum of understanding or something of that kind? I have in mind just such an agreement between the Law and Institutions Sub-Committee of the European Union Select Committee and the Joint Committee on Human Rights as to how one deals with overlaps and so on. Could the Minister perhaps reflect on whether there are other ways of achieving this aim that are not simply an assurance from him but something short of statute?
Lord Henley
My Lords, I have served on one of the two committees that the noble Lord refers to—and felt considerably out of my depth—but not on the other. I note what he says about the memorandum of understanding between them. This might be something that the ISC and other committees could reflect upon between themselves and decide how they want to proceed. Again, however, I do not think that this is best set out in statute, although obviously we will reflect on these matters. That is the point of this House and why we are going through a Committee process. I have set out why I do not think that this is the best way of going about it, but I shall listen to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, and trust that he will feel able to withdraw his amendment at this stage.
Lord Campbell-Savours
In some ways, that may be a helpful response. Following the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Lester, and his reference to the memorandum of understanding, and on the basis of what the Minister said the other day—that there would be an ongoing process over the next few months during which this memorandum of understanding was to be drawn up—
Lord Henley
It is one thing if we are talking about a memorandum of understanding between the Government and the ISC. I think my noble friend was referring to a memorandum of understanding between the ISC and other Select Committees. That, obviously, would not be a matter for the Government.
Lord Campbell-Savours
It might not be a matter directly for the Government but it could well be incorporated into the document. The memorandum of understanding might deal with the whole question of the principle of the relationship that should or might exist between this halfway-house committee and Parliament.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lester, for his intervention. I listened to the three reasons that he gave and I am not altogether sure that, apart from the last one, the first two would really register with members of the ISC. There may be some argument for the last one. On the basis of further consideration of these matters, I beg leave to withdraw this amendment.
Lord Faulks
“Statutory PII for national security sensitive material
(1) In any relevant civil proceedings in which the Secretary of State considers that—
(a) a party to the proceedings (whether or not the Secretary of State) would be required to disclose material in the course of the proceedings to another person (whether or not another party to the proceedings), and(b) such a disclosure would be damaging to the interests of national security,the Secretary of State must make a claim for public interest immunity in relation to that material under this section.(2) A claim for public interest immunity under this section must be made by the Secretary of State issuing a certificate relating to the individual documents in question and giving reasons why, in the Secretary of State’s view, disclosure would be damaging to the interests of national security.
(3) When deciding whether the material attracts PII under this section, the court must weigh, on the one hand, the degree of harm to the interests of national security if the material is disclosed against the public interest in the fair and open administration of justice on the other.
(4) When conducting the balancing exercise under subsection (3), the court shall—
(a) apply a presumption against disclosure of national security sensitive material held by, derived from or relating to an intelligence service, rebuttable only by compelling reasons, and(b) pay due regard to—(i) fair trial principles,(ii) the principle of open justice,(iii) the right to an effective remedy for violations of human rights,(iv) the ability of the media to report matters in the public interest, and(v) the need for state accountability for human rights violations.(5) If, after conducting the balancing exercise under subsection (3), the court considers that the balance of the public interest lies in non-disclosure, it must consider whether sufficient disclosure to enable a fair trial of the issues is possible by other means short of full disclosure, such as—
(a) redaction;(b) provision of a summary of the material;(c) disclosure subject to confidentiality undertakings;(d) hearings in private;(e) restrictions on reporting;(f) restrictions on access;(g) restrictions on the use of the material.(6) If, after conducting the process set out in subsection (3) to (5), the court concludes that the balance of the public interest lies in non-disclosure, the court must rule that the material shall not be disclosed.”
Lord Faulks
My Lords, in moving Amendment 39, I shall also speak to Amendment 40. These amendments are in the names of my noble friends Lord Lester of Herne Hill and Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and me. My noble friend Lord Lester and I are members of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. My noble friend Lord Macdonald, who unfortunately is in the British Virgin Islands at the moment and sends his apologies, and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, are members of the Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House.
We are now moving on to Part 2. These amendments would provide for the insertion before Clause 6 of the public interest immunity procedure to be reduced into statutory form, and would provide that, following PII, either party to civil proceedings could move on to closed material proceedings. A judge may at that juncture grant permission if the court considers that, first, the CMP is the only way forward and, secondly, that the public interest is served in having issues determined by the CMP, which outweighs the unfairness of either the claim or the defence being struck out.
At the moment, PII operates on the basis of common law. It is well understood and all the evidence suggests that judges are getting decisions in individual cases right. However, the Government’s complaint is that, despite the prime facie satisfactory way in which PII operates, there is a justice gap. Certain cases are effectively untriable. They have to be settled or even struck out. The provisions of Clauses 6 to 12 represent the Government’s solution.
The concerns expressed by many noble Lords at Second Reading suggest that there may well be considerable room for improvement in these provisions. I do not claim to speak for my co-signatories or for other noble Lords who have put forward similar amendments in this group, but I can be confident that all are concerned to understand quite how these complex provisions will work in practice. For example, Clause 6(5) states:
“Before making an application under subsection (1), the Secretary of State must consider whether to make, or advise another person to make, a claim for public interest immunity in relation to the material on which the application would be based”.
Many noble Lords and commentators have said that this is a meaningless obligation and that it runs the risk of merely being a tick-box process.
At Second Reading, I said that I would expect judges to require some convincing that the Secretary of State had gone through this process. I suppose there could, in theory at least, be a freestanding judicial review application in relation to that provision. Can the Minister reassure the House that the provision represents a real safeguard and explain how it works, or should work, in practice? Why not, as the amendment proposes, place the PII procedure in the Bill and make it an essential precursor to an application for a CMP?
Another concern expressed by many has been the fact that CMPs are open only to the Secretary of State and not to other parties to the litigation—that is, claimants. It is not immediately obvious what the circumstances are in which a claimant would want or have the ability to invoke a PII procedure and then move on to the CMP, but it surely does not help to make this legislation seem fair and proportionate if the recourse to so-called secret justice is available only to one side.
In the debate on the Bill, much has been made of the memoranda and evidence of the special advocates involved in these closed and open hearings. I share with many other noble Lords a respect for this body of highly qualified men and women, and I identify with many of their concerns. Their view is that PII is working well and that CMPs are an offence to open and natural justice. I do not go that far. These amendments do not attempt to remove the right to proceed by way of CMPs. It may be a form of justice that is very much one of last resort, but I am satisfied that the Government have made their case for the availability of CMPs in civil proceedings, just as CMPs operate in other fields. I am reinforced in this conclusion by the observations of the highly respected Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, David Anderson QC.
It may help if I take the Committee briefly through the amendment, which is on a, “Statutory PII for national security sensitive material”. It provides that the Secretary of State must make a claim for PII and issue a certificate giving reasons. The court must then weigh the balance between the degree of harm as against the fair and open administration of justice, and the amendment sets out the balancing exercise that the court should perform, including,
“a presumption against disclosure of national security sensitive material”.
Subsection (4)(b) of the amendment states that the court should,
“pay due regard to … fair trial principles … the principle of open justice … the right to an effective remedy for violations of human rights … the ability of the media to report … and … the need for state accountability for human rights violations”.
The amendment continues:
“If, after conducting the balancing exercise … the court considers that the balance … lies in non-disclosure, it must consider whether sufficient disclosure to enable a fair trial of the issues is possible by other means”.
The amendment then sets out a menu of other means that have been discovered over the years by judges as a way of mitigating any hardship by means of partial disclosure, and concludes by stating:
“If, after conducting the process … the court concludes that the balance of the public interest lies in non-disclosure, the court must rule that the material shall not be disclosed”.
This process gives the judge the balancing exercise for which he or she is well qualified, but leaves in the hands of the Secretary of State consideration of whether the disclosure of material would damage the interests of national security.
I confess to a little uncertainty about how Clause 6, as drafted, will operate in one important respect. Is it open to the judge to decide that in his view disclosure of the relevant material is not damaging to the interests of national security? In other words, can he second-guess the Secretary of State? In the helpful letter sent by Ministers following Second Reading, with the accompanying algorithm, that seemed to be the contention. If that is right, does it not mean that the CMP could be sidestepped altogether? My reading of the inclusion of “must” in Clause 6 does not sit easily with that construction.
Lord Carlile of Berriew
I am very grateful to my noble friend for giving way, and for the great clarity with which he has opened this debate. However, will he deal with this question: why are PII proceedings less secretive than CMP proceedings?
Lord Faulks
The PII proceedings, which we attempt to define in this amendment, would not normally be secret. The process contains a number of different options for a judge in dealing with an application. It is conceivable that in the course of responding to the particular facts of a case a judge might decide that a certain part of the hearing, even under PII, might have to be under a CMP. However, the purpose of the amendment is not to impose a straightjacket on the procedure but to ensure that the PII procedure is gone through—with all its inherent safeguards—before moving on to CMPs, which are by definition closed material proceedings and therefore do not involve access to the litigants or to the open advocate.
Lord Thomas of Gresford
Is not an answer to the question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, that the PII applications are heard in just as much secrecy as the closed material procedures? The difference is that in PII applications the judge’s decision over what is to be disclosed and what is not to be disclosed is discarded from consideration, whereas with closed material procedures he is supposed to consider it and take it into account. In terms of secrecy, there is no difference.
Lord Faulks
I am grateful for the clarification—that is indeed helpful. In dealing with whether or not it is appropriate to go through the PII process first, the Minister in his response to this suggestion at Second Reading said, at col. 1756, that do so would be “costly and illogical”. I do not expect any judge to spend much time and expense undertaking a process that has an inevitable outcome; nor would I expect advocates to insist on it. However, as I said earlier, the obligation to go through the PII process is an important portal. In this context, I would also expect judges to be very conscious of wasted costs. I cannot for the moment see why it would be illogical to go through the process.
The amendments in this group, which include a statutory definition of PII—for which I give credit to the legal adviser to the JCHR—represent an attempt to preserve the option of CMPs while ensuring that the resort to closed proceedings should be undertaken with extreme care and in a way that minimises the risk of injustice. I beg to move.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
I am grateful to my noble friend for the way in which he introduced the amendments. It makes my task brief and rather less sophisticated. I will make a number of points. First, the report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights on the Green Paper summarised, in paragraph 97 onwards, the main differences between PII and CMP. It pointed out in paragraph 103:
“The Government’s position in the Al Rawi litigation”—
in which I appeared for a third party—
“was that it should be for the courts to make the determination and the Green Paper does not explain what has changed the Government’s position since that case”.
The Joint Committee emphasised the importance of a judge rather than a Minister making the determination. The germ of the idea of putting the horse before the cart rather than the cart before the horse—that is, putting the balancing of PII first and CMP second—came from Mr David Anderson QC in his evidence to the committee.
It is my impression that our allies in the United States are much more concerned about the Norwich Pharmacal point than they are about the closed material point. The closed material point is very much a matter of procedure in which it is not suggested that Wiley balancing, as it is known, would in any way jeopardise national security if it were considered to be the first step in that procedure.
The advantages of considering PII first are that it makes it less likely that there will be an unnecessary resort to CMP. I am agnostic—even though I am a party to our amendment—about the way in which this can be expressed. The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, has another way of doing so, and no doubt it would be easy for the Government to find a way of doing so. I am concerned with the principle, which is that it should be for the judge and not the Minister to determine at the outset of a case whether to rush into the CMP procedure or to ask whether PII is desirable.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
Perhaps I should put this question to the noble Lord, Lord Faulks. I very much applaud the efforts made to produce the amendment, for which I have considerable sympathy, but I am confused by one proposition. As I understand it, under the amendments tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Hodgson, Lord Faulks and Lord Lester, the court has to say, “We are not going to disclose under PII before we get to the possibility of a closed hearing”. In reaching that conclusion, the court has to exclude the possibility of a CMP hearing: it will approach the case on an ordinary PII basis. I can easily envisage a situation where a judge says, “It is a finely balanced case, but I have decided to order disclosure because a fair trial would be so damaged, even though significant damage will be done to national security”. Under the amendment of the noble Lords, Lord Lester and Lord Faulks, that fine balance would have to be struck before getting to CMP. It seems an odd conclusion. Am I right in my analysis of the amendment? If so, why is it put like that?
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
I did not understand it to impose that degree of rigidity. If it does, then I respectfully agree that some modification of the wording is necessary. I want to deal briefly with one or two other points.
The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, may want to say something himself about the Government’s response to the Constitution Committee’s report, which analysed the three flaws, as the committee saw it, in the existing scheme. I read and reread this government document and it gave me a headache because I simply did not understand what it was saying. It seems to be saying that there is very little difference between PII and a CMP, that there would be the same flexibility in a CMP as in PII, and that, having gone through a CMP, the judge can in any case go back to PII. It must be my fault but I simply do not understand what the Government’s settled position in that document really is. The Government say that the judge would have a number of important tools in a CMP to ensure that it was conducted fairly. They say that there is a similar level of flexibility to that available to the judge under PII. They say that it should be exceptional to use a CMP. All these points are certainly interesting but my basic point is on Wiley balancing. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, was responsible in his judgment in Wiley for articulating that Wiley balancing should be open to the judge first and that a CMP should be an exceptional procedure following it and that at all stages national security and other vital public interests should be preserved.
I have just one question for the Minister. Does he agree that there is no case in which an English or Scottish judge has breached national security or not shown the appropriate degree of deference to the executive branch of the security and intelligence services in his or her final adjudication? I ask that because I am very concerned that across the Atlantic there seems to have arisen a complete misunderstanding that our judges cannot be trusted with state secrets and national security. I do not know how that came about. My guess is that it arose in dialogue during the Binyam Mohamed case, especially at the Divisional Court level. However, it seems to me vital, as a matter of public record, that the Government make it absolutely clear that our judges can be trusted and have a fine record of trust of that kind.
Lord Pannick
My Lords, I have added my name to Amendments 39 and 40. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, for introducing the amendment. I recognise that there may well be a need in some exceptional cases for a CMP or closed material procedure, but it seems to me that this should be a last rather than a first resort. My answer to the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, is that PII certainly maintains secrecy just as effectively as a closed material procedure. If it did not, then it would not be a satisfactory alternative. The advantage of PII is that it does not enable the judge in determining the substance of the case—a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford—to rely on material that is seen by only one party and not by the other party. The evidence that is admitted is seen by both sides in the case. My answer to the question posed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, is this. If, as a result of the PII—
Lord Carlile of Berriew
I apologise for intervening again but this seems to be a very important point. I am not sure that the noble Lord, despite all his great distinction, is right in the answer he has just given.
In criminal cases, when a PII application is made, generally the defence knows absolutely nothing about that application and has seen absolutely no documentation underlying it. I have relevant professional experience in criminal cases; I do not have any relevant experience in civil cases so this in a spirit of genuine inquiry. Is the noble Lord saying that in civil cases where a PII application is made, the claimant will have seen the document for which the PII application has been made? If not, we have a problem, do we not?
Lord Pannick
The noble Lord is absolutely correct. In my experience of both civil and criminal cases, the relevant material is presented to the judge by the public authority that has possession of it. The claimant does not see the material. The judge will determine the PII application either by reference to a general description of what it contains or, in appropriate cases, the judge will privately see the material and determine the PII application. Therefore, the noble Lord is absolutely right. Other than in wholly exceptional cases, the claimant will not see it. The point, however, is that it is only if the judge decides that the information may be seen by the claimant—or the defendant in a criminal case—that the material is taken into account by the judge in determining the substantive issues in the case.
That is the advantage of PII: it avoids the case being determined on its substance by reference to material that only one side has seen. If the judge says that PII excludes this material, it is not made public, but equally it is not taken into account by the judge when he determines the case. The whole point of this amendment—as far as I am concerned; I cannot speak for my co-signatories—is that surely the law should seek to ensure that the PII process is gone through in order to identify whether it can provide a satisfactory solution, as it very often will, before we go to the wholly unsatisfactory in principle procedure of the judge deciding the case on its substance by reference to material that only one side has seen.
PII can ensure that even the most sensitive material can be seen by both sides in the case through this means. PII is often used in practice to ensure the redaction of sensitive material so that what is— properly—disclosed to the claimant is not the whole of the document but a redacted version; for example, the names of security agents are removed, or only the gist of the material is disclosed and the judge decides the substance of the case by reference to that document rather than the sensitive material. The amendment seeks to ensure that that process is gone through before there is any question of a closed material procedure.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, says that in PII there is supposed to be a balancing process and the judge might decide that this is very sensitive material but the public interest outweighs the sensitivity, which would leave us in the same difficulty. There are two answers to this. The first answer is that as given by the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill. Nobody can point to any case where the judge deciding a PII application has decided to reveal something that the security services or the public authorities in general regard as sensitive. Judges do this job with enormous sensitivity and with very considerable knowledge of what is required by the public interest.
Lord Pannick
We know that because there is absolutely no evidence of which I am aware of public authorities appealing against PII decisions and saying that it is unacceptable, because sensitive material or any other public information is going to be revealed by the judge.
However, there is a second answer to the noble Lord, which is that under a PII application, even if the public authorities take the view that the judge has balanced matters and decided to reveal that which is sensitive, the public authority has no obligation to reveal it. It can decide that it would rather lose the case than disclose this information. That is why we need a procedure for CMPs, because there may be cases where PII does not produce a satisfactory result for public authorities. I am prepared to accept this, not least because David Anderson QC, the independent reviewer, has concluded that there ought to be such a procedure. My point is that it ought to be a last resort, rather than a first resort. My fundamental objection—
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has much more experience than I have in the uses of PII. Subsection (5) of the proposed new clause lists the different matters which the judge should regard when making his decision. Am I right in thinking that these are matters to which the judge has regard to in a PII case? Are those the kind of considerations that the judge will look at carefully in order to tailor the needs of national security and justice?
Lord Pannick
The noble Lord is absolutely right. The purpose of the new clause before Clause 6, and the detail that is set out in Amendment 39, is that it is an attempt—with the very considerable assistance, as the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, said, of the legal advisers to the Joint Committee—to set out in statutory form the common law position. That is its purpose; but I emphasise that PII is not a procedure that requires disclosure. It is distinct, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lester, says, from the issues that we will be discussing on Norwich Pharmacal where the concern is that if the judge makes an order, there must be disclosure.
My fundamental objection to Clause 6, and the reason I support these amendments, is that under subsection (5) the Secretary of State, before he decides whether to make an application for a closed material procedure, must first consider whether to make a claim for PII. So the obligation is on the Minister to consider whether to apply for PII or not. That is all to the good. However, if a closed material procedure application is made by the Secretary of State—or indeed by anybody else—Clause 6(3) provides that,
“the court must ignore … the fact that that there would be no requirement to disclose if … the material were withheld on grounds of public interest immunity”.
As I understand Clause 6, the judge is obliged to ignore the possibility of PII. I take the view that, just as the Minister ought to consider whether PII provides a satisfactory means of resolving the conflict between security and fairness before he applies for a closed material procedure, equally, the judge should have to consider that.
The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Wallace of Tankerness)
The noble Lord made the same point at Second Reading. Perhaps I might explain how subsections (2) and (3) interact. I understand the point that he is making but it is not as fundamental as he represents it. If I have got that wrong, I apologise. He will realise that under subsection (3) the court has to decide,
“whether a party to the proceedings would be required to disclose material”.
That relates back to the first leg of the two conditions that must be satisfied in subsection (2)—namely, that in paragraph (a). The point is that the judge cannot say, “You wouldn’t have been required to disclose this because it could have been dealt with by PII”. This provision tries to ensure that, if you did not have PII, there would nevertheless be an obligation to disclose evidence under, I think, Part 31 of the Civil Procedure Rules. I hope that explains why this is not a matter of principle but one that indicates what might otherwise be required to be disclosed.
Lord Pannick
I am very grateful to the noble and learned Lord, who is characteristically very helpful on these matters. However, I hope he will accept that it is absolutely vital, in a matter of such importance and sensitivity, that we make it very clear in the legislation that the judge, when asked to decide whether to go into a closed material procedure—in which he will decide the case by reference to evidence that has not been seen by one side—will do so only if he is satisfied that there is no other lawful, proper means of resolving the question. If the Minister is telling me that the Government’s intention is that the judge should first ask himself whether the problem can be resolved by, for example, gisting or redacting the material or by some other means, or that the judge has a power to say to himself, “This material is really not very important in determining the case. Therefore, I do not need to go into a closed material procedure”, I would be very relieved and satisfied.
I ask the noble and learned Lord to reflect on this point. The issue is not really about the proper interpretation of the very difficult words in Clause 2. The question is one of principle, about what we seek to achieve. For the reasons that I have sought to identify, I hope that the Committee and the noble and learned Lord will agree that we should end up in a position whereby the clause states unambiguously that—given the disadvantages that it inevitably involves and the unsatisfactory nature of such a procedure—a closed material procedure, although it may be needed in exceptional cases, should be adopted only if there is no other fair and proper procedure that can be adopted, and if that is the view of the judge who is hearing the case.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
My Lords, I have amendments in this group that refer to the inability of parties other than the Secretary of State to access CMPs. Amendment 41 and consequential Amendment 50 would omit “The Secretary of State” from the first line of Clause 6(1) and replace it with:
“Any party to relevant proceedings”.
I propose this on the grounds of fairness. Throughout the briefing and our debates so far, the Government have stressed the importance of fairness. In my view, the present drafting of the clause represents an unacceptable inequality of arms. A party who is suing the Government has no right to apply for a CMP, yet one of the justifications for CMPs in the Green Paper was unfairness to claimants. The Green Paper claimed that some claimants might find their cases being struck out because a fair trial was impossible due to the fact that the issues were so steeped in secret, undisclosable material that the Government would be unable to defend themselves. The Government claimed CMPs would be necessary to protect the claimants from that eventuality.
In the Government’s briefing, which they circulated ahead of the proceedings on this Bill, they said:
“It is also clear that in some cases, the absence of CMPs is particularly unfair on the claimant. In a recent naturalisation case (AHK and Others) the judge ruled that without any means by which sensitive intelligence could be heard in court, ‘the Claimant is bound to lose, no matter how weak the grounds against him, there is obvious scope for unfairness towards a Claimant’”.
If it is advantageous to any party to use closed material proceedings, why should they not be able to so?
Lord Thomas of Gresford
I will speak to Amendments 42 and 47, which are grouped with the other amendments that have been spoken to. I acknowledge the assistance of the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law in drafting my amendments.
The approach in the amendments introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, is to create a special, statutory public interest immunity procedure, limited to material sensitive to national security, which must be followed by the Secretary of State as a precursor to a closed material application. I consider that to be preferable to the clause as drafted but it is a bit of a straitjacket, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, pointed out. It means that the judge would have to go through a series of hoops set out in Amendments 39 and 40 before he could proceed. I hope to suggest a different model that runs more with the grain of the Government’s proposals and is more flexible but achieves the safeguards that I am sure all noble Lords—except possibly my noble and learned friend the Minister—consider necessary.
The present position, as outlined already by other noble Lords, is that public interest immunity springs from a common-law basis, with its principles derived from a number of cases. I need not go into that. The Government’s approach in the Bill is to leave public interest immunity to the common law and not introduce a statutory procedure, but as an alternative to introduce statutory closed material procedures at the Secretary of State’s discretion for the protection of material sensitive to national security. All the Secretary of State need do is consider whether to make a PII application under Clause 6(5)—but he does not have to make such an application.
It is necessary to restate and hold in the forefront of our minds whenever we discuss this topic the essential distinction between the two applications. In a PII application, the judge weighs the material on Wiley principles and orders disclosure or partial disclosure where he determines that the public interest in the administration of justice outweighs the public interest in non-disclosure. But material that is not disclosed under PII—being, in the judge’s judgment, too sensitive —is not admissible and therefore plays no part in his determination of the case. Under CMPs, closed material is admissible even if it is not disclosed. Indeed, the Secretary of State may wish the secret information to be central to the judge’s determination. I am sorry to restate what has been said over and again but it is important to bear that in mind because it impacts on the amendments I am putting forward.
Therefore, if sensitive material in the hands of Secretary of State undermines his case or supports the the claimant’s case, it is in the Secretary of State’s interest to make a PII application and to persuade the judge not to disclose it or have it form any part of his determination. If, on the other hand, the Secretary of State is in possession of sensitive material which he wishes to rely on and which he wishes to be admissible—which he wishes the judge to take into account—it is in his interest to make application for closed material procedures. Remember, under the Bill it is entirely for the Secretary of State to determine which sort of application he makes.
The choice given to the Secretary of State by Clause 6(5) as to which procedure to follow gives him a significant litigation advantage over the claimant in two respects. First, it may deny to the claimant access to material in his favour when a PII application is made. Secondly, by the use of closed material procedures, if that choice is taken, it puts unchallengeable but admissible evidence in the Secretary of State’s favour before the judge for his determination of the issues. This consequence of Clause 6 is in direct conflict with the motivation of the Bill, as stated publicly by the Lord Chancellor—repeated in speeches and in the documentation that has been supplied to us—that this proposal in the Bill is not to protect secrets, because PII and closed material procedures equally protect secrets, but to make litigation fairer. Yet the proposal to make litigation fairer gives, as I say, a litigation advantage to the Secretary of State.
This brings me to Amendment 42. An astute litigator on behalf of the claimant should suspect that if the Secretary of State makes an application for public interest immunity, the chances are that the sensitive material which is withheld is in the claimant’s favour. The purpose of the amendment, like Amendment 41, is to permit any party to the proceedings to make a closed material application if he has reason to believe it would be in his interest to do so. That would go some way towards equality of arms.
The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, pointed out that in criminal proceedings, with which he and I are particularly familiar, very often a defendant will not know that an application has been made at all. Nothing may be said. I think, but I may be subject to correction, that in civil proceedings a claimant would know that a Secretary of State’s certificate had been issued to claim public interest immunity.
Lord Carlile of Berriew
We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, that in civil proceedings, as in criminal proceedings, there are certain circumstances in which one might know—there are categories set out in judicial decisions—but there are certainly cases in which one might not know, whether in civil or criminal proceedings. I am sure that that is right.
Lord Thomas of Gresford
That is a matter for clarification by people who know about it and we will look into that later.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I am impressed by what has been said about the opportunistic opportunities that this gives. At the moment I am bewildered by what it is suggested the claimant would want to use closed material proceedings for. I can see the point about the appearance of equality of arms, but it strikes one initially as being a slightly odd conclusion to reach. I am sympathetic to the idea that the courts should make sure, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, is saying, that every other option has been tried, but I would be grateful if the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, would explain what are the circumstances in which the claimant—a man such as Binyam Mohamed in an ordinary civil litigation—would want to keep things secret. The noble Lord, Lord Lester, is going to answer.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
I wonder whether this is helpful. In the case of Binyam Mohamed there was a parallel case in the district court of Columbia by another Guantanamo detainee facing a capital charge. This was a habeas corpus case and the question was whether Binyam Mohamed’s evidence, which had pointed to this man as an evil rogue, could be relied upon. The applicant in the habeas corpus case wished to show that Binyam Mohamed had been tortured, so the federal court had to decide that question. It was very much in the interests of the applicant for habeas corpus that that “closed”, secret material be placed before the court to exonerate him. In the end, Judge Kessler came to the conclusion, since it was not contested by the American Government, that he had been subjected to gross ill treatment and that this other man should be granted habeas corpus because Binyam Mohamed’s evidence was unreliable by being induced by torture. That is a real-life example in the context of habeas corpus in which it was in the interests of the applicant to rely upon that material.
Lord Pannick
As a matter of principle, the claimant may believe that the secret material would exonerate him. PII would prevent the secret material from being disclosed to him because it concerns security information, but he is confident that he has done nothing wrong—there is no reason why he should not be given naturalisation or some other benefit. He just wants the judge to be able to look at it. The claimant might prefer the judge looking at it without the claimant seeing it to the judge not seeing it at all.
Lord Thomas of Gresford
It is more than the judge merely looking at it, though; the claimant might want the judge to take it into account through closed material procedures. That is the point. If I were acting for a claimant, knowing that the Secretary of State had a discretion over whether to go for a PII application that would exclude material or a closed material procedure that would include material, make it admissible and allow the judge to take into account, and the Secretary of State chose PII, I would think—and I am not a very suspicious person—that the Government were seeking to conceal something that the judge should have in mind in my favour. I might very well advise my client to take the risk.
In, I think, the case of Gillan the court suggested to the litigant, having looked at the material, that perhaps closed material procedures would assist him, but his counsel did not take the risk and he was stuck with that. So even though the material apparently assisted him, because he would not ask the closed material procedures —unfamiliar territory to most of us—that material, which might have been in his favour, could not be taken into account by the judge. The judge might know about it but he has to cast it to one side under PII.
That is why I say there is such litigation advantage in the way that the Bill is framed. PII applications can exclude stuff that might be favourable to the applicant. I hope that that answers the question that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, raised.
I suggest that Amendment 47 is a neater way than Amendments 39 and 40 of incorporating further safeguards. It would provide that the judge must not make the declaration that a closed material application be made to the court unless he considered that the material was inadmissible on the existing common-law public interest immunity principles and that it was strictly necessary in the interests of justice. These simple amendments of course infer, first, that the judge has considered the question of public interest immunity. It may not be necessary for him to go through the whole process; one recalls that in the Guantanamo case there were some 9,000 documents, so it was likely to take months for a judge to carry out the public interest immunity exercise if he had to do it first. He could look at the nature of the documents and realise that at least some of them would be inadmissible. However, it is the judge and not the Secretary of State who decides whether closed material procedures should be introduced, after the judge has considered whether PII would be a better approach. Secondly, it requires the judge to consider whether it is strictly necessary in the interest of justice. That amendment puts the judge firmly in control of case management. As the Bill is drafted, the Secretary of State not only has the litigation advantage to which I have already referred but actually controls the procedure to be followed.
Lord Carlile of Berriew
My Lords, there are a few brave souls who are not lawyers still left in your Lordships’ House after 55 minutes of this debate. There are three to my right and I suspect that they are the ones who can recognise that there is quite a small pin with some lawyers dancing the rumba of closed material procedures on it and others doing the cha-cha-cha of PII. We owe it to them to give a comprehensible explanation of the difference and of how a proper outcome of this debate is reached. Given that, I suppose I can be forgiven for confusing the matter further by using two Latin phrases, as old lawyers like me tend to do. The first arises from hearing during this debate from the formidable duo of my noble friend Lord Lester and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. I am not sure which way round they appear on the spine of the book on my bookshelf—whether it is Pannick and Lester or Lester and Pannick on human rights—but I suspect that age probably comes before beauty. I see the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, nodding in agreement. There is a danger of argumentum ad maiorem on any issue of this kind. Oh, dear. I give way to the older of the two.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
I remind my noble friend that we are in the presence of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, who has banned Latin from use in courts. On this occasion it would be desirable if my noble friend spoke English and not some archaic antique language.
Lord Carlile of Berriew
The writ of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, certainly ran through the courts in those days, but I am not sure that the use of Latin has yet been banned in your Lordships’ House. I want to use what I regard as a very meaningful Latin phrase, which I read in the first administrative law textbook that I studied, de Smith’s Administrative Law, before Lester and Pannick reached the shelves. It was a seminal work and I remember the phrase “audi alteram partem” being an important part of what I learnt from that book. I am pleased to see the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, nodding at least in recollection if nothing else.
Audi alteram partem is extremely important because it depicts that both sides should be heard wherever possible and it is presumed that both sides should be heard in a legal dispute. For those reasons, in shorthand, I support the succinctly moved amendment of my noble friend Lord Hodgson. For the reasons that he and my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford gave, it seems that there may be cases in which it is a perfectly legitimate tactic and it may be proved to be right in substance for a party other than the Government to apply for a closed material procedure—if CMPs are to survive this legislation.
I hope I am right in saying—and it was certainly evident from the way in which the amendment was moved by my noble friend Lord Faulks—that we are all trying to achieve the same thing with this group of amendments. I firmly believe that the draft legislation shows that the Government and my noble and learned friend on the Front Bench, the Advocate-General, are trying to achieve the same aim. The overriding objective, as we call it, is that civil proceedings should be decided justly and fairly for both sides. I therefore agree with the principle that for the overriding objective to be achieved the proceedings should be as transparent as possible and that hearings in secret in which both sides are not heard should be as rare as possible. I certainly agree with that part of what my wise and successful successor as independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, David Anderson QC, has said. I am a little puzzled as to why so many people seem to believe that PII is fairer than closed material procedures. My experience of PII is limited to criminal proceedings, but it is instructive.
In one case in which I was instructed—a lengthy police corruption case—it turned out that, unknown to me as leading counsel for a defendant, there had been a number of PII applications. Some two to three months into the case, the High Court judge trying it came into court and said: “I wish to hold a further PII hearing in relation to some documentation that I have seen to determine whether it should be disclosed to the defence”. He then retired into chambers with leading counsel for the prosecution, his two juniors and a solicitor from the Crown Prosecution Service. After a lengthy hiatus in which we drank a large number of cups of Nottingham Crown Court’s best coffee, the judge emerged in court and two redacted pieces of paper were revealed. They were rather important and my junior and I wondered why we had not been given these documents at the beginning of the trial. We felt that we should have been but, already many weeks into the trial, the prospects of the jury being discharged and the trial starting again were realistically zero. The same would apply in civil proceedings, where, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has confirmed from his experience, which is different from mine, the same processes are followed. The public authority in question makes its application for PII, usually in secret, the other side—the claimant in civil proceedings—knows absolutely nothing about it, and a few weeks into the trial the judge may decide that he or she should review PII.
What the Government are offering through closed material procedures is not for both sides to be heard but, given the provision in this Bill for the appointment of special advocates, in reality it would become the norm for a special advocate to be appointed. Although not instructed by or on behalf of the claimant, the special advocate would represent the interests of the claimant. Having read a very large number of control order case transcripts, including a lot of closed transcripts, I happen to believe that special advocates have sold themselves rather short and that they were extremely successful, as results have shown, in a large number of control order cases. I was interested and encouraged to hear the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, saying “Hear, hear!” as I made that statement.
Although one would not have a wholly transparent process, one would have a process in which highly skilled advocates, often leading counsel, would represent the interests of the litigants concerned. That looks to me much more like a transparent legal procedure. I do not think for one moment that these procedures, whichever we adopt, should become the norm. They should remain rare. I firmly believe that, although it is inevitable that in almost all cases a public authority will make the application, the decision that determines how the case progresses, if at all, should be made by a judge, having weighed up all the arguments placed before him or her. It is of course inevitable that the issue will be raised in 99 cases out of 100 by the public authority because the public authority is the custodian of national security and of secret material.
Although I can see grounds for amending the legislation, I remain unpersuaded that the cha-cha-cha is a more attractive dance than the rumba here. My noble friend wants to do a waltz, I think.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
I would like to do a quick-step. Is my noble friend going to be sympathetic to Amendment 62 in order to improve his dance?
Lord Carlile of Berriew
I am sympathetic to any amendment which will improve the justice of decisions made. I am broadly sympathetic to Amendment 62. When I was independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, I frequently expressed the view that there should be stronger discussion between special advocates and those whose interests they represent. I remain of the view that the security services are over-sensitive, if not hyper-sensitive, about such communications. The short answer to my noble friend is yes.
I therefore invite the Minister to assist this Committee, particularly the non-lawyers here, by answering the fundamental question as to whether the Government have chosen a fairer procedure. Surely that is all we are trying to achieve. I say “that is all” but, if we achieve it, it will be a noble achievement indeed.
Lord Pannick
Will the noble Lord assist the Committee with why he thinks that so many special advocates, with all their experience, regard closed procedures as so fundamentally unfair?
Lord Carlile of Berriew
They have spoken for themselves and I have read what they have said. The answer is that I do not know. I simply do not agree with them. Each special advocate represents his or her own experience. No special advocate does more than one case at a time. If I have an advantage in this, it is one of observation over a period of years of the work of the body of special advocates.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, that there are considerable improvements that can be made in the way in which special advocates receive and carry out their instructions. However, there is no doubt that they have been more effective than they diffidently appear to accept.
Lord Woolf
My Lords, I should perhaps begin by making certain disclosures. First, I have to confess that, together with the director of the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law, I am among the editors of De Smith, which was referred to in argument as a book that deals with some subjects that are dealt with so admirably by the other book that has been referred to. Secondly, and perhaps more significantly, I should indicate not only that I was a judge who had to deal, as I did from time to time, with PII applications in both criminal and civil proceedings, but that for five years I was what was known as the Treasury Devil, one of whose tasks was normally to appear on behalf of the Government in cases where PII was being sought because of national security. I therefore have a certain degree of practical experience of the position as it arises, alive, within the court system.
The position in criminal proceedings is different from that in civil proceedings, because the issues in criminal proceedings are different from those in civil proceedings. In criminal proceedings, the state is bringing the prosecution. It has the burden of producing the evidence that is to be relied upon. One of the criticisms that have understandably concerned special advocates is that, if the defendant in criminal proceedings does not know the case that is being made against him, it is very difficult for him to give instructions that may be highly relevant and which the special advocate would wish to have in order to do what he is obliged to do: represent the defendant.
In civil proceedings, on the other hand, the probabilities are that the claims for PII or closed proceedings will arise on the grounds of national security where the state is the defendant as opposed to the equivalent of a claimant in civil proceedings, and the person who is the claimant will have full knowledge of the case that he wants to present so as to get the relief that he is seeking. There may be civil proceedings—I put it only as “may be”—in which a special advocate who represents the interests of the claimant can do that more successfully than is possible in criminal proceedings. There may not necessarily be the same inherent unfairness that is always involved in the use of special advocates in criminal proceedings.
While I still stress that the claimant may be under a real disadvantage, and the proceedings may be inherently unfair in that respect, special advocates are certainly better than nothing so far as the party who is being represented by them is concerned. I apprehend that if one were to question special advocates, they would always concede that what they could do was better than their not being there. It is a contribution that must not be ignored, although obviously if one does not need to have secret proceedings and if one is able to disclose all the evidence, the best possible way for that to be done is for it to be done in public, as it should be done in normal civil or criminal proceedings. However, as I say, a special advocate being there is better than nothing.
That brings me to the approach that we are adopting in this legislation. I would say that it has been accepted that there is a need for a procedure that enables in the very few cases that involve national security for material not to be placed before the court in circumstances in which the judge can rely on it. That can be important to the claimant and to the Government because, if the evidence and material are not placed before the court in that situation, the judge may be aware of the material but cannot rely on it in coming to his conclusions, because it is part of his responsibility to determine cases on the evidence that is placed before him in court, whether it is placed before him in the normal way or in the special way that we are considering here.
Only in a small minority of cases is it necessary to resort to the special procedures that we are debating in the course of these proceedings. Certainly on the basis of my experience, usually you can find ways of squaring the circle—ways in which the evidence can be put forward so that it is valuable to the judge without having to risk causing damage to such interests as national security. Justice is done through the advocates involved co-operating, through agreements that certain things are to be redacted, and through the trust that usually exists between the advocates appearing in the proceedings on behalf of the Crown in matters of these sorts and the advocates appearing on behalf of the other parties.
As has been said in argument and as appears in the overriding principle set out in Part 1 of the CPR, the court is seeking to achieve justice, and that should always be the criterion that has to be applied. I would urge that flexibility is very important here. PII has been developed as a common law principle, and if it is accepted on all sides, as I believe it is, that PII in the present proceedings should remain, I question whether we need to reduce into statute that which the common law has developed. Of course, if the common law has developed it, it can continue to develop according to new circumstances that we may not anticipate in the course of the argument taking place in this debate.
I would also urge that it is highly undesirable that we should put the seeking of a PII and a closed hearing into separate watertight containers. If the judge hearing the matter is going to do justice, it is important that he should have before him the knowledge that PII is still available and he can say whether the best way to deal with the matter is through PII or the alternative—through a closed hearing.
The hearing itself might have to be conducted in an unusual way, or might have to be closed, to discuss these matters. However, on this sort of issue the special advocate can be of great assistance to the judge as to the best way of going about it. The advocate on behalf of the Crown will be before the judge and the special advocate can be before the judge, and the judge will take care to ensure that the best way of achieving justice in the situation before him is the one that is adopted.
Many of the amendments here set out principles that I find wholly admirable on the procedure to be adopted on PII. They could have been contained in a text-book; they do not have to be in a statute. So long as it is absolutely clear, as I believe it always has been, that PII is still available, I suggest that that is sufficient for legislation.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
I respectfully agree with everything that the noble and learned Lord has said. Does he appreciate that the reason for this variety of amendments is to achieve precisely the position that he would advocate, and that to get rid of straitjackets seems to be present in the Bill as it stands?
Lord Woolf
I agree that there are dangers, in the way the Bill is drafted at present, of it being thought that there is a straitjacket, but there would be an equal danger of a straitjacket if we adopted either of the alternative forms of amendment that have been proposed so far, although I am bound to say that I prefer the option of the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, and the reasons he explained, to the reason previously put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Lester, and others. If you come second in line in putting forward amendments, you can usually do things marginally better than the previous attempt, and I think that has applied here.
As the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, rightly pointed out, the Bill as it is at present is not as clear as it should be. It is very difficult to express it in a more satisfactory way than has been expressed already, but it could be done and I am sure that if the matter is reconsidered it will be possible to make the situation clear beyond peradventure. I would urge that this approach is adopted.
I should also make it clear that I think that the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, is right in saying that in most situations that are covered by the Bill the result will be preferable to both sides if the closed hearing procedure is adopted rather than PII, because PII has the very unfortunate effect that you cannot rely on the material that is in issue, whereas both the claimant and the Government may want to rely on that material. That is a good reason for having the closed-hearing procedure.
Baroness Berridge
My Lords, I had planned to speak to Amendments 39 and 40 but what I am about to say relates to what is now being described as the overriding objective of this group of amendments. Whichever it is, it is important that the name “public interest immunity” is retained as, even when we are dealing with national security-sensitive information, it is not government immunity, although it is often claimed by the Government as a party. When it is, it is done on behalf of and for the benefit of the public and not the Government.
Baroness Manningham-Buller
My Lords, I hesitate to rise in this very interesting debate, which has been monopolised by noble and learned Lords. I am not learned, so the point I would like to make is a practical one and very short. As the independent reviewer of terrorism has noted, there are a very few cases that are so saturated with extensive roomfuls of highly sensitive material that talking about the odd document and the residue will not work. I make that point because I think there are these very few cases where the whole case is substantially based upon highly sensitive material, and we need to be aware of that.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
It has been an excellent debate. I would like to single out for special mention the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, and the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, the only two non-lawyers who participated. It is important that we put this debate into a non-legal context because normally the legal answer that follows comes from the facts.
In the next two days of Committee we shall deal with two completely different problems. The problem we are dealing with here is not ultimately the protection of national security; it is how there can be fairness in a trial brought by a claimant for damages when he alleges things against the Government to which they may well have an answer which if disclosed to the claimant would damage national security. I say that national security is not in play in this first group of issues is because ultimately the state can refuse to disclose that material in litigation. They can protect national security that way, and indeed they will, but at the cost, as they would see it, of unfairness to them in not being able to deploy their full case.
In this first group of amendments—those to Clauses 6 and 7—we are dealing with fairness in the context of a claim for damages or judicial review being brought against the state. Just picking up what the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, said, which seems absolutely right, it is easy to envisage a situation where a Minister or government department has come to a conclusion based entirely on intelligence material which would in this hypothetical case reveal the reason they came to it, but they cannot disclose a word of it because it would damage national security. That is the situation that the first section of this debate is dealing with—fairness.
The second group of amendments—which we shall come to, perhaps, in five years’ time at the rate we are going at the moment, having had an hour and 38 minutes on this absolutely fascinating topic—is not ultimately to do with fairness but with national security. The amendments touch upon Norwich Pharmacal orders, where the court can order disclosure of information or documents to a claimant and the defendant is not able to say, “OK, we leave the pitch here and we do not agree to any of that”. They must, under the current arrangements, disclose things, and that has two potential affects—
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
I am just wondering whether it is right for the noble and learned Lord to put these issues into such neat boxes. Let us take the case of Binyam Mohamed and assume that there was closed material procedure so that the Government would not have had to pay a lot of money to settle the case. That would be a case saturated with national security on both sides. I am not speaking with any personal knowledge of the case, but Judge Kessler in the United States would have looked at the material showing serious ill-treatment. He would have wanted that material to be put forward. No doubt there would have been material within the intelligence and security service showing that Mr Binyam Mohamed was not an ideal citizen. Both sides would have been reliant upon heavily saturated material from the intelligence and security service. Therefore, I suggest national security would be involved in the first category as well as the Norwich Pharmacal one.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I have read the eight judgments in the Binyam Mohamed case and, although it was dressed up as a judicial review application at one stage, the case was essentially an application for a disclosure of documents and is therefore a Norwich Pharmacal case.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
I am talking about when he was seeking damages in the civil claim after he had been released and brought back to this country. That is the process to which this would be relevant.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
Yes, indeed, and in relation to that the Government would be free to withdraw their defence—indeed this is the route that was taken, as I understand it—at which point national security would be protected. It is that situation that we are dealing with first. As I was saying in relation to Norwich Pharmacal, which we shall deal with at a later stage in proceedings, the Government do not have the option of withdrawing from the case. The consequence of this is that they may be forced to disclose information that any reasonable person would think damaging to national security. Equally significantly, those foreign intelligence agencies that provide us with information might consider that it is no longer politick or sensible to do so.
This evening, however, we are dealing with the category of fairness in the context of civil proceedings, rather than danger to national security. The change proposed by this Bill is significant. Very helpfully, in answer to one of the many reports that Parliament has produced on this issue, the Government have set out the list of circumstances in which closed proceedings are possible at the moment. Generally, they are terrorist-related and not usually in relation to resolving a dispute between two civil claimants; it is about whether the state is going to do something not good as far as the individual is concerned. Therefore, this would be a significant change.
Issue number one for the Government is to establish that there is a sufficient problem—unfairness to the state—to demand this quite significant change. Here in the Chamber we are all aware that in the Al Rawi case the Supreme Court said closed proceedings generally are not fair. That does not mean this is not the answer because it may be the best that can be done. However, we need to pause before introducing a system where, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Kerr of Tonaghmore, said—and everybody agreed with this—closed proceedings could lead to a situation where a judge is looking at material that is not only not cross-examined but might be misleading.
What is the case for the change? The Joint Committee on Human Rights, on which the noble Lords, Lord Faulks and Lord Lester, and the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, sit, had quite detailed hearings about this. To start with, it did not get any evidence. After it closed its witness sessions, it got evidence from Mr David Anderson QC who said that there may be “a small but indeterminate” number of cases,
“both for judicial review … and for civil damages, in respect of which it is preferable that the option of a CMP … should exist”.
In relation to those cases, it was his view that,
“there was material of central relevance … that it seemed highly unlikely could ever be deployed”,
except in closed proceedings.
David Anderson QC divided his two sets of cases into judicial review and ordinary civil damages claims. The judicial review proceedings were all in respect of refusing naturalisation or excluding an undesirable from this country. Those judicial review proceedings are now dealt with under Clause 12, so we put them to one side. He said that three civil damages claims were the foundation of his case that there was this small group of cases in respect of which CMP might be useful.
In response to what David Anderson QC said, a number of special advocates put in evidence in which they questioned his conclusion that the evidence referred to could be deployed only in closed session. They referred to the fact that in every case in which they had been involved, which slightly reflects what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, said, there always proved to be a way, whether by redactions, gisting or some other means, in which the material was deployed in some way without damage to national security. That is where the evidence rests at the moment.
I should say that I was Solicitor-General for a period of time. One of the things that the Solicitor-General does is look at PII certification. There were some difficult problems that were getting worse when I left the post. I suspect that they got worse after I left because the situation in the world changed. I should also say that David Anderson gave very sensible advice and was highly respected. We are in a position where the only person who has seen the detail of the cases is David Anderson QC for whom I have great respect. We are also in a situation where it is perfectly possible—the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller has said this—to envisage cases where intelligence is completely the defence on which the Government would legitimately rely but could not disclose. As the Joint Committee on Human Rights has said, the Government have slightly damaged themselves by the strange way in which they have deployed their case. We are willing to be persuaded, but we need to be persuaded.
Baroness Berridge
There is a slight update on the position of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. As a result of Mr David Anderson QC seeing those cases, he came back to give evidence to us. The suggestion was put to him that the special advocates look at those three cases. After he saw those cases and said what the noble and learned Lord has outlined, we received representations saying, “That is not a correct procedure. We need to go in as well to see those cases and to see whether they cannot be dealt with”. At the moment, I believe that the special advocates with security clearance have been invited to go in and look at those cases, so that we can have two views on whether those cases can be determined under the present system.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I was aware of that. The Joint Committee on Human Rights said:
“The flexible and imaginative use of ancillary procedures (such as confidentiality rings and ‘in private’ hearings) has meant that to date there is no example of a civil claim involving national security that has proved untriable”.
So the committee is saying that there may be ways around that. I find it difficult to imagine that the key point about the closed material procedure is that the claimant does not see the documents. From what has been said—this may well be right—the claimant is the person you do not want to see the material. How does a confidentiality ring or an in-private hearing deal with that fundamental point about closed material proceedings? From this side of the House, we understand what is being said but query whether the case is yet proved.
On the second issue, let us assume that you need something because the case is to be treated as proved in relation to these three cases, which is what is relied on. Is what the Government are proposing the right answer? Remembering that the point here is fairness and not the protection of national security, in our respectful submission, the solution is obviously flawed. There are two problems with it. First, it says that where a Minister certifies or contends that national security would be damaged—no balancing exercise: end of story—closed material proceedings are allowed. No balancing would be allowed.
There is a little bit of movement on the other side in relation to that. I say that because Clause 6(1) states:
“The Secretary of State may apply to the court seised of relevant civil proceedings for a declaration that the proceedings are proceedings in which a closed material application may be made to the court … The court must, on an application under subsection (1), make such a declaration if the court considers that … such a disclosure would be damaging to the interests of national security”.
There is no balancing of any sort before you get to the declaration of Clause 6(1).
Clause 7(1)(c) makes provision for rules of court and states that,
“the court is required to give permission for material not to be disclosed if it considers that the disclosure of the material would be damaging to the interests of national security”.
Once even the most minor damage to national security is established, the door comes down and you do not disclose.
I cannot believe that that is what the Government intend in relation to this. They do not even include in the provision anything along the lines of “Before you do that, think very carefully about whether the problem can be avoided by any one of the many means currently used”. My two big worries about the Bill in this respect would be, first, that there is no balancing exercise and, secondly, that there is no requirement for there to be thinking about whether there are means by which it could be avoided in other ways.
The noble Lord, Lord Thomas, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, came together in an unusual combination in relation to this. They said that maximum flexibility is the answer and I agree. This is not a maximum flexibility situation. For the two reasons that I have given, I would respectfully submit that the Government have got it wrong in relation to this.
What is the answer? For the reasons I have given, I think that what the noble Lords, Lord Faulks, Lord Lester and Lord Pannick, have proposed does not quite get there. I cannot understand why the obvious answer, at the moment, is that you give a judge the power to rule that it is PII and is not disclosed; or that it is disclosed in full; or that, in exceptional circumstances, it should be heard in a closed material proceeding. With the amendment in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Faulks, Lord Lester and Lord Pannick, you end up in a situation where only if you say no to disclosure can there then be a closed material procedure. However, there must be cases where it is a finely balanced thing. If the court was forced to choose between disclosure and non-disclosure, it would choose disclosure, but if it also had the option of a closed material procedure, it would take that. The amendment does not allow for that flexibility.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
The spirit of liberty is the spirit that is not too sure that it is right, but I tried to indicate agnosticism about the precise way of approaching it. I entirely agree with the noble and learned Lord, with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, and with my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford that flexibility is key and that if we can achieve that, we do not want to put it into a straitjacket. We simply produced a form of words that were an attempt to be formal but were not intended to be the last word at all.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I hope that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, takes the same view of this Bill. I am grateful for what the noble Lord, Lord Lester, said and one can recognise that view around the House. I am not yet persuaded of the need for it, but it could be that the noble and learned Lord will persuade me. If there is a need for it, the question is then: what is the right course? In my respectful submission, neither the Government’s proposals nor the amendment quite get there.
With the greatest respect to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, who I agree with in relation to flexibility, in the light of the decision in the Al Rawi case I do not think it is possible simply to leave the position for the common law to develop. As I understand the Al Rawi decision, it is effectively saying, “You cannot have a closed material procedure unless the parties agree; and even then we are not sure”.
Lord Woolf
I was saying that PII should be left flexible. I was not suggesting that you could do without legislation.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
That was my fault. More generally, I have two further points. First, I now understand the point made by the noble Lords, Lord Hodgson and Lord Thomas. I did not understand it previously. I thought that they were talking about the claimant keeping material back, but I now understand that they were saying that it should be possible for the claimant to say that he has not seen the material, but that the judge should see it, even if the claimant does not. I can see force in relation to that. Even though it appears to give equality of arms to the claimant, it is in fact a very unequal equality because the claimant has not seen the material and the defendant has seen it. The tactical decision that the claimant will make in litigation is quite tricky.
Lord Thomas of Gresford
I think I made precisely that point—that it was not equality of arms but a step towards equality of arms, and it was better than the present situation.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
Yes, and indeed my noble and learned friend—although I should not refer to him as learned, but he is learned in every other respect—Lord Beecham is saying that that is exactly the point that the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, made. There is agreement all round on that.
Where we come out in relation to this is: prove your case. If you do that, then having no balancing or requirement to go through steps beforehand is an inadequate response. We favour more the amendments tabled. We particularly like the idea of flexibility that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, and the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, have advanced. We hope that the Government will, having heard the debate, produce a reformed approach that will reflect a pretty unanimous view around the House on how best to deal with this issue.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I join the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, in congratulating all who have taken part in the debate. It has been very helpful. I certainly welcome the spirit in which various proposals were put forward.
Perhaps I may deal first with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, who said that he remains to be convinced. I noted that most other contributors to the debate thought that there were cases, albeit a small number, where closed material proceedings would be required. He quoted David Anderson QC, who has had access to some of the material and has been satisfied. There is only a small number of cases. No one is claiming that there is a huge number, and I will come on to that in a moment. There is the experience of people such as the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham -Buller, who have seen the kind of cases where this issue could arise. I generally agree with the analysis where the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, indicated at the outset of his speech that there were two different issues here—fairness in civil proceedings that by their nature are not of the Government’s instance, and other cases that we will consider later in Committee with regard to Norwich Pharmacal.
We are trying to secure fairness. The Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law, which has been quoted and referred to in this debate, said, in its response to the public consultation that,
“we consider that the prospect of claims alleging very serious wrongdoing on the part of state agencies (such as complicity in kidnapping, forced disappearances and torture—as have been made in several recent cases) being dismissed because key evidence inculpating state agencies is held to be immune from disclosure, to be a very concerning one from the perspective of the rule of law”.
We are seeking to ensure that there is material there and, if so, that it can be placed before a judge, obviously subject to safeguards, and that if national security issues are involved they would not be prejudiced by the material coming into the public domain.
I detected in the debate a sharing of that objective. It is perhaps worth reminding the Committee that in the Green Paper that the Government published last year, we made it clear in paragraph 2.4 that:
“CMPs should only be available in exceptional circumstances, and where used, every effort is and should continue to be made to have as much material considered in open court as possible. But in the small number of cases where sensitive material is crucial to the outcome, it is better that the court should be able to decide the case, despite the additional complexities a CMP might create, than—in a worst case—that the case should not be tried at all”.
We also said in paragraph 2.5:
“An appropriate mechanism for triggering the CMPs will help to ensure that they are only used where it is absolutely necessary to enable the case to proceed in the interests of justice. The principle of open justice is an extremely important one, and any departure from it should be no more than is strictly necessary to achieve a proper administration of justice”.
I hope that that provides reassurance to a number of my noble friends; the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, emphasised the importance of it—as did the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer.
Perhaps I may first address the amendment of my noble friend Lord Faulks. It would introduce a system of statutory public interest immunity for national security material only. I fully recognise that the purpose of the amendment is, as it were, as a precursor to Amendment 40. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, indicated, nevertheless it would represent a change from a situation where public interest immunity has proceeded on a common-law basis. Putting it on a statutory footing would be a significant change. We obviously need to put closed material proceedings in civil cases on to a statutory footing, because in Al Rawi the Supreme Court indicated that there was no common-law basis for them. We are dealing with two different things in that respect.
PII is a principle that the courts have developed over a number of years to deal with the handling of sensitive material, and a wide and flexible range of public interests falls within its ambit. However, I have concerns that to change all these things may lead to more difficulties than the problem the change was intended to resolve. The Government ruled out a statutory PII in the Green Paper because it would offer little advance on the current system in providing clarity on the applicable principles, stability and certainty. If you start to create a statutory presumption in relation to national security when PII is asserted, it would start to raise questions when PII is claimed and sought in respect of some other grounds.
However, I accept that the primary purpose of the amendment was to prepare the way for Amendments 40 and 47, on which my noble friends Lord Faulks and Lord Thomas raised important issues about the relative benefits and interaction of closed material proceedings and public interest immunity.
My noble friend Lord Faulks asked whether Clause 6(5) was a tick-box exercise. It is important to emphasise that it is a statutory duty. The Secretary of State would consider whether a claim for PII should be made before applying for a CMP on the basis that it is a statutory duty and a legally binding obligation. Were someone to apply for judicial review of that exercise, the Secretary of State would in practice need to show the court that he or she had in fact properly considered PII as an alternative to a CMP application. That entails giving the matter serious consideration, taking into account all relevant considerations, ignoring irrelevant ones, and coming to a rational conclusion on the facts of a particular case.
The statutory duty would mean that, were PII successfully claimed, for example, the Secretary of State would consider factors such as what this would mean in terms of exclusion of materials which CMPs would otherwise allow the court to take into account. It may relate to the volume of national security material, or only one piece of evidence in the case might be relevant. Why go through the requirement for PII if indeed there is only one piece of evidence or—at the other extreme, and this is the term that has been used—if it is saturated? It may also relate to how relevant or sensitive the national security material is to a particular case. However, it is not a tick-box exercise.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
I do not understand why it is sensible to do this by way of satellite litigation—judicial review of a Minister—rather than leaving the judge at the centre to make the judicial decision himself.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I come on to why I do not agree that the PII ought to be exhausted first, and that that should be the test of what should apply with regard to an application. I have indicated why it would not be advisable, and I totally accept what my noble friend said: he is agnostic as to the terms of this. We are just trying to find a way of reaching proceedings that are acceptable.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
Just to clarify, I am not talking about which comes first. I do not understand why it is sensible to say that a Minister makes the decision, and then it can be judicially reviewed. Why is that a more practical and sensible approach than leaving the flexibility to the judge from the very beginning?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
Of course, it has been Ministers who have asserted PII, and I think that is what we expect the Minister to do: to give consideration to whether that would be appropriate in this particular case before considering an application for closed material procedures.
We do not find an exhaustive proceeding of PII satisfactory because, where it is obvious from the outset that the Government would be claiming PII, and national security counts for the overwhelming majority of relevant material, why go through the PII exercise before applying to the court for a declaration that closed material procedure can be used? That may be the kind of case that the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, was talking about. As I have indicated, the Government’s proceedings specifically include a duty to consider it. However, Mr David Anderson QC in his evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights said that the termination could be made without conducting a whole PII. He said that,
“if the exercise is plainly going to be futile, I do not think legislation should require it to be performed”.
Lord Pannick
I ask the noble and learned Lord whether he agrees with the evidence that Mr Anderson gave in answer to a question from the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, when he said:
“The closed material procedure is a weapon that could usefully be added to a judge’s armoury, but it should be for the judge to decide on the fairest way to dispose of a case”.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, talked about trying to square the circle. By the time I come to the end of my remarks, I will perhaps suggest that the circle is not as far from being squared as may appear from some of the comments that have been made. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, is a member of the Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House, and its report did not go so far as to recommend that the Bill require PII to be exhausted before a CMP declaration is sought from the court. The report stated:
“We can see force in the argument that it will sometimes be otiose to push the PII process to its completion before turning to CMP”.
Therefore, the idea that we should exhaust PII beforehand has some practical difficulties. Amendment 47 of my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford may try and avoid that, but I am not sure that it would because it still appears to require an exhaustive process. My noble friend referred to the Guantanamo civil damages claims, where there were 250,000 potentially relevant documents for which PII might have to be considered. We are talking about having to go through all that.
I come on to the two stages of the closed material procedures, an important part of what I wish to say to your Lordships. There is what might be described as the gateway application—basically covered by Clause 7—and then there is detailed consideration of the documents once a CMP has been granted. Of course, on the detailed consideration of the documents, not quite the same test would apply, and we would have to go through all these documents again to see if a CMP should apply to each one individually. That could take considerable time and cause delay to the claimant, which is of quite considerable importance as well.
My noble friend Lady Berridge asked if the court should have gone through PII in the Al Rawi case because it could have resulted in a balancing act and things might have gone into open court. The point is that if the court had overturned the PII certificates on Wiley grounds, the result would not necessarily have been disclosure of the material in open court, if disclosure would have damaged national security. The Government would have to seek to have the material removed from the litigation by making concessions or by seeking to settle. Indeed, that is one of the issues that we are trying to address with these proposals.
Some have suggested that under public interest immunity more material would be heard in open court than in a CMP. We do not believe this to be the case. Nothing heard in open court now should be heard in secret in consequence of these provisions. In practice—and for the very reason I have just given to my noble friend Lady Berridge—claimants will have access to the same level of information, because, where the court declares that the case is one where closed material procedure may be used, this does not mean that all material in those proceedings is automatically heard in closed proceedings. As with PII, there will be a painstaking exercise to ensure that as much of the evidence as possible is heard in open court.
This painstaking exercise has sometimes been overlooked. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, said that the Clause 6(3) test is passed and the door closes. That is not the case. The Clause 6(3) test is only that the CMP may be used in principle, and there is then a detailed assessment at stage 2 with regard to the provisions that are available, with the rules of court to be promulgated under Clause 7. I hope this addresses some concerns. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and my noble friend Lady Berridge made a point about the second stage of the process. The decision to go into closed material procedures is an in-principle decision, and there is no equivalent with regards to PII. That is stage 1.
In stage 2, in Clause 7, the court considers what might then be done with the material. It may be on a document-by-document basis. It could lead to redaction, and it could lead to gisting. It would be quite possible for every piece of material relevant to proceedings to be partially disclosed, redacted or gisted, If this could be done without damaging national security. I hope that that gives reassurance that there is a stage which, although not exactly the same, is a very similar test and process to PII. As we said in the Green Paper, we wish to be in open court as much as possible, and we believe that that can be facilitated by going through a stage 2 process.
My noble friend Lord Faulks asked about the points made by our noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern on Second Reading with regard to Clause 7(3). The importance of Clause 7(3) is that it follows Clause 7(2)—obviously—and covers circumstances where if the court refuses permission for particular evidence to be heard in closed proceedings, and the Government elect not to disclose that material, the court has the power to direct that that material should not be relied on and should be excluded from the proceedings, or to give directions that concessions must be made. These are very important safeguards.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My understanding of the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, is that the Government can choose to go for PII and get the material out completely or, if it helps them, to say, “Let’s have it in secret without the other side seeing it”. The Government can make that choice and nothing in the Bill would make it wrongful for them to make their choice by reference to what would give them the best prospect in litigation.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
Certainly I am aware of that concern. It was perfectly legitimate for the noble and learned Lord to raise it, because it motivated the amendments tabled by my noble friends Lord Thomas and Lord Hodgson.
For the sake of completeness, I will indicate that it is important to remember that the court will need to be satisfied that disclosure of that material would damage the interests of national security, and that any obligations under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights are met. Of course the court will have the assistance of special advocates representing the interests of excluded parties in testing whether these conditions are met. I endorse what was said by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, and my noble friend Lord Carlile, that perhaps special advocates have sometimes undersold themselves. I think it was in the case of M v Home Office that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, indicated that he had been very impressed by what the special advocates had done in challenging evidence.
I move on to the point about the Secretary of State and the important amendment spoken to by my noble friend Lord Hodgson. It raises an important issue that the Constitution Committee flagged up with very seductive arguments that we should consider. I am aware that there is concern about the potential unfairness of the Secretary of State being the only party to proceedings who can make an application. However, I will explain to the Committee that we heard that the motivation behind the amendment was concern that there would be too much control in the hands of the Government, and that were they to apply for PII to exclude material from the case, the other party would not be able to request a CMP so that the information would be put before a court. As I indicated, this matter was picked up by the Constitution Committee.
There is an important constitutional point here. Under our system of government, the Executive are the guardian of the United Kingdom’s national security interests. The courts have frequently stated that the Government’s function to protect national security by claiming PII is a duty rather than an option. Correspondingly, we believe that it should be the responsibility of the Secretary of State to apply for a declaration that a closed material procedure may be used when the sole criterion is that of national security. There would have been stronger arguments if some of the other grounds that were floated in the Green Paper had been included—but we confined this purely to national security. We believe that the courts can play an essential role.
Lord Faulks
I entirely accept what the noble and learned Lord said about the relative roles of the judge and the Secretary of State. Perhaps this might give him an opportunity to deal with the response in the Second Reading debate. It was suggested in the algorithm that the judge could decide what was in the interests of national security.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
It was helpful of my noble friend to raise that. Clause 6(2) states that there are two ways in which a judge must be satisfied before he must grant an application for closed material proceedings. The first is that the party to the proceedings would be required to disclose material to another person in the course of the proceedings. That would normally come under Rule 31 of the Civil Procedure Rules. Again, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, that Clause 6(3)(a)(i) is there because there could be circumstances in which a judge could take the view that you would not be required to disclose something because you could assert public interest immunity, and that argument would succeed. Apart from the fact that there might be public interest immunity, if disclosure would be required under normal rules in civil proceedings, that would be the first test that the judge has to apply.
The second test is that it would be damaging to the interests of national security. It was said by a number of noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill, that the courts over many years have been very respectful of the government position on that. The Bill makes it very clear that the application would be one in which special advocates would be involved. They could assert to the judge that the case had nothing to do with national security and that the Government were trying to cover up some embarrassment. That is why the second test is there. The two conditions must be fulfilled: first, there must be a requirement to disclose; and, secondly, disclosure would be damaging to the interests of national security.
In practical terms, the Secretary of State would be in the best position to judge the scope and nature of national security-sensitive material. Despite the fact that the absence of a CMP might be detrimental to their interests, other parties will not even be aware that relevant national security information exists, and would not be able fully to judge what damage there might be if the information were released. It is therefore clear that the argument for the Secretary of State making the application is a strong one. Nevertheless, it can remain open to a third party to approach the Secretary of State and request an application for a CMP should they require one. One example of this might be if the police were party to proceedings involving national security-sensitive material, for example in relation to counterterrorism. The Secretary of State would assess the risk of damage and make an application for a CMP on their behalf.
If the public interest were more widely drawn than national security, there would be a stronger case for other parties to the proceedings to be able to apply for a CMP. However, as my noble friends Lord Thomas of Gresford and Lady Berridge made clear—I was asked about this by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer—one concern is that the Government might want to have their cake and eat it, and might choose between claiming PII and applying for a closed material procedure opportunistically—opting for PII to exclude material and cover up wrongdoing and CMP where closed material would help their case. We do not believe that this is a realistic concern.
I assure noble Lords that the intention behind the CMP proposals is precisely that allegations against the Government are fully investigated and scrutinised by the courts. The intention is that all relevant material, helpful or unhelpful, will be put before the courts. Although it is in the first instance for the Secretary of State to instigate the CMP application, or to make a claim for PII, the power to order CMP or accept a PII certificate will rest with the judge, who will be alert to any unfairness to the non-government party, and with the CMP would have the case-management powers under Clause 7 to ensure that individual pieces of evidence are treated fairly through requiring disclosure or exclusion. It is inconceivable that a judge assessing the PII claim would conclude that the public interest in excluding material outweighed the public interest in its disclosure if the Government were cynically seeking to use PII to exclude material that undermined their case or assisted another party to the proceedings, especially where the court would know that the possibility existed of making an application for the use of a closed material procedure.
This is where the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, is relevant. He said that these matters could be looked at in the round and should not be put in silos. That is what we anticipate happening. The concern is perfectly legitimate and I fully understand it. However, we do not believe in reality that that would happen, and that the judge who was asked to grant a closed material proceeding or a public interest immunity certificate would allow such cynical ploys to succeed.
Lord Thomas of Gresford
That sounds like one of the great lies. “I am from the Government and I am here to help you”. The noble and learned Lord is saying that a Minister faced with a claim against him is inevitably going to be like a judge and not weigh one thing against another. If he can win his case by going for PII instead of closed material procedures, which I suggest he can, why would he not choose to go for PII? That is why I say my suspicions would be aroused if the Minister who had that choice went for PII, knowing that excluded material could not form part of the judgment. That is the problem. For the past five minutes the noble and learned Lord has been emphasising that the judge has this decision; he has this discretion; he looks at this material; he makes up his mind. The Bill is a straitjacket whereby the Minister controls which procedures are to be followed as well as what material is to be disclosed. So I hope the noble and learned Lord will reflect on what he has been saying.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I do not accept that it is a straitjacket. I have sought to indicate that at the second stage proceedings each individual piece of material will be looked at. If disclosure subject to redaction is needed, that is what will be ordered. If gisting is needed, the power will be there for the court to do that. I do not believe there is terribly much between anyone as to what we seek to achieve. I have made it clear that it is not the intention of the Government that uncomfortable, unhelpful evidence should be held back. Indeed, I have just said that it is our intention that all relevant material should be before the court. If your Lordships do not think that the wording achieves that, it would be only proper, given the quality of the debate we have had, for me to reflect on the points that have been made. We are all grappling with how we get the procedure that achieves an objective which is widely shared.
I hope noble Lords will also consider the points that I have made. Some of the comments made suggested that it had not been fully understood what the nature and extent of the second stage procedure would be with regard to individual documentation and evidence once the gateway had been opened and the principle of closed material proceedings had been accepted. I hope noble Lords will reflect that that procedure is available. I am more than willing to engage with the Opposition, with my noble friends and with Cross-Benchers to see if we can address the objective in a way which does not defeat the object of this but ensures that in cases where justice and fairness demand that material should be made available, material which would be damaging to national security were it to go into the public domain, that that can be achieved. I have no doubt that when I invite my noble friend to withdraw his amendment he will indicate that we will come back to it at the Report stage. I sincerely hope that over the summer months we can have some consideration of it and perhaps the agnostics might become believers.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
Just to be clear, is the Minister saying that he accepts that the judge at the first stage should have complete discretion in deciding on case management and whether it should be dealt with first by PII or not? If not, why is that such a bad idea?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, that is not what I said. I did say, however, that the judge at the first stage has to be satisfied that two tests are met before he even opens the gateway to closed material proceedings. There has perhaps been some misunderstanding that when you pass through the gateway, everything suddenly becomes subject to closed material proceedings. That is not the case. It is at that stage that individual pieces of evidence are looked at. That is a materially different position from the one which has sometimes been suggested that the gateway is the be-all and end-all and once you go through the gateway the doors and the shutters came down. That is not what is proposed but obviously if noble Lords do not believe that is properly reflected in the drafting, I am more than happy to try to find a way in which we can proceed.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, I am grateful for that constructive indication. I would co-operate fully in trying to draft an answer that reflects what the noble and learned Lord is saying. I understand him to be saying that if a PII application were made, the judge would be able to say, “You cannot keep all this secret. You should deal with it in a CMP”. That is what I understand the noble and learned Lord to be saying. I think he is nodding, although it may be an involuntary twitch. Assuming that he is nodding, there seems to me to be a problem in the drafting because it gives the court the power to make a CMP order only where there is an application by the Secretary of State. I would be more than happy if the solution reached was to apply to the judge who has the power to decide, balancing all the factors, whether this should be PII, complete disclosure or a CMP. That is not what the Bill says now but that is broadly what I understand the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, to be arguing for—the noble Lord, Lord Lester, is nodding—and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, to be saying. I am more than happy to sit down with everybody and draft that but that is not the current position.
Lord Thomas of Gresford
Perhaps I may add that my Amendment 45, which we have not come to, is designed to replace the word “must” in Clause 6(2) with “may”—in other words, a discretion for the judge to decide whether to make a declaration based on the criteria that he must apply.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, again we are falling into the trap of jumping to stage 2 and thinking that the application immediately rules everything as closed material, which is not the case. If there is a body of evidence which can be presented to the judge showing that interests of national security are absolutely pertinent to the determination of this case, it is “must”; there must be closed material proceedings. But, as I have indicated, that does not mean that every piece of evidence is to be excluded and is not to be disclosed. If the Secretary of State cynically applies for PII when a CMP is available, the judge may not be disposed to grant PII. What I understood from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, is that the reality, particularly if you have special advocates arguing the case, is that unless the Secretary of State seeks a CMP for this kind of material he will have less of a chance of getting his PII accepted. Even if a CMP application was not made by the Secretary of State and a request was made to him for a CMP which he refused, that in itself would be judicially reviewable. If that refusal was seen to be unfounded and irrational, or the only rationality was to hide malfeasance, then clearly that would weigh heavily with the Secretary of State. I have indicated what we intend to achieve by this. I repeat: the intention is that all relevant material, helpful or unhelpful, will be before the courts. I think we can have a worthwhile discussion as to how that could be brought about.
Lord Faulks
My Lords, this has been a lengthy but helpful debate. I am grateful to all noble Lords for taking part and for the very constructive comments that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, has made. It seems to me that we are moving, if not dancing as the noble and learned Lord would have it, towards some sort of consensus here. The question is whether we have found the right route to CMPs—an option which should be exercised only in the last resort. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, said, it is certainly better than nothing. It is hoped that there will not be many cases that need CMPs. Like the noble Lord, Lord Lester, I do not wish to be competitive about which amendment is preferable. The amendments are intended to probe the somewhat complex provisions. There has been a great deal of clarification from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, for which I am grateful. It is still not entirely clear to me how some of the various parts of the procedure are going to work with each other. I think it is accepted that there is room for some improvement in that regard.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, asked for the evidence that PII is actually working. Apart from the anecdotal evidence and the absence of appeals, there is some substantial evidence from the special advocates themselves, who say that not only is it working but it is enough, and they do not support the possibility of CMPs at all.
I accept that there is always a danger in putting in statutory form something that is in common law; it could perhaps remove the possibility of growth. None the less, PII is a mature form of the common law and the definition of PII contains a great many checks and balances, as this statutory interpretation has set out. Taking Amendments 39 and 40 together, it looks a rather complex procedure, formulaic or even a straitjacket. In practice, all it is doing is summarising what is well established, and there will indeed be a great deal of flexibility even if one were to follow the terms of the amendment.
Flexibility is clearly desirable, but I would reiterate that it is most important—as the Government acknowledge in Clause 6(5)—that the question of PII should be properly considered, and potentially judicially reviewable. This amendment puts in the Bill an obligation to go through the process before going to CMPs. I suggest that, with modifications, that represents a positive safeguard on what I hope will be a rarely resorted to but undoubtedly necessary procedure. In the light of what has helpfully been said, I am happy to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
My Lords, before I resume the House, I take this opportunity to offer some assistance to noble Lords who will be participating in the next debate in the name of my noble friend Lord Astor. As is obvious from the list of speakers, there is great interest in this debate, which has led us to have to limit speaking times to three minutes, with the exception of my noble friend Lord Astor and my noble friend the Minister. I know that noble Lords are familiar with the way that the clock operates and will want to work with my noble friend the Whip on duty tonight to ensure that we finish the debate in the hour to which it is limited.
Railways: High Speed 2
(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Viscount Astor
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress they have made in reviewing the economic viability, value for money and benefit-cost ratio of the High Speed 2 London to Birmingham, and London to Leeds and Manchester, lines.
Viscount Astor
My Lords, HS2 is a controversial proposal designed to operate a high-speed rail link between London and Birmingham, and eventually onwards to Leeds and Manchester. It is controversial for a number of reasons.
The first is the route: a new line cutting through some of the most unspoilt countryside in England, where there are already two existing lines, one operated by Virgin Trains and the other by Chiltern Railways. Either line could be upgraded or the new line could follow one of the existing motorway routes—an option suggested by the Transport Select Committee—which would cause minimal disruption compared with HS2.
However, I want to concentrate on cost. The question is whether the cost of £33 billion is worth the benefits that might accrue. We all want better services from north to south, but I challenge the assumption that HS2 is the answer. The Government’s case rests on the assumption that rail travel is destined to grow at the rate projected by the Department for Transport, but one has to say that the department’s record in projecting future passenger numbers is not good.
In the words of the National Audit Office, the department used “hugely optimistic assumptions” about passenger numbers on HS1. Passenger numbers from 2007 to 2011 were only one-third of the original 1995 forecast and two-thirds of the 1998 forecast. The NAO went on to say that the costs had exceeded the savings from shorter journey times, and the Public Accounts Committee said that costs would eventually rise to £10 billion.
I am sure that the Minister will quote the support of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for High Speed Rail. However, it is a group set up specifically to support high-speed rail, so I would remind him of another report by the Public Accounts Committee, which came to the opposite conclusion and recommended:
“The Department must revisit its assumptions on HS2 and develop a full understanding of the benefits and costs of high speed travel compared to the alternatives”,
and that it should consider the alternatives, such as investment in more local train routes.
The department claims to have improved its forecasting, with better computer modelling and more computer power, but of course wrong assumptions in produces wrong statistics out, whatever the rise in computer power. What it has failed to take into account is that the projected benefits are largely dependent on business use, and business use is changing.
Why travel so often when Skype and internet conferencing are becoming the norm? Reductions to already short journey times are largely irrelevant to business efficiency as carriages are now linked to the internet and provide a good working environment. To assume that all time spent on trains is wasted is simply not credible. The department’s own report Productive Use of Rail Travel Time and the Valuation of Travel Time Savings for Rail Business Travellers asserts that a reduction of 10 minutes in journey time increases the amount of working time by only 0.75 of a minute.
HS2 does not deliver a step change in journey times. It connects to the centre of Birmingham but there is no onward connectivity and a change is required; nor does it connect to Heathrow, as promised in the Conservative Party manifesto. This connection is offered as a possibility, some time after phase 2, in 2033. What is more, a route via Heathrow would cause the least damage to the Chilterns, crossing through its narrowest part. HS2 will cut the journey time from London to the centre of Birmingham but only by barely half an hour, and much less if you want to make an onward connection.
By the Government’s own admission, the benefit-cost ratio for phase 1 declined from 2.4 in March 2010 to 1.4 in January 2012, and to just 1.2 in April 2012. However, even this overestimates the true position, as the DfT also admits that its assumptions are based on out-of-date gross domestic product figures. If one takes into account the latest GDP forecast and uses the later rail demand model, the benefit-cost ratio dips below 1—well below the Government’s own ratio for acceptable capital expenditure benefits.
In an earlier statement to the Transport Select Committee, the then Transport Secretary Philip Hammond agreed that below 1.5 he would need to seriously review the viability of the project. A full Y route to Manchester and Leeds produces only a modest increase to 1.4 in the benefit-cost ratio. It seems to me that the department is going to have to review the project.
We know that peak-time services from Euston in the evenings are only 56% full and that Manchester services are 45% full. We know that total journeys per person by all transport modes are declining, not increasing, so to justify the projected increases by 2032 there would have to be a large shift from road to rail. Looking ahead to 2032, we know that most cars will be electric and therefore very fuel-efficient. The Government accept that HS2 does not reduce CO2 emissions. There is no evidence that HS2 is going to cut road usage. By 2032, electric cars could easily be driving themselves on the main routes, as has already been tested in America.
What will increase in the future, as I think everybody agrees, is commuter use of the rail network, but HS2 does not solve that issue. I believe that the answer is an upgrade of the existing line, more frequent services, more carriages and longer platforms—which could all be achieved at a fraction of the cost for the same result.
The recent growth following the upgrade of the west coast main line led to huge improvements in service frequencies and journey times and shows what can be done by improvements to existing services. Upgrading is estimated to cost about £2 billion and the department says that it produces a benefit-cost ratio of over 5.0. That is real value for money. This would cater for all the future demand predicted by the department and provide the capacity much sooner so that any crowding problems were addressed much faster. It would also cause significantly less disruption to the existing network than what is proposed.
We are also told that 1 million jobs will be created, but the evidence to support this claim is questionable. Various comparisons are made concerning Europe and the TGV, but a close analysis of what has happened in Europe shows a very local movement in jobs and not necessarily a total increase in jobs in the wider area. Just 1,500 permanent jobs will be created by HS2, but the department admits that seven out of 10 jobs attributed to phase 1 will benefit London, not the regions. We could create a lot more jobs in the north by supporting industry there with direct investment, grants, help with bank finance and better local services.
We need to spend money upgrading our entire rail network. We need infrastructure spending that links the rail network to airports and then to city centres. Those in the north have been pressing for a northern hub that connects key northern cities by rail. East Anglia, for example, is desperate for better services and connections. The concern is that HS2 will inevitably drain funding away from the rest of the network and that desperately needed improvements will not get funding.
The commendable House of Commons Transport Committee report called for a proper transport strategy before HS2 phase 1 and phase 2 proceed. It also called for an explanation of how HS2 fits within an overall transport strategy and for the summary and assumptions of the financial case so they can be properly examined.
We need a rail strategy that will bring real benefits to northern businesses rather than just marginally faster journey times to London. The planned HS2 does not connect to HS1, which is not much help to passengers arriving from Europe. They will still have to get the Tube or the bus across London.
HS2 fails on the four key principles that even HS1 managed to pass: it does not follow existing noisy transport corridors; it does not follow the shortest route through areas of outstanding natural beauty; it is not proposed to be tunnelled through the most sensitive areas; and it does not provide benefits for local communities affected by the route or by access to the service.
I have done a quick canter through this about as fast as a train will go, because time is limited. I have given notice to the Minister of the questions I have asked this evening. I am sure he will be able to address the issues of cost and benefit and try to prove the Government’s case for HS2.
Lord Adonis
My Lords, the international rule of high-speed rail is that everyone wants the stations but no one wants the line. England is no exception, and the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, has been honest enough to admit that he certainly does not want the line anywhere near him. He wrote in the Spectator recently:
“I admit I am biased ... I have walked and ridden over the Chilterns all my life”.
I was not biased as the Secretary of State for Transport. The previous Government proposed HS2, and the present Government are carrying it through because it is the best decision for the infrastructure of the country. This is for two reasons. First, it is false to suggest that there is a choice between building HS2 or saving billions of pounds by not doing so. I fear that that is wishful thinking. The real choice is whether to build HS2, to treble inter-city capacity between London, Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds, or instead to carry out successive patch-and-mend upgrades of the four existing main lines from London to the north, ultimately spending more money for less capacity. The cost-benefit analyses show a strong business case for HS2. But it is equally important to consider the alternative. What would need to happen if there were no HS2? On this, Network Rail's assessment is clear:
“Even modest demand growth causes problems and significant rail enhancement is needed … train lengthening beyond 12-cars would have major implications for terminal stations and signalling systems. Further incremental enhancements at key locations may provide some capacity but not enough to be sustainable for the long-term and not where it is most needed”.
There is no need to gaze into the crystal ball. It is only four years since the last upgrade of the west coast main line referred to by the noble Viscount was completed. It cost £10 billion, and that £10 billion did not price the cost of a decade of chronic disruption to passengers as open heart surgery was performed on a Victorian railway operating at capacity.
There is a second compelling argument for HS2. By using 21st century technology, rather than trying to squeeze yet more out of what by the 2030s will be a 200 year-old railway, you get a transformation of capacity, speed, reliability and passenger service all in one. That is why most advanced European and Asian countries, with an economic and physical geography similar to ours, have already built high-speed lines to link their major cities. The claim that London to Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow are distances too short for high-speed rail is quite unfounded. The world's most successful high-speed lines are between Paris and Lyons, Frankfurt and Hamburg, Tokyo and Osaka, Rome and Milan, distances comparable to those between Britain's major conurbations. Britain is right to be following suit.
Lord Bradshaw
The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, will remember when I came over with his noble friend, Lord Berkeley, to contest the use of COBA, the system for cost-benefit analysis which is used. This was invented in 1960—at least it entered transport in 1960—and it was used to create a case for the Treasury about the building of the Victoria line. It is based on the theory that one can add up all the small time savings of everybody, multiply them, and then end up with a big sum of money. However, it is not real money, it is imaginary money. I ask the Minister to go back to the department again and challenge the use of COBA, because it is wrong. It is a great industry among the consultants and the department, but it does not lay a single piece of track and it does not properly justify itself.
There is a very strong case that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, has just referred to, for providing more capacity. However, in the figures he has quoted, the noble Viscount has ignored the fact that the freight industry will double or treble its demand in the timescale of the building of HS2. In so doing, it will wipe out any extra capacity, together with the better train services which will be available at most of the intermediate stations on the west coast main line. I was talking to a newly elected MP from Kent. I asked him how many complaints he received about the HS1 which runs through his constituency, and he said, “None”. He said that people have accepted it, that it is quiet and efficient, and that it does not have any of the things that clutter up motorways like lights and places for people to rest. The noble Viscount, Lord Astor, should take some of his friends to Kent and see the actual effect, because many people are talking up the effects in the hope of compensation.
Lastly, there are huge cost reductions available for HS2. I believe that it should run from Old Oak Common through to HS1 and probably connect at Ebbsfleet. Old Oak Common should be developed in a way in which it becomes the main terminus. We should try not to inflict more people on Euston, which is already full.
Baroness Seccombe
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Astor for bringing this highly important, and for some of us, hypersensitive matter before the House this evening. First, I wish to declare my interest as the President of the Kenilworth and Southam Conservative Association. The constituency lies in the heart of magnificent rolling country of fields, trees and hedges. It comprises glorious productive farming land where at present the residents live with the constant threat of monstrous wind turbines. Now a blight has been added to their fears, with the further threat of high-speed trains ripping through their homes and farms.
I know that many of your Lordships have studied the project in detail. I am not in that category but, as a commuter who has heard innumerable local views, I feel I should express my position. If the fearsome amount of £33 billion has been identified, it should be used for the maximum benefit of us all, not for the few rich northern commuters who would save minutes from a journey at the expense of the long-suffering travelling public and the whole network.
Turning to the chosen route of HS2 Ltd, I am saddened that the company has refused to meet community forums. It has also refused to allow bilateral meetings at which specific counterproposals would have been suggested, which denies local people the chance to give their views. I can imagine that when HS2 Ltd finalises the route in November, there will be considerable irritation.
Lastly, I turn to blight. The planned consultation on a long-term compensation scheme is yet to begin, despite being expected in the spring. The delay is obviously causing anguish. The exceptional hardship scheme allows compensation only when your reason for sale is included on the Government’s list. That is not acceptable so I hope that great care is being taken to produce a system that people can live with. If we have to live with this scheme, I plead that someone who needs to downsize for income or medical reasons, for instance, but is able to sell only at a discount price, should be listened to with understanding and compassion.
Altogether, this is a bad scheme and a huge waste of money which should be dropped. I know that the Minister is fair and sensible and will take our message to his colleagues. I look forward to his reply.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, on securing this all-too-short debate this evening. I can only imagine the frosty reception around the family dinner table when he announced that this debate was taking place tonight, particularly after the revelations in “Mrs Cameron’s Diary” in this morning’s Guardian.
I declare an interest in that my family and I live in Little Missenden, which is only a few hundred metres from the proposed line. It runs through the very heart of the AONB designed to protect the Chilterns. It may be said that, as a result of my living so close, my comments should be discounted. However, it is the very fact that the line runs so close to our village that made me take a close interest in the woeful economic case and the very sketchy consultations carried out to date. I put on record that had there been an overwhelming case in the national interest for proceeding with the line, we would have accepted the situation. However, this is the wrong solution to the perceived lack of future passenger rail capacity, it is in the wrong place, and the project is unaffordable now and will be in the immediate future.
In his excellent speech, the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, gave a withering assessment of the economic viability, value for money and benefit-to-cost ratio of the High Speed 2 line. I agree completely with his comments and conclusions. To strengthen the point made at the end of his speech, I suggest not only that the Major Projects Authority—the MPA—should be asked to report on the HS2 project and publish its results, but that the OBR should take a look at the overall economic impact of the scheme.
Despite my antipathy to the present scheme, I am not against investing in our rail network. I could support a high-speed rail network, but only if it had the following characteristics. The whole high-speed network should be planned coherently from the start and include east and west coast links to Scotland, Wales and the south-west. Greater priority should be given to the need to switch passenger traffic from air to rail, and to linking directly with HS1 and the Channel Tunnel. This would imply routing the line through Heathrow and considering a second hub at Stratford, as recently suggested by the Labour Party.
Serious attempts need to be made to limit the damage done by a new rail line by respecting our heritage and countryside, whether designated or not, by sticking to existing major transport corridors and being prepared to spend what is necessary to provide proper twin tunnels. For example, in the Chilterns, it is an outrage that the current plans do not provide for such a deep tunnel. I urge Ministers to look very carefully at the proposals put forward by groups such as the Conserve the Chilterns campaign group. The Government need to come up with a proper compensation package that reflects the real costs borne now and in the future by those with property blighted by the plans and whose lives will be adversely affected by the construction and operational phases for 20 or more years.
Lord Bates
My Lords, in my short contribution I shall try to agree with my noble friend Lord Astor and the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, about the benefits of HS2. I speak from the perspective of the north-east of England. In doing so, I declare an interest as a weekly traveller on the east coast main line to Newcastle. The journey of three hours and six minutes is the most pleasurable part of my week and probably the most productive. The idea of people cutting it short does not exactly fill me with joy. If they wanted to extend it, I would probably be quite happy and even more productive in that time. However, I accept that I am unusual in that.
My question is: what will the way in which HS2 has been phased do for disparities between the north and south? The south-east has benefited enormously from significant infrastructure investment, starting with the Channel Tunnel, which received £11 billion in current money. Then there was HS1 and the Olympics, which brought £10 billion into the south-east. There is talk of a potential third runway at Heathrow. Crossrail received around £15 billion. Significant infrastructure investment is taking place in the south-east. If HS2 is added to it in its current proposed phasing, it will simply draw more and more business to the south-east of England and cause overheating so that Birmingham becomes simply part of the commuter belt for Greater London. That holds some dangers.
I propose that we solve the problem by starting the high-speed rail network in the north and working south. There are some strategic benefits to so doing. As a northerner, I am also slightly suspicious of 20-year infrastructure contracts. Ten years in, when the first bit has been built as far as Birmingham, will we find that the money has run out? High Speed 2 Ltd will say, “We’re terribly sorry”, and we will not see it completed. If people think that is a bit far fetched, we live with the unmotorised part of the A1 to this day. Starting in the north and moving to Birmingham would allow people time to see how Crossrail is working out, sort out what they will do with Heathrow Airport and assess whether it is needed.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Astor for initiating this debate. I declare my interest as a board member of the Countryside Alliance, which has expressed concerns about HS2.
HS2 is not without controversy. One of the most contentious elements is the fact that the line will run through the heart of the Chilterns, a designated area of outstanding natural beauty. I know the Chilterns and the route north of Aylesbury well. I have a profound respect for the communities there and know many people who will be directly affected. If we are to desecrate some of our finest countryside and place such a heavy and lasting burden on communities, we need to be clear that it is in the national interest.
Under this Government, all infrastructure projects are to include the value of natural capital, as set out in the natural environment White Paper. This approach is commendable. It is illogical, therefore, that the current business case for HS2 does not include a proper account of natural capital. The Transport Select Committee’s recommendation that the revised business plan for HS2 should take account of this is entirely in keeping with the Government’s overall approach.
The justification for HS2 has changed since its inception. First, it was championed as green but that claim is now discredited as it will not lead to any significant reduction in emissions. Then there was speed, but HS2 will cut journey times from London to outside Birmingham by barely 20 minutes. On capacity, many experts say that future commuter demand can be fulfilled by upgrading existing lines. Many groups have pointed out that predicted demand for HS2 is extremely high. Now we hear that addressing the north/south divide is used as validation. However, this is far from certain and many people fear that HS2 could funnel resources and growth towards London and the south-east.
What strikes me most is the lack of consensus around this project. If we are to spend £33 billion of taxpayers’ money on it, does there not need to be more certainty and transparency? The claim is that HS2 will offer genuine value for money, foster growth, improve the transport network and be an investment that benefits the whole nation rather than the few. In its current form, HS2 is a long way off that.
Baroness Scott of Needham Market
My Lords, this is the second time this week that I have found myself engaged in the parliamentary equivalent of speed dating—but here we go. High Speed 2 is not about shaving a few moments off the journey time between Birmingham and London. To really appreciate its true economic value, it has to be seen in the context of a national plan with links to both local schemes and European networks. Despite a highly disruptive £10 billion upgrade, the west coast main line has little room for additional trains while demand on the route has grown over 50% in the last decade and is forecast to keep growing. The challenge of operating long-distance commuter and freight services on the same line is almost insurmountable without further expensive and disruptive work.
Capacity released by HS2 will improve services to many West Midlands towns and into Wales. The east-west rail link for which I have campaigned for 15 years could become a reality. Phase 2 could relieve pressure on the east coast main line and avoid work, for example, on the Welwyn viaduct. With the amount of freight coming into UK ports increasing at 6% per annum, extra rail capacity is needed to prevent more HGVs on our roads. HS2 can be co-ordinated with local transport schemes and housing growth—for example, the new HSR station at Birmingham Moor Street as part of a local regeneration scheme, or the new station at London Old Oak Common providing a link into the City and east London. Experience from the Jubilee line extension shows that these benefits have traditionally been underestimated in conventional BCR analysis.
There is a growing network of European cities connected by high-speed rail, from which the UK outside London and the south-east is currently excluded. This is despite the growing evidence that it is successful at reducing journeys by air. High-speed rail can form an important part of our aviation policy in other ways. For example, Heathrow should be linked to places outside London via high-speed rail. Accessibility to Manchester in phase 2 could make a huge difference to its viability. Indeed, under phase 1, Birmingham Airport will be closer in time to London than will Stansted. The Government need better ways of capturing these benefits and of quantifying the cost of inaction. Applying expensive and disruptive sticking plasters to the west coast main line is not a viable option. We need to create a coherent vision for transport which extends 30 years into the future, as our European neighbours have done. Only then will we have a transport system that will deliver a dynamic economy. Everyone says we need to invest in infrastructure for growth. Let us not talk ourselves out of delivering it.
Lord Cormack
My Lords, like the noble Baroness, this is the second high-speed debate this week in which I have taken part. I am delighted to be able to support my noble friend Lord Astor, who introduced the debate with a powerful, cogent speech, the figures carefully marshalled. For all the eloquence of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, whom I admire very much indeed, I do not think that he adequately refuted the points made and the figures advanced by my noble friend.
I approach this from a slightly different point of view. The interest that I have to declare is a passionate love of the English countryside—the British countryside, too. Nearly 35 years ago, I wrote a book called Heritage in Danger, in which I pointed to some of the dangers to our very finite countryside. This is not a great, enormous country in geographical terms like France or Germany but one of finite beauty and size. The march of the wind farms and the driving of this link through some of the most glorious countryside in England would remove for ever something that should be imperishable and is of absolutely priceless worth. If you are going to do that, you have to demonstrate that there really is a case for it. I do not think that that has been done.
I have much sympathy with the points made by my noble friend Lord Bates in his speech. I agree with him about the work that one could do on trains. If there is a case for a high-speed rail link of this sort, then start in the north. We are far too London-centric. If we have got this money to spend—we have not; we are always being reminded of the economic stringencies of the time—then let us go back to Beeching and reinstate some of the lines that were so unnecessarily taken up. Communities were deprived of vital links. That would be a better way of reviving the economic fortunes of many parts of this country. Give Lincoln, where I live now, more than one direct train a day from London. Bring to the people a system that really benefits the people.
Many have cast doubt on this scheme and I quote but two. My former colleague Archie Norman, who sat for some few years in the other place and who is the chairman of one of the great companies of this country, believes that the economic case has not been made. Andrew Tyrie—he has been much in the news recently, is to chair this very important committee and has a real knowledge of economic affairs—questions the economic viability. The case has not been made. If we have money to plan for spending money of this sort over the next 20 years, there are far more deserving cases that can bring far more benefit to far more people and preserve our glorious countryside in the process.
Lord Scott of Foscote
My Lords, I will say a word or two in the gap in support of all those who have criticised this HS2 train proposal. I draw attention to the report produced by Mott MacDonald’s consortium, commissioned by and on behalf of the Department for Transport, investigating the economic consequences of the proposed train. In particular, the consortium’s report deals with the supposed economic benefits of the time to be saved by businessmen travelling on the train from London to Birmingham or, later, from Birmingham onwards. I am sure that the Minister will be familiar with this report. He may not agree with me that the information I have about it—I have been unable so far to obtain a copy; it runs to 170 pages—indicates that the supposed economic benefits of the journey in the new train saving businessmen’s time will be at best trivial and at worst spurious. I suggest that this particular report deserves a bit of attention before the Government decide to commit themselves irrevocably to this scheme.
Lord Rosser
My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, for securing this debate. Our position is that we strongly support the transformation of our rail network to provide greater capacity and reduce journey times. This will require a combination of both new high-speed lines alongside upgrading the existing network through a programme of electrification and a new generation of high-speed intercity trains. We delivered Britain’s first new high-speed rail line, High Speed 1, and before the last election we set out plans for a second high-speed line, HS2, connecting London to Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds. The Government have backed this project and it should continue to be taken forward on a cross-party basis.
We have some concerns over the way the Government are planning to deliver the new high-speed line. We support creating a major transport hub near Heathrow which would improve connections between our largest airport, Crossrail and the Great Western main line. Since that would mean some change in alignment, it might enable better protection of the Chilterns. If the Government are determined to reject this sensible alternative, we will accept their decision but will expect credible alternatives to be brought forward to address the issue.
We disagree with the Government’s decision to legislate only for the first phase of the high-speed rail line in this Parliament. By splitting the route between two pieces of legislation, the Government are risking national support for the scheme and raising unnecessary concerns about the cross-party commitment that exists to complete the entire Y-shaped route. We also believe that high-speed rail should be a service that is affordable for the population as a whole and not just certain sections of the community, as envisaged by the previous Secretary of State in evidence to the Commons Transport Select Committee in September last year.
All noble Lords who have spoken will want to hear from the Minister whether the Government’s position on High Speed 2 remains as set out in the Written Statement by the Secretary of State for Transport on 10 January 2012. I, too, would like the Minister to answer that question. I would also like the Minister to say whether any subsequent developments have significantly changed the figures to the extent of appreciably weakening the case contained in Command Paper 8247 on high-speed rail, presented to Parliament in January 2012, the Atkins paper of January 2012—the High Speed Rail Strategic Alternatives Study—and the two January 2012 HS2 Ltd/Department for Transport papers on the economic case for HS2.
Will the Minister also say, assuming that the Government’s position on HS2 has not changed since the Written Statement of January 2012, whether the Government’s main—but certainly not only—argument for HS2 is the saving in time for those travelling by rail between London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, or whether it is the need to address the projected serious capacity problems arising from continuing significant projected growth in passenger demand on the west coast and east coast main lines between London and Birmingham, London and Manchester and London and Leeds as well as growth in freight traffic?
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Astor for securing this debate on a very important subject. I also thank noble Lords for their typically well informed contributions. It is certainly not a matter of nimbyism. It is important and right to raise questions about a project as significant as HS2 and I am happy to try to address such questions this evening. Large scale infrastructure projects are not new or unusual. They have been going on for many years and they have been controversial. For instance, the Jubilee line extension was controversial at the time of its conception, but where would we be without it now?
In his opening speech, my noble friend questioned the benefits that we expect HS2 to deliver. I want to reassure him on this point. I believe passionately in a successful Britain, a country that can compete and thrive in a global economy. To achieve this we need infrastructure fit for the 21st century and beyond. We cannot just make do and mend. Good transport equals good economics. One of the best ways to support British business, power up the recovery and put people back to work is to invest in, and modernise, our transport networks. HS2 will revolutionise travel in our country, transforming connectivity between London, the Midlands and the North, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said, it is the best decision. It will provide a step change in the capacity of the rail network to accommodate the growing demand for long-distance travel, providing up to 18 trains an hour, each with up to 1,100 seats. Without it, our main north-south rail arteries will become increasingly disrupted and overcrowded, damaging both our economy and our way of life.
HS2 will slash journey times for passengers between our key cities and regions. It will be a truly national network benefiting the whole country. While the high-speed line itself runs to Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, the new trains will be designed to continue onto the current network, providing direct services to destinations further afield, such as Liverpool, Newcastle and Glasgow. It will help rebalance the economic geography of the country, supporting thousands of jobs and unlocking growth and opportunity for generations to come. It will be a truly transformative project.
Some noble Lords have questioned whether a new high-speed network is the best way to provide the additional north-south capacity our country needs, suggesting instead a programme of enhancements to the existing network, but this would provide only a short-term answer to the demand challenges addressed by HS2, and even then, only at the cost of significant disruption to passengers on affected lines, all the while sacrificing the connectivity benefits high-speed rail will bring.
Several questions related to the approach taken to assessing the economic viability of the project. In January, when my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Transport announced her decision on HS2, she set out the economic case underpinning this project and the department will shortly be publishing further updated economic analysis. However, the benefit-cost ratio analysis forms only one part of the decision-making process for this strategically important project. There are wider strategic considerations as well, which I outlined a moment ago. I will try hard to answer as many supplementary questions as I can and when I fail I will, of course, write.
The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, asked about the two hybrid Bills. He will know that each hybrid Bill requires a very considerable amount of work to determine what powers are needed. Several noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Astor and the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, claimed that there is no economic case for HS2. I beg to disagree. HS2 continues to have a good economic case. The Government have always been clear that as well as offering good value for money in itself, there are wider social and economic benefits associated with improving connectivity and supporting regeneration in our major cities.
My noble friend Lord Bates was concerned that HS2 will not rebalance the economy. He talked about the north-south divide and the unintended benefit for London at the expense of the regions. The Government’s position has the support of businesses and their representative organisations across the country, which express their belief in the importance of improving our transport network, and specifically our intercity rail network, in order to enable higher economic productivity.
The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, asked about the release of the Major Projects Authority report. The Cabinet Office has a policy of not releasing the reports for two years, but they will be released at the appropriate point. Noble Lords asked me about the DfT’s record in forecasting and modelling transport demand and they suggested that it is poor. The Department for Transport has significantly improved its passenger forecast modelling in recent years. As acknowledged by my noble friend Lord Astor, we have a better understanding of what drives passenger demand, better computer modelling and our approach to risk analysis has improved.
The position of HS1 and HS2 are very different. Eurostar was accessing a completely new market for intercapital rail travel in competition, it transpired, with a burgeoning short-haul deregulated aviation market. HS2 will relieve a seriously congested existing railway between the two largest conurbations in the country—a long-existing market where demand is well understood and predicted to grow. My noble friend Lord Bradshaw suggested that our appraisal is based on the over-inflated value put on business travellers’ time. The analysis underpinning HS2 has been based on the Department for Transport’s well established approach to appraisal, one that is recognised across the transport industry and conforms to the highest standards of evidence. I know that my noble friend is very concerned about this point, especially in connection with the appraisal of road transport schemes.
Many noble Lords talked about route selection. In terms of the London to West Midlands alignment, HS2 Ltd considered more than 90 options for stations and sections of the route. There are obvious benefits to staying close to existing transport corridors where possible, which is why HS2 Ltd’s recommended route crosses part of the Chilterns close to the A413 and the Chiltern line and, indeed, uses part of the Great Central line. Overall, an M40 route would be an inferior option. It would be longer, have lower maximum speeds, impact on more population centres, resulting in unacceptable impacts on communities and it would be more expensive. In answer to one noble Lord—I think it was my noble friend Lord Bates—since the main capacity constraint is in the south, HS2 will start in the south.
The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, suggested that the nation could not afford it. The nation cannot afford not to invest in HS2. Investment in HS2, and our wider rail network, can help us overcome the economic challenges we face and secure the country’s economic future. The construction costs will be spread over two decades and on this basis will involve an average level of annual spending of less than £2 billion a year at 2011 prices.
My noble friend Lord Astor suggested that a new railway is not needed to solve the railway capacity problem. By the mid-2020s forecasts show that without HS2, our main north-south rail arteries will be becoming increasingly disrupted and overcrowded, damaging our economy and our way of life, as pointed out by my noble friend Lady Scott of Needham Market. The Government have carefully considered the option of providing additional rail capacity, including upgrading existing lines. These might provide a short-term fix, but not a long-term solution. While alternatives may offer a good benefit-cost ratio, none is able to offer the scale of benefits or change that HS2 offers and would not deliver the increase in capacity that we require. Even the best alternative proposed would lead to decades of disruption on the existing network and lead to unreliable and overcrowded services and more freight on our roads. In answer to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, the capacity constraints make HS2 essential. The value of time saved is taken into account in the BCR.
My noble friend Lady Seccombe talked about community engagement. The Government and HS2 looked long and hard at possible changes to the route. However, the final design of the route is not yet set. The final design will be developed in consultation with local communities as part of the environmental impact assessment. Once that is complete, we expect to consult on the environmental statement in spring 2013. I encourage everyone with an interest to participate in that consultation. We want local communities to get engaged in the design through their local forums. I do not understand how the problem described by my noble friend arose. I hope that she will brief me later after the debate.
Viscount Astor
My Lords, as we have 10 minutes, may I ask my noble friend to address one issue? Does he accept that the benefit/cost ratio has fallen below 1.5? I will quite understand if he is unable to give a detailed answer, but perhaps he would be kind enough to write to me and other noble Lords who have spoken today.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I have already undertaken to write where I have not answered. I am endeavouring to get through all my Box notes as fast as possible.
I know that there is no easy way of building a railway in our country but the concerns of local residents are an important priority for the Government and HS2 Ltd will ensure that local views are fed into the design process and that local communities are aware of what progress has been made with the railway.
My noble friend Lady Seccombe asked what the Government are doing to address blight. The Government recognise that HS2 is already having an impact on communities along the line of route. That is why the exceptional hardship scheme was introduced. When the Secretary of State for Transport announced the decision to proceed with HS2 in January 2012, the Government also committed to introducing a generous compensation package for the long term that goes beyond what was required in law. Developing the right property compensation package for HS2 is complex, as it must be fair to those affected by HS2 proposals while also recognising our broader responsibilities to the taxpayer. The Government will shortly be consulting on the detailed proposals to help affected property owners, with the aim of introducing long-term compensation measures as soon as possible.
My noble friend Lord Astor asked about the HS2/HS1 link, a point raised previously by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. I can assure my noble friend that the Government intend to connect HS2 to HS1 through a link built in the first phase. This will enable trains to run directly between HS2 and HS1 without the need for passengers to change trains. There are clear strategic advantages from integrating Britain’s new high-speed rail network with the only existing high-speed line in this country and thence to the growing high-speed rail network on the continent.
My noble friend Lord Astor talked about the demand for HS2 in a digital age. Some have questioned the demand projections underpinning the case for HS2, positing a world in which improved digital communication replaces the handshake and the face-to-face conversation and thus the train journeys that make them happen. If we turn to history, it is clear that the advent of the telegraph, the telephone and now the tweet have not lead to reductions in travel demand—far from it. I reassure the House that the Government will continue to keep the economic case and indeed the wider business case under review throughout the life of the project to ensure that it reflects the latest research, evidence and understanding of the project.
HS2 is much more than just a BCR. It is about a step change in capacity and connectivity for passengers. It is about unlocking the potential of our major cities and regions, supporting jobs and driving growth. It is about building a dynamic society, a thriving economy and a successful Britain. HS2 is not just viable; it is a vital part of our future prosperity.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now adjourn during pleasure until 8.42 pm.
Justice and Security Bill [HL]
(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
My Lords, I shall also speak to Amendments 44, 46, 48 and 49. They say that you should never begin your remarks with an apology, but I apologise because I had understood that there would be a mini-debate and the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, and I were in the second half. He de-grouped so I am something of a tail-end Charlie.
I will cover some of the ground that we discussed earlier—in particular, the use of PII before a CMP application—but with some differences, which I shall come to later. I do not expect my noble and learned friend on the Front Bench to give a long and considered answer, because he gave one before the dinner break, but I hope that he will be able to take on board some of the points that I shall make in the next few minutes.
As this is the first group of amendments that I have proposed, I should declare interests. I am a trustee of Fair Trials International and treasurer of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition. However, as I said at Second Reading, I am not a lawyer and I have never been involved in the security services. I said then that I ventured out on to the ice with some trepidation and, watching the legal thunderbolts that flew across the Chamber earlier this evening, my trepidation has not reduced. However, I was encouraged by another contributor to our Second Reading debate who said that this was too important a matter to be left to the lawyers, so I am venturing a bit further on to the ice.
All these amendments are probing and I hope to tease out the Government’s thinking on a number of issues. To guard against the more obvious ways of making a fool of myself in your Lordships’ Chamber, I have enlisted the help of Tony Peto of Blackstone Chambers and of the campaigning group Reprieve, to whom I am extremely grateful. All the amendments that I have tabled, and more that we shall discuss later and no doubt at our next sitting, have a common theme and background about which I feel strongly. I hope that the Committee will forgive me if on this first set of amendments I explain the background in a little more detail—I will not have to do it again—and, if this appears slightly unlawyerly, I apologise.
I said at Second Reading that I recognised that there was an important issue here, and before the dinner break the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, said that there were going to be a number of cases where national security was inherently and implicitly involved in the case. At the nexus of civil liberties and national security lies the fact that not everybody can know everything and there are legitimate reasons for having to keep some things secret. However, to keep matters secret is undesirable, so I believe that there has to be a strict test of justification. My amendments, all of which are probing at this stage, are designed to develop the Government’s thinking about this justification and, in doing so, to have a chance to benefit from the legal expertise in your Lordships’ House.
My concerns about the Bill can be grouped under two headings. Both concern fairness and are what I have described before as regulatory capture and the possible impact of these proposals on our society. I have said before that I am always concerned about the naturally inherent risk of the adverse nature of regulators, and the security services are one such example. In all fields, whether it be national security, social services or financial services, regulators are judged by failure or at least by the absence of failure. Therefore, regulators tend to want to set the bar as high as possible to give themselves the maximum amount of power or points of leverage to deliver their allotted task.
That, of course, is the entirely positive aspect of the regulatory case, but I am afraid that there can be a less attractive aspect, which is that of spreading a blanket of confidentiality over a matter so as to avoid issues of incompetence or embarrassment being revealed, or the revelation of a smoking gun. I am hoping to find out during our Committee proceedings how we can lean into the wind, so to speak, and make sure that the procedures that we set up really do enable the sorting of the wheat from the chaff in these difficult and critical areas.
My second area of concern is about the impact on our society of these measures, and this underlines the critical importance of our discussions. This is not about legal technicalities but real life. I take part in the Lord Speaker’s outreach programme. It is a fascinating experience which I thoroughly enjoy. I never go to one of these meetings without learning something about our society and the way in which your Lordships’ House and Parliament are viewed. Most of my visits are to schools, to young men and women of 17 or 18 years of age, doing A-levels. I am a West Midlander, so my visits take me to schools in Birmingham and the Black Country, where there is a large black minority ethnic, particularly Muslim, population. I emphasise, as background to our discussion on the Bill, that these young men and women are keenly interested in our judicial system and its application to them and their communities. When you see them, you get questions—I welcome the questions, because I get such a lot from them—about Guantanamo Bay, Binyam Mohamed, and all these aspects which are the background to what we are discussing during the passage of the Bill.
My second reason for tabling my amendments is therefore to ensure that we do not strain the fabric of our society too much and so, indeed, to ensure that when I begin my visits again to the schools in the autumn, I can look these young men and women in the eye, and say, “Yes, we did look at these issues; yes, we did explore the ramifications; yes, we did have legal expertise bearing down on it; yes, we did make the Government justify their policies; and no, this is emphatically not a system with any in-built bias”.
So, with that rather long-winded explanation of the amendments that I have tabled, to horse! Amendment 43 is a trigger for the operation of Clause 6(1), the application for a CMP. During the earlier debate, I was interested in the balance of advantage for PII and CMPs. Amendment 44 sets out the conditions to be fulfilled before the trigger can be pulled. Four of these are listed: that the court has gone through a PII process; that the process has resulted in excluded material; that material includes evidence damaging to national security; and that, as a consequence, the court is prepared to consider an application for a closed material proceeding.
Amendment 46 sets three tests for the court to consider before making a deliberation: that the threshold conditions have been met; that only a CMP can provide a just resolution and PII will not work; and, lastly and perhaps most importantly, that,
“there is no serious risk of injustice to either party”.
I have been advised—I say that with care—that the earlier amendments that we looked at did not cover that in quite the same way. Indeed, with this, you increase the amount of judicial discretion and therefore improve the application of justice and reduce the ability of the Government to dominate the proceedings.
Amendment 48 inserts a new set of tests for the court to consider in deciding to allow an application. There are five of them, which are self-explanatory, but I draw attention to the last one, on which I am again told that in the interests of open justice and natural justice the statement of whether it would be in the interests of justice to grant the application is again likely to increase judicial discretion.
Finally, Amendment 49 requires the Secretary of State or another party to go through the PII process before applying for a CMP, as opposed to considering whether to make such an application for a CMP outright. The purpose behind these amendments overall is to increase the amount of judicial discretion, and to do so to a greater extent than the alternatives that have been put before us tonight. I beg to move.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
My Lords, in a sense, we have been through this before. This is another means of tackling the problem. I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, in raising issues of public confidence. It is a matter of great concern to me that what we call civil society—often very uncivil civil society—has reacted to the Green Paper and the Government’s proposals in extreme terms, it even having been suggested that we should deny the Bill a Second Reading. There is a great deal of cynicism and suspicion about the work done by our security and intelligence agencies. The fact that the press feel aggrieved that the principle of open justice is necessarily limited by the Bill that we are now considering again leads to the impression that something perfectly unconstitutional and disgraceful is being put forward.
I have never taken that view and have agreed with the Bingham institute and Tom Hickman in particular in the way in which they have approached the problem. However, the Government have not done themselves any service by the way in which they produced a Green Paper and put forward far too broad terms, which gave rise immediately to a justifiable negative reaction, and they are now rightly narrowing what they originally sought to do. We have to be careful to realise as we sit in this Chamber at this hour that what we are now doing will probably not enhance confidence outside but, rather, do the opposite, much as we regret it. We must do what we can to combat cynicism and lack of confidence in the work done by the security and intelligence agencies.
I sometimes worry that, unless we give our judges appropriate powers and discretion, we will in the long run also undermine public confidence in the judiciary. It will be most undesirable if the judges are seen merely to be rubber stamps. I just want to give one example. The only time I took part in closed evidence material proceedings was when I represented the People’s Mujahideen of Iran, which had been proscribed by Jack Straw and was seeking to have the proscription removed. It was prevented from collecting funds, having meetings or publishing material. I turned up as its advocate. There was a special advocate but the special advocate was unable to be of any use at all because what we needed to know was the gist of the case against the People’s Mujahideen of Iran.
After two days, my clients came to me and said that this was a completely unfair procedure, that they did not have the faintest idea of the gist of what they were supposed to have done and that they were now going to withdraw from the proceedings and withdraw my instructions. I perfectly understood their view. Later, they chose another counsel, David Vaughan QC, who went to Luxembourg. The Court of Justice in Luxembourg eventually found in their favour, as a result of which I think that the organisation is no longer proscribed.
I say all that because, having lived through that experience, I understand perfectly why the closed material procedure causes such anxiety to the press, to members of the public who take an interest, to those who go through the procedure and to the special advocates. It is no use saying that special advocates underrate their own capacity. They have to live with this procedure and do the best they can, and I perfectly understand why they have these reservations.
Baroness Berridge
My Lords, I rise briefly to concur with the comments of my noble friend Lord Lester, as well as my noble friend Lord Hodgson, particularly bearing in mind his quote about the possible impact on our society. Although we had an incredibly in-depth legal discussion on the previous group of amendments, I felt some frustration as what we were rightly considering was whether we can in particular cases get the least imperfect solution. That is the purpose of the Bill. However, I believe that there is a wider purpose—that of public confidence in our judicial system, which, along with the Royal Family, is one of only two institutions in our society that have remarkably high levels of public trust.
Baroness Manningham-Buller
My Lords, I am surprised to be compared to a regulator on the strength of the organisation to which I once belonged. I see very little parallel between the security and intelligence agencies and regulation. The conclusion that that makes them overcautious is therefore entirely spurious.
Of course, public opinion of and confidence in the judiciary is extremely important, and we do not want to do anything to damage that. Notwithstanding comments in the Daily Mail, I think that public confidence in the security and intelligence community is not helped by the fact that, in many cases, we have been unable to defend ourselves because of the problem that we are describing today. None the less, as I said at Second Reading, the support that my colleagues get from the public is extensive and perhaps greater than the noble Lord, Lord Lester, suggests.
Another point relates to secret information. We need to have the confidence of those—including many young men and women from the communities to which the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, referred—who give information to the security and intelligence agencies at risk of their lives and in secret. That is one of the fundamental reasons for secrecy. I ask the Committee to remember that in thinking of the confidence in other regards that we want to maintain.
Lord Thomas of Gresford
I respect the views that the noble Baroness has just put forward, but I do not think that public confidence is improved if a closed judgment is given on closed material to the Government in a particular case. It is essential that the public know what is going on as much as is conceivably possible. The interests of national security can be invoked in only the smallest area of cases if confidence is to be maintained.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
The noble Lords, Lord Hodgson and Lord Lester, and the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, have made important points, but we must surely address the issue on the basis of what within our court system produces the most just result available, recognising that imperfect justice may be involved. Everybody accepts that two conflicting principles are valid, namely a properly functioning justice system and the need to protect national security. My view is that if a case is made that unjust results might be being reached, with claimants making claims that they know the Security Service cannot defend, then we should do enough to enable our justice system to properly defend those cases. Open justice is a means to producing justice. The courts have always recognised that if you cannot do justice that is open—for example, if you destroy the confidentiality that the justice system is designed to protect—then exceptional measures are needed for exceptional cases. I do not think our security services are being well served if they are forced to admit claims that they should not, and neither is respect being paid to our judges if they are simply a rubber stamp.
The right answer in relation to this issue is, first of all: is the case proved? That is an open question at the moment, as far as I am concerned. If the case is proved that some measures are needed then these should be kept to a minimum and the judges should decide what is required in order to create the fairest possible system. The problem with the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, which I think he would be the first to acknowledge, is that they involve the judge considering whether there would be any serious risk of injustice to either party if the application for a closed material procedure were to be granted. However, everybody involved in closed proceedings knows perfectly well that if you have procedure that reveals evidence about person A and A never knows what is said about him or her, the prospect of an injustice is significant. However, that may be the best that can be done under the circumstances.
I respect the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, for raising these points. I just do not think the House of Lords can avoid asking: what is the right answer? The only guide we have is to try to reach the right answer. That is the only way we shall retain respect for what we do. The task we are engaged in is trying to balance those two factors. As I said before supper, what we are aiming for in this bit of the debate is fairness because ultimately national security can be protected by the security services pulling a case, so it is all about deciding whether there are a sufficient number of unfair cases that some special procedure needs to be crafted.
As it happens—and I think the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, is right here—the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, are pretty well the same points we had before supper, and he acknowledged this in his opening remarks. The noble Lord’s basic approach in Amendment 44 is to say that one should go the PII route first; then only if the PII decision is non-disclosure do you go on to CMP. I do not like that approach for the reasons I advanced in response to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, in concert with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf. It is too inflexible. I do not see why we cannot give the court all the options at the time it makes the decision, as the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, suggested. This would avoid opportunistic applications and allow the court to come to the fairest possible results. I would be repeating myself if I went on about that. The noble Lord’s amendment has promoted debate, but the effect of that debate is that we do not want the lack of flexibility that his amendment proposes.
The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Wallace of Tankerness)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts for putting forward these amendments and for indicating his concerns: that we should be seeking fairness and reflecting on the possible impacts upon society.
I repeat again the passage from paragraph 2.5 of the Green Paper, which is pertinent here, where the Government assert that the,
“appropriate mechanism for triggering the CMPs will help to ensure that they are only used where it is absolutely necessary to enable the case to proceed in the interests of justice. The principle of open justice is an extremely important one, and any departure from it should be no more than is strictly necessary to achieve a proper administration of justice”.
Inasmuch as we are testing this legislation, that is where this House serves an important part of our democratic procedures. Before the dinner break we tested it very well with all the points that were made. I hope that when my noble friend does the outreach he can say that, in trying to ensure no more than is strictly necessary to achieve the proper administration of justice, these tests have been applied and that there has been a very active engagement of Members of your Lordships’ House in trying to ensure that that outcome is reached.
If we are trying to ensure fairness and that there should be no in-built bias, there will be cases where the use of closed material proceedings means that people who might otherwise have been excluded get an opportunity for material to be heard which might well exculpate them. That may be more relevant to one of the later clauses.
The noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, made a point about fairness. Indeed, it might be important fairness in terms of how the public approach these matters. If the intelligence service, the Security Service, has a full answer to many of the allegations made against it, it is inherently wrong that it should be denied being able to put forward an answer. I perhaps can do no better than again to quote Mr David Anderson QC, much quoted in today’s deliberations:
“We are in a world of second-best solutions: but it does not seem to me that the level of injustice inherent in the use of CMPs in a case of this nature necessarily exceeds either the injustice to the claimant of a case being struck out, or the moral hazard and reputational damage to the intelligence agencies that is caused by settling a case which, had it been possible to adduce all the evidence, would have been fought”.
Bearing in mind these considerations too, I think that all parts of the House are trying to ensure that we find a way forward to achieve the objective.
My noble friend indicated the type of safeguards that he wished to put in. I will not go over them in any detail again but, in response to the previous debate, I think that I explained why the Government do not believe that an exhaustive use of PII before applying for a CMP is appropriate. There clearly will be cases when it could be futile to do so because it is very obvious that to exclude all that evidence by way of PII could render the case that a proper defence could not be put forward.
If my noble friend’s intention is to ensure that CMPs are used only in extremely rare circumstances, I am not persuaded that these amendments are the way in which to achieve that. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, indicated some of the difficulties inherent in the requirement that there should be no serious risk of injustice. The point to remember is that important safeguards are built into this Bill to ensure that national security is not claimed erroneously and that the fair trial rights of all parties are respected. The court will grant a declaration that a CMP may be used only where disclosure of relevant material would otherwise damage national security. As I indicated earlier, there is a second stage in which the court—with the full engagement of special advocates appointed to represent the interests of an excluded party—will adopt a painstaking process to ensure that only material heard in closed session will be material, the disclosure of which would damage national security.
In addition, I mentioned that the operation of the procedure is explicitly made subject to the right to a fair trial protected by Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights under Clause 11(5)(c). In a CMP, the court will make the necessary orders to ensure that the proceedings are conducted in a manner that complies with the article. The judge, with the assistance of the special advocates, will ensure that as much information as possible can be disclosed into open court. If the full document cannot be disclosed, the court will also consider whether it could be disclosed in part through redactions or whether a summary could be provided to the other parties without damaging the interests of national security.
If there is a serious risk of injustice of the kind which my noble friend describes, the court can take the steps which I have described. Equally, if the judge is not satisfied that a CMP has properly enabled the fair testing of closed material he will simply put no weight on it. That approach is the right one in the national security context. A court will grant a declaration under Clause 6 or permit material to be heard in closed session only on the extremely narrow ground that disclosure of material would damage the interests of national security and there are strong safeguards already available to the court.
It is important that we air not only some of the details of my noble friend’s amendment but look at the context in which he proposed it. However, I believe that these balancing considerations have been considered in the proposals before your Lordships’ House. While I do not in any way quibble that these amendments raise an important issue, I hope that I have explained why they are unnecessary, given the other safeguards in the Bill. I ask my noble friend to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
The noble and learned Lord referred to Clause 11(5), which states:
“Nothing in sections 6 to 10 … affects the common law rules as to the withholding, on grounds of public interest immunity, of any material in any proceedings”.
He referred to paragraph (c), but I am looking at paragraph (b). Does it mean that, in considering a PII application, the court cannot have regard to the subsequent possibility of a CMP application?
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
My Lords, perhaps I may ask a question related to the same provision. Subsection (5)(c) states that nothing in those sections,
“is to be read as requiring a court or tribunal to act in a manner inconsistent with Article 6 of the Human Rights Convention”.
I take it that what that means is, “in breach of the duty imposed by Section 6 of the Human Rights Act”, which requires courts to act in a way that is compatible with convention rights, including Article 6. One might think about amending that paragraph to make it clear that one is talking about not just the international treaty but domestic law, which imposes that duty under Section 6 of the Human Rights Act. Can thought be given to that?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
Certainly, it could be thought about. We just wanted to make it clear in the Bill that Article 6 was pertinent. I am answering this to the best of my ability. The noble and learned Lord asked whether Clause 11(5)(b) ousted PII when a court was thinking about closed material proceedings. I am not sure if that was his question.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
The noble and learned that Lord said before supper, “Oh, well. You could always bear in mind if a PII application was made that the court could say that it was not very keen on it. The much better course would be to apply for a closed material proceedings”. I read Clause 11(5)(b) as saying that you have to ignore the possibility of a CMP application when you are considering PII, because the clause states:
“Nothing in sections 6 to 10 … affects the common law rules as to the withholding, on grounds of public interest immunity, of any material in any proceedings”.
I am not therefore sure that it would be open to a judge to say, “I am not going to look at PII because I want you to do a CMP”.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, obviously we will reach Clause 11. My understanding is that concerns were expressed in some quarters that what we were proposing in some way ousted PII and that it was, as some of the more extreme comments suggested, dead in the water. The purpose of the provision was to make it clear that PII is not lost in time or space, and that the common-law rules relating to PII are not affected. If that is not a full answer, we can deal with this in more detail when we consider Clause 11.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble and learned friend for that lengthy reply. It was rather lengthier than I expected it to be, bearing in mind that we covered quite a lot of this ground before the dinner break. I thank my noble friend Lady Berridge for her support, and of course I accept the strictures of the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller. I promise her that I will not do it again. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
Amendment 45 takes us to Clause 6(2), which begins:
“The court must, on an application under subsection (1), make such a declaration”.
My amendment seeks to replace “must” with “may”. I intend to be quite brief and to call up very shortly the heavy artillery of my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford in support. There have been, of course, many references to the key role of judicial discussion in the operation of CMPs under Clause 6. This amendment simply seeks to ensure that the Government’s claim that a judge will have the final say on whether a CMP takes place is a reality. As drafted, the Bill does not seem to do this. While it gives the judge the last word, the reviewer of terrorism legislation has said that:
“The only difficulty is that that word is dictated to the judge by the Secretary of State”.
The special advocates have warned that the Bill creates a statutory straitjacket for judges, and we came across this earlier this evening. Martin Chamberlain said this in his evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights. He said that a key safeguard that had been promised—enabling a judge to have the final say on when secret proceedings are needed—was missing from the draft Bill. He went on to say that,
“in fact the position is that the judge is required to accede to the Secretary of State’s application for a Closed Material Procedure—the word ‘must’ is used—if there is any evidence at all whose disclosure would be contrary to the interests of national security. So, there is no ability for a judge to say, ‘I think this is the type of case that could perfectly fairly be tried using normal Public Interest Immunity rules’”.
Finally, he said,
“you are going to be giving them”—
that is, the judges—
“a statutory straitjacket that requires them to ensure that nothing is disclosed contrary to the interests of national security … there is to be no balance between national security on the one hand and fairness on the other”.
I argue that we should replace “must” with “may” to once again improve judicial discretion. I beg to move.
Lord Thomas of Gresford
My Lords, I support this amendment. I have already made the point that the procedures of the court should be controlled by the judge and not by the Secretary of State. The words “rubber stamp” have been used on a number of occasions, not least by my noble friend Lord Lester, in relation to these provisions. It is a rubber stamp when one combines the provisions in Clause 6(2) with what the judge must do in determining the application, under the provisions of Clause 7(1)(c). This is a point that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, made in his original submission on an earlier amendment, and we have not followed it up very much. Clause 7(1)(c) states:
“that the court is required to give permission for material not to be disclosed if it considers that the disclosure of the material would be damaging to the interests of national security”.
Now, who gives evidence about the interests of national security? It must be, by virtue of the nature of the proceedings, the uncontested evidence of those who are responsible for security. What exactly is meant by the interests of national security is something that I wish to pursue, perhaps at the next sitting of this Committee. In some definitions, it can refer to economic interests, and there are all sorts of others, as well as simply terrorism, which is the context in which we think of national security at the moment. We will need a better definition in due course.
The use of “must” in this clause reduces the judge’s power virtually to nil. The grounds put forward by the Minister may be reduced to the interest of national security, but as I have said, as the Bill is drafted those interests will be defined by the Minister himself. Clause 6(3) instructs the judge to ignore two very relevant considerations: first, that there may be no requirement on the Secretary of State to disclose; and, secondly, that the intercept evidence which the Secretary of State intends to put before him is inadmissible in the very proceedings he is supposed to be judging. If intercept evidence is inadmissible in open court, surely it is inadmissible in closed court. Intercept evidence would have to be normally regarded as inadmissible in such circumstances.
The word “may” will give the judge a discretion to decide what is proportionate and necessary in all the circumstances that come before him. It will give the judge control and power to manage proceedings, and the ability to decide how the procedure will be carried out and which type of procedure would be more appropriate. It will give the flexibility that I talked about in relation to the amendment that we debated earlier.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
My Lords, this is a key amendment. It has to be read alongside Clause 7(1)(c). The effect of the amendment tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Hodgson and Lord Thomas of Gresford, would be that once it was established that a disclosure to a claimant would be damaging to the interests of national security, it would be open to the court, balancing all the factors for and against non-disclosure, to determine that the case should involve the option for the defendant to have a closed material proceeding. If the position were exactly as the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, suggested, and there was some damage to national security but it was extremely minor and only in respect of one document when there were millions of other documents whose disclosure would not do any harm at all, even if the Secretary of State certified that minor harm would be done, it would be open to the court to say, “Yes, we accept that there will be damage to national security but it does not warrant a CMP procedure”. That would give the judges some degree of control.
Currently, if the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs said, “I have spoken to the security services and they tell me that if you disclose this, it will damage national security, and I believe that to be true”, I find it very difficult to imagine that a responsible judge would be able to say no. Once the judge has said yes to that proposition, he or she would be obliged under Clause 6(2) to say, “This is now a case in which an application can be made”. The consequence of that is that Clause 7(1)(c) would apply. Rules of court would have to be made that would then allow the Secretary of State or the relevant party to make an application. If in respect of an individual document or piece of information the Secretary of State says, “I have spoken to the security services and they tell me that disclosure of these 25 documents would damage national security in quite a mild way”—they would not say that, but let us imagine that they did—the judge would have no discretion.
The correct course, if the case is made that we need to change the legal position, is that the judge should have a discretion. Again, I emphasise that what the Bill is trying to do is not protect national security—that can be protected by the case being pulled—but ensure a fair trial. I look to the noble and learned Lord to justify the fact that there is no balance and no discretion. Why is there an obligation to opt for CMP even if the damage to national security would be very mild? The noble Lords’ amendment would get round this and give the judges real discretion.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, once again I thank my noble friend for moving his amendment. It highlights an important issue in the Bill relating to judicial discretion. Under the proposed proceedings, the Secretary of State would apply for a declaration that a closed material procedure might be used in the case. The judge will need to be satisfied of two things before he grants the application. The two conditions set out in Clause 6(2) are that the material is so relevant that normally a party would be required to disclose it, and that disclosure of the material would damage national security.
The construct is that if both conditions are met, there is no discretion; the judge says that this is a case where a closed material procedure will happen. As I started to explain prior to the dinner break, that is a gateway. It does not mean that every piece of material is necessarily going to be the subject of evidence led in closed proceedings. Things would then move on to the second stage where, similar to what happens in PII, evidence documents are then tested. It may be that, subject to proper redaction, certain documents then could be admitted, or permission might be refused for them to be in closed material proceedings and they could be admitted to open proceedings if the redaction was made. In other words, the redaction would be the non-disclosure. Equally, as indicated in Clause 7(1)(d), if permission is given by the court not to disclose material, the rules of court must provide that the court should consider requiring the relevant person to provide a summary—the gisting—of the material. As subsections (2) and (3) of Clause 7 indicate, there are consequences. If the court does not give the relevant person, most likely the Secretary of State, permission to withhold material and the Secretary of State elects not to disclose it, there are consequences that can flow from that and these are set out in Clause 7(3).
That is the process we envisage. Obviously, the court will be assisted and will receive representations from special advocates. It is the intention that the court should have the power to refuse non-disclosure or permit non-disclosure only to parts of a document or require summaries or require a party to take action for refusal to disclose or to summarise—for example, not to take certain points or to make concessions. That is certainly the intention. I am more than willing to look at the wording to see that it gives effect to the intention.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
Is the answer to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, that the principle of proportionality is intended to apply here—in other words, that the court must exercise a sense of proportion once a case is through the gateway? If that is so, it is very important. Can the Government think about writing in the need for proportionality as the previous Government did in their Equality Bill?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I am not conceding at this point that it is proportionality. The dynamic of representation is from special advocates and the court considering the material may be able to disclose a particular document if there are certain redactions. I understand that that is the nature of many of these cases and that representations can be made.
The important point I wish to make is that that is at the second stage. The amendment which my noble friend has moved relates to the first stage. That is a gateway which we believe the case ought to be allowed to go through if the two tests are met—namely, that it is a case where disclosure of material is required. We envisage that the Secretary of State would present the material to the court. If there were a vast number of documents, he could present a sample, giving the flavour of why he believes that issues of national security are involved, and ask for the principle of closed material proceedings to be accepted. But the detail takes place at the second stage. Therefore, our view is that the discretion would not be appropriate at the first stage because it is at the second stage that individual documents are being looked at. If the two tests are met, it is important that closed material procedures are allowed to take place, although what actually becomes closed material will be subject to no doubt considerable discussion, debate and representation. It is for that reason that we do not believe it would be appropriate to allow judicial discretion in these circumstances.
However, I certainly take the point about Clause 7(1)(c) that was made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, and referred to by my noble friends Lord Hodgson and Lord Thomas. If they feel that that is a total barrier and does not allow the kind of discussion, debate and representation to be made at the second stage that we clearly intend should be part of this process, we are happy to look at it.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
Perhaps I might ask for clarification for a non-lawyer. Clause 6(2) has the two tests: a requirement to disclose and whether the disclosure is damaging. No matter how trivial or tiny the case is, you go through that sequence. Then we have the second stage of a gateway that could result in further actions to open up material by redaction and enable it to be disclosed and so on. Where does that second stage come in? Am I right in thinking that Clause 6(2) applies no matter how trivial the matter is?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, if the test is made as to whether it,
“would be damaging to the interests of national security”,
with all due respect, I do not think that is a trivial matter, and I do not think the Secretary of State would actually seek to do it if it was a very minor matter. We are talking about matters that would have to satisfy the court that it,
“would be damaging to the interests of national security”.
That is quite a serious level of consideration. We are not talking about something that is trivial. What I am trying to say is that if the Secretary of State sought to do something that perhaps was not so much in the interests of national security but might be thought in some way to be hiding an embarrassment, as is clear also from the Bill—I think it is in Clause 10(4)—special advocates are engaged at the gateway stage and obviously we would make representations to that effect. If the court was not satisfied that this was a matter of damaging the interests of national security, the test would not be met and it would not be appropriate for the closed material procedure application to succeed.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
I was trying to be helpful—and obviously failing—in asking why the Government do not accept that the principle of proportionality must apply at the second stage. It is an ancient principle of our common law that you do not take a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Provided that the judge has that discretion, it seems a very important safeguard. Could whether or not to write it into the Bill be considered before Report?
Lord Thomas of Gresford
If I may add to that, my Amendment 58 seeks to add words to Clause 7(1)(c) that would introduce a test of proportionality. Clause 7(1)(c) says,
“that the court is required to give permission for material not to be disclosed if it considers that the disclosure of the material would be damaging to the interests of national security”,
to which my amendment would add,
“and that damage outweighs the interests of justice in disclosure”.
That would introduce a balancing test for the judge. As I understand what my noble and learned friend is saying, Clause 6(2) is concerned with the gateway and that could be satisfied by the production of a sample of material. But when you get to the second stage, the judge would be considering things in absolute detail, endeavouring to perhaps make things available by redaction or other means. Even when doing that, my Amendment 58 would be a very appropriate addition to Clause 7(1)(c).
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I know my noble friends are trying to be helpful and I am sure that equally they will understand why I am not prepared to make a concession on the hoof, as it were. This is clearly something one would wish to consider and clearly we will also have the opportunity in good time to consider my noble friend’s Amendment 58. I am glad that he made the distinction between getting through the gateway—which is what Amendment 45 applies to—and the second stage. We are of the view that if the two tests in Clause 6(2) are satisfied to the discretion of the judge, the application for the closed material procedure must succeed and thereupon the detailed consideration of the documentation takes place under the rules of court, which are to be set out under Clause 7.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton
I understand that the noble and learned Lord is seeking to say that there is no discretion to determine whether the threshold is passed. However, something akin to a discretion is reached in Clause 7. Looking at the wording of it, the Clause 7 requirement is rules. Under Clause 7(1)(a), you are not allowed to have the claimant present when you are looking at the individual material. If the court is satisfied that there is damage to national security, it has give permission for it not to be disclosed. It is not a discretionary matter. It is simply determining, as the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, said, whether the threshold is met. If the threshold is met, there is no discretion. One additional power is given; namely, can a summary be given that does not give away the national security material? It is not a question of proportionality. It is exactly the same test in practice as that which is referred to in the gateway in Clause 6(1). If the Secretary of State says, “If you disclose that document I am advised by the security services that it will damage national security”, unless the judge thinks that the Secretary of State is irrational, which would be very rare, he will be obliged to give effect to that. It is not a question of discretion at all. There are no balancing factors. It is simply, “Right, the consequences are that I cannot disclose that. Can a summary be given?”. That is the only thing that a judge is allowed to consider under this Bill. Although I understand what the noble and learned Lord is trying to say, it is not really right to say that there is a gateway under Clause 6 and then some sort of discretion under Clause 7. There is not a discretion under Clause 7.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I make the following point in response to what the noble and learned Lord says. He is right to say that Clause 7(1)(d) would give rise to gisting. However, under Clause 7(1)(c), it may well be that after representations, argument and debate a document is redacted, and of course the redaction may well be the material that should not be disclosed because it is the material which could be damaging to national security. However, once redacted, the remainder of the document might then be admitted to open proceedings. That is an important part of the process. It is not a blanket application to the document as a whole. It may be that the non-disclosure extends to only part of that document. Only part of that document would be a matter of damaging national security. For example, it could be that a document gives the name of an agent. If that was redacted, the rest of the document could well be admitted to open proceedings, but the name of the agent is something which quite properly should not be disclosed.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
The noble and learned Lord says that it would not get through the gateway, but it is not a gateway for every document. It is a gateway to trigger the closed material proceedings. It may be a sample document saying, “Here is the kind of defence we want to mount. There is material here on which we will wish to rely but it cannot be put into the public domain because it would be damaging to the interests of national security”. If the judge agrees that there is documentation there that would satisfy that, the application is granted and thereafter the documentation or evidence is gone through page by page. It may be that you can take something out of a document and the rest of it would be quite safe from the point of view of national security to allow into open proceedings.
That is the process that we envisage being gone through at stage 2. It is an important part of the process, which means that only a small amount of material would be subject to closed material proceedings. However, to get to that process of going through material document by document, you must first get through the gateway. It is on getting through the gateway, if the two tests are satisfied, that the application should be granted. Going back to my noble friend’s amendment, he argues that there should be some discretion at that point. The Government’s position is that the two tests should be met but can be challenged. Special advocates can be involved at that stage to challenge whether the tests have been met. However, if they are met, we should get through the gateway and, thereafter, we can look at issues such as redaction and gisting. That is an important part of the stage 2 proceedings.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
I am sorry to pursue the matter once more. When a judge is deciding on the scope of an injunction, or on whether a restraint of trade is no more than is necessary, that judge is then applying the principle of proportionality. I do not understand why the same does not apply here. When the judge is deciding on such things as redaction and looking at documents, surely he or she will decide that there should not be overkill, that the interests of justice are to be weighed and that the principle of proportionality should therefore apply. However it is expressed, that is the same as the European test under both EU and convention law. It is also the same under our own scheme. I do not understand why that does not apply here.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I think I have already replied to my noble friend. I indicated that he had raised the issue of proportionality and that I would not make a concession on that point on the hoof. However, I also undertook to consider it.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble and learned friend for those comments. I have listened carefully to him on the interplay between Clauses 6 and 7. Obviously, we shall look further at Clause 7 in relation to what can and cannot be revealed and the implications for the gateway, as he put it, under Clause 6(2). I have a slight instinctive dislike of the word “must”, which remains in my mind because of the issue of judicial discretion. However, we will no doubt get further illumination on that as we get to Clause 7 and the later amendments. That may make me wish to consider this again but, in the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Thomas of Gresford
Lord Thomas of Gresford
My Lords, the closed material procedure applies when a court is, under Clause 6(1),
“seised of relevant civil proceedings”.
Clause 6(7) defines “relevant civil proceedings” as,
“any proceedings (other than proceedings in a criminal cause or matter) before … the High Court … the Court of Appeal, or … the Court of Session”.
CMP applications can be brought only where a disclosure of material would be damaging to the interests of national security. However, can such applications be appropriate in habeas corpus proceedings or judicial review involving the liberty of the subject or claims for wrongful arrest against the police or prison officers? Not even the United States goes that far. As my noble and learned friend will be well aware, the habeas applications in the Guantanamo cases have a special procedure whereby sensitive material is released to security-cleared advocates acting on behalf of the applicant. Then the court, in such special procedures, can give permission to those security-cleared advocates to discuss specific matters or questions laid out by the court with the client.
In habeas corpus proceedings, the onus is on the respondent to the writ to justify the restraint of the applicant. Blackstone cites the first recorded use of habeas corpus in 1305, during the reign of King Edward I. He explains the basis of the writ in these terms:
“The King is at all times entitled to have an account, why the liberty of any of his subjects is restrained, wherever that restraint may be inflicted”.
I am always conscious of the Magna Carta Lords who look down on our proceedings in this Chamber. At Runnymede nearly 800 years ago, they insisted that:
“No Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed”.
Are actions against the police for wrongful arrest to be defeated by secret evidence? Let us take the example of someone arrested on a bus for smoking a fake cigarette. He brings proceedings against the police for wrongful arrest. Those acting for the police go to see the judge in secret and say, “We had a tip-off from the security services. We cannot tell the claimant in this particular case. You must strike his claim out or find in our favour”—or whatever. Is his claim then to be defeated? I suggest that that would be quite contrary to the basis of habeas corpus and the protection of freedom of the individual as we have known it for centuries.
In my submission, the Government should define much more closely the relevant civil proceedings in which CMPs may be applied for. We have been talking all day but only in the context of civil claims for damages brought in the High Court in the ordinary way. We have not discussed habeas corpus and matters of that sort. I suggest that they should be specifically excluded. I beg to move.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I have some sympathy with the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, that habeas corpus proceedings should fall within the civil proceedings provisions of the Bill. I am less persuaded by the argument to include any action against the police. It would probably seem wrong to exclude these specific actions from the procedures, not least in the light of the Crime and Courts Bill, with the creation of the National Crime Agency, the extension of powers to the border agency and the like, and the possible involvement of ordinary police forces under the auspices of the NCA in matters which could go to issues of terrorism or other aspects of national security.
The noble Lord may have a point about habeas corpus and it would be interesting to hear the Minister’s response to that, but I do not think that the Opposition could necessarily support the amendment as it stands. There is the problem that we will refer to later about definitions of national security and the like, which possibly offer a more fruitful way of narrowing the scope of the provisions of the Bill. Having said that, I entirely concur with my noble and learned friend’s view. Anything that I say on subsequent amendments or indeed in relation to this amendment is without prejudice to the stance that we take, but we are yet to be persuaded of the case for closed material procedures in the first instance. All the discussions that have taken place so far, and that we will continue to have in relation to this part of the Bill are subject to that distinct reservation. We are not, therefore, conceding the point when we look to see what ultimate fallback provisions might be desirable and necessary if it is the wish of your Lordships’ House on Report to go forward with the Bill in much the condition that we now find it. We will be looking to discuss amendments and we hope that the Government will respond positively to some of them but in relation to this amendment we will be commending the latter part to the Minister’s attention.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My noble friend’s amendment seeks to narrow further the contexts in which a CMP can be used. I hope I can demonstrate to your Lordships that the Bill is already very narrowly drafted and that the amendment could remove justice from those who are entitled to it. The Bill as drafted allows CMPs to be used only in relation to information damaging to the interests of national security, only in the High Court, Court of Appeal or Court of Session, and not in a criminal cause or matter.
The amendment would mean that CMPs could not be used in any action against the police or law enforcement agencies, or any action seeking a person’s release from detention. Where such cases involve information that cannot be disclosed for reasons of national security, this amendment would not allow judges to reach a judgment based on all the facts. Claims relating to national security should, surely, be capable of being heard, rather than material being excluded by way of public interest immunity, regardless of whether the defendant is the police or a government department. As was reflected in the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, the police play a vital role in national security in, for example, counterterrorism investigations. There may be many civil cases which would involve the police—it would not necessarily be directed against a Secretary of State—and it would be unfortunate if they were to be excluded from the possible use of CMPs. Judges should be able to come to a judgment on the full facts in any case relating to national security.
The Bill is designed to increase justice for claimants and defendants in all civil cases where national security means that, otherwise, information could not be put into open court. This amendment would take that justice away from claimants who bring a national security case against the police or law enforcement agencies, or where, as my noble friend explained, the case is about a person’s release from detention. Cases about a person’s release from detention in the UK will generally be in the context of a criminal cause or matter where CMPs are not available, but should this not be the case, it is important that all of the material is before the court, if possible, rather than being excluded by PII.
My noble friend gave a quotation about habeas corpus going back to the reign of King Edward I. I hope that I do not strike too nationalistic a tone, but north of the border, Edward I is not seen as a fount of justice and liberty. That apart, my noble friend raises a serious point. It is our considered view that in the context of habeas corpus cases it is vital that the court is in possession of relevant material before making a decision to issue a writ. Without all of the relevant information, it may not be possible for the court to come to the right decision.
I know that noble Lords are concerned that the nature of the types of cases covered by this amendment creates a greater need for transparency, and that, indeed, in some circumstances, such as proceedings into potential violations of Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights, there is a requirement for transparency. The argument that public confidence requires fully open proceedings in such cases is an understandable one, but I believe that these concerns can be addressed through our current proposals. Nothing in this Bill is incompatible with the ECHR. My noble friend has raised a serious point about detention. I will reflect further on it, but our approach is that it is important, even in these cases, that all the material, if possible, is made available to the court before a decision is made, rather than some of being excluded through PII. I will reflect on what he has said, but our view is that we have struck the right balance. I hope that on that basis he will be able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Thomas of Gresford
I know that my noble and learned friend is heading for the sleeper so perhaps we can send homewards to think again about this issue. Habeas applications in the United States have a special procedure and the importance of it is that the applicant for habeas is given some idea of what he is facing. I am not saying that habeas corpus applications should be completely open, but it is inappropriate to apply the strictures and limitations contained in the Bill to applications of that sort. It is a matter that we can discuss. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.