House of Commons

Monday 22nd October 2012 Commons Chamber

Monday 22 October 2012

The House met at half-past Two o’clock

Prayers

Monday 22nd October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions

Monday 22nd October 2012 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

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

1. What recent assessment he has made of the support given to service leavers when re-entering civilian life.

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

Providing transitional support to service leavers is a high priority. Those who have completed a minimum duration in the armed forces are offered a framework of support services. Of those who make use of this framework, over 90% of those seeking work find employment within six months of leaving the armed forces. However, we believe we can do more, and I announced in September the appointment of Lord Ashcroft as the Prime Minister’s special representative for veterans’ transition. He has a long-standing interest in the armed forces and a track record of support for veterans’ charities. He will review the support available to service leavers making the transition to civilian life and make recommendations for improving that support and for better co-ordination across Government and with service charities. We look forward to receiving his recommendations in due course.

[Hazel Blears]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for that reply. Over the next two years, 9,000 brave men and women who have put their lives on the line for our country will be coming home from Afghanistan. They will need help to find a home and retrain to find a job, and support for their families. At the moment, they are often pushed from pillar to post around local authorities. If there were a veterans champion in each local authority who could co-ordinate those services, they could make the system work effectively for those veterans coming home. Will the Secretary of State consider the campaign for veterans champions in each local authority area and give it his support?

[Mr Hammond]

The right hon. Lady is absolutely right that local authorities are a vital part of this equation. I am pleased to be able to tell her that more than 150 local authorities so far have signed up to the community covenant. I will certainly make her specific point to Lord Ashcroft and ask him to consider it very carefully in his deliberations.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend assure me that maximum effort is being put into trying to recruit to the reserve Army people who have been well trained in the armed forces but are leaving, so that we do not lose their expertise?

[Mr Hammond]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He is absolutely right. As we build our Army reserve to a level of trained strength of 30,000, it will be essential that we capture the skills of regular Army leavers, not just to help us with the numbers but because of the resilience that they will give to reserve forces. I promise him that that is what we will do.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

Following Labour’s lead, employers such as John Lewis and O₂ will guarantee to interview veterans applying for jobs. Will the Minister introduce this scheme to all public sector employers?

[Mr Hammond]

One of the tasks that we have asked Lord Ashcroft to undertake is a discussion across Government and the wider public sector to see what more we can do to ensure that service leavers have the very best opportunities in relation not only to employment but access to benefits and social housing—all the other things that they need. I assure the hon. Gentleman that from my knowledge of Lord Ashcroft I am sure he will do this extremely thoroughly.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend knows very well, not least from the excellent report produced by the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), that one of the biggest problems facing returning servicemen is mental health problems, not only when they first get back but for very many years thereafter. What extra steps can the Secretary of State take to make sure that we alleviate the worst effects of these mental disturbances?

[Mr Hammond]

As my hon. Friend will know, the excellent report produced by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary is being taken forward by the Government. We will continue to work closely with the Department of Health and others to look at how best we can implement the remaining recommendations in that report.

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

May I congratulate the new ministerial team who have found their places on the Front Bench today? It is only a shame that that comes at the expense of their dedicated and highly effective predecessors, who deserve the thanks of everyone in all parts of the House.

Many of our armed forces are currently being made redundant. One of the worries is that the Ministry of Defence seems to be trying to save money by sacking experienced people very close to their full pension entitlement. I have been contacted by angry and disappointed family members who feel very let down by this approach. Will the Secretary of State confirm that in future rounds of service redundancies he will take into account proximity to pension qualification when deciding whom to make redundant?

[Mr Hammond]

I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his generous comments on the retiring ministerial team, and I am sure that he will appreciate that my new Front-Bench colleagues will give him an equally hard time in future.

As the right hon. Gentleman knows, proximity to pension point is not and cannot be a determining factor in selection for redundancy. Wherever we set the bar—we have made some reductions in the immediate pension point for those being made redundant—some people will, unfortunately, fall just short of it and it is inevitable that they will feel a sense of injustice. The legal advice that I have received is that it would not be appropriate—we would be subject to challenge—if we used proximity to pension point as a criterion in redundancy selection.

[Mr Murphy]

There will be disappointment at that answer, not least in the pension justice for troops campaign, one of whose high-profile supporters is Sergeant Lee Nolan, who served our country in Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo, and who was sacked just 72 hours before qualifying for his full pension. So disgusted is he that he has returned all six of his medals to Downing street in protest. Will the Secretary of State at least enter into all-party talks, with the aim of guaranteeing that no one currently serving in Afghanistan will be affected in this way? It is simply wrong and not good enough for someone who has served our country bravely and for many years in Iraq, Afghanistan or any other theatre to be sacked so close to qualifying for their full pension entitlement.

[Mr Hammond]

Before the right hon. Gentleman climbs any further on his high horse, I remind him that we are having to make reductions in the size of our armed forces to deal with the legacy that we inherited from the Labour party. Nobody who is serving on operations or who is on post-operational leave is eligible for selection for redundancy. The right hon. Gentleman knows that we are deeply sympathetic with regard to those very difficult cases in which people missed their immediate pension point by a very short period, but I assure him that the legal advice is unambiguous on the issue.

[Patrick Mercer (Newark) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State join me in congratulating the Newark Patriotic Fund, particularly Mrs Sue Gray and Mrs Karen Grayson, for its work? It is tireless, splendid and could very easily be copied by hon. Members, so could I encourage him to encourage them?

[Mr Hammond]

I can honestly say that I have not come across the Newark Patriotic Fund, but I have no doubt that my hon. Friend will acquaint me with it intimately in the near future. I look forward to disseminating its good intentions.

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

3. What discussions he has had on the proposed merger of BAE Systems and EADS.

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

I was involved in a number of discussions regarding the possible merger of BAE Systems and EADS, as proposed by the companies themselves, prior to their mutual decision to end negotiations on 10 October.

[Mr Cunningham]

I first pay tribute to the former Minister with responsibility for procurement. When we had problems and needed meetings to resolve difficulties, he was one of the very first to arrange such meetings. We never had a problem. Having said that, why did the Secretary of State not take into consideration the shareholding issues experienced by BAE and its associates? Does he not understand that this has caused a lot of unease among them?

[Mr Hammond]

I am not quite sure what the hon. Gentleman means by saying that I did not take account of shareholding issues. The Government made it clear that we understood the reasons why the companies were attracted to a possible merger and that we were willing to listen to the arguments for it, subject to setting out clear red lines about the UK’s national interest with regard to national security, our technology base and protecting jobs. It subsequently became clear that the UK’s red lines could not be satisfied while simultaneously satisfying those of the French and German Governments. It also became clear—I think that this is the point of the hon. Gentleman’s question—that not all the shareholders on either side of the transaction were satisfied that it made sense.

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

I strongly support my right hon. Friend’s red lines, but I put it to him that the palpable failure of BAE’s business model—which, basically, focused only on defence—and the shortcomings in its current management should not be allowed to drive us into an unsatisfactory situation, and that, such is the value of the assets that it controls, we may in the long run have to take a less than entirely hands-off approach to the company.

[Mr Hammond]

As my hon. Friend would expect, the Ministry of Defence has a close working relationship with BAE Systems as our largest supplier. The company has a substantial order book, a profitable business and strong cash flow, and it will continue to operate as an independent British business. Clearly, it will face challenges as its principal customers shrink their budgets, and it will need to adapt its business model for the future.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

4. What recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on steps to ensure that seriously wounded war veterans will receive a minimum of £130 per week towards the cost of care and living.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Mr Mark Francois)]

The Defence Secretary has regular discussions with his Cabinet colleagues regarding the support provided to those who have been seriously wounded while serving in the armed forces. The matter has also been discussed by the Cabinet Sub-Committee on the Armed Forces Covenant. Work on minimum payments is at an early stage, but Ministry of Defence officials continue to work closely with the Department for Work and Pensions to develop the support that we provide to service personnel and veterans.

[Julie Hilling]

There seems to be a little hope in the Minister’s answer. Will he say what is being done now about veterans who have already lost their disability living allowance? My constituent Aaron Moon lost his leg in Afghanistan and had more than six months without disability living allowance. Surely that is not the right way to treat our wounded heroes.

[Mr Francois]

I hope that we can offer the hon. Lady some good news. When the personal independence payment comes in, anyone will be able to apply for it. However, seriously injured service personnel and ex-service personnel will instead be able to apply for a separate payment, which will guarantee that they will not be worse off than under disability living allowance. Under that payment, they will not be subject to periodic reassessment, as PIP recipients will be. The separate payment, which is known as the armed forces independence payment, or AFIP, will be available to those in receipt of an award from the armed forces compensation scheme at tariff levels 1 to 8, or with an entitlement to a guaranteed income payment of 50% or higher.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

11. Does the Minister share my concern that multiple amputee UK soldiers are not receiving the Genium X2 product, which is generally accredited as the best available in the prosthetics field and is used by the US? Will he agree to meet triple amputee Rifleman Jack Otter, who is my constituent, to understand the difficulties and worries that such people have?

[Mr Francois]

I understand that my hon. Friend’s Question was further down the Order Paper, but has been grouped with another Question. However, using the principles of military flexibility, I will attempt to be fleet of foot.

I am familiar with the issue that my hon. Friend raises. The Ministry of Defence has made considerable investments at Headley Court to provide a world-class service for those with prosthetics. I was present when His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales opened the new £17 million Jubilee rehabilitation wing, which was paid for by the Ministry of Defence. The Secretary of State has recently announced a further £5 million of investment. I am familiar with the case of my hon. Friend’s constituent and will agree to meet him. However, I must enter the caveat that I am not qualified as a doctor and that I will have to take clinical advice on what decision it would be best to take following the meeting.

[Mr Speaker]

I have known the right hon. Gentleman for 27 years and he is often right, but on this occasion he is half right. The hon. Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) does have a Question lower down the Order Paper. That played a part in my choosing to call him now. It is Question 11, as the right hon. Gentleman will correctly discern, but it has not been grouped with any other Question.

[Gemma Doyle (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome the Minister to his post. Having travelled with him and his colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne), all the way to Stanley last year, I can say that an 18-hour journey is useful in fostering cross-party co-operation.

I welcome the Minister’s comments today because, despite the Prime Minister’s assurances on the personal independence payment, in a letter to me dated 30 September the then Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Maria Miller), who had responsibility for disabled people, wrote:

“we are working with the MOD to establish if it would be possible to avoid severely injured veterans undergoing multiple reassessments”.

At that stage, the Prime Minister’s message clearly had not filtered through to Ministers at the Department for Work and Pensions. Will the Minister clarify how far back the policy that he has announced today will apply?

[Mr Francois]

It was an enjoyable trip, but what goes on tour stays on tour.

As I have already tried to explain, there will be a special payment called the AFIP, which we hope will be able to address the bulk of these issues. The hon. Lady will know from her interest in the field that the second principle of the armed forces covenant is special treatment where appropriate, especially for the injured or bereaved. We hope that the AFIP will play into that and be an example of the second principle of the covenant in action.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

5. Whether his Department has undertaken any preparations for the removal of the nuclear fleet from HMNB Clyde in the event of Scottish independence.

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mr Andrew Robathan)]

The UK Government are confident that the people of Scotland will choose to remain part of the United Kingdom, and we are not making plans for Scottish independence. We therefore have no plan for the strategic nuclear deterrent to be relocated from its current home at Her Majesty’s Naval Base Clyde.

[David Mowat]

The Minister will be aware that last week the Scottish National party decided that an independent Scotland would join NATO, availing itself of the nuclear umbrella. It then voted to evict the UK deterrent from the Clyde. Replicating that facility would cost millions and take many years. Is that a coherent policy or a hypocritical rant?

[Mr Robathan]

I have to say that that question is best addressed to the SNP, but unfortunately no SNP Members are here to answer it at the moment. It is almost incredible that a country might wish to join NATO but then say that NATO’s assets and armaments would not be allowed to be stationed in that country or pass through it.

[Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)]

The Minister has noted that there is no SNP presence in the House today. The hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) said, “Who dares wins,” but SNP Members do not dare turn up to engage in the debate.

Does the Minister agree that it smacks of a contradiction for the SNP to say that it wants to join an international alliance and promote co-operation with NATO, and at the very same time say that it wants to leave a Union that best serves the defence of Scotland?

[Mr Robathan]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, because I entirely agree. That is an interesting dilemma that members of the SNP will have to sort out among themselves.

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

We should not be too hard on SNP Members. I am sure that pressing engagements in their constituencies have prevented them from attending Defence questions.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that we can share respect for those who are opposed to nuclear weapons in principle, but that we can share only incomprehension at those who say they are opposed to nuclear weapons in principle and then want to join an alliance that is based on nuclear deterrence?

[Mr Robathan]

I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman, and I do agree with him. If I may, I shall quote from The Guardian—not always my favourite reading. It stated this morning:

“After losing Friday’s vote, rebels inside the party now want him”—

the First Minister—

“to prove that NATO would allow a non-nuclear Scotland to join the alliance.”

That is a very good point.

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) is exactly right. What we witnessed at the SNP conference at the end of last week was double standards—the shelter of the NATO umbrella, but the removal of Trident.

Has the Minister heard that the Scottish Government are establishing a defence department or section? What formal approaches have Ministers had from the Scottish Government, or from that dedicated department, about the removal of the nuclear fleet from an independent Scotland? The SNP talks about that a lot, but have there been any approaches?

[Mr Robathan]

This is an unusual outbreak of consensus throughout the Chamber, and I welcome what the hon. Gentleman says. I believe that the Scottish Government have a Minister for Veteran Affairs, who shares the hon. Gentleman’s surname, but if I am honest I am not quite sure what he does. We have had no contact from the Scottish Government about a department of defence. We remain committed to the United Kingdom, and I am glad to say that there is agreement pretty much throughout the Chamber on the need to continue the UK.

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

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his well deserved promotion. Will we continue with the UK’s Trident ballistic missile nuclear deterrent irrespective of the outcome of the Scottish vote?

[Mr Robathan]

I thank my hon. Friend for his congratulations. Current Government policy is to continue with the continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent based on Trident. Should the Scots vote for independence—God forbid!—we would need to review the situation, but the continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent remains our policy, and I see that proceeding into the future.

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

I echo the sentiment that we should not be too hard on SNP Members who are not in the Chamber—after all, we want to keep them in this place. Is the Minister aware of any discussions that SNP Ministers have held about their plans to remove the deterrent with either the United States or other NATO members?

[Mr Robathan]

There have been no discussions with the UK Government or, as far as I am aware, with any other NATO member. As I said earlier, I think it incredible that NATO would accept in the alliance a country that would not allow the various weapons used by NATO to be stationed in or pass through it.

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

6. What the timetable is for the production of the Type 26 combat ship.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Philip Dunne)]

The Type 26 global combat ship programme is still in its assessment phase, and the timetable for the build programme of the ships will be determined at the main gate investment decision, currently scheduled for the middle of the decade. Build will commence to meet the current planning assumption of the first ship entering service as soon as possible after 2020.

[Penny Mordaunt]

When the carrier work ends there will be more than 200,000 tonnes of warship in Portsmouth dockyard, and 1,000 extra sailors—numbers not seen in my city since the 1950s. There will then be a two-year gap before work starts on the Type 26. Rather than pay more to stretch out those contracts to cover that gap and retain sovereign capability, would it be a better use of funds to build some much-needed ocean patrol vessels? Would, and when might, the Minister consider such an option?

[Mr Dunne]

As my hon. Friend knows, the Ministry of Defence has a terms of business agreement with BAE Systems Maritime Naval Ships. That agreement commits the company to maintain warship design and build capability, and elements of support covering all complex service warships in the UK. The Government continue to work with BAE Systems on the utilisation of shipbuilding capability once work on the current carrier programme is complete. As my hon. Friend knows, Corvette offshore patrol vessels are currently under construction by BAE Systems in Portsmouth for the royal navy of Oman.

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

I welcome the Minister to his new position. As he will know, there is a long and proud record on the Clyde of building warships for the British Navy, and a complex ship for the British Navy has never been built in a foreign country. Will the contract for the Type 26 ships contain a clause for the event of a vote for an independent Scotland in 2014?

[Mr Dunne]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words. As my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Armed Forces said, the Government are not currently planning on the basis that the Scottish people will vote in favour of independence in a referendum. The hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) is right to say that the UK has not built a complex warship outside its shores since the second world war, and I believe that the only times it did so during the first and second world wars were in then colonial territories for local use. The Government remain committed to using UK industry to build UK warships.

In the unlikely event that Scotland should decide to separate from the UK, the Scottish defence industry would be eligible to bid only for contracts placed by a future Scottish Government or competed outside the UK, or placed by the UK or other Governments. That is because, as the hon. Gentleman knows, many UK defence contracts are exempted from procurement rules for reasons of national security.

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

The Prime Minister told the House last Wednesday that the Type 26 programme is “fully funded”. How many Type 26 combat ships are fully funded, and when can we expect to see them in service?

[Mr Dunne]

The hon. Gentleman needs to be aware that the programme is currently in its assessment phase. A decision on main gate assumption is due to be taken in a few years’ time, and the build programme will roll forward from that point. The Government have made some assumptions in the equipment plan, which we will publish shortly, and the hon. Gentleman will be able to glean more information from that once it is available.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

7. How many UK service personnel are based in the Gulf; and whether reserves are earmarked for deployment to the Gulf in the event of military action against Iran.

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

Just under 2,000 UK military personnel in the Gulf region are serving on current operations, of whom the majority are royal naval personnel. Reserves could be made available to support the full range of military activity in any operation. The decision to employ reserves is taken by Ministers and subject to a 28-day notice period for individuals.

The UK, together with the international community, remains committed to a negotiated diplomatic solution with Iran on its nuclear ambitions. The Government are pursuing a strategy of pressure and engagement to persuade Iran to negotiate seriously, and to allay the legitimate concerns of the international community. However, we have made it clear that if Iran makes the wrong choice, all options remain on the table.

[Mr Hollobone]

What assessment has been made both of the conventional capability of the Iranian armed forces, and of the ability of Her Majesty’s armed forces to overcome the particular challenges of an armed conflict in that theatre?

[Mr Hammond]

The Iranian armed forces have a significant capability. We do not, at the moment, advocate a military solution to this crisis. We advocate a solution based on pressure and engagement, and on persuading the Iranians to engage with the legitimate concerns of the international community. Should the situation evolve, it is certain that, if the UK took part in any action, it would do so as part of an international coalition.

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

The ramifications of any military action against Iran are enormously unpredictable, not only for our forces in the middle east but for the wider region, so I am glad to hear the Secretary of State confirm that our main thrust is diplomacy. Although we are enormously worried about Iran’s intentions, I hope he can tell the House that we will do everything we can to avoid any military dimension.

[Mr Hammond]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Because of the strategic position occupied by Iran and the vital nature of the strait of Hormuz to the world’s economy—oil supplies transit that waterway—any action, or even suggestion of action, will be deeply destabilising and debilitating. We remain committed to the process of engagement with our European allies and others, which includes the use of economic and financial sanctions to bring pressure to bear on the Iranian regime. There is very significant evidence, particularly the declining value of the Iranian currency, to suggest that such sanctions are beginning to have an effect and to cause fracture within the Iranian leadership.

[Mr Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

I commend my right hon. Friend and the Government for the policy they are pursuing towards Iran. Will he continue to ensure that the policy serves to divide the Iranian Government from their people and does not inadvertently unite them?

[Mr Hammond]

My hon. Friend makes a good point and is absolutely right. I have quizzed many of our allies in the Gulf who have an intimate knowledge of what is going on in Iran on the ground. We do not want those sanctions to unite the Iranian people with their oppressive regime; we want to wake the Iranian people up to the cost of this madcap dash for nuclear capability.

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

16. Does the Secretary of State agree with the Israeli Prime Minister that the international community must draw a “clear red line” over Iran’s nuclear programme? If so, where would that be?

[Mr Hammond]

The Israeli Government have their own well known position on the issue. The UK Government believe that engagement and continuous ratcheted pressure on the Iranian regime is the best way to proceed. We have also made it very clear to the Israelis and others that we do not believe that a pre-emptive military strike is the right way to proceed or the best way to resolve the situation.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

8. How much his Department expects to spend on advertising in 2012-13.

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mr Andrew Robathan)]

Nearly all advertising expenditure by the Ministry of Defence is to attract and recruit the best personnel for the armed forces. In the current financial year, the MOD has to date had approval from the Cabinet Office efficiency and reform group to spend £12 million on recruitment marketing operations to fund general service recruitment activities. A further £18 million was approved for specific recruitment marketing campaigns to address pinch points. The efficiency and reform group is due to decide soon whether to grant a further request for £250,000 for marketing operations and just under £3 million for pinch point campaigns. Further requests may arise during the course of the year. Like all Departments, the MOD seeks to minimise the cost of advertising. Spending has, for example, been reduced from nearly £60 million in 2009-10.

[Mr Bone]

I thank the Minister for that full response. It does seem a little strange that we are spending money on advertising for the Army at the same time as we are making members of the armed forces redundant. On the surface, it looks strange: would the Minister comment?

[Mr Robathan]

I know that my hon. Friend has a personal interest in the armed forces as his son is a Chinook pilot who is still flying—I pay tribute to him. His son could probably explain that one needs a constant flow of recruits into the armed forces as otherwise one ends up with an age gap. That has happened in the past—I recall it happening in the 1970s, under the Labour Government of Wilson-Callaghan—so one must continue to recruit; otherwise one ends up with a great gap in skills and ages that is very difficult to fill. A constant age structure is needed throughout the armed forces.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

9. What plans he has for the future involvement of UK troops in the mentoring and training of the Afghan National Security Forces.

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

12. What plans he has for the future involvement of UK troops in the mentoring and training of the Afghan National Security Forces.

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

UK forces will continue to mentor and train the Afghan army and police as they progressively assume responsibility for security operations over the next two years. The Government are clear that our support to Afghanistan will endure long after the end of our combat operations in 2014. That is in our national interests and in line with the long-term commitment made by the international community at the Chicago summit in May.

NATO is currently working to refine the detail of its training, advisory and assistance mission in Afghanistan after 2014, but the UK has already committed to lead the new Afghan national army officer academy near Kabul, which is under construction.

[Jason McCartney]

One of my constituents, Private Thomas Wroe, who was just 18, went to the aid of an Afghan policeman last month but was murdered in a cowardly way. Will my right hon. Friend ensure that during the draw-down our troops are protected as much as possible from these green on blue attacks? Will he also join me in praising the hundreds of people from Kirklees and Huddersfield who turned out last Thursday to pay tribute on the homecoming of Corunna Company, 3rd Battalion the Yorkshire Regiment?

[Mr Hammond]

I know that every Member will join me in condemning these attacks and those who perpetrate them in the strongest possible terms. We were all deeply shocked by the cowardly act that resulted in the death of Private Wroe and his colleague in 3 York, Sergeant Gareth Thursby. I know that the thoughts of the whole House will be with their families and friends.

We continue to work with our ISAF and Afghan partners to reduce the risk to an absolute minimum, but I am clear that we will not allow these cowardly attacks to deter us from our strategy or our commitment to the mission in Afghanistan. I am sure that all hon. Members will join me in congratulating the people of Kirklees and Huddersfield on turning out in strength to demonstrate their support for the units of the armed forces that are particularly connected with those communities.

[George Eustice]

As long ago as 2006 I saw on a visit to Afghanistan some of the excellent work our forces were doing to train the Afghan army. Given that six years later we still appear to have more work to do, how confident is my right hon. Friend that the transition of security responsibility to Afghan forces will be completed by 2014?

[Mr Hammond]

Commanders on the ground are confident that it will be completed by 2014. Yes, we still have more work to do, because Afghan security forces have been expanding dramatically since the time six years ago to which my hon. Friend refers. Afghan forces are taking more initiatives on their own. They are planning their operations, leading on almost all operations and acting alone or as the primary force on many of them. They have recently started to conduct much more sophisticated operations—for example, flying raids using night vision goggles. This is a very important step for them and we are very confident that by the end of 2014 Afghan national security forces will be capable of containing the insurgency as ISAF forces withdraw.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

Families who suffer bereavement or veterans who suffer injury in Afghanistan know that when they return local authorities currently have the power completely to exempt war disablement pension and war widow’s pensions when means-testing for council tax benefit. Does the Secretary of State agree that under the new system local authorities should continue to ensure that the full disregard is given for those benefits in England and Wales?

[Mr Hammond]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman in principle, and will look into his specific question, although I doubt whether we have the power to direct local authorities in Wales. I suspect that is a matter for the Welsh Assembly Government, and I know that he will take it up with the relevant authorities.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

The RAF tactical medical team provides the only consultant-led, blue-light rescue service across ISAF. It is highly regarded, giving those whom it rescues and treats a 25% greater chance of survival. Will he ensure that at least a basic capability is passed on to the Afghan national security forces, so that they too will have the confidence of knowing that they have rescue services that can support them?

[Mr Hammond]

I cannot give the hon. Lady any specific assurances about the form of continuing enablement post-2014, but I can assure her that ISAF commanders are acutely aware of the effect on Afghan morale of having high-quality medical support services available. One issue that will be addressed over the next two years will be how best to deliver that in a way that is sustainable post-2014.

[Sir Nick Harvey (North Devon) (LD)]

When my right hon. Friend made his welcome comments last week about reducing the number of British troops in Afghanistan next year, was he signalling a change from the agreement at the Lisbon NATO summit of “in together, out together”? Or will he confirm that decisions will continue to be taken with our key allies, most notably the US, which is a little preoccupied at the moment? How soon does he expect the US to make the decisions, and will those not be all-important?

[Mr Hammond]

I can reassure my hon. Friend that there is no change in policy. Over the last couple of weeks, I have been able to pass on the rather good news that commanders in theatre now believe, given the situation on the ground and the role that Afghan security forces are increasingly playing, that it should be possible to achieve a further significant draw-down in forces before the end of 2013. I can assure him, however, that the principle of “in together, out together” remains. ISAF will take these decisions together, and I expect them to be made once the new US Administration is formed early in the new year.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

10. What recent discussions he has had with ministerial colleagues on increasing support for veterans in finding work.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

15. What support his Department is providing for veterans seeking employment; and if he will make a statement.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Mr Mark Francois)]

With permission, I shall answer these questions together as I understand that they have actually been grouped.

The MOD regularly meets the Department for Education, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Department for Work and Pensions and others regarding initiatives to assist service leavers in making a successful transition to civilian life. Prior to leaving, all service personnel are entitled to some form of resettlement assistance, consisting of time, money and training, according to length of service. Those who serve six years or more, and all those medically discharged, regardless of how long served, are entitled to the full resettlement programme, which includes a three-day career transition workshop, the use of a career consultant, a job-finding service, retraining time and a retraining grant.

[Jack Dromey]

To leave the armed forces is to lose a way of life. Does the Minister not accept that we have a triple obligation to our heroes—never to short-change them by making them redundant within days of their enjoying a full pension; always to ensure that they get the support necessary to re-enter civilian life; and, crucially, to honour their past service to this country? Will he therefore take this opportunity to apologise to the House and the Royal Fusiliers for the actions of one of his fellow Ministers last week, who wrongly sought to exclude those brave men from the Public Gallery?

[Mr Francois]

I do not believe that my right hon. Friend attempted to do that. The hon. Gentleman’s first point was addressed directly in an earlier answer by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. I agree that we should endeavour to do the best for our service men and women when they leave the service—it is part of the armed forces covenant—and on that I can offer the hon. Gentleman some specific good news and one direct example: BT is set to bolster its current work force by recruiting 250 further engineers from service personnel already committed to leaving the armed forces. That will make a total of 1,000 people whom BT has taken on under that heading, and we welcome that.

[Martin Horwood]

Given the worrying statistics on the problems faced by ex-service people in gaining employment, would Ministers be interested to hear that 1 Rifles is working with Omega Resource Group from my constituency in developing veteran-specific employment programmes? Is that something they would like to hear more about, and should it be considered in Lord Ashcroft’s review?

[Mr Francois]

I would indeed be interested to hear more about that, as I am sure will be Lord Ashcroft. I know for a fact that, for instance, the Rifles have been working on projects to help seriously wounded ex-servicemen to engage in archaeology. A number have gone on to study archaeology or have applied to study it in further or higher education as a result of that initiative. The Rifles have an active programme in this regard, and we commend them for it.

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

13. What steps the Government are taking to extend support in education for the children of current and former service personnel.

[Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)]

14. What steps the Government are taking to extend support in education for the children of current and former service personnel.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Mr Mark Francois)]

The Ministry of Defence and other Departments have made important changes in service children’s education. We have introduced the service pupil premium, and we have extended it to children of military personnel who have died in service and to eligible service children whose parents have left the armed forces. In addition, the MOD introduced the support fund for state schools with service children. The new schools admissions code now enables infant schools in England to treat the children of UK service personnel as a permitted exception to class size regulations. That means that infant schools may admit service children and increase the class size to more than 30 if they feel they have the resources to do so.

[Rehman Chishti]

Will the Minister join me in welcoming the community covenant recently agreed in my constituency in Medway, which has been supported by well over 50 local companies?

[Mr Francois]

I most certainly will. As the Secretary of State has already said, more than 150 local authorities have signed the community covenant, and we are now on track to get to 200. They are coming in fast, which gives us the nice problem of tracking them as they come in. If I can give my hon. Friend another example of how the scheme works in practice, Oxfordshire county council has amended its admissions procedures so that service personnel who apply to move their children into an Oxfordshire school before they move to Oxfordshire can use a British Forces Post Office number on the application form. That might sound like a small thing, but prior to the change service personnel could not apply for a school place until they had moved into an area. Allowing service personnel to apply in advance of their children moving to an area materially affects their family’s quality of life. I commend Oxfordshire county council for its initiative and I hope others will copy it.

[Mr Marcus Jones]

I welcome the recent announcements made by the Minister, which clearly demonstrate that this Government are doing their bit to honour the military covenant. Can my right hon. Friend say what steps are being taken to help those children who have been bereaved to go on to higher education?

[Mr Francois]

Yes, I can. The coalition programme for government included an undertaking to provide

“university and further education scholarships for…children of Service”

personnel

“who have been killed on active duty since 1990”.

The aim is to provide a head start in life, enabling bereaved service children to obtain higher education qualifications. The education scholarship scheme was launched on 8 April 2011 and, where the criteria are met, provides further education and university scholarships for the children of servicemen and women who died while serving in Her Majesty’s armed forces.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

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

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

My departmental responsibilities are to ensure that our country is properly defended, now and in the future, through delivery of the military tasks for which the MOD is mandated. My first priority is and will remain the success of the operation in Afghanistan. The Ministry of Defence has also embarked on a major project of transformation to ensure the behavioural change needed to maintain the budget in balance and deliver the equipment programme, so that our armed forces can be confident of being properly equipped and trained. With many of the most difficult decisions needed to put our defences on a sustainable basis having been taken, and with the benefit of a balanced budget to build on, we now need to focus on the future, and in particular on building the trust and confidence of the people who make up defence.

[Mrs Moon]

Small and medium enterprises such as Aircraft Maintenance Support Services in my Bridgend constituency provide invaluable support and enablement to combat troops. They send their employees out to ensure that equipment is available for troops to use outside the bases. Does the Secretary of State agree that we owe a huge debt of thanks to those private sector companies that ensure that our troops are appropriately equipped to take part in active service?

[Mr Hammond]

I absolutely agree. I always make the point clearly that there are three legs to our defence: the armed forces, regular and reserve; the civilians who support them; and the contractors—the hundreds of thousands of people working in the defence and defence support industries who provide and maintain equipment so that our troops can do their job.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

T3. Given the outstanding contribution of our reserves to the armed forces, will the Minister please update the House on the progress of the Green Paper?

[Mr Hammond]

The Green Paper on our plans for the reserves is expected to be published around the end of this month or early next month.

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

I, too, welcome the new Front-Bench team. Two and half years into this Government, there is a hiatus in the decision making on Defence Equipment and Support. Ministers’ views seem to ebb and flow, and indecision is rampant. We need clarity, so when exactly will the Minister set out plans for a Government-owned contractor-operated body—a GoCo—or whatever other body he intends to bring forward?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Philip Dunne)]

The hon. Lady talks about a hiatus. There were 13 years during which the previous Administration made no attempt to transform procurement within the Ministry of Defence, but this Government are determined to make procurement efficient and effective so that our armed forces can be given the right equipment at the right time and at the right cost. In July, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced an investigation into the GoCo route, narrowing the options for Defence Equipment and Support. A value-for-money exercise is nearing completion, and we expect to make a decision before the end of the year on whether to move forward.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

T4. What progress is being made on moving bases from Germany to the United Kingdom, and to Stafford?

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mr Andrew Robathan)]

My hon. Friend might know that the 1st Armoured Division’s signal regiment, based at Herford, and the 16th Signal Regiment, based at Elmpt, will move to Beacon barracks in Stafford in the second half of 2015. A competition is under way between four bidders to develop the main site, and we hope to let a contract for that development in the summer of next year.

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

T2. There is a degree of confusion over what happened in last Thursday’s debate, so may I ask the Secretary of State to confirm that the Minister for the Armed Forces approached the Speaker’s Chair about the conduct of Fusiliers in the Public Gallery?

[Mr Robathan]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for letting me set the record straight. I have the greatest respect for ex-service personnel, including the Fusiliers who were in the Chamber last week. By the way, I do not think that the hon. Lady was in the Chamber that day, so she does not speak with great effect, does she? Furthermore, I believe that anybody should be allowed to watch our proceedings from the Gallery, because that is an important part of our democratic process. May I finally say that what she alleges is entirely untrue?

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

T5. I shall be pleased to be wearing the Queen’s Jubilee medal for service to the police on Remembrance Sunday this year, but that service pales into insignificance compared with the service given by the Arctic convoy veterans. Should not the Government recognise—or allow the Russian Government to recognise—their heroic role in defeating national socialism?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Dr Andrew Murrison)]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question; he has taken a long-standing interest in these matters. I should also like to add my strong thanks to those who served in that particularly unpleasant theatre during the second world war. He will know that, earlier this year, Sir John Holmes began to undertake an independent review of the rules applying to military medals and that, on 17 July, he reported his findings, which appeared in the form of a written ministerial statement. Further work has been commissioned by the Prime Minister, including a re-examination of issues that have been the subject of past campaigns, such as the Arctic convoy medal. The outcome of Sir John’s further work is expected by the end of the year.

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

T6. Last Thursday, the House voted to oppose the disbandment of the 2nd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. Will the Government now have the humility to accept that Commons decision?

[Mr Robathan]

May I say that we had an excellent debate? I have to say that I found myself in a minority of one when it came to speeches defending the Government’s position. We had an excellent debate and we listened carefully to what was said, but I do not think that, at the moment, it is the House’s intention for a vote in such a debate to be binding upon the Government.

[Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)]

T7. Does my right hon. Friend agree that support across society for the work of our brave servicemen and women in keeping our country safe is ever more widely recognised? Will he welcome the support of businesses for the new defence discount scheme and encourage more businesses to get involved in it?

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Mr Mark Francois)]

Yes, we do indeed welcome the support of businesses for the defence discount scheme, which will offer servicemen, veterans and servicemen’s families a number of discounts in a range of high street businesses across the country. People may already register for the scheme now, but we hope within the next few months to progress the scheme by giving them a card bearing their name, which will make it easier to prove their membership when they enter one of the participating companies. We believe this will be valuable to the people concerned, and we commend those businesses that are participating in the scheme.

[Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)]

The 2012 armed forces continuous attitudes survey provides some very concerning information, particularly in respect of the Army. Only 52% of soldiers are satisfied with service life; the trend of declining morale has continued, with only 18% reporting high morale across the Army; and only 33% of soldiers questioned felt valued. Does the Secretary of State share my concern at these figures, and, if he does, what is he going to do about them?

[Mr Philip Hammond]

Yes, of course we are concerned about morale in the Army, which I have previously described as “fragile”. We have been through a period of enormous change—budget retrenchment, necessary redundancies, reorganisation and rebasing. What we can do now is try to get this process completed as quickly as possible, so we can return to some certainty whereby people are able to plan their personal futures. As I said just a few moments ago, we have the challenge of starting to rebuild the trust and confidence of people in the armed forces around the armed forces of the future. I am confident that, despite being smaller, our future armed forces will be highly capable, valued and very well respected.

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

T8. Will the Secretary of State clarify whether the United Kingdom has shared intelligence on locations with the United States leading to drone strikes in Pakistan? If so, will he explain the legal justification for sharing such information?

[Mr Hammond]

We do not discuss in this Chamber matters relating to intelligence. I can tell my hon. Friend that there is a need for effective action in the Pakistani tribal areas and that there is a need for that action to be owned by the Pakistanis. The United States operates in Afghanistan under a different basis of law from the one under which we operate. I can assure my hon. Friend and the House that everything we do complies with the law under which we operate.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

One of my constituents served on the Arctic convoys during the second world war. Like many others, he has been advised not to accept a medal offered by the Russian Government. I was heartened by the Minister saying that this matter would be reconsidered and a decision taken by the end of the year. May I ask him to reflect on the fact that other British Commonwealth countries—Australia, New Zealand, Canada—have advised that this medal can be accepted and that it is hardly surprising the offer was not made earlier when there was a communist Government in Russia?

[Dr Murrison]

Sir John Holmes, in his excellent review published in July this year, accepted all the principal parts of the rules that go behind or underpin medalling in this country. We have to accept that the integrity of our medalling system is peerless. Nevertheless, Sir John will report further towards the end of the year on the rules that apply to medalling and will deal specifically with the Arctic convoy and various other circumstances.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

T9. Following the failure of the talks between EADS and BAE Systems, will the Government tell us about any more promising avenues for European defence co-operation that they are pursuing?

[Mr Philip Hammond]

It is not for the Government to pursue arrangements for the future of BAES, EADS or any other company, but we will of course listen carefully with an open mind to any proposals brought to us by any of these companies. Where we hold a golden share—a veto share—we will allow any such transactions to proceed only where the United Kingdom’s vital national interests can be protected.

[Peter Luff (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

When does my right hon. Friend expect the National Audit Office’s assessment of the affordability of the defence equipment programme to be published?

[Mr Hammond]

Shortly.

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

Given the Secretary of State’s past comments about the failure of the private sector to fulfil its obligations in regard to Olympic security, does he have similar doubts about the outsourcing of procurement at Defence Equipment and Support, which is based in my constituency?

[Mr Hammond]

I think that my hon. Friend is referring to comments about the security arrangements for the Olympic games. Let me say this: there are things that are best done in the sector, and there are things that are better done in the private sector. Our proposals for DE and S are an attempt to get the best of both worlds by bringing in private sector management expertise to work alongside highly skilled civilian and military professionals who have specialist knowledge of military procurement.

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

I am grateful to the Prime Minister for coming into the Chamber to hear my question.

The Secretary of State will now be aware that the Defence Committee has written about the future of Garrison Radio, in the context of local radio not just at Colchester but at Catterick. Will a statement be made today about preventing the British Forces Broadcasting Service from snuffing out local Garrison Radio services?

[Mr Francois]

On behalf of the Prime Minister, I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind comments.

I am aware of the issue involving the BFBS and Garrison Radio. I understand that Garrison Radio tendered for the work initially, but that unfortunately its tender was not entirely successful. I believe that the Future Forces Broadcasting Service will be able to provide a perfectly adequate service, but if the hon. Gentleman—who I know represents a valuable garrison—is still dissatisfied, I shall be willing to meet him personally to discuss the matter.

European Council

Monday 22nd October 2012 Commons Chamber

15:31

[The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)]

With permission, Mr Speaker, I shall make a statement on last week’s European Council.

The European Union faces important choices in the coming months in order to meet tough economic challenges and deal with problems in the eurozone. There were no landmark decisions at this Council, but there was some limited progress on both issues.

As I have said, we are in a global economic race, and all European economies need to become more competitive. That means taking steps such as expanding their private sectors, reforming welfare and improving education. In terms of action at European Union level, we believe that it means lifting the burdens on businesses, completing the single market, and taking forward trade deals with the biggest economies and the fastest-growing countries and regions in the world. I have consistently promoted those solutions, and at the Council we made some progress.

On deregulation, I joined others to secure a new agreement that specifically refers to withdrawing legislative proposals from Brussels that stifle our businesses. Of course, we now need to see specific actions, but it is worth noting that the conclusions refer to the

“intention to withdraw a number of pending proposals and to identify possible areas where the regulatory burden could be lightened”.

On completion of the single market, as I reported in June, there is now a proper plan with dates and actions for completing the market in energy, services and digital, but once again it is important for that to be followed through in order to secure jobs and growth.

On trade, the Council agreed on an ambitious agenda to create 2 million jobs across Europe. That includes completing free trade deals with Canada and Singapore in the coming months, and starting negotiations with the United States next year on a comprehensive transatlantic trade and investment agreement. We made some new progress on launching negotiations with Japan “in the coming months.” That deal alone could increase European Union GDP by €42 billion.

Let me now turn to the eurozone. Britain is not in the eurozone and we will not be joining the eurozone, but it is in our national interest for the uncertainty surrounding the eurozone to end. I have argued for some time that a working eurozone needs a working banking union. It is one of the features that a successful single currency needs. Obviously you do not need a banking union because you have a single market; you need it because you have a single currency—so Britain should not, and will not, be part of that banking union.

Britain’s banks will be supervised by the Bank of England, not by the European Central Bank, and British taxpayers will not be guaranteeing or rescuing eurozone banks, but we do need eurozone members to get on with forming a banking union. At the Council, I joined those who were arguing for progress to be made on the plan that had been announced in June. To put it simply, I believe that it is not enough to have a banking union that is stripped of the very elements—such as mutualised deposit guarantees, a common fiscal backstop and a framework for rescuing banks—that are needed to break the dangerous link in the eurozone between sovereign debt problems and the stability of eurozone banks. But because not all countries outside the eurozone—like Britain—will want to join such a banking union, it is also essential that the unity and integrity of the single market is fully respected. The organisation that currently ensures a level playing field for banking within the single market is the European Banking Authority. We need to make sure that it will continue to function properly, ensuring fair and effective decision making. This, again, is specifically recognised in the conclusions. More broadly, as eurozone countries take steps to deepen their economic and monetary union—as they will—it is important that we secure, as I did, an explicit commitment in the conclusions that the final report and road map in December will include “concrete proposals” to ensure that the integrity of the single market is respected.

Finally, the next Council in November will discuss the financial framework for Europe between 2014 and 2020. We have not put in place tough settlements in Britain in order to go to Brussels and sign up to big increases in European spending. I do not believe that German voters want that any more than British voters, and that is why our Governments have led the argument in Europe for fiscal restraint, so I put down a marker that we need a rigorous settlement. As the letter signed in December 2010 by a number of European leaders said, given the tough spending settlements that all member states have had to pursue in their own countries,

“payment appropriations should increase, at most, by no more than inflation over the next financial perspectives”.

On foreign affairs, the Council, led by Britain, once again discussed further restrictive measures on the Syrian regime, and made clear to Iran that we will increase the pressure if there is no progress on the nuclear dossier.

Making our economies competitive, dealing with uncertainty in the eurozone, keeping the EU budget under proper control, and making sure the EU speaks with a strong and united voice on the key international challenges: this is our agenda, and I commend this statement to the House.

15:36

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

I thank the Prime Minister for his statement and associate myself entirely with the summit’s conclusions in particular on Iran and Syria. The dangers of the civil war in Syria spilling over into the wider region are now all too apparent, and we strongly support the EU playing its part to seek to prevent this from happening.

The backdrop to this summit is that across Europe there is low or no growth. I am afraid on this fundamental issue the Prime Minister has yet again returned from a European summit with nothing to offer. So, first, can he tell us whether he had any responses to the proposals on the immediate growth crisis facing Europe that he took to the summit? Europe urgently needs co-ordinated action to boost demand, with those countries with the scope to do so taking action, but yet again there was nothing from the summit.

Secondly, on the single market—which the Prime Minister makes great play of—he admitted that this summit simply reaffirmed what was agreed in June, but will he agree that the situation is actually slightly different from then? On energy, will he confirm that the conclusions were exactly the same as the Council’s conclusions 18 months ago? On digital, they sounded familiar to me, too, and there is a reason: they were exactly the same as they were in October 2011—a year ago. So when he said at his summit press conference, with characteristic humility:

“Who is driving that agenda”—

on energy, on digital—

“which has made so much progress this year? It’s Britain”,

what did he mean by that, because there has been no progress over the last year?

Thirdly, on banking, there are big issues facing financial services as others move towards a banking union, but the summit conclusions are vague at this stage. So can the Prime Minister clarify for us what his key demands are in relation to the crucial issue of voting rights, as banking union goes ahead? Can he tell us what specific safeguards he will be seeking, and can he tell us how he will be building support for his position among our allies—using his enormous popularity, which he has built up over the past two and a half years?

That takes me to the real problem the Prime Minister faced at this summit. At home last week, he was starring in his own version of “The Thick of It”. In Europe he was offering another chapter in his handbook of “How to Lose Friends and Influence”. This is what Finland’s Europe Minister said—[Interruption.] Those on the Government Benches do not like to hear about their lack of influence in Europe. This is what Finland’s Europe Minister said at the summit:

“Britain is…putting itself in the margins...the boat is pulling away and one of our best friends is somehow saying ‘bye bye’ and there’s not really that much we can do about it.”

[Interruption.] Some on the Government Benches are saying, “Hear, hear,” about leaving Europe; there is the problem for the Prime Minister.

That is not the French or the Germans talking—it is Finland. Even the Prime Minister cannot be glorying in fisticuffs with Finland. It is the land of the Helsinki accords, reindeer and the Moomins. Its Europe Minister is an anglophile; he is one of Britain’s friends. The Prime Minister does not seem to realise that all his bluster about fighting for Britain is meaningless if he alienates our natural supporters. Will he confirm that he really has become the guy who goes to Europe and picks a fight in an empty room? That is just as well, because he normally finds himself in an empty room.

The Prime Minister was asked about his isolation, and this is what he had to say:

“We are actually a very, very important and influential player…right there in the vanguard.”

If he thinks that, the problem is not that he is isolated, it is that he is completely deluded about the arguments going on in Europe. Last October, he said:

“This is not the time to argue about walking away”.—[Official Report, 24 October 2011; Vol. 534, c. 27.]

But that is exactly what his Cabinet is now doing. [Interruption.] The Education Secretary has chosen to walk away from this statement, but the Eurosceptic beauty contest has begun, with the Education Secretary, the party chairman and others joining the fray. The reality is that the Prime Minister has lost control of his party on Europe. We have a Prime Minister who is outside the room looking in at Britain’s empty seat at the table. There is one thing that our allies in Europe and the British people can agree on—his Government are a shambles and it is Britain that suffers.

[The Prime Minister]

I am sure that there was a question in there somewhere. Frankly, I am not going to take any lectures on Europe from a party that gave up part of Britain’s rebate and got nothing in return; that gave up the social chapter and got nothing in return; and that joined the EU bail-out fund and got absolutely nothing in return. It is this Government who introduced the referendum lock, who got us out of the bail-out mechanism and who will always stand up for Britain in Europe.

I think that the right hon. Gentleman did ask a question somewhere at the beginning: what did Britain bring to Europe’s growth crisis? We brought, last week, falling unemployment, falling inflation and a million more people in work. He asks what we want in terms of banking union safeguards. We want single market safeguards, but I note that he had absolutely nothing positive to suggest on any of these agendas at all.

The right hon. Gentleman talks about Britain’s influence in Europe. The single market in digital, in energy and in services is a British agenda that we are driving forward. He says that there has been no progress. There were never, under his Government, dates and specific actions for completing these markets, but there are now. Oil sanctions on Iran is a British agenda that we have succeeded in driving forward; pressure on Syria and support for the Arab spring countries is a British agenda; and trade deals with the US and with Japan, not just with Canada and Singapore, is a British agenda.

What else did we get from the right hon. Gentleman? He talked about what I was doing at the European Council, but it is worth remembering that when I was there he was, of course, preparing for his great trade union sponsored march. I thought that the House might welcome an update on how the sponsored walk went: Unite union—£6 million; Unison—£3.2 million; and the GMB—£3.2 million. That is what he was doing—calling for general strikes and disruption—when we are fighting for Britain.

[Sir Peter Tapsell (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

When the Prime Minister made it admirably clear to Chancellor Merkel that Britain would not permit the European Banking Authority or the European Central Bank to have any control or oversight of the Bank of England, what was her response?

[The Prime Minister]

The point I would make to Chancellor Merkel—we do not actually fundamentally disagree about this—is that the single currency needs a banking union. At the heart of that banking union will be the ECB, with a new role as a banking regulator. But clearly as this country is not in the single currency our banking regulator will continue to be the Bank of England, and there will not be any question of the ECB having a say over the Bank of England—that is not the situation. Strangely enough, in a way the challenge is to persuade countries of the eurozone to go far enough in having a banking union that will help to break the link between banks that are in difficulty and sovereigns that are in difficulty. Just as we have a solid banking union for our single currency in the United Kingdom, they need a solid banking union for their single currency in the eurozone.

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

Did the Prime Minister make it clear—by the way, his use of “United Kingdom” versus “Britain” is improving, but it is not yet good enough—to the other European leaders that we would not contribute towards any of the millions of pounds that the European Commission wishes to spend to tell every European Union citizen how wonderful the EU is? Is that not a ridiculous waste of money?

[The Prime Minister]

I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for her school report and I shall continue to try to improve on my use of “United Kingdom” rather than anything else. On the issue of what the European Commission and European Union spend, as we get into this budget debate we should still look at the 6% of the money spent on the EU’s central costs and the fact that, as I said at the weekend, some 16% of Commission officials are paid more than €100,000 a year. Okay, 6% is a small percentage of the total but it is still meaningful in getting a good budget deal.

[Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

I commend my right hon. Friend and the Financial Secretary for so far complying with the European scrutiny rules on these banking proposals. Now my Committee has been able to recommend them for debate, and an early debate at that. However, given the reported advice of the Council’s legal adviser and the inherent impact of the proposals on our national interest, will he veto the proposals, not least because the proposed voting changes would expose the City of London to qualified majority voting, which would be very damaging to it?

[The Prime Minister]

The European Union is going about this change to banking union through a treaty base that requires unanimity, so Britain has a full part in the discussions; but I do not want us to veto proposals for a banking union for the eurozone because I think the eurozone needs a banking union. We should be putting our negotiating heft, as it were, towards ensuring that those of us remaining outside the banking union have proper safeguards. Let me make one last point: I am sure that my hon. Friend knows that a lot of financial services regulation in the European Union is already done by qualified majority voting.

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

If a referendum were held tomorrow, the Prime Minister would be in my camp in voting to stay in the European Union. According to one of Lord Rothermere’s organs, the Secretary of State for Education said that if there were a referendum today on whether the UK should cut its ties with Brussels, he would vote to leave. What is the Cabinet position? Is it that of the Secretary of State, who is an out-er, or that of the Prime Minister, who, like me, is an in-er?

[The Prime Minister]

I hate to disappoint the right hon. Gentleman, but we are not having an in-or-out referendum on the European Union tomorrow. I want us to achieve a new settlement between Britain—the United Kingdom—and the European Union and to put that new settlement to fresh consent. That is what should happen. I think that the idea of an in/out referendum is wrong, because I neither support the status quo nor think that leaving is the right answer.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I warmly welcome the Prime Minister’s wish to have a new settlement with the European Union and encourage him to negotiate just that. Is not our veto over a six-year budget perspective for which the others want a huge expansion of spending the opportunity to negotiate that new settlement?

[The Prime Minister]

The point about the European budget is that we need to maximise our negotiation leverage on that specific issue, as we are part of this union and we want it to have a sustainable budget. As I wrote in the letter of 18 December 2010,

“payment appropriations should increase, at most, by no more than inflation over the next financial perspectives”—[Interruption.]

The shadow Chancellor asks from a sedentary position what our leverage is, and it is very simple. The decision must be agreed by unanimity. Tony Blair, when he sat in that seat, gave up our rebate without any need, but we will not do that.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

Were there any discussions, either at the summit or in the margins, about the acute immigration crisis facing Greece? As the Prime Minister knows, last year 100,000 illegal migrants crossed from Turkey to Greece. This year, 100,000 Syrians have moved into Turkey. Would the Prime Minister be prepared to contribute to additional rapid border intervention team—RABIT—forces on the border between Greece and Turkey to try to ease that crisis?

[The Prime Minister]

The Greek Prime Minister, attending his first European Council, raised that issue, which is clearly putting pressure on Greece. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, the British Government’s position is that we should continue to support the organisations that deal with these issues, such as Frontex. If there is pressure for more resources, we can consider that. We should always bear in mind, however, that when it comes to migration into Europe it is the countries of the north, including Britain, that face the greatest pressure from asylum claims.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

Since the Government have raised the possibility of opting out of the European arrest warrant, which is vital for tackling human trafficking, organised crime and terrorism, did any of our European partners at the summit express the worry that Euroscepticism might make the UK go soft on crime?

[The Prime Minister]

No one mentioned that to me, no.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Has the Prime Minister not realised yet why those others in Europe do not take very much notice of what he has to say? Does he not realise that they work it out that this Prime Minister is being constantly undermined by the antics of his Chancellor of the Exchequer, the ex-Chief Whip, Boris Johnson—it goes on for ever? This heir to Blair has suddenly become like John Major all over again.

[The Prime Minister]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I know the Prime Minister will reply with very specific and focused reference to the deliberations of the European Council.

[The Prime Minister]

Those are all subjects that were not discussed in any great depth at the European Council.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

I am sorry not to be able to follow the humorous line that we had from the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner), but in the unanimous negotiations required for a European banking union, will the Prime Minister try and repatriate powers that are currently subject to qualified majority voting?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend asks an important question. We need to see how the banking union proposals develop. We do not yet know whether it will be a full-on banking union or a restricted banking union. We do not know for certain the treaty base that will be pursued. If it is pursued on a basis of unanimity, it is absolutely key to make sure we safeguard the single market. I am very conscious of the fact, sitting round that table, that I am responsible for 40% of the European Union’s financial services industry. That, I think, must be our focus during these negotiations.

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

Could the Prime Minister clarify whether he intends to opt in or out, or out and back into the European arrest warrant, bearing in mind that it was recently used to bring Jeremy Forrest, the maths teacher who disappeared with Megan Stammers, back to the UK?

[The Prime Minister]

This issue has been discussed at great length by the Home Secretary, who set out in great detail in the House of Commons recently that we are minded to exercise the opt-out that the previous Government put in place, but there are safeguards that we want to seek for the arrest warrant.

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that the development of a eurozone banking union demonstrates how the UK is increasingly finding itself in the worst of all possible worlds—bound and directed by a qualified majority that is solid in the eurozone? May I remind him that we already have a European Banking Authority which is based in London and operates by qualified majority vote?

[The Prime Minister]

I go a certain way with my hon. Friend, but the point is that the proposals for banking union have to be agreed by unanimity, so that is an important safeguard for Britain. But I do not think it would be in our interests to stop the eurozone putting in place something that a single currency needs in order to function. Our economy is suffering today because of uncertainty in the eurozone. Those high interest rates in Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal affect us too, and they need action, including a banking union. We in the United Kingdom have a single currency—the pound sterling—and we are going to keep it. It works—and it works partly because we have a banking union. The countries of the eurozone need one too, so blocking it just for the sake of it does not make sense.

[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

On completing the single European market in energy and digitalisation, there has been no change. Is that what the Prime Minister considers progress?

[The Prime Minister]

I think the hon. Gentleman is wrong, in that for the first time there is a series of actions and dates that have to be completed by a specific time. If he reads the growth pact, it is all set out in huge detail. In previous Council conclusions, there have just been warm words, rather than the dates and the actions, and that will make a difference.

[Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend will be aware that the biggest issue confronting families in Britain and across the European Union is the cost of living, with rising fuel and food prices and utility bills. In that context, he will have the strong support of Government Members in making it clear to our European partners that large increases in the EU budget would be utterly unacceptable to the British people.

[The Prime Minister]

I am very grateful for my hon. Friend’s support. If anything, since December, when Chancellor Merkel and the French, Finnish and Dutch leaders all signed the letter, along with me, the debt situation—the deficit situation—has got worse, so the pressure to make sure that we deliver a sensible settlement for the European budget has got even greater. That is why we will be sticking to our guns.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Did the EU deserve the Nobel peace prize?

[The Prime Minister]

There is a case for saying that the institutions that Europe put in place after the second world war—and I would include NATO as well as the European Union—have played a role in making sure that we settle our problems around conference tables rather than on the fields of Flanders. To that extent, yes, I think that it is right. [Interruption.] Someone says, “Why not go?” We already have three of the five European Presidents going to Oslo to collect this prize, and I suggested that alongside them should be 27 schoolchildren —one from each country.

[Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. When there is a danger of eurozone members taking a common position or, indeed, being required to do so, as is the case with the European Central Bank regulation, is it not absolutely essential that he stands up for Britain’s interests and insists on the safeguards that we need to protect our position in the face of a Europe that is increasingly divided between eurozone and non-eurozone countries?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend has absolutely hit the nail on the head. We want the eurozone banking to go ahead, but there are dangers, because if the ECB members voted en bloc in the European Banking Authority, they would automatically have qualified majority voting—that is the problem. That is why the conclusions of the summit include these words:

“An acceptable and balanced solution is needed regarding changes to voting modalities and decisions under the European Banking Authority…Regulation.”

That is very important conclusions language that we fought quite a battle to secure. My point is that I do not want to veto the banking union, but unless this problem is properly sorted—and Britain has a totally legitimate argument about why it needs to be sorted—we cannot allow it to go ahead.

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Prime Minister has said before that he brings something significant to the EU growth party. Can he inform the House what it is?

[The Prime Minister]

Among the most important things that Europe can do for growth are trade deals with the fastest growing parts of the world, completing the single market, and deregulating and cutting costs. All those are the agendas that Britain is driving forward and having greater success with than we have had for many years.

[Mr Charles Kennedy (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (LD)]

On maximising British influence within Europe, in the early days of this Administration the Foreign Secretary gave voice to the aim and ambition of seeing more UK citizens secure positions within the European Commission. Can the Prime Minister give us an update as to how that strategy is working?

[The Prime Minister]

We are making some progress on this issue. I discussed it specifically with Martin Schulz, the President of the European Parliament, who wants to see more British people involved in the Commission. I do not believe that it has to do with issues about pay; as I pointed out, Commission officials are rather better paid than members of our own Foreign and Commonwealth Office. However, we are looking at all the potential barriers to make sure that Britain is punching its weight in the Commission and elsewhere.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

As the Prime Minister said goodbye to his Chief Whip, did it occur to him that he might have some difficulty persuading the rest of Europe to listen to what he was saying if he could not even convince his own Back Benchers?

[The Prime Minister]

This, obviously, was all discussed at great length at the European Council in all sorts of forums. I am delighted to welcome the new Chief Whip, who is in his place and is already doing a great job.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Leader of the Opposition’s remarks show how completely hopeless he would be at negotiating anything with the EU since he has no policies and his only strategy is to be best mates with them? Does he also agree that it will be essential, with European banking union, that we put in place safeguards against any financial transactions tax for British banks?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Do we know where the leader of the Labour party stands on the EU fiscal treaty? We do not know. Do we know where he stands on the financial transactions tax? We have not got a clue. Do we know what he would do about the banking union? We have absolutely no idea. The Opposition have no positive message, but I know what they are up to in Europe. They are members of the European Socialists party, whose president is a Bulgarian who opposes gay pride marches. They have also signed up to scrapping the UK rebate—that is your official policy—and to increasing substantially the EU budget and introducing new EU taxes. They are your mates and that is your policy.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I remind the House and the Prime Minister that I do not have any policy on these matters, so I would be very grateful if he did not involve me in this exchange. Secondly, I gently and politely make the point that we are here to talk about the policies of the Government.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

Talking about mates, which parties from Latvia did the Prime Minister meet at the Council?

[The Prime Minister]

I can certainly give a list of people I did not meet—the parties of the European Socialists party, which include the Polish communists, whom the Opposition sit alongside. They also sit alongside Romanian holocaust deniers, and, as I have said, the party’s Bulgarian president opposes gay pride marches. I will not refer to your mates again, Mr Speaker; they are the hon. Gentleman’s mates.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

The whole country will be grateful for what the Prime Minister has done, especially because he has said, if I have understood him correctly, that when he is returned as Prime Minister, without the pesky Liberal Democrats in coalition, he will renegotiate with the European Union and put a referendum to the people in which they can vote yes for the renegotiation or no to come out.

[The Prime Minister]

As I was at the European Council meeting, I am afraid that I missed my hon. Friend’s 60th birthday. I am extremely sorry about that, but I hope that he and Mrs Bone got my belated card.

I think that Europe is changing. The deepening of the eurozone, which will inevitably happen as a result of the problems of the single currency, will open up opportunities for a different and better settlement between countries such as Britain and the European Union. We should pursue that. I have said that we should have both strategic and tactical patience, because the priority right now is dealing with the problems of the eurozone and the firefighting that has to take place, but I think it will be possible to draw up that new settlement and then, as I have said, seek fresh consent for that settlement.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

On the subject of how to win friends and influence people, there were 15 Heads of State present at a European People’s Party meeting on Thursday night. Having walked away from that group, how many heads of nations did the Prime Minister seek to influence at his dinner later the same evening?

[The Prime Minister]

I did not have a dinner that evening, so the hon. Gentleman’s question was wrong. [Interruption.] The dinner was all 27 Heads of State and Heads of Government, and I can inform him that it started at 6 o’clock and went on until 3 am. I remind the hon. Gentleman that, when it comes to mates, he has to explain why his mates want to scrap the UK rebate, increase the EU budget and introduce new EU taxes. If they are your dinner companions, I would rather not turn up.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Did the Prime Minister discuss his plans for an EU referendum at the European Council? He may find an in/out referendum undesirable, but I find his in/in referendum equally unacceptable. Only an in/out referendum will do for the British people and it would be very much in the Prime Minister’s best interests if he stopped resisting it.

[The Prime Minister]

I agree with my hon. Friend about many things, but on this one we do not agree. The problem with an in/out referendum is that it would put two options to the British people, which I do not think really complies with what people want. Many people, me included, are not satisfied with the status quo, which is why the “in” option is not acceptable; but many people—also like me—do not want us to leave altogether, because of the importance of the single market to Britain, a trading nation, so they do not want to be out. That is why I think that an in/out referendum is not the right answer.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

Even before the budget negotiations have begun, the Prime Minister has threatened to veto them. Does that not say volumes about even his lack of confidence in his own powers of persuasion?

[The Prime Minister]

What I have done before these budget negotiations is work together with other European leaders to set out what I think is acceptable. In the letter that we published on 18 December 2010, we said that

“payment appropriations should increase, at most, by no more than inflation over the next financial perspectives.”

In these negotiations we are dealing with taxpayers’ money and we are already a massive net contributor to the European Union. It is right to set out your position and stick to it, knowing that you have a veto if you need to use it.

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

May I commend the Prime Minister’s decision to stick to his guns and show consistency over the budget by insisting on a real-terms freeze? Does he agree that we will never drive reform in the EU if we continue to give it a blank cheque and allow it to spend whatever it likes?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Even if there is tough control over the European budget, as I say there should be, there is plenty of room to ensure that the cohesion countries receive the support that they need as their economies develop, to crack down on the administrative central costs, and to continue to reform the common agricultural policy and reduce the agriculture budget, which still makes up about a third of EU spending. There is plenty that can be done to get more money out of what is already spent and to use it more wisely.

[Mr Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley) (Lab)]

Surely the Prime Minister must be aware that the vast majority of his Back Benchers are clamouring for a referendum. Why does he not get the money from Ashcroft to pay for it? He gives them millions.

[The Prime Minister]

I have explained the position on a referendum. I do not think that an in/out referendum is the answer. The vast majority of the British people want us to be in Europe, but to have a better deal in Europe. That is what we stand for.

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

So, the Prime Minister wants to renegotiate our membership of the EU and put the new terms to a referendum. However, will that be an in/in referendum or will a no vote end Britain’s membership of the EU?

[The Prime Minister]

We are getting slightly ahead of ourselves. We need to use the development of the European Union to seek a fresh settlement. There must then be fresh consent for the fresh settlement. There is time to elapse before that can happen because of the immediate firefighting in the European Union, and we can go on discussing it between now and the next election.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

We have heard a lot today about protecting British interests, but will the Prime Minister set out how he expects to protect those interests from being harmed by closer European fiscal integration, when he did not even guarantee us a seat at the table for the negotiations?

[The Prime Minister]

My view is that it is inevitable that the eurozone countries will have to integrate further. As a country that is not a member of the eurozone, we must recognise that if those countries are to have a working single currency, they will have to make some changes. I therefore do not think that it would be right to stand in the way of everything that they need to do to build a currency that works. However, as that goes ahead, it is important that we safeguard our interests as a member of the European Union and, as I have said, seek a better settlement for the future.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

Has my right hon. Friend had the opportunity to see today’s edition of Le Figaro? Its front page declares that punitive taxation has killed the little attractiveness that remained for Paris as a financial centre against the City of London. Will my right hon. Friend continue to be a champion for London?

[The Prime Minister]

I have not seen that front page, but given all the other front pages that there have been recently, I think that I should go away and read it at once. It is important that Britain remains attractive for investment, business, enterprise and start-ups. We are in a global race—a competition—and that gives us a head start.

[Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)]

What advice did the Prime Minister seek from the Education Secretary and the third of the Cabinet whose policy it is to withdraw from the European Union before he attended the Council? Is it not the case that if we became the new Norway or Switzerland and had their policies, we would still be net contributors to the EU budget, but have little say over how it was spent, and we would still be bound by the rules of the single market, but have no influence over what those rules said?

[The Prime Minister]

I always listen carefully to all my Cabinet colleagues, especially the Education Secretary. However, the Leader of the Opposition has to answer the question himself. The shadow Defence Secretary has said that it is time for a referendum. Is that Labour policy or not?

[Edward Miliband]

indicated dissent.

[The Prime Minister]

No, it is not. Well, the right hon. Gentleman has clarified one thing this afternoon. That is very good.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

Does the Prime Minister agree that the best way to protect British interests is to strengthen the single market? By doing so, we might find some allies who are interested in a competitive and powerful single market monitored, ironically, by the European Commission.

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. In today’s European Union, it is not just the northern countries—the Dutch, the Danes and the British—that are fighting for the single market. Italy is now run by Mario Monti, who is very pro completing the single market; the Spanish, under Mariano Rajoy, support the single market; and the former Baltic states in the east of Europe back this agenda. The balance within the European Council has shifted more in favour of single-market and competitive measures, which is good news for Britain.

[Gemma Doyle (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Prime Minister says that he wants a freeze on the EU budget. Does he think his chances of achieving that are greater when he is in the room negotiating or after he has stormed out in a huff?

[The Prime Minister]

I have never stormed out of any European negotiations, but what I have done is that when a treaty was on the table that was not in British interests, I vetoed it.

When it comes to the future financing framework, I have studied very closely what the last Labour Prime Minister who went through the process did, in 2005. To start with, he said, “I’m not going to sign up to this new financial framework, because it means losing the British rebate.” But then they gave him a bit of pressure, and he completely backed down and gave up almost half the rebate. In return, he got a promise of a discussion on reforming the common agricultural policy, and that discussion never even properly happened.

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

Motor manufacturers such as Honda will be very pleased to hear that progress is being made on negotiations with Japan. Does my right hon. Friend agree that only through Britain’s positive engagement in and continuing membership of the EU will we negotiate effective and comprehensive trade agreements?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. If Britain was not at the table, I do not believe a free trade agreement would have much chance at all. There are countries alongside us that are in favour of it, but we are probably one of the most enthusiastic. I met the Japanese equivalent of the CBI last week at No. 10 Downing street with the Business Secretary, and I said that I would push hard for a free trade agreement with Japan. We have got a change in the language of the conclusions to talk about starting the negotiations in the coming months. However, it is hard work pushing and driving that agenda, because many countries would rather not see that happen. We think it is good for Britain. One of our selling points is being the most open trading economy in Europe, and we need to keep that up.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister has said a lot about mates this afternoon. Was there any discussion about the relations between the EU and Russia? Russia’s activities, or intransigence, on Syria have made the situation immensely worse there and infected the situation in the Lebanon. If there was any such discussion, can he explain why his mates—not just the members of Putin’s party but his own Conservative Members of Parliament and two Conservative peers—voted against the resolution at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe condemning Russia’s human rights activities?

[The Prime Minister]

I am afraid we did not get the apology that we were waiting for. We will have to be very patient.

I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman is wrong on a key detail. The Conservative representatives at the Council did vote for the report to which he refers.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

I very much congratulate my right hon. Friend on his work on expanding trade with non-EU countries, but does he share my concern about the EU’s procrastination on completing free trade agreements with countries such as Canada and Singapore?

[The Prime Minister]

Good progress is being made on Canada and Singapore, and I believe that as the conclusions of the Council say, the negotiations will be completed “in the coming months”. The bigger challenges will be getting properly started on Japan and the US, which, as two of the world’s biggest economies, have the greatest potential of all.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

The Government are committed to resisting the transfer of any further powers to Europe. Given that money is power, will my right hon. Friend commit to resisting any attempts to increase the size of the EU budget and therefore the UK contribution to it?

[The Prime Minister]

We are one of the countries in Europe that stand up for fiscal discipline and restrictions on the EU budget. I remind my hon. Friend that the annual budget negotiations are carried out under qualified majority voting. Last year we achieved a real-terms freeze in the European budget, and the year before we did not. Discussions and negotiations are under way for the 2013 budget, but the multi-year framework, which will control the budgets between 2014 and 2020, requires unanimity. That is where we can insist on the greatest possible discipline.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

On that point, will the Prime Minister assure the House that he will get the toughest possible deal, particularly on farming policy, given the poor deal for farmers from the revisiting of the Fontainebleau agreement and the review of the budget rebate? We need to ensure that our farmers, who are already greening our economy, get the best possible financial outcome for the next six years.

[The Prime Minister]

Obviously we will look carefully at this issue and at how it will affect our farmers. As my hon. Friend knows, the last Government basically disapplied the rebate from the spending on cohesion countries, which had some perverse effects as far as our farmers are concerned. What matters is that we do a good deal for Britain in the round, including our farmers.

[Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)]

As the Prime Minister will know, I wrote to him over the weekend about the European Parliament’s extraordinary two-seat operation between Strasbourg and Brussels, which costs over £1 billion of taxpayers’ money and emits 100,000 tonnes of CO₂. Does he agree that the so-called Strasbourg circus is an enormous waste of resources, and at the next Council of Ministers meeting in November will he push for an end to the farce, as in our coalition agreement?

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that issue. It has long been our position that that system should cease and that we should have one seat for the European Parliament, and we continue to make that point.

[Gavin Williamson (South Staffordshire) (Con)]

Labour Members of the European Parliament want my constituents to pay more taxes so that the European Union can spend more of our money. Will my right hon. Friend assure the House that such crackpot ideas from the Labour party will be kicked into touch?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and Labour Members who say that that is not the case clearly have not read the policy document of the European Socialists party to which they belong, which calls for scrapping the UK rebate, increasing the budget, and imposing new EU taxes. That is what the Labour Members’ group stands for.

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

On the subject of influence within the EU, does my right hon. Friend agree that quite a number of countries in the eurozone might benefit from talking to a country that has generated 1 million private sector jobs over the past three or four years?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point: there is a big range across Europe in how effectively our labour markets function, and if we look at unemployment rates—particularly youth unemployment— we see that the contrast between some of the best performing countries such as Holland, and the worst such as Spain and Italy, is very marked. The UK is not, I am afraid, among the best performing countries, but we should aim to be.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

Many of my constituents tell me that they wish to see the future of this country far less closely tied to that of continental Europe, but they are increasingly cynical about how that will take shape. Will the Prime Minister reassure my constituents that he will lead us in the right direction?

[The Prime Minister]

I would say to my hon. Friend’s constituents, as I would say to everybody, that I think Britain benefits from having a positive and strong relationship with our European allies and partners. We are a trading nation and have been throughout our history. Some 50% of our exports go to European countries and we need not only those markets to be open, but to have a say in how the rules of those markets are written. That is in Britain’s interest. As the European Union changes, and particularly as the eurozone becomes a tighter bloc with its own banking and fiscal union, the relationship between those outside the single currency and those inside is clearly going to change. We as a country should be thinking about how we can maximise the interests of the United Kingdom as that happens.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, is reported to have said that there is little point in holding the next EU summit if Britain wields its veto on the budget. Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is also little point in holding a summit if all the countries of Europe voluntarily surrender their vetoes? Is it not right to negotiate with our competitors from a position of strength, and use the tools of influence rather than the tools of effluence favoured by the Leader of the Opposition?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. We obviously need an agreement over time about the future funding of the European Union, and it makes sense to have a discussion about that. I am very clear about where that discussion needs to lead, and my view on that is not going to change. If we can come to an agreement in November, so be it, and if we cannot, so be it—happy to talk, but not happy to spend a lot of money.

[Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)]

The French press are today criticising their own Government, and talking about a financial exile because of punitive tax rates. Does the Prime Minister agree that it would be a good idea for Labour Front Benchers to take out a subscription for some of the French press, so that they understand how significantly poor punitive tax rates are for the economy?

[The Prime Minister]

That is an absolutely excellent suggestion. Labour Front Benchers also ought to consider the effect of a financial transactions tax, because that will be pushed ahead by some EU members. It would be a great mistake to start piling on extra taxes—[Interruption.] “Is that our policy?” I have no idea what the policy is of the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls). The real problem is that neither does he.

[Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)]

One area that has been missed in the Punch and Judy show that we have seen in the Chamber is the impact on foreign affairs. The Prime Minister spoke about additional measures on Syria. What additional measures is he planning?

[The Prime Minister]

A very successful Foreign Affairs Council met before the European Union Council. As I have said, the language on Iran was very tough—if there was not movement on the nuclear issue, the sanctions would be tightened up; and the language and conclusions on Syria were about further steps to put restrictions on the regime. Whether in discussing Syria or Iran, or indeed EU relationships with countries such as India and China, Britain is making a lot of the policy and a lot of the approaches.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

All EU members are having to take cuts in their spending domestically. When possible, can we insist that further payments from this country to the EU should be proportionate to the cuts we are taking domestically?

[The Prime Minister]

This is an ingenious idea that others are also pursuing. It is a complex picture, because Britain is one of the few net contributor nations. We need to look at the starting point. We are the second largest net contributor, which is why our rebate and our tough position on that policy is completely justified.

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

The Prime Minister is being accused of being an isolationist, when, in fact, we do not need to be part of the banking union discussions because we are never going to enter the currency. Will he confirm that, on a lot of other points, we are at the heart of the discussion, including on keeping the European budget down?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely intelligent point. The creation of the single currency has created a different dynamic in Europe. Inevitably, if countries are not in and do not want to join the single currency, they will not be involved in every single discussion about the future of the single currency. That is what has created different pathways in the European Union. We must be mature about and accept that fact, and think, “Now we know it, how can we best protect and defend the British interest in the EU?” She makes a very important point.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

Much of the discussion this afternoon has been on the need to protect our banking industry from regulation. For the avoidance of doubt, will the Prime Minister confirm that all our other exporting industries, such as pharmaceuticals, energy and oil, will be given the same respect in our negotiating position?

[The Prime Minister]

Of course—my hon. Friend makes an important point. I am not saying that we should stand up just for financial services and not for other industries. The industries he mentions are extremely important. However, we account for around 40% of the EU’s financial services, so it is an important industry. I am not a mercantilist, but it is one industry segment in which we have a substantial positive trade balance with the EU. A British Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary or Business Secretary would not be doing their duty if they did not speak up and point out some of the dangers of not having reasonable outcomes on those issues, but my hon. Friend is absolutely right that many other industries benefit from being members of the EU and from ensuring that we are writing fair rules for the single market.

[Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)]

My constituents will be horrified at any suggestion to increase the EU budget or the UK’s contribution to it at a time of such austerity here. I can assure my right hon. Friend that the vast majority of my constituents want him to stick to his guns on the multi-year settlement, to get a good deal for the UK, and to do what is best for the UK. Will he assure my constituents that they will be pleased with the outcome when the time comes?

[The Prime Minister]

I can certainly give my hon. Friend the assurance that we will stick to our position on that. I cannot tell him when a deal will be done—it does not have to be done this November. The important point is that the British position on not wanting real-terms increases will stay in place whether the deal is done in 2012, 2013, 2014 or at any point in future. That is the key thing that everyone needs to know.

[Mr Speaker]

The moment has arrived for the good doctor.

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

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Can the eurozone have a banking union that works without that leading to economic and political union too?

[The Prime Minister]

I think that the short answer to that question is no. Over time, the more there is a banking union and a fiscal union, the tighter the political union will be drawn, because—for instance—German voters having to stand behind Greek deposits, or French voters having to pay for the restructuring of a Spanish bank are deeply political questions. In my view, as the eurozone deepens its commitments, as is inevitable for a working single currency, there will be pressures for further political union, and for further treaties and treaty changes. That is why I believe it is possible for Britain to seek a new settlement and seek fresh consent on that settlement, but we have to show some patience, because right now the issue in Europe is how to firefight the problems of the eurozone—get down interest rates and get the eurozone economy moving—rather than thinking through all the consequences of banking union and fiscal union in the way that my hon. Friend suggests.

[Mr Speaker]

I thank the Prime Minister and all colleagues for their succinctness, which enabled all 49 Back Benchers to contribute in well under an hour.

Points of Order

Monday 22nd October 2012 Commons Chamber

16:25

[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Prime Minister said that I was wrong when I asserted that there had been no progress in completing the single market in energy and digital. However, his statement says that between June and October there was no progress—the statements are exactly the same. That shows clearly that I was right and he was wrong.

[Mr Speaker]

I think that is a matter of debate. The hon. Gentleman has clearly satisfied himself of his own position, which I am sure will be reassuring to all his friends and family. The point is on the record, but it is not a matter for the Chair.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is a shame that the Prime Minister has scurried out of the Chamber. Successive Speakers have made it clear that no Minister, including a Prime Minister, can opt out of parliamentary scrutiny and that answers to written parliamentary questions have to be timely and substantive.

Last week, as I am sure you are aware, I tabled five parliamentary questions for named day answer on Friday regarding the secret e-mails and texts between the Prime Minister, Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, which a Downing street official has described as salacious and deeply embarrassing for the Prime Minister, and the deliberate attempt by No. 10 to cover up their existence. Following your ruling last Thursday, the Prime Minister “replied” last Friday afternoon. The answer said:

“I refer the hon. Member to my letter to the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), of 18 October 2012. A copy has been placed in the Library of the House.”—[Official Report, 19 October 2012; Vol. 551, c. 449W.]

Leaving aside the fact that it is dodgy to refer hon. Members to a letter that is not available to them, which has been deprecated by successive Speakers in the past, the only supposed answer that one could possibly conceive of there being in that letter to my right hon. Friend is:

“I am, however, happy to respond to your questions in full. As you know, I set up the Leveson Inquiry. I have co-operated fully with the inquiry and given them all the material that they have asked for.”

That is not in any shape or form an answer to any of the five questions I have tabled. It does not even pretend to be an answer to me—it is meant to be an answer to somebody else.

Can you please confirm, Mr Speaker, that it is an important principle of this House that Ministers have to reply to hon. Members? They cannot have hissy fits and decide who they are going to reply to and who they are not going to reply to. Every single Member of this House has to be answered properly and fully.

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. Let me say at the outset that I stand by every word of my response to the hon. Gentleman last Thursday. In responding to his point of order then, I said that questions should receive a substantive answer, and that also reflects the resolution on ministerial accountability that is set out on pages 201 and 202 of “Erskine May”. I believe that the hon. Gentleman has been advised how he may follow up his questions, and I will study both the present exchange and the further exchange. I will leave the matter there for the moment.

Hillsborough

Monday 22nd October 2012 Commons Chamber

16:30

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of the Hillsborough Independent Panel Report.

The Hillsborough independent panel published its report on 12 September. Alongside the report, it launched an archive consisting of hundreds of thousands of pages of records. The report and the archive reveal the truth about the Hillsborough disaster and its aftermath. What the panel has uncovered is shocking and disturbing, and it was right for my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, having read the report, to apologise to the families of the victims. In addition to that apology, however, there must be accountability. The bereaved families deserve a proper response to what is a comprehensive report. So today I want to set out the shape of that response and how we can, in the words of some of the families, move from truth to justice.

Before I do so, however, I want to remind the House of some of the panel’s findings. First, it found that the safety of the crowd entering Hillsborough’s Leppings Lane terrace was “compromised at every level”. The capacity of the terrace had been significantly over-calculated, meaning that hundreds more tickets were sold than the area could safely accommodate. Crush barriers were lower than set out in safety rules. Their layout was also inadequate. The small number of turnstiles meant that delays were always likely at a capacity match. There were three times more people per turnstile at Leppings Lane than at the opposite end of the ground.

Previous instances of crushing had not been recognised or acted on. Lessons had not been learned. When the disaster happened, neither the police nor the ambulance service properly activated their major incident procedure, which meant that command and control roles were not properly filled. The panel found

“repeated evidence of failures in leadership and emergency response coordination”.

There was no systematic triage of casualties and a lack of basic equipment. None of this takes away from the heroic work of spectators and individual members of the emergency services who fought to save lives, but the panel is clear that a swifter, better-equipped and better-focused emergency response could have saved more people.

The original inquests heard that the victims of Hillsborough suffered traumatic asphyxia leading to unconsciousness within seconds and death within a few minutes, but the detailed medical analysis produced by the panel tells a different story. The panel considered that there was definite evidence in 41 cases, and possibly in a further 17 others, that those who died did so after having survived for a longer period. In these cases, their condition was potentially recoverable, and they might have survived had there been a more effective emergency response. It is difficult to imagine how the families of those who died must feel hearing that fact after 23 years.

The truth, however hard to bear, should not have taken so long to be told. The panel’s report shows that the coroner at the original inquest acted on the medical advice of pathologists and after seeking the views of colleagues, but it also shows very clearly that the structure of the inquest and the imposition of a 3.15 pm cut-off of evidence meant that a false picture was presented and accepted as fact.

The panel’s report makes it clear that South Yorkshire police in the last couple of years have set an example in terms of the process of disclosure to the panel. However, its findings about South Yorkshire police in 1989 are stark. The panel’s report lays bare the reaction of the police in attempting to shift blame for the disaster on to the fans. Lord Justice Taylor’s report into Hillsborough found that the disaster’s main cause was

“the failure of police control”.

Inadequate crowd management and poor provision of turnstiles led to an unmanageable crush outside the ground. Taylor found that the police were right to respond by opening exit gate C but wrong to fail to consider where fans entering through that gate would go next. Most went straight ahead, down a tunnel marked “Standing”, into the already-full central pens. Failure to block that tunnel was, according to Lord Taylor’s report,

“a blunder of the first magnitude”.

The police, however, attempted to create a different story—one in which drunken Liverpool fans arrived in their thousands at the last minute and caused the disaster. Their late arrival, it was claimed, overwhelmed the police. Officers presented unfounded stories of vile behaviour to the press. The intention, according to the panel, was to

“develop and publicise a version of events that focused on…allegations of drunkenness, ticketlessness and violence”.

In seeking to make its case, South Yorkshire police went so far as to vet the written statements made by its officers. Once vetted, changes were made. The panel found that 164 statements were altered significantly. Of those, 116 were amended so as to remove content that was unfavourable to the police, including on its lack of leadership.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

At the meeting of the Select Committee on Home Affairs last Tuesday, the present chief constable of South Yorkshire police was asked whether he accepted without qualification the panel’s report. He said yes.

[Mrs May]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He is absolutely right: the current chief constable has accepted what was in the report unconditionally. That is an important step for South Yorkshire police, but obviously we have to look at what the report says about South Yorkshire police.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

Is not part of the problem that there is currently limited, timid and weak sanction for any tampering by police officers with statements and witness statements? This is not the only case in the news today where witness statements and statements by officers have been tampered with. Clearly the current sanction is not strong enough, because if it was, perhaps we would have fewer incidents of this kind.

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. I am coming on to talk about the investigations that will take place into the actions of South Yorkshire police, and obviously the issue that he has raised—the sanctions—is rightly something that should be considered alongside those investigations.

Let me return to the actions of the police. Perhaps even more shockingly, the panel also found evidence showing that officers carried out police national computer checks on those who had died. The panel said this was done in an attempt

“to impugn the reputations of the deceased”.

The whole House will want to join me in thanking the Bishop of Liverpool and all members of the panel for their thorough and revealing report. The panel’s report was shocking and disturbing, and the families of the victims must have found its contents harrowing. But although it is painful and will make many people angry, the report brings the full truth of Hillsborough into the light of day. The truth that some families have long known or suspected is now clear for all to see and to respect. I believe my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister spoke for all of us in the House when he apologised to the families of the 96 for what he called the “double injustice” that they have suffered: first, the injustice of the appalling events and the indefensible wait to get to the truth; and secondly, the injustice of what he called the “denigration of the deceased”—the suggestion that those who died were somehow responsible for their own deaths and for those of their friends and fellow fans.

But after the truth must come justice; and after the apology, accountability. So let me set out for the House what is happening now. The Independent Police Complaints Commission has announced an investigation into the panel’s findings. The investigation will cover potential criminality and misconduct in respect of police officers, both serving and retired. It will be thorough and wide-ranging. As I have previously said, I remain committed to ensuring that the IPCC has all the powers and resources it needs to carry out its investigations thoroughly, transparently and exhaustively. The Government are already looking at what additional powers the IPCC will need, which includes proposals to require current and ex-police officers who may be witness to a crime to attend an interview, and whether this might require fast-track legislation. I therefore welcome what the shadow Home Secretary set out at the weekend about the opportunity for us to sit down and discuss the proposals, and to see whether fast-track legislation is the right way forward—I think my office has already been in touch with hers to try to get a suitable date in mind.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

As the Home Secretary probably knows, the South Yorkshire chief constable wrote to me on Friday to say that he has sent a list of 1,444 names of former and serving officers of South Yorkshire police to the IPCC. That is a huge number of names—more than we expected. Has the IPCC approached her to ask for additional resources, bearing in mind that it already has a large workload? It is important that we deal with the resources issue right at the start.

[Mrs May]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for making that extremely valid point. The number of names sent by the chief constable of South Yorkshire makes clear the enormity of the issue. The Home Office is in discussion with the IPCC about the resources that it might need to ensure that it can conduct the investigation as thoroughly and exhaustively as we would all wish.

In addition to the question about the IPCC’s powers in the investigation, it is also important to recognise that, in the case of Hillsborough, a number of individuals and organisations other than the police or ex-police officers will be investigated. We need to ensure that all these investigations are robust and properly co-ordinated, and that other investigations do not in any way compromise the independence of the IPCC. An important part of that will be to ensure that any police officers who are involved in any investigations are not from South Yorkshire police, now or in the past.

I am also very clear that, as we go through this process and decide on the next steps, it is important that the families should be consulted at every stage and that our proposals should be discussed with them.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

I wrote to the Prime Minister recently about how this investigation was to be taken forward, and received a response from one of the Home Secretary’s Ministers. Will all the information and documentation relating to any future decisions be made available for public scrutiny?

[Mrs May]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. We will obviously need to see what material will be required for the investigations, and what material might be used as evidence in any charges and prosecutions that are brought. I will certainly look at the issue that he has raised about continuing transparency, which I recognise has been important in relation to the documents that have been released so far. Perhaps I can come back to him on that point.

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

May I return to the question of resourcing that was raised by the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz)? A number of agencies, including local government and the police, will be involved as a consequence of the inquest, and many other operations will need to be undertaken that will require substantial resourcing. Can we have an assurance that those costs will be met centrally, rather than in a way that could affect the operation of other services to people in the communities affected?

[Mrs May]

I hear what the right hon. Gentleman is saying, and I understand his concern that other services should not suffer as a result of any requirements being placed on such organisations. I cannot give a commitment across the board at this stage. We are talking to the IPCC about the resources that it will need, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health will be looking at the implications for any health bodies that are involved. We want to ensure that the investigations are as thorough and exhaustive as possible, and we would not wish to put any barriers in the way of that happening, but a significant number of bodies will be involved, and we have to look at the matter very carefully. Specifically in regard to the IPCC, we are already having discussions about any requirements that it might have.

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary has said that we are moving towards a point of accountability, and she has mentioned the police. Before she completes her contribution to the debate, will she list the other public and private bodies to which we might wish accountability to be applied?

[Mrs May]

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health will certainly be covering a number of those bodies in his closing remarks this evening. As I have already mentioned, there were issues around the operation of the ambulance service, for example. Further public sector bodies might be involved. Those who are looking at the report are determining which bodies need to be investigated, and the list is currently being compiled. I can, however, commit that we will provide a list for the House at an appropriate point in due course, so that everyone is able to see all the bodies that are involved.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend tell us whether there will be a process whereby the investigation can look into those who, although not involved in the services that she has mentioned, added to or fuelled the salacious rumours that were going around? I am thinking in particular of the local MP at the time. Could such matters be looked into, or would they be a matter for a private prosecution by the families?

[Mrs May]

I am absolutely clear that the various investigations—I shall come on to other aspects of investigation—will look at the totality of the report and its findings, and will identify any cases where there has been a suggestion of criminality; and if there has been such a suggestion, it will be properly investigated.

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

With the families’ hopes dashed on so many occasions, does it not shame us as the mother of all Parliaments that it has taken 23 years for the families to get to this stage where at least the truth is out, but justice is still to be done?

[Mrs May]

The hon. Gentleman is right, but I think that the issue goes wider than that. Going back to the remarks that the Prime Minister made in his statement, the problem for the families was that a sort of collective view came to be held across the country—that the fans had been responsible. We can discuss how that came about—it is quite clear in the report how it was fuelled by certain newspaper reports—but everybody came to accept that view and not to question it. It is to the great honour of the hon. Gentleman and a number of other Opposition Members, and to the families themselves, that they held fast to their belief through those 23 years. I hope that they can now take some comfort in the fact that the truth is out there. That double injustice has come to the surface and people have recognised it.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary said that it became the collective view of everybody across the country that this was the fans’ fault, but let me be clear that that is completely and utterly incorrect. Many people across the country were very clear that it was not the fans’ fault, and very few people from my background were surprised to find that the former Prime Minister, the police and certain newspapers were in cahoots.

[Mrs May]

I recognise that there will have been individuals, perhaps in certain parts of the country, who took a different view. What happened was that, collectively or as a whole, nothing was done, and nobody responded to that view. This happened, I think, because there was an acceptance of the story that had been put about. As I said, that was the second injustice to the families that the Prime Minister mentioned. They had to suffer not only not seeing brought to light what they believed was the truth about what had happened to their loved ones and friends, but the injustice of being told that it was those individuals’ own fault. That is absolutely shameful.

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

Does the Home Secretary agree that our system is at times vulnerable to cover-ups, and that we need to look at the processes to try to make sure that we have no more of them?

[Mrs May]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I assume that in the course of these investigations, some issues of that sort will be raised and we will need to look at them. I shall say a little more later about the accountability of the police.

Moving on to deal with further investigations, the Director of Public Prosecutions has initiated a review of the panel’s findings. His review will inform a decision as to whether there are grounds to pursue prosecution of any of the parties identified in the report. If the DPP decides that further investigation is necessary, I will ensure that this can be carried out swiftly and thoroughly. In the case of police officers, it is likely that the IPCC will pick up the investigative role. If the DPP finds that a broader investigation is necessary, we will appoint a senior experienced investigator—entirely independent and unconnected to these events—to operate an investigation team within the new National Crime Agency.

The bereaved families have long considered the original inquest to have been inadequate, and the Hillsborough independent panel has pointed to significant flaws. My right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General has studied the panel’s report in detail and looked at the disclosed material and the previous requests for new inquests that were declined by his predecessors. He has confirmed that he will apply to the High Court for the original inquest to be quashed and a new one ordered.

Right hon. and hon. Members will know that it is for the High Court and not for Government to make the final decision, and that we must be careful not to pre-judge the Court’s consideration. Should the Court agree a new inquest, I have asked the chairman of the Hillsborough independent panel, the Bishop of Liverpool, to work with the new chief coroner to ensure that arrangements are put in place in which the families are central, and to ensure that the new inquest is run in a way that reflects the dignity and respect that the families have themselves so consistently demonstrated. I have also asked the Bishop of Liverpool to act as my adviser more generally on Hillsborough-related matters, and he has agreed to do so.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

At the original inquest the families had to cover their own costs, including the costs of attending. Can the Home Secretary comment at this stage on whether the costs of the families’ involvement in future inquests might be borne by the public purse?

[Mrs May]

That point has been raised with me directly by families and by representatives of families and survivors, and my officials are looking into it now.

As I said earlier, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health will say more about the role of health professionals and emergency health services in respect of Hillsborough when he closes the debate. I know that, like me, he has met representatives of the Hillsborough families, and has taken a close interest in the work of the panel. I also know that, with his responsibilities for the health service, he shares my determination to ensure that proper action is taken when individuals or institutions are found to be at fault.

The Government’s Chief Medical Officer, Professor Dame Sally Davies, has already written to the Royal College of Pathologists, the College of Emergency Medicine and the General Medical Council drawing their attention to the panel’s work and asking them to consider its implications. The Department of Health has also drawn the panel’s report to the attention of the General Medical Council, which will be considering whether there is a need to investigate any currently practising doctors.

The chief executive of the NHS, Sir David Nicholson, has written to the chief executives of ambulance services and hospitals that provide emergency care to ensure that they are aware of the panel’s findings. Last week, given the panel’s findings in relation to the alteration of statements in the ambulance service, the Department of Health asked the Health and Care Professions Council, which regulates ambulance paramedics, to consider whether any actions taken by currently serving ambulance staff might merit further investigation.

I was steadfast in my support for the panel, and I am equally steadfast in my determination that the processes that are now taking shape must be pursued with all the rigour that the panel showed in its work. I have set out the action being taken by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Attorney-General and others, but it is clear that that action will require a co-ordinated approach. Representatives of the IPCC, the DPP and the Attorney-General are already in contact and working together, and I can give a commitment that, as part of my ongoing role as the Government’s lead minister for Hillsborough, I will ensure that a fully co-ordinated approach is adopted. I have met representatives of the bereaved families and survivors, and I will ensure that they are consulted further about the arrangements.

[Keith Vaz]

I am grateful to the Home Secretary for giving way a second time. As she knows, the families came to see the Select Committee last Tuesday, and I am glad that she was able to see them on Thursday. They suggested that the DPP should have oversight of all the different agencies. I know that the Home Secretary will be the lead Minister and that Stephen Rimmer will be the responsible official in her Department, but does she not think that a single person should co-ordinate all the various agencies? There is a possibility that things might get lost in various different places otherwise. I am merely seeking the Home Secretary’s view on what is best.

[Mrs May]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for raising that point, which I discussed with representatives of the families when they came to see me. A number of meetings are taking place with representatives this week to consider a number of options for how that co-ordination can take place. We are looking at all those options, and I assure him that the option that was raised then will be in the mix. We must ensure that we get what is right, and what the families can have confidence in.

I take immensely seriously the report’s implications for public confidence in the integrity of the police. Police officers in this country police with the consent of their fellow citizens, but they can only do that if they have the trust of their fellow citizens. The actions of officers, especially senior officers, at Hillsborough and immediately following the disaster strike at the heart of that trust. There are also wider problems that give cause for concern in relation to the integrity of the police. In recent weeks we have seen a constable and a chief constable dismissed for gross misconduct, and a number of senior officers across the country are currently under investigation for misconduct. Lord Justice Leveson will report shortly on the findings of his inquiry, and Operations Elveden and Weeting continue to uncover the involvement of individual police officers and police staff in the activities of News International. This all generates a level of public concern and loss of confidence in the police that is damaging to the reputation of the vast majority of decent, hard-working police officers, and therefore to their ability to police with consent.

Our programme of police reform includes a new college of policing, which will work to improve police leadership and professional standards. Police and crime commissioners, elected next month, will bring greater transparency and local accountability to policing. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary is becoming more independent. I have also already said that I am prepared to give extra resources and new powers to the IPCC.

[Mark Pritchard]

I am grateful to the Home Secretary for giving way a second time; she is being most generous. I am sure she agrees that the governing coalition does not have a monopoly of wisdom on legislation and good ideas as to how this country can be better governed, so will she remain open-minded about the shadow Home Secretary’s recently announced plans to replace the IPCC with a new police standards authority? A lot of people think the IPCC is not fit for purpose. It will be very busy over the coming months, and it is right that we stick with it and support it, but will she be open-minded about the possibility of bringing in a Bill to establish a new police standards authority before the next election?

[Mrs May]

I am always willing to be open-minded on a number of such matters. The IPCC is under new chairmanship, and I think Dame Anne Owers has done an excellent job in the limited time she has been at the IPCC in showing its genuine independence and her desire to make sure the organisation has all the powers and resources it needs to be able to do the job it currently has to do in conducting a number of investigations, but I have outlined a number of changes that I believe will bring greater accountability to the police. All those changes will make a positive difference in terms of public confidence in the integrity of the police, but I will return to the House by the new year with fuller proposals to ensure that the police operate to the highest ethical standards and that the public can have full confidence in police integrity.

I would like to end by paying tribute to the families of the 96 and all those who have supported them over the many years. Their persistence and indomitability, driven by love for those they have lost, are an inspiration. They have fought for justice, and not warm words, but I would like to place on the record my respect for them all the same, and I offer them this commitment: the Government will do everything in their power to support them in moving from truth to justice.

16:57

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I welcome the Home Secretary’s opening speech, the personal attention that I know she has given to this extremely important issue, and the stance she has taken. I agree with her and join her in respect of the apology that is owed to the families for the 23 years they have waited and been denied both truth and justice, and also in recognising the deep distress caused by the disturbing facts found in the Hillsborough independent panel report, which shocked the country and this House.

What was set out in its pages was a shocking failure to keep people safe. They were failures that spanned nearly three decades: the failure to improve the safety of the ground in the years before Hillsborough; the failure to learn from previous crowd problems; the failure to organise crowd safety before the match; the failure to deliver crowd safety during the match; the failure to close the tunnel once the gate was opened; the failure to help fans in the crush speedily; the failure to be honest about what happened and to investigate what happened; a failure to get to the truth; and a failure to provide justice. That is a long list of failures, which have caused untold sorrow and anguish, and which underpin the tragic death of 96 people.

A long list, too, of untruths have now finally been exposed: the untruths about the fans, about late arrivals at the match, about drinking, and about the actions of the emergency services. There is also a story of injustice: an inquest that failed to give every family a truthful account of how and why their loved one died; a failure to hold anyone to account, either through the criminal courts or through disciplinary procedures; a systematic cover-up; and a campaign of misinformation that maligned innocent people.

As the Prime Minister said on the day the report was published, Hillsborough was

“one of the greatest peacetime tragedies of the last century”.—[Official Report, 12 September 2012; Vol. 550, c. 283.]

Ninety-six people died but it could have avoided. That alone should have made it even more important to get to the truth and justice, and it makes it even more sobering and shocking that there has been a failure to do so for 23 years. All the institutions that are supposed to pursue truth and justice—that are supposed to provide checks and balances in a democracy—failed to do so over Hillsborough: the police; the courts; the police watchdogs; the justice system; the press; and democratic institutions. They all failed to deliver truth or justice for 23 years.

It is therefore with humility that we must all pay tribute to the families of the 96 victims, who fought for 23 years for the truth and are still fighting now for justice, because without the efforts of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, the Hillsborough Justice Campaign and Hope for Hillsborough the truth would have remained hidden. They kept fighting when others would have given up, they kept calling for the truth to come out when others turned their backs and they kept standing when others fell. We must pay tribute to all of them, and we must also pay tribute to the Bishop of Liverpool, the Right Rev. James Jones, and his team of experts for setting out in black and white what the evidence shows.

I pay tribute to the Liverpool Echo, which has kept the campaign going for so long, and may I pay tribute to the local MPs, who have fought so hard to support the families? I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), whose work in government led to the setting up of the Hillsborough panel and who has continued to pursue this issue from the Opposition Benches. I pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) and for Halton (Derek Twigg), and to all the other Merseyside MPs who have been so determined in standing up for their constituents; I know that many from across the Back Benches and the Front Benches will be speaking in the debate, but some will not be able to speak from the Front Bench today, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), whose constituents were also affected on that day.

I welcome the words from the Home Secretary today because I believe that there is agreement right across this House about the importance of both action and accountability. Although the Hillsborough panel was set up before the election, she and the Prime Minister have supported it since and they have supported its conclusions. We are keen to work with the Government on the next steps, because disclosure and truth are not enough—the families have made it clear that they need justice. The panel’s report refers to the following quote:

“The whole point of justice consists precisely in our providing for others through humanity what we provide for our own family through affection.”

That journey is not over. So today we have the opportunity to debate and reflect on the details of the panel’s report, and the Home Secretary set out powerfully this afternoon some of the most important conclusions it reached.

I also want to make some points about the next steps, and how we make sure that the system does not fail again and that truth and justice are delivered now. Today, the three next steps have been announced. We heard about the Attorney-General’s welcome decision that he will be applying for fresh inquests into the deaths of the 96; the Director of Public Prosecutions’ decision to review the evidence with a view to criminal prosecutions; and the Independent Police Complaints Commission’s investigation into police conduct surrounding Hillsborough, which could cover both criminal and disciplinary issues. As I understand it, the Home Secretary has today told us that if the DPP decides that a criminal investigation will be pursued, a special investigative team will be established to take that forward.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am sure that the right hon. Lady, a fellow West Yorkshire MP, shares my concerns that the chief constable of West Yorkshire is being investigated by the IPCC, not least for having tried to influence the police authority not to refer this matter on. Does she agree that in order for the public to have faith in this investigation, he should be suspended?

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Gentleman raises a serous issue about the chief constable of West Yorkshire, who, as he rightly says, has been referred to the IPCC on a series of accounts—for things that happened at the time of Hillsborough, for things that happened subsequently and for the things that have happened most recently. The hon. Gentleman will know that the Home Secretary and I are both limited in what we can say on an individual case when due legal process is under way, but it is extremely important that the case is properly investigated and, later on in my speech, I shall return to some of the issues it raises.

Given the failure of previous investigations to reach either the truth or justice, it is vital that action is now timely and effective and I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement that every step must include detailed consultation with the families.

Let me make a few points about the inquest. Clearly, everyone is keen for a new inquest to be reopened as soon as possible although we recognise, of course, that the proper legal processes must be pursued and that the Attorney-General has 450,000 documents to consider. Given how long the families have already waited, I hope that the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office can consider together whether any additional support must be provided for the Attorney-General’s Office so that it can complete that in as timely a manner as possible. Clearly, the process must start as soon as is practical. I hope, too, that the families will be listened to on the importance of holding the inquest not in Sheffield but in the north-west.

The panel’s report was clear that the coroner’s decision to implement a 3.15 pm cut-off was flawed and that some people survived for a significant period beyond that time. The report also found, tragically, that a swifter, better focused and properly equipped response would have had the potential to save more lives. The emergency response after 3.15pm has never been challenged and it must be now.

Other concerns about the inquest that have long been raised by the families emerge clearly from the panel’s report: the way it was structured; the continued credence given to the unfounded claims about drinking and alcohol levels; the reliance on altered police witness statements rather than on the original testimony of officers; and much more besides. Clearly, it is important that a reopened inquest is not confined to considering the events that took place after 3.15 and there must be a proper answer for every one of the 96 families about what happened to their loved ones. That means that the families will need legal representation, too, and I hope, given the exceptional circumstances, that the Home Secretary and the Ministry of Justice will ensure that that happens directly so that the families do not need to go through further hassle and uncertainty with the Legal Services Commission.

Let me turn to the criminal investigation. The IPCC has already identified two kinds of potential criminal or misconduct issues based on the disclosures in the report. The first concern what happened at Hillsborough on 15 April 1989 and the events that led up to it, as well as the potential culpability of individuals and institutions for the deaths, which will mean reconsidering those unheeded warnings, the safety standards, the lack of an updated safety certificate, the planning, the operational decisions, the failure to close the tunnel, the failure to declare a major incident on the day and more. The second concern the cover-up, the potential perversion of the course of justice and misconduct events.

I want to dwell on the second group of issues for a moment. The purpose and role of the police are to protect people and to pursue truth without fear or favour, wherever it might take them, in the interests of justice. The panel’s report shows that at Hillsborough the police failed to keep people safe, that they distorted and buried the truth, and that justice was betrayed. The panel’s report was devastating in its exposure of what happened in South Yorkshire police, with 164 statements taken from the officers on the day identified for substantive amendment, of which 116 were changed. A series of statements that revealed the lack of leadership from senior officers as the crisis built were all deleted and so, too, were statements about normal practice on closing the tunnel once the gate was opened.

Pressure was applied to police officers to change their statements, too. PC Michael Walpole, in a letter to Lord Justice Stuart-Smith’s scrutiny report, said about the doctoring of police statements:

“I must say that I wished my final statement to be the exact copy of the original recollection…However, since I (like most others) was suffering from post traumatic stress and depression, I agreed to the deletions to my final statement under the conditions I was placed under. My personal view is that a police officer should be able to freely make an honest and truthful statement of facts and opinion and it was an injustice for statements to have been ‘doctored’ to suit the management of the South Yorkshire Police.”

That is an extremely serious statement.

People will have seen—the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) referred to them—the separate allegations that have emerged this morning about statements being changed in relation to Orgreave, where it appears that a separate investigation will be needed into what happened. It is important that the matter is fully pursued for the sake of justice over Hillsborough and also to ensure that these events do not cast a shadow over the important work that the police do each day and to ensure that wider public confidence in policing is maintained.

The Home Secretary rightly referred to the approach taken by the current South Yorkshire chief constable, both in full disclosure to the panel and in accepting the conclusions of the panel’s report. It is important for the sake of policing today that we take seriously what happened 23 years ago.

[Mark Pritchard]

Does the shadow Home Secretary agree that to restore public trust in the police, whatever the IPCC says, there should be criminal prosecutions where there is enough evidence that is beyond all reasonable doubt? We are all subject to the same law, whether Members of Parliament or police officers, both serving and retired. Would she share my concern if the IPCC, having found something, allowed police forces to conduct their own internal disciplinary inquiries, which so often rely on the balance of probabilities—of course, the threshold is lower—and so often see police officers go into a well-remunerated and happy retirement while the victims still do not have justice?

[Yvette Cooper]

I agree that if there is evidence of criminal wrongdoing, there must be prosecutions. It is right that those decisions about prosecutions are made independently, not by Parliament obviously, but by the Director of Public Prosecutions. It is right that there should be criminal accountability for what happened. The hon. Gentleman is right, too, that we must ensure that the disciplinary procedures are subject to a proper process because there may also be cases where, even if there may not be criminal misconduct, disciplinary proceedings should be pursued. I take the opportunity to welcome his support for the idea of replacing the IPCC with a strengthened police standards authority. Such reforms are important for police confidence in the future.

The panel’s report shows clearly the misleading, false and deeply hurtful information that was disseminated by members of South Yorkshire police—false claims that were propagated by members of the police that fans had broken into the stadium, a claim that was reported in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, and further allegations of drunkenness, ticketless fans and fans arriving late, which were promoted by unnamed officers and were shown to be false by the work of the panel.

The question now is how disciplinary and criminal investigations should be pursued into what happened on the day and afterwards. It is essential that everything possible is done to remove further obstacles in the way of justice and to ensure that the families are consulted. It is vital that they have confidence in this process.

It is clear that the investigation cannot be carried out solely by the IPCC, which has neither the powers nor the resources to do so. Although I agree with the Home Secretary that the new chair is doing a very good job and has a strong background, this investigation is far beyond the scale of anything that the IPCC has done before. It will also require powers that the IPCC does not have. For example, evidence will need to be taken from large numbers of serving and retired police officers, and also from police staff, former police legal advisers, former civil servants, even MPs and maybe even journalists. However, the IPCC does not have the powers to do that. Although it can pursue officers where it has good reason to believe that they have committed a criminal offence, if it is seeking witness statements or pursuing disciplinary offences, its powers are much more limited. The IPCC itself has told the Home Affairs Committee that

“where police officers refuse to attend for interview, IPCC investigators can only seek the information they need through the submission of written questions to officers via their solicitors or other representatives. Not only can this seriously undermine public confidence in IPCC investigations, it can also impact on the overall effectiveness and timeliness of investigations.”

In many cases the IPCC cannot compel civilians at all.

My view is that we will need a new framework in future. I welcome the Home Secretary’s commitment to look further at the issue and bring it back to this House. The IPCC was a huge step forward from the old Police Complaints Authority, and it has done some important work on individual cases, but it is simply not strong enough to provide the safeguards and standards for good policing that we need. That is why I have asked Lord Stevens’ commission to consider drawing up a new police standards authority to replace it.

In the meantime, however, we need answers on Hillsborough. The Home Secretary said that a range of possibilities is being discussed in the mix on how this could be taken forward and that she is discussing it with the families. Clearly, that is important.

[Keith Vaz]

My right hon. Friend and the Home Secretary have both made eloquent speeches. It is heartening to see Parliament at one on this very important issue.

When the families came to give evidence to the Home Affairs Committee, they talked about the need for co-ordination. My right hon. Friend has pointed to the problems with some of the powers of the IPCC. There may be a case for a special prosecutor—an individual who can draw all the strands together. It has been suggested that it should be the DPP, but I think that he will be too busy to do something of this kind. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we will lose the initiative if we do not have a single point of co-ordination? The Home Secretary has the powers to do this; let us use them.

[Yvette Cooper]

I agree with my right hon. Friend about the importance of co-ordination and the value of having a special prosecutor in these circumstances. It might be helpful if Ministers said a bit more about whether there is any concern about how long it will take for the DPP to decide whether further criminal prosecutions will be pursued given that a special prosecutor and a special investigative team may not be established until after that decision has been taken. In other words, what resources does the DPP need in the meantime in order to take the decision about criminal prosecutions? The IPCC is beginning investigations now, and there is a question about how long these will take to get going.

[Mr Anderson]

In many years of representing people, particularly in the public services, in some very serious internal disciplinary procedures, it was always the norm that when someone was accused of potential serious misconduct they were suspended. Has anyone been suspended from the police service? If not, who has the power to do that if it is seen to be the right thing to do?

[Yvette Cooper]

There are legal processes in place that allow police authorities to take decisions about the suspensions of police officers. As my hon. Friend will recognise, in taking these decisions it is clearly important that legal processes are followed. In the past, there have been suspensions in a series of such cases.

[The Attorney-General (Mr Dominic Grieve)]

Let me clarify this point. If the Director of Public Prosecutions considered that he lacked resources in order to carry out his co-ordinating function, he could come and raise it with me as the superintending Minister. The position at the moment is that no such approach has been made, but if it were required, of course he could do that.

[Yvette Cooper]

I welcome that clarification. The interest of the families and the public in this lies in having a properly co-ordinated investigation. We do not want to have a separate IPCC investigation and a parallel criminal investigation but a single, co-ordinated investigation.

[Mrs May]

Perhaps I can clarify the situation. There is the IPCC investigation and there is also the investigation by the DPP that is taking place. If the DPP believes that a wider investigation is necessary, the Home Office will make resources available under the ambit of the incoming National Crime Agency for an investigator who is completely separate and has no connection whatever with these issues. We would expect to put the co-ordination role in place fairly soon, because this is also about making sure that things get done. For example, we must ensure that if it looks as though there is a delay in any part of the investigation, then somebody, or a group of people, can press the body concerned, whether it be the IPCC, the DPP or individuals, to get on with the job. An investigation must be done fully and properly to uncover the truth and bring about justice, but we also need to make sure that it is not going to drag on and on, because the families do not deserve that.

[Yvette Cooper]

I welcome the Home Secretary’s clarification. First, the co-ordination is very welcome. Secondly, however, should the Director of Public Prosecutions decide that prosecutions should be pursued—there seems to be strong support in the House for him to do so, although it is clearly an independent decision for him—would that result in a single investigative team involving the police and the Independent Police Complaints Commission, or would there continue to be, in effect, two parallel investigations by the IPCC and criminal investigators? That would raise concerns, given the fact that the IPCC can pursue both criminal and disciplinary investigations.

I urge the Home Secretary to consider, as part of her role in the co-ordination process, having a single team, with full police investigative powers and led by a special prosecutor, for the criminal investigation, and for it to consist of police officers from a range of different forces, perhaps under the auspices of the National Crime Agency. The role played by the West Midlands police in the original investigation was clearly a problem and the panel’s report raised considerable concerns. Drawing police officers from a series of different forces would give the investigation greater authority.

We are keen to explore with the Home Secretary whether additional powers could be granted to the IPCC —perhaps through emergency legislation—so that it can pursue disciplinary action as well as criminal investigations. I welcome the contact that her office made this morning to ensure that we can speedily take those discussions forward. We are interested in supporting emergency legislation to enable the IPCC to compel witnesses and access third-party data.

Thirdly, although a special prosecutor is welcome, the Government will be aware that there have also been failings over Hillsborough at the Crown Prosecution Service in the past, so some additional oversight may be needed.

Fourthly, I welcome the points that Government Front-Bench representatives have made about resources. The IPCC has said that a substantial amount of work is required initially to scope the investigation, including identifying the resources required. It is, therefore, likely to be many months before officers are contacted by the investigation team. Any further delay would be of considerable concern. I hope that the Home Secretary and others can provide reassurance about the availability of those resources.

My final point on the disciplinary investigations is that the IPCC has noted that retired police officers are not liable for any misconduct sanction. That is obviously very troubling for the public in many cases, because it makes it possible for police officers who have committed serious misconduct, or who have breached the great trust put in the office of constable, to retire on full pension without any further investigation or sanction. Given that 23 years have passed since Hillsborough, this is a particularly sensitive concern. Many officers have already retired and many more may do so before these investigations are concluded. Will the Home Secretary consider the issue carefully?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

The right hon. Lady may not know the answer, but will she try to clarify something about retiring police officers for me? The current chief constable of West Yorkshire police had retired from the police and taken his full pension, which was suspended when he came back as chief constable of West Yorkshire police. Is he classed as retired or as serving? This is an important point for the investigation.

[Yvette Cooper]

I hope that the Home Secretary will be able to respond to the hon. Gentleman’s important point. The wider issue applies to a whole series of cases. If officers have taken early retirement or retired at the normal age, further investigations or sanctions should be considered if there was serious misconduct while they were in office. The issue is complex, but I will happily discuss it further with the Home Secretary to make sure that justice is not denied in the case of Hillsborough as a result of long-standing arrangements for disciplinary and misconduct procedures, and to make sure that people can, even after 23 years, still be held to account.

Finally, this journey is not over. We owe it to the families to ensure that they can now get truth and justice. We must reflect on how this could have happened; why the attempts to reach the truth and justice failed so many times; why the Liverpool fans and their families were not taken seriously by the justice system for so long; and why the systems that were designed to help people and to provide safeguards against injustice—the courts, the coroners, the police, the police watchdogs, the free press and our democratic institutions—did not get to the truth for 23 years. What do we need to do now to strengthen those checks and balances and to remove the obstacles to justice? Most importantly, how can we ensure that this cannot happen again? No one should have to wait 23 years to find out the truth about what happened to a loved one. No one should have to fight this hard to get justice for a child, a husband or a relative they have lost.

The Hillsborough panel report is so powerful because it has exposed the truth and brought it out from the shadows and into the light of day. The Bishop of Liverpool has said that

“if the truth of any situation is unearthed and laid bare then the truth will shed light and show the direction forward. And it will have the power of pressure.”

The truth has shed light on Hillsborough and the direction is clear, but the journey is not over. Now we must ensure that the pressure of truth leads to justice.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Understandably, there is intense interest in this debate. In recognition of that, I have had to impose a time limit of 10 minutes on each Back-Bench contribution. I emphasise to the House that, depending on progress, that time limit might, during the course of the debate, need to be reviewed.

17:26

[Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)]

The atmosphere that enveloped the Chamber when the Prime Minister made his statement to the House last month will stay with me for the rest of my life. That atmosphere was echoed across the country as the truth of what happened at Hillsborough was revealed.

To learn that the lives of 41 people might have been saved and to discover that those responsible sought to manipulate the truth to conceal their own guilt and shift the blame on to the innocent victims of the day made this one of the greatest scandals in our history. The failures, flaws, corruption and deceit of those who were culpable have been laid bare for all to see. Most importantly, the reputation, honour and persistence of those who sought the truth for so long have been vindicated.

Reading through the panel’s report, it is difficult to identify which of the many failings caused the most harm: the cavalier attitude towards health and safety at the stadium, which had no safety certificate and a terrible record of near misses at big matches in previous years; the complete absence of leadership, communication and responsibility among those who were supposedly in charge on the day; or the perpetuation of lies by those self-serving individuals in senior positions of authority who tried to absolve themselves of responsibility. Each of those revelations, and the many others that the report highlighted, were truly shocking to discover. We owe the members of the panel a huge debt of gratitude for their diligence and hard work, and for the clarity with which they presented their findings.

Looking around the Chamber, I can see many right hon. and hon. Members who fought long and hard to ensure that the truth about Hillsborough was brought to the public’s attention. What many of us cannot understand is why it has taken so long. Although there is much in the panel’s report that has been revealed and published for the first time, there is a huge amount that has been known about for a long time, but that has been ignored, dismissed or ridiculed over the course of the 23 years.

A case in point, where information and evidence have clearly been ignored, is that of my constituent’s son, Kevin Williams. As with all 96 victims, the inquest into his death ruled that Kevin died at or before 3.15 pm, yet video evidence showed Kevin being lifted out of pen 3 at 3.28 pm and resuscitated on the pitch by PC Michael Craighill. At 3.31 pm Kevin was carried across the pitch by, among others, an off-duty fire officer, Mr Tony O’Keefe, who stated that Kevin was still alive. At 3.37 pm, Kevin was resuscitated by an off-duty police officer, PC Derek Bruder, who testified that Kevin was still alive. Finally, Special WPC Debra Martin found Kevin’s pulse, picked him up in her arms and watched and listened as he opened his eyes, spoke the word “Mum” and then died just before 4 o’clock.

There has never really been any doubt about what happened to Kevin Williams. The eyewitness accounts on the day were unequivocal: Kevin was still alive just before 4 pm. The evidence has been presented to three previous Attorneys-General on three separate occasions, and the facts of what happened to Kevin were recounted in the House in an Adjournment debate as far back as 1994. What happened to Kevin, and to so many others, has not been a secret, yet only last month, with the Prime Minister’s statement and the publication of the independent panel’s report, was the truth finally accepted.

[Steve Rotheram]

I spoke today to Anne Williams, who is not well enough to be here but will be watching the proceedings on the television. Is it not testament to a mother’s love that somebody would continue their fight despite the fact that, time after time, the legal doors were slammed in that woman’s face? She went as far as the European Court and was turned down. Is that not a national disgrace?

[Stephen Mosley]

I spoke to Mrs Williams on Friday and she passed on her regards and thanks to Members such as the hon. Gentleman and the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), who have done so much to ensure that we have got to where we are now. I am grateful for the fact that the truth is now out there, and as the hon. Gentleman says, it is a total disgrace that it has taken so long.

We now know that witness statements were altered in the weeks and months after the tragedy. Last week, the Independent Police Complaints Commission launched an investigation into the process of amendments undertaken by South Yorkshire police. In addition, the IPCC said that the role of West Midlands police would be examined as part of its investigations, and it is that role that I wish to address.

As I said, at 3.37 pm Kevin Williams was being resuscitated by an off-duty police officer, PC Derek Bruder. PC Bruder had seen Kevin moving his head and being sick, so he went over to help. He saw an ambulance and tried to stop it so that Kevin could receive medical attention. PC Bruder provided an official statement shortly afterwards, along with a second statement four months later.

PC Bruder was then visited at his home on 3 May 1990 by a West Midlands detective inspector to take a further statement. PC Bruder was told that the video footage had been studied and that the ambulance to which he referred in his statement was not in the ground in the time, so he must be mistaken. He stuck to his evidence and told the detective inspector that he would be available to give evidence at the inquest. But PC Bruder was not called to give evidence at the inquest. Instead, Detective Inspector Sawers said at Kevin’s inquest that PC Bruder was mistaken about the ambulance; mistaken about taking a pulse from Kevin; and also mistaken about seeing him be sick. It is worth noting that, contrary to the evidence given at the inquest, video and photographic evidence was available, along with a statement from the assistant driver of the ambulance in question, Mr Tony Edwards, confirming PC Bruder’s testimony that an ambulance passed them at 3.37 pm. His evidence was correct all along and should not have been ignored and dismissed at the initial inquest.

Another example of the inappropriate actions of West Midlands police relates to the special constable who held Kevin in her arms as he passed away shortly before 4 pm. Special WPC Debra Martin’s original statement, made within weeks of the disaster, described finding Kevin’s pulse, resuscitating him, hearing him call for his mother and holding him as he died just before 4 pm. However, a few months later Miss Martin was visited at her home by West Midlands police officers. In total, she was visited on four separate occasions by senior police officers whose aim was to convince her that her original statement was mistaken and that Kevin was not alive when she treated him. Considerable pressure was put on Miss Martin to ratify the amended statement, and I understand that she was even told that she could not have looked after Kevin because she was not at Hillsborough. She was accused of standing by and doing nothing as people died; she was told she was making the whole thing up. In the end, she succumbed to pressure and signed the second statement without reading it. In that second statement, everything that referred to signs of life in Kevin was gone, and there was no reference to a pulse or to him saying, “Mum”. Miss Martin has stated on numerous occasions that she stands by her original statement and that she was bullied by senior police officers to sign the second, inaccurate statement.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Does my hon. Friend agree that Miss Martin was not bullied, but rather the course of justice was perverted?

[Stephen Mosley]

This is my reading of the situation. Miss Martin is very clear about what happened; I heard her talking about it on the radio just last week. She was terribly bullied and found herself in an awful situation.

Although the conduct of West Midlands police is not detailed in the independent panel’s report, it must be seriously called into question, and the actions of the police thoroughly investigated in the IPCC inquiry.

The Hillsborough independent panel has done a fantastic job not only in overseeing the full disclosure of information, but also, importantly, by adding to public understanding about what happened. To ensure that we finally complete the quest for justice, two more tasks must be undertaken. First, where responsibility has been neglected and evidence either altered or deliberately ignored, prosecutions must follow. Secondly, the Attorney-General must deliver on his promise to ask the High Court for new inquests into the 96 deaths. Previous inquests have been shown to be false, and they must be quashed in law. The circumstances surrounding Hillsborough have remained clouded in the minds of many for more than 23 years. People did not understand what happened, but now they do. After 23 years, the truth has finally been revealed and it is time for justice.

17:37

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

I welcome the report which sets out, once and for all, the real truth that many of us have known from the start, and I congratulate the panel on its work. I was closely involved with the Hillsborough family support group during long negotiations with the previous Labour Government about setting up the independent panel, and I know that many people put huge amounts of work into the process. Two people who had an input but would not normally be mentioned are Mario Dunn, then the Home Secretary’s special adviser, and Ken Sutton, who led the civil service team and did a tremendous amount of hard work to get us to where we are today.

A number of hon. Members have been considering how we can move this issue forward, and one cross-party idea is to set up a Hillsborough disaster all-party group that will allow us to discuss various matters that will continue to arise, and meet relevant people and bodies—including, of course, the families—to see how the process is progressing. I hope that that group can be set up within the next few weeks.

Before I get to the main thrust of my comments, I wish to record my admiration for and thanks to the families that have campaigned over these 23 years. They have been brave, dogged and persistent and have never given up seeking truth and justice for their loved ones. They have, quite frankly, been magnificent. A leading role over the years was played by a constituent of mine, Eddie Spearritt, who sadly died earlier this year and did not see this report. He lost his son, Adam, and was himself in intensive care and unconscious, although he survived. I will return later in my remarks to some of the issues that the Spearritt family have raised with me. The fact that Mr Spearritt survived is particularly pertinent with regard to arguments about the 3.15 pm cut-off that we have heard previously and today.

I speak as someone who was in the stadium on the day of the disaster. If someone from another planet had come to earth at some point in the years after Hillsborough, they would not have believed it if they were told that, prior to the match, Liverpool football club raised concerns that it was not given the Kop end to accommodate its larger support; that extra tickets were given to Nottingham Forest, which had smaller support; and that there had been a significant crush incident in 1981 and problems between then and 1989, but nothing significant was done and Hillsborough continued to be used as a venue. They would not have believed that the police had decided they wanted to put side fencing on the terracing as segregation and requested that the turnstiles should be altered to direct supporters into the correct pens, but Sheffield Wednesday rejected the suggestion on the basis of cost. They would not have believed that the ground did not have a valid safety certificate, and that an experienced commander, Superintendent Mole, was replaced 21 days before the match. We do not know to this day, and neither did the panel ascertain, why that happened. The panel said that it was a “significant development”. We therefore do not yet have all the truth.

Someone coming to this planet would not have believed that there had been a 30% cut in the number of police officers in the Leppings Lane end, which was the most difficult area to police; that the police were not stopping people to check their tickets and did not organise queues as they had done in previous years; that the police lost control outside the ground; that communications between police officers in the command posts inside and outside the ground were, to say the least, chaotic; that the police opened an outside gate and did not block off the tunnel to pens 3 and 4; and that the officer in charge of the operation ignored what was happening in front in his own eyes—supporters were in serious trouble, being crushed, and, as we know, dying. He then lies about what happened, and police officers engage in a co-ordinated campaign to blame the fans—in other words, they organise a conspiracy to put the blame on the fans and away from themselves.

Someone coming to this planet would not have believed the appalling and inadequate emergency response—senior ambulance management did not take control. They would not have believed that the whole justice system failed the families and survivors, and that no one to this date has been prosecuted or faced justice. They would not have believed that scandalous situation possible. Of course, we knew a lot of that in the years after 1989, including during the debate in 1998, but nothing was done until the independent panel report.

For the first time in 23 years, I have read the match programme from that day. Next to a picture of the Leppings Lane end is the following comment: “a perfect venue”. It states:

“As you look around Hillsborough you will appreciate why it has been regarded for so long as the perfect venue for all kinds of important matches”.

The programme mentions altering and improving the Kop end—Sheffield Wednesday did not, of course, improve the Leppings Lane end—and preparation prior to the match, which it says was of paramount importance. On opposing the then Government’s identity scheme, the Sheffield Wednesday chairman says that

“the hooligan problem inside football stadiums is virtually eradicated”,

and yet we, as Liverpool fans, were accused of being hooligans on that day. That man was in charge of Sheffield Wednesday football club, and he made those comments in the programme on the day, which says a lot about the mindset that existed at that time.

Here is another interesting insight into the club and its attitude. Following the 1981 crushing incident, when the police allowed a number of supporters on to the track around the perimeter fence, Mr McGhee, the same chairman of Sheffield Wednesday football club, argued that the police action was completely unnecessary and made the ground look untidy. He considered that that might prevent Hillsborough hosting future semi-finals. I wish it had.

Assistant Chief Constable Goslin insisted that, owing to the crushing on the terraces, there had been a “real chance of fatalities” to which, astonishingly, Mr McGee replied:

“Bollocks—no one would have been killed!”

I hope that is parliamentary language, Mr Deputy Speaker; it is in the report. However, we now know different. We need to continue to explore the issue of the ground.

I mentioned the Spearritt family, who wrote to me and made the point about ensuring that the investigations are fully resourced. They are also concerned about the position of the chief constable, Norman Bettison, which clearly needs proper scrutiny, and the time it will take to bring to justice those who should face it. The families have waited a long time already of course. Other families have raised issues about the cost of the inquest and associated issues, and the siting of the new inquest—presuming that one is held—in Liverpool. That is a matter for others to decide, but I hope that it will take place close to Liverpool if not in the city.

Constituents have also raised with me the issue of Kelvin MacKenzie, who has tried to claim that he was misinformed by the police. In fact, the book “Stick It Up Your Punter!: The Uncut Story of the Sun Newspaper” by Chippindale and Horrie says that the chief reporter at the time

“did not like the look of some of”

the copy that he had been given, although the

“agencies whose names were on it were reliable”.

The book continues:

“In his opinion it now needed handling as delicately as a ticking bomb. Seeking out MacKenzie, he confided his fears. ‘We’ve got to be really careful with this stuff…These are only allegations’”.

The front page that was eventually published was obviously a real concern for staff at The Sun at the time:

“As MacKenzie’s layout was seen by more and more people a collective shudder ran through the office. There was an instant gut feeling that that it was a terrible mistake. The trouble was that nobody seemed able to do anything about it. By now MacKenzie’s dominance was so total there was nobody left in the organisation who could rein him in”.

That is worth mentioning, as Mr MacKenzie has said it was the police’s fault and they owed him an apology. Clearly, he had lots of information and advice, but he ignored it and ran the statements he did.

The 1998 debate said many of the things that we know to be true today, especially about the 3.15 pm cut-off, and the police statements that my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) and I saw and raised in the debate. The Stuart-Smith report said that there was no reason to reconsider those points, and that needs looking at. Dr Ed Walker was one of the doctors who treated people on that day, and he raised the possibility of people surviving after that time, but he was ignored.

What happened on that day is a scandal and a disgrace.

17:47

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement, praise the panel for its work and express my profound respect for the Hillsborough families.

Despite successive reports, it is unlikely that everyone will agree on every detail of the awful events of 15 April 1989. Each person, depending on how they were placed and why they were there, will have their own slightly different perspective, but I am sure that they would all agree on one thing. No one, whether supporter, player, steward, policeman, or council or FA official, whether partly responsible or utterly blameless, would not if they could go back in time do absolutely everything they could to prevent something like from this happening. That is because the victims, as we know now, were not ticketless or drunken or badly behaved, but those to whom all owed a duty of care. It simply should not have happened, and we now know that, for a whole range of different reasons, it could have been prevented from happening.

When the story was told, people saw different things and offered different explanations, and obviously some had a different agenda other than simply to get the facts out in the open. The South Yorkshire police, for example, were aware from the start that potential civil and criminal liability was an issue, and they got the lawyers in. What shocked me most reading the report was the tampering with the evidence of their own officers and their apparent complicity with misrepresentation in the media. The tampering was of a very formal kind; we have heard some horrific examples, but it was more institutional than that. They drew explicitly and openly on an unclear distinction that they made between opinion and fact, and then eliminated, with the knowledge of the West Midlands police and the assistance of their lawyers, a stream of inconvenient statements they had had from their own officers, including the plentiful references to “panic”, “chaos” and “disorganisation”. They were all eliminated as “just opinion”. They even changed evidence of “non-existent” radio communication to “hard to hear” radio communication. In other words, they engaged in an organised rewrite or editing of history. It was a clear institutional strategy. Admittedly, officers signed the amended scripts, but it would have been hard to insist on the re-inclusion of items that criticised their superiors and police performance, once they had been eliminated higher up—not exactly a smart career move.

I do not believe that the world is peopled by saints and sinners—as we have all learned, there are many shades of grey—and I dare say that some in South Yorkshire police thought they were doing the right thing. Many of us have met a lot of people involved on that day. I think, for example, of Norman Bettison, then chief constable for Merseyside, with whom many of us are acquainted in other contexts. Everyone needs a fair hearing, and there has to be a huge moral gulf between someone putting a good gloss on their own actions and those of their police force, and incriminating others, particularly those who can no longer defend themselves. That has to be reflected in any subsequent judgment.

Let us consider this: it took very little time for South Yorkshire police’s version of events to be established, broadcast and embedded in the public mind; it took 23 years for the families to do the same, and without their efforts the truth would be lost to history. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) said, that tells us something about this country. It tells us that there is a huge inequality, not of wealth, but of power—power to get a fair press, power to get information, power to get justice—and that raises big questions for Parliament. In this case, Parliament has been the last resort of the powerless, but we cannot be content with a world in which power is so badly and unequally distributed.

Liverpool people have a reputation for being stroppy—I do not know why—and for looking askance at the world. We do not need to go back many generations in any Liverpool family to come across an ingrained vein of grim Irish or Welsh fatalism and the belief that the world is not a fair place. The Hillsborough families have shown that that is not something we need put up with.

17:52

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

First, I want to reiterate what I said on 12 September, when the report was published, and commend the tenacity, drive and sheer breathtaking commitment of the families for what they have achieved with the support of politicians of differing parties and, in particular, my colleagues from Merseyside and my right hon. Friend—a friend outside, as well as inside, the House—the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham). I also commend the Bishop of Liverpool and the panel, who have shown that it is sometimes better not to have a judicially led inquiry. We might learn from that. I also want to reiterate what has been said about Ken Sutton and the secretariat, who were absolutely superb and had the most enormous job in getting to the kind of truth that was not seen and available elsewhere.

I, like my hon. Friends the Members for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) and for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), have been a lifelong supporter of Sheffield Wednesday. As such, I want to say that the hearts of the people of Sheffield are, as then, with the people of Merseyside and the families. On that terrible afternoon, kindness shone through the darkness: people took families and individuals into their homes around the ground, used telephones in a day when mobile telephones were not available, ran people back to Merseyside, where appropriate, and did their best to indicate a humanity that I hope we will also remember.

The debate has so far been of the highest order, and I want only to say one or two things that might add to it. I commenced representing Brightside in 1987. At the time, I did not hear from any thinking human being who genuinely believed that the deceased had anything to do with the events of that afternoon. How could they have anything to do with it, given that they were in the ground well in advance of 3 pm and so at the front of the dreadful pens that existed at the time? As I said two months ago, the tales that were made up and the way the so-called facts were reiterated demonstrated that we could only really rely on truth and justice being revealed when we had absolute transparency. Today, that is more possible, given mobile technology and the way everything is recorded—we have seen that in recent days—and that is a good thing, but it can only really work if there is a change of heart from the top down.

I want to refer to the three elements of the case—the events of the day, the cover-up and the inquest. I was not in the ground on the day, but I visited Northern General hospital the following morning and talked to those with minor injuries and to some of the parents. I was impressed by what the hon. Member for City of Chester (Stephen Mosley) said about Kevin’s mother, Anne, whom I heard on the radio a week last Friday, showing the most enormous dignity, having demonstrated the most enormous courage in pursuing this matter and having coped with what she has had to live with ever since. I do not know whether the inquest will bring any kind of peace, but it will certainly bring greater truth.

I understand that such an inquest has incredibly difficult barriers to overcome. The bar was set extremely high by those who took the civil case 12 years ago, and the Stuart-Smith inquiry set the bar at a height that makes it difficult, 23 years on, to achieve the kind of justice that those in the Gallery today rightly seek. What is absolutely sure, however, is that the cover-up must be revealed if we are to prevent such a thing from happening again. It is about culture and perception. The fact that on the day 116 officers wrote down what they believed had taken place but had their testimony altered is a testament to their efforts to tell the truth. The scandal was that senior management in South Yorkshire police and the West Midlands force—the latter has also been tellingly referred to this afternoon—overrode their decency and honesty. That is the lesson for us. The issue is about how senior management, not those at the bottom, should be pursued. I believe that 100 members of the 1989 force are still in place. I hope that their experiences in respect of senior management will be listened to and that they will not be made to feel that they are being pursued. Otherwise, we will get the wrong conclusion by pursuing the wrong people.

As with the organisation and supervision on that tragic afternoon and as with the cover-up, the inquest, which, of course, turned out to be a scandal, was based on presumption and a particular perception of the fans. I say that regardless of what Bert McGee, with whom I am glad to say my relations were nil, might have written in the programme that afternoon. As the MP covering the stadium, I never repeated any of the garbage told to the then MP for Sheffield, Hallam, Sir Irvine Patnick. I believe that the perception had arisen out of the previous years—out of what had happened at Ibrox, Heysel and Birmingham, where two people were killed, and the hysteria around the situation with fans. Action by the Taylor committee was taken on the back of that. Here is a thought: the Taylor committee, which got to part of the truth, came out with recommendations that were more about dealing with fans than they were about the outcome or the truth and justice of what happened at Hillsborough in April 1989. We have to ensure, in detection and investigation in future, that that never happens again—that we do not have a police force or inquiries that build on existing perception, but that we genuinely try to get to what happened.

We have a challenge before us, because the truth is virtually out. The families are near to getting some sort of peace and settlement, if that is possible. The Parliament that we stand in today is revealing and opening up what has been covered up for 23 years, but to go forward we need to be able to pick up some of the issues around future transparency and strong outside investigation. My right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary referred to this issue. I was the one who set up the Independent Police Complaints Commission, because its predecessor, the Police Complaints Authority, was totally and utterly inadequate. I would like us to strengthen the IPCC immediately, because waiting to legislate on something new would not be the answer. Therefore, we should by all means provide greater powers, but this is also about process, as well as culture and enforcement. The top-down examples that I have referred to are about changing the way we operate our police service. This is also about what happened with the other emergency services—not least the ambulance service—which led to the terrible tragedy of those who might have been saved being left on that afternoon.

We are, 23 years later, trying to put right a wrong that is part of our history. We are trying to do so without undermining the morale and the feeling of service of those in the police and emergency services in South Yorkshire, who I have to care about because they are the ones who are serving my constituency and those of my hon. Friends. They need to know that, while we are getting to the truth and providing justice and accountability for the past, we are also mindful of their lives and their work, and that is why—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order.

18:02

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

As Members of Parliament, we all have to deal on a daily basis with the consequences of what happens when the state fails. Thankfully, there are mercifully few occasions when the state fails as badly as it did the victims of the Hillsborough disaster. We should all be able to take it for granted that the state will make every endeavour to keep us safe. We should also take it for granted that the state will deliver justice and treat us fairly if we obey and abide by the law. Through the publication of this report, we have seen how spectacularly the state failed in those commitments to protect the victims of Hillsborough. The report also shows how the organs of the state colluded to deny the families justice for their loved ones. The families have now got the truth, but in doing so they have reminded us that the establishment is fallible. That is a very uncomfortable truth.

I am pleased to follow the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett). Some of the things I will say follow on from the points he made. I was born and bred in Hillsborough, and I lived a mere stone’s throw away from the stadium. I remember that day very clearly, not least because friends and family were there, as stewards, spectators and police officers on duty. I should also advise the House that I was employed at South Yorkshire police in 1992. It is from that perspective that I would like to make a few comments.

South Yorkshire police has rightly been condemned for its failings as part of the tragedy, but it says a lot about Trevor Hicks that when the report was published and South Yorkshire police was criticised, he immediately chose to pay tribute to the individual members of South Yorkshire police who had behaved honourably and supported the victims. I draw attention to the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Stephen Mosley), who identified some of the officers who did exactly that. Although today is rightly about the victims of the tragedy and how we ensure that the same thing never happens again, I want to take a few moments of the House’s time to pay tribute to all the police officers of South Yorkshire who behaved professionally and honourably, but who are being unfairly maligned as a result of the criticism of the force. They should continue to feel proud of the contribution they make to keeping our communities safe. It should also be remembered that, as it was a football game, a number of the officers on duty were special constables, giving their time as volunteers.

Over the years, a number of police officers have shared with me their perspectives of what happened. Without exception, they have all recognised the failings of South Yorkshire police and, as highlighted by the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough, the failings by the senior leadership on the day and subsequently. Those present on the day all report that there was chaos and a complete breakdown of leadership. What happened on the day was exacerbated by a failure of the leadership to acknowledge what had gone wrong, which can have been motivated only by a desire to protect the name of the force and individual officers. That is completely unacceptable. I hope that the inquiries by the IPCC will find those who were culpable and take appropriate action.

When I joined South Yorkshire police in 1992, I joined an organisation that was traumatised by the effects of the Hillsborough disaster and its aftermath. As a consequence, the force had a mission to improve confidence in the service and to improve performance. To achieve that, a corporate affairs unit was established under Chief Superintendent Norman Bettison. Much has been made of his role in the disaster and subsequently, and the unit, which he supervised, has been the focus of discussion in the House before. It will be mentioned in this debate, too, but I should advise the House that as well as dealing with the aftermath of Hillsborough the unit dealt with much wider issues and was responsible for some significant changes in procedure and performance in the force.

The IPCC will obviously get to the bottom of where the wrongdoing took place. I do not think we should prejudge the outcome of those inquiries, but if systemic wrongdoing is found, senior officers cannot distance themselves from it. I was particularly disappointed that, immediately following publication of the report, the former chief constable of South Yorkshire police, Richard Wells, who succeeded Peter Wright—he is no longer with us and therefore no longer able to account for his role in these events—announced that, with regret, he had accepted the account of events given to him by officers, which was that

“statements had been looked at for criminal justice purposes and emotional, non-evidential material had been removed.”

It is just not good enough for any officer in a senior position to distance themselves from things that happened on their watch. Leadership means setting the style and tone of an organisation, and it means taking responsibility when things go wrong. Whether it was a systematic attempt at rewriting events or the activity of individual over-zealous officers, it is still not good enough for senior officers at the time to say that they did not know what was happening. They ought to have known. They are responsible, and we do not pay them healthy salaries so that they can abdicate responsibility when things go wrong. It now falls to the IPCC to identify where misconduct took place and who was culpable, but it should not have taken this long, and we should not have to rely on regulators and inquiries to get to the truth. We need to instil in public servants an emphasis on doing the right thing and on placing that ahead of protecting their reputations. The truth will out in the end.

I cannot finish without addressing the untruths that were published in The Sun and which did so much to set the tone in which the circumstances of the disaster came to be viewed. I was horrified to learn that the source of that material was a former Member of this House. Although it is recorded that the account was given by a police officer, his statement as published also records that another officer told him to take what he had heard with a pinch of salt. It is extremely regrettable that that advice was not heeded. As a result, an untrue account of events relating to the behaviour of fans was allowed to be perpetuated. It is that account which has denied them justice for so long. All of us in this House should never forget our role as community leaders; nor should we forget the respect that our comments command. We should never repeat anything unless we can be satisfied that it is the truth. In this context, careless talk has impeded justice.

It has taken an unacceptably long time for the victims’ families to get the truth, but I am massively inspired by their fight, and I hope that the fresh inquests and the investigations afforded by this report will give them the closure that they need from this awful tragedy.

18:09

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price), who made an eloquent and balanced speech drawing on her own experience and putting what we have heard over the past few days and weeks into the context of overall policing. I also want to pay tribute to the Home Secretary and the shadow Home Secretary. They both made outstanding speeches today, and they showed the House at its very best. The Government have reacted and, frankly, they have not put a foot wrong following the publication of the independent panel’s report. I am grateful to the Home Secretary for the way in which she has given her personal attention to this issue, knowing that, as Home Secretary, she has a lot of things to do. It is one of the toughest jobs, if not the toughest job, in the Government, but she has given this matter the necessary quality time.

The thoughts that the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), has expressed today on how to reconstruct the system for the future, and in particular on the way in which we should develop the Independent Police Complaints Commission, are very welcome. I saw today a desire from those on both Front Benches to work together to ensure that, as the Home Secretary said, from truth we shall get justice.

The Home Secretary and the shadow Home Secretary were present at the police bravery awards last Thursday, and I heard them both praise the British police as the finest in the world. That does not, however, take away from the fact of this damning report by the independent panel into what happened 23 years ago. I want to pay tribute to Members on both sides of the House for the way in which they have prosecuted the cause of the families, who have struggled so hard in very difficult circumstances to get justice.

Today, I want to concentrate on the future, because there is a danger that, despite all the good will and all the work being done by the various agencies, we could lose track of precisely how we are going to arrive at a conclusion on this subject. I want to refer to the evidence given by David Compton, the South Yorkshire chief constable, when he appeared before the Home Affairs Select Committee last Tuesday. We are not holding another inquiry into Hillsborough. We have had the definitive inquiry. All that the Committee wishes to do is monitor on a regular basis what is happening, just as we have done with Operation Weeting, which was set up following the phone hacking scandal. We will therefore call back the chief constable and the families on a four-monthly basis to ensure that things are going in the right direction. We are not holding an inquiry.

The chief constable gave excellent evidence. He was forthright and transparent, and he promised that he would write to the IPCC by last Friday with the names of the officers who were involved in some way in what happened at Hillsborough. As I said earlier, the names of 1,444 officers have now been sent to the IPCC, of whom 304 are still serving in the South Yorkshire force. It immediately becomes clear, given the number of names involved, that there will be a problem with resources. I welcome what the Home Secretary has said about that today, but she should not wait for the IPCC to come to see her. A meeting should be convened pretty quickly to ask the IPCC what it needs, and to give it those resources. I am watching the Home Secretary’s face as I speak, and I am sure that she has already fixed such a meeting. We often say in the House, “If they need the resources, they should come and ask for them”, but we should go to the IPCC and offer it what it needs.

We also received evidence last week from the families themselves. Many of their names have already appeared in parliamentary reports, including those of Trevor Hicks, Jenny Hicks, Margaret Aspinall and Sheila Coleman. They all came and gave evidence to us, alongside Lord Falconer, who is advising the Hillsborough families. They were concerned about co-ordination and they suggested that the Director of Public Prosecutions should have overall superintendence of the various agencies. However, I am not absolutely convinced that it would be the best course of action to place this matter into the hands of the DPP, another very busy senior official.

I favour the idea of appointing a special prosecutor to look into all these cases and to act as a co-ordination point, because it is really important that we wrap this up in the personality of one person. I put the idea to the Home Secretary right at the start that this could perhaps be done by Tom Winsor, the new chief inspector of constabulary. This is a role for the inspectorate. It should not be about police officers investigating police officers; it should involve someone completely new coming into the system to look into it. I do not know whether he has the resources to do that. There are a number of other people who could take on the task. I would also like to throw in the name of Denis O’Connor. He has just stood down from the role of chief inspector of constabulary, and would therefore be unburdened by day-to-day management duties. We need a figure with experience who can command respect and who can bring all the various agencies together.

I am glad that the Home Secretary said that she would hold meetings this week. It is really important that we take on board what the families say, and that we try to cut through the bureaucracy that will inevitably result from all the agencies trying to do their very best by those families, and by the stated views of Members on both sides of the House, as I am sure they will do. I hope that we can reach a conclusion quickly.

I am glad that the Home Secretary was able to see the Hillsborough families. They had contacted her office before they came to appear before the Committee, but they said that they had not received a definitive reply. I was therefore pleased that she was able to meet them at such short notice. It is they who have been driving this whole issue over the past 23 years, and we should put them right at the centre of what we are seeking to do. We all have our views and opinions but, at the end of the day, it is the families who should turn to Parliament and say, “We need closure, and this is how we are going to get it.”

The hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) mentioned Norman Bettison earlier. I was surprised recently to be rung up by The Times newspaper and to be told that, 23 years ago, I had been to a briefing meeting held by the police officers who had policed Hillsborough, and that I had left the meeting before the end. The press asked me why I had done that, and I had to tell them that I cannot remember what I did last week, and that I certainly cannot remember what I did 23 years ago. I can only imagine the detail of the reports of such meetings, if Norman Bettison was able to write in his report that Keith Vaz had left a meeting early, as though that suggested something pejorative about the way in which the meeting had been conducted. Officers in the South Yorkshire police force were clearly keeping detailed notes on what Members of Parliament were doing in the meetings that they had organised in order to discuss these issues. We should give the IPCC the opportunity to make a judgment on Norman Bettison’s case. I know what the families feel, and I have heard what he has said today.

We should also look at the whole way in which policing operates at the moment. There are a lot of different cases going on. My hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) has raised some questions in the press today, and I know that he will raise them in Parliament when he speaks. The fact is that we need to look at the new policing landscape. The Government are right to try to change it with the creation of the National Crime Agency and the new college. All these issues need to be addressed. I am not convinced that we should reform the IPCC in the middle of these negotiations, but we can clearly take on board what the shadow Home Secretary has said about giving it additional powers so that it can complete these investigations properly.

The Select Committee is conducting an inquiry into the IPCC, and tomorrow we shall see Marie Rigg, the mother of Sean Rigg. For years, she has felt that his case was not properly dealt with by the IPCC, so the Hillsborough families are not alone in criticising the organisation. We want to hold a proper inquiry and give proper recommendations to the Home Office, taking on board what the shadow Home Secretary and others have said. At the end of the day, according to the families, the only way to get closure will be for people to be prosecuted for what happened. Who those people are, Parliament does not know at this moment. All that we can do is ensure that we have a good, robust process so that justice can finally be done.

18:19

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

I should like to start by praising the families who fought on and on for 23 years to get to where we are today. I want to talk to the public about the impact of what we are discussing. Football is a great joiner of people. Since I have come to this place, I have developed an excellent friendly relationship with the hon. Member representing Liverpool, Wavertree—[Hon. Members: “Walton.”] That is a good start: I mean the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram). That relationship comes down to the bond that people gather from being football fans. Although we sit on totally opposite sides of the political divide, we get on exceptionally well through our love of football. Football binds many people together. My sister is an Arsenal fan whereas my brother-in-law is a Liverpool fan, and they live in Sheffield. Quite where on the football spectrum my niece and nephew will end up remains to be seen, but what about the prospect of their going to a football match—something that binds together people who love the game—13 years from now, when they will be 16 and 14, and a terrible incident occurring?

Some people might dismiss this debate as having gone on too long or believe that these matters should not have been dug up again. There are people who have made such comments, but I ask them how they would feel if a family member—a niece or nephew, say, if they do not have children—lost their life going to one of the events that so many people in this country go to, watch, enjoy and love, and were then effectively told that it was all their fault anyway? What if they then saw an establishment war against them, which is effectively what has happened over 23 years?

I came into politics because, I am sure like many people, I wanted to defend people who need to be spoken up for. I have a big thing about bullies; I hate them, yet I see them in so many aspects of life, using their position to bully others. As my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Stephen Mosley) said in his excellent speech, people were bullied into changing their statements. All that came about because people had made a mistake. The police made mistakes, but instead of standing up and admitting the terrible mistakes that they made that day, they tried to push the blame on to those who had no reason whatever to have that blame put upon them. I think that every single person in this country needs to think about that and about the events they go to enjoy together as a family. They should think about how they would feel if a disastrous event took place and they were blamed for what had happened.

I remember being at school when this event happened—I was 13—and hearing some of the comments made the next day about what The Sun had said. Even in south- east England, school children and others were very uncomfortable about the newspaper coverage. Many people went into shock—this was more than a general sense of shock—about what had happened. I remember reading the Sunday newspapers along with my parents the next day, and I clearly recall seeing a picture of somebody being crushed up against the fence. It had a deep impact on me. The following day a newspaper came out with “The Truth” plastered across it, and some accusations were made. Let us remember what they were. It was claimed that people, including children, were drunk. It was said that people were pickpocketing the dead, urinating on dead bodies and attacking police officers. If that was true, why was nobody arrested, as there were plenty of police there? There were plenty of television cameras there, too, recording all the events, but no arrests were made and no evidence ever came forward.

This leads me on to my comments about the chief constable of West Yorkshire, Norman Bettison. I am not standing here today to say that Sir Norman Bettison is guilty of any crime. I am not saying that, but what I am saying is that he edited, as he was asked to do, the video footage of what went on that day. I think that over 60 hours of footage was brought down to 30 minutes. Subsequently, questions have been raised about whether pressure was applied by people such as Norman Bettison when he was the chief constable to get police officers to change their statements. I know that many more speeches today will address that issue directly.

When I look at the press release from the West Yorkshire policy authority, I see that the authority committee referred the matter to the chair of the special committee, whose role was

“to oversee all conduct matters involving chief officer ranks, including the Chief Constable.”

The second press release stated that that committee

“will decide whether any conduct matters or public complaints about the Chief Constable should be recorded and whether any matters should also be referred to the IPCC as a result.”

One charge that the IPCC is looking into is that Sir Norman tried to influence that committee not to refer him. That may or may not be true, but that is one of the charges brought. If the public are to have faith in any report that comes out from the IPCC, they must be absolutely 100% convinced that no undue influence was brought to bear on that process. Frankly, that is the accusation being levelled against it. With someone involved in the investigation who has effectively been charged with involvement in a cover-up now having to face a new charge of trying to influence the police authority, their position must be untenable if the public are to have faith in the report that comes out.

I emphasise again that I am not saying whether Sir Norman Bettison is guilty or innocent, as that is what an investigation is for. What I am saying is that for the public to have faith in any report that is produced, he should either be suspended or, if a mechanism cannot be found, offer his own suspension from duty. He should not take retirement. I have heard Sir Norman’s warm words:

“Recent weeks have caused me to reflect on what is best for the future of policing in West Yorkshire, and I have now decided to set a firm date for my retirement. I hope”,

he said, that his departure

“will enable the Independent Police Complaints Commission to fully investigate allegations that have been raised about my integrity.”

I disagree. I do not think he should take early retirement. I think that his early retirement date should be held until we get to the end of an investigation so that he can be held to account in respect of his current role.

[Mr Frank Field]

Will not the things that the hon. Gentleman has said today make it more difficult to hold the chief constable to account?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am sorry, I did not quite catch that.

[Mr Field]

Might not the hon. Gentleman’s wish for somebody to be held to account be made that much more difficult to achieve by the contribution he has just made?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I would hope not. My point is that if he suspended himself and removed himself from any investigation, the public could have faith in any report that is produced. I did not level the new charge—that he tried to interfere with West Yorkshire policy authority—against him; it was the IPCC that levelled that charge. After 23 years, the public must have faith in any report that is brought out.

[Mr Anderson]

Is it not a fact that in the vast majority of employment cases, where an issue is raised or accusations are made against a worker—and this man is a worker—that worker would almost certainly be suspended, regardless of what they had to say about the allegations? If the allegations were made, they would be suspended, particularly in order to prevent any interference with any records or paperwork. That would happen to virtually anybody in this country, so why should it not happen to this man?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am most grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. He will have heard me intervene on the shadow Home Secretary earlier. Her answer made it very clear that she and the Home Secretary did not have the ability to be involved, which is why I said that if there is a mechanism whereby the person in question can offer himself for suspension, that is what should happen. I want to make it absolutely clear that I am not casting judgment on him; what I am saying is that this House, the public, the victims and their families need to know that when this process is finished, no more questions will be left unanswered. There should be no more theories about whether someone influenced a report; only then can peace be brought to those families. They must know that the full truth is out there; those found to be responsible must face up to the consequences; and we must close this dreadful, shameful chapter in our country’s history.

Finally, I want to make a point about what my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) said. I simply cannot understand how such an experienced politician as the then Member of Parliament for Sheffield, Hallam was able to go to journalists and report as fact rumours about which he had been told. I am thinking particularly of what appears on page 351 of the report, to which my hon. Friend referred:

“‘Some of the supporters were pissed out of their minds. They were pissing on us while we were pulling the dead and injured out…they were swearing at us kicking and punching us and hampering our work’. One seated showed me the marks of the kicks on his left trouser leg and the marks on his skin.”

The report goes on to mention what fans were said to have yelled about what they would do with a girl who was naked. An off-duty sergeant is said to have given this information to the then Member of Parliament. We also read on page 351 that

“‘senior officers advised Mr Patnick to take what he had heard ‘with a pinch of salt’.”

Those accusations should make every one of us angry. I am angry, and I cannot imagine what the families must feel about the fact that a Member of this House fed those allegations to the newspapers, and into the general stream of information that was going around the country, when a senior police officer had told him to take them with a pinch of salt.

At the end of the process, those who are found to have deliberately peddled that story must be prosecuted for defamation of character, because that is what it was: besmirching the names of the dead was a defamation of character. It is not good enough, and I hope that we shall never see a repeat of it in the House. I also hope that one outcome will be that we all remember—this was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock—that we, as politicians, are in a very powerful position. Our words matter, and we must never peddle rumours and, consequently, untruths.

18:31

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

Many Members on both sides of the House have made impassioned speeches, and many have presented arguments that I wish to present as well. I shall therefore use my brief contribution to reinforce some of their points, as well as adding some of my own.

Let me begin by adding my voice to the tributes that other Members have paid to the families of the 96 victims. The publication of the independent panel’s report lays bare the double injustice that they have suffered for far too long, and is a major step forward in their search for truth and justice. However, as all of us who are taking part in the debate well know, the report represents not the end of that struggle, but merely the beginning of a new chapter. For 23 years the families and survivors have been let down, and we owe it to them to ensure that we do everything possible to ensure that they finally get the justice they deserve.

I want to record my thanks to the Bishop of Liverpool and the members of his panel for the forensic work that they did on the report. It is testimony to the bishop’s efforts that the Home Secretary confirmed today that she wished to retain him as an adviser on all matters connected with Hillsborough. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) and my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) for the work that they did when in government. They called for the release of documentation, and set up the independent panel. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram), who has been a powerful and passionate advocate for justice for the victims of Hillsborough. I am sure that we shall hear him speak movingly later this evening.

I welcome the Government’s decision to set aside time for the debate. I also welcome the Home Secretary’s announcement that, if the Attorney-General approves, a special prosecutor will be appointed to examine the possibility of criminal charges. That will be an unusual step, but it is clearly necessary given the nature of the tragedy, the extent of the cover-up, the pain that too many have suffered over two decades, and the many agencies that are implicated.

I support the calls from my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), the shadow Home Secretary, for the introduction of new powers to compel police officers to give evidence to the Independent Police Complaints Commission’s inquiry into Hillsborough. I also welcome the Attorney-General’s decision to make an application to the High Court for new inquests to take place, and join other Members in asking him to ensure that the process is completed as quickly as possible. New inquests are vital if the wrongs of the past are to be righted. Although the original coroner’s report returned a verdict of accidental death, the independent panel’s report clearly shows that the deaths of 96 innocent people that day were anything but accidental. That verdict must be overturned.

The deaths and suffering of the survivors were a result of systematic failures by football authorities, the police and the emergency services before, during and after what happened on that tragic day, 15 April 1989. It was clear before the game that the stadium was not a safe venue. The independent panel’s report shows that the risks were already known before 1989, and that the crush was therefore avoidable. The ground did not have an up-to-date safety certificate, and problems with congestion at the Leppings Lane end had already occurred during the 1981 and 1987 FA cup semi-finals. There had been actual crushing during the 1988 semi-final the year before, but little action had been taken as a result. Although some work had been done between 1981 and 1987, it was not sufficient to ensure that the ground met minimum safety standards. The fact that the ground was used for such a high-profile match, without an up-to-date safety certificate, shows a complete lack of concern for fan safety.

On the match day itself, key safety procedures were not followed. There was a failure to recognise that the turnstiles were inadequate, or to foresee the problems that would be caused by not sealing off the tunnel leading to the central pens. The response in the immediate aftermath of the crush was appalling. A general failure on the part of the emergency services to recognise what was happening was compounded by the failure to execute major incident plans correctly. Those mistakes cost lives.

Afterwards, a concerted and shameful cover-up of those mistakes began with the blaming of innocent victims. Hundreds of police statements were doctored and amended. The original coroner’s report set an arbitrary 3.15 pm cut-off time; the only reason for that seems to have been a desire to excuse the failings of the emergency services. The blood alcohol levels of those who had been killed—even children—were checked without consent. There was collusion between senior figures in the police force, the political sphere and the media to perpetrate a campaign to smear the fans and innocent victims. Despite the finding of the Taylor inquiry that the police were at fault, not a single officer responsible for the conduct of the police that day has been disciplined or prosecuted.

Those failings, and what in some cases appear to be specific acts of criminality, need to be investigated and exposed in more detail than is allowed by the time afforded to me, or even to today’s debate. That leaves the question of who is best placed to conduct such investigations. As my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood said in the House on the day the report was published, this cover-up, the lies, and the failure to bring prosecutions show a complete failing on the part of our legal system. Securing justice for the families of the victims must of course be our immediate priority, but once that process is complete, we must also consider the wider failings of our legal system. The fact that a public inquiry, a judicial inquiry, and the coroner’s inquest in the 1980s and 1990s failed to establish the truth of what happened at Hillsborough is deeply disturbing, and such a situation must never be repeated.

I think that it is clear from the report, and from today’s debate, that a number of things need to happen. First, the Attorney-General should submit his promised application for new inquests as soon as possible. Secondly, if that application is successful, it is crucial for the inquests to be held in Liverpool, for the costs to be borne by central Government rather than by any local authority, and—most important—for no legal costs to be borne by the families. The Home Secretary said this afternoon that her Department was looking into that, and I hope that its response will be favourable. Thirdly, a special prosecutor needs to be appointed and given the powers to conduct a full inquiry—including powers to question the police—in order to determine what criminal charges can and should be brought.

What happened at Hillsborough 23 years ago was a terrible tragedy that could have been prevented. It has been made worse by a shameful cover-up by parts of the very institutions that are meant to protect us. Now that we have the truth, we all have a duty to the 96 victims, their families and the survivors to secure justice and ensure that nothing like this ever happens again.

18:40

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

The hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) concludes by rightly saying nothing like this must ever happen again. Sadly, however, there are other cover-ups going on at the moment. The Hillsborough independent panel report states:

“The disclosed documents show that the bereaved families met a series of obstacles in their search for justice.”

The hon. Member for City of Chester (Stephen Mosley) highlighted a case going all the way through to the European Court of Human Rights and the truth not coming out. We must learn from Hillsborough, and from other cover-ups, and work to get greater transparency so that such cover-ups never happen again.

On Friday, my Family Justice (Transparency, Accountability and Cost of Living) Bill will receive its Second Reading. It should, perhaps, be re-titled the “No more cover-ups Bill”. In the case of Hillsborough, there was a cover-up. There was also pressure placed on police officers not to complain. In the case of Jimmy Savile, there was a cover-up, too. There was also pressure placed on people not to complain—ironically, by banning them from watching the TV and withdrawing other privileges.

As a country, we do little to support whistleblowers. Clause 7(2) of my private Member’s Bill aims to stop people threatening others to stop them complaining. Only last week, I received a report from a fellow Member about one of her constituents being threatened.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I know the hon. Gentleman wants to discuss his Bill, but he knows that we are not doing so today. He also knows how important Hillsborough is, and how many people are present who are very concerned about the events that took place there. I therefore ask him to speak to the subject in hand, rather than drifting on to the topic of his Bill, which I know he has a keen interest in.

[John Hemming]

I take that point, Mr Deputy Speaker. My concern is that we have other cover-ups going on, and I would have thought that it is in order to discuss them and how to prevent them. I will not refer to my Bill, however.

In England, it is even possible to get a court order that stops a complaint being made. The Hillsborough case went as far as the House of Lords and involved inquests, inquiries and judicial reviews, but the truth did not come out until there was an independent panel.

My own view is that we need to be willing to look at cover-up allegations by establishing committees of inquiry in Parliament. However, there are other things that could be done to improve the accountability of public officials. Judicial review proceedings are used to deal with the accountability of public officials, and they were used in dealing with Hillsborough. The General Medical Council is also subject to judicial review. However, public bodies have very deep pockets, and there are cost risks for ordinary individuals if the costs of such a process are not covered by public funding. If cost limitations on judicial review are not set at an early stage, ordinary people cannot take on the system—the GMC, perhaps, or a local council planning decision, or a coroner as in the Hillsborough case.

In the case of Hillsborough, judicial review did not provide an adequate system of scrutiny; that was made clear in paragraph 2.9.100 of the report. One of the difficulties with criminal prosecutions and regulatory actions is that all the processes are somewhat remote from the people affected. At paragraph 2.9.114 Terri Sefton is reported as stating,

“none of the questions that she had wanted answered had been answered.”

We need greater transparency and accountability. We know, for example, that the Slovak Republic has identified 40 cases in the English courts involving 89 children where it does not think the legally correct decision has been taken, yet they have gone through our system without any challenge. To me, that is a serious criticism of the system.

The system also has an automatic cover-up in that the media in the UK are prevented from discussing details of what has been going on. Even academic researchers are banned from looking at these secret cases, to see if the decisions are sensible. More recently, it has become clear that one of the people involved in the Haut de la Garenne scandal was Jimmy Savile. Hillsborough happened in 1989, and the Savile issues arose many years ago. However, the US—

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. As you are well aware, the motion on the Order Paper relates specifically to Hillsborough. Time is at a premium, and many Members want to speak about those events. Is the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) not creeping out of order here?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I am aware that we are drifting from the topic under discussion. I have brought the hon. Gentleman back to the subject being debated once before, and I am sure he does want to speak about Hillsborough, and that is what he will do for the rest of his speech.

[John Hemming]

I do want to speak about Hillsborough, but there are similar cases that go before the Europe courts. Unless we solve the systemic problems and ensure that cover-ups do not continue, there will be further cover-ups. I am sure the Hillsborough families wish to see the system changed so that such situations do not happen again. I will not mention any of the other relevant examples at present, but, over time, we must look at them, because, as the Minister accepted earlier, the system is very vulnerable to cover-ups.

[Steve Rotheram]

I cannot speak for all Hillsborough families, but the Hillsborough families I know would absolutely agree that there should be no more cover-ups. However, they have fought for 23 years for the opportunity to come to this House and hear politicians speak about the Hillsborough independent panel report, and I think the hon. Gentleman is drifting far from that topic.

[John Hemming]

It is interesting how many Members are taking on the role of the Speaker today. I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point, however.

Let me return to the comments in my prepared speech: it is to be hoped that the report of the Hillsborough independent panel will provide closure for the families. They need justice, and they have now got to the truth. Parliament needs to learn from this and stop the culture of cover-up. There must be no more cover-ups.

18:46

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

My hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) listed a number of authorities, from the football club that is based at Hillsborough through to the media, that, to say the least, made mistakes, crass errors or whatever one wants to call them. When dealing with the issues the report highlights, the one point it is impossible to get one’s head around is the motives of those people who were involved in this complex series of mistakes. We can, perhaps, understand that the club was desirous of the revenue coming in from hosting such a prestigious game, but the subsequent actions of a number of senior people in the police, the emergency services and the media lead us to the conclusion that their motives were completely scurrilous.

Two of the 41 victims who, it appears, lived beyond 3.15 pm were my constituents, and another of my constituents also died. Let me quote the comments of the brother of one of those constituents. Nick Delaney’s brother, James, died, and he said in response to a local press inquiry about the Attorney-General’s report:

“I’m over the moon. It’s great news. I didn’t expect it to be as quick. I just hope they push it through now. People need to trust the police again”.

That is very true.

The difficulty we face is that because of the complex interaction of all these issues, we know that we cannot promise the Hillsborough victims’ families any form of instant justice. We are going down the right path and, as long as Members in this House continue to work together in a collegiate manner, I am hopeful that we will get somewhere towards achieving justice for the victims and their families.

The coroner’s court has been mentioned. I am hopeful that there will be a fresh coroners hearing, and I certainly think it would be totally inappropriate for that to be in Sheffield. I am open-minded as to where else it should be; somewhere else in the north-west may be appropriate. There is a school of thought that says Liverpool may not be the best place to hold it, but somewhere else in the north-west where the court would be accessible to the victims’ families might be considered as an appropriate venue.

I want to deal briefly with the issues associated with the media. The Home Secretary used a phrase to which we all ought to listen: “after the apology, accountability.” That comment applies particularly to people such as Kelvin MacKenzie. It is mission critical that we re-establish —somehow—confidence in the media. As with the police, the media must have the confidence of the people in the country. I want to refer to what he said, where he said he got it from and what others have said.

Kelvin MacKenzie has, apparently, asked South Yorkshire police to apologise to him for the “vilification” he has received. That seems extraordinary because, as the Home Secretary said, after the apology comes the accountability and he was the accountable person in that newsroom. A police spokesman has said that

“Mr MacKenzie was responsible for the particular headline he chose to run with.”

Irrespective of one source that he got, just as the police need to follow every line of inquiry, so should a respectable journalist. He is now seeking to pass the blame on to his source and he claims to have been

“deeply affected by the affair”.

Interestingly, former Sun reporter Harry Arnold has now broken his long silence. He apparently wrote a substantial part of the story and was “aghast” when he saw the headline “The Truth”. The book that my hon. Friend the Member for Halton quoted from clearly says that that was the feeling within the newsroom. After the apology comes accountability, so I hope that every outlet for Mr MacKenzie’s work reflects on that statement before hiring him again, because he has done a huge disservice to justice by reinforcing the mistakes made on that day.

The mistakes are covered in great detail, graphic detail, horrendous detail in the report, and I, too, praise the work of the Bishop of Liverpool and his team. I also want to put on the record my thanks to the Home Secretary and the Attorney-General for following through the work started by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) when he was a Minister. The fact that this has brought the House together in pursuit of justice will, I hope, lead us to create a culture where events such as these can never happen again in this country. That will never bring back the victims of the Hillsborough tragedy, but I hope that it will be a legacy from which the whole country can benefit.

18:54

[Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)]

I welcome this report, and I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) and the hon. Members for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) and for Halton (Derek Twigg) for all they have done over many, many years. This tragic event has finally received the independent scrutiny it deserves, and I thank the Bishop of Liverpool for his forensic and exhaustive report, and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General for their commitment to justice.

The report’s findings have confirmed what witnesses and the families of the victims have always maintained: the allegations of drunkenness, ticketlessness and violence were deliberately and maliciously spread by the police, the authorities and elements of the media. It is difficult, looking back now, to understand the culture and attitudes towards football fans in the 1970s and 1980s. As a Manchester United fan who attended matches during this period, I know that a small minority of people gave the beautiful game a bad reputation. The distrust with which football fans were viewed gave some individual members of the authorities a smokescreen behind which they could hide. The fans who visited that fateful day, who included the hon. Members for Liverpool, Walton and for Halton, were, it was implied, the architects of their own demise.

I recall the days in 1989 when I visited Old Trafford and the hostile and somewhat aggressive attitude of the police that we encountered when we arrived at the ground for a game. I am amused when I think of the people I used to go there with and the positions they now occupy in modern society—perhaps we wish we had known then what we know now, as we might not have been so compliant. I also remember BBC Radio 5’s Alan Green mentioning that he went to a Sheffield United game a few days after the Hillsborough disaster and saw members of the South Yorkshire police laughing and joking while they were looking after the crowd. He shared with his listeners his disbelief that police officers could be laughing and joking such a short time after that tragedy.

I am thankful that many of the contributing factors that led to the events on 15 April 1989 have led to reform. Notably, standing has been removed at matches, and more rigorous health and safety policies at football grounds and comprehensive crowd management policies have been implemented. What we used to go through in the 1970s bears no resemblance to what we find at the modern game. However, we now know that many of these issues had been highlighted in the lead-up to the disaster, as the hon. Member for Halton highlighted in his excellent speech. The revelation that at the same match a year previously there had also been a crush at the Leppings Lane end must make us ask exactly how and why lessons were not learned. Crowds of men, women and children went into the pens at Leppings Lane when the authorities knew full well that their lives were at risk.

The failures of the police, the stadium management and the other emergency services are clear. There is responsibility, and it was avoided through a systematic abuse of power. The report found that 164 statements were significantly amended and criticism of police actions was removed in 116 of them. Blame was deliberately placed on the victims. Vicious and wholly untrue allegations were passed to and published by the media. Those allegations, it has finally been revealed, were the reported conversation between South Yorkshire police and the then Member for Sheffield, Hallam. The public, sections of the media and Parliament were deliberately misled. We have to ask why West Midlands police were used as an independent police force to investigate South Yorkshire police, given that a few years earlier, in the early 1980s, their serious crime squad had been investigated and found guilty of corruption. I hope and believe that some senior officers from that force will be held to account.

The conclusion of the coroner’s inquest and the practices used, once again, seemed to seek to deflect blame from the police on to the victims. The checking of children’s blood alcohol levels served no purpose whatsoever, except to reinforce perceptions of lawless drunkenness. As a proud father who takes his children to football matches, I can only imagine the distress that this must have caused those families. The conclusion that by 3.15 pm no one could have been saved failed to take into account the individual circumstances of each victim’s death and sought to suggest a powerlessness on behalf of the authorities to reduce the death toll, as was well mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Stephen Mosley). We must wait for a new inquest before definitive conclusions can be made, but the report’s findings suggest that lives could and should have been saved, and that makes my blood run cold.

It has been a long, long fight for the truth to be made public, but I believe that justice will be done. I welcome the Attorney-General’s commitment, I welcome the Independent Police Complaints Commission’s decision to investigate wrongdoing by the police, and I welcome The Sun’s front page story, “The real truth”. We have an opportunity to do right by the families of the victims, the 96 themselves and all football fans, past, present and future.

19:00

[Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

I welcome the opportunity to speak and to raise with the Home Secretary and Home Office Ministers many of the questions West Lancashire constituents have asked me since the publication of the Hillsborough independent panel’s report.

Amazingly, it is 12 months since I and many hon. Members in the Chamber today stood in this place and asked for the disclosure and publication of all documents relating to Hillsborough. That day we called for the truth and now we have it, but the fight for justice continues and will do so until it is secured. Gandhi said:

“Truth never damages a cause that is just.”

Liverpool people were never frightened of the truth, so, as we move on to the next stage, I am reminded that Benjamin Disraeli said that

“justice is truth in action.”—[Official Report, 11 February 1851; Vol. 114, c. 412.]

It is that action that we now welcome, and we seek assurances that the process will be seen through to the very end, delivering justice.

I join other hon. Members in welcoming the Attorney-General’s announcement that the original inquests into the 96 deaths will be quashed; the Independent Police Complaints Commission’s investigation; the Director for Public Prosecutions’ inquiry; and the comments made by the Home Secretary today. Those are certainly steps in the right direction and are welcomed as progress towards justice, but I believe the depth of the cover-up and how it spread throughout the institutions of the police, Government and the media demand that everybody be required to give evidence, whether they are retired or serving police officers or even insurance companies. There can be no place to hide for anyone when it comes to one of the darkest events in modern British history.

Before I move on to the specific questions and issues raised with me, I want to put on record my gratitude and respect, and that of my constituents, for the members of the Hillsborough independent panel and their excellent work in bringing the truth about Hillsborough into the public domain. In particular, like so many of my hon. Friends, I want to mention the chairmanship of the Right Rev. James Jones, the Bishop of Liverpool. A constituent who came to my advice surgery described Bishop James as “the shepherd”. Everyone associated with the panel felt the warmth of his guidance, his care and his truthfulness and, like a shepherd, Bishop James looked after his flock and led them to the safety of the truth.

On the issues my constituents have raised with me and the questions on which I hope Ministers can shed some light, with all the documents now in the public domain, my constituents have had the opportunity to search through them and have brought to my attention concerns about missing documents. One constituent gave a witness statement to West Midlands police and was visited twice by officers and shown videos of Hillsborough, but his statement does not appear in the documents provided to the independent panel. That situation is very strange, given that he obtained a copy of his statement in 2004. He tells me that other people are in the same position. It appears that not all the statements have been provided to the panel and I would be grateful if the Home Secretary could look into that matter, find out what has happened to those statements, and either ensure that all the documents relating to Hillsborough are published or give the reasons why they were not provided.

Throughout the coverage of the Hillsborough tragedy, the focus on South Yorkshire police, the Government’s actions and the complicity of sections of the national media and those who perpetuated the lies that were told has been considerable. However, the Football Association appears largely to have disappeared below the radar, but it chose the venue that led to the events unfolding that day and allowed the game to take place in a venue without the appropriate safety certificates. There is no question about the culpability of the Football Association in the entire fiasco, but it has been distinctly quiet in recent months apart from its attempt to apologise immediately following the publication of the report. My constituents have asked when the FA will be held to account by the various investigations and inquiries. Will it come within the scope of the criminal investigation?

I have also been asked whether the coroner and his collusion with South Yorkshire police will be included in the criminal investigation. Given the historical problems of crowd safety at Hillsborough, why were 100 fewer police officers on duty in 1989 than at the 1988 FA cup semi-final at the same ground? There were actually fewer officers there than in 1987. Many of my constituents would also wholeheartedly applaud any action against Sir Norman Bettison for his role in Hillsborough. There are certainly precedents for reconsidering and potentially removing his knighthood.

Constituents have also asked what action can be taken against those sections of the media that were complicit in perpetuating the lies. Let us be clear that that did not happen just in the immediate aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster. The Taylor report exonerated Liverpool fans from any blame, but the lies about that day at Hillsborough in 1989 were continually repeated. Only the publication of the independent panel’s report has stopped the lies being told and I would welcome the Home Secretary’s guidance on that.

The experience of Hillsborough is a watershed in the political, social and legal landscape of Britain. Much is still to be resolved. I had the great privilege of attending the vigil at St George’s hall on 12 September following the publication of the report—an emotional day for so many people. As I stood on the steps outside the hall, the sense of sadness and vindication after 23 years was palpable. It will live for a long time with anyone who was there. I look forward to a similar day when it can be said that justice has finally been done for the 96. A considerable amount has been said and written about Hillsborough, yet for us all the silence of the 96 will remain for ever the strongest and most powerful statement.

19:08

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

It is both a sadness and a pleasure to contribute to the debate. I thank the panel for its diligent work in pulling together all the evidence and finally laying bare the truth that has now been shared with the world, and I thank the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), who managed finally to persuade his Government, quite rightly, to start the inquiry. I also thank the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) for her diligent work going through the papers in the Library and using her legal mind to ensure that work on the issue kept going.

Just over a year ago, on 17 October, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) made his tremendous contribution to the Backbench Business Committee debate, when we got to debate Hillsborough in this House for the first time in a very long time. Not long afterwards, a colleague said to me, “I know that’s all very powerful, but I don’t understand why it’s still an issue. The Taylor report said it.” Indeed, the Taylor report said it. In many people’s minds it may not have gone far enough, but it laid the blame firmly at the feet of South Yorkshire police. To give credit to the Hillsborough independent panel, it has been able to show the scale of the cover-up.

I spoke quite emotionally in the Chamber when the Prime Minister read his statement last month, and today I have already said that I am still sick, angry and incredulous at the cover-up. The families of the victims, their friends and those who have been keeping the campaign alive for 23 years may be sick, angry and incredulous today, but they are vindicated in the campaign that they have been pursuing.

I want to thank the Attorney-General. I appreciate that he is a man of great legal diligence and wants to go through the paperwork, but the announcement that he made in the written ministerial statement was welcome—that he would be applying not just for one inquest to be set aside, but for all 96 to be set aside, so that the many inquests that were restrictive in nature could be put aside. I also thank the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Health for their continuing diligence on this matter.

I will not relay again all the different issues, but I have been trying to put myself in the mind of the former Member of the House, to whom my hon. Friends the Members for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) and for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) have already referred. No Liverpool fan will ever forget the tragic events that happened in another country, in Heysel, just a few years earlier, when other football fans were resentful at what had happened because all teams were banned from European football as a consequence of what happened that night. I do not want to read out again the statement to which my hon. Friends referred, but I will always struggle to understand how someone could repeat a few days later the smear of somebody who implied that Liverpool fans were sexually abusing a dead person, and indeed were going to go further than that. I realise that that person cannot be in the House to defend himself today and I know that he has expressed his regret.

It was made clear today that two forms of investigation are needed—one into what actually happened on the day, and one into the potential cover-up. Of course it will be for a court of law to make that decision. Since the last time we discussed the matter, a school friend has contacted me by e-mail to say that he did not go into the stadium that day because he saw the police officers opening the gate, he saw what was going on and he walked away—and thank God he did. I hope that such evidence will be put to people, even though they may now be quite elderly. As we heard earlier, when one of those officers retired on medical grounds, it was decided not to pursue justice. I know that there was a private prosecution, which did not end as we may all have wanted, but I still hope that such people will be brought to justice.

One of the things I would like to say to the people who have kept the fight going is “Please, have a little more patience.” That may seem a terrible thing to say after 23 years, but people were patient for the unveiling of all the terrible things that came out in the Hillsborough independent panel report. Although we can say freely in the House what we believe, it is important that we allow justice to come to its full term and that the IPCC or the special prosecutor, if that is deemed appropriate later, is brought into play. One of the things that I hope those outside the Chamber will recognise is that we know that Parliament has let people down in the past, but there is unanimity here today that Parliament is definitely on their side and we will not let people get away with it.

19:14

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

Ten minutes is nowhere near enough to do justice to a campaign that I have been involved with for 23 years, and to a 395-page report presented to the House that shocked a nation. It has taken 8,591 days to get here, but we finally have what the families and the people of my great city have known all along: the undeniable truth.

I did not dare dream that one day I would be in the House of Commons to hear a British Prime Minister apologise to the families of the Hillsborough disaster. Not only did that happen, but the Prime Minister offered a double apology. I never thought an Attorney-General would ever apply to the High Court for fresh inquests into the deaths of 96 men, women and children, but just last week in this very Chamber, that is what was announced. And I could never have imagined that the police and other organisations and individuals would ever face the full weight of the law for their lies and deceit, but we now know from what the IPCC and the DPP have said that there is the probability that criminal charges will be brought against those really responsible for both the tragedy itself and the cover-up that followed.

Let us remind ourselves of that corruption in more detail. The report suggests that police statements relating to the Hillsborough disaster

“underwent an unprecedented process of review and alteration”.

The report outlines a process of intimidation, manipulation and coercion by senior officers against their juniors less than 24 hours after the disaster, and the report finally reveals the names and rank of the officers involved in the disaster, with their actions.

There was clearly an “us versus them” mentality in the police before the match, and this mentality did not change as the disaster unfolded before their very eyes, and it certainly did not change after the disaster. When does human nature override orders given by senior officers? Why did humanity not replace duty? Was it not the duty of the police to ensure fans’ safety?

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

Although much has been said about the enormous failings of the police, what about the other organisations?

[Steve Rotheram]

We now know that the police were not the only ones who were at fault on that day. Six agencies were also involved in the cover-up. I will try to cover them in the limited time available.

The ambulance service was engaged in despicable alterations to statements. We always knew that the police were involved, but the ambulance service was at it too. Many, many parts of the Hillsborough independent panel report are harrowing for the families and the survivors, but none more so than the news that numerous fans were alive after the arbitrary 3.15 pm cut-off point, and with proper emergency care they could and probably would have been saved.

Next, there was Sheffield Wednesday football club. As the report says, following the 1981 crush,

“there was a breakdown in the relationship”

between Sheffield Wednesday and South Yorkshire police. The two major partners in match-day safety had a fractious relationship at best. What is more, Sheffield Wednesday, a club that was promoting Hillsborough as a modern ground, fit to host major football games, failed in its first duty to ensure that it had a suitably safe stadium.

By now the failings of Sheffield city council are well known. The council allowed a major football stadium in its city to operate outside the law. The report is absolutely clear that the way the council undertook safety inspections was totally and utterly inept and it failed to ensure that an appropriate safety certificate was in place.

As Kenny Dalglish wrote in his weekend column in The Mirror, the Football Association

“knew that Hillsborough did not have a safety certificate and yet they were still adamant the game had to be played at the stadium.

If they had not insisted that the game was played there . . . the fans that died would still be alive”.

The FA must now face the full force of the law for the deadly decisions that it made at that time.

Hansard of 17 April 1989 makes for particularly interesting reading. It was clear even then that there were those in this place who were seeking to shift the blame for the disaster on to the fans—no one more ignorant of the facts than Irvine Patnick, the then Tory MP for Sheffield, Hallam, who asked the Home Secretary to

“examine…the part that alcohol played in the disaster”.—[Official Report, 17 April 1989; Vol. 151, c. 29.]

Why—on what basis—did he ask that question?

[Mr George Howarth]

In view of the recent revelations about Irvine Patnick, does my hon. Friend agree that this calls into question any honours that were bestowed on him?

[Steve Rotheram]

If there were ever a job for the Honours Forfeiture Committee, surely the scrapping of Patnick’s knighthood would be it.

The report reveals for the first time that it was a Sheffield-based news agency, White’s, that claimed that the fans had verbally and physically abused the police and urinated on them as they attended to the stricken, and had stolen from the dead and dying. That came after three days of conversations between White’s, senior police officers, the Police Federation spokesman, and Irvine Patnick MP. Fancy that, Mr Deputy Speaker—lies conjured up through collusion between the press, the police and certain politicians.

It was said on the day that the Hillsborough independent panel report was published that there were 97 victims of the Hillsborough disaster. The families, the survivors and the people of our great city were tarnished and branded guilty of the deaths of 96 of their own. The reputational damage has been incalculable. But one thing is for sure—the 97th victim of Hillsborough was certainly not Kelvin MacKenzie; how dare he claim his victim status? The police were able to make such rapid progress in their conspiracy because they were aided by ready henchmen such as MacKenzie who poisoned the atmosphere around Hillsborough. It will be interesting to see whether any charges of criminal liability are placed at his door.

I am grateful to the Home Secretary and the Attorney-General, and I appreciate their efforts and commitment to upholding the law and the pursuit of justice in this case. However, I urge the Attorney-General to complete his application as quickly as possible so that fresh inquests can be launched almost immediately. All agencies involved in subsequent investigations have made it clear that the inquests can happen in parallel alongside investigations into potential prosecutions, and there is therefore no need for a delay. South Yorkshire police have billed the taxpayer for a considerable amount of legal advice over the past 23 years as they sought to cover up their actions and the actions of senior officers. Given how badly this country has let the families down, it should be for the state to ensure that any costs of fresh inquests are met by central Government funds.

The first investigation, which is being led by the Director of Public Prosecutions, is looking at whether manslaughter charges can be brought against South Yorkshire police, Sheffield Wednesday football club, the Football Association, Eastwood—the engineering company—and Sheffield city council. Any manslaughter charges may be corporate or individual, depending on the DPP’s findings, and may relate to the actions of those agencies before the disaster. The second investigation, which is totally separate from the first, will be carried out by the IPCC. This investigation will focus on the conduct of the police after the disaster and will decide if charges for perverting the course of justice or malfeasance in public office can be brought against certain individuals.

It is vital for the families and for the justice process that three things now happen with these investigations. First, they must be co-ordinated; there is no point in having two investigations covering the same ground. It is the wish of the families that there be a figurehead for subsequent investigations. The IPCC and DPP should work together effectively and efficiently so that decisions over future prosecutions may be made within months, not years. Secondly, both investigations must be well resourced. Thirdly, the investigations must be carried out in reasonable time. The families have had to wait 23 years already. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) has said,

“What you have achieved, your dignity in the face of provocation, setbacks and defeat will forever inspire any parent fighting for their child.”

He was absolutely right.

At Hillsborough on that fateful day, we witnessed one of the greatest moments of spontaneous human ingenuity in peacetime. Heroes who were labelled drunken louts and who were apparently “unemployable” came together in a time of uncertainty, panic and immense fear to try desperately to save others by creating makeshift stretchers from advertising hoardings and by working to save the dying while the professionals did little or nothing.

This report means that half our campaign has concluded, and our gratitude must be conveyed for the work of Bishop James and the independent panel, but the fight for justice continues. The lies are now attributable to the liars. Whether or not the reported 41 or 58 could have been saved, the reality is that 96 should have been saved. We will never give up until there is justice for the 96.

19:26

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

I was, with my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), one of the two Ministers in the previous Government whose initiative led to the establishment of the Hillsborough independent panel. I believed then that after years of campaigning and the seeming exhaustion of all legal avenues, only transparency and full publication of all documents could reveal the truth to the world. The people of Merseyside always knew the truth of Hillsborough.

Hillsborough is something that I have campaigned on since I was first elected in 1997. As a lawyer by trade, I am dismayed to see the utter failure of the legal system to right the wrongs and the smears of Hillsborough. Only Taylor’s interim report partially succeeded. All the other legal proceedings—from the inquests to the civil actions, the contribution proceedings, the judicial reviews, the criminal investigations, the disciplinary investigations, the Stuart-Smith scrutiny, and the private prosecutions—failed. The Hillsborough independent panel has succeeded. It has enabled the incontrovertible truth of what happened on the day and subsequently to be spread beyond Merseyside.

It took a wholly novel and non-legalistic process to break down the failings of past legal attempts to get the truth on record. I commend the great work of Bishop James Jones and the panel members. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh, as well as Lord Michael Wills, whose role has been unremarked on but was crucial, our current Home Secretary, who enabled the panel’s work to be finished when it could have been halted by the new Government, and the Prime Minister, who quickly grasped the import of the panel’s findings and has said that justice must follow on from truth.

Accountability, especially for the black propaganda campaign, matters very much to this House. Those who ordered and orchestrated that campaign have had many years of impunity to enjoy their burgeoning careers. One of the people I named in this House in 1998 as being involved in orchestrating it is Sir Norman Bettison, currently chief constable of West Yorkshire police but at the time a chief inspector, then superintendent, in South Yorkshire police. I should make it clear that he has always denied any involvement in the “dirty tricks campaign”, as Trevor Hicks has somewhat mildly dubbed it—the black propaganda campaign, I call it—in public statements.

I have here a letter from which I would like to read an extract. It was written in 1998 to Ann Adlington, then a solicitor working for the Hillsborough family support group. It is from Mr John Barry, who says that he was at Hillsborough and saw the disaster unfold. He sent it to me with a covering letter in 2009, and has recently given me permission to make it public. It says: “At the time”, in 1989,

“I was doing a part-time MBA at Sheffield Business School. One of my fellow students was a middle ranking police officer with South Yorkshire Police…Some weeks after the game and after I had been interviewed by West Midlands Police, we were in a pub after our weekly evening class. He told me that he had been asked by his senior officers to put together the South Yorkshire Police evidence for the forthcoming inquiry. He said that ‘we are trying to concoct a story that all the Liverpool fans were drunk and we were afraid that they were going to break down the gates, so we decided to open them’. I was quite astounded that he had shared this information with me, knowing that I had been very close to the scene of the disaster and had been greatly affected by it. We didn’t discuss it further.”

Mr Barry confirmed to me in the covering letter in 2009 that the middle-ranking police officer to whom he refers is Norman Bettison. He has agreed to swear a statement to that effect and I have put him in touch with the families’ solicitors. Here we have an account of a contemporaneous conversation in which Norman Bettison boasts that he is engaged in a South Yorkshire police plot to fit up the Liverpool fans and deflect blame from the force. That is indeed what happened subsequently, so what Sir Norman denies in public he boasts about in private conversations.

Sir Norman Bettison has given inconsistent accounts publicly over the years about what his role was. In late 1998, when he was appointed chief constable of Merseyside, he accepted that he was a member of what the Hillsborough independent panel report calls the Wain unit. In a written statement, he said:

“The unit was tasked with looking at what had happened on the day of the disaster…The unit also liaised with and passed information to WM police who were undertaking the formal and independent investigation into the disaster…After the immediate work of the unit was complete, I was given a specific role to monitor the public inquiry and the inquest and brief the Chief Constable on progress.”

On 13 September 2012, the day after the panel’s report was published, Norman Bettison immediately put out a statement exonerating himself and restating two of the Hillsborough smears that were part of the black propaganda campaign I referred to in 1998, namely that fan behaviour made the police’s job more difficult and that Liverpool fans arrived late at the ground and caused a surge at the Leppings Lane end. In the 2012 statement, he said about his role:

“Shortly after the conclusion of the Taylor Inquiry, I was posted to other duties. I had nothing further to do with the subsequent Coroners Inquests and proceedings.”

That is completely different from what he said in 1998 about having a special task reporting to the chief constable until after the inquests.

It is my belief that Norman Bettison has always known more than he has admitted to publicly. I met him one to one in my parliamentary office in late 1998 at the request of Sir David Henshaw, the then clerk to the Merseyside police authority, following the understandable furore that erupted when Norman Bettison was appointed chief constable of Merseyside. At that meeting, he let slip the liability split agreed in the contribution proceedings —in other words, the percentage of the blame that South Yorkshire police would accept for the disaster when paying out damages. That was very sensitive information from South Yorkshire police’s point of view and it was never made public; it was a requirement of the settlements that it be kept secret.

I knew what percentage of the blame each defendant had agreed to accept, because as a trainee solicitor at Brian Thompson and Partners I had had legally privileged access to some of my principal’s Hillsborough files. My principal was on the Hillsborough steering committee of lawyers, dealing with civil litigation on behalf of some families. Only someone who was at the heart of dealing with Hillsborough from the South Yorkshire police side would have known what percentage of the blame they accepted, and Norman Bettison knew that information.

The Hillsborough independent panel report itself suggests that Norman Bettison had a much wider role than he has admitted. He was present and took notes at the five-hour meeting between senior officers and the South Yorkshire police legal team on 26 April 1989, at which it was decided that officers would write their own statements instead of having them taken. That would not have been usual practice.

Norman Bettison compiled and introduced a video for South Yorkshire police, which was shown on 3 October 1989 to Michael Shersby MP, who represented the interests of the Police Federation in Parliament, and which tried to emphasise aspects of the disaster that deflected blame from the police. He also brought it to Westminster and showed it to more MPs, in an attempt to undermine Taylor’s findings that South Yorkshire police were to blame for the disaster.

Norman Bettison was involved in what looks like a crude attempt to smear and discredit Lord Justice Taylor, as reported by The Independent on Sunday on 16 September 2012, which led to the then chief constable of South Yorkshire police, Peter Wright, travelling to see the Director of Public Prosecutions to suggest that Taylor should be charged with perverting the course of justice. He also received daily reports of how well the smears were being received by the coroner at the inquests—the means by which police sought to undermine Taylor’s report and achieve historical revisionism. I very much welcome the Independent Police Complaints Commission investigation into his role.

I want to raise one other issue. This House and the country were shocked by the extent to which police statements were interfered with and changed by South Yorkshire police. I believe that there may have been a similar issue regarding West Midlands police pressurising survivors who were witnesses into changing statements to support the South Yorkshire police account of events. The hon. Member for City of Chester (Stephen Mosley) has referred to West Midlands police pressurising police officers about their statements. I have seen one such example. I have heard from survivors who gave statements that they were never told whether they were passed to the Taylor inquiry or the coroner and that they have been denied copies when they have sought them. I am pleased that the IPCC has decided to investigate the role of West Midlands police in that regard.

The families want swift criminal investigations that do not overlap and are not sequential. I know that the Home Secretary understands that and wants to do her best in that respect. The families deserve to be properly resourced after 23 years of having to raise their own money, and I know that she is also thinking about that. The families want a point of contact in order to be able to be kept informed about how things are going. The Bishop of Liverpool may be a good person to fulfil that role, given that he continues to advise the right hon. Lady and is well trusted by the families.

Twenty-three years is far too long for anybody to wait for justice. I hope that, through the efforts that we can all make and the House’s unity on the need for something to be done to get to the bottom of this, and soon, we can make sure that justice does not take as long as it has taken to establish the truth.

19:36

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

I first pay tribute to the families of the 96 who have campaigned with dignity over the past 23 years for truth and justice. I also want to put on the record my admiration for Liverpool fans and football fans from around the world who have supported the campaign from day one, especially Everton fans who, despite being our major rivals, have stood by the Hillsborough families and supported them every inch of the way. I thank them for their efforts.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg), who has been the point of contact between the families and MPs since the campaign started. I also pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) and my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), who took on all comers to make sure that all the files were released and that the truth came out. I pay a special tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram), who has already said how he has been campaigning on this issue for many years both in the House and elsewhere, and to his predecessors and many other MPs, both past and present, who have campaigned on the issue for a very long time. I associate myself with the comments that have been made so far, especially by the Front-Bench representatives, who have been very positive. I am glad that Parliament is standing firm and together to make sure that there is truth and justice on this occasion.

I also want to take this opportunity to remember my old friend, David Hawley. He was a childhood friend and we met by chance after 20 years and arranged to have a drink. Unfortunately, I did not take that offer up quickly enough—I should have done so much quicker—and two weeks later he died at Hillsborough. I can only hope that his wife and family take some comfort from recent events and that they can at least get some peace.

Much has been said about who is to blame for the disaster. We know that many individuals and organisations are to blame, but we also know that the fans were not to blame. We need to do a number of things today. I hope that the Secretary of State will make it clear that the Government will pay the costs of all the coroners’ inquiries, past and present, for the families. The inquiries should be arranged as quickly as possible and, given this week’s exposé by The Independent on Sunday, we need a separate investigation into the role of the Crown Prosecution Service. We also need to see whether some of the legal files held by the Yorkshire police and their lawyers can be released, so that we can see exactly what went on between them.

I want to concentrate on why it took so long for the truth to come out. We know that as soon as the tragedy occurred the authorities decided to carry out a cover-up to protect themselves. They found willing partners in the national media. The cover-up included the police, other emergency services, the football authorities, Sheffield city council, Government Departments, the CPS and possibly others. They were all successful in the cover-up for many years. They decided to blame the fans, not themselves.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend said that Sheffield city council was involved in a cover-up. I hope that he will reconsider that, because I have seen no evidence that anyone at Sheffield city council partook in any cover-up.

[Mr Watts]

I am not making any accusations against members of Sheffield city council, but there was certainly no certificate. I do not know what role Sheffield city council officials played, but I would have thought that they would have had to make some comments. If that ground was not safe, the game should not have gone ahead.

As I have said, I do not want to make individual accusations against members of the emergency services. None of us knows how we would react when faced with the crisis with which they were faced. I do not know how I would have acted as an individual policeman or member of the ambulance service, so it would be wrong for us to pass judgment, given the situation that they found themselves in and the poor leadership that existed.

Many issues regarding the disaster need to be addressed. We need full, independent, transparent, open, fact-based investigations that are carried out professionally, for a change.

There are other issues that I would like to address. Why did the establishment and the media not expose the cover-up before now? I believe that in-built prejudices about the north-west, about football fans and, especially, about Liverpool led them to protect the establishment and to not worry too much about the 96 who found themselves in that position. It is clear to me that the London-based media and establishment believed that all football fans were potential hooligans, who deserved what they got. They believed the police, the emergency services, the establishment and the football authorities without question. They took the view that they were right and that football fans were wrong. I believe that all Liverpool people and fans were seen as trouble makers and, in some cases, thieves and thugs.

I suggest that anyone who does not believe that account reads the book, “Stick It Up Your Punter: The Rise and Fall of the Sun”, which goes through the conversations that went on in the media and parts of the establishment in some detail. After the tragedy, the London-based media and establishment were ready to pounce, led by The Sun and its editor, Kelvin MacKenzie. Once The Sun had ignored the facts, its editor could do what he wanted. He could not wait to put the knife in. Apparently, the first headline that MacKenzie came up with was, “You Scum”. That was later replaced with, “The Truth”. What does that tell us about editors and newspapers? They are happy to publish anything that fits their political and personal prejudices. Kelvin MacKenzie fits that stereotype perfectly.

Kelvin MacKenzie now claims that he was misled. However, he said before the National Heritage Committee that he did not stand by the claims that he made at the time. I hope that hon. Members remember that. He went away from the Select Committee saying, until a couple of weeks ago, that the false allegations were absolutely true and repeated them on a regular basis. He and The Sun obviously will not support my view of how the media dealt with this matter. They will point out that some northern journalists work for their newspapers. I am sure that that is true, but most of them have been away from their northern roots for too long and have become part of the London-centric establishment. I find it incredible that any human being could write such inaccurate, shabby and hurtful stories, or that they could continue to repeat them until only weeks ago.

The national media, including the BBC, are still employing this man. That says an awful lot about what is wrong with our media and the lack of standards that they maintain. I cannot believe that anyone could justify employing such a man. We need a media that will investigate the establishment and hold it to account; that will do the job that they are supposed to do, instead of dealing with tittle-tattle and sex stories; and that will protect the public from the establishment and cover-ups like the one that we have talked about today.

19:44

[Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)]

This debate is another milestone in the 23-year struggle to force the authorities to face up to the truth of why 96 people died, hundreds more were injured and thousands traumatised as a consequence of the Hillsborough disaster —a disaster that was wholly preventable.

The unique work of the Hillsborough independent panel has exposed the horror of what happened and has made it impossible for the authorities to continue their deception in hiding the truth. The painstaking work of the bishop and his team has transformed the public understanding of what happened for ever, and I commend them.

The vindictive lie that the victims were responsible for their own deaths is laid bare for all to see. It was always based on prejudice and lies, and the denial of culpability from those who were responsible. It was perpetuated by a long-standing cover-up. The Taylor report came close to exposing the truth, but nobody wanted to listen and the authorities joined forces to hide the truth from the public.

The question is where we go from here and what should happen now. It is essential that the dynamic is maintained. We must move with urgency from exposure of the truth to accountability, and due process is required. I welcome the statements of the Attorney-General, the Home Secretary and shadow Ministers. I warmly welcome the actions that the Attorney-General and the Home Secretary have begun. My comments will concentrate on what needs to be done now.

It is essential that the cases that may now be brought are fast-tracked. It has been suggested that there should be a special prosecutor to enable that to happen. I support that proposal. If there is a special prosecutor, sufficient resources must be made available to make swift action possible and there must be no financial cost to the victims’ families. The scope of the investigations and possible prosecutions should be wide and there should be no restrictions. The role of the CPS in the wake of the disaster and the subsequent inquiry by West Yorkshire police should be examined closely.

It is essential that there is parliamentary oversight of what happens from now on to ensure that the momentum is maintained and that any problems are identified and resolved. I was interested to hear the comments of the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee on how the Committee might follow this up. I have confidence that the Home Secretary will want to follow up what happens. It is also important that Parliament is kept informed of developments across the range of activities and actions, so that we know what progress is made and so that any problems are identified and resolved swiftly. There must be no more hiding of the truth, and the public and Parliament must not be prevented from knowing exactly what is happening.

I welcome the Attorney-General’s decision to apply to the High Court for new inquests. I also welcome the statements made by the Home Secretary on how that can be taken forward. The Attorney-General has stated clearly that he must listen to the representations of individual bereaved families on their cases and on what should happen. That must be done, because due process is an essential part of justice. However, action should be as swift as possible, and there must not be any more undue delays. The accidental death verdicts must be quashed, but how long will that process take? Resources must be made available to expedite it.

New inquests are absolutely essential, and they will confirm the absurdity of the damaging and always unjustified decision taken by the coroner to impose a 3.15 pm cut-off point. New inquests will unlock the door to exposing the horrendous inadequacy of the emergency services’ response to this major disaster, as well as the orchestrated cover-up that followed. After all, thanks to the work of the Hillsborough panel and the unprecedented disclosures made to it, we now know that more than 116 statements were altered to cover up culpability for what happened. If required, the law should be changed to enable the IPCC to question all those involved at the time and consider actions against organisations, as well as individuals, where necessary.

The campaigners have fought for 23 years to bring us to this point, but Parliament, too, has had a role in listening to the sustained and strong representations of the bereaved and the traumatised. Through the then Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), and my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), Parliament set up the Hillsborough inquiry, and the Government of the day allowed unprecedented access to documents so that the Hillsborough panel could consider all the information available, including information that had been hidden from public view and would not normally have been available for many years, if ever. Parliament must now ensure that we move swiftly from exposure of the truth to accountability for what happened. The 96 and their families, and all those who have suffered, deserve no less. I know that Parliament is determined to pursue the matter, and tonight’s debate must help to make that a reality.

19:52

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

I apologise to the House for the fact that I had to leave for a meeting earlier.

I welcome this opportunity to speak from the Back Benches on an issue of great importance to my constituents, and I join colleagues from all parties in paying tribute to the Hillsborough independent panel for its work. In particular, I pay tribute to the Bishop of Liverpool for the leadership that he has shown, and I welcome the Home Secretary’s announcement that she has appointed him as her adviser on the matter.

The Home Secretary described the report as “disturbing” and “painful”, and my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary spoke about the shocking failure to keep people safe. I join colleagues in thanking my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) and my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) for their work in government, which ensured that the long-overdue panel was set up and the process set in train. I thank my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram), who has shown remarkable leadership on the issue since his election to the House two and a half years ago, and my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg), who, as has been said, has acted as a point of liaison between Members of Parliament and the families.

When we had our debate a year ago I said that, unlike some colleagues, I did not have a connection with Liverpool in 1989. Listening to speeches in both that debate and today’s, I have been struck by what has been said by those who were there and those who lost friends or family members. I cannot say any of those things, but I can say that I speak on behalf of my constituents in West Derby, in the great city of Liverpool, many of whom were there on that day and some of whom lost friends, family members and loved ones.

After last year’s debate and the Prime Minister’s statement to the House last month, I was struck by the response of my constituents and people in Liverpool more widely and across Merseyside. There was real appreciation of the seriousness of both occasions. All too often we hear the relevance of Parliament and politics to people’s everyday lives called into question, but what stood out in the responses that I had from my constituents was that people saw a really relevant response by Parliament, the Government and the Opposition Front Benchers on both those occasions. That is an important point—the cross-party nature of the debate, and the Government’s decision to continue the work that started under the previous Government, are commendable. Today’s debate gives us an opportunity to say so.

The Home Secretary described the report’s references to the behaviour of South Yorkshire police as “stark”, which is absolutely right. The report is stark. The truth is now clear for all of us to see, and we pay tribute to those who have spent 23 years campaigning for it. The Prime Minister spoke in his statement last month about a double injustice that now needs to be corrected. I, too, commend the IPCC and the Director of Public Prosecutions for opening fresh investigations into the appalling failings that occurred on 15 April 1989, and both the Home Secretary and the shadow Home Secretary spoke at the beginning of today’s debate about the importance of a co-ordinated approach. I echo that.

As colleagues have, I welcome the Attorney-General’s announcement last week that he would apply to the High Court to have the inquest into the 96 who died at Hillsborough overturned. I hope the Attorney-General will move as quickly as possible to proceed with that action and that, as my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary said, he will have all the resources of government behind him so that the matter can be moved forward as quickly as possible.

I echo what Members have said throughout the debate about the importance of the families being fully engaged at every stage. I pay tribute to all the families and the various support groups and campaigning organisations—the Hillsborough Family Support Group, the Hillsborough Justice Campaign and Hope for Hillsborough—whose combined efforts over a 23-and-a-half-year period have got us to where we are today.

One of my constituents, Steven Kelly, whose brother Michael died at Hillsborough, plays an active role in the Hillsborough Justice Campaign doing his best to offer support and advice to people affected by the disaster. I spoke to him in advance of the debate about the issues that should be raised today. Like a lot of other people in Liverpool who were affected by Hillsborough in 1989, Steven trained to become a counsellor so that he could help others who were affected as they battled through their grief. Steven and the many others who want to help need assistance in their counselling work from paid professionals, and in the current climate of austerity it is more difficult for Liverpool council and the voluntary sector to provide that support. Steven has asked me to draw to the attention of the Government and the House the vital importance of support for people for whom old wounds have been reopened by the revelations in the Hillsborough report. Let us take that work forward on a cross-party basis, in the spirit of our debates.

The Home Secretary spoke about trust and the importance of integrity in the police. This morning, another constituent not connected with today’s debate visited me. He is a serving police officer in the Merseyside police force, and he spoke passionately as a Liverpudlian about what had happened in 1989, but he also spoke passionately, as a committed police officer, about how different the police of 2012 are from the police of 1989. He expressed a concern that I have heard others express, which is that trust in the police as a whole could be undermined by what has been revealed. Nobody in the House wants that.

Delivery on justice and accountability is, first and foremost, vital for the families and the memory of the 96, and all those who have campaigned for justice in Liverpool and beyond. Building on the Home Secretary’s earlier remarks, delivering on justice and accountability will ensure greater confidence in the police, not only in South Yorkshire, but in the rest of the country. This is an opportunity, and like other hon. Members who have spoken in the debate, I know this is an incredibly powerful and emotional issue in the city of Liverpool, and beyond. We have an enormous and long overdue responsibility to build on the truth that was revealed in the panel’s report, so that out of that truth can come justice and accountability. I commend the Home Secretary and the shadow Home Secretary on the way they have conducted this debate today. It sends out a powerful and unifying message to my constituents, and I hope we can ensure that we move forward efficiently, building on the brilliant work of the Bishop of Liverpool and the independent panel.

20:00

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

Let me begin by thanking the Bishop of Liverpool and each member of the Hillsborough independent panel. Their diligence and clarity have made clear what was hidden and unjust. The report has made the shocking and the painful bearable, because although it is horrendous to read, we now have the truth. We are all so very grateful to the panel.

Just over a year ago, here in this House, the Hillsborough families and the campaign for justice made history. Having fought a 23-year campaign to see their loved ones exonerated, when it seemed that full disclosure by the Government might be at risk, they did not give up. With thousands and thousands of voices, they told us that this was the issue that must be heard.

The House has often been seen as an exclusive place. A sign in the Public Gallery has words saying, in effect, “No clapping. No making a scene”. People are supposed to watch in silence and show no emotion. As I know, if someone already feels like an outsider, this House can be a difficult place to come to. But when the Hillsborough families needed Parliament’s help to get full disclosure, they broke down barriers that had been in place for centuries which said that only the Government or Her Majesty’s Opposition could call a debate here. Theirs was the first public campaign with enough signatures to reach the threshold needed for a Backbench Business debate. Tens of thousands of people signed the e-petition, and just one year later we have the truly open and frank report that we asked for then. We have the truth.

I also pay tribute to all those journalists—print and broadcast—who undertook the serious responsibility of helping the public understand what is contained in the report. To those journalists—they know who they are—who saw the pain suffered by those who lost a loved one but could not grieve properly, and who listened to those who were in Sheffield on that day and never got over it, I say this, “Your words helped to tell that story. Over the past few weeks, your words have made the awful contents of the panel’s report understood. Your words made sure that those who had been ignored were finally heard, and for that I will never stop thanking you.”

Now that we have the truth, I am hopeful that we are turning towards justice. I associate myself with the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger), and other hon. Members, on the process that we now want to see. Last week, the Attorney-General said that he is preparing his application to the High Court, and he stated:

“I want the application that is made to be as persuasive as it can be.”—[Official Report, 16 October 2012; Vol. 551, c. 9WS.]

I understand that he is now doing a significant amount of work to make that case, and I hope he will not mind me briefly drawing the attention of the House to two crucial points of evidence. The first concerns the 3.15 pm cut-off point in the inquest, and the second relates to prosecutions arising from the alteration of police statements.

Chapter 10 of the panel’s report covers the 3.15 pm cut-off point in great detail. In brief, the reason for that relates to information provided in chapter 5, which covers medical evidence. The coroner judged that all 96 people who died on 15 April 1989 died the same way, and stated that

“all who died had suffered fatal and irreversible injuries by that time.”

The report provides evidence that calls that claim into question, stating that

“some people who were partially asphyxiated survived, while others did not. It is highly likely that what happened to these individuals after 3.15 pm was significant in determining that outcome.”

That is a vital finding.

On altered statements, as the House heard on 8 May 1998, Lord Justice Stuart-Smith was aware of

“the fact that some of the original statements made by individual police officers had been edited by solicitors acting for South Yorkshire police.”—[Official Report, 8 May 1998; Vol. 311, c. 944.]

That leads to a question that the shadow Attorney-General, my hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), asked the Director of Public Prosecutions: faced with that information, why did the Crown Prosecution Service and the Director of Public Prosecutions act as they did?

Let me quote my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) from that debate in 1998:

“I condemn the decision of the Director of Public Prosecutions not to prosecute Duckenfield, the chief constable and others. I understand that the view of the DPP is that there is insufficient evidence. We do not know why that is the case because the DPP cannot publish the reason…That does not help me”.—[Official Report, 8 May 1998; Vol. 311, c. 963.]

All these years later, my hon. Friend must have his answer.

In addition to the key question of why we have not seen prosecutions earlier, and other vital points raised by colleagues, I want to alert the Government and the House to something that I take to be one of the most important lessons in this report. At the heart of the Hillsborough disaster were a couple of horrendous decisions taken by police officers in charge on the day. Against a background of disrespect for fans, and a cavalier attitude to safety, they made the wrong choices with horrific consequences. Despite the magnitude of the disaster, the response could have been very different. The agents of the state could have looked after the families and treated them with kindness—not blood alcohol tests and allegations, but proper respect for the deceased; not the so-termed “black propaganda unit”, but honesty and frankness; not the hesitation and, in the end, refusal to admit liability, but a proper, early apology.

It is clear from the report that people acting on behalf of the state responded to the primary horrific crisis by adding a second. Untold damage is done to the relationship between people and their Government when the actions of the state are, in effect, a second disaster. What was the impact of that secondary crisis? Unnecessary further distress felt by a great number of people over many years. There is also the unspoken impact on those who took their own lives following the disaster.

Mental illness can affect any of us and it should have no stigma attached to it. We must improve our care for people after extremely traumatic events, and we must not backslide on efforts to improve mental health care. I hope the Government will reflect on the lessons in the report, and look not only at what happened but at how our response to disasters can, and should, be better.

The state can at times be so concerned with its liabilities that it forgets about the relationship of trust and care that must exist between people and the Government. It forgets what power it has to condemn people to a life of disbelieving what they saw with their own eves, and feeling all the time like a perpetrator when in fact they were a victim. We know that there were people so wronged and so afflicted by distress that they were deeply affected. Added to the grief of losing 96 precious, special people, is the silent distress of those who blamed themselves.

I hope that all parts of Government and the state have changed. When a crisis occurs, the state should be there to protect the vulnerable and offer help in times of need. If there is no respect for the dignity of those affected or grieving, we risk a secondary crisis and, in the end, a collapse in trust. I say to all hon. Members that I hope we can shape our Government, our police forces and ourselves to be better than that now and in the future. Much has changed since 1989, but perhaps still not enough.

Let my closing words be about love. This issue is very difficult, and I have previously found it hard to get my words out, so I hope the House will forgive me if, in paying tribute to all those who have fought for justice, and to the families of the 96, I borrow the words of another McGovern. Jimmy McGovern, the talented playwright, spoke at the Hillsborough memorial service at Anfield in 2011. He told us what the campaign for justice had been all about. He told the families of the 96 what they had shown. Their campaign is, as he said,

“A wonderful demonstration of enduring love.”

Justice for the 96.

20:10

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary and several hon. Members have paid tribute to the determination and dignity with which the families and survivors have pursued their cause over so many years. I add my voice to theirs.

There are two good reasons why the families pursued their cause—there are many more, but I shall isolate two. First, they did so because had those in positions of responsibility on that day—not only the police—carried out their duties properly, they could have helped to avoid the disaster; and, secondly, because of the cruel and baseless allegation that the fans themselves were responsible for what happened. Often, because it was not always easy to articulate what justice would amount to, too many were either unable, or in some cases unwilling, to comprehend the voice of the families.

Before the independent panel got to work, there were a lot of strands to the story of what happened. Among other things, we knew—because of the Taylor report—that the principal reason for what happened was the failure of South Yorkshire police to manage the event properly. We also knew—I saw this first hand—that the so-called mini-inquests were a cruel travesty that seemed interested only in undermining the characters of the 96 people who died. Moreover, that was compounded by the 3.15 pm cut-off point decision, which effectively served to insulate the authorities from any responsibility for anything that happened after that time. We also knew that parts of the media, and most shamefully The Sun newspaper, had grotesquely misrepresented and twisted events in such a way as to paint those who lost their lives and the survivors as partly the architects of their own misfortune. The survivors were also painted as bearing the responsibility for those who so tragically lost their lives. I recently watched the Jimmy McGovern drama to which my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) referred in her emotional speech. It powerfully illustrated how, on top of the trauma of being present and surviving, some felt that the finger of suspicion, despite everything, including the Taylor inquiry, was still being pointed in their direction. That ghost had not been firmly been exorcised.

What the independent panel managed to achieve—by so doing, it did a great service to truth—was to weave all those strands together into a coherent and damning narrative. In my view, the report shows convincingly how the strands combine to form a distinct and discernible pattern. Two unambiguous conclusions among others can now be accepted with absolute confidence by all fair-minded people. First, there is no foundation whatever to the victims-as-cause theory that, we now know, was scandalously orchestrated by South Yorkshire police to such grotesque effect. I am not normally a conspiracy theorist, but in this case there clearly was a conspiracy. I know from comments that constituents and others have made to me that the conspiracy shakes the very foundations of their belief in institutions that they have always respected.

As somebody recently pointed out to me, had there been a fire at a theatre or classical music concert, nobody would ever have tried to blame those attending for having had a gin and tonic or glass of wine during the interval. The fact that so many people were at least tacitly prepared to accept or even half accept that version of events speaks to a more general and regrettable aspect of our society: the implicit prejudice many have towards football fans and working-class culture.

Secondly, the report’s conclusions call into question the means available to investigate major disasters. As we have heard, the Taylor inquiry got it right, but provided no real pointer as to how those responsible could be held to account. Because of the prejudiced assumption on which the inquest was based, the inquest system was deeply flawed to the extent that it was both grossly offensive and cruelly ineffective. As the Prime Minister has said, the approach taken by the independent panel—I join others in praising the work of the Bishop of Liverpool and the panel—might serve as a model for the future, should that ever sadly prove to be necessary.

Finally, the question of what happens next must be addressed. As many have said, we know the truth, but what about securing justice and accountability? As I have said previously, the key action will be to hold fresh inquests. I have described on previous occasions what was wrong with the so-called mini-inquests, and I will not repeat what has already been said, but I welcome the Attorney-General’s statement of last week. I hope the courts take note of the strength of feeling and of the strength of evidence in favour of holding fresh inquests.

A different outcome could unlock the door for other action against bodies and individuals who either failed to carry out their responsibilities or tried to cover up what happened before, during and following that fatal football fixture. The recent Independent Police Complaints Commission statement is, in addition, a welcome step in that direction, as is what the Home Secretary has said today. I know she will listen and I hope she takes note of the many points that have been made on resources, keeping the House informed and, most importantly of all, keeping the families abreast of what is happening.

One small point that has not so far been raised with the Home Secretary is this: I hope that anybody who claims they are too ill to give evidence will be rigorously tested—some will make such a claim, and some serving police officers of the time are getting on. I hope it will not be taken as read if they get a doctor’s note saying they are too ill to give evidence. That needs to be independently tested, because it is all too easy in such cases—it is a cop out. I hope she takes that point on board.

Once or twice in each generation, we have a debt of honour placed on us. What happened at Hillsborough is a stain on all of us. I hope we can now redeem that debt of honour.

20:18

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

I begin my short contribution by acknowledging the work of the panel, and in particularly the Bishop of Liverpool, as all hon. Members have done, and I pay tribute to the families. On Friday, I spoke to the BBC about a constituent who lost her boy on the island of Kos 21 years ago. I said that it is impossible to understand what it is like to lose a child. All hon. Members must acknowledge that if they have not lost a loved one or a child in tragic circumstances, it is impossible to understand it, but we can understand and be amazed by the strength and courage of the families over the past 23 years, and acknowledge that, without their campaign, we would not be where we are today. The House has acknowledged that fully.

I should refer first to the culture that informed the management of football in 1989. It was, of course, a culture that encouraged the characterisation of football fans as heavy-drinking hooligans. My right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) pointed out, rightly, that having a drink before or at a football match does not make someone a hooligan or mean that they have done anything wrong. The stereotype was far from being true. The vast majority of fans, even if they do have a drink, are genuine fans and law-abiding citizens. Even then, many fans going to football matches were part of families—dads taking sons, dads taking daughters, mums and dads taking their children. That is something that we should always remember.

Nevertheless, the stereotype of the hooligan was very powerful, and it underpinned an approach by the authorities that led to fans being treated as something less than human. It had three tragic consequences at Hillsborough. One was the erection of the barriers, way before 1989, to prevent fans from going on to the pitch. The second was the crush itself, which was thought at first by the police to be the result of hooliganism. When the crush occurred, the police thought that it was hooligans kicking off. The final consequence was the vilification of fans by South Yorkshire police, the direct consequence of an all too easy assumption that any trouble at a football match is down to the behaviour of the fans.

Justice has to be delivered, and I welcome the referrals to the IPCC and the involvement of Keir Starmer in the ongoing investigations. As my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary said earlier, the investigation is in two parts. We have the events leading up to the disaster and the cover-up in what happened afterwards. We have to have a thorough investigation and, if there is clear evidence of criminal wrongdoing, charges have to be laid and those accused should answer those charges in court.

The cover-up was especially shocking because it was so deliberate and led to the vilification of the fans for all these years. The investigation of South Yorkshire police and the cover-up has to take place in the context—there is no point in avoiding it—of the screening tonight of a programme about a cover-up and the changing of statements about an earlier event in south Yorkshire. It is clear that there was a culture, and we need to ensure that there is a thorough and rigorous investigation of that culture in relation to both Hillsborough and any other aspect of policing in the 1980s, so that we can defend the integrity and standards of British policing in the long term. If we are to continue to have policing by consent, we have to get to the bottom of what was happening to policing in the 1980s. I suspect that it was not just a problem in the South Yorkshire police and that the problem went beyond that force—we already know that Hillsborough also involved the West Midlands force.

I have been clear about the need for rigorous criminal inquiries with no holds barred in getting to the bottom of what went wrong, but it is also important to recognise that the South Yorkshire force is very different now. It has moved forward. It is not perfect by any means—far from it, as recent events have shown—but it is important to remember that it has made progress under two former chief constables, Richard Wells and Med Hughes, and we now have David Crompton. It was Med Hughes who, readily and without question, agreed to release the South Yorkshire police archives for the purposes of the panel’s work. We need to acknowledge that, and we also need to remember that football policing in Sheffield has improved radically in recent years. Police officers in charge of policing at Hillsborough and at Bramall Lane have to be accredited and trained, and anyone taking command at Hillsborough has to have significant experience, especially when taking charge of a big match such as a local derby. I need to say that for the sake not just of South Yorkshire police, but for police morale across the country, as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) said earlier. If the public are to continue to have confidence in the ability of the South Yorkshire police force to protect our streets, we have to say now, publicly, that it is different from the force that was functioning in 1989.

Equally, Sheffield Wednesday football club is a different club. Bert McGee went a long time ago. It has a different structure now. In fact, the previous club was dissolved and we have a new club with new personnel and new people in charge. The chairman and those new people did not hesitate to release their documentation to the panel so that it could be as thorough as possible in reaching its conclusions. Sheffield Wednesday is not perfect in how it functions—no club is—but progress has been made, and that should be put on the record in the context of this debate.

We have to address the injustices of the past, but we must also recognise progress. More than anything else, we need lessons relating to accountability and transparency arising from Hillsborough to be learnt and applied. I therefore welcome the commitment from the Home Secretary to bring forward proposals in the new year, and I look forward to being able to examine them. I welcome the consensus that appears to be growing on this issue across the House. My right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary made it clear that the House will work collaboratively to ensure that we learn the lessons and move forward on the key fundamental issue of police accountability and transparency. There is no other guarantee for public confidence in policing other than the ability to see what is going on within the police, and the knowledge that they are doing their job properly and with integrity. Transparency is the only means by which we can properly guarantee that that is the case.

More than anything else, I look forward to moving on with justice delivered and with our progress towards the highest ethical standards in policing hastened by what we have learned from Hillsborough. I look forward to that in the name of all those who died so needlessly that day, in the name of a sport that is enjoyed by millions but which needs to be enjoyed safely, and in the name of the absolute need for policing that we know we can trust.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Seven Members still wish to participate in this debate, and we have an hour before the winding-up speeches will start. I am therefore changing the time limit for speeches in the hope that all of those Members will be able to speak. The new limit will be eight minutes.

20:28

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I am pleased, Madam Deputy Speaker, to have eight minutes.

I brought together the families in Birkenhead most affected by Hillsborough, and they asked me to relay certain messages. This I willingly do. They will have been following this debate and, therefore, will know that many of their questions have already been put, and they will be anxiously awaiting the Health Secretary’s reply. My guess is that they will also have noticed how generous we have been in throwing a spotlight on other organisations and their responsibilities for the horrors that we have described and which were described in the independent report. First of all, then, those families wish me to record their thanks for the work that the bishop and the panel did in breaking this open.

As we have shone the searchlight on other organisations, heroes have emerged. Those organisations are not totally without something to be said for them. We should also shine a light on Parliament. I am surrounded by a number of heroes who, during those long 23 years, did not lose faith but continued to raise the issue. When we are liberally condemning other public and private organisations, however, I must add that we do not come out smelling of roses ourselves. Some of those in Birkenhead most affected by Hillsborough are dead. They did not live to see the results of the independent inquiry. All of them are 23 years older and many are now quite elderly. So time is of the essence for them.

Before I pursue that last point, I wish to put three questions not so far raised specifically in this debate. First, in a previous debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) said that Sheffield was not a suitable place to hold the inquest. The families might well say the same. They are mindful, however, that although two thirds of the families affected are in Merseyside, there are many in Scotland and the south, and, in an extraordinary act of generosity, they have asked me to say that Liverpool might not be the most ideal place to hold the inquest, because a minority of other families will wish to come from other parts of the country. They ask that their needs are also borne in mind.

Secondly, given the tale of horrors we have heard from the independent inquiry and in our debates, the families want to know who will run the inquest. A large number of people set in authority over us have not done terribly well, so why should the families trust the next person? The Home Secretary partly answered my third question when she said that she would give us some idea of the scope of the next stage of the inquiry. As their Member of Parliament, I have listened to this debate and have the advantage of representing what I guess is their opinion so far. We have heard many phrases. As one family member said, truth has at last come home, but, as the Home Secretary said, that must be followed by justice and accountability. To be honest, though, I do not know what the next steps will be. We know that there has been an application to set the inquests apart, but I do not know how we will ensure that truth is followed by justice, and I am not sure what steps will be taken to ensure that those people who should be held accountable are held accountable.

I make this plea: it is a question of urgency. People have waited 23 years. People have died waiting for this report and debate, and time is of the essence for many family members still alive. Although they are still alive, part of them died with those events 23 years ago, and they wish to see truth followed by justice, not in any vengeful sense but because they believe it is important. They believe that those who were in authority should stand accountable.

If I may say so, however, the issue for Parliament extends even beyond Hillsborough. The latter has thrown up a terrible divide in this country between those who are done to and those who do the doing. There is a huge crisis of confidence in the people set in authority over us. Hillsborough could go some way to healing a divide that, if I may say so, is far bigger even than that faced by those who suffered the terrible horrors and blight of Hillsborough. Let us think of Hillsborough as an X-ray, as the barium meal going through the system. It shows up some terrible weakness in our country, where many people feel that they are done to, where it is terribly difficult for them to be heard, where it is nigh on impossible for justice to follow through when truth is established and where those who have taken money to be accountable do not accept that accountability.

I hope that when the Secretary of State for Health sums up he will give my constituents who will be following this debate some clarity on those two key issues. Now that we have truth, what is the road map to justice and how do we get accountability? The plea I make, through him to the Home Secretary, is this. Tomorrow she will have another crisis, and the day after she will have another. It is crucial that there should be somebody who is now accountable for ensuring that the truth that has been established in the independent inquiry is followed by justice and accountability. I do not doubt for a moment the Home Secretary’s good will or her wish to see that through herself; I think it will be very difficult for her to do so. That task has to be delegated. That person needs to be named and we need to support them in taking truth, which has at last come home, to the stage of justice and, even more importantly, accountability.

20:34

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

In paying tribute to the families for their campaign, I want to thank them for something additional: empowering people across the country. One of the things we will find in future months and years is that a lot of people now feel empowered to take on the establishment, be it the state or whoever else. That is a change. I certainly do not intend to use my time to go through all the major issues that people have been bringing to me, but Hillsborough and the campaign of the families has been cited as the reason for doing so—to quote one person: “I wish I’d had the courage to speak out before.” We are going to see more people speaking out about more things. That is part of the legacy that we will see, because the campaign has had such an effect.

I will list one of those issues, however, because the revelations today—about an hour ago on the BBC—of what happened at Orgreave would without question not have come out without the Hillsborough campaign in the last year. The two are directly linked, because what happened at Orgreave was a comparable cover-up of statements made by the police. One of the police constables—now retired—has been prepared to speak out, spelling out exactly what happened and who did what. I salute his courage in doing so, but the culture that came out of what happened in the aftermath of Orgreave—done by the same police force and the same chief constable, albeit in co-operation with other police forces as well—was a prelude to what happened in the cover-up over Hillsborough just five years later. We need to learn the lessons from that.

One of those lessons is about the need for people to feel confident in speaking out from the inside about what is going on. I hope that everyone has read or will read the police statements, which are easily accessible and now in the public domain. I think I am the only MP in this debate speaking from Nottinghamshire. I have a lot of Nottingham Forest supporters in my constituency, and as I said in the last debate, it could quite easily, by fluke or coincidence, have been Nottingham Forest supporters at the other end.

There are two statements that I would like to pick out—I will quote from them—because they are quite extraordinary. It is not just the Liverpool fans who were reviled, but the Nottingham Forest fans. The lie and the myth in the police statement about Liverpool fans urinating was in fact a lie about Nottingham Forest fans urinating down from the stands on to other Nottingham Forest fans. Strangely, it was never reported anywhere in Nottinghamshire and there were no complaints about it. It is a lie—not a statement altered, but a lie.

Last night I read another statement by an officer, who was promoted immediately afterwards, as many were, who claimed—the timing would have been approximately around 3.40 pm—that he saw 100 Liverpool fans charge across the pitch towards the Kop. He said that he then saw fights in all the stands. That is besmirching not only the Liverpool fans but the Nottingham Forest fans. There were no such fights in the stands.

My constituent Val Yates was on the pitch trying to save lives at the time. I asked her last night what I should say today. Her answer contained some language that was not quite parliamentary, so I will cut to the chase. She told me to say thank you to the Notts Forest fans, because they were coming on to the pitch and trying to save the lives of the dying. That is what was going on, yet that police constable stated that he saw something else happening at the time. This is part of what needs to be prosecuted further: deliberate, calculated, obscene lies.

Val also told me to “Go for ’em”. Well, I will go for one that has not yet been named: Hammond Suddards solicitors. Oh, of course, apparently we cannot attack solicitors, as they are representing their clients, but looking at the report, it is clear that they were instigators in changing the statements and are probably the people who rewrote the statements. Hammond Suddards, the great big firm of solicitors in Yorkshire, needs to go in front of the Law Society to be fully investigated, and held to account for what it did in perpetrating these lies.

I do not have time to go into the current state of disaster planning, but the Government need to ask whether such an occurrence could happen again. I would like them to look precisely at the rights of families in disasters, and at whether the Government are making the right decisions to ensure that the rights of families are being properly looked after and that they will be in future, if, heaven help us, another disaster occurs. That is a fundamental lesson to be learned from this.

The Government also need to look at the current configuration of emergency planning. Let me quote from a disaster planning meeting that was held in South Yorkshire two weeks ago:

“The public will be horrified, but they won’t find out”.

That comment related to the fact that ambulance capacity in the county is currently running at 98% to 99%. That means that, in the event of another Hillsborough, ambulances would have to be taken off emergency calls to go to it. They cannot rely on the north midlands for help, because the reconfiguration of services last week cut the number of ambulances available there. This is a fundamental issue. Disaster planning is not being incorporated into changes in the ambulance services. Indeed, from what I can see, the services have not even been consulted.

Let me turn to football safety certificates. Everyone thinks that stadiums are safe now, but they are not. A mathematical model, based on perfect evacuation using perfect communication, is used to determine the issue of a safety certificate. That needs to be looked at, as does stewarding. At the moment, the stewarding situation is a huge mish-mash from one ground to another. Finally—Patnick, the MP who lied. Who told him, and will he have the courage to say who told him to spread his lies that week about Hillsborough?

20:43

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

I am greatly humbled and privileged to participate in this debate tonight. I stand firmly behind the families and friends of the 96 Hillsborough victims. Their search for justice, transparency and the truth should be an example to us all.

Like many other people, I was delighted to hear the recent statements from the Prime Minister and, last week, from the Attorney-General. Many of the comments in the reports raise a number of important questions. The Prime Minister said many things of which other people—the vast majority of people, including the families of those who died and their friends, along with politicians of all parties—were unaware. That concerns me greatly, as I have had constituents saying to me, “If you knew that, why did you not do anything about it?” We need to learn a whole range of lessons.

The nation as a whole was stunned to hear some of the revelations—and rightly so. We were stunned that 164 witness statements on an issue as serious as what happened at Hillsborough were tampered with by the police. Even more appalling is the fact that if people had done their jobs properly within the proper time limits, 41 and perhaps as many as 58 people might have survived the Hillsborough disaster.

The truth is that this tragedy, this disaster could and should have been wholly avoided. My hon. Friends the Members for Halton (Derek Twigg) and for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) mentioned previous examples of problems at Hillsborough. We heard of semi-finals where it was traditional that thousands, perhaps even 50,000, people would turn up to watch a game at Hillsborough. The personal experience at Hillsborough I want to mention arose when Sheffield Wednesday played Newcastle United in a league game. We turned up as normal, but we could not get into the ground. And what happened? The gates were opened, we were hurled into Hillsborough like cattle and forced through the tunnel at the Leppings Lane end. People were climbing the perimeter fences to get over and climbing up to the upper stand.

People panicked, yet there was no operational support from the police. I was pushed back against the wall—and I am a fairly big sort of guy—only to feel a policeman’s forearm across my windpipe. I was told to stop pushing, but people could not move. This was a league game at Sheffield Wednesday. I was evicted from the stadium. Supporters were terrified: there was utter chaos and no control. The police approach at that time was to treat supporters like animals. There was no regard whatever for the safety or health of anyone. Frankly, it was appalling.

Such incidents must have been documented. We should have learned from incidents like this. No one has ever mentioned to me this league game with Newcastle, but I was there. Why was this not looked at? Why, for goodness’ sake, was Sheffield Wednesday granted a safety certificate? It beggars belief. I do not want to criticise anyone, as I am not sure what the right body to grant such a certificate was, but my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) mentioned a number of agencies. They were collectively culpable, in my view.

Let me focus now on the actions—or perhaps the inactions—of the South Yorkshire police. They have been there before. The current chief constable admits that there was a “Life on Mars” culture whereby police constables could do as they wished. This was not a “Life on Mars” culture; this was culture in Sheffield and culture in Liverpool—in the UK in 1989. Like millions of others, I was utterly bewildered to hear that 164 witness statements had been altered. This was the UK; this was Great Britain, not a flash cop series from across the Atlantic.

In the time that I have got left, I want to make some stark comparisons regarding police actions in South Yorkshire during the 1980s. I shall refer simply to the miners’ strike. This was not the first time the police had been involved in a corrupt cover-up. As they say in the force, “They have got previous.” My hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) mentioned the battle of Orgreave. On that occasion, the BBC reversed what had actually happened in the attack involving the miners and the South Yorkshire police. In 1985, 93 miners went to Sheffield crown court, but the trial collapsed 16 weeks later because it had become clear that the police evidence was unreliable. Since then, as with Hillsborough, hundreds of statements have been examined, and there have been dozens of examples of the use of exactly the same phrases. As with Hillsborough, police officers were instructed to describe scenes that they had not seen or even experienced, and as with Hillsborough officers readily admitted that statements had been narrated to them.

The common denominator is South Yorkshire police and cover-ups. It appears that the policing of the 1980s needs close scrutiny, although in many senses it is too late for the 96. Every person involved in the cover-up deserves the full wrath of the law. I cannot even imagine the pain, suffering and despair experienced by the families. We expect our police to be honest, regardless of rank, and we expect them to be people on whom we can rely. The families want a cohesive, co-ordinated investigation. There cannot continue to be one lengthy investigation after another, and it is important for such investigations to be resourced properly.

Let me say, as a miner and a former president of the National Union of Mineworkers, that my ultimate aim is to call for a full inquiry into the actions of the South Yorkshire police during the miners’ strike. However, today is for the victims of Hillsborough, and justice for the 96.

20:51

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

When thinking about the debate, I tried to work out what we were really trying to achieve. Are we part of the process of investigation? I do not think that we are. Are we part of the process of scrutiny? Of course: that is a job that we do every day in the House. Are we part of the process of interrogation? Obviously we should be part of that as well, on a regular basis. Officially, however, as a result of the mechanisms of the House, we are here to confirm

“That this House has considered the matter of the Hillsborough Independent Panel Report.”

I am not criticising the Government, because I know that that is how we conduct our business here, but I think that we should really be discussing a motion along these lines: “That this House will do everything in its power to deliver justice to those who died, those who survived and all their families; and that, in doing so, we will set up a series of rigorous, transparent processes to ensure that that happens, that sufficient resources—of all kinds—are put in place to facilitate the process, that we in this House are constantly updated on progress, and that we can reconvene, at short notice, if we think that we are falling behind on these commitments.” I hope that every Member in the House can agree with those words, and I hope that they will give some succour to those who are listening to the debate, because that is the job that we have taken on tonight.

We have heard a lot about the truth leading to justice. I am happy that we have arrived at some of the truth about the “what”—about what happened—but what about the next stage? We have to work out the “why” and the “who”: in particular, we must identify the guilty. We do need justice, but what are the definitions of “justice”? One is

“Conformity to truth, fact, or sound reason”.

Another is

“The upholding of what is just, especially fair treatment and due reward in accordance with honour, standards or law.”

What we have heard over the past 23 years is a negation of justice.

I agree with much of what was said by my hon. Friends the Members for Bassetlaw (John Mann) and for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) about the role of the police, and that of the South Yorkshire police in particular. I was at Orgreave in June 1984, and I was one of those who believed that on that day the police had decided to get their retaliation in first. I was not surprised by that, and I was also not surprised to observe, when I went to matches in the 1970s and 1980s, that the police adopted the same attitude in the football stadium. The truth was that the police decided that because some people, either on a picket line or at a football game, might decide to behave like animals, the best thing to do was to treat everybody as if they were animals. We need to see what happened at that time through that prism. It was not a surprise that Hillsborough happened, because we expected to be treated in the way that I have described and, even more worryingly, we accepted that we would be treated in that way. We cannot lay the blame entirely on the police, however. We need to clarify the role of Sheffield city council, too. I take on board what Sheffield Members have said about the council having done the right things, but the report says the safety advisory committee carried out inadequate and poorly recorded inspections. I cannot think of another scenario in which an organisation that is refused a safety certificate just goes ahead with business as normal; that is unheard of.

In the report, Sheffield Wednesday football club is accused of having limiting costs as its primary concern, while the police’s primary concern was dealing with public disorder. Their primary concerns were not the safety of the men and women in the ground, but keeping costs down and preventing disorder.

The Football Association has a lot to answer for, too. Why did it decide to continue using that ground for such matches? I am also surprised and dismayed by the role of the ambulance service, which I have worked with for many years. It has a lot to answer for as well.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw was right to say that the solicitors’ actions need to be scrutinised. They went to the police and said to them, “You need to go back to your officers and get them to ‘reconsider and qualify their statements.’” They were clearly part and parcel of changing the record of ordinary policemen who had been on duty that day.

What are we in Parliament going to do? I was pleased to hear the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), say that the Committee will set up a process whereby it can be continually updated by the people on the ground. Members of Parliament have got to keep on the case, too. We have to keep asking parliamentary questions and urgent questions if we have concerns, and we need to keep asking for statements.

We Back Benchers should consider setting up an all-party group, because such groups can ask people to come and tell us what is going on, and tell us whether things are moving in the right direction. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) said, we should recognise the role played by the Backbench Business Committee in getting us to where we are today, too. We Back Benchers must take on this responsibility now as well. We should be able to raise matters of concern regularly, and to tackle any obstacles that get in the way of the good people of Liverpool achieving justice.

We must ensure there is no chance for us in this House to say, “Nowt to do with me, guv.” We are now the state; whether we like it or not, we inherit the shame of 1989. We are the establishment, so it falls to us to redeem this House for the total failure of the past. It is up to us to act properly and get a quarter of a century of wrongdoing put right. No one should get away with what happened in 1989, including politicians in this House, regardless of whether they are retired, have moved on to another place or are still Members of the Commons. If any Members of this House have failed in their duty, they should stand up and account for what they did. We must make sure we hold their feet to the fire, so that truth and justice can be achieved.

In many ways, what happened was a failure of the state. It was state-sponsored failure, because most of the bodies responsible for what took place on that day were agents of the state—they were public servants, whom we look to to do the job of taking care of the people we are proud to represent. We must make sure everyone involved in what happened is called to face up to their failings.

When matters such as Hillsborough arise, one of the things that annoys me most is people telling me, “It’s time to move on.” What they really mean is, “You need to forget the debate you’ve just had; you need to bury this issue and let it lie.” I thank God that the great people of Liverpool have blown that kidology mentality out of the water. What we should be doing is making progress, and working with the people who have suffered, so we do our bit to make sure justice is not just a word, but is a fact.

20:59

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

I apologise to the House and to hon. Members for being late, but I was chairing a Select Committee and I did let Mr Speaker know.

It is important that we get to the truth—the families have waited for far too long. I support the calls for a new inquest; clearly, the 3.15 pm cut-off was arbitrary and wrong. I do not believe that that inquest should take place in Sheffield, and I think that the Government ought to fund the cost of it. I support the further investigations by the Independent Police Complaints Commission and the Director of Public Prosecutions. I think what they will do is concentrate on the key issues: the failure of police control and monitoring on the day, which is what Lord Justice Taylor found many years ago; the subsequent evidence coming out of the panel that there was an attempt at a cover-up, including changes to statements; and whether, as a result of those issues, criminal prosecutions or charges of misconduct should follow.

I support the comment of my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) that although the police actions on the day were at the heart of this problem, the South Yorkshire police force is now a different organisation with a different culture. It is important that, as local Members, we support it in trying to maintain the trust and confidence of local people in its day-to-day policing activities. As she mentioned, Sheffield Wednesday football club is also a new organisation with new ownership.

I agree with the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) that there were failings, and he rightly identifies them and the panel draws people’s attention to them. However, Lord Justice Taylor also dealt with the issue of breakdown between police and club, and paragraph 166 of the interim report stated:

“What is clear, however, is that de facto the police at Hillsborough had accepted responsibility for control of the pens at the Leppings Lane end.”

That is the key issue—the control and responsibility were with the police and they failed absolutely on the day.

In terms of Sheffield city council, I am pleased that the panel found absolutely no new evidence or information that had not been available to Lord Justice Taylor. As leader of the council at the time, I made it clear to all its officers that they were expected to co-operate thoroughly with Taylor’s investigations and inquiries, and to provide all evidence and information—clearly, they did that. Again, as has been identified, including by Taylor, there were failures by the advisory panel and as a result of the non-issuing of a safety certificate. I shall discuss that in a moment.

We must place all this in the context of what football was like at the time. As a football fan, I went to every away ground. I had been to all 92 clubs—to every ground in the country—at one point. My hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) said that he had been at an incident at Sheffield Wednesday where there had been crushing and nobody seemed to act. I went to many grounds where there was crushing and problems, and so did other football fans. That was accepted as commonplace at the time; it was accepted that that was what happened at football matches. Of course it is wrong that that should have been the case, but that is what happened. Lord Justice Taylor said:

“there have been many other occasions when overcrowding has led, at various grounds round the country, to a genuine apprehension of impending disaster through crushing, averted only by good fortune… So, although the operational errors on 15 April were special to one ground and one day, the lack of precautions against overcrowding was not unique. I do not believe that sufficient safety measures were being applied at all other grounds.”

This was a problem of football generally.

Of course I am devastated that the disaster happened at my football club, but I do not believe it was down to a number of individuals believing the ground to be unsafe and carrying on regardless. The horrible truth is that Hillsborough was generally regarded as a safe ground, which was why it was selected, although it proved not to have been so in the event. Of course there should have been a safety certificate—there is no excuse for the failure to provide it—but the evidence was that one was being prepared, which would actually have justified the arrangements of the ground as they were.

One of the fundamental problems that Taylor’s report identified was that although the Safety of Sports Grounds Act 1975 and the green guide, which clubs, local authorities and the police were meant to follow, required an overall capacity for a ground, there was no mandatory requirement for individual parts of the ground to have a special capacity limit—that simply was not a requirement. Furthermore, even if there was a capacity for individual parts of the ground, there was no requirement—this was a crucial problem at Hillsborough—to have mechanisms, electronic or otherwise, to count people into each individual pen. I went to football grounds all around the country and I found that, generally speaking, people went through a turnstile at one end of the ground and there was no counting mechanism for any individual part of that end.

[Steve Rotheram]

My hon. Friend points out that many grounds were unsafe, but we are talking specifically about the Hillsborough independent panel’s report. Paragraph 1.54 on page 32 talks about

“serious crushing at the FA Cup Semi-Final between Tottenham Hotspur and Wolverhampton Wanderers”

in the semi-final in 1981. If lessons had been learned by the authorities at that time, there would not have been a Hillsborough disaster in 1989.

[Mr Betts]

The problem was that the crushing at that time was regarded as due to the lateral movement of the crowds at the Leppings Lane end, so lateral barriers were put in place in response to that incident. They created the pens that caused the problem and that is the issue. The lateral barriers were a safety measure that proved to be a failure.

Lord Justice Taylor stated—this confirms what the panel said—that the lack of counting mechanisms for individual parts of the Leppings Lane end meant that the responsibility rested with the police to see whether the pens were overfilling. The problem was that on the occasion of the Hillsborough disaster the police did not see the pens overfilling and opened the gates, which led to more people going into the central pen. They then did not respond to the further overcrowding. That was what Lord Justice Taylor found and I do not think any different evidence was given to the panel. There was a complete failure of the system. Of course there should have been counting mechanisms, but grounds across the country did not have them at that time. It was the police’s responsibility to monitor the crowd and take precautionary action and they failed on that occasion.

Lord Justice Taylor’s interim report was comprehensive. He said that it was the police’s responsibility to control and monitor the crowd. They failed in that respect, as he identifies in chapter 10. In chapter 17, he discusses the choice of Hillsborough as a ground and states:

“However, it was not suggested that the choice of venue was causative of this disaster. The only basis on which that could be said would be that, because of its layout, the Leppings Lane end was incapable of being successfully policed for this semi-final. I do not believe that to be so.”

He is saying that despite all the failings—those of the council, of the club and of others—the key issue was that the ground could have been operated safely on that day but for a failure of police control. Along with the issues considered by the panel, that brings us back to the key questions: why have people not been held accountable for those failings, why was there an attempt at a cover-up afterwards and how will we deal with the issues to ensure justice for the families? They are the key points and if we focus on them and on the responsibilities and actions, we will, I hope, get to the truth.

The question of timing is important and I hope that we can make arrangements so that all the necessary evidence can be taken account of properly and quickly. Twenty-three years is an awfully long time, so we ought to ensure that the final conclusions come as quickly as possible.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Unusually, Members of Parliament have come in under time, so I am in the very happy position of being able to tell the last two Back-Bench speakers that they will now have 10 minutes each in reward for their patience. Mr Esterson, you will have 10 minutes and will be followed by Mr Blomfield, who will also have 10 minutes. We will then start the wind-ups.

21:04

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

You are most kind, as always, Madam Deputy Speaker.

The families and their supporters deserve huge credit for how they have stuck to their guns and for the dignity, restraint and perseverance with which they have continued their fight in the face of a catalogue of smears from the press and cover-ups by the establishment. Ninety-six people went to watch a football match and died, but their families have been treated as if their loved ones were criminals. That has now stopped, thankfully, and the Government have started the process of setting the record straight.

Fifteen-year-old Kevin Williams, 17-year-old Steven Robinson, 18-year-old Gary Jones and 18-year-old Christopher Devonside were among the 18 victims from the borough of Sefton. Their families have told me that they want new inquests and that they want those responsible to be prosecuted. Christopher’s father, Barry, was at the match and saw what happened to the victims as he sat in the stand while his son was in the Leppings Lane end with a friend. Barry was given the run-around on the day by the police. We now have confirmation that this was while the cover-up was starting and senior police officers were desperately trying to agree a story blaming the victims for their own deaths. Barry also attended the inquests. He told me what happened when the results were announced. In front of Barry and other family members, the police celebrated the accidental death verdict. In his words, “Crates of wine and beer were brought into an adjacent room where about 20 senior police officers toasted their success with the coroner.” As he said to me, “How’s that for impartiality?”

The way that the inquests were carried out, the way that the evidence was ignored, the way that witnesses were intimidated and the way that police evidence was altered—all this showed that a cover-up was being carried out, part of a massive miscarriage of justice, alongside an arbitrary decision by the coroner that all must have been dead or beyond saving by 3.15 pm. No wonder, then, that Barry Devonside and the other families have always maintained that the inquests did not tell them how or why their loved ones died, and that it protected those responsible for their deaths.

Other Members of the House have addressed the key issues which come from the independent panel’s report. I add my congratulations to the panel on the work that it has done, and to colleagues in the House who have worked to help the families reach the position that they are in today. The Prime Minister gave a full apology in his statement last month, and the Home Secretary and Attorney-General have done everything that has been asked of them. For that this Government deserve praise. Previous Governments have failed the families and we need to ensure that no more time is lost. It is not possible to make up for lost time, but it is possible to minimise future delay.

The report of the independent panel highlights what went wrong before the event, on the day and in the immediate aftermath, and in the days, months and years after. Much of the evidence in the report is not new, of course, but the report has set it out in a way which allows calls for new inquests to be addressed and for prosecutions to be considered. The report makes the simple point that the policing of football matches was regarded as a matter of control. Public safety was completely ignored. Anyone attending a football match at the time knew only too well that we were regarded with suspicion at best and outright hostility at worst by many of those supposed to be there to keep us safe. The culture of watching football meant that Hillsborough was an accident waiting to happen.

I attended the 1987 semi-final at Hillsborough. I was in the Leppings Lane end. My hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) described his experience of attending a match with Newcastle in the same location and in the same end. When we left that ground, we felt that we were lucky to escape without serious injury or death. The same thing happened in 1981 and 1988, yet the lessons learned were not applied in full. Some would argue that the behaviour of the police meant that this was no accident, but that is no doubt something for the special prosecutor to consider when he or she looks at the evidence. As the report makes clear, the disaster could have happened at any one of a number of matches in previous years or at a number of other football grounds.

The Attorney-General has already announced that he will apply to the High Court for fresh inquests into the deaths of all 96 victims. Gaining new inquests is the top priority for the families. At the original inquests the coroner decided that all victims must have been dead by 3.15 pm, despite evidence that many were still alive, including 15-year-old Kevin Williams, whose mum Anne has worked so hard to have the verdict overturned. The fact that the Attorney-General is convinced that he can succeed in having the verdicts overturned in the courts this time shows how right Anne and the other families have been all along. The independent panel has found evidence that at least 41 of the victims may still have been alive at 3.15 pm, and that number may be higher. The decision to have a cut-off at 3.15 pm has meant that evidence about the emergency response has not been fully examined. Only 11% of the evidence was considered by the coroner. As the independent panel says in chapter 4:

“The emergency response to the Hillsborough disaster has not previously been fully examined, because of the assumption that the outcome for those who died was irretrievably fixed long before they could have been helped.”

A new inquest would allow a new coroner to consider all the evidence and to decide why the 96 died. A different verdict would show that the victims died as a result of the failings of the police and other authorities.

[Derek Twigg]

My hon. Friend has made some important points about where blame lies. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), for whom I have immense respect, that the police were overwhelmingly to blame. However, as I said in my speech, Sheffield Wednesday football club also needs to be held to account. The key thing was that the radial fences were put in. It was envisaged that there would be access via direct turnstiles and dedicated facilities, but this was not pursued. The report says that there was

“no way of knowing accurately how many fans were in each area.”

That is a very important point that needs to be examined further.

[Bill Esterson]

My hon. Friend has worked incredibly hard with the families over very many years, as have other hon. Members. He is quite right that that key finding of the report needs to be properly examined. It shows the difference between the Sheffield Wednesday ground, where the recommendation was not deployed, and other grounds where there could possibly have been problems.

[Mr Blunkett]

There is no doubt that culpability existed, as was acknowledged by the £1.5 million that was put into the fund by Sheffield Wednesday at the time, but we are now trying to distinguish between the terrible events that happened then and the changes that were made on the back of them, which have benefited footballers, fans and communities as a whole.

[Bill Esterson]

My right hon. Friend is of course right. This is about what can be done now to put the injustice right.

A different verdict would show that the victims died as a result of the failings of the police and would at last allow the families the official recognition of how and why their loved ones died. The Home Secretary has announced the potential appointment of an independent prosecutor so that any criminal prosecutions do not drag on any longer than necessary. This is the least that can be done after the 23-year wait by the families. The independent prosecutor will explore possible criminal charges—whether manslaughter relating to the original tragedy or conspiracy to pervert the course of justice following the exposé of the cover-up. Consideration by a new coroner of all the evidence will at last allow for examination to take place of what did and did not happen after 3.15 pm. It appears that the CPS and the DPP did not consider the evidence of what happened after 3.15 pm when they decided not to prosecute. That evidence needs to be considered by the prosecutor and will be relevant to the cover-up that started on the day and continued over the months and years that followed.

The lack of impartiality, the cover-up, and the discrediting of witnesses—all this will be addressed and overcome by new inquests with proper involvement and support for the families. I reiterate my earlier request to the Home Secretary that the families are given full financial support at new inquests, because that is only right in making sure that justice is done this time round. An independent prosecutor will, I hope, achieve the same level of justice when it comes to holding those responsible to account. Again, it is welcome that the families will have all the involvement that is needed in any inquiries of a criminal nature.

All MPs who represent the families have pledged to continue to fight alongside them until new coroners’ verdicts are delivered and until all those responsible for the deaths of the 96 and the cover-up that followed are held to account for what they have done. That is the least we should do, and I am sure that it is what we will do.

21:19

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

One of the challenges of speaking at this stage of the debate is that so many hon. Members have made powerful and moving contributions. I do not want to repeat them, but I do want to make a couple of points, because, as a Sheffielder, I have always felt a sense of collective shame about the fact that this appalling tragedy took place in our city, and that justice seemed such a distant prospect for so very long and was frustrated by our local police force.

I join the tributes that have been made to the Liverpool families, whose courage and determination to see the truth are an example to us all in this House and beyond. As my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) said, and as a number of hon. Members have repeated, it is simply a scandal that it has taken us 23 years to get to this point. Having done so, however, it is vital that truth is followed by justice and that all those responsible for both the disaster and the subsequent cover-up are held fully to account.

I welcome the fact that in her opening remarks the Home Secretary drew a distinction between the South Yorkshire police of 1989 and the organisation of today. I am pleased that, under Med Hughes, the South Yorkshire police of today, as my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) pointed out, played a leading role in helping to uncover the truth, just as the force of the past played such a role in hiding it.

We have to recognise what different times those were and what a different culture existed in the police. As a number of hon. Members have pointed out, it was not just about an attitude towards football fans. As some of the later contributions have highlighted, many of us saw a culture in much of the police whereby they seemed to be above the law in areas such as Sheffield, south Yorkshire and the mining communities in our part of the country, and that that culture was almost encouraged by the then Government in the way in which the miners’ strike was handled. It is not just the South Yorkshire police force who were caught up in that. We need to remember that the Government at the time deliberately drafted police from other parts of the country into South Yorkshire police to ensure, as many people in our mining communities saw it, that the rule of law could be abandoned. One of the lessons of this terrible story is the danger of any part of the state feeling that it is beyond the law and accountability.

Just as we should distinguish between the force of today and the South Yorkshire police of the past, we should also distinguish, as the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) has done, between the role of individual policemen and women and the leadership of the force at that time. It is deeply unfortunate that, following the publication of the independent panel’s report, some in the press highlighted the fact that 195 officers on duty at Hillsborough were still working for South Yorkshire police, the implication being—this was not implied in the report—that they were somehow not fit to do so. We need to acknowledge that what went wrong at Hillsborough was a catastrophic failure of leadership, both at the stadium on the day and in the handling of events afterwards, and that ordinary policemen and women at Hillsborough were also let down by that leadership. Many of them went above and beyond the high standards that we expect of our police officers in their immediate response to the tragedy on the day.

I have two examples of that. PC Keith Marsh was a uniformed PC outside the Leppings Lane entrance on the day of the disaster and, on arriving at the fences there, he immediately joined the rescue efforts. He was able to get near the gate and drag a young boy, Lee Nicol, free from the crush. When he checked for a pulse, he was unable to find one and immediately began attempts to resuscitate Lee. It was clear that without oxygen or professional medical treatment, Lee was going to die. PC Marsh carried him to an ambulance and stayed with him to go to the Northern general hospital, still performing CPR. Eventually, he managed to get a response, but he was ultimately unsuccessful in saving Lee. Lee’s family were so grateful to Keith for his efforts that he was invited to be a pallbearer at their son’s funeral. Keith retired from the force as a detective sergeant, but has now returned as a member of support staff at Attercliffe police station.

PC Fiona Nichol was deployed on the trackside at the Leppings Lane end on the day of the disaster. She recognised the crushing and described seeing the terror on people’s faces as she opened a gate. Her first instinct was to protect a group of scouts who were in one of the pens. She reacted quickly and began to pull people out. Climbing up the fence, she pulled the body of a young boy out of the crush and began to give CPR, but sadly without success. She gave further assistance to other victims, giving CPR and pulling people out of the crowd.

On the 20th anniversary of the disaster, Fiona met David Gillooley, a Liverpool fan who was 26 at the time of the disaster. He told her:

“I saw you pull people out. I saw you pull big fellas out. And you kept pulling and pulling and pulling, and it got to the point where I could feel less pressure. Now, without a shadow of a doubt, that’s down to you.”

Fiona is another of the 195 officers who are still serving. She is now based in a response team in Barnsley.

Officers like those two were described as heroes by Trevor Hicks of the Hillsborough Family Support Group. It is important that, when we bring those responsible to justice, we do not tarnish the reputation or damage the morale of those who do not deserve it. Through accountability, we must strengthen confidence and trust in policing, not only in south Yorkshire, but across the country.

21:26

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

A year has passed since our last Hillsborough debate. That year has brought momentous events that many people thought they would not live to see. The truth has finally been established—more difficult to take, not less, for the passage of time, as the Home Secretary said. The tragedy was entirely foreseeable —it could and should have been prevented. Lives should have been saved. There was a campaign of vilification with no justification.

Those truths have been told only because of the sheer love of mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters—a love that would not let them give in, a love that provided strength when hope was lost and provided dignity in the face of provocation. Those truths were also told because of the people of a city that truly understands what solidarity and loyalty mean, who locked arms around these families—red and blue together—and supported them for every step on the hardest road imaginable. At last, the entire country can see what Liverpool has lived with for 23 years. Parliament, too, has finally woken up to the full horror of Hillsborough.

We have heard many powerful speeches this evening from both sides of the House. We have heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Halton (Derek Twigg), for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) and for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), who have done so much to help the campaign, and from my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett). On the other side of the House, we have heard from the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price), who spoke from her personal experience, and from the hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke). What is clear from those outstanding speeches is that, rather than the closure that people glibly talk of, the report has opened questions of the most profound kind for the institutions of our country, our Parliament and our society. As the debate comes to a close, I want to set out clearly what I believe those questions are. Before I do so, I want to speak for the Opposition in adding to the tributes that we have heard.

In the Church’s history, it is hard to think of a better example of one of its leading members fulfilling the functions of his office with more distinction or doing a greater service for the city and people under his direct pastoral care. The Right Rev. James Jones, Bishop of Liverpool, has brought light to people who for 23 years have been trapped in the blackest of tunnels, but he has done more. Through his leadership, he has shown the relevance of the Church to Britain today. Through him, the Church has succeeded where the state had failed, in bringing truth and the beginnings of reconciliation to a tragedy arising from a divided Britain.

We thank all the members of the panel for what they have done, and we thank the secretariat, under the leadership of Ken Sutton and Ann Ridley, for its outstanding support. Tonight, I pay particular tribute to Professor Phil Scraton. Of this I am sure: the full truth about Hillsborough would never have been known were it not for his meticulous efforts over many years, turning over stones that others had walked past. Professor Scraton has done a huge service not just to the Hillsborough families but to this country, and I hope the House will join me in acknowledging it tonight.

What is striking about the panel’s report is its thoroughness and the sheer comprehensiveness and quality of the painstaking researching that underpins it, carried out by the research team at Queen’s university, Belfast. I hope that the Government will consider that approach, with the emphasis on disclosure, not adversarial argument, a model for resolving other contested issues arising from our past.

There can be no doubt of the incredible emotional impact that the panel’s work has already had on the people most directly affected by the tragedy. As my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper) said, to be in Liverpool on the night of 12 September this year was to see a collective weight lifted from so many shoulders, which I will never forget.

I do not think we have begun fully to appreciate the scale of the suffering and loss, the true human cost of the tragedy, and the devastating psychological impact on survivors. From the midst of the most harrowing scenes imaginable—truly, hell on earth—thousands of them were simply left to drift home from Hillsborough, to try to make sense of what they had seen without counselling or support. Even worse, they were left to read in the days that followed that they were in some way to blame for what had happened. People talk to me of the lost souls that are scattered throughout the communities of Merseyside, the north-west and beyond, haunted by what they saw and never the same again. Tonight I think about them as we finally put right this terrible wrong. Does the Health Secretary agree that never again should people suffering trauma and shock on such a scale be left without the counselling and support that they need for their mental health? Will he give serious thought to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) about support for such services on the ground now?

In making this speech tonight, I think of my constituent Stephen Whittle, who on the morning of 15 April 1989 gave his ticket to a friend who never came home, and who just over a year ago took his own life, leaving everything he had to the Hillsborough families. Recent events will have been unbearably painful for Stephen’s family, but I hope they will take some comfort from the fact that the campaign that he cared about has finally prevailed.

Tonight, I also want to mention Carl Brown, 19 when he died at Hillsborough, not from Liverpool but a Leigh lad—a reminder that this tragedy affected everyone everywhere. It was a national tragedy, and we must all work to bring accountability and justice.

I pay tribute again this evening to the Prime Minister for the way he responded to the panel’s report, the tone that he set and the events that he has set in train ever since. I thank the Home Secretary for her speech today, her leadership and the personal commitment that she has shown to achieving justice for the 96. If I may, I want to leave two points with her this evening.

First, we welcome what the Home Secretary said about the co-ordination of the criminal process and investigation. It is important that we have clear leadership of the whole process, supported by a well resourced, professionally led, integrated investigation, not a series of parallel and unco-ordinated investigations. I hope she will continue to update the House on those important points.

Secondly, these are of course complicated matters that will take time to resolve, but the families have waited long enough. I urge the Government to ensure that public bodies and individuals conducting further work keep that thought in the front of their minds when carrying out their duties.

The impact of the panel’s report has already been immense, but the full enormity of what it reveals has not yet sunk in. It shakes our faith in the very foundations of our society, and in the organisations that exist to protect us and see that justice is done. If we are to learn from the report, those institutions must face up to fundamental questions, and in the time remaining to me this evening I wish to identify five areas of concern.

I will start with football, because of all the organisations in the frame, I believe that the football organisations have the furthest to go in facing up to their responsibilities—in fact, I do not think they have ever really started to do that in 23 years. The Hillsborough independent panel presents football with failings of the first order. A decade of warnings, starting with the 1981 FA cup semi-final, was not acted on. A ground known to be unsafe was made dangerous by modifications that were not recorded in the safety certificate. In short, as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton said, it was a ground operating outside the law.

What possible explanation can the club offer for failing to ensure the safety of people who paid money to enter Hillsborough, and why did the FA choose a ground for one of the biggest games of the season that, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire said, was not certified as safe? Neither Sheffield Wednesday nor the FA has ever answered those questions. What are we to make of the revelation in the panel’s report that the FA received complaints about the 1988 semi-final between the same two teams, one of which warned in stark terms that the ground was “a death trap”? Were those complaints acted on? Not only does it seem that nothing was done, but the guardian of the game in this country chose to bring the same fixture with the same teams back to the same ground the following year, prompting the question of whether the game’s governing body believed that it had any responsibility to listen to supporters, act on their complaints or ensure their safety and welfare. It is hard to conclude that it did.

For years, people were coming away from Hillsborough with tales of panic and distress. Is there any other part of our national life in which we would tolerate thousands of people going to a leisure venue and routinely coming away with injuries, broken bones, stories of frightening breathlessness, and authorities that do nothing about it? It reveals an unpleasant mentality that still pervades parts of the football industry, and a casual disregard for the paying customer. Costs were cut to the bone and safety was sacrificed on the altar of crowd control.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), I remember my experiences at Hillsborough, and it angers me to remember that, when I stood with my younger brother and my dad on the Leppings Lane terrace in January 1988 for an FA cup third-round game, throughout the whole second half I was not watching the match but the backs of their heads. I did not let them out of my sight because I feared for their safety in the unbearable conditions of those central pens. There was a feeling that the football club had taken our money but could not be sure of our safety, having failed to take essential legal steps. It makes me angry to think of that and the thousands of people who were put at risk.

That is why I found it hard in September to see a response from football that was stunning in its inadequacy and left people wondering whether the football organisations will ever face up to their responsibilities. In their initial statements, neither the Football Association nor Sheffield Wednesday football club offered one single word of apology to the families. On Thursday 13 September, the FA had to issue a second statement when that was pointed out, and Sheffield Wednesday convened an emergency meeting on 11 September to rewrite a draft statement that contained no word of apology. That says it all, and as far as I can establish, the FA has not yet had a meeting to consider the panel’s report and its implications for the game’s governing body.

The hirer of Hillsborough and the ground’s owner both had a duty of care and a basic responsibility to ensure that a semi-final venue had an up-to-date safety certificate. Their failure to do that was, in my view, grossly negligent, as was the failure to act on warnings and complaints. That is why the families, rightly, cannot accept that the disaster was accidental, and why football must be forced to face up to its responsibilities in the inquiries to come.

Secondly, I will consider the media, but I will balance my remarks by mentioning some exceptions. In the run-up to the 20th anniversary of the disaster, an article by the outstanding investigative journalist David Conn prompted me to start thinking about setting up the disclosure process, and led me, together with my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood, to make the first public call for an inquiry.

The Mirror can take pride in its efforts supporting the families, the Liverpool Echo has given unwavering support, and ITV’s commissioning of Jimmy McGovern’s Hillsborough drama kept the story alive, but all that is overshadowed by the incalculable damage caused by the most hurtful lies imaginable printed as truth at an entire city’s moment of greatest grief. It was not just The Sun newspaper, appalling as it was, but many other newspapers. Why has the media industry never truly faced up to its moral failings on Hillsborough and the pain it caused people? Why did it not realise its own wrongdoing or propose proper redress to the families? Why, 20 years on, are bereaved families still facing outrageous intrusions into their grief?

Why did The Sun think it appropriate, some years on, to travel to Liverpool to make an offer to the families to pay for and build a sports centre and to give an apology only on the condition that the families accept the apology in full? The families did not owe The Sun anything. What does it say about the ethics of the media industry that an apology was presented to the families on those terms?

It is clear to me that Hillsborough was a forerunner of more recent events under the consideration of Lord Leveson—an early warning of out-of-control media that was not acted on. I urge Lord Leveson to call the Hillsborough families before he concludes his inquiry. I ask him to ask this fundamental question: how did the media leave this story alone when pursuing so many other trivial causes with much greater ferocity when the amended statements were in the public domain for so long? That was a professional failure to focus on what really matters and to give the proper redress that the families deserve.

Thirdly, on the coroner service, I have two simple questions. How could it ever have allowed a situation in which a parent finds out for the first time on 12 September 2012 what happened to their child on 15 April 1989? What assurance will it provide that never again will we see the denial of fundamental parental rights for 23 years?

Fourthly, on the police service, I recognise the force of the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough that the officers on the ground were also let down by their seniors. However, we will watch how the police service responds to the report, which will affect public confidence. I make this simple statement: the service must not allow retirement to be a route to avoid full public accountability, as the hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell said. To allow it to do so would damage public confidence in the service, as would a situation in which the council tax payers of Merseyside pay for the pensions of people who are found to have acted improperly.

We learn in the panel’s report of a campaign orchestrated from the very top—it was ordered by the chief constable of the force—and of the shocking revelation that his officers were to have a “free hand” in preparing a “rock solid story” to exonerate the force and blame the fans. That is prima facie evidence of a failure of policing of a terrible kind—self-protection over public protection.

In responding to the panel’s report, we must not make the mistake of thinking that it was a one-off, exceptional, isolated event. David Conn was the first to draw the parallel with Orgreave, which a number of hon. Members have mentioned, and which has featured today on the main BBC news for the first time in many years. There are echoes of the Hillsborough story in the Orgreave story—statements amended; an institutional effort to shift blame. It is uncomfortable, but what has been revealed goes far deeper than many people would like to believe. The temptation will be to box Hillsborough off as isolated, but that cannot happen. The cultural problem must be addressed.

That brings me—fifthly and finally—to the questions for this Parliament and this House of Commons. We are good at asking questions of others, but this one is for us. How did we let an injustice on this scale stand for so long? Ultimately, the failings are ours. The panel’s report is an invitation to us to ask the most searching questions of ourselves. We failed to legislate for public accountability. We allowed a culture of cover-up. An entire English city was crying foul, rightly saying that there had been a great injustice, but their voices were not heard here in this House. No political party did enough to help them and, worse, we have a political class that looked down on Liverpool. I am left wondering whether this could ever have happened to another city. Every Member of this House should read chapter 12 of the panel’s report and ask how it ever happened that a propaganda campaign to impugn ordinary citizens of this country got a platform in the rooms of this Parliament and how, beyond a few stray voices at the meeting, the alarm bells were not ringing throughout this place.

We talk proudly of the mother of all parliaments, and of the reputation of British justice, but this adversarial tradition in politics and the law, in which two versions of the truth battle it out, allows on occasion the wrong version of “the truth” to win and it is often the version with the greater connections to power. For the Hillsborough independent panel report we can pick up the same threads as we find in the Saville inquiry into Bloody Sunday and as we have heard in the Leveson inquiry. All three reveal a country where the powerful and the connected hold the cards, where the concerns of ordinary people were dismissed—a country with an unaccountable establishment that at times colludes in its own self-interest and self-protection.

Hillsborough is a story of an abuse of power, of class and of unequal access to justice. I do not want to live in a country where that can ever happen again, where ordinary people can ever be treated in this way again. That is why I want this to be a watershed moment when this generation of politicians, this Parliament, truly learns the lessons of Hillsborough and builds a country where power is properly shared, where it does not take 23 years for ordinary people to overturn injustice and where news organisations cannot ride roughshod over people at their lowest ebb. Let us work together for greater powers to hold the police to account; let us bring proper redress for people damaged by an out of control press and implement Lord Leveson’s recommendations; and let us make more changes that connect Parliament with people, never forgetting that it was the public who forced Hillsborough back on to the Floor of this House a year ago. This must be a humbling moment for this proud Parliament, but in honour of the 96, let us make it a moment of change.

21:46

[The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)]

This has been a powerful debate that has shown Parliament at its best, but also caused us to look into the mirror and reflect on our own failings. I would like to start by adding my own condolences to the families of the victims of that terrible day 23 years ago. I have been privileged to meet some of the families, including Anne Williams, Margaret Aspinall and Trevor Hicks. They were among the most moving and heart-rending meetings I have ever had as a Minister. I would like to reiterate to them my unreserved apology for some of my early comments about the events of that terrible day, and thank them for their quiet dignity in the face of so much misunderstanding by those in authority, including me.

That so many people lost their loved ones that day—children, parents, brothers and sisters, friends and partners—is a national tragedy. That they themselves were blamed for the deaths, that people covered up the truth and that so much that could and should have been done to save people’s lives was not, is a matter of huge shame for our country. We cannot know whether our actions now will help bring closure to the bereaved families, but it is incumbent on all of us to do it right this time.

My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has outlined the facts as highlighted by the report of the Hillsborough independent panel in relation to the police. I should like to do the same as regards the response of the ambulance service on the day and the subsequent actions of pathologists and the coroner.

The panel found significant failings in the response and actions of the South Yorkshire Metropolitan ambulance service. Ambulance staff at the stadium were slow to respond and to realise that a major incident was unfolding, despite being close to where the crush was taking place. Poor communication between the emergency services led to delay, misunderstanding and, importantly, a failure fully to implement the major incident plan. The result was a lack of leadership and co-ordination by senior officers and that resources, including the emergency foot team with essential medical equipment, were not deployed. This clear failure continued for at least 45 minutes after fans were released from the pens. There was no systematic assessment of the condition of the victims, and there was a lack of basic equipment, much of which, again through poor communication, remained in ambulances parked outside the ground.

A number of doctors and nurses happened to be in the ground at the time as spectators. Their accounts, critical of the lack of leadership, co-ordination, triage and equipment, were vigorously refuted at the time by South Yorkshire metropolitan ambulance service. Sadly, they were an accurate portrayal of what happened that day. There is also evidence that a number of written statements were altered. In a number of cases, they deflected criticisms and emphasised the efficiency of the ambulance service response.

The Hillsborough independent panel also re-examined the evidence around the cause of death. In most cases, post mortem results stated that the cause of death was traumatic asphyxia, with the assumption made by the coroner that unconsciousness would have taken place within seconds and death within three to four minutes. As a result, it was repeatedly asserted by the coroner, by the High Court in the judicial review and by Lord Justice Stuart-Smith’s scrutiny that, by the time those who died had been removed from the pens, death would have been irreversible.

I regret to inform the House that the panel found clear evidence in at least 41 cases that that was not the case. The post mortem reports found that 28 people did not have traumatic asphyxia with obstruction of blood circulation and would have taken much longer to die. There was also separate evidence that in 31 cases the heart and lungs had continued to function after the crush, and, in 16 cases, for a prolonged period. However, these people would have remained vulnerable to a further incident brought on by something as simple as being placed on their back, which would further have obstructed their airway. It is not possible to say with certainty whether anyone could or would have survived under different circumstances, but it is highly likely that what happened to them after 3.15 pm played a significant part in whether they survived.

The Hillsborough independent report raised those and other clear failings by the NHS at the time—failings that might have contributed to the loss of as many as 41 lives. I have, in the past, made my own personal apology for my misunderstanding of the events at Hillsborough. Today, I would like to take this opportunity, on behalf of the NHS, to make a sincere apology to the families, friend and loved ones of the victims of the 96. I am deeply sorry for the part that the NHS played in their grief, both at the time and in any attempt to conceal those failings in the 23 years since.

The ambulance service in south Yorkshire and across the country is very different today from how it was in 1989. We have learned valuable lessons from major incidents such as Hillsborough, but also more recently from the 7/7 bombings, the floods in 2007 and the Cumbria shootings in 2010. In 1989, ambulance services were predominantly about first aid and transporting people to hospital. Only around 10% of ambulance crews were qualified paramedics able directly to intervene at the scene of an emergency. Today, the service is characterised by a highly skilled and qualified work force. Around 60% of staff are paramedics.

Although the events of that day happened almost a quarter of a century ago and although the ambulance service has changed significantly since then, we should not and will not assume that the failings of 1989 have been fully rectified in 2012. I am totally committed to making certain that any and all steps are taken to ensure that any failings brought to light by the panel’s work are dealt with promptly and satisfactorily.

The chief medical officer, Dame Sally Davies, has written to the Royal College of Pathologists, drawing its attention to the panel’s report and inviting it to reflect on what lessons might be learned by pathologists practising today. In addition, Sir David Nicholson, chief executive of the NHS, has written to ambulance trusts, acute hospital trusts and strategic health authorities again asking them to consider what further lessons might be learned from the report that would improve NHS services.

I would like now to mention some of the extremely moving speeches that we have heard this evening. I apologise if I do not get round to mentioning all of them because of the time constraints, but let me say first that we have seen a debate this evening that has shown this House at its very best. I want to pay particular tribute to the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) for his campaigning. It is true to say that without his decision, with the support of the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), we would not be here today and justice would not have been done. He deserves huge credit for that.

We heard an extremely moving speech from my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Stephen Mosley), who talked about the appalling failing of West Midlands police and the agony that the family of Kevin Williams went through. The hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) talked about the fact that he was in the stadium on the day. The hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh) talked about his shock at the elimination of inconvenient witness statements by South Yorkshire police, describing them as opinion and not fact.

The right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) talked about the kindness of the people of Sheffield to the people of Liverpool and about how it is important, if we are going to have a culture of transparency, that it needs to come right from the very top. My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) talked about how she was born and bred in Hillsborough, living only a stone’s throw away, and paid an important tribute to the members of South Yorkshire police force who behaved professionally and honourably. The right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) talked about the huge workload faced by the IPCC, and highlighted the issue of ensuring that it has adequate resources. My hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) talked about the power of football to bring people together and about the importance that everyone should be accountable for their actions, no matter whether they are still serving or not.

The hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) talked about her support for the shadow Home Secretary’s desire for the IPCC to have powers to compel police officers to give evidence—something that we have said we are happy to talk to the shadow Home Secretary about. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) talked about the need to change the law to stop cover-ups. The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller) talked about the need for The Sun and Kelvin MacKenzie to be accountable for their actions, and about the need for the investigation to be carried out quickly.

My hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans) talked about his concern for the families and victims. The hon. Member for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper) questioned whether all statements had been disclosed to the panel. If she has any details of any missing documents, I would ask her to let us know, so that we can ask officials to look into that. She also asked whether the Football Association was subject to investigation. I can confirm that the actions of the football authorities are within the scope of the review of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

My hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) spoke movingly as a football fan about the need to resolve this matter with decency and urgency. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram), whose campaigning on this issue is second to none, talked about the question of when human nature should override the orders given by a senior officer. The hon. Member for St Helens North (Mr Watts) asked why the establishment and media did not expose the cover-up and, again, talked about the role of The Sun.

The hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) talked, as many Members did, about the importance of speed and parliamentary oversight. I can assure her that Parliament will be kept fully informed of the progress of the investigations. The hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) talked about the response of constituents to the way in which Parliament has responded to this issue following the Prime Minister’s statement. I agree—and the Government agree—on the importance of ongoing support for families.

The hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) talked movingly about the achievements of campaigners for justice for the Hillsborough victims. The right hon. Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) talked about the conspiring that has happened and how that shakes many people’s confidence in the very foundations of the state. The hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) said that, for all of us, it is impossible to understand what it is like to lose a child. She said that we must remember the law-abiding fans and the fact that the image of a hooligan was a stereotype that led to many of the problems that we are dealing with today.

Then we heard powerful contributions by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) and the hon. Members for Bassetlaw (John Mann), for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), for Blaydon (Mr Anderson), for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) and for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), although I am sorry that I do not have time to reference them all in detail.

I want to conclude by saying that, as the Prime Minister has said, the Hillsborough families have been the victims of a double injustice: first, through the events themselves, the failure of the state to protect their loved ones, and their interminable wait for the truth; and, secondly, through the injustice of the denigration of the deceased and the way in which everything that happened that day was portrayed as being somehow their own fault. The Liverpool fans were not the cause of the disaster, and it is clear, as the report states, that

“a swifter, more appropriate, better focused and properly equipped response had the potential to save more lives”.

22:00

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 9(3)).

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I have not put the Question, because the motion has lapsed. I have listened with great respect to what the Secretary of State has said. I think that those attending to our debate can take it that the House has considered the matter of the Hillsborough independent panel report. I thank the Secretary of State and all colleagues for taking part in the debate.

Business without Debate

Monday 22nd October 2012 Commons Chamber

delegated legislation

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

Licences and Licensing

That the draft Late Night Levy (Application and Administration) Regulations 2012, which were laid before this House on 4 July, be approved.—(Nicky Morgan.)

Question agreed to.

administration

Ordered,

That Mr Mark Francois be discharged from the Administration Committee and Mr Desmond Swayne be added.—(Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.)

Educational Funding Gap

Monday 22nd October 2012 Commons Chamber

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

[Mr Speaker]

Order. In thanking everyone who has taken part in, or witnessed, this evening’s debate, may I appeal to right hon. and hon. Members who, unaccountably, might be leaving the Chamber and not wishing to stay to hear the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), to do so quickly and quietly, affording the hon. Gentleman the same courtesy that they would wish to be extended to them in similar circumstances?

22:00

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

It is a pleasure to have secured this important debate on the educational funding gap for 16 to 18-year-olds with special needs. I well remember, back in 2008—a date that will feature rather less auspiciously later in my remarks—going to Crewe and Nantwich to campaign in the by-election that resulted in the election of my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson), now the Under-Secretary of State for Education, to this House. It is a great pleasure to congratulate him on achieving ministerial office. I understand that this is the first Adjournment debate to which he has replied, and I am sure that he will want to give me as positive a response as possible to the requests that I intend to make.

I am going to focus on two specific areas. The first is the educational funding gap for 16 to 18-year-olds with special needs. The second, which is indirectly related to that, is the funding of what are known as enrichment courses at further education colleges for people in that age range and for those who are somewhat older. The two issues arise as a result of similar causes. I have forewarned those in the Minister’s office of what I am about to say, and they have seen the material to which I shall refer.

This material has been supplied to me by a splendid organisation called SCARF, which is in the New Forest. SCARF stands for Supporting special Children and their Relatives and Friends. I pay particular tribute to Sarah Newman, Cathy Cook and Pam Tibbles, among others, who were present at a meeting of the organisation with me and my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Mr Swayne). I know that my right hon. Friend would like to join me in participating in the debate tonight, but he is now governed by that particular form of omertà known as the silence of the Whips—or, in present circumstances, perhaps we should say the silence that most Whips generally observe.

I have learned about these problems first hand from SCARF; I have learned of the views of the principal of Totton college in New Forest East via SCARF; and I have learned of the views of the principal of Brockenhurst college, also in New Forest East, directly. I have also been sent briefings by a number of charities, including the National Autistic Society, Ambitious about Autism and the special needs charity Contact a Family.

I want to talk about the parents’ experiences, some of which will be drawn from SCARF’s recent submission to the Education Select Committee, but I shall refer first to one from a constituent who wrote to me recently about the strains and stresses placed on her family as a result of the funding gap to which I have referred. She writes as follows:

“Our son is 16 years old and has autism. He attends college just 3 days a week. We are paying £120 p/w for private day service provision on the other two days. This has been necessary to ease the extremely high levels of anxiety and stress for our son and ourselves as parents and to provide”

her son

“with continuing development of his personal, social and communication skills.”

This mother goes on to make a very important point:

“Adolescence and transition to further education, is a particularly difficult time for a young person with autism or any disability…Our son cannot be left unsupervised to structure and manage his own daily activities, hence the alternative was for myself to give up work and be his ‘buddy’ for those two days each week”

when there is no further education available for him.

“This is far from ideal as, aged 16, he does not want to be constantly shadowed by his mother and also having spent a summer holiday this way, the sheer exhaustion and strain has already resulted in breakdown in family relations. I am extremely concerned about the impact the cuts are having on families with disabled young people. I run a parent support group and am deeply saddened by the despair I see on parents faces”.

That is from the coal face, as it were.

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend—and his constituency neighbour—on securing this debate. He could have read from the sort of letter I have received from many of my constituents. Does he not believe that this policy is very short-sighted because the actual cost to the public purse of not enabling these young adults to reach their full potential will be much more in the longer term?

[Dr Lewis]

Absolutely. This is one of those classic cases where we are in danger of falling between two stools. There is education funding up to the age of 16 and then adult social funding from the age of 18, but if something goes terribly wrong in that two-year gap, the cost—in terms of both human suffering and additional support from the state resulting from the fallout of something going wrong at that time—will be colossal. My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

The summary of the position is put forward, as I mentioned earlier, in SCARF’s submission to the Education Select Committee. It describes the overall situation as follows:

“Education funding has been repeatedly cut in recent years”.

Apparently, this started in 2008, but it happened again in 2010 and then in 2011. As a result,

“Further Education colleges can only offer 3 days a week of education to these young people. In addition, Social Services day-care is not available, except in the most extreme cases, until these young people turn 18 and are classed as adults. Consequently, many parents/carers are left to provide the care themselves for their young person on 2 weekdays every week…these young people end up stuck at home with their parent/carer, quickly becoming challenging and disruptive…the end result is a crisis which then requires significant support from health and social services.”

SCARF wants a guarantee that all young people with special needs or disabilities—I believe that LDD is shorthand for “learning difficulties and disabilities”—should have “the right to full-time education for 5 days a week up to at least the age of 18.”

As I said in response to the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt), I recognise that it may be necessary for more than one department to be involved. It is possible that those in the education department will say “We simply cannot carry the funding burden for the whole of that period.” Given that this used to be primarily the responsibility of the education department, if the education department is going to shuffle off that responsibility, it surely has a duty to find another department—perhaps one connected with social services—that will take the responsibility on.

As SCARF observes in its submission,

“since September 2008, our local FE colleges have had their funding repeatedly cut”.

It gives a number of examples of the way in which that can affect families. I shall not go into them in detail, because time does not allow me to, but one parent says that her son

“absconded without warning one freezing winter afternoon”

and was knocked down by a car, while another talks of the danger of her son’s lighting fires around the home and the fact that he needs active supervision all the time. Some parents have to give up their jobs, while others strain to find the money to pay people to be the buddies or supervisors of their children on those two days off.

There is no doubt that what was previously a relatively seamless five days a week of provision from childhood to adulthood is no longer available. The explanation, as I understand it, is this. Following the introduction of foundation learning qualifications, the basis was changed from generic or broad learning aims to education that would lead to the achievement of specific qualifications. That is fine for people who are not learning-disadvantaged or disabled, but it obviously has a huge negative impact on that category who are. There was also a reduction in what is called “entitlement funding” from 117 hours to only 30 hours a year, and a restriction excluding what are known as “enrichment” activities from the process. Such activities are not designed to lead to the world of work, but are designed simply to give greater quality to the life of a learning-disabled person.

That brings me to my second topic, which is the question of people who are in an older age category but who were previously able to take part in free enrichment courses on one day a week at local further education colleges. Let me give the example—with permission—of my constituent Jessica Snell. She is the daughter of the retired principal of Brockenhurst college. He writes:

“Jessica…is 38 years old and has Down’s syndrome. She lives with her parents and attends a local day centre for 3 days a week. For some time she has attended her local college for one day a week and has gained significantly in her life and social skills. Until 2010 the college was able to draw down funding and remit any fees. This year, she must pay £840 for one day a week for 30 weeks and has no additional income beyond her SDLA”—

severe disability living allowance—

“benefit from which she can pay. Her programme is not work related but she has opted for cooking, drama and craft, all of which add to her independent living skills and enjoyment of life. College also gives her the opportunity to meet and mix with a vibrant community of young people.”

Just as the 16 to 18-year-olds faced a tighter restriction as to whether or not they were going to get qualifications at the end of the process, so the older severe learning-disabled person faces a tighter restriction as to whether or not the course will ever get them into work. If the answer is no in each case, the funding has disappeared, with the consequences I have described.

I began by saying what a pleasure it was to see my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich at the Dispatch Box, and I hope for the far greater pleasure of hearing him say what the Government intend to do to bridge this damaging gap in order to help young people between the ages of 16 and 18 and people like Jessica, who in their adult years cannot hope to enter the world of work, but can still derive much personal satisfaction and advantage from having one day a week at a further education college.

I am sure the Minister will want to tell the House about the Bill on the reform of provision for children and young people with special educational needs, which I believe we will be considering next year. The national special needs charity to which I referred earlier, Contact a Family, has given great support to SCARF’s campaign, and welcomes the draft provisions published last month as far as they go, but it is deeply anxious that they do not guarantee a right to full-time education to those with learning difficulties and disabilities right up to the age of 18. Can the Minister assure us tonight that if his Department is unable single-handedly to fill the gap between these ages, it will work with other Departments so that, between them, we avoid this problem of falling between two stools and we reinstate the situation that used to apply before 2008 and has progressively—or regressively, I should say—deteriorated since then and that we return to the position in which, one way or another, people have five days a week of support between the ages of 16 and 18?

22:17

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)]

I begin by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) for welcoming me to my new role and, I think, for reminding me of those heady days of 2008 in Crewe and Nantwich. More importantly for the purposes of the debate, I thank him for bringing before the House the important question of funding for students aged between 16 and 18 with learning difficulties and disabilities, and in particular those who are being educated in our further education colleges. As I have frequently heard my hon. Friend speak in this House, it comes as no surprise to me that he argues this case clearly and with passion on behalf of his constituents who are the parents of just such young learners. He has brought home the very real issues that they face in getting the best education for their children.

Although I am still relatively new in my post as Minister in the Department for Education, I have already become aware of the responsibility that rests with me for these young people. My Department has already set out our commitment in our May 2012 document “Support and aspiration: A new approach to special educational needs and disability—progress and next steps.” That approach follows on from the proposals in the earlier Green Paper. Our proposals, which we have drawn up into draft legislation that is currently being scrutinised, are designed to move away from the disjointed, labyrinthine and label-focused current system my hon. Friend described to a more seamless, supported and outcomes-focused system. In doing so, we seek to offer real hope for young people with learning difficulties and disabilities, and to help them meet their desires and aspirations, in the same way that other young people can.

The pressures are particularly acute at periods of transition, such as when people move from primary into secondary education and then from compulsory education into further or higher education. The concern for parents, as has been so eloquently expressed by my hon. Friend, is whether their children are getting the level of education and support they need, and whether appropriate funding is available to make sure that that happens. Although his constituents point to this concern as having begun in the 2008-09 academic year for the colleges in his area, which my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Mr Swayne) also represents, we know that it is a concern in other parts of the country as well. It is, of course, right that parents expect to receive an appropriate level of provision for their children’s needs, and so it is right that local authorities and colleges work closely with parents and the young people themselves to ensure that their needs are being properly met at all times.

My Department funds local authorities to make provision and support available for young people with learning difficulties and disabilities in a way that allows for five days a week learning where that is appropriate. The funding behind that has not declined, and we are not changing the overall funding for schools and high-needs pupils and students aged up to 25. The amount we allocate for these children and young people through additional learning support—a key feature—has increased year on year. The amount of high-level additional learning support we make available for 16 to 24-year-olds has, in fact, increased by more than a quarter in the past two years, from £97 million in 2010-11 to £124.9 million in 2012-13. Additional funding has been made available from the learners with learning difficulties and disabilities placement budget for students with high levels of learning difficulty and/or disability placed in FE colleges. That has also increased by a quarter, from £24.8 million to £35 million in the same time period.

I know from a visit I made last week to Hereward college in Coventry that the one thing that most young people aged 16 to 18 want is to have, as far as possible, the same opportunities and life chances as the rest of their peer group. For some young people, who may have learning difficulties and/or disabilities but are quite capable of undertaking unsupervised independent study on their own, a course involving three days a week of supervised learning in an FE college will be wholly appropriate to their needs. However, for others—this touches on the case that my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East cited—it will simply not be enough, particularly for those with more profound or limiting disabilities. So where it is clear that a young person would have difficulty managing their learning in a three-day-a-week setting with periods of unsupervised study, we would expect a programme to be offered over a longer period each week. That would and should be accompanied by additional support for learning, the funding for which I have set out, and support outside formal lessons, to be provided as appropriate.

Of course, it is not the business of government to tell autonomous FE colleges how to arrange the courses they provide or how to set their timetables. By the same token, it is essential that the provision on offer in these colleges is right for each individual. Nor is it true that all FE colleges have looked at the overall funding available to them from their local authority and decided to reduce the length of courses they offer to their students; many have worked together to find innovative solutions. For example, Luton local authority has funded a “broker” to put together programmes for its young people with highest needs, combining education, health and social care as appropriate. It has generated new types of day provision with very high support functions, taking on a new role as a commissioner of services. Neighbouring Hertfordshire has operated with two “brokers” since 2006, but is now attempting to merge the role into personal adviser roles. Both Hertfordshire and Luton were part of an original east of England regional initiative Improving Choice, which developed a “person-centred” approach, aiming to increase availability and access to support for study within their local area.

Under the current funding approach, the provision that young people with learning difficulties and disabilities receive will depend on what the local authority has set out in the learning difficulty assessment drawn up for them. This is designed to identify the young person’s educational needs, and describe the provision that will be made available to them that will be suitable and appropriate to their needs. A local authority should not be drawing up a learning difficulty assessment that recommends a three-day-a-week course in a local FE college where that would not be appropriate to the young person’s needs.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

It seems to me that the Minister is saying that things ought to be sorted out between the local authority and the college. Brockenhurst college, to which I referred, is regarded as a beacon college and both Mike Snell, a parent and former principal, and Di Roberts, the present principal, have been awarded the CBE for their efforts, but with the best will in the world they cannot bridge the gap by themselves. I know that Hampshire county council—I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that it is highly competent—is doing its best to help but it cannot bridge the gap caused by the restriction in the definition of available funding that I described.

[Mr Timpson]

Of course we are concerned when provision is not being met in any individual situation and I will be happy, as always, to look more closely at the circumstances mentioned by my hon. Friend. If a child has an identified need that is not being met through the learning difficulty assessment, that shows exactly why we need the reforms we will introduce in primary legislation next year.

The information set out in a learning difficulty assessment is covered by statutory guidance, but the guidance does not prescribe in close detail what can and cannot be included in each and every case.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) on securing the debate. The Government’s direction of travel is that more post-16 funding will come through local authorities as part of the seamless approach, which is to be welcomed in many ways. How will he ensure that local authorities have the right capacity to do that job, which they have not done hitherto? In cases where many local authorities have to work with one college, how will he ensure that there is a co-ordinated rather than fragmented approach on behalf of the young people who will all attend the same college?

[Mr Timpson]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising the important question of how to get the most out of the available resources. We are under no illusions about the tight economic situation which means we have to find more from less. That is why the reforms we will introduce in the new year will focus on joint commissioning between education and health so that we can try to pool our resources more effectively; on putting a local offer on the table so that parents can see close up what services are available to them and get as much accountability as possible from the local authority and health services; and on ensuring that we identify as early as possible the needs of each individual child. That will mean that the necessary work can be done as early as possible, preventing unnecessary work in the future that could have been avoided if provision had been offered earlier. Those are all reasons why the reforms, which I shall explain in more detail in the three minutes I have left, will make an important contribution to a more effective child and young person-centred system.

Our proposed special educational needs reforms will improve the situation for this group of young people in general. More specifically, our proposed new education, health and care plans will focus much more on the needs and aspirations of the young person and will be drawn up in consultation with them. It is important to note that following an assessment of the young person’s needs and negotiation with them and their parents, the plans will set out their education, health and social care needs not up to the age of 16 or 18 but up to the age of 25. That is a new statutory protection for young adults in further education.

Let me move quickly on to the second issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East. If I do not cover every point he has raised, I will be happy to write to him in more detail to ensure that he has a full and considered reply. Access to FE provision for adults with learning difficulties is rightly the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, but it is clear to me that there are issues of real concern here that my hon. Friend has helpfully raised. The Government prioritise funding where its impact is greatest on outcomes, and maximising that is part of the Government’s agenda to support people into employment. We fully fund units and qualifications for unemployed people in receipt of jobseeker’s allowance and employment support allowance, depending on what they need to help them enter and stay in work. In 2012-13 we are investing over £3.8 billion for more than 3 million adult training places through the Skills Funding Agency.

I hear the concerns that my hon. Friend raises in relation to specific funding streams to support enrichment and further qualifications. There have been some changes to the way that they have been calculated, and that may have had an impact on some individual college budgets. I will be able to provide him with a fuller picture of the effect that that has had. I hope also to provide him with some reassurance that we understand the importance of learning not just educationally, but from a nurturing perspective for all young people. That is very much at the forefront of the reforms that we will be taking through the House in the coming months.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this extremely important issue, and I look forward to being able to provide him with a fuller reply in due course that sets out all the issues that he has raised.

Question put and agreed to.

22:30

House adjourned.

Petitions

Monday 22nd October 2012 Petitions

Monday 22 October 2012

Post Office facilities (Bargeddie)

Monday 22nd October 2012 Petitions

The Petition of residents of the Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill constituency,

Declares that the Petitioners support the continued presence of the Bargeddie post office as well as the maintenance of DVLA provision and other facilities there.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, to make provision for the Bargeddie post office to remain open and for the provision of DVLA and other connected facilities to be continued.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.—[Presented by Mr Tom Clarke, Official Report, 11 September 2012; Vol. 550, c. 254.]

[P001116]

Observations from the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills:

The Government note the support of the residents of Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill constituency for the current provision of services at Bargeddie post office and their wish to see them maintained.

The Government note that decisions relating to the location and provision of post office services in individual cases are an operational matter for Post Office Ltd and the Government have no role in them.

The Government note that Post Office Ltd has advised that there are no plans to change the current post office service provision or range of services provided at Bargeddie post office.

Post Offices (Clifton, Bristol)

Monday 22nd October 2012 Petitions

The Petition of residents of Bristol West constituency,

Declares that the Petitioners support the proposed reopening of the Clifton Mini Market post office.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, to make provision for post offices to be operated on a voluntary basis so that communities such as ours may gain an invaluable service.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.—[Presented by Stephen Williams, Official Report, 5 September 2012; Vol. 549, c. 353.]

[P001115]

Observations from the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills:

The Government note the views of the residents of Bristol West constituency in their calling for the reopening, on a voluntary basis, of Alma Vale post office, which closed in July 2008 under the Network Change Programme of the previous Government. Under the two closure programmes of the previous Government, 12 post offices closed in the Bristol West constituency.

The Government note that the implementation of the Network Change Programme was an operational matter for Post Office Ltd, and Ministers did not, and do not, play any role in decisions relating to individual post office branches. It is noted that there are currently 13 open post offices in Bristol West constituency, and the nearest branch to the site of the former Alma Vale branch is Cotham Hill post office, approximately 0.4 miles away.

The Government note that strict access criteria are in force which includes a requirement that 95% of the total urban population across the UK is to be within one mile of a post office outlet. The Government further note that Post Office Ltd is exceeding this target, with 99.1% of the urban population nationally living within one mile of a post office.

The Government note that customers from branches which closed under the Network Change Programme will by now have migrated to a number of neighbouring branches, increasing customer sessions and making these branches more sustainable and viable for the future. Post Office Ltd must take into account the potential effect on neighbouring branches when deciding whether to open or reopen a post office branch and will not do so if this would have an unacceptably adverse effect on nearby branches. The Government note that Post Office Ltd considers that reopening a branch at Alma Vale would threaten the viability of neighbouring branches.

Westminster Hall

Monday 22nd October 2012 Westminster Hall

Monday 22 October 2012

[Mr Philip Hollobone in the Chair]

Backbench Business

Monday 22nd October 2012 Westminster Hall

Children’s Cardiac Surgery (Glenfield)

Monday 22nd October 2012 Westminster Hall

16:30

[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the e-petition from Adam Tansey relating to children’s cardiac surgery at the East Midlands Congenital Heart Centre at Glenfield, Leicester.

Mr Hollobone, I welcome you to our proceedings and thank the Backbench Business Committee for agreeing to the debate this afternoon. Parliament can respond to issues of public concern quickly. More than 100,000 names —I think that the total is about 103,000 at the last count—appear on the e-petition that I have referred to.

The new Secretary of State for Health has responded in short order to the facts presented to him, and I thank him for that. In a letter sent by him today to the various councils that referred the Glenfield decision to him, he says that the Independent Reconfiguration Panel will now conduct a full review of the decision by the Safe and Sustainable review. That is most certainly to be welcomed. However, he also says that the IRP will not consider the decision taken by his predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley), to remove ECMO from Glenfield, as that decision was not taken by the joint committee of primary care trusts; I will say what ECMO means in a moment.

That last statement is illogical and certainly difficult to understand; we are surely entitled to assume that the previous Secretary of State made his decision on the basis of the recommendations from the Safe and Sustainable review. We need to find out, as an urgent priority, whether the new Secretary of State can reverse the decision on ECMO. As I am sure contributors to this debate will demonstrate, it would be sensible for him to do that and I look forward to receiving confirmation from my hon. Friend the Minister that that is going to happen. Cardiac services and an ECMO facility go hand in hand. We know that; I am sure that the Department for Health knows it, and I look forward to hearing in due course from my hon. Friend that she knows it, too.

I have had some intermittent contact over the years with the campaigners supporting the case for Glenfield’s ECMO and children’s cardiac units and I have visited the hospital on many occasions as the MP for Harborough, which is in south-east Leicestershire—most recently, when the additional facilities funded by the Thomas Cook travel company’s charitable foundation were formally opened in May this year. However, owing to the time and other constraints imposed on me as Her Majesty’s Solicitor-General, a post I held until last month, I have not been able to follow the development of the issues surrounding the Government’s reconfiguration of children’s heart services with as much attention to detail as I might have wished.

Now, what does ECMO mean? It stands for “extracorporeal membrane oxygenation”, and it is a highly technical, very clever and hugely successful medical means of recovering people who have both severe heart problems and severe respiratory problems. It might interest you to know, Mr Hollobone, that the only survivor of the house fire in Prestatyn at the weekend—the father of the household—is alive today only as a consequence of his being transported to the Glenfield ECMO unit, where he is under the treatment of Mr Giles Peek, one of the consultants there.

I am happy to report that, despite my absence from the battlefield, two other hon. Members from Leicestershire, my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) and the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), have been at the forefront of the campaign to bring this matter to the attention of the Government and the wider public. That is not to say that my hon. Friends the Members for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) and for Bosworth (David Tredinnick) have not played their part, nor that the Minister for the Armed Forces, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Mr Robathan), and the Minister at the Department for International Development, my right hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr Duncan)—colleagues who, unlike me, continue in Government—have not been working below the radar. Nor do I mean to suggest that my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Mr Dorrell), the Chairman of the Health Committee, has been a mere spectator—of course, he has not. All of us have been doing our best to ensure that the case for Glenfield is heard in the right quarters. That is also true of the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) and the hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth); despite their being respectively the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee and an Opposition Whip, they have played their part in this campaign.

We have an abundance of parliamentary talent in Leicestershire, but if any praise is due, it is due to my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough and the hon. Member for Leicester West, who have led the cross-party campaign—I stress that it is cross-party—to ensure that the case we are here to make has been, and continues to be, waged so effectively. The hon. Member for Leicester West is the constituency MP for Glenfield, but she is also the shadow Minister for Health, so she has a double reason for taking an interest in today’s proceedings. It goes without saying that she has been working very hard for her constituents, both human and institutional, in this regard, but she has been doing so in co-operation with my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough, who is now a Government Whip; my departure from the Government has been more than compensated for by my hon. Friend’s promotion.

However, by convention and practice that means that my hon. Friend is no longer able to speak in Parliament, either here in Westminster Hall or in the main Chamber of the House of Commons. Nevertheless, she is in her place this afternoon and I know that she will continue, as we all will, to support vigorously the medical and ancillary staff at the Glenfield hospital and the patients and their families who benefit from the services provided by those doctors, nurses, technicians, administrators and the many others connected to that great hospital, some of whom are with us in Westminster Hall today.

My constituents Dr Sanjiv Nichani, the senior consultant paediatrician at the Glenfield hospital, who specialises in children’s heart care, and Mr Giles Peek, the director of the paediatric and adult ECMO programme and a cardiothoracic consultant surgeon, have travelled here today to hear the debate and to speak to the Minister afterwards, all being well.

[Patrick Mercer (Newark) (Con)]

May I express my support for the comments of my hon. and learned Friend? As you, Mr Hollobone, and he both know, Newark has all sorts of problems with health care at the moment. Glenfield hospital is crucial to my constituency. I particularly draw the attention of my hon. and learned Friend to the comments by Mrs Pamela Durney, who owes so much to this crucial hospital for her children’s health.

[Sir Edward Garnier]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. His support demonstrates that the issue is not only for Leicestershire, but one that affects patients from right across the east midlands and, I would suggest, from well beyond the east midlands.

Before my hon. Friend the Minister feels a little surrounded, may I thank her for being here to respond to the debate? I also congratulate her, although she must be bored of hearing congratulations, on this first step in what will be a long and successful ministerial career; I say that not as a question but as a statement of fact, and on that basis I am sure that we have won the case. I have no doubt that her response to this debate will act as an accelerant to her progress and provide great hope to those of us who want to see the Glenfield hospital’s ability to save lives continue.

Let me read out part of a letter from some members of staff at the Glenfield hospital:

“As members of the East Midlands Congenital Heart Centre team, we feel that we have a responsibility to our patients to ensure that we make clear our intentions with regards to the implementation of the recommendation of the safe and sustainable review. We are not in a position to leave our homes and families, to move to Birmingham to work. As a team of (predominantly) women, we are (predominantly) second wage earners, with husbands, children and homes. The toll of this review on both our work and home lives has been immense. It has created uncertainty and confusion, as well as intense anxiety. The repeated mantra of the review team that it will all be ok ‘with the help of the EMCHC team’ is meaningless in that we have not even been consulted. Unfortunately, we have been placed in a position where to refuse to relocate is openly criticized as being obstructive by the review. This is not the case. Our patients remain our priority within our working life, yet we have a responsibility to our families which, when push comes to shove, will over ride this.”

They go on:

“This letter is in no way representing a threat. It is an open expression of our concerns, over another assumption made by the review team, and which places us in a position where we are forced to choose between our patients and our families. We are a group of dedicated professionals, who have worked hard to achieve the excellence that we have done. Our patients deserve the best, and we fear that the recommendations will not give them that, and we will be unable to be there to support them.”

In my view, that letter speaks for them all—from doctors through to cleaners—and I hope that the Secretary of State will not forget the work that employees of the national health service do at the Glenfield unit when he comes to decide how best to proceed.

It is proposed that the number of cardiac centres in England be reduced from 11 to seven, and thus they will all be working at full capacity. Can the Minister ensure that in the event of a superbug outbreak, for example, as happened at the Belfast neonatal unit this year, or of a fire, as happened at Birmingham hospital in 2010 and in Leicester in 2011, or of any other catastrophic event in one of the cardiac units under consideration, that the remaining six will be able to cope with the pressure without endangering the lives of the critically ill children and babies in their care?

Glenfield already takes patients not just from Leicestershire, but from across the east midlands, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) said. It also receives patients from Birmingham, Southampton, Northern Ireland and elsewhere in the United Kingdom—and even from Scandinavia and mainland Europe.

The Safe and Sustainable cardiac review for children in England has been under way for more than three and a half years. It proposes that the Glenfield unit be closed and its patients and neonatal and paediatric ECMO services be transferred to Birmingham. The Minister and the Secretary of State are, we now know, to revisit the medical and economic evidence that the review board has considered, but I look to them to make a different, better and more logical decision, based on the evidence that is there for all to see.

Four available options emerged from the review, and they were predicated not so much on the cost of providing children’s cardiac services—albeit that cost must play a significant part—as on their sustainability. I will not, for reasons of time, list the options or their components, but option A suggested that there should be seven surgical centres: at Glenfield, at Freeman hospital in Newcastle, at Alder Hey children’s hospital in Liverpool, at Birmingham children’s hospital, at Bristol royal hospital and at the two centres in London, each with four surgeons looking after a minimum of 400 children every year.

Following the public consultation between 1 March and 1 July this year, option A received the greatest support. The consultation was the largest ever public consultation within the national health service, with more than 75,000 respondents; nevertheless, that number is much smaller than the number of people who signed the e-petition that provoked this debate. Option A was supported by six of the 10 health regions in England. It is, at £22 million, the least expensive option—the next cheapest costs £44 million—and it has the added advantage of ensuring shorter travelling distances for families.

None of the four options is perfect or ideal, but the option that includes Glenfield satisfies many of the objective criteria that one would expect of a good solution—not least in respect of Glenfield’s nationally commissioned ECMO services. Given today’s letter from the Secretary of State, it is in that regard that our attention now needs to focus. Glenfield provides both cardiac and respiratory ECMO. Its national ECMO centre has been in operation since 1991, and it treats babies, children and adults from across the country and abroad.

ECMO is an invasive life-support system, which can be used on patients with severe respiratory or cardiac failure. It consists of removing blood from a patient, taking steps to prevent clots from forming in the blood, adding oxygen to the blood and pumping it artificially to support the lungs. There is an increased chance of survival of half as much again when a patient is treated in an ECMO centre rather than in a conventional intensive care unit. The Glenfield ECMO unit has the best results in the world, has more expertise and success than any other ECMO unit in the country and is the only such unit in the country to provide mobile ECMO. We have four national centres for ECMO, and the ideal scenario would be to maintain ECMO services in their current locations.

There is the fact that Glenfield’s ECMO unit was applauded by the national health service during the H1N1 crisis and that Glenfield’s ECMO survival rates are 20% higher than the United Kingdom average. Kenneth Palmer, director of the ECMO unit of the Karolinska university hospital in Stockholm and an international expert on ECMO treatment, wrote to my right hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire, the former Health Secretary, on 7 July, on learning about the proposal to shut the Glenfield unit:

“You will take over 20 years of experience from one of the world’s...best ECMO units and throw it away...to rebuild it in another place...You cannot move a unit, you can just destroy it and rebuild it with many years of decreasing survival rates and increasing morbidity”.

Mr Jim Fortenberry, paediatrician-in-chief of children’s health care in Atlanta, Georgia, also wrote to my right hon. Friend on 6 July:

“Glenfield has one of the finest ECMO programmes in the world and was the source of the recent CESAR trial, a landmark study that helped sort out the benefits of adult ECMO...The impact on care of attempting to move out this program in toto to another location would be devastating. ECMO is not merely the equipment, but the incredible collective expertise and institutional memory of its entire team”.

Glenfield has, over the years, built up a team of more than 80 ECMO specialists.

Dr Thomas Müller, ECMO co-ordinator at the university medical centre in Regensburg, Germany, wrote to my right hon. Friend on 9 July:

“Glenfield Hospital has won an excellent reputation for their expertise in paediatric and adult ECMO treatment and is deemed to be one of the world’s leading centres. The knowledge and experience of the staff in Glenfield probably is unmirrored in Europe and the US. To my knowledge, Glenfield treats the largest number of patients with severe cardiac and respiratory failure with ECMO worldwide...centres with less expertise certainly will experience a higher mortality. Therefore, in the interest of best patient care the decision to close down the most experienced centre of the UK is difficult to comprehend for somebody from abroad.”

Dr Leslie Hamilton, a cardiothoracic surgeon at the Freeman hospital in Newcastle, has also acknowledged that there is a risk in moving ECMO services from Glenfield.

Glenfield performs about 100 ECMO procedures a year, which accounts for 80% of the neonatal and paediatric activity in England and Wales. As I have mentioned, Glenfield also takes patients from other countries, including Scotland, Sweden, Finland and Ireland. The mortality rate at Glenfield is 20%, compared with 34% in the rest of the United Kingdom. Two additional surgeons have expressed an interest in going to work there. The centre is a popular place to work and can be made more “sustainable”—to use the jargon—with more surgeons and space.

In advancing the case for Glenfield, I do not need to denigrate the facilities and expertise of other hospitals. I see the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown) in the Chamber along with my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt), who no doubt represents the interests of the Birmingham children’s hospital. In advancing the case for the retention of the internationally acclaimed ECMO centre in Glenfield, I do not need to undermine the good work and dedication of cardiac and thoracic specialists elsewhere. I do not want to do that, and I would not have the time, even if I thought it a proper or sensible thing to do. It just so happens that Birmingham children’s hospital regularly refers patients to Glenfield. Why? Because unlike Birmingham, which conducts only cardiac ECMO, Glenfield does both cardiac and respiratory ECMO.

[Lorely Burt (Solihull) (LD)]

I fully endorse my hon. and learned Friend’s comments about Glenfield. Indeed, one of my youngest constituents, Yvie Beards, would probably not be here today were it not for Glenfield. However, does my hon. and learned Friend not agree that the type of expertise that we have in Leicester should be replicated in other parts of the United Kingdom? Although the Birmingham children’s hospital has one of the best child treatment centres, it could also contribute to that same level of care for children and others in the west midlands.

[Sir Edward Garnier]

I am sure that my hon. Friend is right, but we do not replicate what goes on in Glenfield by closing down Glenfield. If she and I are right about this, we need more Glenfields, not one fewer. We certainly do not need Glenfield itself to be closed.

Glenfield has this year opened a paediatric intensive care unit—a PICU—which will also become unviable as a result of losing paediatric cardiac surgery. Currently, 71% of those in the PICU are cardiac patients, so closing it down will no doubt affect the non-cardiac patients whom the unit treats. The loss of the ECMO service would also make the adult ECMO unit unviable. As of 18 October, option A is supported, on the e-petition, by about 103,000 signatories.

The Guardian, not necessarily a newspaper that a Conservative Member of Parliament leaps to quote from, pointed out on 28 April 2010:

“There has been a wealth of clinical evidence for many years that specialist clinical services, such as stroke, trauma and heart surgery, should be concentrated in fewer centres… Survival and recovery rates would improve markedly with many lives saved.”

The ECMO unit at Glenfield works: it helps children survive and, as we just learned from the Prestatyn case, it helps adults survive. The medical evidence shows that the ECMO unit works, and now it is up to the Secretary of State to understand that and let both the unit and the children it treats survive.

16:50

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone.

I pay tribute to the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) for securing this debate, and I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allowing us to hold it this afternoon.

The hon. and learned Gentleman, who is one of my parliamentary neighbours, spoke with typical eloquence, as is his wont, and I for one am disappointed that he no longer graces the Government Front Bench. The Front Bench’s loss is the Back Bench’s gain, and I thought that he spoke extremely well. I apologise in advance if I echo many of his points, but that indicates the cross-party support for the campaign. Although we are perhaps blessed in not having any Liberal Members in the east midlands, I am sure that, if we did, they, too, would support the campaign.

As I am sure that the Minister, who represents an east midlands seat, is aware, this issue has caused considerable concern, not only in my Leicester South constituency, but across the east midlands region. It is no surprise to those of us who have been involved in the campaign that the e-petition has hit 100,000 signatures, and I pay tribute to Adam Tansey, the father of Albert Tansey, who set up the e-petition.

There has been widespread opposition to the proposals from the Safe and Sustainable review and how they affect Leicester. The review recommended the closing of the children’s heart unit and the associated moving of Leicester’s world-class extracorporeal membrane oxygenation service to Birmingham. Local people have campaigned vigorously against the proposal, and I pay particular tribute to Ms Robyn Lotto—a constituent of mine who has magnificently led much of the local campaigning in recent weeks. We should also pay tribute to Glenfield’s staff, who are very concerned, as the hon. and learned Gentleman indicated when he read out the circular that we were all sent.

Many organisations in Leicester and beyond have spoken out. The vice-chancellor of Leicester university, Sir Bob Burgess, said:

“Glenfield is a leading international heart hospital where excellent clinical care takes place within a context of internationally significant research. I would therefore ask that the proposal to move the Glenfield services be reconsidered and this valuable facility retained for people of our region.”

The Bishop of Leicester, who I see observing us, said:

“It is not…clear that the movement to Birmingham will be straight forward… In fact I fear that the movement of these services will be harmful to the nation as a whole”.

As I have mentioned, politicians from all parties have come together on this campaign. Politicians on the Labour-dominated Leicester city council are working alongside politicians on the Conservative-dominated Leicestershire county council and on what I assume is the Conservative-dominated Lincolnshire county council, and they have all expressed their concern.

MPs on both sides of the Chamber are speaking up, and, as the hon. and learned Gentleman did, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), who in many ways has spearheaded the campaign from our side with her usual pizzazz, and to the hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan), who cannot speak in this debate because she is a Government Whip—fortunately for me, Opposition Whips can speak—but who I am sure would speak if parliamentary convention allowed.

I am, of course, pleased that the Secretary of State for Health has today announced that the independent committee will conduct a full review and report back at the end of February next year. Notwithstanding that welcome announcement, I want to make a number of points on which I hope the Minister can provide clarification.

On demand and capacity—I appreciate some of these points might be for the review committee, but it is important to get them on the record—genuine questions have been raised about the assumptions on demand and the capacity on offer at Birmingham that the joint committee of primary care trusts used. As I understand it, the national projections used by the review assume that demand will be flat, yet the most up-to-date data show demand increasing, because birth rates in the east midlands and west midlands are well above national averages. The projections of population trends used by the review team were based on data from 2006-07. Using those data would suggest a relatively stable work load rising to 3,990 cases in 2025, but, if the latest data on population expectations from the Office for National Statistics are used, the projected rise in surgical case loads hits 5,422 in 2025. Questions have also been raised about the likely patient flows, with clinicians suggesting that Sheffield and Doncaster have indicated a preference for Birmingham rather than Newcastle.

Given that extra surgery work, the movement of the ECMO provision, the increased population projections for the midlands and the worries about increased patient flows from south Yorkshire, I would be grateful to the Minister if she let us know whether the Department is confident that Birmingham has the capacity to meet what is clearly set to be considerably increased demand.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Anna Soubry)]

The hon. Gentleman knows, of course, that the Independent Reconfiguration Panel will no doubt consider all his points. As he knows, from the outset, this has been an independent process decided by clinicians. In those circumstances, I am sure that he will make it clear that I am in no position to answer any of his points, which must be addressed by the IRP. Does he agree with me on that?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

The Minister makes an important point. None the less, I still think that, even if it is not appropriate for her to respond, as I suggested might be the case, this is an appropriate forum to put some of those points on the record, and I will continue to do so. I entirely understand her position.

I have a couple of points to make on Leicester’s paediatric cardiac intensive care unit, which the hon. and learned Member for Harborough mentioned. There is concern about how the decision will affect the wider paediatric cardiac intensive care on offer in Leicester, with the potential closure of the unit at Glenfield increasing pressure on the other Leicester hospitals and, more generally, reducing the supply of paediatric intensive care across the east midlands and placing more demand on Birmingham. Again, that is an important point. If the Minister cannot respond, I hope that the committee at least will take it into account.

I want to focus on the ECMO service, as the hon. and learned Gentleman did, and as I suspect many other hon. Members will, too. As I said at the outset, I entirely welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement this morning, but—I will quote from the letter, as the hon. and learned Gentleman did—I am disappointed that he said:

“The decision of the SoS taken regarding the removal of the ECMO equipment”—

he uses the rather bland word “equipment,” but the decision is quite controversial, so describing it in that way is unfortunate—

“from Glenfield to Birmingham should not form part of the review as the decision was not taken by the Joint Committee of Primary Care Trusts.”

That is right, but as has been said, the two things go hand in hand.

I shall repeat some of the points that have already been made. The ECMO service at Glenfield is the longest-established and provides 80% of ECMO capacity nationally. Many of its staff have more than 20 years’ experience. Glenfield’s ECMO service has some of the very best mortality rates. The mortality rate for ECMO at Glenfield is 20%, but the national mortality rate is 50% higher. Will the Minister address the decision not to include ECMO in the review? Does she expect to be able to pick up an ECMO unit in one hospital, plonk it into another and find that the same expertise and mortality rates will transfer with it? As has been said, many international experts do not think so—certainly not in the short run. We have already heard about Kenneth Palmer, the expert ECMO adviser, who told BBC Radio Leicester:

“They could never have the same survival rate in another unit if you move it like this.”

He also said—I think that the hon. and learned Member for Harborough quoted this, and I will repeat it:

“Moving one unit to another place is the same as totally closing down and rebuilding from zero in the new place... I have been very clear…that you cannot move a unit; you can just destroy it and rebuild with many years of decreasing survival rate and increasing morbidity.”

In other words, he is concerned that lives will be lost.

Another international ECMO expert, Dr Thomas Müller, says that

“in the interest of best patient care the decision to close down the most experienced centre in the UK is difficult to comprehend.”

Jim Fortenberry, the chair of the ECMO leadership council in Atlanta, has already been quoted in the debate. He said on BBC Radio Leicester that the ECMO unit is

“considered one of the finest ECMO units”

and described it as a “real jewel”. When he was asked on the radio whether he thought lives would be lost he said:

“I do agree with that unfortunately, I think the risk is great”.

International experts are therefore deeply concerned about moving ECMO from Leicester to Birmingham. One of their concerns is that the institutional memory, built up over a generation by the team, will be lost. That is one reason why I find it slightly disappointing when the Secretary of State presents the matter as just moving equipment from Glenfield to Birmingham. We have already heard that many of the staff feel that they will not be able to move. I shall repeat the quotation from the letter that they sent us all, because it is worth focusing on:

“We are not in a position to leave our homes and families, to move to Birmingham to work. As a team of (predominantly) women, we are (predominantly) second wage earners, with husbands, children and homes.”

As I understand it, 13 nurses are required for one ECMO bed, so there are concerns about Birmingham’s ability in the short run to build and develop a dedicated team of expert staff similar that at Leicester.

Given that the review panel will not consider the ECMO decision, I should be grateful to the Minister if she shared her analysis, or the Department’s analysis, of the risk assessment of moving the ECMO facility. It has been suggested in past debates—indeed, if my memory serves me correctly, it was suggested in a useful meeting that we had with the previous Minister, now the Minister of State, Department for Transport, the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns)—that different experts had advised the Department and that they did not share the analysis of Mr Palmer and others. I apologise if my memory of that is slightly wrong, but if that is the case, perhaps the Department will agree to publish the evidence.

We have a campaign including an e-petition signed by 100,000 people—clinicians, staff and members of the public—who are deeply concerned about the proposal to move the ECMO unit. They accept the argument made by Mr Palmer and others. If the Department thinks that there is a different analysis to be considered, perhaps it will finally publish it, so that both sets of analysis can be properly scrutinised, and we can come to a considered opinion. That would reassure us on the point about mortality rates.

I would be interested in hearing the Minister justify the decision not to allow the IRP to consider the ECMO decision. Was not the decision to move ECMO taken and presented as a necessary consequence of the decision taken by the JCPCT in relation to the Safe and Sustainable review? Given that that was the context in which the ECMO decision was made, does it not seem odd that the review committee will not now consider the decision to move ECMO? If the justification is that there is a procedural argument that the various local authorities have asked the committee to consider the outcome of the Safe and Sustainable review and that ECMO was not part of that, fair enough, but it would leave a rather sour taste in the mouth of many campaigners who signed the petition. If that is the case, is there any way in which the ECMO decision can be reviewed? Can the Secretary of State consider reversing the decision of the previous Secretary of State? Many of us who are involved in this cross-party campaign would be grateful for guidance on that from the Minister. I am not sure whether the campaigners would feel pleased if, despite their winning the review, the ECMO unit were still to be shifted.

Many hon. Members want to speak, and because of the cross-party nature of the campaign, we are probably all making similar points, so I will conclude my remarks, but I encourage the Minister to focus on the point about ECMO. There is deep concern about it. People will be pleased about the review, but concerned that ECMO seems to have been excluded from it, and I hope that she can give us some reassurance.

17:05

[David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I offer many congratulations to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier), who very deservedly received a knighthood recently. I remind him that that is of course a tradition in his constituency, as his predecessor was also knighted. I served with Sir John Farr in my first Parliament, and he did so much for hosiery and knitwear in his constituency. I welcome my hon. Friend the Minister to the Front Bench. It is very nice to see her there.

It is clear from remarks that hon. Members have made that there is universal and cross-party support for retaining children’s services at Glenfield. One of the first decisions of the new Secretary of State for Health was to call the matter that we are debating in for review. That bodes well, because my right hon. Friend did so well with the Olympics that I believe he will do just as well as Secretary of State for Health. His decision shows his light touch. The fact that we now have a second chance to consider the issues, and the welcome arrival of a letter today, saying that the Independent Reconfiguration Panel will commence a full review and report not later than 28 February, is a huge relief for the county. My hon. Friend the Minister has already intervened to point out that she cannot second-guess what it will say, but the point of today’s debate is to give Leicestershire Members on both sides of the House an opportunity to show how concerned we are about the decision and to make some points about it.

I shall not repeat the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough or the hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth), who engagingly described my hon. Friend as learned; I think, Mr Hollobone, that we are not allowed to do that any more. Did not the reforms of the House say that we could not call—

[Sir Edward Garnier]

You can make an exception.

[David Tredinnick]

My hon. and learned Friend says I can make an exception for him, and I am delighted to do that.

The first point I want to make is that there is real concern that we are working on faulty statistics. The data used to make the decision were based on 2006-07. We need only consider the recent publication of the census in London to see the huge increase that there has been in population. There are shifting populations, and there is concern that the analysis is fundamentally flawed. It is not only my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health who has had to consider flawed data recently. What about the west coast main line, whereby we found we were operating with completely inaccurate information? The right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown) nods his head. This can happen in Departments, and we must take note of it.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough and the hon. Member for Leicester South have addressed the issue of the ECMO link. To most reasonable people, it seems absurd that the two decisions will not be linked. I am sure that there are legal arguments, but somehow we must get a sensible decision so that both issues can be considered together.

The next point concerns the site of Glenfield. Glenfield is a hugely popular hospital not just with patients, but with surgeons. From, one might say, a feng shui point of view, it is on top of a hill outside the city, and it has a good, clean, clear energy. That is why everybody likes working there: it is nicer for everybody than the Birmingham site, as is proven, I would suggest, by a survey showing that only 2% of the staff in Glenfield want to move to Birmingham. It is not just BBC current affairs programmes that are jumpy about moving out of their current locations, as there is a real problem with the decision to move from Glenfield to Birmingham, as the hon. Member for Leicester South said. The body of knowledge built up over 20 years will dissipate, because many of the people who work at Glenfield simply will not move.

My next point involves the increased pressure on Birmingham, which has been referred to. Can Birmingham deal with it? Somewhere in the briefing papers is a point about Bristol. What happens if something goes wrong at Bristol and patients are moved around? My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough made the point about the terrible tragedy in Wales, during which patients have been brought to Glenfield. Is it wise to concentrate all the resources in the midlands in one centre? I wonder whether it is.

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

Birmingham is already having to send patients to Glenfield because it cannot cope with the numbers. Does my hon. Friend not agree that it seems silly to close such a popular centre? As he said, there will be a knock-on effect if other centres close, but patients are already being sent from Birmingham to Glenfield, and children are being sent to different hospitals because there is no room at Birmingham. It seems absolutely crazy that my constituents cannot continue to use the Glenfield hospital, where so much expertise has been created over a number of years.

[David Tredinnick]

I agree absolutely with my hon. Friend, who makes another valid point.

I will not detain the House for long, as other hon. Members want to speak, but I want to make two more points. I have had letters from all over my constituency from people who have benefited from Glenfield. Let us think for a moment. Who put the money into the unit in the first place? Was it all Government money? No, it was not. A lot of charities in Leicestershire have raised money to support the unit. What about their efforts? How will they feel, having struggled over the years to provide a superb local service? It will be a great injustice if that money is dissipated in a reorganisation.

I am delighted to see my hon. Friend the Minister in her place, and I congratulate my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough and all the other Leicestershire Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) and the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), across the Floor, who has worked on the issue. I say to my hon. Friend the Minister that this is a critical problem. Please help us.

17:13

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I welcome my hon. Friend the Minister to her post and congratulate my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) on securing this important debate.

As the Member for North West Leicestershire, I speak for a constituency roughly equidistant, in distance and travel time, from the Glenfield site and the Birmingham children’s hospital site. For my constituents, there is nothing to choose between the two, so I have a position of relative impartiality. I am interested in patient outcomes.

I recently toured the congenital heart centre at Glenfield, and two main concerns from the report were raised with me. The first was the issue of capacity and demand, which was raised by the hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (David Tredinnick). The figures given by the Department of Health were queried. It has been calculated that Birmingham children’s hospital will be expected to deal with 611 cases a year. However, clinical teams have suggested that it could be 900 to 1,000 procedures a year. Birmingham children’s hospital, having done its own modelling, expects the number of procedures to be more than 900.

I understand that senior commissioners acknowledge that the number is likely to be significantly higher than the figure of 611 used in the review, as does Sir Roger Boyle, the recently retired cardiac tsar, who initiated the project. The calculations demonstrating that the closure was a safe and sustainable option for the midlands, which considered travel, access, quality, deliverability, sustainability and affordability, were based on 611 operations, not 900 or 1,000. Doctors at Glenfield doubt very much that Birmingham children’s hospital has the capacity to handle that volume of work. In addition, Birmingham children’s hospital has stated that it wishes to move to a new site within 10 years, as it has already reached the limit of what can be achieved in the space that it has. Based on that, I would like the points that I have raised to be addressed to ensure that the Safe and Sustainable exercise was carried out using the correct data.

I turn to extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO, a life support service currently delivered at Glenfield. There is a strong argument that the value of the service has not been fully appreciated throughout the review. Glenfield pioneered ECMO treatment in the UK and delivers education, training and clinical support to other ECMO centres in the UK and abroad. Survival after ECMO treatment in the Glenfield unit is far more likely than in other UK and international centres—that is, more children survive.

Several concerns have been raised with me about the Safe and Sustainable process for assessing the risks and practicalities of moving the service. I understand that only two experts were consulted about moving ECMO, and that the Swedish ECMO expert Kenneth Palmer, of the Karolinska Institute, has publicly expressed his anger at how his views have been used to justify the move from Glenfield, and has withdrawn his support for the process. Another issue is how a Sea King helicopter carrying a patient might land in central Birmingham. Glenfield can handle that, because it designed a system to accommodate it. Although the use of a Sea King helicopter is rare, we have heard that when they are used, as in the recent fire in Wales, they are life-savers. I would welcome a further review of the matter.

I remain concerned that Birmingham children’s hospital will not see ECMO as a strategic priority and might contemplate splitting the service among other providers, which would defeat the principles of the Safe and Sustainable review and put at risk the world-class results that we are achieving. The review’s aim is to concentrate expertise and deliver more positive outcomes. However, there are no plans for any other ECMO provider, including Birmingham children’s hospital, to use what my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough termed the mobile retrieval service. That goes against the principle of the whole review.

The mobile retrieval service that Glenfield provides is a fundamental aspect of the service, and it partly explains why Glenfield produces so many positive outcomes. Its team travel by ambulance to the hospital where the sick child is located, taking all the necessary kit with them to start ECMO treatment. ECMO is then started on site and continued in the ambulance on the way back to Glenfield, ensuring that children receive the treatment as soon as possible at a time when their life expectancy without treatment might be measured in hours rather than days, and avoiding a much riskier ambulance journey on a simple ventilator. If that aspect of the service is not taken up by others in Glenfield’s absence, there is a danger that fewer children will survive horrific illnesses.

Will the Minister clarify the level of scrutiny of the results achieved at Glenfield and Birmingham children’s hospital? Since the decision was made, the unit has stated that it invited various members of the Safe and Sustainable review to Glenfield to show them the results of the past 10 years, which, it believes, demonstrate the success of its service. It has no record of that data being shared previously, and I would welcome clarification on what data were looked at during the initial review process.

A significant concern, highlighted by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough and the hon. Member for Leicester South, is the fact that it cannot be assumed that the staff who deliver the service at Glenfield will relocate to Birmingham. Many live east of Leicester and will find the commute to Birmingham unviable. I understand from Glenfield hospital’s own surveys that a number of staff have indicated that they are unwilling to move to the new unit.

There is also concern regarding the air of uncertainty that surrounds these units. Once a unit is earmarked for closure, the most able and gifted personnel quickly find jobs in other areas. That puts the process under great strain and leads to a rise in mortality rates. I hope the Minister gets on with this review as quickly as possible, so that we have a rapid resolution and can provide some reassurance to staff to ensure that we keep the service at its superb, world-class level.

We need to ensure that the conclusions of the Safe and Sustainable review are safe and sustainable—not only for the remaining structure of the NHS, but for my constituents in North West Leicestershire and all constituents in Leicester, Leicestershire, the east midlands and the midlands as a whole. I hope the Minister will take account of that.

17:21

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

It is a pleasure once again to take part in a debate under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I join other hon. Members in congratulating my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) on securing the debate.

I feel like something of an intruder, coming from the remote parts of Lincolnshire to this east midlands event. I rise to speak because many of my constituents’ children and grandchildren have received treatment at Glenfield and Leeds, and I have campaigned with my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) for the retention of the Leeds unit. We have centres of excellence and we want to retain them. My constituency is at the end of the line and somewhat remote, so the geography of where people receive life-or-death treatment is of particular concern. We joined the campaign for the Leeds unit and heard from parents how the distance to the life-saving unit has made a big difference. Cleethorpes is 80 miles from Leeds and 90 miles from Leicester.

The alternatives suggested to my constituents—in Newcastle—have been a significant factor in the opposition to the proposed changes. We already feel remote and out of it. I do not want to be frivolous, but if, for example, some of my constituents were involved in an accident, Humberside police would attend and summon an ambulance from the east midlands, which would then take them to Grimsby hospital, which is administered by the Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. All these factors give people a sense of unease, and a sense that they are at the end of the line and do not matter. It is essential that we ensure that services are as close as possible to the people.

Parents will go to the ends of the earth to take their children to emergency treatment, but as a national health service we have to ensure that services are, wherever possible, as close as possible to the centres of population. We need to bear in mind the need to have centres of excellence, which, as the clinicians constantly tell us, means more and more concentration, but remoteness will mean that these proposals are unlikely to be achieved.

[Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an important point. The Safe and Sustainable review found, from its own independent advice, that patients in his constituency would not travel to the units that would be kept open under the proposals.

[Martin Vickers]

My hon. Friend is right. I think it was proposed that the likely number of operations taking place in Newcastle would be 403. That will not be achieved, because people in Cleethorpes and northern Lincolnshire will not travel to Newcastle; they will look for alternatives. With doubts being cast on the centre at Birmingham, inevitably, if Leeds and Glenfield closed, people would gravitate south rather than towards Newcastle.

We have heard expressions of concern about the process of consultation, and there is no doubt that the view that the consultation was flawed is widespread. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey drew attention to that in an Adjournment debate a few weeks ago. I appreciate that the Minister said, in an intervention, that the review was by clinicians. The problem is that clinicians always tend to want to gather together in more and bigger centres of excellence, and our constituents want as local a service as possible.

I hope that when the Minister and the Secretary of State make their decision they will consider other aspects. The expertise of the professionals is important, but access to services is also important. The last thing that people want is a decision that comes from a review by people they do not know and about whom they are doubtful—expert opinion—at the best of times. They want the Secretary of State to weigh up all the factors, not just the expertise. Parents and grandparents of children who have received treatment from these units know, from personal experience, the care and attention that they provide, and they fear being shunted away.

We have centres of excellence. Please, Minister, do not rubber stamp a review that wants to close them. Consider, first of all, the children who are treated by these centres.

17:28

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone, and to follow such excellent speeches from hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber. I rise to speak both as the shadow Health Minister and as the Member of Parliament for Leicester West. My constituency is extremely fortunate to include Glenfield hospital. I welcome the members of staff who have taken time out from their busy jobs and travelled a great distance to attend the debate, and I thank them for doing so.

The future of children’s heart surgery matters greatly to the thousands of people who signed the e-petition that has made today’s debate possible. I thank the Backbench Business Committee and the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) for securing the debate. The issue also matters to thousands of families right across the country, which is why my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown) and the hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) have attended this afternoon.

The issue of children’s heart surgery has needed to be resolved for many years. Following the findings of the Bristol royal infirmary inquiry 10 years ago, clinicians and professional bodies, including the Royal College of Nursing and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, have been very clear that children’s heart services need to change.

The problem is that services in England have grown up ad hoc and are too thinly spread across the country for every child to get the best possible standards of care. That is why the previous Government initiated the Safe and Sustainable review and why we continue to support the principle of fewer, more specialist centres for children’s heart surgery.

The issue is whether the Safe and Sustainable review has fully considered all the relevant clinical evidence in making its recommendations. The review has failed fully to consider the clinical implications of moving services from Glenfield, particularly the children’s ECMO service. I fear that that mistake is about to be repeated, because the new review being conducted by the Independent Reconfiguration Panel, which we learned about earlier today, will not include discussion of the former Secretary of State’s decision to sign off moving children’s ECMO services from Glenfield to Birmingham.

The two things cannot be separated and are inextricably linked: what happens to the children’s heart surgery happens to ECMO services. It is important to remember that any decisions about nationally commissioned specialist services, such as ECMO, must be signed off by the Secretary of State. I assume that the former Secretary of State made that decision only because of the recommendations of the Safe and Sustainable review, so we need to ensure that any review of those recommendations looks at both ECMO and children’s surgery.

At the risk of repeating the many eloquent speeches that we have heard, Leicester has one of the largest ECMO units in the world and it has long experience, having started in 1989. Glenfield has built up a team of more than 80 ECMO specialists. It is the only unit in the UK that can treat all age groups, which was critical during the H1N1 flu pandemic, because Leicester was able to flex its service to treat up to 10 adults simultaneously while training people working in other adult centres and co-ordinating the national service, triaging all the patients and providing the majority of the patient transport.

[David Tredinnick]

Will the hon. Lady dwell on the mobile service, because that is often a last-hope service for patients? I am informed that, without the mobile service, some patients would not survive.

[Liz Kendall]

The hon. Gentleman has predicted my next sentence. Leicester is also the only unit in England and Wales to provide a mobile ECMO service for babies and children. Once again, it is difficult, if not impossible, to separate the adult ECMO service from the children’s ECMO services. The two are linked. It is not just about equipment; it is about staff and teams working and learning together.

I do not want to denigrate any hospital’s work, but I understand that Birmingham has neither the capacity to continue the mobile ECMO service nor any plans to develop a mobile ECMO service for children. That is a serious cause for concern and something that the Independent Reconfiguration Panel must consider.

Hon. Members have already talked about the outcomes for ECMO patients at Glenfield being significantly better than elsewhere. This is not anecdotal opinion, but clinically audited, peer-reviewed evidence that has come from the very best clinical databases available in this country and internationally. Independently validated data from the UK paediatric intensive care unit database, or PICANet, show that survival rates are at least 50% higher in Leicester. That difference in mortality is maintained even when the severity of illness treated by Glenfield is taken into account.

Data from the best available international register, provided by the Extracorporeal Life Support Organisation, support the evidence of good outcomes in Leicester and show that crude mortality rates in Leicester are 19%, but nearly twice as high in other centres, at 35%. Both those independent, validated data sources show the high quality of ECMO care provided at Leicester and bring into sharp focus the risks of closing Glenfield’s children’s ECMO service.

A service cannot simply be picked up and moved to another city without losing vital skills and expertise. It takes years to build up the quality of care to the same level. Interestingly, the Safe and Sustainable review explicitly addresses the time it takes to build up the quality of care in relation to children’s heart surgery. It says that

“clinical outcomes improve with experience”,

due to factors such as team working, as well as the experience of individual clinicians. The review says that this is a

“statistically significant observation in keeping with analysis which demonstrates historically, an 8 - 10 year period of time before such a service matures to produce excellent clinical outcomes”.

If that is so in relation to children’s heart surgery services, it also pertains to children’s ECMO services.

It was unfortunate that, in his letter to the chair of the Independent Reconfiguration Panel, the Secretary of State referred simply to moving the equipment of the ECMO service. It is not just equipment; it is about staff. It is clear that the majority of staff at Glenfield will be unable to move due to family commitments. Many of the nurses there have homes, families and children, and they may be second earners. A family cannot simply be uprooted and moved. Indeed, an anonymised survey of all staff at the unit found that 80% are “not at all likely” to move to Birmingham. Significantly, none of the ECMO specialists who replied to the survey were able to consider working in Birmingham.

I am concerned that the Safe and Sustainable review has not considered the evidence about ECMO in sufficient detail. The review panel took advice about the future of ECMO services from the Advisory Group for National Specialised Services. There was no representative from any UK or international professional ECMO body on the advisory group, so it commissioned a report from ECMO experts, including Dr Kenneth Palmer, director of the ECMO unit at Karolinska university, whom several hon. Members have mentioned.

Following that report, the advisory group said that it would be “possible” to move Glenfield’s children’s ECMO service. However, the question is not whether it is possible, but whether it is desirable and whether it makes sense to move one of the best-performing services—if not the best, not just in this country but in Europe and internationally. That would not be considered in respect of children’s heart surgery services, so why consider that for ECMO?

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

Mr Hollobone, I apologise for not being able to follow the whole debate; I am participating in the debate on Hillsborough.

A number of hon. Members from all parties have praised the work of the campaigners. Our best evidence that the facilities work comes from people such as Ria Pahwa, the young girl from Rushey Mead in my constituency, who had seven operations in Glenfield and who has been an essential part of this campaign. If we are looking for evidence that the facilities need to stay in Leicestershire, the evidence is in the campaigners themselves.

[Liz Kendall]

We have all met many children, some of whom are now adults, and families who have received excellent care and support. It is important that we put their views forward strongly and that the best peer-reviewed and validated clinical evidence is considered in the new review.

As many hon. Members have said, Dr Palmer wrote to the former Secretary of State saying that he sharply opposes the use of his name for the proposed transfer of services from Leicester to Birmingham. A similar view is taken by leading international ECMO experts from the Extracorporeal Life Support Organisation, which also wrote to the former Secretary of State:

“We are united in our dismay. We are united in our dismay at the proposed move of ECMO services from the Glenfield programme in Leicester to elsewhere…The Glenfield program is clearly and objectively recognised as one of the finest ECMO programs in the world. Movement of an established unit such as Glenfield in the manner described will have profound negative consequences on the outcomes of patients needing ECMO. This move…is one clearly likely to produce results that will have a human toll in increased deaths.”

That is why the specific evidence on ECMO must be fully considered, including by the new review.

An issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) and several other hon. Members must also be considered by the new Independent Reconfiguration Panel: whether the assumptions about the level of cases remain based on the best available evidence. The Safe and Sustainable review looked at surgical activity data from the central cardiac audit database for 2002 to 2006—the latest evidence available at the time—which suggest that the number of cases for heart surgery would remain roughly stable over the next 20 years. New validated data, however, are now available for three more years—to 2010—showing a consistent rise in activity, suggesting that adult and paediatric activity will each increase by approximately 75 cases per year.

We also have new evidence from the Office for National Statistics about population growth, which comes from data published in October last year and indicates that there will be substantial increases in the number of nought to four-year-olds, in particular in the east midlands, the east of England and London. That causes real concern about whether Birmingham will be able to cope with all the extra cases that it will receive.

Birmingham’s case load will also increase because of the closure of Northern Ireland’s children’s heart surgery services. The Safe and Sustainable review reports an all-Ireland framework, with Northern Ireland cases going to Dublin, but that will take several years to establish and, in the meantime, a significant and increasing number of babies will continue to travel to Birmingham.

The Birmingham children’s hospital itself is concerned about whether it has the capacity to cope with all the extra cases that it will receive from a closing Glenfield, from the likely increase in surgical activity, from the increase in population, in particular among the nought to fours, and from the increase in cases coming from Northern Ireland. The hospital, I understand, has analysed the case load and produced an internal paper concluding that it would have to perform 1,000 cases a year, which is at the very limit of what the Safe and Sustainable review panel reported as a safe number for cases to be treated. I urge the IRP—rather than the Minister, if she cannot do anything—to look at whether that paper has been written and to assess all such evidence in its review.

Finally, like the previous Government, this Government rightly want changes to children’s heart surgery services so that they provide not only safe standards of care, but excellent, high-quality standards for every child in every part of the country. Just as they want that for children’s heart surgery services, they must want that for children’s ECMO services. It is not good enough to say that it is possible to move a service; we want to know whether it is desirable to move a service to get the very best outcomes.

Glenfield survival rates are 50% higher than any other unit’s in this country and internationally. It will take at least five and probably up to 10 years to redevelop the same quality of service. No one would take the best service in the country for children’s heart surgery and close and move it, so no one should do that for ECMO either.

The issue is of concern to my constituents and those of hon. Members from throughout the east midlands, and to families everywhere in the country. Such people include Clare Johnson, a constituent of my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson). She contacted my right hon. Friend to tell him about the experience of her son, Michael. Michael was born in July last year with severe meconium aspiration, which means that his lungs fill with a substance that makes it very difficult to breathe. His lungs haemorrhaged and his heart failed. The paediatric mobile ECMO service from Leicester came to collect him and transferred him to Glenfield. He was on the ECMO machine 24 hours a day for four days; when he came off it, his heart and lungs were working for themselves. Ms Johnson said:

“As soon as the team arrived to prepare him for transfer, their evident skill and professionalism gave us that very first glimmer of hope…The care we received was second to none.”

Ms Johnson also said that:

“although I am not the best person to point out facts and figures, I cannot help but pore over the evidence available and the main thing that strikes me is the ECMO survival rate”,

which is so much better. She said:

“Glenfield is the only unit to offer Mobile ECMO”—

the very service to save her son—and concludes:

“I understand that I probably sound like a Mother who is just wanting to support the unit who saved her baby’s life”

but:

“My beautiful baby boy Michael Martin Johnson died at 10.40 pm, 8 days after his birth and 3 hours after being transferred back to Hull from Leicester. He had a reaction to some medication he was given and died very suddenly and unexpectedly of a severe gastric perforation. A successful result will not bring my son back. But it WILL prevent other mothers from losing their child, as that IS the ultimate and inevitable result that stopping ECMO at Glenfield will have.”

Clare Johnson makes the case far more eloquently than I ever could. I hope that the IRP looks properly at Glenfield’s ECMO service and at the real benefits that it brings. The Minister has rightly said it is up to the IRP to consider the evidence, but it was the new Secretary of State who decided not to include ECMO as part of the review—that is what he says in his letter today—and that is a mistake, because the two services need to be looked at together. I ask the Minister to explain why the Secretary of State has explicitly excluded ECMO from the new review. That is the wrong decision and I hope that it will be changed.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

After the Minister has spoken, I will call Sir Edward Garnier to wind up the debate.

17:47

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Anna Soubry)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) on securing the debate and other Members on all the contributions that we have heard. I pay tribute to all Members who have attended today, as well as those who have spoken. My hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) attended the debate but, unusually perhaps, has not made a speech, although we have not been discussing the hospital for which he has campaigned so hard.

I pay tribute to all Members who have spoken in numerous debates in the House, written letters to Ministers, met and conferred with local groups and experts and spoken at length to their ordinary constituents. As a result, we have heard a moving story from the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) about the services offered at Glenfield, and there are many more stories to be told about children’s heart services centres throughout England. All such Members have campaigned locally to have decisions overturned or reviewed in some way, or to ensure that the right decisions have been made on the right basis. They have brought such arguments and their campaigns to the House, as they should do, because each of them is doing their job as a first-class, local constituency MP by bringing important issues to this place.

I also pay tribute to great cross-party work, which my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough mentioned, both in Parliament and locally. Forgive me for speaking not only as a Minister but with my other cap on as the Member of Parliament for Broxtowe. On my local television service, I have seen and witnessed such cross-party work, which is to be commended; such issues are not party political and certainly nothing to do with any alleged cuts. This is about how we ensure that our children and babies get the very best heart surgery services that we can give them.

I must pick out my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) and the hon. Member for Leicester West, who together have spearheaded the campaign, but I also pay tribute to all the work and effort of the hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth), who joined them at the meetings. Everyone involved in the process up to the decision of the joint committee of primary care trusts has been motivated by the very highest of intentions to ensure that our children and babies receive the very finest heart surgery services that we can provide, and that those services are sustainable.

I will deal with as many of the points that have been raised today as I can. As I said at the outset, hon. Members should make and have made their points so that they can be recorded—not just so that their constituents can see how they have advanced the argument, but so that those who, in turn, must look at the decisions that have been made and consider the arguments can see how important these matters are, because they have been raised in Parliament by local Members.

I turn to what has happened today and what is, in some respects, the nub of the debate, which has been very good. As many hon. Members know, councils have a right to challenge the JCPCT’s decision, and today the Secretary of State has agreed that the Independent Reconfiguration Panel should conduct a full review. I will come to what that means in a moment. He has asked the panel to report back by the end of February—my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) was worried about the time factor—or, and this may concern my hon. Friend, after conclusion of the legal proceedings brought by a Leeds-based charity, which may delay things, although I hope not.

The review will consider whether the proposals for change under the Safe and Sustainable review of children’s congenital heart services will enable the provision of safe, sustainable and accessible services, and if not, why not. The panel’s review will also be able to consider how the JCPCT made its decisions and—hon. Members may think that this is the most important point—the implications of those decisions for other services.

The Independent Reconfiguration Panel today received instruction from the Secretary of State and will now begin to consider how to constitute its review. It is, of course, a matter for the panel to decide how to conduct that review. It is an independent body, but I make it clear that it will look at all the decisions and—for many hon. Members this is most important—at the implications of those decisions, which includes the implications for the unit at Glenfield.

[Stuart Andrew]

rose—

[Liz Kendall]

rose—

[Anna Soubry]

I shall give way to my right hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey, then to the hon. Member for Leicester West.

[Stuart Andrew]

I thank my hon. Friend for the promotion. I am grateful that there has also been cross-party support in the campaign to keep the unit in Leeds open. I want absolute clarification on the IRP. Will she assure me that it will consider the whole decision-making process, including the initial assessments and all the data that were submitted? That is where many of us believe there to be inaccuracies, which have brought about the wrong decision.

[Anna Soubry]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. It will be for the IRP to decide the full extent of its review of all the decisions that have been made, but the points that he has made here and in various letters will no doubt be put to it for consideration. I am told that, so far, it has not had a formal request from Leeds city council’s overview and scrutiny committee, and perhaps he can prevail on the committee to make that submission as a matter of urgency, so that we can all be absolutely sure that the review will be concluded by the end of February, and that there will be as few delays as possible.

[Liz Kendall]

The Secretary of State’s letter today says that his decision regarding removal of ECMO from Glenfield to Birmingham should not form part of the review. Is the Minister saying that the IRP will not look at the Secretary of State’s decision, but that it can look at ECMO services, although not at what he said? I am afraid that that is still unclear.

[Anna Soubry]

I am grateful for that intervention. I will explain why the Secretary of State has not been able to review the previous Secretary of State’s decision in this way. However, I am making it clear that the IRP will look at the implications of the decisions, and I will shortly turn to why the previous Secretary of State’s decision is not part of the process. I will then answer some of the specific points that have been raised by the hon. Member for Leicester South, but I want to finish dealing with the IRP.

More generally, in undertaking its review—this may assist my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey—the IRP will interview and take evidence from a number of parties, including, but not limited to, NHS organisations, local authorities and local Members of Parliament. That will normally include evidence used in developing recommendations and proposals, taking decisions and national guidance.

I turn to the specific point about why the decision to move the children’s ECMO services over to Birmingham from Glenfield is not part of the review, or at least part of today’s decisions. Decisions about ECMO for children at Leicester being moved to Birmingham follow from the decision to transfer heart surgery to Birmingham. In other words, it was a consequence of the JCPCT’s decision. Children’s ECMO services are a nationally commissioned service, so the decision was taken by the Secretary of State, not the JCPCT. The Secretary of State made his decision based on the Advisory Group for National Specialised Services. To be clear, the JCPCT having made the decision, AGNSS then looked at the children’s ECMO services at Leicester and recommended to the Secretary of State that, in light of the JCPCT’s decision, those services should also be transferred to Birmingham.

I want to make it clear that it is unfortunate that the word “equipment” has been used. I am more than aware that the matter involves considerably more than pieces of equipment at Glenfield, and I pay full tribute to the team who work there, and indeed to the children’s heart surgery team there and to every team throughout the country. It is important to make it clear that no one is saying that a good service is not being provided, or that a service is bad or poor. The issue is all about ensuring that we get the very best service in fewer but bigger centres.

[David Tredinnick]

The Minister said that the issue is all about patients getting the best service, but I take her back to the point about the mobile service, which has been the subject of the thoughts of various hon. Members. Is there any way we can ensure that that aspect of the service is fully considered? If Birmingham will not commit to providing a mobile service, it is crystal clear that a number of patients will suffer.

[Anna Soubry]

I am grateful for that intervention. It may be argued that that is one of the implications of the JCPCT’s decisions. The children’s ECMO services at Leicester are being been moved over to Birmingham. That is an implication of that decision. Another implication is that there are concerns about the mobile unit for children’s ECMO as well.

The previous Secretary of State accepted the recommendations of AGNSS—the advisory group for national specialist services—and it is that information to which the hon. Member for Leicester South referred when he told us about his meetings with the then Minister, now the Minister of State, Department for Transport, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns). The recommendations of AGNSS are made to the Secretary of State, on, as I understand it, a confidential basis. It is not normal for them to be disclosed, but the previous Secretary of State made his decision based on the advice of that service.

The question, as it has been rightly put today, is whether there is any challenge now to that decision. I am told that that is for the Secretary of State; he can, in exceptional circumstances, revisit that decision if those exceptional circumstances are made out. If the IRP wants another full review of all that has happened—it effectively calls into question the whole process, and so on—it obviously flows from that that the ECMO children’s service at Leicester must be retained in that event, because it flows from the JCPCT’s decision about where to have the specialist children’s heart services. In any case, if there is some other new or exceptional evidence that can be placed before the Secretary of State, or that he is aware of, he may be able to look again at the decision that was made by the previous Secretary of State. I hope that that is of some help. I can go no further and give no more detail, except, safe to say, that I am told that that is a rare and unusual event.

I remind everyone, as I conclude my remarks, what led to the review, the recommendations and the decisions. Concern about children’s heart services began a long time ago as a result of serious incidents in Bristol back in the 1990s. For some 15 years, therefore, it has been accepted, almost by everyone, that children’s heart surgeries were of great concern. National patient groups all agreed that what was needed was to ensure that we had surgeons, nurses and other health professionals based in larger, but fewer, specialised centres. That is why, as the hon. Member for Leicester West has identified, the previous Government set up the review. In many ways, it took courage to do so, because there had been a lot of talk about the issue but not much action. Everyone agreed absolutely that reducing the number of centres was necessary, so that we would have bigger numbers of surgeons, nurses and other specialists, and that the service could be better, but in fewer units. Therefore, to put it crudely, somebody was always going to lose out.

Although I have listened with great care to the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), this is an example in which we do not want a greater number of smaller units; it is a good example of where we want fewer, but much bigger units. It is perhaps worth remembering that children’s heart surgery has advanced considerably over the years, so that surgeons now operate on children who are often only two days old, with hearts the size of walnuts. It is argued that that is the most specialist, delicate and difficult of all surgery.

It is not surprising, given the service’s nature—the fact that it is for children and babies—that so many people who have experienced what Glenfield provides speak with such passion about it, and why they are so concerned about its future. That, too, goes for other places that have been told their facilities will be moved away—for example, from Leeds up to Newcastle. I pay tribute to all who have gone to the trouble of signing the e-petition in support of Glenfield. I can speak about the great campaign that was organised, having attended a Leicester Tigers rugby match some time last year; every seat had a leaflet on it and an event was organised in support of Glenfield. Other places, too, have organised campaigns, and rightly so. It is an indication of the passion and loyalty that such services engender in people.

There has, however, been a long process. There has been an independent review, aimed at ensuring that our children are operated on safely and given the very best services. As a result, tough decisions have been taken by the JCPCT. It has done that independently, and with considerable support from clinicians, royal colleges and many eminent bodies, as well as others who have spoken out in favour the proposals. However, today’s decision by the Secretary of State is to be welcomed. Everybody can now be assured that there will be an independent review of the decision—I stress the word “independent”. I have also made my observations about the possibility, if there is new evidence in exceptional circumstances, that the previous Secretary of State’s decision about the future of children’s ECMO at Glenfield may also be considered.

I hope that that will give some reassurance to hon. Members who have attended the debate. All their comments are listened to by both the Department and me. It is to be hoped that the review will be thorough, as I am sure that it will be, and swift; it will be concluded by the end of February.

18:07

[Sir Edward Garnier]

I thank everyone who has contributed to the debate—whether the Minister, the Opposition Front Bencher or Back Benchers. It has been thoroughly useful, informed and informative, and I am grateful to everyone who has assisted in the process.

On the process, I suspect that my hon. Friend the Minister was tiptoeing around the issue, not wishing to trespass across a difficult line, but it is important not to confuse process with what we are sent here to do as Members of Parliament and as Ministers, which is not to confuse the substance with the means by which we make decisions. Our constituents expect us, as elected politicians, to come here and speak for them and say things that may be disobliging to those who hold the levers of power—and that is what we have done.

I know that the Minister is concerned—of course, she should be—that anything she says might be taken as ammunition that would fuel someone’s thoughts about a judicial review of a decision made by a previous Secretary of State, and I do not want to push her in any direction that might cause her that problem. None the less, we all know what lies behind her careful words. At least I do—I am sure that many others do as well—and I am entitled, as she is not, to rip away that veil and get to the heart of this question: what is to happen to the ECMO services, both adult and children’s, at the Glenfield centre, and what is to happen to the cardiac services for children at Glenfield? As has been agreed across the Chamber this afternoon, those are inextricably linked questions.

The House does itself no great service if it shilly-shallies around process and avoids the question. As Members of Parliament, we must ensure that the question is put. The question this afternoon has been put, and the Minister has done her best to answer it, but the message that she must take back to her Department is that we are not as fascinated as some of her departmental lawyers might be by who made which decision and whether or not the joint committee of PCTs is an independent reviewing body.

The Secretary of State has the levers of power in this question and he must pull them—he must exercise them—and make a decision. That is what he is paid to do, what he was appointed by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to do and what he was elected to Parliament to do. I am sure that the Minister will give him every assistance in reaching what is the inevitable answer to the questions posed this afternoon—namely, that the Glenfield ECMO unit, for children and adults, and the Glenfield cardiac services unit should remain open.

I do not care who made the decision or how the dainty route was created to get to it. We all know that the current decision is wrong and needs to be dealt with. The Minister, please, will go back to her Department and inform the Secretary of State that Parliament thinks that that decision is wrong and that Parliament requires the Government, through the Department, to change it. How they do that is up to them, but they must do it.

I thank the Minister for her patience in listening to us. I thank her for dealing with a difficult and, as she rightly says, emotionally charged subject. None the less, we have to set aside the emotion and the personal and heart-rending stories, make the right decision and just get on with it. I look forward to the Secretary of State writing us another letter, in a very short time, in which he adds to the letter of today’s date a decision to review the ECMO matter as well, because, as we all know, it is not possible to separate the two, and it is not possible to separate us, as elected representatives for our constituents, from this issue. We will stick to it like a barnacle until we are satisfied that the matter has been properly resolved. I look forward to having further such discussions with my hon. Friend the Minister in the very near future, but I thank her most sincerely for her presence here today and her contribution.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the e-petition from Adam Tansey relating to children’s cardiac surgery at the East Midlands Congenital Heart Centre at Glenfield, Leicester.

18:11

Sitting adjourned.

Written Ministerial Statements

Monday 22nd October 2012 Written Statements

Monday 22 October 2012

Contingency Fund Advance

Monday 22nd October 2012 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills wishes to recruit a chief executive officer (CEO) for the proposed Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) before Royal Assent has been received for the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill which will create the CMA.

The CMA CEO will play a critical role in leading the organisational design of the CMA and reform of its competition processes ensuring that greater speed and rigour of decision making is delivered, in line with the Government’s response to their consultation on competition reform. The CMA CEO-designate, in conjunction with the CMA chair-designate, my noble Fiend Lord David Currie, will need to effectively manage the transition to the CMA bringing together the Office of Fair Trading and the Competition Commission into a single new body by October 2013. To help achieve this objective the CMA CEO will need to be in post early 2013.

Parliamentary approval for resource cover for this new service will be sought in a supplementary estimate for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Pending that approval, urgent expenditure estimated at up to £220,000 will be met by repayable cash advances from the Contingencies Fund.

Bilateral Loan to Ireland

Monday 22nd October 2012 Written Statements

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Greg Clark)]

I would like to update the House on the loan to Ireland.

Ireland completed the seventh quarterly review of its International Monetary Fund and European Union programme of financial assistance on 13 September 2012, following which, the utilisation period for the fifth instalment of the UK bilateral loan began.

Upon request, the Treasury disbursed the fifth instalment of £403.37 million on 19 October 2012, with a maturity date of 20 April 2020.

The interest rate charged on the loan is calculated as set out in the loan agreement as the UK’s cost of funds plus a service fee of 0.18 basis points per annum, creating an effective per annum interest rate on this tranche of the loan of 2.372%. The UK more than covers its cost of funds.

The Treasury will provide a further report to Parliament in relation to the bilateral loan as required under the Loans to Ireland Act 2010 as soon as is practicable following the end of the next reporting period, which ends on 31 March 2013.

The Government believe that it is in our national interest that the Irish economy is successful and its banking system is stable. The Government continue to support Ireland’s efforts to improve its economic situation.

Consultation on Firearms Control (Government Response)

Monday 22nd October 2012 Written Statements

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Damian Green)]

The Home Secretary launched the “Consultation on Legislative Changes to Firearms Control” on the 8 February 2012.

The consultation looked at the need for a new offence for possession of illegal firearms with intent to supply and whether the penalty for illegal importation and exportation of firearms should be increased. Today, I am announcing the Government’s response to that consultation.

Gun crime and drug offences cause considerable harm to our communities and are linked to organised crime and so we believe that the law for importing and supplying firearms should be no less serious than importing class A drugs.

Having carefully considered the consultation responses from a broad range of key partners it is clear that there is strong support for taking a tougher stance on control of prohibited firearms.

We will:

Increase the maximum penalty for illegal importation of firearms to life imprisonment.

Create a new offence of “possession with intent to supply” with a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Subsequently, we will bring forward the necessary legislation as soon as the parliamentary schedule allows. A copy of the summary of consultation responses and the related impact assessment will be placed in the House Library.

Equality 2025 (Triennial Review)

Monday 22nd October 2012 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Esther McVey)]

Later today I will launch a review of Equality 2025 advisory non-departmental public body. As part of the Government’s continuing drive for efficiency and effectiveness all Departments are required to review their arm’s length bodies at least once every three years. The review will be carried out by the Office for Disability Issues within the Department for Work and Pensions. The review will be looking at:

Whether the purposes for which Equality 2025 were established are still necessary.

Whether the services currently undertaken by Equality 2025 to deliver these purposes are still appropriate, adequate and effective.

Whether these services are best carried out by an advisory non-departmental public body; and, if so, how might Equality 2025’s performance be enhanced and improved?

Once completed, the outcome of the review will be published in spring 2013 on the Office for Disability Issues website, I will also place a copy in the Libraries of both Houses.

House of Lords

Monday 22nd October 2012 Lords Chamber

Monday, 22 October 2012.

14:30

Prayers—read by the Lord Bishop of Leicester.

Education: English Baccalaureate

Monday 22nd October 2012 Lords Chamber

Question

14:36

Asked by

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they propose that all young people will be able to study for the new English baccalaureate certificate.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

My Lords, we expect that everyone who now sits a GCSE should be able to sit the new English baccalaureate certificate. Although it will be more challenging than the current GCSEs, we believe that all children with a good education should be able to achieve it. We have also moved to strengthen vocational qualifications, increase the number of UTCs and studio schools and set an expectation that young people who are not secure in English or maths at the age of 16 will continue to study towards that qualification post-16.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

I thank the Minister for that reply. Does he understand the concerns of many academics and parents that the new qualification will narrow the definition of educational success and excellence? Is it not inevitable that the teaching time for many other crucial subjects, such as art, music, religion, computing and technology, will be squeezed out by the emphasis on the core subjects in the EBacc? Does he recognise that the Government’s obsession with academic subjects offers little comfort to the forgotten 50% who will never go to university but who want an alternative, gold-standard vocational qualification, such as the technical baccalaureate proposed by the leader of the Opposition?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, I do not accept the basic premise that the Government are concerned only about academic qualifications to the exclusion of all else. I agree with the noble Baroness, and with the party opposite, on the importance of vocational and technical qualifications. One of the very first things that the Government did when coming into office was to commission the Wolf review into vocational qualifications. However, with regard to the EBC, the amount of time that is likely to be taken to teach those core subjects will still leave plenty of time for the important subjects that she mentions, such as art, music or design, which I agree one would want to continue to be taught. I do not think it is a narrowing of the definition of excellence to want to set a higher bar for more children from a whole range of backgrounds, particularly the most disadvantaged, to get good academic qualifications that will get them into further or higher education, apprenticeships or work.

[Baroness Walmsley]

Is the department considering including computer science in the EBacc certificate? I mean real computer science and not just how to use applications.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

As my noble friend knows, we are looking at how to ensure that computer science is taught well. A consultation is out at the moment and the precise composition of the EBC is something that I am sure my right honourable friend will continue to reflect on. I will relay my noble friend’s point about the importance of computer science to the Secretary of State—I know it is a point that he shares.

[Lord Singh of Wimbledon]

Can the Minister assure us that religious education will be included in core subjects for the English baccalaureate certificate? Does he agree that the absence of religious education can lead to bigotry and prejudice?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I agree very much about the importance of religious education. I am particularly pleased that the number of young people taking religious education at GCSE went up by nearly 8% this year and by 10% last year, at a time when people are concerned about take-up because of the introduction of the English baccalaureate performance measure. We do not currently have plans to make it a compulsory part of the English baccalaureate system.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top]

Is the Minister aware that when GCSEs were introduced there was much discussion of girls managing better, in terms of both learning and achievement, under a system of continuous assessment than with a cliff-edge examination at the end? Did the Government consider this when they changed the rules for 16 year-olds’ exams?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, the Government’s proposals for the English baccalaureate certificate are out for consultation. There will be a range of issues on which people will be able to express their views, including those raised by the noble Baroness. While I take the point about assessment and different people learning in different ways, it is the Government’s view that the balance has tilted too far, and that having a linear course with exams at the end will not only give a better indication of performance but free up more time in the classroom for teachers to teach not to the test but towards a broad and rich education.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

Will the Minister enlighten us on the Government’s position on allowing unqualified teachers in classrooms?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

The Government’s position is, and has been for some time, that teachers without QTS may work in free schools. That has been extended to apply to academies. The Government’s view is that that is a space for innovation that is very likely to be only at the margin of the system as a whole. We think that the freedom for people with particular expertise who have not been through the qualification process to come in and offer it, as they do in independent schools, should be extended to academies.

[The Lord Bishop of Leicester]

My Lords, in the light of the Minister’s reply to the noble Lord, Lord Singh, will he assure the House that religious education will not eventually disappear from the qualifications register and thus disappear from school timetables altogether?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I will give as much reassurance to the right reverend Prelate as I can—not least because RE is a compulsory subject and, as I said, the evidence is that the number of young people wanting to take a qualification in it is increasing, which is a good thing. It is also the case that the English baccalaureate certificate for six subjects represents only a core. Having that small number will provide space for a whole range of important subjects, including RE, to continue to be taught, offered and examined.

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

Will the Minister clarify that the EBacc will consist of seven subjects and will require a GCSE pass of grade A to C? What proportion of young people in the relevant age cohort do the Government think will pass linear exams at GCSE grade A to C in seven subjects?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, the EBC will consist of six subjects. It is our view that with the good teaching and support that I know is in our system, children currently studying GCSEs should be able to take on and tackle the EBC. We do not know the precise proportions and percentages because decisions will be taken by Ofqual on where the grade boundaries and so on will be set. As a general principle, it is our view that children who take GCSEs should be able to take the EBC.

Broadband: Street Cabinets

Monday 22nd October 2012 Lords Chamber

Question

14:45

Asked by

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what representations they have so far received about their plan to allow broadband street cabinets to be installed without the prior approval of local planning authorities.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My Lords, the Government wish to roll out the best, superfast broadband of any major European country by 2015 to meet demand and hasten economic growth. Six representations have been received, from English Heritage, MPs’ constituents, a local council and private individuals. English Heritage raised the possible impact on the physical amenity, but wished to contribute supportively. The others had similar concerns and asked about plans to consult, which I can confirm will take place.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, will the Government think again about allowing broadband providers to install their bulky and intrusive equipment wherever they decide is convenient for them without a requirement for planning permission or even for local consultation? While no one wishes to thwart the distribution of superfast broadband, can we not handle this in a civilised way and in a spirit of genuine localism? Should not the claims of amenity and quality of the built environment be weighed alongside the claims of economic development and adjudicated through the local planning system, as has long been the practice in our country?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

I can understand the noble Lord's concerns. However, the changes to the formal planning process do not mean that broadband providers have carte blanche to install street cabinets or poles wherever or whenever it suits them. They must still notify planning authorities of their siting plans and consider requests for changes to be made. In exceptional circumstances, planning authorities can remove permitted rights to develop by using an Article 4 direction. The main broadband suppliers have agreed to develop a code of practice with DCMS whereby the siting of cabinets must have regard to proximity to any existing street furniture, minimising the visual impact and of course ensuring optimum safety on the streets. Sensitivity to locals is the byword, with planning and assessment made in advance.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes]

For the benefit of the whole House, for those who do not know, is the broadband cabinet the equivalent of a walk-in telephone box or is it, as I understood from the supplementary question, a container for equipment? If it is a container, what size of object are we speaking about?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

To pick up the last question, the new cabinets will be 1.6 metres high and 1.2 metres wide. They will be green and will be taller and deeper than the models currently being used on the street. They are not as such designed, having perfunctory casings, but they will blend in where possible.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

Plans are afoot to camouflage them.

[Lord Clement-Jones]

My Lords, getting the planning regime right for street cabinets is clearly important, but does my noble friend agree that it is also vital that if we are to get investment and competition in broadband, particularly in rural areas, there are open standards and open access to these cabinets for service providers, as recommended by the Lords Communications Committee?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

I very much agree with my noble friend. It gives me the opportunity to explain the benefits of superfast broadband. There are many statistics that are extremely positive. For example, a 10% increase in broadband household coverage boosts the economy from between 0.1% and 1.4% of GDP. It also allows firms to develop and adopt more productive and efficient ways of working. It is also a great boost to home-workers who, while being based at home, will spend and circulate money more locally.

[Baroness Whitaker]

My Lords, what steps have been taken to ensure that the design of these cabinets will be the best possible? Is there scope for running a competition?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

I do not believe there is scope for running a competition because so many of these street cabinets are being rolled out. However, I again reassure the House that the cabinets will be and must be sensitively sited. Although they are on the large side—I have already mentioned the camouflaging—in some cases there will be overhead cabling, some of which, instead of going into the street cabinets, can be placed inside church steeples, which is a good use for churches.

[The Earl of Selborne]

My Lords, as my noble friend has described the cabinets as being quite small in size rather than bulky and intrusive, as the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, would have it, should we congratulate the manufacturers on producing something that can be placed so discreetly?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

I thank my noble friend. There is every hope that the cabinets will be discreetly sited and will not impact on localities too much.

[Lord Tomlinson]

My Lords, does the noble Viscount accept that, however discreetly they are sited, they seem to be an open invitation to every bill poster who passes them?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

I am not aware of that. I am sure that occasionally there may unfortunately be graffiti or otherwise, but let us hope not. We need to find ways around that.

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, does the noble Viscount recognise the importance of siting these cabinets sensitively not just from an aesthetic point of view but from the point of view of those who want to walk in safety on the pavement? It is important to be aware of the potential hazard that cabinets like these can cause to blind people and others who want to walk safely on the pavement.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

The noble Lord makes an extremely good point. I know that DCMS officials have already had discussions with Ofcom, BT and Virgin Media regarding a proposed code of practice that includes ensuring that these cabinets are placed in positions of safety on the streets and so, for example, not on street corners or on narrow streets. That will allow individuals, including disabled people, to pass by.

[Lord West of Spithead]

My Lords, I am low on the learning curve. How many of these cabinets per square mile will there be once the project is fully rolled out? I have to say that I was not worried about them at the start of this Question, but I am becoming more and more worried.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

I would like to reassure the noble Lord that, although it is difficult to describe precisely where they will be, they will be positioned where they need to be positioned around the UK. I would also like to reassure the noble Lord that they will not be on every street corner. They will be sited very discreetly on occasional streets.

Financial Regulators: Examinations

Monday 22nd October 2012 Lords Chamber

Question

14:52

Asked by

[Lord Flight]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they are considering introducing qualifying examinations for individuals working for financial regulators.

[The Commercial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Sassoon)]

My Lords, the qualifications for the appointment or advancement of individuals employed by financial regulators are a matter for the regulator concerned. All newly recruited supervisory staff in the FSA are required to undergo mandatory assessments at the end of their probation to demonstrate that they have sufficient technical knowledge to carry out their roles. Thereafter, an annual assessment of technical competency is conducted to ensure that key supervisory staff can evidence that they continue to meet the required standards.

[Lord Flight]

My Lords, can I ask the Minister whether he thinks it slightly inconsistent that no examinations need to be passed by people working as regulators, whereas under the RDR reforms the regulators require all financial advisers, irrespective of age, cleanness of record and experience, to take examinations? As a result, over 20,000 will be stepping down at the end of the year because they feel that they are too old to take examinations, many of which are not relevant to their particular expertise. We are likely to end up with financial advice being available only to the wealthy in our community.

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I certainly do not agree with my noble friend’s conclusion on this. As he well knows, one of the conclusions of the retail distribution review was that the role of financial adviser should be properly professionalised. I have seen comparisons being made between the professionalisation of financial advisers and of lawyers and accountants. Although these are matters of judgment for the FSA, the authority deems it appropriate that exams should play a part in this. I understand from the FSA that the final rules setting out the new qualification requirements were made in January 2011, two years before the requirements are to come in. On top of that, an indicative list of level 4 qualifications has been available since the end of 2009. The FSA’s research shows that, up to the spring of 2012, 71% of advisers had already qualified, and the expectation is that 93% are on track to secure the appropriate qualification in time. The final point I would make to my noble friend—again, I am sure that he is aware of it—is that, as well as taking examinations, financial advisers also have the option of an alternative assessment procedure.

[Lord Peston]

My Lords, having spent a great many hours with the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Flight, and others on the Financial Services Bill, perhaps I may ask the Minister whether he will remind the House of the enormous power being given to the financial regulators. I have been looking into it. It may be that never in the history of our country has anyone had the regulatory power that these people have. It is a power either to do good, of course, or to get a lot of things wrong, to the benefit of our chief competitors in Frankfurt and Wall Street. Surely the Government must take a much more positive view of what sort of people are working for financial regulators and themselves take some responsibility to see that they are people with a broad range of experience who do not wish to see our financial services sector destroyed?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, as well as getting the architecture of supervision and regulation right—on which this House has rightly spent many hours and to which the noble Lord, Lord Peston, has made some important contributions—the Government should within that appoint to those bodies an appropriate board with appropriate expertise and experience. It would then rightfully be up to the two successor bodies to the FSA to decide how to equip their staff properly to do the job. The FSA’s approach to testing and competence will be continued by the FCA. The FCA is also exploring whether to have training externally accredited, which the FSA has not done up to this point. The PRA, on the other side, is developing a comprehensive strategy, including a three-year training programme for new graduates. These matters are therefore being taken extremely seriously by both the successor bodies, which is how it should be.

[Lord Sharkey]

My Lords, it seems clear that the FSA was blind to the moral and ethical failings of the banks as well as to their regulatory failings. How will the FCA do better in this respect? It is all very well worrying about the locks on the stable door, but should we not also be worried about the mindset of the horse?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, one of the things that is very striking about the FSA is the speed with which it put in place an inquiry into what had gone wrong on Northern Rock. It was very frank about its failings and has changed an awful lot of things already. One should be fair to the FSA and recognise that it acknowledged the failings of its supervisory regime, which is already reflected in differences to its approach to training and continual assessment.

[Baroness Wall of New Barnet]

My Lords—

[Lord Elton]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

This side!

[Baroness Wall of New Barnet]

Would the Minister like to hazard a guess as to why the FSA, unlike many other professional organisations, feels that it is not important for the public to recognise the skills of those individuals by the qualifications that they hold, particularly in such an important area?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, as I have said, I understand that the FCA is thinking about whether its training could be externally accredited. So it is indeed thinking ahead to whether that could be a possibility.

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, in his initial reply, my noble friend said in effect that there would be a benchmark after the first year’s work in a regulator and at subsequent stages, but nothing about the benchmark for new entrants. Further to his answer to the previous question, does he not agree not merely that the public need reassurance but that the practitioners need to have respect and to be in awe of the regulators and of their qualifications? Otherwise, there will be considerable discontent and a good many mistakes made.

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, the House can of course be assured that the FSA would not seek to recruit, let alone retain, any individuals who were not competent to carry out their duties. What I said in my first Answer was that, at the end of the probationary period, an assessment is done, so it certainly does not wait until the end of the first annual assessment.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, in his Answer, the Minister talked about technical qualifications. Surely, given where we are after LIBOR and everything else, we need a code of conduct that also covers ethical issues. Qualifications are needed for that not just, as is proposed, under LIBOR. Does he not agree that it should be provided in the Financial Services Bill for everyone working in banking?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I am sure that they take account of the judgments that need to be made on the ethical front, but they should not be in the Bill before the House.

EU: UK Membership

Monday 22nd October 2012 Lords Chamber

Question

15:00

Asked by

[Lord Liddle]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have for making the case for the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are committed to playing a leading role in the European Union to advance our national interests. We play an active role within the EU on many issues—Iran, Syria, Burma, the single market and improving Europe’s competitiveness—and work closely with other EU countries to deliver those important objectives. There is no question of the UK disengaging or withdrawing from the EU. We will remain leading proponents of the EU’s most successful policies.

[Lord Liddle]

My Lords, although it is always a pleasure to face the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, I was rather hoping to welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, to answer this Question—I think it is the first Foreign Office Question that she has had the opportunity to answer. It is a pity, on a day when the Prime Minister is coming back to the other place to report on the European Council, that she is not here.

What the noble Lord said is all very well, but most of what we hear from the coalition is refusal to enter negotiations on questions that are central to our economic interests, such as the fiscal treaty and the banking union. We hear about opt-outs from justice and home affairs measures that are vital to fight organised crime. We hear about repatriation of competences.

[Noble Lords]

Question!

[Lord Liddle]

Okay. We hear about a future renegotiation. Is it any surprise that the public standing of the EU is at a low ebb? When will we hear from the Government clear leadership that our membership of the EU is vital to our economy and essential to our place in the world? Since the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, is answering for the coalition, how much longer are the Liberal Democrats prepared to put up with the Government’s policy of isolation, defeatism and retreat?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I say on behalf of my noble friend Lady Warsi that she answered three debates last week and she will be here tomorrow. She has other responsibilities.

On the question of defending our position within the EU, the Government have made it clear through a number of senior Ministers, not just the Prime Minister, that we intend to stay in the European Union—rather more clearly than leading members of the previous Government in their last two to three years in office.

[Noble Lords]

Nonsense!

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

It is not complete nonsense. I am sure that when the noble Lord was a special adviser to Tony Blair he was often rather disappointed by the then Prime Minister’s unwillingness to make the case for Britain’s continued membership of the European Union.

[Lord Giddens]

Perhaps I might push the noble Lord on his answers. Does he agree that as a condition of its survival, the European Union must become more integrated politically and economically? Notwithstanding what the noble Lord said, does this not inevitably mean that the UK will be progressively marginalised and, in the end, without significant influence within Europe?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the eurozone may well have to become rather more integrated, but the European Union as it exists is not a simple first-tier/second-tier issue. In a couple of months’ time, we will debate the new Irish protocol. There are Czech protocols, Danish opt-outs and Irish opt-outs. When it comes to defence and foreign policy, Britain and France are very much at the core and Germany is occasionally on the edge. So it is not a simple matter of insiders and those on the fringes.

[Lord Dykes]

My noble friend’s credentials on Europe are of course impeccable, but will he reassure us that other senior members of the Government are not drifting almost accidentally and in a cavalier way into extreme referendumitis in order to appease some of their eccentric colleagues in the other place?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I read the stories in the Sunday newspapers the other week. I have no idea how authentic they were.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, is the answer not that the Government cannot make the case for our membership of the EU because there is now an overwhelming case for us to leave it and thus create a great many jobs by relieving us of its suffocating clutches? Beyond that, is it not time for the EU itself to be wound up, with a similar benefit for the democracies of Europe? What is now the point of any of it? I hope that the noble Lord will not give me the nonsense about peace.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I am sorry that the noble Lord thinks that peace is nonsensical. It is not an unimportant issue for us. The noble Lord clearly thinks that international regulation of the open markets is not an important issue either. I am well aware that UKIP thinks that we should follow the example of Switzerland and have a sort of Swiss relationship with the European Union, although since UKIP also thinks that we should double our defence spending, I think the UKIP model is Switzerland with nuclear missiles and a large navy.

[Lord Tomlinson]

Would the noble Lord accept that there is fairly substantial inconsistency in what he said about the single market? The Government are always expounding the virtues of the single market, yet anybody who listened to Mrs Theresa May yesterday on “The Andrew Marr Show” would have heard her calling into question fundamental aspects of that single market, such as the free movement of people.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I did not see the Andrew Marr programme. I apologise; I was picking apples at the time. We are all clear that free movement is one of the four bases of the single market and needs to be maintained as far as possible.

Voting Age (Comprehensive Reduction) Bill [HL]

Monday 22nd October 2012 Lords Chamber

First Reading

15:07

A Bill to extend the franchise for parliamentary and other elections and for referendums to all citizens over the age of 16 years.

The Bill was introduced by Lord Tyler, read a first time and ordered to be printed.

Prisons (Interference with Wireless Telegraphy) Bill

Monday 22nd October 2012 Lords Chamber

First Reading

15:07

The Bill was brought from the Commons, read a first time and ordered to be printed.

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Monday 22nd October 2012 Lords Chamber

Order of Consideration Motion

15:08

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That it be an instruction to a Committee of the Whole House to which the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill has been committed that it considers the Bill in the following order:

Clause 1, Schedule 1, Clause 2, Schedule 2, Clauses 3 to 5, Schedule 3, Clauses 6 to 12, Schedules 4 and 5, Clauses 13 to 26.

Motion agreed.

Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications, Deemed Applications, Requests and Site Visits) (England) Regulations 2012

Monday 22nd October 2012 Lords Chamber

Motion to Refer to Grand Committee

15:08

Moved by

[Baroness Hanham]

That the draft Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications, Deemed Applications, Requests and Site Visits) (England) Regulations 2012 be referred to a Grand Committee.

Motion agreed.

Local Government Finance Bill

Monday 22nd October 2012 Lords Chamber

Third Reading

15:07

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, I have it in command from Her Majesty the Queen to acquaint the House that Her Majesty, having been informed of the purport of the Local Government Finance Bill, has consented to place her interests, so far as they are affected by the Bill, at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of the Bill.

I appreciate that several noble Lords are wishing to leave the Chamber but we all want to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis. Will noble Lords please leave quietly so that the noble Baroness may move the first amendment today?

Amendment 1

Moved by

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

1: Before Clause 9, insert the following new Clause—
“Council tax reduction schemes
(1) The Secretary of State shall make provision for an independent review of all council tax reduction schemes made under the provisions of this Act, to consider their effectiveness, efficiency, fairness and transparency and their impact on the localism agenda; and to make recommendations as to whether such schemes should be brought within universal credit.
(2) A review under subsection (1) shall take place within three years after this Act comes into effect.”

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, I am grateful. This first amendment is a very modest and simple one. It simply asks for a review of the Bill within the next three years; that is all. I know that many around the House are worried about aspects of the Bill. We thank the Minister for the one-year transitional grant, as any additional money is welcome, but returning to councils just one-fifth of the council tax benefit cuts in a transitional one-year grant creates additional problems in itself. There are a lot of loose ends in the Bill, a lot of unknowns and a lot of concerns, which is why the amendment, which is a modest one, ask for a review of these proposals. If what the Bill proposes is sturdy and robust, a review will show it. If it is not and needs adjustment, a review will show it. If it needs more radical reforms such as moving into universal credit, a review will show it. The amendment seeks evidence, which is something that we should do, and I very much hope that it will attract the support of the entire House.

To remind ourselves, council tax benefit is being removed from our national social security system, when now it is fully funded to meet individual need wherever that person may live, to, in five months’ time, a rebate scheme with 10% less money in it, based on local discretion, with each local authority inventing its own local version. However, I fear that such local versions will depend not on a council’s unique insight into unique local need but on its prosperity, its reserves, its property values, its demography, its pensioner numbers, its benefit claimant numbers, its second homes and empty homes—everything and anything except the particular need of the particular individual who needs financial support, irrespective of where in the country she may live.

What are our concerns? We list them in the amendment. I suggest that they include effectiveness, efficiency, fairness and transparency, and I shall spend a moment on each. This cannot be an effective way to construct council tax support. It depends solely on the accidental variations between authorities—how many pensioners, how many second homes—but in no sense are those accidental connections associated with the amount of need of the council residents in its patch. In other words, this version of localism has nothing to do with local need and everything to do with local council finances.

Essentially, as we argued on Report, richer authorities are keeping the national scheme—essentially, the social security system—because they can afford to. Poorer authorities are not, because they cannot. In my view, the proposals are not effective because they do not, and many of our local authorities cannot afford to, meet local need—and that, of course, is the entire point of the council tax rebate in the first place. So I do not believe that they are effective.

Are they at least efficient? Do they represent value for money, the second test in our amendment? I think not. From the local authorities’ point of view, we risk poll tax mark two. Up to 2 million families may be paying for the first time towards their council tax. Set it too high—a 30% minimum, as is the case in several authorities in Norfolk—and families cannot pay. Set it too low, after the transitional grant at £1.50, and the council cannot collect. On the one hand, families cannot pay; on the other, councils cannot collect.

The Minister’s own transitional grant Statement sensibly accepted that:

“Councils will rightly want to avoid collecting small payments, and it may consequently be better value for money for councils to avoid designing schemes which seek to do so”.—[Official Report, 15/10/12; col. WS 164.]

Quite.

15:15

The Minister’s Statement also says that there should be no sharp reduction for those entering work. Quite. But if councils exclude pensioners from the cuts as they are required to do, if they avoid collecting small sums from benefit claimants as the Minister urges them to do, and if they seek to protect work incentives as the Government and all of us would wish them to do, then the entire population of those on council benefit is covered and protected: no cuts for anyone. So where, in poorer authorities, do the other four-fifths of savings of that £500 million, minus the transitional grant, come from the year after next? Where do the full savings of £500 million come from the year after that?

Small sums are exactly what local authorities will need to collect. If they do not, they cannot balance their accounts. But if they do, they face huge numbers of defaulters, whom they cannot afford to chase. Confidence in the whole basis of council tax finance will be destabilised and, as with the poll tax, take years and years to rebuild. Many of us in this Chamber were in local government during the poll tax period, and we know what subsequently happened. If we are not careful, we will be going in the same direction again. Efficient? I think not.

Our third test is fairness. Council tax benefit is part of income support. How can it be fair that the income of our poorest and most vulnerable families should depend not on their need but on the financial ability of their local authorities to meet their need; not on their poverty but on the poverty of their local authority; not on who they are but on where they are?

What may this mean for our poorest? We must add this cut in council tax support to the cuts in housing benefits. I do not know whether anyone in government is seeing how the two sorts of cuts are interacting. I have worked out that the carer in her forties and the widow in her fifties could lose 28%—between a quarter and a third—of her current benefit. I only ask your Lordships how they will manage. If they go into debt, they face eviction and, without children, they may not be offered alternative accommodation. So they sleep where? Rough?

Our final test in this amendment is transparency: people should be able to understand what they can claim and what they should get. Do we really think that asking families, means-tested for universal credit, then to apply for council tax benefit and, through a different means test, for council tax support—the means test varies from council to council—is easy to understand and transparent? The means test is also for a system which may change each year as the local authority finances improve or worsen. A widow this year may pay nothing; next year she may pay nothing or 8.5% or any figure above or below it. The year after that, she may pay any figure between nought and 30% or, in one authority, 60% of her council tax—from nothing to 60%. They will not get much help from the CABs, because half of their branches have been cut. Housing associations which, as with my own Broadland Housing Association, span a county, will be dealing with seven different council tax benefit schemes, each of which may be different for each of the next three years.

One of the prizes of universal credit is transparency, which will aid populations and encourage people back into work. This multitude of council tax benefit schemes, each possibly changing every year, sabotages universal credit, a scheme I want to see succeed—as I am sure the entire House does.

All these concerns about effectiveness, efficiency, fairness and transparency may not be realised. I hope that I am wrong about that, but only an independent review will tell us if these schemes are robust, stable, well researched and fully claimed. If they bear fairly on the poorest and are collected officially and with dignity, then a review will confirm that. If local authorities need other sources of revenue, such as a single person discount, which the noble Lord, Lord Best, argued so powerfully for on Report, then a review could consider that. If, however, as I fear, we face something of a shambles, and local authority funding lurches from one transitional grant to another to cover non-payment, and if local authorities come in desperation themselves to favour a single, national scheme which can, and should, be incorporated into universal credit, then a review would tell us that too.

DCLG will have to track all this, whether it likes it or not. That is what Governments have to do. This amendment would ensure that such tracking is done independently and publicly, by putting in place a review to which local authorities would contribute so that we can all learn from it. Its cost is negligible, so financial privilege cannot be involved. However, such an amendment, with the support of your Lordships, would allow Members of the other place to think again now that they see the potential effect in their constituencies, both of the proposed scheme after consultation—and those results have come through only in the last fortnight or so—and in the last week, the effect of the transitional grant. No MP could have had this vital information about how it affects their constituencies when they voted this Bill through. Above all, such an amendment and review would help ensure a fair, affordable and stable council tax benefit scheme in future.

I hope that the Minister will support this modest, cost-free, evidence-seeking amendment, and that the House will also do so. I beg to move.

[Lord Shipley]

My Lords, I rise to speak in support of this amendment. My reason is that we need to understand better than I believe the Government do the impact of various changes being implemented at the same time over coming months.

Next year, a large number of people will be taken out of income tax because of the rise in the threshold. At the same time, universal credit, and its housing elements in particular, will begin implementation. We should note that demand for housing benefit is now rising because rents are going up, as opposed to going down, as the Government expected would happen a few months ago. At the same time, council tax benefit will be devolved to councils, being renamed “council tax support”, and it is likely that demand will rise because of the name change alone. In addition, there is a 10% cut in the grant given to local authorities for council tax support, and in actuality, many think that that cut is nearer to 12.5% because of that rising demand.

The Government have said that councils can make up the cut by charging 100% on empty homes and second homes. We know that that can work for some councils because they have enough numbers of one or the other, or both, to do it. However, it will not work for all. Many councils do not have enough empty or second homes to enable an increase to 100% to deliver the 12.5% cut in the budget. Even the transitional relief announced last week, prior to Report, will not solve the problem for all, and in any case, that transitional relief is only for one year.

The Local Government Association—I declare my vice-presidency—thinks that the Government’s package substantially underfunds the 8.5% cap on what an individual household would pay and that councils will need to find another £100 million to make up their loss. Putting aside the problems of councils, the problems for individuals could be very severe in the face of so much change at once and the need, in particular, of many working-age households to start paying some council tax.

I agree that as a minimum the Government should commission an independent review to report as speedily as it can, but certainly within three years, on how all the changes are working. I realise that the Government keep things under review but the problem is that more than one Whitehall department is involved and the Government need the support of an independent body such as the Institute for Fiscal Studies or the Joseph Rowntree Foundation to assess the impact in an independent way.

I regard this amendment as modest and the Government could and should accept it. I hope that the Minister will accept it as a helpful contribution to our understanding across government of the impact of these substantial changes.

[Lord Best]

My Lords, I hope that the Minister is able to accept this amendment or something akin to it. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, that it will be important to review the effects of localising the council tax benefit system. Down the line we will need to ask whether this change has led to a chaotic situation of dozens of different schemes and whether this localist approach has produced variations in benefit schemes that reflect not what local financial circumstances force on councils but what genuinely fits local conditions. We also need to ask whether it would be better to return to a national scheme incorporated into the universal credit arrangements.

My own emphasis for a review, however, would be on analysing the consequences of the cuts to council tax benefit on the households affected and on those councils which find it necessary to start collecting council tax from the lowest-income families who did not previously have to pay. What has been the cost in extracting these new taxes? What has happened to those who could not pay? It is a very serious matter deliberately to reduce the income of those who are trying hard to get a job, are not able to work or are in work but on the very lowest earnings. No government would want to hurt those of our fellow citizens who are living on the breadline and finding life a considerable struggle.

As I noted in Committee, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and others have shown that it is those of working age on the lowest incomes who have seen the least improvement to their living standards over the past decade. The gap between rich and poor has widened and income inequalities have increased. It is those in relative poverty who expend the highest proportion of their incomes on fuel and food, and so now face the greatest pressures in making ends meet.

The various welfare benefit cuts introduced since 2010—with the largest still to come—are bound to have a cumulative effect. The same households that are hit by one cut may well be affected by another. Thus, many of the 660,000 households affected by the forthcoming “bedroom tax” will also be caught by having to start paying council tax from the very same day—1 April 2013. What will be the knock-on effects of the council tax benefit measures when added to all the other benefit changes? What unforeseen consequences may emerge from these measures? Are there impacts on physical and mental health, with consequential costs to the NHS? Are there burdens for children’s services? Are mounting rent arrears leading to homelessness, with higher costs for central and local government? When do these cuts reach a point when any reasonable person would see them as punitive and unacceptably harsh?

In response to an amendment in my name to the Welfare Reform Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Freud, agreed to a thorough-going and high-quality review of the impact of housing benefit cuts. He has made the point that he wants government policy to be based on sound evidence, which good research should bring forward. That can enable in-flight corrections to policy. For example, the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, mentioned the hopes of the noble Lord, Lord Freud, that cuts to local housing allowances and housing benefit would lead to rent reductions but they have not materialised. If the researchers for the review of the noble Lord, Lord Freud, show clearly that rents have instead been rising, Ministers may be wise to think again about their approach. In the case of council tax benefit, the cuts, unusually, are outside the remit of the Department for Work and Pensions, and an evidence-based review will need to be undertaken by the noble Baroness the Minister’s Department for Communities and Local Government. A parallel exercise there to the DWP’s would seem essential if lessons are to be learnt in time to rectify deficiencies in the new system. For example, I have learnt from working on this Bill that the Secretary of State has had the power since 1992 to vary the 25% single person discount for households. A review of the kind proposed by this amendment could be the catalyst to persuade the Secretary of State to use that power and allow a different discount level where the local authority concerned needs this change. It is this kind of policy change that a review could stimulate.

This is a modest amendment with minimal financial implications. It could prove of immense value to the Government and to those who could be hugely disadvantaged by the benefit cuts in the Bill. I heartily commend it.

15:30

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Hanham)]

My Lords, I thank—

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

I am sorry, I was slow to get to my feet. We speak in full support of this amendment, moved so comprehensibly by my noble friend Lady Hollis. I am delighted that it also has the support of the noble Lords, Lord Shipley and Lord Best, who made a hugely important point about the collection of issues coming down the track, particularly from next April, and the need to look at those on a comprehensive basis, as well as the importance of any review being independent.

As we discussed throughout our deliberations on the Bill, the council tax support scheme represents a major change to the benefit system, affecting millions of people. We know that it has been introduced with inadequate funding and, further, has been introduced at a time when probably the biggest change to the social security system since Beveridge is being phased in, with universal credit. As my noble friend made clear, we consider that council tax reduction schemes should revert to being a national, demand-led benefit, as now, inculcated into universal credit, and this amendment seeks a recommendation of an independent review on this issue. But it does not insist on it, and this is not the only issue that it wishes to be the subject of the review; it seeks a comprehensive look at how the localised system is working.

The fact that local authorities have had to operate council tax benefit schemes does not necessarily make them experts in the design of such schemes. Of course, designing an individual scheme that has to work alongside and be consistent with other national benefits, the rules of which are still to a certain extent being worked out, is particularly problematical. The design must lead not only to a system that is practical and efficient to operate but one that addresses the needs of the poor and most vulnerable, while also containing adequate work incentives. It is clear that the variety of schemes on which local authorities have been consulting do not all meet these criteria; proposals include requiring minimum payments of 20% or 30% for all working age claimants, introducing a maximum limit, increasing tapers, reducing savings limits and counting child benefit as income. Having espoused the mantra that it is up to local authorities and not central government, at the 12th hour the Government have had to come forward with a package to encourage local authorities to comply with some national norms—a taper rate of not more than 25% and those currently passported to full benefits to be subject to not more than 8.5% of what would otherwise be their full liability.

The extent to which the package is sufficient, with just one year and less than one-quarter of the funding cut imposed, remains to be seen. Early evidence is that it is insufficient. It still leaves the prospects of the poll tax mark 2 and horrendous collection problems for local councils. The point is that on the first consultation by many local authorities, many proposals diverged from some key principles which the Government at least nominally sought to encourage, particularly protection of vulnerable people. That is because councils have been left with impossible choices—poll tax mark 2. The Government of course hope that this will all settle down; we think that they are wrong—but an independent review within three years will test that matter.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, for trying to leap in ahead of him. He will have to be quicker getting to his feet and I will have to be slower getting to mine.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, and the three other main contributors to this debate for tabling this amendment, which has been raised before and relates to the monitoring and evaluation of the reforms that we are talking about here—council tax support. However, the amendment would go wider than that, as the noble Lords, Lord Shipley and Lord McKenzie, said, and seek formal review across all the welfare programmes.

This amendment seeks to require the Secretary of State to undertake a formal review of council tax support three years after its implementation, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, was considering whether it should be brought within universal credit. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, made it clear that he wants the provision to go much wider than that.

We have had several discussions on this issue during the passage of the Bill. I will say again what I have said before: namely, that in the first instance it is for councils to keep these schemes under review. The Bill requires each billing authority to do just that, each financial year, and to consider whether or not to revise or, indeed, replace its scheme, which a local authority is entitled to do. Local authorities are closest to their local communities and therefore are closest to those who need the council tax support. Therefore, they will be in the best position to decide how they set their council tax in future, bearing in mind the needs of their population.

I am not convinced that a major independent review as a set stage is required or, indeed, that it would be particularly helpful for local councils. Therefore, noble Lords will not be surprised when I say that I cannot accept the amendment. However, I recognise that it is right and proper for the Government to keep the framework in which councils operate under review. I can confirm that we will take steps to do this. We are already considering with local government what minimal data we will require from councils to enable us to keep this policy under review. I have no doubt at all that local councils will keep us informed of how it is progressing.

There were rather snide or slightly underappreciative comments about the transition scheme announced last week. As we discussed, the transition scheme has been set up to ease in these changes and to ensure that there are incentives and support for councils to help deliver the Government’s objectives.

Furthermore, as we have debated at each stage of the Bill’s passage, the Government do not believe that council tax support should be part of universal credit. Indeed, it was deliberately separated from it. Therefore, I cannot accept the requirement to consider the integration of council tax support with universal credit, nor am I in a position to accept on behalf of the Government a wide review across welfare provision.

However, the noble Baroness is right to remind us of the importance of monitoring and evaluating policy. The Government do that, particularly where there are major policy changes. The Government will continue to keep this policy under review and make adjustments as they see fit to ensure their objectives are delivered. That seems to me the proper way of doing it. It is far too long to sit and wait for a review in two or three years’ time if something needs to be amended or changed. The Government need to be advised of what is happening and amend something where they can if that is necessary. I assure the House that that is what will happen and that the measure will be kept under permanent review. Therefore, I hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, I thank very much other noble Lords who have spoken—the noble Lords, Lord Shipley and Lord Best, my noble friend Lord McKenzie, and of course the Minister for her reply. However, points came up in the argument that I did not feel the Minister addressed. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, who was absolutely spot-on, made the point that because this issue interlocks with welfare reform, it needs a broader approach than the Minister seemed to suggest in her reply. My friend the noble Lord, Lord Best, says he is worried that one possible outcome could be chaos or, equally, we could find that the variations that come our way are acceptable and appropriate, but he remains worried about the implications of this change for the poorest people in our community. As in the Welfare Reform Act, when he successfully persuaded the Minister and the whole House that we needed to monitor the legislation in an independent way, the House backed him, agreed with him and supported his amendment.

We need to know the effects on local authorities, on some of the poorest people in our communities, on work incentives, and on the Conservative Government’s flagship welfare reform—universal credit, which I support. We have to have such a review. The Minister said that individual councils would be keeping the schemes under review; of course they will. This is no substitute for an individual and independent review across the whole field of welfare reform—in so far as this is a part of welfare reform—and council tax benefit. We need that review, otherwise the reviews that the noble Lord, Lord Freud, has agreed to will be incomplete and partial, and no one will be able to put the pieces of the jigsaw together. As I have said, they affect some of the most vulnerable people in our society—disabled people, families with children in poverty, carers and some of the most fragile and frail.

It is because the amendment is very modest and because this is the only way that we are going to get coherent government policy to ensure, as I and everyone else wish to, that support for welfare reform is effective, especially for those who need it above all, that having failed to persuade the noble Baroness of the desirability of the amendment, I hope perhaps we can persuade the House.

15:43

Division 1

Ayes: 203

---

Labour: 130
Crossbench: 40
Liberal Democrat: 16
Independent: 3
Democratic Unionist Party: 1
Bishops: 1
Plaid Cymru: 1

Noes: 165

---

Conservative: 125
Liberal Democrat: 28
Crossbench: 5
UK Independence Party: 2
Ulster Unionist Party: 1

15:55

Amendment 2

Moved by

[Lord Tope]

2: Before Clause 9, insert the following new Clause—
“Power to make grants discretionary
(1) Section 11 of the Local Government Finance Act 1992 (discounts) is amended as follows.
(2) After subsection (5) insert—
“(6) Notwithstanding subsection (3) above, the billing authority shall have discretion to set the appropriate percentage at a rate between 20 and 25 per cent.
(7) In subsection (6) above, the discretion to set the appropriate percentage at a rate other than 25 per cent shall not be exercisable for pensioners.
(8) In subsection (7) above “pensioner” means a person who has attained the qualifying age for state pension credit.””

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, Amendment 2 stands in my name and in the names of my noble friend Lord Shipley and the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding. It has been drafted by the Local Government Association; reflects exactly the policy of the Local Government Association; and has the support of all four groups on the Local Government Association.

We had a long debate on this issue on Report. As the matter was explained fully at that time, I do not intend to go through all of it again today. The amendment differs from the amendment that we debated on Report last Tuesday in two important respects, and, together, those two differences meet the objections that were raised in that debate. First, the amendment would restrict to only 5% the discretion given to local authorities to vary the single person discount. At present that discount is 25%; under this amendment, it could not be less than 20%. Secondly, everyone of pensionable age would be exempt from the change. They would all remain entitled to a 25% single person discount, as at present.

In her reply to last week's debate the Minister commented that she herself received and welcomed the 25% discount. I can reassure her that if this amendment is successful, she will continue to receive the 25% discount, which I know she will welcome.

Perhaps rather more significantly, the Minister also pointed out that an unrestricted amendment—an amendment which would have allowed local authorities, in theory at least, to get rid of the single person discount altogether—could represent a potential tax increase for more than 8 million people. Although I do not think that that would ever have happened, this amendment will ensure that it cannot happen. A very high proportion of people currently in receipt of the single person discount are pensioners and will therefore be exempt from this, and not all local authorities will need or choose to vary the current discount. Therefore, the number facing a very small tax increase will be very significantly less than those maximum figures quoted in the previous debate on this subject.

Nearly all those people will also have benefited from a freeze in their council tax for the past two years, and they will probably do so for a third year, next year. I do not pretend for a moment that this is easy or welcome—there are many in receipt of the single person discount for whom any tax increase will be difficult—but we are talking about a few pence per week from people who are already paying council tax. Surely that is better, or less bad, than local authorities having to take rather larger sums, and certainly much larger sums as a proportion of their income, from the poorest members of their community, many of whom have not previously had to pay any council tax.

The Bill already gives power to local authorities to vary the discounts that they give on empty properties and second homes. Although that is welcome, in many areas it is nowhere near enough to bridge the gap created by the 10% reduction—or as my noble friend Lord Shipley said in the previous debate, more likely, in effect, the 12.5% cut in funding for council tax support. Areas with large numbers of claimants tend not to have many second homes. If the Government are so willing to allow local authorities to vary these two discounts, why has the Secretary of State so resolutely refused even to discuss allowing them to make a small variation in this third discount scheme? The Local Government Association calculates that if this limited discretion were given to local authorities, all but 14 local authorities would be able to meet the funding gap fully without making any charge on claimants.

If the amendment is not agreed and implemented, the LGA states that 90% of the schemes currently being consulted on by local authorities intend to charge working-age claimants generally between 15% and 25% of their council tax. I suspect that the funding scheme announced last week by the Government will not make a significant difference to that, because local authorities will find that the costs of implementing it for one year only will make it simply not worth doing. We will see, but I doubt if any local authority will charge council tax claimants because it wants to; it will do so because it has no choice.

16:00

I understand that the Labour Party is resolutely opposed to the localisation of council tax support, which Parliament approved when it passed the Welfare Reform Act, and to the 10% funding reduction for council tax support which came from the 2010 spending review. I suspect that quite a few Liberal Democrat councillors, and no doubt many Conservative and independent councillors, share that view. I have some sympathy for the Labour Party wanting to see this in the much wider context of local government funding and taxation—but that is not where we find ourselves today. The funding cut will happen next April; council tax support will be localised from next April; and the wide-ranging review of local government funding will certainly not happen by next April, or even in the next few years.

In a few days the Bill will become law. If it is passed as it stands, from next April most working-age claimants will have to pay a significant part of their small income in council tax, often for the first time; and local authorities will have to collect relatively small sums from people who have not previously had to pay and who will find it very hard to start doing so. However, if the amendment is agreed and implemented, that need not happen. The funding gap can be breached by much smaller sums from those in the wider community who are already paying council tax, most of whom will benefit from a three-year freeze in general council tax increases.

That is not the world as we would wish it, but it is the world in which we find ourselves. To borrow a phrase used by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, in our debate on Report, this is “the real red line”. That is why the amendment is strongly supported by all four groups in the Local Government Association. I trust that it will receive equally strong support from all sides of the House. I beg to move.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly in support of the amendment because I see that very many speakers are listed for the debate that is to follow, and I am sure that they do not want to sit here too late.

I made my main point when I supported the similar but different amendment moved last week by the noble Lord, Lord Best. I will not repeat it but will instead make two points. First, in the debate on the previous amendment there was a reference to this issue being “poll tax number two”. I spoke about the poll tax on 16 October. The difference is that, for whatever reason—and people may want to criticise it fiercely—it was part of the original poll tax concept that “everybody should pay something”. In the circumstances, that was not acceptable to the public. In the present circumstances, the proposal by the Government is not intended deliberately to do that—but inadvertently this will be the result unless the amendment or something very like it is agreed. As was said in the debate on the previous amendment, and as my noble friend Lord Tope said, large numbers of people who hitherto have not had to pay council tax because they were given council tax reliefs will find themselves having to do this. This is something that we should try to avoid.

My second point picks up on something on which my noble friend the Minister has apparently laid great stress. On 16 October, she said,

“we have never consulted on reducing council tax discounts”.—[Official Report, 16/10/12; col. 1422.]

Does that mean that Parliament cannot pass an amendment for a proposal on which the Government have not consulted? Are we to be excluded from expressing our views and amending a clause in the Bill because Ministers chose not to consult on it? That is an extraordinary proposition, and I cannot believe—I say this with some kindness—that my noble friend has really worked out the consequences of what she said. It would put an enormous barrier in the way of Parliament debating legislation of this kind if Ministers could simply say, “You cannot possibly have this because we did not consult on it”. Ministers may not have consulted on it but some of us in Parliament and the Local Government Association, as my noble friend Lord Tope said, have come down strongly in favour of this amendment.

I simply cannot accept the argument that because the Government chose not to consult on something this House is prevented from passing it. With those two arguments, I totally support my noble friend Lord Tope. As I have made very clear to my Front Bench, if he presses this matter to a Division, I shall certainly support it.

[Lord True]

My Lords, I also spoke at Report so I will be brief. It gives me some distress to say to my noble friend Lord Tope that, when he said that this amendment addresses the arguments against the amendment that we debated at such huge length on Report, I cannot agree with him. It does not address certain fundamental points of principle. I acknowledge that it is supported widely within the Local Government Association and by many council leaders who will be glad for a penny if they can get hold of one. However, the reality is that when you are making decisions about council tax you are not making decisions within a single box relating to benefit, you are looking at the totality of a local authority’s budget and budgetary decisions.

I hear my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding, who I unreservedly admire and whose expertise on these matters the House respects hugely. With respect, however, I must say that I think he is wrong to try to construct a doctrine whereby the Government are saying that because they had not consulted, Parliament cannot determine—because of course Parliament can determine. I made that point on Report. I say as a local authority leader that we have not consulted on this matter. We have not asked the public about it because it was not within the parameters of the scheme that was proposed.

Were Parliament suddenly to decide that this new broadening of the tax base should take place, it would be an enormous surprise to the council tax payers in almost every authority up and down the land suddenly to discover that a new tax was falling on many single person households. While I acknowledge that the popular and sensible move to protect pensioners is being taken, that only means that this change will bear down more heavily on other people involved as recipients of this discount, such as lone parents. We discussed that on Report. The amendment would mean that it would fall even more disproportionately on those heads.

Regardless of whether the provision is a doctrine of government, I do not think that the amendment addresses the problem. I have said throughout the course of the Bill’s passage that I would have preferred for this to be wrapped up in universal credit. I have been open about that. But it is a bit like the lady who swallowed a fly and then had to swallow a spider to catch the fly. It would make a further structural change in council tax benefit, which by definition has not been thought through or considered, to impose taxation on a large subset of single-parent households. I do not know whether we are talking about 8 million or 5 million of them; it could be fewer. Perhaps the Minister will tell us. But I do not think that that is a good way to make policy. It seems to be making policy on the hoof. Some of us might think that we are having rather a lot of that lately and I do not think that this House should add to it.

[Lord Best]

My Lords, I rise to support this amendment. Indeed, it would be very strange if I did not support it since I have worked on this issue for some months. With help from my indefatigable colleagues at the LGA, we have formulated this revised version of my earlier amendment after last week’s debate. So perhaps I should explain why it is not me who chose to bring this back before your Lordships.

The original amendment would have given full discretion to local authorities to vary the single person discount. This would have enabled councils to raise the necessary funds to compensate for the Government’s 10% cut to council tax benefit, making it unnecessary for them to start levying council tax on the poorest non-pensioner households. The modifications in this new version of the amendment, as set out by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, seek to address the criticisms raised in the debate last Tuesday. They limit the flexibility for councils to reduce the single person discount from 25% to no less than 20% and maintain the full 25% discount for single pensioners, regardless of their income. These constraints would very probably have been adopted by local authorities in any case, but having them in the Bill means there can be no cries of, “It’s a widow’s tax” or “It could mean lone parents being asked to pay another £5 per week”. The revised amendment means that most widows would be excluded and virtually everyone paying council tax in the bottom council tax bands would be charged well under £1 per week more. The relatively few single people in the most valuable properties, those in the top council tax bands, would be likely to see an increase of only a little over £2 per week if their council chose to use the discretionary power to the full. Since the single person discount reduction would come in a year when the Government are requiring another freeze for the overarching level of council tax, the reduction from 25% to 20% could not be even a fraction as painful and problematic as cutting council tax benefits by £3 to £5 or more for the poorest.

I had hoped very much that the Government and those of your Lordships who were hesitant to support the more open-ended amendment would be brought on board by the modified version. The LGA has articulated the very strong support of council leaders for this amendment, most particularly those leaders representing less affluent areas where more people are in receipt of council tax benefit and there are fewer opportunities to raise more taxation from high-value empty properties or second homes. This is the lifeline that could save councils from having to cut services or support to the most economically and socially vulnerable.

I promised my Cross Bench colleagues, who have been incredibly supportive, that if I failed to secure any movement in the position of the Government or the Labour Benches, I would not try their patience further and take up the time of the House with a battle that could not be won. Sadly, the Minister has made clear to me that despite the strength of feeling of the LGA and local authorities of all political persuasions, the Government will not budge. Equally, noble Lords on the opposition Front Bench have remained adamant that despite the strongest representations by Labour councils, they cannot support any change to the fixed 25% single person discount. I have had to conclude that my efforts have failed and it is not for me to bring back this matter to the Floor of the House. It would be like entering Frankel for a final race in the knowledge that he was bound to lose. However, I entirely respect the efforts of the noble Lords, Lord Tope and Lord Shipley, in continuing the fight, and of course I am hugely appreciative of the magnificent support that I and the LGA have had from the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, throughout this lengthy saga.

Maybe there will be a last-minute change of heart by the Government or the opposition Front Bench. Certainly, all concerned have had a chance to see if the Government’s transitional £100 million grant could save the day. The verdict, I fear, is that although it will put back the day of reckoning for a year in some areas, it will not save the day in the least well-off areas, and for future years, of course, the position remains untenable in very many more places.

It may be that all that is left is a protest vote, but if protesting is all that we can do at this stage then protest I do. It is terrible to impose on councils the task of collecting taxes from people who do not have the money to pay; and it is terrible to subject those already struggling to survive on the very lowest incomes to a further reduction in their living standards. I do protest and, of course, I strongly support this amendment.

16:15

[Lord Smith of Leigh]

My Lords, last week, I reluctantly supported a similar amendment and, within a week, I have not changed my mind thoroughly—although I preferred the previous amendment because it was more localist than this one, which is more restrictive. I need to declare an interest as a vice-president at the LGA, but that is not why I support the amendment. I support it because I am a leader of a council and will have to make the kind of decisions that noble Lords have described. This may be the least-worst option for some of us. I do not quite agree with the noble Lord, Lord Best. The amendment will not save the day. As I said last week, it will be a help, but it will not save the day, because the gap between what my authority needs to raise to meet the shortfall in the council tax benefit scheme could not be raised under this particular text. However, it will help to mitigate some of the worst impacts that would be felt by other members of my community who are poor and cannot afford to pay the large amounts that they will have to pay if the council tax benefit scheme is introduced in the manner proposed. While I am reluctant to support the amendment, it is much better than having to do some of other things that, without it, I would have to do.

[Lord Shipley]

My Lords, I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Smith, that this is the best of the options that we have available. Crucially—and it is the reason why I thought that the Government might be willing to accept it—the amendment would cost them nothing.

In her Written Statement last week announcing a £100 million transitional grant, the Minister said that it was,

“to help those councils who choose to do the right thing”.—[Official Report, 15/10/12; col. WS164.]

The problem with that is that it does not recognise that many councils cannot do that. There are several reasons why this is the case. We have heard reference to the council tax freeze—last year, this year and now next year. Last year was fine, because the Government built into the baseline of all local authorities the amount that they had lost through the tax being frozen, but, in this financial year and the next financial year, no money has been or will be built into the baseline. That means in practice that councils will have to absorb inflation and rising costs.

There was an expectation that councils, in being able to tax at 100% empty or second homes, would be able to make up the gap in their finances. The problem is that many councils do not have many empty homes or second homes and therefore cannot use that means to make up the gap in their finances.

We should also note, as I reminded the House on Report, that according to figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, councils in poorer parts of England have had budget cuts since 2010 at almost three times the rate of councils in the south of England. That is partly a result of the loss of working neighbourhoods funding.

The consequence of all these factors is that many councils have no flexibility or room for manoeuvre. This amendment would give them some extra flexibility. It would mean a small extra weekly sum from a large number of working-age, single person households, most of which have had a freeze in council tax for the past two years and would otherwise have a freeze next year. It would be enough in most cases to take poor working-age households out of paying council tax, thereby preventing a regressive tax being implemented.

Last week, at Report, I reminded the House of a statement made by the Deputy Prime Minister a few days ago. I shall repeat his words because I think they are hugely relevant. He said:

“As we have to tighten our belts … as we have to make more savings as a country … you start at the top and work your way down, not the other way round”.

I agree that those who are poor should be protected. The reason why I give my full support to the amendment is that it does just that: it protects the poor better than the Bill. Given that it has the full support of all political groups on the Local Government Association, I hope that your Lordships’ House will feel able to support it.

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill]

At this stage, we get down to essentials, as we did in the previous amendment. That amendment addressed the crux of the problem. I appreciated what the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, said about this being in the universal credit. That has come through from various noble Lords. However, we are where we are, as my noble friend Lord Tope said, and we must deal with that.

The important thing about the amendment is that it gives discretion to local authorities. That discretion is important. Speaking as a councillor in the London Borough of Barnet, I believe that that would help my council, although it would not help all councils. It is an extension of the localism which we debated previously. This amendment and the previous amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, support the poorest in society. That is why, contrary to my normal beliefs, I voted for the previous amendment and will certainly vote for this one.

My noble friend Lord True spoke about the difficulties that it would impose on local authorities to have the change at this late stage and asked how it would help. As I said, local authorities have discretion whether to do this or not, and that discretion does not have to be applied this year—it could be applied next year. Many local authorities may decide to use their part of the £100 million in transitional relief this year to ease the pain but, as I pointed out on Report, it will help only this year. By next year, the amendment, building on the review suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, will mean that local authorities can achieve my aim and, I hope, that of many noble Lords: to help the poorest in society.

My noble friend Lord True said that that was swallowing a spider to catch a fly. Without the amendment and the previous amendment, the Bill is a particularly dangerous fly and I think that it is worth swallowing the spider.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, let me start with a point of agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Tope, which is that the Government—his Government—have underfunded the requirement placed on local councils to introduce local council tax reduction schemes. That is the root cause of the problem that his amendment is intended to address.

It is now widely recognised that the cut in grant to support local schemes is more than 10%. For a start, the national control total is based on falling claimants, although the reverse is the case in a number of areas. That is to the disadvantage in particular of those areas which have been hardest hit by the extended recession. The IFS estimates that the grant for support—this is before the transitional grant—will cover only 81% of the costs of claimants nationally and that for one in 10, the figure will be less than 75%, a grim prospect indeed.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Tope, and his colleagues in particular, that they accept this position as an inevitability. It is not. We are in this position because they as part of the Government do not knock on the Chancellor’s door or lobby Ministers to get a different outcome. It is in their hands to do it. They can influence their coalition partners better than we ever can. If they could do that, it would be a much more effective way of dealing with what we agree is a very serious problem.

In moving the amendment, the noble Lord explained, and other noble Lords reiterated, that this amendment differs from the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Best in two respects: it gives discretion to local authorities to reduce the single person’s discount by up to 5% so that it cannot be lower than 20% and it does not allow local authorities to change the discount for pensioners, who are protected from any such change. However, as the noble Lord, Lord True, said, it does not address all the issues raised when we debated the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Best. This more restrictive proposal will still have the effect of increasing levels of council tax support, other things being equal, because it will increase council tax levels for some, pushing them into the scope of the benefit. The LGA argues that an average reduction of 5% in the single person’s discount for non-pensioner households coupled with the use of the discretion on empty properties and second homes would close the funding gap for most authorities. It is further argued that this would involve spreading the pain of the cuts so that more people would be contributing, but contributing a smaller amount, towards the shortfall. This may well be right, but it does not necessarily make the resultant distributive effect of the outcome acceptable.

We should also recognise the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, that not all councils have an equal ability to raise revenue from other freedoms in the Bill. Second homes, for example, are not evenly spread. One of the difficulties with the noble Lord’s proposal is that looking at aggregate in the position is all very well, but things are played out at individual local authority level. This is supposed to be the essence of localism, which the noble Lord supports. The IFS has done some modelling of the proposition, albeit with a 7.5% reduction in the single person’s discount, and I believe that the thrust of analysis holds good. One of its conclusions is, unsurprisingly, that changing the discount would produce more in relatively prosperous areas than in poorer areas. The prosperous areas, which are likely to have lower demands for council tax support and more income from second homes, would be able to retain a higher level of single person’s discount than poorer areas. It is all right for the rich; it is the poorer areas that will bear the consequences of this. Further—and, I grant you, with a 7.5% reduction in the single person’s discount—the IFS estimates that losers would include 20% of the poorest income decile group, 16% of the second poorest income decile group, 22% of the third poorest income decile group and 86% of lone parents in work. This is reinforcing the point that in many respects the proposition requires the poor to pay more to protect the very poor.

We well recognise that councils whose resources have been cut to the bone and are struggling to protect the most vulnerable see this as a lifeline, and I understand where my noble friend Lord Smith is coming from, but there has got to be a better way. Frankly, if the noble Lord is supporting an increase in the tax base by a change to the single person’s discount, it would be more logical for him to argue that there should be a mandatory change at national level and the additional resources should be reflected in the local government settlement with a redistribution in favour of poorer areas. That would be a better way to approach it, but that is not his position, nor is it ours. As we argued on Report, the answer is for the Government to provide proper levels of support. The Government have implicitly recognised this in providing the transitional grant but, as ever, that is too limited and time-limited. I suggest to the noble Lord that by pressing this amendment he is seeking to let his Government off the hook and asking poor people, among others, to pay the price. We cannot support the amendment.

16:30

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I thank those noble Lords who have returned to the battle on this front, and I thank the noble Lord opposite for indicating where his party stands on this.

It might be worth reminding the House why we are in the position that we are in. We still sit on one of the largest deficits that this country has ever seen, and everything and every aspect is having to make a contribution to that. If we had not inherited that financial situation, we would not be here.

Let us be clear: the amendment is a tax rise on millions of single people, even in the reduced form that now comes before us. An amendment to give local authorities complete discretion over the level of discount was discussed for over an hour and a half on Report, but ultimately was not pressed. The Government were opposed to any change in the single-person discount then, and our position has not changed now. The single-person discount was part of the regional council tax system. It was part only of the system, not of anything to do with what was then council tax benefit. It is correct that it was not included or considered as part of the consultation on changes to support for council tax benefit. Noble Lords have said, “Well, that doesn’t matter; we can produce this in this House if we wish to”, and of course that is absolutely right—that can be done. In broad terms, though, the country has not been asked about this, although we have heard views about it. The noble Lord, Lord True, is correct in what he said; it goes back to the fact that this was not part of the original local government scheme.

The single-person discount exists because, by and large, single-adult households make less use of local authority services. I accept that there are some who do not—those who need adult support or social services support—but by and large single people, and I return to the fact that I am a beneficiary of this particular discount, do not make as much use of the facilities.

I do not want to repeat my arguments from Report but I want to be clear on the impact that the amendment would have. Changes to the single-person discount would be, as I have already said, a significant tax increase. Although the amendment clearly excepts pensioners, it would still hit other groups such as single parents and low-income people of working age. It is important, perhaps, to be aware that in October 2011—the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, came to this conclusion in a different way—more than three-quarters of the claimants of single-person discount were in dwellings that were banded A to C. Only one-third live in band A and only 10% of such claimants live in properties that are band E, so the effect would fall disproportionately on the people who lived in the lower-cost accommodation—and I suspect that most of those would be people who by definition would not be considered to be very well off. So the amendment would tax those whom noble Lords are seeking to help.

Noble Lords have previously commented on the amount of revenue that may be raised by reducing the rate of discount. I would like to sound a note of caution. People losing their single-person discount under this amendment may ultimately find themselves in greater need of help with their council tax. This would mean curtailing the impact of any additional resources, putting more people in need of council tax support and creating unintended pressures on councils. I am sure that the House would agree that it is not quite the outcome for this amendment that would be expected or hoped for.

Finally, without a direct correlation between distribution and financial need, it is not at all certain that the limit of new funds that the amendment would realise would indeed help those councils which the noble Lord is trying to support—another point which the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, made very strongly in his comments.

I have made it clear from the outset that the Government will not be supporting this tax rise on several million people. I tell the House that the Government will not be able to support this amendment.

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, I am of course grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate, particularly to those who have spoken, from all sides of the House, in support of the amendment. I pay particular tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Best, who has indeed fought this fight, not to make policy on the hoof, as the noble Lord, Lord True, suggested, but who has tried to bring it about for many, many months. The noble Lord, Lord Best, will understand if I say that his view that it is not worth entering the race if you are bound to lose is not shared by most Liberal Democrats. Similarly, we are grateful to him for his offer of a protest vote. That is something that we are also used to gratefully receiving; we sometimes put them to surprisingly good effect, as I hope that we will today.

The Minister has said, quite rightly, that if this amendment were passed, it would be a tax rise for some. It would. It would be a small tax rise where local authorities chose to vary the single-person discount, and not all of them will do that. It would be a small tax rise for those in receipt of the full 25% discount.

The cut in funding for council tax support being implemented in the way that most local authorities are having to do so is itself a tax rise for the people least well able to afford it. I do not pretend for one moment that the amendment is ideal, the perfect solution, the cure-all. Of course it is not. It is what the noble Lord, Lord Smith, quite rightly described as the least worst option. It is the least worst option that is before us tonight. We have heard speeches in support of it from all sides of the House tonight. I hope very much that we will see them translated into support.

I find it inexplicable—I have used that term before—that the Labour Party is choosing today to vote with the Conservative Government and against the amendment.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Tope]

If the Labour Party votes, it will vote with the Government. The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, suggested that we should be lobbying our coalition partners.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

Will the noble Lord tell me what he and his colleagues have been doing for the past two and a half years?

[Lord Tope]

My Lords, as the noble Lord never ceases to remind us, we are actually part of the Government, and willingly so. We have been lobbying for a long time on this issue. I do not lightly bring an amendment to the House which I know that my coalition partners cannot agree with. I do so because we are at the very last stage of the Bill. This is the last opportunity that any of us in this House have to do something about it. I am now going to give the House the opportunity. I beg leave to test the opinion of the House.

16:38

Division 2

Ayes: 64

---

Liberal Democrat: 30
Crossbench: 26
Conservative: 2
Labour: 1
Independent: 1

Noes: 299

---

Labour: 132
Conservative: 129
Liberal Democrat: 14
Crossbench: 12
Independent: 2
Democratic Unionist Party: 1
Ulster Unionist Party: 1
UK Independence Party: 1

16:57

Amendment 3

Moved by

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

3: Before Clause 9, insert the following new Clause—
“Guidance to authorities
The Secretary of State shall issue guidance to local authorities as to what persons or category of persons shall be deemed to be vulnerable for the purposes of ongoing council tax support.”

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, this is a straightforward issue which was the subject of much debate in Committee. The amendment requires the Secretary of State to,

“issue guidance to local authorities as to what persons or category of persons shall be deemed to be vulnerable for the purposes of … council tax support”.

This issue has to be revisited in light of the actual scope of schemes on which local authorities have consulted and the Government’s reaction by way of the transitional grant. Hitherto, the Government had set their face against prescribing the protection which councils should provide for vulnerable groups and the nature of that protection, other than for pensioners where statutory protections have been included. They have reminded local authorities of their equality duty, the duty to prevent homelessness and the obligation to mitigate child poverty but have washed their hands of greater engagement on the subject.

What effect has this had on councils in drafting and consulting on schemes? The LGA tells us that councils are seeking to give protection to vulnerable groups through their equalities impact assessments, although the outcome of this has not been analysed. Apparently, the groups identified in consultations as being vulnerable are people with a disability, lone parents with children, carers, war widows and young people leaving care. Notwithstanding this, some of the draft schemes appear to pay scant regard to protecting vulnerable people. There is a common theme of everyone of working age having to make a minimum contribution—perhaps 20% or even 30% of the liability. Some draft schemes look to include child benefit and maintenance payments as income.

In introducing the transitional grant, the Government have expressed their concern that while some councils are doing their utmost to avoid increasing the burden on those currently on benefits, who are vulnerable by any definition, other councils are asking, or being forced to ask, for significant contributions. Therefore, the Government are seeking to drive a national uniformity of approach by making transitional grant available if certain criteria are met. In particular, as we have just discussed, the funding can be accessed if those currently on 100% council tax benefit are supported so that they pay no more than 8.5% of what would be the full liability.

16:59

Although the transitional funding is too little and only for one year, it is at least a step in the right direction that the Government identified those currently being passported to full council tax benefit as a group who should be protected—at least to a level. If not specific guidance, it is the Government giving clear signals as to some whom they consider are vulnerable. Those being passported are those on means-tested benefits—income support, income-related JSA, income related ESA and the guaranteed pension credit. It will be seen that this is a broad group encompassing lone parents with young children, recipients of carer’s allowance, the unemployed and disabled people subject to employment and support allowance. This should not be the extent of the protection available to vulnerable people, especially those with a disability. At present, if someone is means-tested rather than passported, certain types of income are ignored—DLA, the care and mobility components, and constant attendance allowance. Clearly, guidance should cover these issues. Importantly, they do not need to be identified by reference to local criteria. It is not local judgments that are in play here in the Government introducing this national uniformity approach.

Surely the lesson, even at this early stage of the new arrangements, is that unless some authoritative guidance is provided by the Secretary of State, some vulnerable people will be further disadvantaged. The transitional grant criteria may not endure as authoritative when grant disappears or when those individual benefits are replaced by universal credit. The Government have effectively crossed the Rubicon and accepted that central guidance and/or encouragement to drive good practice has proved to be essential. Clearly, many councils will strive to protect vulnerable people but the financial pressures on them, now and in the immediate future, will be overwhelming. Keeping national markers is one way of helping to avoid the voices of the most disadvantaged being lost. I beg to move.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, I take pleasure in supporting the amendment so ably moved by my noble friend. In Committee, we asked for guidance as to who were vulnerable and what council tax benefit protection for them was appropriate. The Minister replied, correctly of course, that although there was a power under the Act for the Secretary of State to issue guidance to that effect, he did not propose to do so.

In the past week, we have had the welcome news of the £100 million transitional grant for those on benefit but, as my noble friend emphasised, it lasts for one year only. While reducing the cuts for many vulnerable people for one year, it creates the poll tax mark 2 problem of trying to collect small sums from 2 million people. The following year, vulnerable people will again be fully exposed to the cuts. This is simply not fair to local authorities or to the vulnerable people living in them, who may be facing three different schemes in each of three years—full protection this year, up to 8.5% next year, and the full cut the year after. The Government’s transitional grant reflects the fact that they now see just what localism can mean in practice, and they do not like what they see.

I am glad of the real decency that the Minister has shown, and we expect nothing less of her, but vulnerable people will still have to deal with the fallout when the transitional grant has expired unless, as the amendment argues, funding is provided on a sustainable basis. Let me take Norfolk as an example. I declare an interest as Deputy Lieutenant and a former city councillor and county councillor. There are seven district councils and these are their proposals so far: Norwich is struggling to retain the existing national default scheme and is making cuts to do so, and there is therefore no minimum contribution for people on benefit. Great Yarmouth is proposing a minimum contribution from benefit claimants of 20%. King’s Lynn proposes a figure of 25%. Breckland, Broadland and North Norfolk propose a straight 30%, even though North Norfolk and Broadland have high numbers of second homes, which one would have thought would have given them some head space to protect people against the cuts. South Norfolk proposes to compress bands down to band D and then drop below D to bands C, B and A, and then levy 20%. That means a 28% minimum contribution for benefit claimants in band A properties and potentially up to 60% for the high bands. I am very happy to share my workings with anyone who queries that.

Therefore, there are five schemes among seven neighbouring authorities in one county with different minimum payments for vulnerable people on benefit ranging from 0% to potentially 60%, to say nothing about different rules for savings, income, backdating and the second adult rebate. It is quite likely that many of these councils will take up the transitional grant—I hope that they do—but in the year after that they will be back up there with these awful cuts.

Yet we are still told, although less stridently, that this is all about appropriate local decision-making—for example, that local authorities are uniquely placed to decide that they should permit backdating, because presumably the individual local authority knows its patch and has a high proportion of people with fallible memories and slow response times, so it keeps backdating, while a neighbouring authority is scrapping backdating because it is confident that its residents are much sharper than those of the authority next door and will be quick to claim. For one to have backdating and the other not on some reading of the mentality of the residents is presumably an unusual assessment of local need. Or it may be that one authority knows that its residents need savings of up to £6,000 in total because its unique insight into local need tells it that its residents will not face divorce or disability, which makes such savings necessary, while the authority next door is less sanguine about its capacity to foretell the future needs of its residents, so it allows them £16,000 in savings. Do your Lordships really believe that all this is about unique local insight into unique local needs in the name of unique localism?

Alternatively, let us take income. Every scheme that I have seen regards disabled people as vulnerable, but some include DLA as income and others do not. As DLA—if you take the middle-rate care and higher-rate mobility components—can be nearly £100, if it is counted as income that household will make a significant contribution to council tax benefit and to council tax; if it is not so counted, it will probably be exempt. Therefore, there could be two blind people in identical circumstances but one would be made deliberately poorer than the other because, unluckily, he lives in the “wrong” authority and the value of his DLA awarded nationally is cut by local discretion. Is that what we intended when we awarded DLA? What is the point of a national benefit funded by taxpayers if it is vulnerable to local cuts made by local councillors? That is what is going to happen.

All my life I have fought for and believed in local government. Assessing and meeting housing need, for example, is a proper duty of local authorities and a proper subject for local discretion. However, what is not a proper local decision is for local authorities to determine what income vulnerable people should receive. That is and should continue to be a matter of individual entitlement, national criteria and common responsibility and not a matter for local discretion and local handouts.

Disabled people and their carers are scattered across the country. Although they may happen to live in a particular locality, their disability is in no sense local. Therefore, their income support—and council tax benefit is part of their income support—should not be a local responsibility and it is not up to the locality to meet it. Whether there are 2,000 disabled people in Merthyr Tydfil or 200 in west Oxfordshire, they are the responsibility of us all.

I do not believe for a moment that local councillors want to treat disabled people unfairly or more harshly than their next-door neighbours. They do not want to add more financial distress to the lone parent with a five year-old child, desperately searching for work. They do not want to undermine the support that a carer seeks to give to an elderly parent. However, as my noble friend has argued, without sustainable funding for their vulnerable residents, that is what they are going to be doing in 18 months’ time.

The Government have given themselves and local councils a breathing space of a year. They and we should use that year to come up with fairer, better and stable arrangements for meeting the financial need of the most vulnerable people in our society. I support the amendment.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, I will intervene very briefly. We have heard two very powerful speeches from my noble friends in support of this amendment. The more I have listened to the debate during the passage of this Bill, the more I have come to the conclusion that all the talk about protecting vulnerable groups is simply a fig leaf. The Government say that they want to protect vulnerable groups but they do nothing to ensure that local authorities do so. Indeed, there is not even any mention of vulnerable groups in the eligibility criteria for the transitional funding. They know full well, while also saying that local authorities should have regard to work incentives, that they are putting local authorities between a rock and hard place.

My own authority, Nottingham, is not going to protect vulnerable groups because it is going to spread the pain out among all working-age people. My noble friend Lord McKenzie has suggested that this is probably what many authorities are going to do. The Government can then turn around and blame the local authorities by saying that it is the local authorities that are refusing to protect vulnerable groups, having set up a scheme but not having given them enough money to ensure that they protect vulnerable groups. It really is not on. What are the Government going to do to monitor the impact of the new scheme on local groups? If this monitoring produces the evidence that vulnerable groups are not being protected, what action will the Government take? Ultimately the buck should stop with the Government, not with the local authorities, in terms of ensuring that vulnerable groups are protected.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for introducing this amendment and for his explanation, as well as the other speakers. Amendment 3 is quite a tight amendment—although we have rather waltzed away from it—that would require the Secretary of State to issue guidance setting out who is considered vulnerable for the purposes of local schemes.

As noble Lords are aware, the Government have made it clear that local authorities should make good provision for vulnerable people in their communities. However, we do not believe it would be helpful to create a new definition of vulnerability, particularly when local authorities already operate within a framework of responsibilities in relation to vulnerable groups. The Department for Communities and Local Government is at the moment working with the Department for Work and Pensions to ensure that local authorities will continue to receive appropriate data on current benefits and universal credit for those who would be considered vulnerable. This could include data that would help local authorities identify individuals they considered to be vulnerable, such as those who have a disability, so that they are able to provide that support in future.

As I said before, local authorities are well aware of their responsibilities and their own priorities and do not need further hand-holding by central government. I am satisfied that local authorities are already alive to the need to protect the vulnerable and to draft schemes, which many are considering, on how to support those they consider to be vulnerable. A number of councils, including Arun, South Tyneside, North East Lincolnshire, Portsmouth and Daventry, to name just a few, are all proposing schemes that make some special provision for people who the council consider particularly vulnerable, whether disabled people or families with young children.

As we have discussed previously, we have already published guidance that reminds local authorities of the statutory framework in which they operate and of their existing responsibilities in relation to people who are considered to be vulnerable. I am pleased to have had the opportunity, throughout our discussions at various stages of this Bill, to draw attention to these important responsibilities. As I indicated to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, on Report, I am content and happy to bring this guidance to the attention of local authorities again, while alerting them to potential future legislative changes relating to carers, as set out in the draft care and support Bill, which they will also want to be aware of. However, given that local authorities already have an established and understood framework of statutory responsibilities in relation to promoting equality of treatment for individuals who are vulnerable through the design of their schemes, I do not believe that there is any value in creating new guidance.

I am aware, however, that a number of draft schemes propose a significant increase in the tax burden on those currently paying no council tax. It is disappointing that a number of councils have not felt able, in the light of their responsibilities towards vulnerable groups, to design schemes that avoid placing very great financial pressures on those least able to pay. That is why we have introduced the transition grant, to help those authorities which undertake to avoid significant cuts to awards in the first year, to find other more sustainable ways of managing the reduction in the future.

To be compliant with the grant criteria, an authority must develop a scheme that ensures that no one who would be eligible for 100% support based on current criteria can be asked to pay more than 8.5%. We have discussed that previously at length, so I do not need to go through the whole system again. I have the guidance here and I give a commitment to the House that it can be put forward again to local authorities to remind them of their duties.

17:15

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

The noble Baroness says that she already has the guidance. The guidance spells out the equality duties and so on under legislation. However, it does not actually cover some groups of people; for example, carers are not part of the groups covered under the legislation. Nor does the guidance easily translate the vocabulary of rights and discrimination, which is what the Equality Act is about, into the need for financial support. If the Minister proposes to reissue that document, could she add an addendum on the implications of that document on this piece of legislation?

[Baroness Hanham]

The document makes it quite clear that councils have a responsibility, if nothing else, under the Equality Act to ensure that they treat everyone fairly. I think that would take account of what the noble Baroness has said.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, I thank my noble friends Lady Hollis and Lady Lister for their support for the amendment. My noble friend Lady Hollis ranged over those draft schemes which, to her knowledge, are in a different place on a whole range of different components. She made the point about how local schemes undermine the import of national benefits, particularly DLA. My noble friend Lady Lister questioned whether there was any serious attempt on behalf of the Government to ensure that vulnerable people are protected.

The Minister said that she would reissue the guidance, such as it exists, which is to be welcomed. However, it does not go very far. Is not the lesson to be learnt from this that when you saw how schemes were being developed, what consultations had taken place and what was emerging from that, there was clearly insufficient protection for vulnerable people in many schemes? I think the Minister recognised that. That is still on the basis that councils, in the Minister's terms, should be well aware of their equalities duties, homelessness duties and child poverty duties. They are already in a position where they should be aware of that framework, yet they are still, as we know, being forced, due to a lack of funding, to come forward with schemes that simply do not protect vulnerable people sufficiently and the Minister herself has recognised that. That is why the transition grant had to be brought in, in a sense, to try to bend what individual councils were doing into some sort of national criteria.

One would have thought that that experience would validate the need for some ongoing guidance because that grant will disappear after a year and the import of it will dissipate over time. It is a great pity that the Minister and the Government do not feel able to do more on this front. It is a very critical time for local council tax support schemes. We know that funding is very tight and we should be doing absolutely everything that we can to protect the most vulnerable. This is an opportunity for the Government to be part of that. I regret that they are choosing not to do that. Having said that and given where we are, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 3 withdrawn.

Amendment 4

Moved by

[Baroness Sherlock]

4: Clause 9, page 5, line 32, at end insert—
“( ) No council tax reduction scheme shall, taking account of withdrawal of other benefits, have a taper which produces an overall withdrawal rate greater than that which would result from the application of the default scheme.”

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, the amendment is designed to help the Government. To that extent, I hope that the Minister will embrace it enthusiastically. I spent some time as a special adviser at the Treasury. During work on my first Budget, I learnt one important fact: it is possible for things to be simultaneously very important and extremely dull. I am afraid that my speech may fulfil that theory completely, but I hope that the House will bear with me. In preparing for it, I was very grateful for advice from many quarters, including the National Policy Institute and the Children’s Society. I am also grateful to the Minister for allowing me access to her officials, to help me understand the implications of government policy.

At present, the taper rate for council tax benefit is 20%. In other words, for each additional £100 of income somebody has, they lose £20 in council tax benefit. That does not sound much, but it comes on top of a series of other tapers. If someone is on a low income but pays tax and national insurance and gets tax credits, after a certain point, for every £100 she earns, she will lose £32 in tax and national insurance, and another £41 in lost tax credits, leaving her with £27 out of the £100. The housing benefit taper is set at 65%, so she will be left with £17.60. The council tax benefit taper is set at 20%, so she will have about a fiver left out of the £100 extra that she has earned. That is what is called a maximum taper of 96%.

That may sound bad, but it could be about to get a lot worse. The National Policy Institute found that some councils were either proposing an increased taper or were consulting on increasing the taper from the current 20%. For example, I looked up the draft scheme proposed by Trafford Council. It includes a proposal to increase the taper from 20% to 30%. Interestingly, the text of the paper outlining the draft scheme states in paragraph 6.6:

“The draft scheme is designed to underpin the principle ‘Encouraging and supporting people back into work’ and the Government’s welfare reform principles below … People should get more overall income in work than out of work … People should get more overall income from working more and earning more”.

Is this what will happen? With a 30% taper on council tax, that person will face a combined taper of 99%. Of the extra £100, she will get to keep little more than £1.

Increasing the taper from 20% to 30% does not save very much, either. The report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies showed that it saved about 2% nationally across the council tax bill. However, as the IFS noted, because it reduces support at low levels of earnings, it reduces the incentive for some families to have someone in low-paid work. If the taper were to go over 35%, the worker would actually lose money. In other words, she would earn an extra £100 but would have less money in her pocket than before she earned it.

What is the solution? The Government explained that their solution to the problem of high marginal deduction rates was the introduction of universal credit. This was explained in another place in a Written Answer by the DWP Minister, the right honourable Chris Grayling, on 1 April last year. In response to a question from Liam Byrne, he said:

“Universal credit will improve the incentives to increase hours of work. At present some 0.7 million households in low paid work lose 80% or more of any increase in earnings. Under universal credit, virtually no households will have deduction rates above 76%”.—[Official Report, Commons, 1/4/11; col. 518W.]

Sadly, that was before taking into account the fact that council tax support would fall outside universal credit. Even on the current 20% taper, someone paying tax and national insurance could just nudge over the 80% combined taper. With a 25% taper on council tax support, the combined taper reaches 82%—and onwards and upwards. Therefore, we have a problem with the plan for universal credit to be the vehicle for stopping large numbers of people having high marginal deduction rates. It also means that the Government can no longer offer any assurance about people being better off in work, because the answer to the question, “Will I be better off in work or if I work more hours?”, will in future be simple. It will be, “It depends where you live”.

It is also worth remembering that the welfare to work programme is national. When the Government increase conditionality and tell a lone parent that she must take a low-paid job even if it means working in the school holidays when she would rather be with her children, they will not in future even be able to guarantee that she will be better off because they cannot necessarily guarantee how her local council will treat council tax support. Of course, by the time she has had to face other changes to tax and benefits and indeed possibly pay 7% of any maintenance in charges, she could be quite a bit worse off.

However, this is Third Reading and we cannot unpick the mess that is caused by keeping council tax support outside universal credit. But we can limit the damage. If the Minister cannot accept my marvellous amendment I hope that she will at least ensure that the guidance issued to local authorities makes clear the consequences of higher tapers. I fear that not all councils will necessarily understand the consequences of these decisions. I therefore hope that she will do that and recommend that the maximum taper be limited to that in the Government’s own default scheme.

I hope that the Minister will be able to accept this narrow amendment. All that it does is to insist that authorities cannot create schemes with means tests that are more aggressive than the Government's own default scheme. In so doing, it would ensure that the working poor could at least keep some of any increase in earnings. Surely we can all agree on that. I beg to move.

[Baroness Donaghy]

My Lords, Amendment 5 deals with the issue of work incentives. One of the central tenets of the coalition Government’s welfare announcements was that there should be no disincentive to work. “We will make work pay”, they said. However, there is no reference to work incentives in the Bill. The proposed schemes devised by councils to localise council tax benefits actually contain many disincentives to work. Since Committee, we have had the announcement of a transitional £100 million to assist councils in 2013-14. The government Statement referred to maintaining positive incentives to work and called for no sharp reductions in support for those entering work. But the changes will still have a massive impact on the working poor. Incidentally, the announcement also laid bare the myth of localism.

Let us remind ourselves that council tax benefits are in-work benefits. Nearly 750,000 people are non-passported recipients of council tax benefit and in work. It is the most comprehensively claimed benefit, despite the fact that a large number of eligible older people do not claim it. People who do claim it are in low-paid and often part-time work. In Committee, I outlined at least seven disincentives to work contained in local authority proposals to localise council tax benefits. I do not intend to go through them today in detail as they are already on the record, but they include: increasing tapers; the further exploitation of non-dependent deductions; removing working tax credit income disregards by varying amounts; making workers with income regarded as greater than need contribute more through increasing the rate of withdrawal; capping support at the level for band D, E or F; and, finally, everyone paying something—a return to the poll tax, but without anything included within income support, jobseeker’s allowance or ESA to counter it.

The £100 million transitional grant is supposed to reassure us that the Government are putting in place protections for the poorest and most vulnerable. That is not the case, as outlined by my noble friend Lady Lister. It is a temporary measure to help push through the new poor law. The irony is that the recently announced transitional grant will benefit councils that are relatively better off, which will find it easier to devise schemes that qualify for the grant. The Local Government Association has indicated that it is “questionable” how many of the 104 councils proposing a minimum payment of 20% stand to benefit.

The Minister’s Written Statement urges the development of well-designed council tax support schemes and to “avoid collecting small payments”. I believe that in practice local authorities are in an impossible position. The impact on those in work is completely sidestepped in that Statement. With 23 applications for every job vacancy, some working people are clinging on to their jobs by their fingernails. Comparatively small amounts being chipped away on council tax benefit, the bedroom tax, wage freezes and energy price increases will, when taken together, make the difference between just about holding things together and the whole pack of cards collapsing. Being presented with a council tax bill or an unexpected increase in that bill could be the pivotal point for some working families in deciding that work does not pay.

Where are the greatest number of working people who will be affected? County Durham has 5,810 working recipients of council tax benefit. There are more than 8,000 in Manchester, over 6,000 in Liverpool, 3,500 in Wigan and 3,500 in Salford. These are some of the poorest areas in the country, while South Bucks has only 420 and the City of London has 40. This redistribution of wealth is shameful and will have consequences for employment. The Government need to demonstrate that they are in favour of work incentives as opposed to benefit disincentives or this measure will be seen as an attack on the working poor. That is why I have tabled my amendment.

17:30

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

I support the amendments of both of my noble friends. They speak for themselves very powerfully and there is nothing I can add that would help them on their way.

[Baroness Hanham]

Rather than rising to speak, the noble Lord was nodding his head, so I was not sure whether he was going to intervene. We shall have to come to an agreement for the next two groups of amendments.

Amendment 2, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, and Amendment 3, spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, are concerned with the interaction between the local schemes and work incentives. I share the concern that work incentives should be supported. That is why earlier this year the Government published guidance to which the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, referred, setting out the key features that local authorities should consider including in their schemes to support work incentives. All noble Lords have acknowledged that the transition grant scheme will provide a financial incentive for local authorities to implement those schemes that support work, ensuring that there are no cliff-edges—that is the 25%—as claimants enter work and increase their earnings, and that support is tapered away steadily as their earnings increase. Amendment 2 is intended to control the rate at which council tax support and other benefits are withdrawn to help preserve those work incentives.

In Committee we set out our intentions for the default scheme that will come into force if a local authority fails to adopt a local scheme. We clarified in particular how we intended to take universal credit income into account in that scheme. Officials from my department have continued to work closely with officials from the Department for Work and Pensions to refine the proposals we set out earlier this year so as to ensure that the default scheme avoids unintended interactions with universal credit and supports the strong work incentives that universal credit was intended to deliver. Indeed, my officials have discussed this with the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock.

The approach set out in the default scheme to treating universal credit income clearly supports work incentives, and I will expand on two key features. First, universal credit will be tapered away by 65% before it is taken into account as income under council tax support schemes. This means that the 20% taper under the default scheme will apply only to residual income once universal credit has been tapered away, and helps to control the overall withdrawal rate. For people below the income tax and national insurance thresholds, the combined marginal deduction rate would be 72%, which for many households would be a significant improvement on the current system. Secondly, the default scheme reflects the fact that universal credit will allow people to earn more income before it starts to be withdrawn. The default scheme allows for council tax support to be withdrawn earlier, minimising the extent to which the means tests interact. Local authorities will not be required to treat universal credit cases in the way provided for in the default scheme, but there are very good reasons why they should want to use this framework as a starting point.

Amendment 3 is intended to require local authorities to have regard to work incentives in designing their local schemes. As I explained when this amendment was first tabled in Committee, I agree with the noble Baroness that work should be supported. As I have said, the Government have published guidance that will help authorities to do that. We are very happy to revise and reintroduce this guidance in order to set out clearly the approach that the department is taking to provide for the treatment of universal credit in the default scheme and to emphasise the benefits of this approach to local authorities, which I think is more or less what the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, is asking for. I am also content to use the refreshed guidance to set out the implications for work incentives of increasing the taper rate to help local authorities in their considerations. More particularly, officials will continue to discuss the content of the guidance with the two noble Baronesses as it is developed, and I am very grateful to them for their constructive contributions. I hope that, with their help, we will be able to produce guidance that they can accept. While I cannot accept the amendments, I hope that my assurances go some way to addressing their concerns.

[Baroness Sherlock]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister. For the record, I would like to clarify that I think her comments about Amendment 2 in fact relate to Amendment 4 and those about Amendment 3 relate to Amendment 5. Obviously the amendment numbers have changed—I see that the noble Baroness is nodding in assent—so I should like to clarify the record for those who read the proceedings in Hansard later.

I would have preferred it if the Government had felt able to accept the amendment, but I am grateful to the Minister for her willingness to change the guidance in the way she has described, and for her department to continue to engage. In the light of that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 4 withdrawn.

Amendment 5 not moved.

Clause 13 : Regulations about powers to require information, offences and penalties

Amendment 6

Moved by

[Baroness Meacher]

6: Clause 13, page 10, line 18, after “or” insert “knowingly”

[Baroness Meacher]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 6, I shall speak also to Amendment 7. Clause 13 provides for the creation of new criminal offences that could apply to claimants who provide information to the best of their ability, or indeed to advice workers acting in good faith on behalf of their clients. Many innocent people could find themselves liable to criminal charge or under investigation by the police. Proposed new Section 14B(1)(b) introduces a criminal offence for failing to comply with any requirement under specified regulations—I will not go into the detail of the regulations—or failing to comply with the requirements of any arrangements entered into in accordance with such regulations. Proposed new Section 14B(1)(c) creates a criminal offence for,

“failing, when required to do so … to provide any information or document in connection with a person’s liability to pay council tax”.

The sub-paragraphs also apply to a refusal to comply, but these amendments do not apply to people who refuse to comply, because presumably if someone refuses to comply, that is done knowingly and willingly. I am focusing simply on the failure to comply, and I shall try to explain why we need some adjustment. The amendments require that a person knowingly fails to comply with a requirement if their failure is to amount to a criminal offence. My noble and learned friend Lord Lloyd will suggest some alternative wording that might be introduced into this proposed new section, and indeed I sent a note to the Minister to explain that.

I want briefly to explain why the thrust of the amendment is important. Clause 13 will not apply to the great majority of council tax payers whose council tax is based on the predetermined value of their property. They do not have to submit information about their income year by year. The people who may find themselves charged with an offence will be single and vulnerable people entitled to a discount assessed on the basis of their circumstances.

The groups of vulnerable people at risk of criminal charge will include those with serious mental impairment and their carers; spouses or dependants of foreign students who may not speak English very well; people in prison or other forms of detention or in a bail hostel; and people in hospital or in care homes and hostels. Without help, these claimants are at risk of providing wrong information. Many of them have difficulty getting through each day without worrying about whether a form they completed months previously remains correct in every detail.

The circumstances of these vulnerable people often change frequently. People with chronic conditions, for example, move in and out of hospital fairly regularly. The citizen can never be sure, at the time of or after submitting information, that the regulations will not have changed since the year before. A significant risk to council tax payers arises from Regulations 3, 10 and 11 of the Council Tax (Administration and Enforcement) Regulations 1992, which require information to be supplied by taxpayers within 21 days if they are served by written notice or assumptions change in the course of the financial year. If Clause 13 of the Bill is passed without our amendments, council tax payers who are unaware of Regulations 3, 10 and 11—surely nearly all of us—and who therefore fail to act in accordance with them become potentially liable to a criminal prosecution.

Let us put ourselves in the position of someone coming out of hospital, probably still severely unwell. These days, as we know, people do not remain in hospital a single day longer than they absolutely have to. They will probably find a pile of post on their doorstep. We can expect those people to concentrate on getting well, coping with daily life, shopping, cooking and doing the usual daily chores. It may be some weeks before they feel up to dealing with the pile of unopened mail—maybe beyond the 21-day limit. Such a council tax payer will not have knowingly failed to comply with any requirement for information, yet they may find in that pile of mail an order requiring them to provide information which they will inadvertently have failed to comply with. Can any one of us seriously suggest that, in that situation, that person will have committed a crime?

Alan Murdie, a barrister who edited the CPAG handbook on council tax for 14 years and who has kindly briefed me for this debate, is concerned that this situation will be made worse because the standards of administration of council tax are apparently worse than at any time in the past 20 years. He is well placed to make that judgment. At best, says Alan Murdie, people will be pursued in error and, at worst—I must say that this shocked me, but I trust this person who deals with these situations all the time—the provisions will be used to extort money from people by unscrupulous officials. Mr Murdie says:

“The council tax is the most complicated local taxation system ever devised. Even after 20 years many aspects of the tax are unclear and open to argument and errors are rife throughout the system. The council tax has gone beyond what ordinary members of the public can understand”.

The council tax benefit regulations alone are apparently longer than the whole of the General Rate Act 1967.

Z2K is experiencing a growing number of cases involving vulnerable people being targeted with demands for money which they do not owe—that, for me, is deeply distressing. Just one example is that of a young man who was threatened with enforcement and imprisonment for tax that he did not owe to Southwark Council. He committed suicide. How many more people are at risk of suicide if these provisions go ahead without any mens rea requirement? The Government risk a re-run of the 1990s, when thousands of people were wrongly jailed for local tax default, resulting in more than 1,000 cases being overturned on appeal in the High Court on judicial review and in cases coming before the European Court of Human Rights.

The amendments will not prevent any vulnerable people being wrongly charged over debts they do not have. The amendments will, however, reduce the number of such cases—I hope significantly. I know that the Minister is aware of the widespread concerns about Clause 13. I trust that the Government will be able to make the limited concession encompassed in the amendments.

17:45

[Lord Lloyd of Berwick]

My Lords, I strongly support the thinking which lies behind the amendment, for all the reasons so eloquently given by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and for all the reasons which she gave late at night last week at the very end of the Report stage. I regret that I was unable to be present on that occasion.

My only concern now is that the single word that she has chosen to bring about her purpose may not be the very best one. There may, after all, be all sorts of reasons for a person failing to comply with a requirement, good as well as bad, and there may be good reasons even when a person knows that he is failing to comply with the requirement. What is needed is a word which distinguishes between the good and the bad reasons. The ordinary words which are always used to do that, which I think is the objective that the noble Baroness has in mind, would not be “knowingly” failing but failing “without reasonable excuse”. It so happens that those are the very words which are used in paragraph 1(2)(b) of Schedule 3 to the 1992 Act, which is the Act that we are amending and which there imposes a civil penalty of £50. Those words, “without reasonable excuse”, which we already find in the Act, are all the more relevant and important now that we are turning the civil remedies into criminal offences.

I am of course aware that this is Third Reading and that a manuscript amendment is not permitted, but if the Minister is attracted by the thinking behind the amendment, as I certainly hope that she and other Members of the House are, perhaps she will bear these words in mind when she gives the matter further thought.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I join the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, in endorsing the thrust of the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and I respectfully adopt his formulation, which I think meets the drafting point. In any event, I have an inherent aversion to the creation of absolute offences, which is what new Section 14B does. It is not appropriate to criminalise behaviour which could be dealt with in the way of a civil liability, particularly when there is not a necessary element of dishonesty. I hope that, when the legislation goes back to the House of Commons, the Minister will look sympathetically with her colleagues in government at whether the provision could be improved.

However, in addition to the matters which the noble Baroness’s amendments address, I am concerned about some further provisions in the proposed new section. New Section 14B(4) states that regulations under subsections which refer to false statements and the like—that is, subsection (1)(d), (e) and (f),

“that create an offence that may only be committed by a person acting dishonestly … must provide for the offence to be triable summarily or on indictment”.

I have no objection to that, but new subsection (6) states that regulations under those provisions which,

“create an offence that may be committed by a person acting otherwise than dishonestly”,

would incur a lesser sentence. So there is still a provision within the new provision to allow for somebody not acting dishonestly to be brought before the criminal courts under the provisions of new subsection (1)(d), (e) and(f). That is another example of stretching the creation of an absolute offence.

It is clear that people who deliberately fail should be dealt with but, in my view, not necessarily by the criminal courts. It is equally clear that those who may fail inadvertently or for the reasons advanced by the noble Baroness should not be treated as criminals, although there may be and perhaps should still be a procedure for them to suffer some penalty as an inducement to provide information. That point may be more debatable. I join with the noble Baroness and the noble Lord in thinking that those provisions go too far to criminalise behaviour—particularly, as the noble Baroness said, as that may well affect vulnerable people, for whom a criminal sanction is simply inappropriate.

Without the Minister committing herself today, I hope that she will at least agree to discuss this further with colleagues to see whether a less draconian process could be used.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

My Lords, I assume that the prosecuting authority would have some regard to the circumstances of any suggested offence under the regulations, but it is very important that the regulations should not include people as potentially liable for criminal sanctions who have not been dishonest in some way or other. The noble Baroness has given examples of people who might find it very difficult to comply with regulations within 21 days in some circumstances. I hope that my noble friend, with her colleagues, may find it possible to modify the statutory language to eliminate the risk of people being faced with criminal charges who are not deliberately doing wrong but who find themselves in difficulties of one kind or another.

I have sympathy with the view that the regulations which deal with council tax are extremely complicated and that it would be easy for someone to fall into a mistake without any deliberation. The last thing that we would want is to criminalise people who make honest mistakes; otherwise, most of us would have some difficulty avoiding the criminal law at some stage, and possibly at more than one stage, of our careers.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I have listened with sympathy to the noble Baroness, but I think that she is tackling the wrong end of the spectrum. If it was as she suggested, we would certainly need to do something about it. I may need to give the following explanation.

The clause is intended to allow flexibility to create offences similar to those already in existence relating to council tax benefit. It does not create any additional offence beyond those. The offence that exists is under Section 111 of the Social Security Administration Act 1992. It is that of refusing or neglecting to comply with a requirement to enter into arrangements allowing authorised officers to access electronic records. It is also an offence under that section for a person to refuse to provide information or produce any document when required to do so in accordance with the legislation.

The information may be required from one of several classes of persons and bodies: for example, from banks, employers or utility companies. We seek the flexibility to create a similar offence in regulations where a person falling under those categories fails to comply with the requirement to supply information needed in relation to the council tax support scheme. To be clear, that would relate to circumstances where an individual or organisation holding information about a council tax payer has failed to provide information when required to do so. A small number or persons, such as the self-employed, might fall into both categories, but this is not about requesting information directly from vulnerable taxpayers, as has been suggested. I hope that the noble Baroness will be assured on that point.

[Baroness Meacher]

I am grateful to the Minister, but she referred to the fact that failure may not necessarily apply to the person themselves. My concern is that it can apply to a vulnerable person—just out of hospital, for example—who has not opened their mail and who unwittingly therefore falls foul of compliance with regulations. That is my concern. There may be all sorts of crimes in relation to bankers and what have you, but my concern is for vulnerable people. It seems from the wording that those people could be caught up in those crimes.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I am seeking advice from the Box about the words, “not necessarily”. My understanding is that this is not about the person concerned; this is about organisations from which information may be sought with regard to the ability to pay council tax or possible fraud. It is not about the individual taxpayer.

Perhaps I may read what has been passed to me, because it is important. To be clear, the powers that the noble Baroness seeks to amend relate to powers to require information about a council taxpayer—for example, about their income. Many investigations take place across the system. The powers recreate those which exist in relation to council tax benefit, as I said, and regulations made under the powers are subject to the affirmative procedure, so will be subject to debate in both Houses.

What the noble Baroness seeks to achieve is not part of the provision, because it does not affect the person themselves—the noble Baroness described accurately people who might not be able to give that information, who may be vulnerable and who should be looked after in a different way by the council.

I share the desire of the noble Baroness to protect vulnerable taxpayers, but the amendment will not, for the most part, impact on them. It affects powers that would apply only to those who hold information about the taxpayer—I say this again because we need to be clear about it—not to council tax payers themselves and only in certain circumstances which recreate offences which currently exist under council tax benefit. Those are criminal offences, as I outlined.

Council tax payers who accidentally or unintentionally fail to provide information to the local authority should not be prosecuted or convicted for a genuine mistake, but that is not what the power provides for.

I recognise the concerns expressed by noble Lords, but I think that the noble Baroness is shooting at the wrong fox. When the regulations come to this House, which they will in due course, we will be able to make that absolutely clear. I have done my best to assure the noble Baroness that this is not about individual taxpayers who should not be pursued, but is about where information may be required to see whether it is appropriate to undertake further investigation. I hope that with those explanations the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment.

17:59

[Baroness Meacher]

I am very grateful for the Minister’s response and to my noble and learned friend Lord Lloyd, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, and the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, for their contributions to this debate. I have to say that if I am shooting at the wrong fox, the fox is very well camouflaged because I do not see it. It is not clear to me—perhaps it should be, but it is not—that the person and their advice worker, who is also feeling very vulnerable in this situation, cannot be caught up in this legislation. Therefore, I ask the Minister for further discussions about this to see whether there is a way of improving the wording to clarify that the council tax payer and their adviser will not and cannot be charged with a criminal offence when they have acted in good faith.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, it is not possible to change the legislation because we are in the last dying hours of passing it through this House, but the regulations will come to the House for the affirmative procedure. I am happy to have further discussions with the noble Baroness in the interim.

[Baroness Meacher]

I am very grateful for that reassurance. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 6 withdrawn.

Amendment 7 not moved.

Schedule 1 : Local retention of non-domestic rates

Amendment 8

Moved by

[Baroness Hanham]

8: Schedule 1, page 23, line 18, at end insert “, and
(h) amounts received by the Secretary of State in the year under regulations under paragraph 42 (payments following estimates of amounts to be disregarded).”

[Baroness Hanham]

This is a group of very minor amendments to tidy up the Bill. The amendments introduce nothing new. They are consequential on amendments accepted on Report in your Lordships’ House and correct or insert references to new provisions inserted on Report as appropriate. I hope that, with that explanation, noble Lords will be happy to accept them.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, I take the opportunity offered by these government amendments to Schedule 1 to raise the issue that I have been pursuing throughout the course of this legislation, which I discussed with the Minister last Thursday, and to seek clarification at this last stage of the Bill. I declared all my interests at the previous stages of the Bill and they remain the same.

I shall not rehearse the arguments that we have already heard in this House. I am grateful to the Minister for her time at the meeting on Thursday. I also thank Sporta, SEUK, my noble friend Lord McKenzie and the noble Lord, Lord Best, for coming along to the meeting and lending their support and great expertise. I was also able to inform the Minister that the noble Lords, Lord Shipley, Lord Tope, Lord Adebowale, Lord Mawson, Lord True and Lord Smith, sent their apologies. I thank the Minister and her team for the letter which she sent to me and copied to all those concerned.

I am sure that noble Lords and others are very pleased that, at last, the Government seem to recognise a problem which the political parties, the Cross-Benchers and all the organisations concerned with community-based charities and mutuals have articulated for months. Sporta, in particular, has been active in doing most of the leg-work research and in meeting officials during the summer. However, it is a matter of regret that the Government have decided not to take action on the concerns of a wide range of local community organisations with charitable status during the course of the Bill.

In her letter to me the Minister referred to, “the persuasive arguments that you and your advisers have used”. However, she also said that the department would need to see evidence of the problem. I think the fact that all the leaders and ex-leaders of councils in this Chamber and all the organisations concerned at community level are clear that there is a problem should be persuasive. However, all is not lost. The Minister also informed us that a way of addressing the issue is provided by the amendments that were brought forward on Report specifically with enterprise zones in mind. The Minister’s letter gives a broad assurance that, “the same powers could be used in respect of other reliefs such as charitable relief”. The Minister will not be surprised to learn that what I am seeking today is confirmation of that and that the powers can apply to the central funding of all mandatory reliefs given by all local authorities to charitable organisations, should we be able to persuade the Government of the rightness of this decision in the next year.

I would also welcome confirmation from the Government that they will open their doors to the evidence which the many charitable bodies associated with this cause will work hard to gather over the next period and that they will assist the main representatives of these bodies to understand how and when to present this evidence to the department. Indeed, can a specific mechanism be offered to do this? I would also like to take this opportunity to encourage local authorities to co-operate in supplying evidence of the effect of the legislation on their decisions as regards the formation or expanded use—or otherwise—of local charitable organisations. Indeed, I intend to raise this issue with the Local Government Association. This is especially necessary if, as is feared, such decisions are taken with negative effect at an early stage in the consideration of options.

In the year of the Olympics, the Paralympics and the big society, we are concerned about the impact that these changes might have on sport and exercise for the disabled, the less able, the old, working mothers—everybody, actually. I know of no one in the sport and leisure field who has welcomed these proposals. Indeed, Social Enterprise UK has written to the Cabinet Office about the policy clash produced by these proposals and advised the Minister on why the Bill could have a damaging effect.

We suspect that the impact of these proposals will be damaging for the future of theatres and museums outside London; in other words, there will be fewer of them at local level. Social Enterprise UK believes that, as time moves on, this policy could have a chilling effect on new proposals in the Localism Act for the right to bid and the right to challenge community facilities by local charities, so a great deal is at stake. I thank the Minister for her help with this and for the meeting and the letter. I hope that she will feel able to reassure me that arguments will be heard at an early stage and that adjustments will be considered before too much damage is done.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, so far as the government amendments are concerned, I understand them to be consequential and to correct other parts of the Bill. I am grateful for the short briefing note that the Bill team gave us. I have no problems with these amendments.

As for the contribution by my noble friend Lady Thornton, I, too, thank the Minister for her engagement and the engagement of the team, and particularly for facilitating the meeting last week. I hope the Government will be able to put on the record the assurance that was given at that meeting, particularly as it concerns the prospects of dealing with the matter through secondary legislation, once the Government become convinced, as I hope they will be, that we do not need to amend primary legislation.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, the noble Baroness referred to mandatory and discretionary rate relief under particular circumstances. She kindly did not put an amendment forward, but she has done very well in getting her speech recorded in Hansard so that there is no escaping what she has been talking about. I gave her two clear messages when we met. One was that while we accept that there is concern about the effect of the percentage amount of relief available to charitable organisations, we are not totally satisfied that it will have the effect that she thinks. If the organisations that were there provide good evidence and the Government decide that it is of serious significance, there are measures within the Bill that would enable us to make the changes that she seeks. I am very happy to see her again if that should be necessary.

Amendment 8 agreed.

Amendments 9 to 11

Moved by

[Baroness Hanham]

9: Schedule 1, page 23, line 31, at end insert “, and
(f) payments made by the Secretary of State in the year under regulations under paragraph 42.”

10: Schedule 1, page 23, line 40, leave out “and (d)” and insert “, (d) and (h)”

11: Schedule 1, page 23, line 42, leave out “and (b)” and insert “, (b) and (f)”

Amendments 9 to 11 agreed.

Schedule 3 : Local retention of non-domestic rates: further amendments

Amendments 12 to 14

Moved by

[Baroness Hanham]

12: Schedule 3, page 60, line 4, after “(2)(e)” insert “or (f)”

13: Schedule 3, page 60, line 45, after “(2)(e)” insert “or (f)”

14: Schedule 3, page 61, line 21, after “under” insert “or by virtue of”

Amendments 12 to 14 agreed.

Schedule 4 : Amendments relating to council tax reduction schemes

Amendment 15

Moved by

[Lord Beecham]

15: Schedule 4, page 65, line 29, at end insert—
“( ) Such regulations must have regard to the possibility of authorities having to hold a further consultation as a result of the necessary alterations that must be made to their schemes in order to make a successful application to the transition grant.”

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, we have reached—at long last, some of your Lordships might think—the final chapter in debating what this side, at any rate, regards as a fundamentally flawed Bill, particularly with regard to the system of council tax support. The Bill will create significant difficulties for councils in terms of administration, collection and indeed decision-making about who is and is not to be entitled, and it will involve significant hardship for too many of their residents.

The amendment, though, does not address the substance of the Bill; it is more about process, albeit about an important part of it. Under the Bill’s provisions, authorities are required under paragraph 3 of Schedule 4 to consult before making a scheme, publish a scheme in such a manner as they think fit and generally consult anyone with an interest, including major precepting authorities, and then they may publish it. However, sub-paragraph (4) states that the Secretary of State may make regulations about the procedure for preparing a scheme, and it is to that paragraph, effectively, that the amendment seeks to add a rider: that the regulations must have regard to the possibility of authorities having to hold a further consultation as a result of the necessary alterations that must be made to their schemes in order to make a successful application—the amendment says “to the transition grant” but I suppose that it should be “for the transition grant”—which we debated at some length last week.

As we debate the Bill before it leaves us on its return to the House of Commons, councils up and down the country are in the throes of consulting on complex changes to the benefits system affecting millions of people. We have heard in previous debates about schemes that run to well over 100 pages, and no doubt authorities are doing their best to consult their citizens, organisations and indeed the precepting authorities about how the system should be developed. If I may again refer to the experience of my own authority in Newcastle, the city council is faced with a loss of some £3.4 million as a result of the changes to benefits. That in itself, had it been a council tax increase, would have substantially breached the 2% limit that the Secretary of State has fixed from next year because it would in itself constitute a 3% increase in council tax. However, technically speaking, that is not what is happening, although I am bound to say that the rather airy way in which the Secretary of State and indeed the Minister appear to assume that after the transitional year it would be possible to meet that bill, simply by magicking some more savings out of the system, strikes me as a little overoptimistic, particularly when in any event many authorities will be not only generating savings already in the pipeline, as it were, but seeking to meet a substantial reduction in government support over the next few years—in my own authority’s case, some £90 million a year within three years.

Be that as it may, however, the council is seeking to consult on its current scheme, a consultation that has produced a two-page densely printed document setting out the proposals that the council makes. We have already touched on some areas: there is protection for a number of groups, and there is the 20% contribution in general from those who may not even be currently paying council tax. Whether, and to what extent, people will be able to grasp what is happening, particularly if they do not have a well informed knowledge of the current system, is perhaps another matter. Still, the council is providing material online for people to reply to and download, as well as a telephone line and indeed 14 public meetings, between now and the closure of the consultation period on 14 November, bearing in mind that the council has to take through its processes decisions about the scheme and about the budget overall, and there is not a great deal of time to do that.

18:15

Now, with the transition scheme, there is an additional factor about which we have not yet been able to consult—nor indeed, I suspect, has anyone else in any systematic way. It may, if the council is so minded, lead to a significant change in the scheme. The particular factor that is relevant is the estimated cost because, even with the transitional grant, Newcastle City Council—I cannot speak for others in this respect because I do not have the information, but there may well be a similar situation elsewhere—will receive a grant, but apparently it will also leave a gap of, in Newcastle’s case, between £470 million and £650 million, if indeed the council accepts the offer of the grant. That is a significant figure, and one that clearly needs to be in the public domain as part of the consultation process. However, we will not know the actual figure until the final revenue support grant settlement and all the details are available which, as I understand it, will be around 20 September. The Government have certainly published the figure for the transitional grant, but what is not clear is the implications of that for the council budgets, given the potential cost to the authority, which, as I say, in Newcastle's case is substantial—according to the city treasurer, in the order of between £470 million and £650 million. If we will not know those details until as late as the third week in December, it will be extremely difficult to achieve an effective consultation before the time when the scheme has to be finalised, which, under the Government's proposals, is 31 January—not a great deal of time in terms of the council’s own decision-making process leading up to a budget, but certainly virtually impossible to have a meaningful consultation, given the Christmas and New Year period and the rest of it, within that very short timescale.

In addition, the council will have to consult the police and fire authorities, which are major precepting authorities, and of course in shire areas there is also the question of individual billing authorities, which might have a different approach—they are perfectly entitled to do so under the provisions of the Bill—within the county. The county will also need to be consulted. I suspect that counties are part of the hidden agenda of this whole measure regarding the transitional relief; it seems, cynical though some of your Lordships might think this, not unconnected with the fact that next year we have county council elections in which a great number of Conservative Party seats are at risk. Mr Pickles is an astute politician, and I suspect that this transitional relief may really be designed to offer somewhat more than transitional relief to current serving Conservative county councillors. However, no doubt the electorate will come to their own conclusions about that.

The purpose of the amendment is to seek from the Secretary of State regulations that would allow for a proper consultation to take place in terms of the change that the Government have introduced at this late stage in relation to the transitional grant. That might mean extending the period by which the scheme has to be settled. That seems probably one of the more sensible ways of dealing with what might be a difficult situation. The danger otherwise is that councils would think that they cannot safely consult—my noble friend Lady Hollis rightly referred to the possibility of judicial review if such consultation was not deemed to be effective—and if councils were relying on a position that was valid until just last week in terms of the scheme that they had devised. Given the financial consequences to which I have referred, although I emphasise that they are possible consequences, in my submission it would be a brave council that decided to go ahead without the security of a further consultation.

Again, I am not expecting a commitment from the Minister, but the amendment would not really change legislation; its thrust is to try to secure some consideration by the Government, within the context of the procedural regulations that they will be making, to ensure that such further consultation as may be deemed necessary and desirable can actually take place with effect. I beg to move.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, I support my noble friend. He is absolutely right. When we raised the issue of whether changes in the scheme following the transitional grant would require going out to consultation, the Minister seemed to indicate that they would not. Some of us were worried about judicial review. Since then, she has written a letter to my noble friend Lord McKenzie in which she says that individual councils must take their own legal advice on the matter. That suggests to me that the department is no longer as clear as it at first was that local authorities might not be exposed to judicial review if they were substantially to change their scheme from, say, a 30% minimum down to virtually nil or 5% as a result of the transitional grant without going out to further consultation. Given that, I hope that, as a result of the move that the noble Baroness has herself made between the earlier stages of Committee and Report and her subsequent correspondence, she will give some consideration to how best she can meet my noble friend’s concerns.

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, in responding to the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, I have always made it clear that local authorities are, or have been, out to consultation. I think that those consultations are due to close very shortly and may in many cases already have closed. There is no requirement on the Government, and we are not going to make any regulations, on consultation. I have made it clear, and I do so again now, that if a local authority thinks that the changes that it is going to make as a result of the transitional grant are so significant that it changes its scheme so much, then it must decide whether it thinks that it needs, for its own protection, to go out to further consultation. It will seek its own advice about that. I cannot answer the noble Baroness any more clearly than I already have.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

I am just wondering whether the noble Baroness can give an example of what would constitute a significant change triggering possibly going out to consultation.

[Baroness Hanham]

No. Local authorities have their different transitional schemes. A transitional scheme has come in. It will provide local authorities which wish to take it up with extra resources to help them ease into the new system. They must know themselves if they decide that they need it. In many cases, it will not be necessary but, if they need to, they will take that advice.

Local authorities now know what they are going to get from the transitional relief; that has already been published. They will know whether they need to change their scheme according to what they have received from transitional relief and on the basis of what they are proposing if they are going to amend it.

I do not believe that they need extra time. January 31 is, after all, a full four weeks. Most local authorities can undertake a quick consultation on this. I imagine it will be very limited indeed. Most local authorities which are principal authorities are very quick and adept at having consultations with other councils. I must resist the amendment on the basis that it is completely unnecessary.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, I respond on behalf of my noble friend as this is the last time that we will be speaking on the Bill. With great respect to the Minister, she has not fundamentally dealt with the point that my noble friend was probing. We accept that it would be up to local authorities to make a judgment as to whether or not they needed to consult. However, given where they are and the processes that councils have to go through to come up with a revised scheme—and sometimes the agonising decisions as to whether they can put in the additional funding to close the gap because the transitional money is not going to cover it all in many circumstances—I wonder whether there is time to do that. It would be perverse indeed if, in attempting to take advantage of these provisions, the system simply did not allow them to do that in time to hit the 31 January deadline. That is the point that we were pressing, and it has not been fully addressed. However, we are where we are on it.

I close by saying a brief thank you to some people, certainly to the Minister and the Front Bench for engaging on this Bill and to all noble Lords who have participated. Around the Chamber, we have seen a lot of expertise and wisdom, some of it very long-standing, brought to bear. I certainly thank my team, both Back Bench and Front Bench. I conclude by thanking the Bill team. I know that we see a bit of what the Bill team does. A lot goes on behind the scenes and I am grateful for what it has done on this piece of legislation.

[Baroness Hanham]

Having seen the noble Lord rise, I apologise for the number of times that I have tried to out-step him throughout the Bill. I am grateful for the noble Lord’s good humour. I am grateful to all Members of the Opposition for the way in which they have put their amendments. I am particularly grateful to those of my political colleagues who have, in most cases, supported me. I have enjoyed taking the Bill through the House. I also thank, of course, my Front Bench and also the Bill team who has been completely outstanding.

[Lord Beecham]

I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 15 withdrawn.

Bill passed and returned to the Commons with amendments.

European Council

Monday 22nd October 2012 Lords Chamber

Statement

18:26

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)]

My Lords, taking advantage of this spirit of good will and excellent relations across the Dispatch Box, perhaps now would be an appropriate time to repeat a Statement that was made earlier on this afternoon by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister. The Statement is as follows.

“With permission, I would like to make a statement on last week’s European Council. The European Union faces important choices in the coming months, to meet tough economic challenges and to deal with the problems in the eurozone. There were no landmark decisions at this Council, but there was some limited progress on both issues.

As I said, we are in a global economic race. All European economies need to become more competitive. That means taking steps like expanding the private sector, reforming welfare and improving education. In terms of action at the EU level, that means, in our view, lifting the burdens on businesses, completing the single market and taking forward trade deals with the biggest economies and the fastest growing countries and regions in the world.

I have consistently promoted these solutions and at the Council we made some good progress. On deregulation, I joined with others to secure a new agreement that specifically refers to withdrawing legislative proposals from Brussels that stifle our businesses. Now, of course, we need to see specific actions, but it is worth noting that the conclusions refer to the,

‘intention to withdraw a number of pending proposals and to identify possible areas where the regulatory burden could be lightened’.

On completion of the single market, as I reported in June, there is now a proper plan with dates and actions for completing the market in energy, services and digital. Once again it is important that these are followed through to secure jobs and growth.

On trade, the Council agreed an ambitious agenda to create 2 million jobs across Europe. This includes completing free trade deals with Canada and Singapore in the coming months, and starting negotiations with the US next year on a comprehensive transatlantic trade and investment agreement. And we made some progress on the launch of negotiations with Japan ‘in the coming months’. This deal alone could increase EU GDP by €42 billion.

Turning to the eurozone, Britain is not in the eurozone and we are not going to be joining the eurozone, but it is in our national interest that the uncertainty surrounding the eurozone comes to an end. I have argued for some time that a working eurozone needs a working banking union. It is one of the features that a successful single currency needs. Obviously, you do not need a banking union because you have a single market; you need it because you have a single currency. So Britain should not, and will not, be part of that banking union.

Britain’s banks will be supervised by the Bank of England, not the ECB, and British taxpayers will not be guaranteeing or rescuing eurozone banks. But we do need eurozone members to get on and form a banking union. At this Council I joined those arguing for progress to be made on the plan announced in June. Put simply, it is not enough to have a banking union that is stripped of the very elements, such as mutualised deposit guarantees, a common fiscal backstop and a framework for rescuing banks, that are needed to break the dangerous link in the eurozone between sovereign debt problems and the stability of eurozone banks.

However, because not all countries outside the eurozone, like Britain, will want to join such a banking union, it is also essential that the unity and integrity of the single market is fully respected. The organisation that currently ensures a level playing field for banking within the single market is the European Banking Authority. We need to make sure that it will continue to function properly, ensuring fair and effective decision-making. This is specifically recognised in the conclusions. More broadly, as eurozone countries take steps to deepen their economic and monetary union, as they will, I also secured an explicit commitment in the conclusions that the final report and road map in December will include,

‘concrete proposals to ensure that the integrity of the single market is respected’.

Finally, the next Council in November will discuss the financial framework for Europe between 2014 and 2020. We have not put in place tough settlements in Britain in order to go to Brussels and sign up to big increases in European spending. I do not believe that German voters want that any more than British voters, and that is why our Governments have led the argument in Europe for fiscal restraint. I therefore put down a marker that we need a rigorous settlement. As the letter signed in December 2010 by a number of European leaders said, given the tough spending settlements that all member states have had to pursue in their own countries,

‘payment appropriations should increase, at most, by no more than inflation over the next financial perspectives’.

On foreign affairs, the Council, led by Britain, once again discussed further restrictive measures on the Syrian regime, and made it clear to Iran that we will increase the pressure if there is not progress on the nuclear issue.

Our agenda is, therefore, making our economies competitive, dealing with uncertainty in the eurozone, keeping the EU budget under proper control, and making sure the EU speaks with a strong and united voice on the key international challenges”.

I commend this Statement to the House.

18:32

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord the Leader of the House for repeating a Statement given in the other place by the Prime Minister on the recent European Council meeting.

We on these Benches associate ourselves with the summit’s conclusions on Iran and Syria. The dangers of the civil war in Syria spilling over into the wider region are now all too apparent, and we strongly support the EU playing its part to seek to prevent this happening.

However, the backdrop to this summit is a Europe where there is low or no growth. Five and a half million of Europe’s young people are unemployed, and long-term unemployment is stubbornly high across all countries. I regret that the Prime Minister seemed to come back from this summit with nothing to make a difference to this situation.

First, can the Leader of the House tell us why the Prime Minister went to the summit with no proposals on the immediate economic situation facing Europe or on how growth prospects could be improved in the short term? Europe urgently needs co-ordinated action to boost demand, but yet again there was nothing forthcoming from this summit.

Secondly, the Government boast about progress on the single market, which is 20 years old this year. In particular, the Statement repeated by the Leader of the House points to progress in energy and in digital, and says, with the humility so characteristic of this Government:

“Which is the country that is saying … ‘Let’s get a date for completing the energy market … the digital market’ ... Who is driving the agenda which has made so much progress this year? It’s Britain.”

After the veto that was not, I would have thought that the Government would have learnt about grand claims that fall apart.

On energy, the Council conclusions also sounded very familiar. Will the Leader confirm that the conclusions were exactly the same as the conclusions from the Council 18 months ago?

Concerning trans-European networks as mentioned in the conclusions, I was there at their birth, about 20 years ago, and it is imperative that their development progresses a little more swiftly than it has been of late.

On services, it is all familiar again—exactly the same conclusions as those from March 2012. So much for progress at this summit.

Thirdly, on banking, big issues face Europe as a result of the move toward a banking union in the euro 17 area. The Government are keen to point to paragraph 8 of the Council’s conclusions, which calls for,

‘an acceptable and balanced solution’,

on voting weights. However, this is rather unclear. Will the Leader clarify what is the Government’s key demand in relation to the crucial issue of voting rights, as banking union goes ahead? What special safeguards will the Prime Minister seek? Will the Leader also tell us what support the Government found at the meeting for this position, and how the Government will build on that support?

That takes me to the real problem that Britain faced at this summit. This is what Finland’s Europe Minister said at the summit:

“I think Britain is ... putting itself in the margins. ... it’s almost as if the boat is pulling away and one of our best friends is somehow saying ‘Bye bye’ and there’s really not much we can do about it”.

That is not the French or the Germans—it is Finland, and their Europe Minister is an Anglophile. He is one of Britain’s friends, but this is what he thinks about where Britain is going under this Prime Minister. The Government do not seem to realise that all their bluster about fighting for Britain is meaningless if the Government alienate our natural supporters.

However, the really worrying thing about the Government’s position is that the Government are not just isolated. They appear to exist in a parallel universe. When the Prime Minister was asked about his isolation he said this:

“We are actually a very, very important and influential player ... Britain is right there in the vanguard...”

The vanguard? Do the Government really believe that?

Last October the Prime Minister said:

“This is not the time to argue about walking away”.

However, is that not exactly what his Cabinet is doing now? It started with the decision to leave the European People’s Party. That is why, when 15 centre right leaders gathered on Thursday before the summit, the Prime Minister was not there. We then had the veto that was not, and the treaty that went ahead anyway.

It would appear that the Prime Minister has lost control of his party on Europe. We have a Prime Minister outside the room looking in at Britain’s empty seat at the table. There is one thing that our allies in Europe and the Government’s Back-Benchers agree on: the Government are a shambles, and it is Britain that suffers.

18:37

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, the noble Baroness the Leader of the Opposition started off well by associating herself with the conclusions on Syria and Iran. I am very grateful for that. However, I am afraid to say that it was downhill after that. Let me try to tackle some of the questions that she raised and give some answers and get some clarity on where we are on this. This is the first of a series of European Council meetings up until the end of the year that will increase in importance. This is an opportunity to set the scene, to clear the undergrowth and to sort out the most important issues that we need to resolve.

The noble Baroness asked why the Prime Minister did not go along with his plan for growth. When it came to the budget negotiations, he was the first to ask why, if we have to restrain spending in the United Kingdom, we should see profligacy in Europe. I would hope that the noble Baroness would agree with that and look at some aspects of where the United Kingdom is doing well in Europe. In the United Kingdom we see falling unemployment, rising employment, falling inflation, and low borrowing rates which preserve our triple-A rating. These are all things that the noble Baroness the Leader of the Opposition should support, and I hope that in future she will use them in her speeches.

The noble Baroness specifically asked about two aspects: energy and digital. She went on to say that these conclusions look remarkably like other conclusions that we have seen from the European Council. Remarkably, yes—I agree with her up to a point. However, she will know from her own experience in Europe that very often the same old problems come round again and again, and some of these are longstanding issues that have taken a long time to resolve. This year, we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the single market. How come it has taken so long to complete the single market when the noble Baroness’s Government were in charge for 13 years of those 20 years?

The Council did not discuss energy policy in detail but the conclusions refer to an agreement reached in March, which recalls the need to complete the internal market by 2014. It referred to new proposals for a connecting Europe facility. That is a continuation rather than the same point that was made in previous conclusions. Likewise, on digital, it is important to maintain the focus on areas that we have agreed. It would be a mistake to chase the new and neglect to hold others to account. Sometimes agreements are made but we need to make sure that they follow through, which is entirely sensible.

The noble Baroness asked an entirely sensible question—I am not saying that the rest of her questions were not sensible—about the banking union and our key demands in terms of voting rights and specific safeguards. The point was that we have not so far been clear as to what it is that we want. This is entirely deliberate. We have not been explicit yet over what we want to see in terms of a voting regime for X and Y. Several possible proposals are floating around, some of which are quite technical. We want to make sure, for instance, that the ECB does not get a de facto vote. Others are concerned that, should more countries join the euro, the UK does not end up with a veto. Overall, we want to see what I suspect in her heart the noble Baroness also wants to see—an acceptable solution that protects the single market through a change to the modalities of decision-making under the European Banking Authority regulation.

The noble Baroness had some fun with the quotation of the Finnish Minister. I think that he was in the boat and we were on dry land. Dry land might be quite a good place to be over the next couple of years. But she went on to say that we had been left isolated in the EU. We do not think so. We believe that we are an active participant in EU negotiations. We lead the EU on many issues—for instance, improving Europe’s competitiveness, the single market, trade and taking tough action in Syria—and eurozone members are often our closest allies, including the Finns. Member states with different interests do and need to work together in different ways. The EU is not and should not become a matter of everything or nothing.

That is the point of all this. From everything that has happened in the past two years, it is clear that there are stresses and strains within the European Union, which largely emanate from the financial crisis and the terrible problems that the eurozone countries have got themselves in. On banking, it is the responsibility of all of us to work together to try and solve that. In that respect, we are as good Europeans as anyone else.

18:43

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, staying with the financial framework, perhaps I may congratulate the Prime Minister through my noble friend on aligning us to the German position. However, he will no doubt be aware that the German position is probably to have a compromise on the budget, which will be to cap EU spending at 1% of European GDP. That, of course, is backed by Austria, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands and the Czech Republic. Therefore, will my noble friend reassure the House that when Mrs Merkel meets the Prime Minister in early November, he will not be wedded to the position of no increase whatever on the basis that we need further compromise at the December summit and that we may need to give a little bit here to meet the Germans in order that they might support us in December?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I do not think that I can give my noble friend what she would really like, which is an agreement with Chancellor Merkel’s position. The Prime Minister has said that he is willing to do a deal on the budget in November, so long as it is the right deal for British taxpayers. Given the tough trading settlement that all EU member states have had to pursue at home, there simply is not the case for increases in European spending that are above the rate of inflation over the coming financial framework, which starts in 2014 and goes on until 2020.

Furthermore, Chancellor Merkel and three other leaders in 2010 joined the Prime Minister in writing a letter for a call for action to curb the progressive increase in EU spending and we remain committed to that objective. Last Monday, Chancellor Merkel and the Prime Minister discussed the budget and, I gather, reiterated their ambition to limit increases in the budget. Of course, they agreed that officials should work together on this before they meet early in November.

[Lord Williamson of Horton]

My Lords, I recognise that the so-called banking union involving monitoring and in some cases intervention in banks within the eurozone but not in the UK could be advantageous if it helped to stabilise the financial situation in the eurozone, although some related issues could give rise to problems. It was expected earlier that the European Council would decide to complete the banking union at this meeting but, of course, the conclusions obviously do not do so. Indeed, among the 3,164 words—that is my count—in the conclusions on economic policy, it states on completing EMU that “informal consultations will continue” and that the European Council looks forward to a road map,

“at its December 2012 meeting, so that it can move ahead on all essential building blocks”.

That is not exactly a rousing conclusion. Will the Leader of the House give us a reasonable estimate of the timetable now for the completion of the banking union?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, that is a very seductive question. But it is really not possible for me or the British Government to give a view as to when we think that those negotiations and discussions will be completed. Apart from being extremely good at counting the number of words, the noble Lord probably has also read many reports in the press over the past few days about the view of other countries on the banking union, and he will understand just how difficult and complicated that is. However, we will continue to play a lead role in the development of common rules for the single market and encourage our colleagues to come to an agreement as quickly as possible.

[Lord Grenfell]

My Lords, one of the less kindly remarks that Winston Churchill made about Stanley Baldwin was that he was a man who occasionally stumbled upon the truth and that he then got up, dusted himself off and hurried on as if nothing had happened. I think that that is a charge that one could probably level against this Prime Minister when it comes to Europe. Will the Leader of the House tell us whether he honestly has not understood the degree of irritation among our partners at the way in which the United Kingdom is behaving within the councils of the European Union?

The Prime Minister told us in one breath, for example, that he is prepared to do a deal with Chancellor Merkel over the budget but immediately went on to say that it would not be an increase, which is not a deal. That is not a deal in the minds of the rest of our European partners. Chancellor Merkel has offered a reasonable compromise. I notice that he says in his Statement:

“I don't believe that German voters want that”—

meaning an increase—

“any more than British voters”.

If you read about the rapturous reception that Chancellor Merkel got yesterday from, of all people, the Christian Social Union Partners in Bavaria when she went back to report on the results of what she had done at the summit, one would have the impression that probably she had a large section of the German population behind her.

Does the Leader of the House really believe that if the Prime Minister’s so-called deal, which is not a deal, produces no increase, he is prepared to veto the budget? Does the Prime Minister also understand Angela Merkel when she says that if he does that she will call off the budget summit anyway? I do not think that the Prime Minister has many of the attributes of Samson but surely he must understand that if he is going to pull the whole structure down around him because he insists on absolutely no increase, none of his European partners will have a good word to say for him.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, the noble Lord, with all his experience and knowledge, asks whether I understand how irritated other members of the EU are at the Prime Minister’s stance. I understand how irritated the British people would be to see budgets for austerity in this country and profligacy in the EU. That, of course, is what is uppermost in the Prime Minister’s mind.

The Prime Minister and Chancellor Merkel have agreed to meet early in November. There are, of course, huge budgetary pressures throughout Europe, including in this country. Let them meet. The Prime Minister said what he has said, echoing the words that Chancellor Merkel agreed and signed in 2010. Actually, I think that increasing the EU budget in real terms is a very fair deal for the people of Europe, particularly given that Britain is the second largest contributor to the EU budget.

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

Britain is not a member of the eurozone. We have decided to keep our own currency. There is no prospect of our joining the eurozone. So why on earth does our Prime Minister keep lecturing the eurozone as to how it should carry on, including whether it should have a banking union? Since we are not part of it, it is nothing to do with us, and we should keep out of it.

The second point I want to raise has already been raised—that is, the position in relation to Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, who seems to be throwing her weight about increasingly these days. The Prime Minister does not have to satisfy Angela Merkel; he has to satisfy the people of this country, and the people of this country, we understand, will suffer austerity for the next 10 years, which means that they cannot afford to pay any more than the £10.3 billion that we already pay into EU coffers. I hope that the Prime Minister realises that he is not answerable to the EU for taxation and our contributions. He is responsible to the British people, who show increasingly that they are not very happy about remaining in the European Union, and who will be even unhappier if they are asked to pay even more towards it.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, that is the point that I was trying to make to the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell. I have every sympathy with the view given by the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart. It is entirely correct that, although we believe that the economy is heading for a state of recovery and long-term growth, many budgets are being cut in Britain, and we are not in the business of seeing them being increased in Europe, where British taxpayers will have to foot the bill. But that is a discussion that will take place, first between the Prime Minister and Mrs Merkel and then, later on, in the Council of Ministers.

As for the noble Lord’s question as to why we are interested in the banking union, self-evidently financial services and financial matters are incredibly important to the United Kingdom—it is one of our key interests—and to the City of London. It is entirely right that we should take note of what is happening in the zone where nearly 40% of our exports go. One of the many reasons why this economy has suffered in recent years is because of the uncertainty in the eurozone, which we believe needed to be resolved—and one way in which to do that is through the banking union.

[Lord Soley]

I notice with interest the deft footwork on the part of the Leader of the House on answering a question about the budget and the meeting. It should get him a place in the finals of “Strictly Come Dancing”. But in all seriousness, the story on the front page of the Financial Times says very clearly—and it is a very reliable newspaper on this—that Chancellor Merkel is considering cancelling the summit if the British threaten to use their veto and want no increased expenditure at all. Can he tell us—and I am sure the Financial Times, too, and the people of this country—whether that story is correct or incorrect?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I am not quite sure what I am supposed to confirm or deny. I can confirm that there was a story on the front of the Financial Times, but I cannot confirm that it was right that Mrs Merkel has issued a threat. She may have done—I have absolutely no idea. But it must be in everybody’s interest to seek an agreement on the EU budget, and the Prime Minister is quite rightly standing up for British interests and has explained what his position is—and I think that it is a very sensible position.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

Will the Leader of the House accept a warm welcome for the recognition in the Statement that he has just repeated that it is better to be there at the negotiating table in the European Union than to wield vetoes that are not really vetoes and absent yourself from the subsequent negotiations? It is a distinct improvement on what happened in December last year that the Prime Minister is working at the table and will continue to do so to make sure that the interests that he is quite rightly seeking to protect of the single market, and the way in which the banking union will interact with the single market, are defended by being at the table.

Secondly, on the budget in the Statement and in what he has subsequently said, the Leader has reiterated again and again that the British position, which incidentally is supported by your Lordships’ European Union Committee, is that there should be no increase in real terms. But those words never manage to get past the lips of the Downing Street spokesmen; they just talk about no increase. The Leader knows quite enough about these matters to know that between 2013 and 2020 no increase in real terms will mean considerably higher figures in nominal terms—that is, by the amount of inflation. It is really not sensible to give the impression that we are trying to keep the budget steady at nominal terms, when that is not what we are trying to do. All that does is to distance ourselves from the other members of the European Union that take very similar views to our own.

My own view is that we are heading towards a very satisfactory outcome to the budget negotiations if we play our cards right. There is a solid body of support for a very low outcome, way below what the Commission proposed, and I just hope that we are not going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

[Lord Strathclyde]

I have two points on that question from the noble Lord. First, we have every intention of continuing to work at the table and to be part of the negotiation. There are some very important and crucial issues that need to be resolved over the next few weeks, and I will be back at this Dispatch Box discussing and debating them, as I have done over the past two and a half years. But it is important to get some sense of the economic reality, which is very different to when the last EU budget was negotiated. For example, the level of public debt across the 27 EU member states in 2012 will be 50% more than it was in 2007. Across the EU on average, countries are expected to see expenditure as a percentage of GDP fall by about 8% between 2010 and 2014, and more than 16% of Commission officials earn more than €100,000. At a time when we are trying to boost growth, it is hard to justify a budget in which 45% is spent on the common agricultural policy.

Let me deal head-on with noble Lord’s concern that when we talk about a nil increase we mean a nil nominal increase. We do not. We mean that we do not see the case for increases in spending that are above the rate of inflation.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My Lords, in the Statement the Prime Minister specifically quoted, and thus emphasised, a passage in paragraph (g) of the European Council conclusions on the right regulatory framework for growth. The conclusions go on to state:

“The European Council looks forward to the Commission communication expected in December, which will take stock of progress and signal further action to be taken by the end of the current parliamentary cycle at the latest, including the follow up on the top 10 most burdensome pieces of legislation for SMEs”.

Will my noble friend remind your Lordships’ House of whether this is an actual or approximate date that constitutes the end of that parliamentary cycle so that our anticipation can be further whetted?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I think that the parliamentary cycle comes to an end in 2014. However, we would like to see real progress on deregulation and dealing with regulation, particularly as it affects businesses and small businesses, as soon as possible. What was apparent at the end of last week was that that was a view shared not just by other member states but by the Commission itself. There are important prizes to be won here. If we can make the economies of Europe more efficient and effective, that will lead to growth, which is something that we all want to see.

[Lord Skidelsky]

My Lords, I agree with the Leader of the House that the British people will not support profligacy abroad while having to suffer austerity at home. Is not one way of trying to bridge that gap to have a bit more of what he would call profligacy at home, in which case at least the economy might start growing again, which it has notably failed to do over the past two years of coalition government?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, as I said earlier to the Leader of the Opposition, it has been a difficult two and a half years in Britain. What have we seen? We have seen nearly a million private sector jobs being created in the past two and a half years. For the first time since 1976 we have seen net exports of motor cars made in the United Kingdom. We have seen the AAA rating and record low levels of borrowing. Employment is the highest that it has ever been and unemployment is falling. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, agrees that these are very good signs for our long-term growth prospects.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

Will the noble Lord confirm that he is about to ring the editor of the Financial Times to say that the Government’s policy is that when they talk about no increase it is in real terms, and that Chancellor Merkel takes some heart from that clarification?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I wrote down what I said and am very happy to repeat it. I said that we do not see the case for increases in spending that are above the rate of inflation.

[Lord Willoughby de Broke]

My Lords, one of the Council conclusions on which I hope the noble Lord can enlighten the House is headed, “Developing a tax policy for growth”. Is this a tax policy for having higher taxes or lower taxes? Secondly, the same paragraph of the conclusions refers to,

“enhanced cooperation to be launched on a Financial Transactions Tax”.

Was that supported by the British Government?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, on the first point, we are not in favour of any new taxes emanating from the EU. Secondly, we have not supported a financial transactions tax. We know that certain elements within EU countries have got together and decided to impose a financial transactions tax. I believe that in the long term that will prove to be against their interests.

Arrangement of Business

Monday 22nd October 2012 Lords Chamber

Announcement

19:03

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My Lords, the next business is not time limited. As noble Lords are aware, the Companion guidance on debates such as this states that the mover of the debate—in this case my noble friend Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market—has about 20 minutes in which to speak and the Minister responding has about the same time. All other noble Lords contributing to the debate can speak for up to 15 minutes. I and other Whips on duty this evening will do nothing other than help noble Lords to follow the guidance in the Companion. However, as the debate is starting just after seven o’clock and 22 speakers have signed up to it, noble Lords might like to know that if the House wishes to rise at about 10 o’clock this evening, the average time for people to speak in order to come in at around that time would be in the order of six to seven minutes. However, I stress again that the Whips on duty will not try to intervene in any way. I just thought that noble Lords would find it helpful to have that guidance.

EAC Report: Development Aid

Monday 22nd October 2012 Lords Chamber

Motion to Take Note

19:05

Moved by

[Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market]

That this House takes note of the report of the Economic Affairs Committee, The Economic Impact and Effectiveness of Development Aid (6th Report, Session 2010–12, HL Paper 278).

[Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market]

My Lords, I have great pleasure in moving the Motion that stands in my name. Before I attempt to summarise some of the key themes in our report I would like to make three preliminary points. First, I hope the House will conclude that it is a thorough piece of work. Our inquiry took nine months. We had, altogether, 30 sets of oral witnesses and written evidence from many more. Our report contains 28 conclusions and recommendations. I warmly thank our specialist adviser, Christopher Adam, Professor of Development Economics at St Cross College, University of Oxford, and our Committee Clerk, Bill Sinton, and his team for all their hard work, assistance and support to us.

Secondly, our report does not cover humanitarian aid for emergency relief following natural disasters, conflicts or social breakdown. We fully support Governments and NGOs in their responses to humanitarian emergencies which are no more than 10% of DfID’s budget. Our report focuses only on development aid which is nine-tenths of the official budget.

Thirdly, development aid is an emotive subject. There are many different views, strongly held. The members of our committee, who span the political spectrum and are members of all parties and of none, also hold strong views. I was anticipating an interesting and challenging chairmanship. In the event our report was unanimous, even on what we anticipated would be some controversial conclusions. I believe that that is because we based our report, as Lords’ reports do, on the evidence before us and the responses to the many questions we raised. I am delighted to see the interest that it has aroused, not least judging by the number of your Lordships who wish to speak in this debate. I anticipate that there will not be unanimity in the Chamber—indeed, the Government have already disagreed in part with our report—but I repeat that we were unanimous.

As the first words of our report say:

“One in five of the world’s population still lives on less than $1.25 a day. This poverty is a source of great human misery, and, if effective ways can be found to reduce it which are acceptable to the taxpayers of the developed world, then reduce it we should”.

In other words, the aim of our report is to see how best donors, and in particular the British Government, can deploy aid to reduce poverty and promote sustainable development while getting value for taxpayers’ money. We set out to look beyond the total money spent to assess the impact, effectiveness and outcomes of aid programmes as well as their cost.

It is worth putting development aid in a wider economic context. Official aid from OECD member states and international organisations to developing countries has, as we all know, grown fast over the past 50 years. In 2010, official aid was about $130 billion in total, but private capital flows to developing countries were vastly greater—more than $1 trillion in total, made up largely of foreign direct investment, remittances and portfolio investment. Put another way, private capital flows to developing countries are about 10 times official aid flows. To this should be added developing countries’ export earnings, which in 2010 were more than 40 times official aid flows. In summary, official aid is about 2% of financial flows from developed to developing countries. As Professor Paul Collier wrote:

“Aid is almost a sideshow in the portfolio”.

The global picture shows that trade and capital flows, not aid, are the real external drivers of economic progress in the developing world.

It is also worth recording, particularly in the context of the 0.7% target, just how relatively well the UK does in aid spending compared with most other countries. In terms of actual amounts, as figure 3 in our report shows, we are the second largest donor, with only the US ahead of us. We compare equally well on the proportion of our gross national income spent on aid. Indeed, all of the six countries ahead of us contribute much smaller amounts of total aid, with the possible exception of the Netherlands. On this measure, the proportion of GNI, the US is well down the list.

To put aid in a broader financial context is not to dismiss its importance. The global figures mask a greater degree of aid dependency in some of the poorest developing countries, which struggle to attract private financial flows. Official aid is the direct contribution on behalf of their citizens which Governments, including our own, make to development. The sums involved are very substantial and growing fast. For example, DfID’s programme increased by more than half in four years to £7.7 billion in 2011 and will rise to £12 billion by 2013. This rate of growth is in striking contrast to the restraint imposed in current economic circumstances on most other public spending programmes. Our report is largely about the aid budget’s impact on development and how far it represents value for money.

An evaluation of the effectiveness of the aid programme needs to start from its aims and the means deployed to achieve them. The basic aim of aid, as set out in the International Development Act 2002, is to reduce poverty by promoting sustainable development. We fully support this aim. We are less clear about means. We are glad that DfID enjoys a high reputation as an aid agency, and that came out clearly in evidence to us. However, directly funded aid projects are now rare. DfID aid goes mainly on financial support for programmes devised and managed by host Governments in, say, education, health or training. The DfID contribution is increasingly made through multilateral organisations such as the European Commission or one of the UN bodies. As a result, DfID is often not in full control of its spending programmes and their effectiveness and value for money or otherwise depends largely on the efforts of others.

We welcome the review of bilateral aid carried out by the Government and the decision of the previous Secretary of State to run down bilateral aid programmes in various countries including China, and to concentrate bilateral aid on 27 countries. Indeed, at this point, let me stress that we strongly supported in many of our recommendations the new directions and policies being pushed through with such vigour by the previous Secretary of State. However, more needs to be done and many of our recommendations follow that course. Let me touch on some of them.

The Government should prepare an early exit strategy from the very substantial bilateral aid programme for India. It is true that India’s impressive economic growth and technological attainments coexist with widespread extreme poverty, but British development aid to the poorest Indian states may provide a perverse incentive to the Indian Government to use less of their own resources to relieve poverty. We recommend that the Government should make plans to run down the British bilateral programme in India.

We also welcome DfID’s recent decision to cease funding some ineffective multilateral programmes, but here again more needs to be done. We advocate reduction of DfID funding of aid programmes run by the World Bank and the UN Development Programme, at least until a revaluation of their work is carried out.

We support DfID’s commitment to reduce general budget support—that is, support that can be spent in any areas—in the coming years, but are concerned that while budget support for specified sectors is to increase, much of DfID’s funding of aid programmes by multilateral agencies goes to budget support. The trouble with budget support is that money spent in that way is difficult to monitor and account for, and therefore does not help build the British taxpayer’s confidence that aid funds are being well spent.

We fully support and endorse the high priority that the Government give to the fight against corruption, but they need to make a greater impact on this front, where the level of fraud identified by DfID in use of its aid funds—which it has assessed at a little over £1 million a year—seems paltry and implausibly low. Given the critical reports of the National Audit Office, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact and some of our expert witnesses, we believe that DfID must make much more stringent efforts to detect and deal with corruption—not least because, as we have seen recently, it is increasingly becoming the focus of some parts of the media. The spotlights that are being shone on some of these issues will increasingly undermine public confidence in an expanding aid budget. We welcome the focus that the previous Secretary of State put on this and his setting up of the independent commission. However, I have to say that the commission was not among our most impressive witnesses, and it seemed to be seriously underresourced.

There is much to commend in the Government’s new approach to running the aid programme. As well as the range of issues of which I have spoken, there is the Government’s commitment to disperse more aid via the private sector and to badge British aid more clearly, which we welcome. Time prevents me from dealing with other important recommendations in our report, which I hope other noble Lords will comment on. For example, the Government should do more to explore with other G20 countries the scope to discourage illicit capital flight from developing countries. We also have recommendations on the quality of aid through multilateral agencies, which I have briefly mentioned, including the World Bank, the UN Development Programme and the European Commission’s aid programmes—including the fact that much of the funding of those agencies may be used for general budget support. I have noted the Government’s response on this point, which I welcome. We also comment on the vital role of the private sector.

I come now to possibly the most controversial aspect of our report and our recommendation. The committee parts company decisively with the Government over their commitment rapidly to reach the UN target of spending 0.7% of gross national income, or about £12 billion a year, on aid. Whatever its merits when it was adopted in 1970, we do not accept that meeting the UN target by 2013 should be the main yardstick of British aid policy. This part of our report is so important that it is worth quoting our main reasons from the report itself. In summary, we gave four reasons. The first was that the policy,

“wrongly prioritises the amount spent rather than the result achieved”.

Secondly,

“it makes the achievement of the spending target more important than the overall effectiveness of the programme”.

Thirdly,

“the speed of the planned increase risks reducing the quality, value for money and accountability of the aid programme”,

and, fourthly,

“reaching the target increases the risk identified in [the report] that aid will have a corrosive effect on local political systems”.

I speak as a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury. For me, it is always axiomatic that all areas of government spending are rigorously examined at the appropriate times within, but also outside, the individual government departments to ensure of course the right priorities but, above all, that all taxpayers’ money is effectively spent and gives value for money. No department should be immune from Treasury scrutiny and evaluation compared with other departments’ programmes. That is particularly important when a key priority is reducing the fiscal deficit. I can think of no other department where the department itself will be the sole judge of value for money, which is effectively what the commitment implies, and where the department will feel that it is, above all, judged by whether it pushes the money out of the door, rather than whether it is properly spent. In the committee’s view, therefore, the core of aid policy should be choosing and funding the best ways of promoting international development and stability, rather than finding new ways to spend ever increasing resources.

We therefore urge the Government to drop their commitment to enact legislation to enshrine in British law an obligation on future Governments always to comply with the UN target of spending 0.7% of gross national income on aid. It would deprive future Governments of the flexibility to respond to changing circumstances at home and abroad. It seems likely that the scramble to meet the target will reduce the scope to achieve the better focus and accountability in the aid programme we advocate in our report, and ring-fencing aid spending in a uniquely privileged position where it can never be cut, irrespective of economic conditions or priorities, seems most likely to bring aid into disrepute with the British public. We are very supportive of many of the directions and policies now being pursued by DfID but we believe that there are areas where it can go further and we urge it to do so. Of course, the one exception is the commitment to an aid target of 0.7%.

In conclusion, I thank, above all, my parliamentary colleagues on the committee for the huge contribution that they made. They were stimulating, probing, thoughtful, experienced and always a pleasure to work with. I wish that I had more time to comment on other parts of our report but, given the lateness of the hour and in the interests of other speakers, I commend the report to the House.

19:20

[Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale]

I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, for his concise—owing to this evening’s time limits—introduction to the debate and for the hard work that he clearly did on the Economic Affairs Committee to produce the report with the support of all members of the committee. I also thank the noble Lords who were members of that committee for the time that they put into gathering so much evidence, producing such a comprehensive range of recommendations and dealing with such a comprehensive range of issues, and for the priority that they gave to this issue, allowing us to have this debate tonight in your Lordships’ Chamber. Much is worth while in the report and in many of the recommendations, but I believe that the report contains a contradiction at its core, and I welcome the opportunity to outline it at the start of this debate.

Although I believe that the report, the evidence gathered and much of the analysis outlined make the case for some changes in policy and spending on aid and development, I do not believe that they make the case for the reductions outlined in far too many of the recommendations. There is a contradiction between, on the one hand, saying that we should not set an arbitrary target for spending increases or decreases and, on the other hand, the arbitrary impact that that then has on that spending. In fact, in too many cases the report seeks to reduce the level of spending either on individual objectives or through individual institutions or as a general goal. In paragraph 115 the report specifically says that,

“the prize, at the end of the day, [is] less taxpayer-funded aid”.

I believe that in our world today that is an appropriate target for the United Kingdom. Therefore, my remarks will concentrate more on the overall case for development aid and the objectives set out by the British Government and less on individual instances and individual countries.

For this country and elsewhere around the world, these are no doubt difficult times. We live in an imperfect world where every decision made, particularly in fragile, delicate or post-conflict countries, can have messy outcomes. However, the United Kingdom also has a duty and a responsibility to meet its international obligations and to be a force for the stabilisation of fragile states and, of course, for the reduction of global inequalities and poverty. That is a necessity. It is in our interests here in the United Kingdom—economically, environmentally, socially, diplomatically and particularly perhaps in relation to our security—just as much as in individual developing countries or the communities that make up those countries to ensure that the gaps between the developed and the developing world are minimised. However, there is also a duty on the United Kingdom—partly because of our colonial past and partly because of our responsibilities as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, as a leading member of the European Union, as the heart of the Commonwealth and due to our role in many other international institutions—to be at the forefront of the global efforts to deal with conflict and poverty. In this country, we should ask not only what is in it for us but, crucially, what is the right thing to do.

The committee argued that there is too much corruption, bad management and inefficient government in developing countries and that that should be used as a reason for reducing development aid. However, when Members of Parliament in this country were spending public money inappropriately on their homes and offices and on personal possessions we did not use that as a reason to cut the amount of money we made available to their constituents. Therefore, we should not use it as a reason for action that would have such devastating consequences elsewhere in the world. There is inefficiency, greed and bad management all over our world. Our job should be to try to help to improve the world, not to make the conditions worse.

The committee argued that at times development aid can have very little purpose or, indeed, sometimes no purpose in relation to economic growth, and that there is a far stronger role for the private sector. I have no doubt that a strong private sector and a growing private economy—particularly one that is free of corruption and is transparent and based on the long-term stability that comes from regulation and the rule of law—are absolutely critical in the fastest-growing developing countries. However, so, too, is an educated and healthy workforce, as well as the infrastructure that allows people to get goods to market, whether that infrastructure is physical or electronic or whether it is about human potential and capital in the 21st century. Governance and institutions that can provide the stable framework for business in which the private sector can properly operate are also critical.

As the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, said, the committee argued that the target of 0.7% should not be legislated for by the Government and that, indeed, it should be dropped. I accept that that conclusion will have been reached after much deliberation and that a serious point is being made there. It would be possible for me simply to say that, in fact, UK aid and aid internationally is making such a huge difference that we should not countenance that suggestion. I could talk about the 46 million children who now start school because international aid has made a difference, the 6 million people receiving treatment for HIV, or the fact that UNICEF reported just last month that the number of children dying before the age of five in our world today is half what it was in 1990. However, those arguments are not enough. I could argue from the point of self-interest—that for every £1 in aid that we spend in Africa, we get about £2 back in trade. I could make that point and many others in relation to our self-interest.

However, there is a more fundamental point here. Legislating for the 0.7% target would allow the very outcome that the Economic Affairs Committee of this House is seeking to achieve. If we legislated for that 0.7% and we did so on an all-party basis, first, the amount spent in aid could well decrease as well as increase because it would change according to the conditions of our own economy, not because of some arbitrary decision by a politician or departmental official in DfID, and, secondly, it would take the debate on the amount of spending out of party politics and ensure that we spent our time in this Chamber and in the other place concentrating on how that money was spent and on making sure that it was spent more effectively in the years to come.

Therefore, my case for legislating for the 0.7% is based not on an arbitrary target but on the fact that it would lead to the outcome that I believe the members of the committee were seeking to achieve of ensuring that the United Kingdom is at the centre of these affairs globally—a position we should be proud to be in. By legislating for a target of 0.7%, we can take the discussion forward and have a real debate on impact, moving forward in capacity-building, in building human capital, in ensuring that there is better governance and in getting decent relationships with good Governments who are transparent, corruption-free and more effective. At the same time, perhaps we could learn some lessons from those new corruption-free, transparent, efficient and effective Governments in the developing world that we could bring back home.

19:30

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market, for the opportunity to speak about aid effectiveness. Some causes take on an aura of inevitability and become incontestable by their very nature. So it is with international aid for the Liberal Democrats. One of the things that drove me into political activism in the 1980s was the belief, articulated by the Liberals of the time, that we as a country needed to reach the UN target of 0.7% of GDP to alleviate poverty beyond our shores.

Liberal internationalism has always been one of the foundational values within this party and is virtually a part of its DNA. Therefore, the coalition agreement committing this Government to honouring the commitment given by all three parties to the 0.7% target was, and remains, an entirely valid and honourable promise to those who have the very least on this planet. However, to say that one believes in the moral imperative of alleviating hunger or sickness is not to say that one should be impervious to the evidence of what works. Moreover, a balance has to be struck between providing relief today and ensuring that relief is sustainable. The most powerful helping hand is one that lifts a person to his feet with sufficient strength that he may stand on his own feet thenceforth.

This report provides a sharp analytical framework for assessing where a helping hand is most effective, and I congratulate the committee on its work. I will confine my remarks to the general issue of the effectiveness of aid and then pick up the more controversial aspects of the report to do with whether we should commit to the timescale that we set ourselves and the manner of so doing. The consensus across the report that poverty alleviation and sustainable development should continue to be our priorities is welcome. I was much taken by Professor Collier’s succinct description of the need to continue with giving when he said,

“growth is not a cure-all; but the absence of growth is a kill-all”.

That speaks volumes. The other area of great consensus across the field is that private investment and capital flows, along with remittances, are far more powerful levers and actually do most of the heavy lifting when decent governance is in place and countries are able to move from being low-income countries to middle-income.

I was disappointed to note that the share of technical assistance in the overall development assistance budget expended by us both in the UK and in EU programmes was rather lower than the budgetary support provided. The report points to all the evidence showing that technical assistance, and the expertise provided through it, strengthens institutional capacity in low-income countries through improved tax collection, audit and legal systems and can embed capacity within those countries in the longer term. Can my noble friend give the House the Government’s current assessment of the Commonwealth’s technical assistance programme, which they found to be less than effective in their last review?

I also have to disagree profoundly with the report’s scepticism about using aid to put in place mitigating measures for climate change. There are good reasons why we have to help developing countries with the mitigation challenge. First, we have a historic responsibility as one of those countries that have pushed the earth’s atmosphere close to the point where further climate stability can no longer be guaranteed. Secondly, there is a need to put developing countries on a development trajectory that does not repeat our mistakes in pursuing a fossil fuel-based industrialisation strategy. Thirdly, it is imperative to widen the participation of developing countries in international mitigation efforts so that we can build a broad coalition in support of a stronger climate regime post-2015. I note that the noble Lord, Lord Stern, is in his place and look forward to hearing his remarks in this regard.

One of the main thrusts of the report is that it is rather difficult to measure the marginal impact of spending with an increase in growth. These things are different for each country at each stage of its development, so I welcome the committee’s view that it is clear that there is no negative impact on growth. However, leaving aside economic growth as measured by GDP, there is good evidence that it is very useful, and promotes growth in the long term, if it is used for building resilience. My noble friend Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon noted in his Humanitarian Emergency Response Review that for every £1 spent on preventing disasters, £4 was saved in responding to them. Likewise, the committee notes that post-conflict states also have better marginal returns for every dollar expended. Again, as Professor Collier points out, it is important to provide jobs if you want sustainable demobilisation for soldiers.

I know that the committee was rather taken with the evidence of Mr Rory Stewart, who dismissed the concept of a “lessons learnt” model whereby one can to some extent extrapolate from one particular circumstance to another. Although I agree with the idea that there is no template for stabilising post-conflict situations, we do have useful experience to draw on. Mr Stewart, in my view, misunderstands what he describes as liberal imperialism. The idea was founded in the 19th-century context that if you were going to expand empire to other parts of the world, you should try to promote standards there that reflected what you thought was successful at home. The idea that our development assistance today, whether disbursed bilaterally or multilaterally, is to replicate “civilisational standards”—in the lexicon of 19th-century liberal internationalism—is, frankly, to treat today’s endeavours with contempt. I wonder whether the role of the Marshall Plan in providing aid in post-conflict Europe or the writing of the Japanese and German constitutions to entrench the rule of law would count as liberal internationalism. Furthering gender equality or the rule of law is the right thing to do in a post-conflict society and some of us are sure that Afghanistan will emerge the better for our engagement there, even if it takes longer than we expect.

I will touch on the enduring concerns that we all have on the propensity for aid to be wasted through corruption. In 1950, the economist Lord Bauer said:

“Foreign aid is a system of taking money from poor people in rich countries and giving it to rich people in poor countries”.

It can do no justice to the taxpayers of the DAC countries to find that their donations are siphoned away by corrupt elites in developing countries. The fungibility of aid clearly makes this a trickier problem to solve, so will my noble friend be able to tell the House whether the Government intend to take up Transparency International’s recommendation that they should attempt to get the G20 countries to agree rules to discourage illicit capital flight from those developing countries?

I come to the issue of whether we should stick to our target and, secondly, whether we should enshrine this in law. The argument for spending 0.7% seems irrefutable for the UK currently. It is certainly a significant sum of money in raw numbers but looks rather different when seen in perspective: it amounts to just 1.6p of every pound of government spending, when 75% of the world’s poorest people live on less than $1.25 a day. Setting our sights on fulfilling our target is right, despite the current state of our finances.

However, I will speak to the merits of legislating for the target ad infinitum. I am not speaking for the Liberal Democrats here but as an individual who has seen, more than once, the effects of legislation that is not fit for purpose after some time has passed. I am also keenly aware that if I were a taxpayer in Greece, Spain or Portugal—all three of which are DAC members—in the current climate I might feel that restoring my own country’s finances, in light of the enormous strain that those economies are under, might be my priority. Were we to enshrine this commitment in law, it would take away any flexibility on our part should our own financial situation weaken. Even more importantly, noble Lords might be able to imagine some sunny uplands in the future where our statute-enshrined obligation for development assistance is no longer needed to the same extent or for the purposes it was defined for.

To use another analogy, if we were to take peace and stability as our target in this increasingly unstable world, then perhaps we should have enshrined our implicit commitment to NATO spending, which is at least 2% of GDP but below which we have fallen.

I wholeheartedly support the target but am concerned about enshrining it in law. However, I accept that all political parties committed to this and that it is part of the coalition agreement. My own proposal, which might assuage some of the concerns about an enduring commitment, would be that if we do move to legislate, we have a requirement for a substantial review at the end of a 10-year period and perhaps insert a sunset clause into the Bill that will come into play should the conclusions of the review suggest that we are able to adjust the target either up or down. This would allow us to fulfil our current commitments, provide space for the planning of programmes and provide certainty of funding for the next period; but would enable us to reconsider, if necessary.

I conclude simply by thanking the committee for this report, which has added significantly to our understanding of the issue.

19:40

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, in this House we do not get many opportunities to debate the general case for development aid and the place of Britain’s aid programme within it—probably fewer than we should. So I very much welcome the chance to discuss the report on the economic impact and effectiveness of development aid produced by the Economic Affairs Committee and so ably introduced this evening by the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, even if I disagree quite sharply with some of its recommendations—I am in rather greater sympathy with the Government’s response to them.

Development aid is a crucial part of Britain’s projection of soft power; it is a practical expression of our role in the world as a leading developed nation, able to help others less fortunately placed. Frankly, that is a moral obligation as well as a self-interested one. It is a not insignificant part of an overall effort, under the aegis of the United Nations, to make the world a more equitable and thus a more secure place. It matters and we need to get it right. Broadly speaking, I believe that the coalition Government have done precisely that, particularly by their decision to ring-fence the aid budget from spending cuts. They have taken a large amount of criticism for that decision, mainly from their own supporters, but it was a bold and laudable decision. They got it right.

The report recommends the dismantling of the UN’s 0.7% of GNI target for official development aid. What is the justification for that? Is the quantum excessive? Far from it, I would argue. Developing countries, particularly those whose populations make up what has been called by Professor Collier—who I was delighted to see gave evidence to the committee—the bottom billion of the world’s citizens, have needs in developing agriculture, education, health services, infrastructure and environmentally responsible policies far in excess of their own fiscal capacity, even when that capacity is put together with the sums that would be raised by the UN target, if only the donors actually provided them, which most of them do not. If our own aid budget is currently growing rapidly to meet that target, it is largely because, for many years, we shamefully fell far short of it while continuing, year after year, to sign up to it in any number of UN resolutions. Should that target be dropped? What signal would that send to the world’s poorest people? I suggest a disastrous one. We should not forget that by setting the target in terms of a percentage of the donor’s gross national income, the system already takes account—the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, made this point—of recession or stagnation in those economies.

The report is also rather critical of efforts to focus aid on fragile states. No one would dispute that mounting aid programmes in such countries is fraught with technical, security and political problems, but a situation in which aid to fragile states simply dries up, as was the case some years ago in a number of those countries, drives those states into a downward spiral, leading eventually to state failure, which puts huge costs on the international community to remedy. I believe that the previous Labour Government, who began a shift in our aid policy to give fragile states more prominence, were quite correct, as has been this Government’s decision to continue that effort. Above all, the development work in fragile states requires the most intensive co-operation between DfID and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I very much support the call for that co-operation by my noble friend Lord Jay of Ewelme, and the progress in getting away from the unhealthy dichotomy between the two departments, which tended to be the order of the day under the previous Government. It must not be allowed to return.

Thirdly, I do not entirely agree with the criticism of the European Union aid budget, to which we make a substantial contribution, of not concentrating enough on poverty alleviation in the poorest countries. I note that the new Secretary of State for International Development took up that theme recently in one of her first public pronouncements. I rather regret that. The EU has a whole string of fragile states around its periphery, from the states of the former Soviet Union, through the Caucasus, to the Balkans and north Africa, which are not among the poorest countries in the world but which it is surely in our interest to see emerging as stable democracies and market economies and which need European help, including trade outlets and investment, to do so. We invariably support the EU’s neighbourhood policy when it comes before the EU Council and rightly so, so we should not be sniping at one of its inevitable consequences, which is a substantial aid budget for those fragile states on our periphery.

I have two more positive themes. First, nothing was heard in this report, or naturally enough in the Government’s response, about the desirability of our working closely with the principal emerging powers, such as China, India and Brazil, which are just beginning to become important players in the aid field. Often those countries have really valuable experience of programmes to lift their own populations out of poverty. Should we not be co-operating with them rather than regarding them as competitors? Perhaps the Minister could say something about that in her reply to the debate.

Secondly, there is the future of the United Nations’ millennium development goals after 2015. The Prime Minister is joint chair with the presidents of Indonesia and Liberia of the UN panel set up to prepare the post-2015 phase, which is a welcome tribute to the role that Britain is playing on development issues. Perhaps the Minister could say something about our approach to the MDGs post-2015. How can we get a better focus on the problems of that bottom billion? How can we refine the very broad-brush approach of the present MDGs? How can we ensure better monitoring of the recipients’ performance in using and in matching up to their own targets? She may also take on board that it might be really good if we had a full debate in the House, in government time, before too long on the post-2015 MDGs and the objectives that the Government are pursuing in respect of them.

19:48

[The Lord Bishop of Leicester]

My Lords, I add my thanks to those of this House to the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, for bringing the subject of development aid to our attention. Crucial to the public discussion of this subject is a central question, to which the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, drew attention earlier, about how the debate is framed—the question raised in sharp terms by the report of the Select Committee. Are we, as other noble Lords have said, to spend our time and energy discussing whether to backtrack on the Government’s commitment to 0.7% of GNI or could we move on to engage in what I believe would be a different but more fruitful debate about the effectiveness of our aid spend and the effective scrutiny of that spend?

In August of this year, I spent two weeks in Tanzania visiting our link dioceses of Mount Kilimanjaro and Kiteto. The advantage of visits to churches is that in African culture you travel straight to the heart of local communities; you meet the key leaders in towns and villages; and you see both the hope and despair of populations rarely visited by politicians or even NGOs. You are also brought face to face with unavoidable moral questions, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, suggested. What is the responsibility today and tomorrow for the unrecoverable childhoods of those stricken with curable disease and avoidable malnutrition? How do we calibrate responsibility to these children against our responsibility to the children of our own country? What sort of moral value do we put on the obligation of the United Kingdom to keep its commitments, repeated in recent years at United Nations, G8 and EU summits?

These questions stand in some contrast to the tone of the Select Committee report, which lists the great range of complex issues on which, according to the report, experts are not agreed. The range of disagreements is vast and includes questions about the effectiveness of aid in promoting growth, the forms of aid most appropriate to achieving independence, the best way to channel aid, the relationship between aid and the need for better governance, the relationship between aid and the need to combat corruption, and so on. This list cannot be used as an alibi for reneging on our commitment to a target. Rather, it precisely illustrates my point. If the Government are to wait for consensus among experts on these issues before becoming resolute in standing by their original commitments, we will be left looking indecisive and incoherent in a fundamental area of government policy.

This House can properly feel some pride in what has been achieved through British aid programmes to date. In 2009-10, UK aid ensured that 15 million people had enough food to eat and it provided more than 1.5 million people with clean water. The United Kingdom’s aid helped to build or upgrade 1,500 kilometres of roads, and in 2012 to 2015 it will help more than 77 million people to access financial services. It can be argued that, far from being unaccountable, DfID is one of the most scrutinised departments in Whitehall, with the Independent Commission for Aid Impact and the International Development Select Committee, in addition to the National Audit Office.

If we could move on from the debate about 0.7% of UK income, we could reach the point of discussing other, more fruitful and urgent questions such as the relative merits of microfinance, social entrepreneurship and grass-roots advocacy. It is after all commonplace in other areas of government spending to explore these kinds of questions, so why is the debate about aid not framed in this way? That would allow us to move on to deal with other crucial matters, including how we plan for a future beyond aid, how we tackle global forces that keep people poor, how we address the tax avoidance that creates the huge inequalities that hurt the poorest and most marginalised and how we push for international co-operation to end the tax-haven secrecy that preserves these inequalities.

Our polarised debate seems to assume that aid is often seen as the only source of external funding and that external funding is all there is to development. This is a sterile and erroneous position. Important though aid is, access to markets and technology, especially green technology, is arguably far more important to a country’s strategy for development than any external financial assistance. Aid is but one part of the solution, not the whole solution. I hope that our debate this evening will help us to move on from narrow terms focused on government targets.

19:54

[Lord Lawson of Blaby]

My Lords, I hope that the right reverend Prelate will forgive me if I do not address the points he made in his contribution to the debate. We are strongly constrained for time, which unfortunately prevents us having a debate in the real sense of the word.

As the first member of the Economic Affairs Committee of your Lordships’ House to speak after our chairman, I start by paying a large tribute to his outstanding chairmanship. He pointed out that in this tricky area we produced an absolutely unanimous report. I think that the main reason for our unanimity, if I may say so, was because the weight of evidence that we received was so overwhelming—evidence that noble Lords who have spoken so far seem to regard as of no account. However, his outstanding chairmanship also played a part, and I thank him.

This country’s aid programme stands out in at least three ways. First, as my noble friend said, we give more in overseas development aid than any country in the world with the sole exception of the United States. Secondly, while in order to achieve sadly necessary fiscal consolidation, all other public expenditure programmes are being either frozen or cut back, the UK overseas aid budget is roaring ahead—at a time when most other countries are slowing down on this front. Thirdly, we are doing this explicitly in pursuit of a pledge to meet the 42 year-old United Nations target of spending 0.7% of our GNP on aid by next year; and, unlike any other country in the world, and in contrast to all other areas of public expenditure in this country, we have said that we will introduce legislation to bind this and all future UK Governments to maintaining this level of spending in perpetuity.

As my noble friend Lord MacGregor pointed out, the principal conclusion of our report, although not the only one, was that, far from making it a legal obligation, we should abandon this antique and wholly arbitrary target altogether. He admirably set out why we unanimously reached that conclusion. In particular, he pointed out how the 0.7% target prioritises the amount spent rather than the results achieved, and thus makes the achievement of the spending target more important than the effectiveness—if any—of the programmes. The Government’s pathetic response to our report was that the 0.7% commitment was a solemn pledge by all three political parties, and that is that.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

Hear, hear.

[Lord Lawson of Blaby]

I very much hope that the Minister will do better than that this evening, even if the Leader of the Opposition is unable to do so.

In my rather long political experience, when all three political parties are agreed on a policy, it is nearly always mistaken—as it is in this case. There is a very clear reason why that should be. The existence of all-party consensus ensures that the policy in question is never properly debated or scrutinised. If the evidence shows that a policy is mistaken, it should be abandoned: it is as simple as that.

I do not question for a moment that the policy is well meant, or that the intentions behind it are noble. However, as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Policies need to be judged by their outcomes, not by their intentions. I cannot stress this too strongly. I believe that all of us on all sides of the House are well intentioned, but that does not prevent us frequently disagreeing strongly with the proposals of those who sit opposite us, on the grounds that the consequences of what they propose would be damaging. For example, I am sure that Mr Blair had the most high-minded intentions when he took this country to war with Iraq. However, that does not mean that he was right to do so. It is outcomes, not intentions, which matter.

I return to the proposal that the 0.7% aid target should be abandoned. I suspect that we might not have felt quite so strongly about this had there not been serious doubts about the efficacy of development aid more generally. To quote the cautious conclusion of our report,

“the evidence that aid makes a contribution to growth in recipient countries is inconclusive”.

We did not go deeply into the question of why development aid does not, on balance, promote economic development, although we did point to the malign relationship between aid and corruption, which has already been mentioned in this debate. But corruption—important as it is—is only part of the story. The real issue is more fundamental than that.

A useful analysis, which I commend to the House, is to be found in a penetrating new study, Why Nations Fail, by a couple of economists, Acemoglu and Robinson, which unfortunately was not published until after we had completed our inquiry. They say that what the nations that fail,

“all share is extractive institutions. In all these cases the basis of these institutions is an elite who design economic institutions in order to enrich themselves and perpetuate their power at the expense of the vast majority of people in society”.

In parenthesis, my noble friend Lady Falkner reminded us earlier of my old friend, the distinguished development economist the late Professor Peter Bauer, who many noble Lords will recall was a stimulating Member of this House. He used to say that the principal effect of official development aid was to transfer money from the poor in the rich countries to the rich in the poor countries. That is far too true for comfort.

Be that as it may, Acemoglu and Robinson continue:

“The idea that rich Western countries should provide large amounts of ‘developmental aid’ in order to solve the problem of poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean, Central America and South Asia is based on an incorrect understanding of what causes poverty. Countries such as Afghanistan are poor because of their extractive institutions—which result in a lack of property rights, law and order, or well-functioning legal systems and the stifling dominance of national and, more often, local elites over political and economic life. If sustained economic growth depends on inclusive institutions, giving aid to regimes presiding over extractive institutions cannot be the solution”.

That must be right. But I would myself put it more simply. The crucial requirement for economic development is a variant of the separation of powers: in this case, a separation between the political and the economic spheres.

Without that separation, if the route to individual wealth is via political office, government becomes a means of extracting wealth for the benefit of those in government, at the expense of the governed; and the notion of facilitating economic development or growth by providing conditions in which the governed can escape from poverty by their own efforts, outside the political process, is conspicuous by its absence—hence the futility of development aid.

I stress that I am not speaking here about disaster relief, although even in the area of disaster relief, the reality is all too frequently far from the intention, as Linda Polman has devastatingly documented in her book War Games: The Story of Aid and War in Modern Times..

The record of development aid, however well intentioned— and I admit that it is—is as disappointing as it is because it does not and cannot achieve the indispensable political and institutional requirement of a separation between the political and economic spheres in the recipient countries. Without that, development aid is futile; with it, development aid is unnecessary. Indeed, official development aid is likely to be worse than futile, and actively counterproductive overall—even though individual projects may bring useful if minor benefits, such as better paid schoolteachers and thus, we hope, better schools.

This is because the principal consequence of the provision of official development aid to Governments in the developing world is to boost the already excessive dependence on government and, more specifically, to reinforce the concentration of political and economic power—the very reverse of what history has shown is required for successful economic development, without taking into account the extent to which aid promotes corruption in the recipient countries; a well documented phenomenon.

It is, of course, important that we do nothing actually to impede the economic development of what used to be known as the third world. That means, in particular, putting no barriers in the way of their exports to us. But if we seriously wish to use taxpayers’ money to help the people of the developing world, the best thing we can do is probably to spend a fraction of what we are currently mis-spending on development aid on educating the future leaders of those countries in our best schools and universities. It is only they who may, in future, be able to effect the political and institutional transformation that their countries so badly need.

20:06

[Lord Boateng]

My Lords, this is an important debate. We owe the Economic Affairs Committee of the House a debt of gratitude for making it possible and for the serious and weighty consideration, so well exemplified by the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, that it has given to this subject. Even when one disagrees with some of the committee’s conclusions—and I certainly do—no one can doubt for one moment that they are worthy of very careful consideration. It would be dangerous in the extreme for anyone to dismiss them out of hand.

From the outset, I declare an interest in this debate. I was the Chief Secretary whose fingerprints are all over the commitment to the UN target on ODA. I confess that. I am an adviser to and trustee of a number of not-for-profit organisations that either have been or hope to be the recipients of grants from DfID. I make no apology for that. I believe that NGOs have an enormous contribution to make, not always realised, frankly, on the part of government donors, to the development of the poorest parts of our world, and have insights into how best to innovate and deliver to the very poor that governments very often do not have.

I must put my hands up, too, to the responsibility of having led a mission for four and a half years. As its head I held a notional responsibility for the operation of DfID in a particular region. I say “notional responsibility” because the reality is that the Foreign Office-appointed head of mission in any country has very little influence let alone control over the activities of the Department for International Development in that country. I shall come to that in a moment because it is an issue that has to be addressed. For all those reasons, I have form as long as your arm when it comes to DfID.

I regard myself as a friend of the Department for International Development and appreciate enormously the dedication and commitment of its staff globally. In my experience, no other development organisation globally enjoys the universally high reputation that ours does. It deserves real credit for that. Although I am a friend of the department, I am not an uncritical one because there are areas, a number of which are highlighted in the report, where the department could certainly do much better. I want to address a number of those in the course of my remarks.

First, a department with the responsibilities and the budget that this one has ought to be capable of working in a more collegiate way across government than in fact it does. The reality is that not only does it often fail to work collegiately with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, it also fails to take advantage of the huge expertise across government in certain areas that are absolutely central to the alleviation of poverty and the development of those countries that are so desperately in need of development. I shall give a number of examples of that from my own ministerial experience, quite apart from anything else.

The Department of Health, about which no doubt we will hear more in due course from the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, is full of expertise when it comes to healthcare delivery systems. There are nurses and doctors all around the country at various stages in their careers who very much want to and often are making a contribution to the alleviation of poverty and suffering in our world—underfunded or unfunded. Do they get the help and support from the Department for International Development that they ought to? I am afraid that they do not. The department, which has more money at its disposal than it can deal with and which is busy handing it over in large quantities to the European Union and a range of other multilateral organisations, some of which frankly do not deal with the money as they ought, has not been prepared to make money available to another government department so that it can be spent more effectively on behalf of the taxpayers of this country to meet the objectives that we as a country have signed up to. That, quite frankly, is a scandal. I would like the Minister to tell us just how much of the ODA budget is expended through other government departments. If, as I suspect and indeed as I know, it is a minute proportion of the total amount available to it, why is that the case?

DfID does not have the staff to monitor and deliver the resources at its disposal as the department itself accepts they ought to be monitored and delivered, so why not allow other government departments to take responsibility for facilitating the sort of partnerships between hospitals, universities and a range of organisations in this country and their counterparts in the developing world which, with just a little seed corn funding—and sometimes with more than just a little bit extra, but a steady and sustainable stream of funding—could make a huge difference to the poorest in our world? There is a case that the department has to answer for its failure in this regard. I hope that HM Treasury will look at this carefully, will drive in a way that it has not always driven in the past—indeed, I put up my hands because I did not drive as I ought to have done—and will encourage co-operation between government departments across the piece. That is an issue to which I hope we will return in the course of our debates on this subject.

I turn now to one area where the department needs to be prepared to abandon some of the orthodoxy that hitherto has tended to predominate. For all its strengths, the department has a tendency to be theological in its approach to development. If something does not fit in to the mindset that is the established wisdom of the department, it is treated with the utmost suspicion. I give the example of science, technology and innovation. I have yet to see a country that has been able to develop and grow its economy without science, technology and innovation, and yet for years the department has had a downer on promoting science. It had to be dragged kicking and screaming by a line in the Chief Secretary’s letter to appoint a chief scientist in the first place. We were told that it was not necessary for the department to have a chief scientist because it was not something that had a direct bearing on the alleviation of poverty—please, do me a favour. The reality is that the poor need science. Without the growth that is stimulated by science and innovation, we are never going to see the developing countries of the world reach the level of human and economic development that is their due. I would like the department to assure us that, this time around, it is giving its chief scientist a budget so that the department can do the work that it is there to do.

I would like an assurance that the department is actually working with higher education institutions in this country and that it is actually prepared to spend some money in those institutions on promoting science and innovation across the piece, particularly in relation to agriculture. We are facing one of the gravest crises in food security that our world has ever seen. That is the reality on the ground. It cannot be solved simply by resorting to food parcels and humanitarian relief. Today, a number of parliamentarians met MPs who represent farmers in Uganda. They are desperate for hands-on technical support in relation to their crops, for the development of drought-resistant seeds, and for the most basic forms of agricultural research and development. Their own Government are not spending up to the AU targets on agriculture as they ought to be. Sometimes we look at issues of conditionality when we grant direct budgetary support and sector support, but ought we not to make it a condition, when offering general budgetary support, that at least the Governments should set their budgets so that they spend up to the targets they have already committed to? If they do not, why should British taxpayers expend their hard-won resources on support for budgets that do not meet the needs of the poorest in those countries? While I do not advocate a return to conditionality—indeed, I am opposed to it and sceptical of some of the new forms now being imposed on the developing world—there are some forms of conditionality that relate to fitness for purpose that should be required by DfID if it is to continue with direct and sector budgetary support along the lines that it indicates it intends to do. I hope that it will take into account the Economic Affairs Committee’s strictures when it comes to sector and general support because there is a great deal of good sense behind them.

My final point is one where, again, you come up against the theology within DfID and the most amazing resistance to co-operation with the Ministry of Defence. There can be no development without security. In the Sahel, we are witnessing, centred around Mali but spreading throughout that region, one of the gravest threats to development and security that Africa has ever seen. I hope that we will hear some reassurance in the course of the debate that DfID will be prepared to co-operate with the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence in using the conflict pool to address the situation in the Sahel. If it does not, and we find that the African Union is unable to access the resources it needs to offer a military, economic and public diplomatic response to the crisis in the Sahel, we will reap a terrible whirlwind across the continent.

If ever there was a time for an agency such as the British Council to be freed up to work in that region, with resource, it is now. Scandalous as it is, the proportion of resources available to the British Council for that sort of work has gone down and has done so when DfID is awash with money. How much money has DfID made available to the British Council in each of the past five years? How much does it intend to make available to it in the next five years? I am afraid that the answer to that question will reveal a continuing reluctance on the part of DfID to share the taxpayer largesse that has been made available to it.

I support and applaud the Government’s commitment to the 0.7% target. I support and applaud the incredible work being done by DfID and our partners throughout the world. But there really is much more to be done. We need to be bold; we need to be innovative; and we need to be prepared to work together in ways that go beyond the old and established ways of thinking and doing things. We need to be prepared to take some risks if we are to fulfil the moral commitment that we have made as a nation. At the same time, we need to applaud the fact that we have made it and have done so with the overwhelming support and concurrence of the British people. It says something about a nation when the majority—61% of UK adults—agree that we should be spending what we are on overseas development. It says something about a nation when, up and down the country—in church halls, in village halls, in chambers of commerce, in trade union branches, in communities rich, poor, rural and urban—people are getting together on a daily basis to see how they can make the world a better place. This House is doing the right thing by giving this report, its conclusions and the Government’s response to it the serious consideration that they deserve.

20:22

[Lord Shipley]

My Lords, this report is the outcome of many months’ deliberation by the Economic Affairs Committee, during which we heard from many expert witnesses who challenged our perceptions of development aid.

I present the apologies of my noble friend Lord Smith of Clifton, who as a member of the committee hoped very much to speak on this report but is absent because he is recuperating from surgery. I am sure that he would agree with me that this report should be seen as the report of a critical friend. It is about the effective use of public money in helping to drive growth in poor developing countries, in reducing inequalities in income, wealth, health and life expectancy between countries and peoples, and in making the world a safer and more secure place by spreading wealth and opportunity.

The UK is a better place because it gives international aid and wants to give more. I pay tribute to the previous Secretary of State for International Development for his personal commitment to the importance of overseas aid. He had a clear programme to get 11 million children into school, to vaccinate 55 million people against preventable diseases and to stop 250,000 newborn babies dying needlessly, and a plan to promote education and access-to-finance schemes for women and girls.

Aid is morally right for richer countries to give, but it should not lead to fraud, corruption, capital flight or arms purchase. The committee heard worrying evidence that it did. We also heard convincing evidence that development aid can be a driver for growth where it acts as a catalyst for a recipient country’s institutions and its economic and social infrastructure. We heard that aid is not necessarily a driver of growth itself but that it can increase the rate of growth, led by the private sector, by investing in health, skills, internal infrastructure and strong political governance.

Since the report was published earlier this year, three trends are impacting negatively on poor countries. First, the international debt crisis is pushing up the debt repayments of poor countries by about one-third. The Jubilee Debt Campaign has identified that because European demand is lower, income derived by poor countries from exports is reducing. Also, European banks and companies are repatriating money and poor countries are being asked to reschedule debt themselves and thus carry greater burdens. Cutting debt repayment matters because it can be followed by specific, measurable action. We should remember, for example, that in 2001, when Tanzania was granted debt relief, school fees were abolished and school enrolment rose from 50% to 80%.

Secondly, there is a food crisis: 250 million people in Africa are undernourished, and food production in Africa is reported to have dropped by 10% in the past 50 years. I read that more than $33 billion a year is spent on food imports into Africa. Prices are rising and becoming unaffordable and faster agricultural modernisation and expansion seems essential, as the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, pointed out a moment ago.

Can the Minister update the House, either now or later, on whether British multinationals will in future be able to direct profits into tax havens that could cost developing countries significant losses of tax income? What estimates have officials of DfID made of that? Is the estimate of ActionAid correct when it estimates that loss at £4 billion—one-third of our planned development aid budget?

All those trends matter deeply to the amount that we give in aid, which is why the Government’s ambitions to increase the amount we give are right. However, we know from research and from the evidence we heard that only about 50% of aid reaches its target. That is far too low. The other 50% goes in administration and overheads, particularly where money goes through a chain of agencies, in consultancies but also in corruption and fraud.

I move to the issue of fraud and corruption. Some of our witnesses claimed that DfID emphasises quantity, not quality, with poor monitoring. An important consequence of that is a lack of public confidence that money is well spent. Indeed, last year, DfID admitted to the Public Accounts Committee that it did not know how much aid money was lost to fraud and corruption—so much for audit. In 2011-12, the sum identified as fraud and corruption from our direct aid was only £3.1 million, a tiny portion of overall spending.

The Government have created the Independent Commission for Aid Impact. It would be helpful to know what it has achieved since we reported. I understand that it has subcontracted some of its work to KPMG. It would be helpful to know the terms of that. For example, is there an element of payment by results?

A recent National Audit Office report into multilateral aid stated that none of the institutions acting on behalf of DfID had any quantified details of known frauds or losses, although departmental staff were aware of investigations into potential fraud in some cases. That rather suggests that not a lot is done to limit fraud. I hope that the Minister can put my mind at rest and confirm that multilateral aid is indeed subject to proper audit.

As the Government spend more to reach their goal of 0.7% of national income, it is crucial that the public have confidence in our aid programme. Rightly, they want giving aid to be dependent on positive outcomes, improving in-country governance and delivering proper audits on the ground, not supporting Governments who are complicit in terrorism or attacks on civil liberties. The target of 0.7% of gross national income for OECD countries has been a 40-year target. It exists as a statement of the responsibility of rich countries to support poor countries across the world, and I subscribe to it.

I have been concerned, and I have heard much evidence to support that concern, that achieving 0.7% cannot be an end in itself. It should be the consequence of what we do project by project and programme by programme because success can be measured only through positive development outcomes. I have also questioned the speed with which 0.7% is to be reached. The committee’s conclusion in paragraph 95 relates to reaching it by next year, and whether it should be made statutory, which presumably future Governments could change if they wanted to.

In financial terms, there is a planned 37% real-terms increase in aid spending by 2015, which is three years away. I am still uncertain whether it can be done without substantial waste, losing large amounts to overheads and administration and, indirectly, to capital flight and fraud. I hope my doubts are misconceived—I would like them to be. Our committee has stressed throughout that its report is not about cutting aid, nor about freezing it, but about ensuring that the criteria used to define success are not just a proportion of national income. Interestingly, in his reply to our report, the International Development Secretary said:

“0.7% is not a central plank of aid policy”.

I am reassured by that and I hope that means there can be a meeting of minds. I am very happy to spend 0.7%, but the impression has been given that it is indeed the central plank of government policy. I am happy to accept the previous Secretary of State’s clarification. He is right to have added in his response that reaching 0.7% will send a powerful message to other countries, and it is doubly important that we do so given the problems of debt, the loss of tax income and reduction in food supplies that I referred to earlier. All I ask is that reaching 0.7% is done by delivering real outcomes on the ground that are sustainable, drive economic growth and maximise the development impact for each pound spent, which will in turn give the public confidence that their money is being wisely spent.

For that reason, we need to be careful that when we pass money to intermediate agencies, we do so with agreement that money will not go to projects that we would not have agreed to fund ourselves. For example, we are the fifth largest contributor to the World Bank. While our contribution is only around 10% of our total spending on aid, some of that money is going to projects that DfID would not have funded directly itself: there are examples in projects in Iran, China and India. The International Development Secretary promised that there would be a tighter focus on 27 of the poorer countries, and that seems to be right.

The same problem seems to have occurred with the EU, where British aid has been used to support some projects that would not have been supported directly by the UK. I welcome DfID’s intention to go with “what works”, in the words of the previous Secretary of State. Certainly, the bilateral aid review he undertook, resulting in country offices bidding against planned results rather than just for access to funding, will help. In education, might this mean longer contracts to allow for vital institution-building and implementation? Might it mean educational consultants working alongside rather than for an overseas ministry? Might projects be clearly part of a bigger picture rather than one-off without proper follow-up? In building civil society, might it mean focusing on outcomes so that large and prolonged aid programmes do not have a corrosive effect on local political and government systems? In health might this mean following the advice of Professor Sachs of Columbia University, which is quoted at paragraph 108 of our report? It says:

“‘I am not keen on programmes that say, “You are a good Government, you get high governance scores from the World Bank, therefore you are going to be a recipient of budget assistance and we trust you”. I trust nobody.’ Handing over money to central government and expecting it to reach the local level is, unless very carefully designed, ‘a hope too far’. Professor Sachs is instead ‘a big fan of well targeted, well defined programmes that can accomplish well designed and specified purposes’, such as delivery of bed nets or vaccines”.

Health projects like that drive growth because people are well.

In the past 20 years, 18 out of 54 countries have moved from being classed as low income to being classed as middle income. Our job is to help many more low-income countries to move from aid to trade and from low income to middle income.

This is not just about 0.7% or any other number; it is about doing what we can and should do to help poor countries to grow their way out of poverty. It also means the Government reassuring everyone that there is indeed capacity in DfID to spend effectively and, in so doing, to build public support for development aid.

20:35

[The Earl of Sandwich]

My Lords, I, too, have high regard for our aid programme, and it is encouraging that so authoritative a committee as the EAC should have decided to report at length on its impact and effectiveness. I say this sincerely because, like the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, I believe that aid, although universally popular in this country, is a neglected subject in Parliament. Even in this House, which has a good record on foreign affairs, aid tends to come up only in general or country-specific debates. With such a large budget, though, international development should be examined like every other aspect of our economy. Indeed, in many ways much overseas assistance provides a catalyst to our own domestic economy.

I still cannot decide whether the committee was attacking the 0.7% target as an intellectual exercise or whether members of the committee such as the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, disapprove of the use of the aid target as a mantra of the political parties. It helped that the media picked up on the report and ran the headline, and I in no way attribute base motives to the committee in seeking attention from the press. All Governments should receive criticism, especially of their core values and their red lines, so this debate and others at least challenge Ministers to rethink and reaffirm policy if necessary.

The 0.7% target is only a target and has now been set in stone by all the main political parties, if not yet in legislation. After all, we have taken 60 years to get to this point; it was back in 1958 that the World Council of Churches proposed a target, initiating the debate leading to the Pearson commission’s recommendation and the UN’s first adoption of the target in 1970. The noble Lord, Lord McConnell, talked of our international responsibility, and today Britain’s acknowledged leadership in the world of development assistance, as measured by the OECD in terms of its performance and effectiveness, to me makes the UN target of 0.7% inevitable.

We have not yet caught up with the Scandinavian countries, which came up to the target some years ago. Last year we were only at 0.56% but we are getting there. Whatever one’s assessment of the Liberal influence on this Government, it is this coalition that should be congratulated on ring-fencing aid during a recession—a difficult thing to do, as they are finding. It was the Labour Government, as we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, who deserve credit for raising our sights in the first place, reflecting growing public support for aid. We should give the maximum support to the Government in fending off critics within their own ranks and maintaining our international reputation. After all, it is widely acknowledged that DfID, whether or not it remains a different department, is a cornerstone of our foreign policy and should remain so.

That the developing world needs more aid can hardly be in doubt, considering the effects of poverty, conflict and climate change. Agriculture in Africa, above all, as the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, said, requires much greater investment at a time of extreme weather conditions and rising populations. India will continue to have a large proportion of the world’s poorest people, and I disagree with the committee about an exit strategy; with the benefit of our historic experience and partnership with India, there is a moral as well as an economic imperative to defy the critics and keep at least three or four Indian states inside our aid programme.

There is little doubt in my mind that aid works if it is carefully managed. It can be very successful in what must be its primary objective and motivation, which is to help the poor on to a sustainable level at which they can earn more, feed themselves adequately and care for their own health. Aid agencies such as Oxfam, Christian Aid and Save the Children have given us many examples not only of their own successes but of DfID’s achievements in malaria prevention in Kenya and Tanzania or the reduction of infant mortality in Bangladesh—there are many examples.

Perhaps more important to the committee is whether the aid system—the current machinery for delivering aid to the poorest communities—can really absorb the budget over the next two or more years, during which our aid is supposed to climb towards £12.6 billion. I doubt whether 0.7% will be reached next year or even the year after. A lot depends on recipient Governments, and I think the committee may be too cautious in recommending more conditionality and less budget support—although I understand what the committee is saying.

However, the committee rightly points out that speed can reduce quality and accountability and encourage corruption and diversion. We also need an assurance from the Minister that DfID’s own administrative cuts, such as country office closures and the loss of staff, are not going to affect the efficiency of the current programme. The committee recognises, as I do, that NGOs in the right context can often deliver aid most effectively and, better still, can be a catalyst to more efficient official spending. I have seen NGOs and church agencies working so successfully with the poorest in India, for example, that—through small business development, loan and credit schemes and integrated development in the best sense—they have shown the way to local government and have often substituted for government altogether. We cannot take that away.

At the same time, I agree that while NGOs have increasingly taken on a quasi-governmental role, they occasionally and perhaps deliberately get in the way. One thinks of Ethiopia under the late Meles Zenawi, especially where even the most established agencies like Oxfam and Save the Children were outlawed at different times. The Independent Commission for Aid Impact says that NGOs funded in recipient countries are not subject to the same level of scrutiny, and this is not surprising. Although DfID is rightly stepping up its monitoring of NGOs, ultimately it is their freedom from bureaucracy that ensures their flexibility, quality and innovative character.

I will not go into the issue of corruption because DfID’s anti-corruption strategy is still at an early stage. No kind of aid can be free of it altogether, but I think there is some exaggeration of deliberate corruption. Much of it can be incompetence. Those of us who have visited UK projects overseas will recognise what might be called the “muddle factor”, which is where perfectly good, well designed programmes are brought down by incompetence both by donors and recipients. I will give one example from Nepal. DfID’s once excellent Livelihoods and Forestry Programme in Nepal—which the Minister may remember visiting with the Inter-Parliamentary Union a few years ago, and was seen more recently by the Commons International Development Committee—was notable for its direct involvement of the local community through forestry user groups. However, in the past two years the whole programme has stalled during an attempt to upgrade it into a multi-stakeholder project involving the Swiss Government. There have since been management failures, expertise and jobs have been lost, and there is still doubt whether the new programme in its revised form will go forward.

The position was summarised in an answer I received in Kathmandu this summer from DfID:

“Following formal approval in January 2012, the new programme is currently in initiation with activities being geared up to establish a project coordination office and select implementing agencies for the new programme”.

This kind of language—which I have also seen in explanations of delays to projects in South Sudan—reveals wastage of taxpayers’ money, nothing less. I emphasise that there are usually two sides to these problems, although they are more often blamed on the host Government or the lack of government, as in Nepal. If the noble Baroness is still familiar with this project, she may wish to make a comment in writing. The Minister Alan Duncan’s letter of last month gives me no confidence and suggests that the project should be the subject of a wider inquiry.

I will say a final word on the multilateral agencies. I do not agree that we should reduce our EU funding to neighbouring states, and I am not convinced that the committee had enough time or evidence to draw useful conclusions about the World Bank or the UNDP. How do you decide in a report like this whether the bank should invest in coal in Kosovo, when half the country cannot afford the price of electricity?

In conclusion, my support for the UN target is as a target, and even for legislation, but it does not contradict the main thrust of the report, which concerns our aid performance and effectiveness. As it says in the report, experts also disagree on what effectiveness usually means. However, experts often disagree anyway.

20:45

[Lord Tugendhat]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Earl, but I am afraid that I shall be taking a somewhat different line on a number of issues to those that he put forward. However, I should like to begin, as did the noble Lords, Lord Lawson and Lord Shipley, who are on the committee, by paying tribute to the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor. It was an outstanding feat to bring us to unanimous conclusions, and it was a great pleasure to serve under him.

I should also like to take this opportunity, especially in the light of recent events, to pay tribute to the stewardship of Andrew Mitchell, as Secretary of State for International Development. He was an outstanding Secretary of State—he treated it as the job of a lifetime—and his commitment and enthusiasm will be remembered for a very long time to come.

I have also been impressed by what I learnt about DfID, and about what others in the field had to say about it. At a time when there are serious doubts about the basic competence of a number of government departments, it was encouraging to find that DfID is regarded as world-class in its field so far as execution is concerned. However, that does not mean that I emerged from our inquiry in agreement with all that it is trying to do. I will concentrate on a very limited number of points.

In particular, I came away with the strong impression that it is living in the past, and is reluctant to move into the present. I fear that the same is true, in respect of aid, of the wider Government. The Prime Minister claims that it would be wrong to balance Britain’s budget on the backs of the poorest people in the world, but that is not the point at issue. The proposition that the Government and DfID must justify, and which they have failed successfully to do, is the commitment to increase the aid budget by 37% in real terms between 2010 and 2011, and between 2014 and 2015, in order to reach the arbitrary UN target of 0.7%, which was set over 40 years ago.

To increase the budget by that rate over a limited number of years, after the increases that we have already had in recent years, would be a tall order in any circumstances. However, at a time when every other public expenditure programme is either being eviscerated or, at best, held constant, it is quite simply wrong to privilege that particular programme in that way, and to seek to set standards by the amount that is spent rather than by the effectiveness of the expenditure.

I am very struck by the fact that those of us who have been on the committee appear to be unanimous in our view, while those who did not have the benefit of listening to the evidence that we received appear to take a contrary view. Moreover, the target of 0.7%, set in 1970, takes no account of the enormous changes that have taken place in the world since that time, many of them greatly for the better so far as development is concerned. By comparison with that time, as the report shows, development aid has become a relatively minor element in the capital flows from developed to developing countries.

The noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, gave the figures and I shall briefly repeat them. In 2010, development aid accounted for 10.9%, the same as that for portfolio investment; foreign direct investment accounted for 43.5%; remittances, an ever-growing source of funds for developing countries, was 27.4%; and 7.2% was accounted for by long-term private debt. In its latest issue, the Economist points out that FDI in sub-Saharan Africa alone has increased by 50% since 2005. Those are very impressive figures.

The way in which this debate has been conducted so far might give the impression that aid and development are two sides of the same coin. But, in fact, development is being fuelled by a great many other drivers as well as aid. The contribution of aid in percentage terms is diminishing as the other drivers increase. It would be very difficult to come away with that impression from some of the things which have been said earlier in this debate.

Quite apart from those factors, and in addition to them, important new donors, undreamt of in 1970, have entered the field. I refer, of course, to China but also to India and Brazil. I believe that we should rejoice in that, welcome them to the fold and welcome what they have to offer. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, who said that we should be co-operating with the new donors and not regarding them as rivals.

The arrival of the new donors gives rise to another question. Why on earth are we still giving aid to India? I know that there are a great many poor people in India. There are more poor people in India than there are, I believe, in sub-Saharan Africa. But India is a country with a space programme, a massive defence budget and major foreign direct investments in this country as well as in others—we are very glad to have India’s direct investments in this country. It has more conspicuously high-spending millionaires than almost any other country.

Therefore, it seems extraordinary that instead of concentrating our aid effort on poor people in poor countries, we should be sending a significant proportion—described as peanuts by an Indian Minister—to India. If the Government of India choose to spend their own money helping poor people in other countries rather than doing more to help their own poor, they have the sovereign right to do so. It is a sovereign country and if it chooses to spend its money helping poor people in other countries rather than poor people in its own, it has that right. But we should not be shouldering its responsibilities to its people. The very fact that we do so reeks of a certain form of a rather depressing nostalgia.

The impression I derive from the continued commitment of DfID and the Government to the 0.7% target and aid to India is of people who are to some extent living in the past. They do not want to accept that aid contributed by richer, western countries like us, through the dedicated efforts of their own officials and NGOs, is no longer the chief instrument of development in poorer countries. Thanks in part to those efforts, and to the catalytic effect of that aid, the economies of the developing countries are now picking up speed with the help of a range of other drivers. We should rejoice in that and in the benefits that accrue to the developing countries as a result.

When the Cold War ended in victory for the West, many in the defence establishment were reluctant to face up to what this meant for them and their roles. We have not yet reached a 1989 moment so far as the development of the developing countries is concerned but much progress is being made, powerful new forces are at work and old ideas, establishments, budgets and targets need to be rethought. Now is not the time for embedding a 40 year-old target in legislation and privileging that particular budget at the expense of the National Health Service, education and all the other domestic budgets, not to mention defence and foreign affairs.

20:54

[Lord Hollick]

My Lords, I, too, would like to thank our chairman, Lord MacGregor, for leading us through this important review of overseas development aid and, somewhat to our surprise, leading us to unanimity. But that is where the evidence led us as well. In 2010-11, our gross spending on development aid was £9 billion, representing a 53% increase over four years. As a percentage of gross national income, aid increased from 0.43% to 0.56% over the three years to 2010. As noble Lords have said, the UK is the second largest provider of development aid in the world. DfID has been consistently held in high regard over the past 15 years. So the UK has much to be proud of in its commitment to alleviate poverty and despair in some of the least developed countries in the world.

The premise that economic growth is the most effective way of achieving a reduction in poverty is universally shared, but there is a wide divergence of views on the contribution that development aid makes, or does not make, to economic growth. The insurmountable difficulties of measurement make it unlikely that this debate can be resolved by conventional analysis, not least because, as the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, mentioned, development aid is but a fraction of larger private capital and trade flows. But there is a good deal of evidence that development aid is an important and vital catalyst in bringing about all the changes that are prerequisite to the flow of private investment and long-term economic growth, from improved healthcare and education to better governance, administrative capacity building and infrastructure investment.

It is possible to measure the impact and effectiveness of aid aimed at achieving many of these specific objectives and that must be the starting point of the value-for-money analysis to which DfID is committed in its business principles. That value-for-money analysis can be made only if the objectives of the project are clearly established at the outset and the outputs and impacts can subsequently be monitored and measured. Far too much development aid is channelled through multilateral organisations or direct budgetary support, where transparency is low or non-existent. DfID is to be commended for weeding out some of the worst offenders, but it needs to impose far tougher conditions of transparency on large multilateral organisations to establish whether its laudable operating objectives of making British aid more effective by imposing transparency and value for money are being met and met in all cases.

Are the objectives of multilateral organisations consistent with DfID’s objectives? For instance, is the European Commission’s support for Turkey, an increasingly wealthy country that can attract all the private capital it needs, a proper use of development funds aimed at helping the world’s poor? Helping accession countries to transition to full EU membership is itself an important objective, possibly worthy of EU support, but it falls well outside DfID’s objectives.

Aid transferred directly to Governments is too often general in its nature, can be spent on anything that the recipient Governments choose and can in turn undermine the legitimacy of those Governments while enriching their members. It is all but impossible for DfID to follow the money involved in these transfers and monitor value for money. Project finance, which has been reduced by DfID, provides greater transparency and less scope for manipulation. DfID should re-examine the merits of increasing project finance. As my noble friend Lord Boateng said, NGOs provide a higher level of transparency—I was very impressed by the evidence that we received about the general effectiveness of their work. I urge DfID to work more closely with NGOs and, in particular, to help them to scale up their activities.

Many of our witnesses were alert to the ever present risk of corruption, particularly in fragile states. Yes, it will always be with us and every effort must be made to eliminate or reduce the redirection of aid to private pockets. Of course, we wring our hands, but we should also take note of the uncomfortable fact, carefully documented by Transparency International and the Tax Justice Network, that many of the bolt-holes for funds obtained corruptly fly the Union Jack or have it incorporated in their national flag. Too many of our protectorates and former colonies, many of which continue to have close relationships with the City of London, operate as tax havens with high levels of secrecy, so let us look in our own back garden first and clear up some of the shortcomings there.

Transparency International also provides an invaluable analysis of illegal capital flight, which shows clearly that many countries that are major aid recipients, such as Ethiopia, also suffer from very high levels of illegal capital flight. DfID should pay close attention to Transparency International’s index and insist that improved governance and effectiveness at the recipient country’s central bank and more effective tax collection in the country should be preconditions to the receipt of development aid.

Visits that I made to Burma and Palestine this year provided further insight into the complexities of overseas aid. In Burma I met with people from Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy to discuss election campaigning—she did not need much advice, as it was more of a coronation—and policy formulation. They were keen to secure support for Burma’s development from the outside world but warned against a sudden flow of funding, which they said would immediately be siphoned off into the wrong hands. Instead, they wanted to rebuild civil society, which has been hollowed out over the past 50 years, to ensure that the country has the professional and administrative skills and structure to cope with the anticipated rush of inward investment. They were in particular looking to Britain to provide that support and suggested that DfID might partner with UK professional bodies representing accountants, lawyers, engineers, tax experts and civil administrators to help to fill the capacity gap. This is a potentially fruitful co-operation which could deliver direct economic benefit to the UK—something that we should also bear in mind—without compromising the quality or effectiveness of what we offer to Burma.

The issue in Palestine was more deep-rooted and, I fear, more intractable. The UK gives some £86 million a year to Palestine, largely to support civil society, yet a World Bank analysis shows that Israeli policies to contain and control Palestine’s economy reduces its GDP to less than a quarter of the level it should be. Much of the GDP lost is in effect transferred to the benefit of the occupying power, so we have the absurd position whereby hard-pressed UK and EU taxpayers are providing development aid in effect to fund the gap in the Palestinian economy created by measures imposed by Israel and which in turn benefit Israel’s treasury. This is an unacceptable situation, which surely should be tackled at both UK and EU level.

The need to monitor and manage the complexities and to scrutinise funding before, during and after implementation demands skilled resources. DfID’s staff receive high praise, but a time when funding is increasing and there is a requirement to manage that funding on a more detailed basis is not the time to reduce staff. Indeed, more resources are needed if DfID’s business plan is to be met and implemented effectively. The committee’s encounter with the recently established Independent Commission for Aid Impact, set up to monitor the performance of aid programmes, was, if I can put it most diplomatically, underwhelming. It did not appear up to the important task that it has been set. Against that background, the planned reduction in staff is a very bad idea, which could increase the risk of ineffective outcomes or, worse, a scandal that could undermine the aid programme itself.

The evidence that we received showed that in general our money is being well spent and, indeed, better spent as the years pass, and that the monitoring of outcomes is improving. On that basis we should continue to support additional funding to meet specified demand, always assuming that it can be managed effectively. However, I remain unconvinced that a further substantial increase in funding to an arbitrary level of gross national income is either desirable or manageable. If such funds are available, I would prefer to see the proposed increase in funding, equivalent to between 1.5p and 2p on the basic rate of taxation, used to reduce the basic rate of tax in the UK to stimulate demand, reduce the burden of recession on the hard-working squeezed middle and stimulate growth, for in the longer term it is growth here that will help to fund an increase in the development funds that we send to the most needy in the world.

21:04

[Lord Stern of Brentford]

My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, and his committee for their interesting and important report, and I thank the noble Lord for his thoughtful introduction. I declare an interest and an involvement. For more than 40 years, I worked as an academic economist on development issues. I have been directly involved in decision-making in the Africa and Asia committees of Oxfam in the 1970s and 1980s. I was chief economist of the EBRD and then of the World Bank. I also led the writing of the report of the Commission for Africa. That report stands up well in what it anticipated and pointed to with regard to how Africa was changing, in part through collaboration with donors.

I am going to concentrate, as others have done—but a bit more academically, if noble Lords will forgive me—on the effectiveness of aid, because that is crucial. I take it that the need is clear in terms of the deprivation, and I take it that our wealth is clear—we are much better off than we were 40 years ago when the 0.7% target was indicated. The arguments turn on the effectiveness of aid. I want to argue that the conditions for effective aid have never been better. Difficult though they are, institutions, policies and governance in the developing world have improved. That is not to minimise the severe difficulties but those factors are better than they were. We have learnt a great deal from successes and failures over the years, in both developed and developing countries. The collaboration and partnership between institutions, among donors and with developing countries has improved.

How do we tell whether aid has been effective in reducing poverty? We must start by agreeing strongly with the committee that growth and private sector activity are fundamental to poverty reduction. We must also agree strongly with the committee that other capital flows are of great importance. Taken in the developing world as a whole, they are of substantially greater importance than aid. However, if we look particularly at the poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa, aid is equal to the sum of FDI and remittances. In the poorest parts of the world, aid therefore remains quantitatively an important part of the story. We have to ask whether aid promotes growth and thus, in large measure, poverty reduction. Does it stimulate those other flows? The evidence is strong that, if used well, aid has done so and it can do so.

Perhaps I might describe one way of looking at this issue that is definitely inconclusive—so-called cross-country regression. Noble Lords must forgive me for using this kind of language but I am a professor of economics at the LSE, and that is a method by which people try to tease information out of data. Crudely speaking, you look at variations in growth and try to explain them by variations in aid and other variables. You do that by lumping lots, or a couple of hundred, of countries together, looking at long periods of time and trying to explain changes in growth through changes in the other variables. In my view, it is inconclusive and a dead-end.

The quality of the cross-country data is poor. There are real problems of identification and simultaneous causation; in other words, you hope that aid will reduce poverty, but aid also goes to where poverty is the greatest, and that confounds much of that kind of statistical work. In addition, different kinds of aid are often lumped together. If we look back at the Cold War era, we should see much of that aid as political support, rather than development aid. It would be hard for any of us to pretend—and we certainly should not—that flows to Mobutu’s Zaire had very much to do with development. That was a different time and we can argue whether those things were justified or not, but those kinds of flows are different animals from development aid. Broadly speaking, I do not think that we should expect that kind of cross-country regression, which is extremely popular in my profession, to get very far, and—surprise, surprise—it does not. We should know that if we take out those kinds of more politically motivated flows, the productivity of the others looks much stronger. However, I do not want to lay too much emphasis on the cross-country regression approach.

What I find convincing are case studies of country assistance, programmes and projects. I shall give a few examples, as they matter. Ethiopia, Mozambique, Uganda and Vietnam all grew at more than 7% in the last decade. They were strongly supported by aid as—this is crucial—policies and institutions improved and they came out of conflict. Five million people were lifted out of poverty—according to the conventional World Bank definition—in Ethiopia between 2005 and 2010. Under a similar definition, the percentage of the population affected by poverty in Uganda has fallen from 31% to 25% in the past five or six years, and in Vietnam from 34% to 22% in the past decade.

Of course, we have to look beyond income, as development is about more than that. Over the past decade, infant mortality rates fell in Ethiopia from 139 to 77 per 1,000 births, in Mozambique from 172 to 103, and in Uganda from 141 to 90. Those are enormous changes and they were strongly associated with aid. When policies and institutions improve and resources are there in support, the results can be immense. It is not true that if policies and institutions improve, nothing else matters, but if they improve and are supported, the results can be much stronger. My friend Daron Acemoglu of MIT would, I am sure, agree with that conclusion.

Perhaps I might continue with these successes. Over a longer period, UNICEF has estimated that 14,000 fewer children under the age of five die each day—I repeat: 14,000 fewer each day—compared with the figure 20 years ago, primarily through success in tackling polio, measles and malaria. Again, that is strongly aid-supported. However, 19,000 children under five still die every day from preventable diseases. The need for action is strong—there is so much more to do.

Regarding education in Tanzania, in the past decade the number of boys and girls at primary school went up from 4 million to 8 million and success in passing exams went up by a factor of five in the same period. That is associated with a stronger allocation in Tanzania’s budget but is supported by the work of DfID. By anybody’s standards, this is surely value for money. Speaking as a former senior Treasury official, I believe that it would pass any serious test of value for money in the Treasury.

However—this is an important point—we have to be careful not to claim too much for ourselves. Development is a partnership. It is about supporting policies and programmes conceived inside a country or embraced by a country. If we say that X or Y happened only because of us and if we try to grab the credit, that is not only presumptuous and arrogant but destructive of the kind of partnerships that we need to build. Therefore, we must carry out our analysis with care and ask ourselves whether we have been involved in a partnership that has created success rather than saying that that success has come about only because of us. If we do the latter, we will destroy the process that we are trying to support.

I shall mention two other issues, and I shall be brief because of the pressures of time on this House. Innovation is extremely important. Aid should discover ways of doing things better. In that way, it can be scaled up and multiply. However, we should also recognise that, as we look for innovation, we take risks and there will be failures. Development programmes with no failures at all are probably not as effective as they should be because they are not pushing out those frontiers. I was involved in assessing a smallholder tea project in Kenya in 1969. It was enormously innovatory in bringing to smallholders what had previously been seen as plantation crops. Before long, tea became one of Kenya’s most important exports. The power of example is important in India, too. India is a collection of states. I have worked extensively in Karnataka and we are working with people there on a programme for climate change resilience. If it works well in Karnataka, that can have an effect across India. The power of example is very important, and I believe that working in Indian states is significant in this respect.

The noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, mentioned climate change. I am not going to dwell on that at any length but will note that the opportunities in low-carbon development, as seen by developing countries from Bangladesh to Ethiopia and beyond, are tremendously exciting. There are many ways of people taking charge of their own affairs, for example through solar power electricity, and many developing countries are looking to work strongly in that direction. This is a case where innovation is extremely important and where we have much to do to share in that very important story. We of course gain from this: carbon reduction in Bangladesh, China or India benefits us and the world as a whole.

I will share a few words about DfID. It is an outstanding department of government. I have seen it as chief economist to the World Bank and had the chance to compare it with other institutions. It is outstanding. It recruits the best young people, as I saw as head of the Government Economic Service, and on the whole they want to stay there. There are other parts of government they want to leave, but they do not want to leave DfID. The best people are recruited and they stay. It is a very knowledgeable and important institution. It is not always right, but it is very strong and has been well led politically. Along with one or two other noble Lords, I pay tribute to the work of Andrew Mitchell. I worked with him on the ministerial advisory group, where his contribution was outstanding. His focus on growth, the importance of entrepreneurship, fighting corruption, getting value for money and his robust defence of 0.7% were at the heart of clear, strong and effective leadership.

In conclusion, deprivation is strong and we are wealthier than we were when that promise of 0.7% was made. There have been great advances in the conditions in developing countries—in governance and particularly in institutions. We have learnt a great deal and collaborate better by following the Paris agreement made seven years ago among donor countries. The millennium development goals have given us shared objectives, so that we are clearer about what we are trying to do together. We can use up to and beyond 0.7% very productively, with real value for money. It has gained us respect internationally as a country, and rightly so. It defines what we stand for. The arguments for 0.7% were strong 40 years ago, and are still stronger now.

21:18

[Lord Bates]

My Lords, it is a great honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Stern. I found that as the noble Lord was talking, I was striking out great sections of my speech, which I no longer need to trouble the House with because the points have been expressed far more eloquently and with such authority and expertise by the noble Lord. My only regret about his evidence was that it was not made available by him as a witness to the committee. I pay tribute to the work of the committee, and to the way in which this debate has been introduced by my noble friend Lord MacGregor.

The report has 28 recommendations. In their response, the Government agreed on 20, partially agreed on four and disagreed on four. I found myself going a bit further towards the committee. Out of the recommendations, I found myself in partial disagreement on only one and in total disagreement on one more. However, the one more that I found myself in total disagreement with goes to the absolute core of this discussion—the 0.7% commitment. I believe, as a Conservative, that our resolute commitment, led by Andrew Mitchell, to 0.7% at such times as these—to which rightful tributes have been made—is one of the most humane and courageous political acts that I have seen in my generation. I am proud to be associated with it. I would not want to see us budge from that commitment at all. If anything, the only flexibility I would seek is that we need not in the future be limited to 0.7% but that it could be increased. When you look at what is happening around this world with the money that is being spent, you see 55 million children vaccinated against preventable diseases, 50 million provided with the means to work their way out of poverty, 9 million people having access to primary education and 15 million with access to clean drinking water. You do not need many statistics like that to realise that this is among the best spend that we make as a Government.

Sometimes the foreign policy world and the debate on it is controlled by an elite. There are people who have enormous expertise and knowledge, but it is not that different from what we do at home. In 2011, in this country, we spent £332 billion on health, welfare and education. If we did not do that, all the police forces and all the prisons in the world would not keep us safe and keep our society orderly and civilised. Therefore, self-interest makes us choose to spend that money in that way, to help us to become a civilised nation. I hope that we can become an international civilisation, and part of the entry cheque for that is a commitment to aid flows.

There is criticism that these commitments were entered into in 1970 but they have been repeated many times since. They were repeated in 2002 at Monterrey for the millennium development goals so that is very recent indeed. They were central to the success of the Gleneagles agreement in 2005 when there was a commitment to 0.7%. The criticism should not be about whether it was 40 years ago but about the fact that 40 years on we are still debating whether we should meet our obligations. Whatever happened to our belief to commit to our international pledges? This pledge was clearly made and freely entered into by successive Governments but we have failed to deliver on it; thankfully, we are about to enter into a commitment by 2014. I welcome that wholeheartedly.

Perhaps I may make a general point about our friend on the other Bench. Would it not have been wonderful if we had hit this 0.7% target when the sun was shining, when we were not in the midst of a recession, as we are now, but during those years when we had abundant budgets and receipts, when we could perhaps have stretched to it? That was a missed opportunity. That point needs to be made. In many ways, the previous Government sidelined us. The noble Lord, Lord Lawson, mentioned the good intentions of these initiatives, but we were sidelined by engagements in conflict, particularly in Iraq, which cost in excess of $1 trillion, almost eight times the amount we are talking about in aid. That is a point of regret.

Let me finish with this reflection. I was persuaded about the need to focus our aid on those who need it most. I thought about how 74% of the UK bilateral aid went to those with the lowest incomes, whereas in the EU it was 56% and I think in the US it was 54%. Clearly, we need to look at that. Of course, we should say that 100% should go to the poorest and those who are in need; we ought to focus our attention on that.

In regard to the evidence, I found myself drawn to support the view of India. I found out the latest figure for the foreign currency reserves of India and found that they were currently hovering around £240 billion, which I am sure our Chancellor would be quite pleased to have. The notion that our modest contribution of £276 million would not make a profound difference to that country—the Indians are more than capable of making it themselves—but could be transferred to make a profound difference to other countries is something of which we ought to take note.

My final point is to endorse the view about the importance of trade as a way of getting people out of poverty. The example of China is inspirational. It comes in for a lot of criticism, but I think I am right in saying—I am looking in the direction of the noble Lord, Lord Stern, who will correct me if I am wrong—that China has lifted more people out of poverty than any other nation in history. It has done so on the back of its economic growth. India and Brazil are also doing it on the back of economic growth. These are welcome steps in the right direction, but the commitment to 0.7% should stay.

21:26

[Lord Lipsey]

My Lords, in view of the Whips’ guidance earlier, I will reduce my blog-length contribution to a tweet—which means that I will not be able to say all I would like to say about the committee chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor.

On the afternoon that we published the report, I was walking through the Lobby when a colleague and good friend came up, eyes blazing, and said: “David, you have signed the report condemning the 0.7% target. Do you not realise that it is party policy?”. I was not a very good target for that particular argument. I have spent more hours of my life than I care to recollect sitting in the kind of committees that create party policies—with a few eager but ignorant young researchers, the representatives of a pressure group or two, and the statutory mad professor. Quite often, what they come out with is stark, staring bonkers.

It would be quite wrong to argue that the 0.7% is stark raving bonkers. However, before we get too high-minded, we should remember how it came to be party policy. In 2005 in the Labour Party, we were rightly worried that Tony Blair’s Iraq policy was costing us the internationalist vote, to which we felt we were naturally entitled. The 0.7% commitment was partly in answer to that. When producing the 2010 Tory manifesto, David Cameron made it clear that the Tories were seen by some as the “nasty party”, and the 0.7% commitment was his answer to that. That is politics; I have been in it long enough to understand it. However, we should not elevate something that came about at least partly as a matter of politics into a great principle; we should look at the merits of the target, not at the fact that it is party policy or at the way in which it became party policy.

I will not go over all the arguments in the committee’s report; they are rather conclusive. I will emphasise just one point. To achieve this target, spending on aid will have to increase from £8.4 billion in 2010 to £12 billion in 2013—an increase of nearly 50% in three years. We know what happens when you increase public expenditure programmes very rapidly. We saw it with the health service. I strongly supported what the Labour Government did in greatly expanding spending on the health service—but now the evidence is in and it shows that what the increased spending greatly increased were the salaries of doctors and what it somewhat decreased was the productivity of the National Health Service.

If we were to abide by the 0.7% target, precisely the same thing would happen. Our aid programme—which, contrary to the view of the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, I believe to be a great force for good—would contain more corruption and more “get the money out of the door somehow and never mind what it is spent on”, and would do less for growth. It would supply opponents of aid with ammunition that they could scarcely dream of. What will the Daily Mail do when it gets into how that money is spent?

If I supported the view of aid of the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, which I do not, and if I were Machiavellian—and neither of us are—I would say that we should go to the 0.7%, because it would so discredit aid that no Government would dare to spend poor taxpayers’ money on that scale again. What is needed with aid is a gradual, well directed and well controlled increase at a speed that the countries and the projects receiving the aid can absorb. It can then be demonstrated that it has done good to those countries and the poor people in them. It is because I fear for the effects of this unrealistic target on aid and I fear even more for its effects on the likely public perception and attitude to aid that I believe it is mistaken.

21:31

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, and his committee for producing an extremely challenging and interesting document. It was not an easy document to produce. I agree more with the Government's response to it—like the noble Lord, Lord Hannay—but both documents are a great contribution to an informed public debate.

My own view of aid has been formed by circumstance. I was lucky enough in the 1980s to act as solicitor for some of the great aid charities, such as Oxfam, Save the Children, Action Aid and so on. I went on a field trip with Oxfam to Brazil to try to understand the realities of the delivery of aid, and I found, as the noble Lord, Lord Stern, hinted at the end of his remarks, that those realities were extremely challenging. Not enough credit has been given in the debate tonight to the extraordinary difficulty of getting aid to where it needs to go. The circumstances in some states are so chaotic, dangerous and lacking in any sort of infrastructure or organisation that there is an inbuilt risk that, whatever you try to do, it will in the end be frustrated. That is inseparable from aid in many of the most underdeveloped countries.

I also thank my son-in-law, a long-standing employee of DfID. He is currently in Tunisia, having just come back from Afghanistan. I have also visited my family in the Congo, where I again saw first-hand what redoubtable challenges have to be faced, day in, day out.

We need to be proud not only of DfID but of our great aid charities, because you cannot discuss one without embracing the other. They are true partners in most parts of the world: there are places where government can go in terms of aid, and there are places where charities can go. To collaborate as they do—and could do more—has been an essential aspect of the full impact of British aid in the third world. I emphasise that fact. The partnership is both complementary and doubles up the value of each.

We should never forget the huge voluntary input into the great aid charities. One is apt to assume that they are made up entirely of employees, but they are not—take Voluntary Service Overseas as an example. My son went out to central east India with Save the Children. There is a huge voluntary input of time, expertise and tenaciousness because it is extremely successful in tapping the great British sympathy for the underdeveloped world. A number of noble Lords have referred to the state of British public opinion. If there was evidence of huge cynicism about aid, one would be more worried about some of the conclusions in the report, but I do not think that is the truth. Indeed, a recent EU Commission survey of attitudes to aid in the different member states of the European Union shows that twice as many people in this country believe in the value and honesty of aid over those who are sceptical. That is not to say that one does not have to worry about certain media outlets or that a great deal more could not be done to uphold public faith in the aid system, whether governmental or NGO. One can and must.

I shall say a word about self-interest, which again has been referred to—very little has not by this time of night. The report makes it clear that aid is in our country’s interest. The self-interest runs deep because the impact of aid can be felt a long way downstream, and then diffusely. But I, along with many noble Lords who have spoken in the debate, have no doubt that the benefits to this country are clear both politically in terms of trade and, above all, if one can use that old-fashioned word, morally.

I want to raise two specific points on the report. First, I refer to paragraph 50, which sets out the seventh recommendation:

“It is important for donors to ensure that opportunities for corruption are as limited as possible by setting in place systems of audit and control as rigorous as local conditions permit”.

Thus far, I agree entirely with the report. It is very wise to take account of local conditions. However, the paragraph goes on by saying,

“and to withhold development aid altogether where corruption is rife”.

I cannot go with that because it seems to be a gospel of despair and casts off those most in need. It is rather like saying to the police, “Patrol the streets but don’t go into that very rough area where you might get into trouble”. The mark of the quality of our aid programme is precisely how we deal with the most bereft and abandoned parts of the world, so pulling out entirely seems utterly wrong. One suggestion I would make, although it may already have been implemented to some degree, is that where Government-to-Government aid is impossible because the recipient Government are so corrupt, one could use the NGOs as the almost exclusive delivery point of the aid we wish to give the country to help it out—remembering, of course, the policy priorities of DfID.

I have to reject that part of the report, and I am afraid that I also find the Government riposte that deals with administration rather wanting. Under the heading:

“Managing an increasing programme with a falling administrative budget”,

they say this:

“We are grateful for the comments provided by the Committee on this. We would like to reassure the Committee that cuts to the administrative budget will not hamper the focus on results or the struggle against corruption and explain why this is so”.

This is just the repetition of a delusion which, if one has been in this House for long enough, one comes across almost every month: the pretence that significant cuts can be made without any repercussions on the ground. I dare say it is possible occasionally, but in this field it is permanently impossible unless—which I am sure is not the case—we have idle and incompetent members of DfID looking at the question of administering the budget to ensure that aid gets to where it is meant to go.

We need much stronger enforcement of the laws that exist to discourage and punish corruption wherever we can. Your Lordships may remember the Act of 2000 which brought onshore criminal acts committed overseas which formerly were not prosecutable here. The body which reported on the Act about three years ago discovered that there had not been a single prosecution under it thus far. To rely on the Serious Fraud Office effectively to police this part of our law is hoping for too much because it has had serious cuts. I have been in touch with the gentleman who runs the Serious Fraud Office. It is at its wits’ end to know how it can deal with crime onshore, let alone crime offshore. I hope that when the Minister comes to sum up she may address some comments to the importance of at least enforcing the laws that we have—the bribery law which we recently passed through this House and so on. Let us not forget, and any lawyer will tell you this, that there is no more difficult area of law to enforce than anything to do with financial corruption. One has only to consider the way in which capital moneys are shifted around the globe in blatant disregard of laws not of one land but of many. Aid has become a playground of crooks and shysters and their expensive advisers. Let us not pretend that we do not have to put resources into ensuring that this aid gets to where it has to go. If that means a form of process conditionality on aid, I for one would say let us have it. Let us have an agreement by recipient Governments that we can put in one or two of our own people to follow an audit trail within their Government in the hope that we can ensure that what was intended and agreed when the aid was put forward has been honestly carried out in practice.

The noble Lord, Lord Lawson, in effect said that you have to choose between the amount of aid and the outcome of aid. That is a wholly false dichotomy. One has of course to have careful regard to how much aid one commits to—and I am totally signed up to the 0.7% commitment, varying, as the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, said it does, with the ups and downs of your own economy—but the idea that one can either look hard-headedly at the amount or look pragmatically and effectively at the outcomes but that you cannot deal with both seems to be an untenable proposition. One has to work at both ends of the equation. I again thank the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, for introducing this debate.

21:43

[Lord Crisp]

My Lords, I congratulate the Economic Affairs Committee on producing this report and on provoking this debate. The report is challenging and being challenged in return. Like other noble Lords, I hope that we can have a fuller debate around development at some later date.

The Economic Affairs Committee, not surprisingly, brings a clear economic focus to this issue. That focus brings great strengths but also, I suspect, some weaknesses. I agree with much of the report. There are many interesting discussions here, but there are some omissions which slightly surprise me. For example, in the report’s critique of multilateral donors, it does not make much of the counterpoint that there is great inefficiency in the multiplicity of individual donors and in the multiple requirements that they make of countries. More than one Minister has said to me and many others that managing multiple donors is a real headache and can be very counterproductive. I note that the Government raise that in their reply to the report.

I come at this issue from a health perspective as opposed to an economic one. From this field, I strongly support the view of the noble Lord, Lord Stern, that the report is too pessimistic about the effectiveness of aid. There may not be conclusive evidence overall, but there are many examples, especially in health, as the noble Lord, Lord Stern, said.

I declare my interests on the register. I chair the trustees of Sightsavers, which receives some match funding from DfID, for which we are very grateful, and is working with DfID on eliminating two blinding neglected tropical diseases. I also co-chair with the Zambian High Commissioner the Zambia-UK health partnerships, which are using UK volunteers, doctors and nurses, to train health workers in Zambia.

I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, who made the point that we do not yet use the experience and expertise we have in this country in a field such as health—which is the one I know, but I suspect also in other areas—effectively alongside the money to support development and the importance of links, of professionals working with professionals. The Government have done much to support some of those through NGOs but, as the noble Lord said, they could do much more to engage the NHS and the Department of Health as part of the delivery arm of DfID.

Looking at the field from the perspective of health, I understand that underneath the definition of economic development is a much stronger issue, which is why people support the aid given from this country. As the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, said in his opening remarks, that is about people wanting us to relieve the distress, suffering, illness and poverty around the world and help the millions where we know what to do and can do so cheaply. As my noble friend Lord Stern, said, there are many examples, including GAVI, the organisation that provides immunisation to so many millions of children, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and, in my field, Sightsavers. We fund our partners to do cataract surgery at the cost of £17 an eye. That is very much value for money. In our recent research with the London School of Hygiene, the person who has gone blind with cataracts returns to economic activity at the same economic level at which they were within a month. In other words, either they get a job or their carer gets a job.

The point I make with that example is that the links between economic growth and health go two ways. It is not just that economic growth can lead to improvements in health. The Commission on Macroeconomics and Health in 2001, chaired by Professor Jeffrey Sachs, who was one of the witnesses to our report, produced the evidence then that health and education contribute to growth. As we all easily recognise, ill health damages it. There have been many analyses of the impact of HIV/AIDS on economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa—or the lack of growth.

We know that economic growth does not guarantee health. The graphs that show the economic status of the country and the health state of the country do not go in a straight line; there is not a direct correlation. We can see examples such as Kerala in southern India or Sri Lanka where, despite relative low income, they have a health status comparable with many countries with a much higher income. It is also about the policies, approaches and priorities that Governments give to those areas. My point is that we need to be careful not to overemphasise economic development at the expense of some of the other important aspects of development.

I want to go slightly further than that. There is some discussion in the report of how much aid should support the UK’s interests. There is an important point in health and elsewhere about shared interest. The most obvious is that we are vulnerable to diseases created or arising in the poorest, weakest and most vulnerable areas of the world. For example, in the 14th century, the Black Death took three winters to get across Europe; SARS took three days to get around the world at the beginning of this century. We have a shared vital self-interest in health surveillance in the poorest countries of the world.

There is more to that. There is more about the creation of vital global public goods. I suspect that people will not generally be aware how many health treatments have come out of the work between the UK, US and other richer nations working with their partners in low and middle-income countries. Much of the treatment and management of HIV/AIDS has of course been learnt there. The DOT therapy for treating TB, now increasingly important in this country, came from Uganda. The hydration therapy for use with small children with diarrhoea came from Bangladesh. Low-tech treatments for postpartum haemorrhage come from for Sri Lanka, and so on. It is, after all, no surprise that people who do not have our resources or baggage of vested interests are very innovative in health. It is no surprise that I advocate partnerships or that in health, as elsewhere, innovation needs to be sourced globally. Knowledge transfer is two-way. There is much about sharing experience and expertise.

Let me also touch on the fact that history means that the UK has a particular role with many of the countries that are recipients of aid and its former colonies and a particular leverage and ability to get things done because of our shared history. The NHS—I speak as a former chief executive of the NHS—owes a great debt to many of those countries for the staff who have come to support the NHS. In return, we owe them a debt in terms of educating more health workers.

The point I make here is that rather than thinking in terms of totally disinterested aid or narrow self interest, there is scope for thinking in terms of mutual benefits and creating public goods. I imagine that this is much the same in areas other than health, such as agriculture and food, which the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, mentioned. Some of this reflects on some rather old-fashioned definitions of aid. The world has moved on from just charity. We need to think a bit more about co-development as well as about support for development. However, redefining aid is for another debate which I hope we can have in due course.

Let me turn to the 0.7% commitment. I understand the point of the arguments that the committee makes about waste and about targeting inputs not outcomes, but I disagree with its conclusion. I support the Government’s conclusion that they have a budget and manage their programmes against results. They need to review it. There is plenty of competition for that money, as anyone who has bid for DfID money will know. There needs to be plenty of openness and no complacency. There will be a constant challenge from others, such as this committee, about whether the money is being spent well and rightly, and so it should be.

The biggest risk was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, and others. It is the pace of growth and whether, even though there is need, there is more need than money, and whether, among other things, DfID has enough staff to be able to go at the pace required. DfID needs to answer that question about pace, not about the overall target.

The 0.7% is, of course, a shared political commitment. It is not about economics but is a commitment alongside others in the world. In some ways, it seems to me that it is not unlike the payment of tithes in churches. It is about who we are. It is about the UK believing that we should support the poorest countries in the world. Very early on in this debate my noble friend Lord Hannay and other noble Lords got this absolutely right, so I shall not repeat it. It would be a terrible signal if we reneged on this. I, too, admired the way that the previous Secretary of State held to the commitment, arguing that the poorest should not pay the highest price for the financial crisis, and I agree with the tributes that were paid to him. I wish the new Secretary of State every success and hope that she will build on the past and on the achievements of the previous Government.

In conclusion, I have talked about what I know, which is health. It is only a part, but it is an important part of this debate about development. It is a plea to think beyond pure economics. Economic and effectiveness arguments are very well made by this report, but we need to bear in mind the ultimate aim. It is not just about growth but about how we think about the world and about the UK’s position in the world. When we look at it in this way we can also recognise that aid can also be about global public goods—not just some of the hard-to-measure ones which many noble Lords have talked about, such as good will, soft power and a leadership role in the world, but also very measurable health therapies and outcomes of benefit to all, which are applicable in other fields as well as in health.

21:54

[Baroness Jenkin of Kennington]

My Lords, the hour is late and many eloquent and powerful speeches have been made making a number of the points I wished to make, so I have been through my remarks with a thick red pen and hope they hang together. It is very tempting just to say, “I agree with my noble friend Lord Bates”, and sit down.

I would like to put the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, right on one point. It was Michael Howard as party leader who first committed the Conservative Party in 2005 to the 0.7% target.

I make my remarks as co-chair with Stephen O’Brien of the Conservative Friends of International Development, which was launched last year. CFID was set up to harness and focus interest from Conservatives who wish actively to support development and learn more about it. Many of our group, now numbering around 700, are alumni of the Conservative Party’s very successful Project Umubano and Project Maya.

Since 2007, more than 300 Conservative volunteers have participated in a number of different programmes in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Bangladesh and Bosnia. They have shared their expertise, whether as teachers, business people, lawyers, medics or sports enthusiasts, with children and adults in these very poor countries that face challenges beyond our comprehension. These volunteers spend two weeks of the summer holidays, at considerable expense to themselves, working in challenging conditions—noble Lords will know that Sierra Leone in the rainy season is no picnic, and two of my own group came home this summer with typhoid—but at the same time enriching their own lives and life skills as well as understanding a little more about extreme poverty. Many of the issues raised in this extremely interesting report were discussed late into the evening. They come back to the UK inspired, enthusiastic and committed. They want to know more about the developing world and about what the UK can do to help and support these countries to lift themselves out of extreme poverty and, eventually, out of our aid budget. I am full of admiration for these young people—I certainly felt the granny of my group earlier this year—and I am very pleased that this new generation of Conservatives is going to be leading the debate going forward into the future.

I join a number of previous speakers in welcoming this comprehensive report. Its evidence was extremely powerful. Like many Members of this House, I am a supporter of the aid work that our country supports, and it is a great source of pride that the UK, DfID and our commitment to improving the lives of the world’s poor are regarded as global leaders in the development field. As the world’s most generous philanthropist, Bill Gates, who has himself so far given away $28 billion of his own money, has put it, the UK Government are taking a fantastic lead. However, businessmen such as Bill Gates do not give away their hard-earned cash without there being a good business case and a commitment to value for money so, like many Members of this House, I welcome Justine Greening’s similar approach, which follows her renewed commitment on behalf of DfID to value for money, transparency and well targeted aid. This in turn builds on Andrew Mitchell’s commitment to spending money only where it will be used effectively and to stopping funding organisations that are not delivering. At a briefing by DfID officials and NGOs in Freetown early this year, I was struck by their support for this approach—one of the senior officials told us that it was long overdue.

On that basis, I, too, support the Government’s commitment to the 0.7% target, as tackling deprivation and poverty around the world is both a moral imperative and in Britain’s interests. However, much of the debate about the generosity of our £7.6 billion aid budget confuses people. A recent poll demonstrated this point. People were asked how much of British expenditure they thought went on overseas aid. They said that the figure was just over 17%. When they were asked how much they thought it should be, the figure that they gave averaged out at just above 7%. The actual figure, though, as we all know, is 1.1%, so we are achieving these results on 1/17th of what the public think we are spending and one-seventh of what they think we should be spending.

Where is the focus of this spending? Over the next four years UK taxpayers’ money will vaccinate more than 55 million children against preventable diseases; provide 50 million people with the means to work their way out of poverty; and save the lives of 50,000 women in pregnancy and childbirth. We will also be able to help provide schooling for 11 million children, half of them girls, at 2.5% of the cost of educating a British child, and to get clean water and sanitation to more people than live in the whole of the United Kingdom. These are examples of where money really makes a difference, as it is next to impossible to escape poverty if you are suffering from illness and disease.

Following the efforts, as previous noble Lords have said, of the GAVI last year, British taxpayers will vaccinate a child in the poorest parts of the world every two seconds for the next five years and save the life of a child under five every two minutes, all from diseases that none of our children dies from. Around 10 children vaccinated for the cost of a couple of Starbucks coffees really has to be value for money

The Secretary of State has said that it is tragic to think of the wasted potential of children who might have become the next Steve Jobs, had they not lost the lottery of life. By helping children to realise their potential, we enhance the global intellectual pool and increase future technological and economic gains, as well as creating a platform for growth by helping developing countries to build a skilled and healthy population that will eventually enable the country to lift itself out of poverty.

The advantage of aid is not that it just stops at the recipients. The recipients of aid can also in due course become aid donors themselves, to help poorer and less developed countries as they move out of poverty. Correctly spent, our aid can ripple across regions as more countries become prosperous.

As countries become richer, the UK needs to move the relationship beyond aid and into trade. Helping developing countries now will mean creating consumers for the future. It is the emerging markets that were poor in recent years where UK companies have been able to win new contracts and realise benefits for the UK now.

The global fund, as the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, has said, has a proven track record of results-oriented delivery, saving more than 5 million lives since its inception. Therefore, continued UK support for the global fund has been provided and the 2 pence per day that every person in the UK gives to the fight HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria save a life every three minutes—value for money, I think noble Lords will agree.

The UK has been leading the international community in ensuring that aid is more effective. Take the International Aid Transparency Initiative in which DfID has played a leading role. The initiative will also help citizens in donor countries see how their aid money is spent, for far better domestic accountability. A budget is necessary to allow forward planning, but the Secretary of State has been very clear on her insistence that aid is based on results and outputs rather than the amount spent. In fact, as we know, DfID offices bid for results, not funding, demonstrating the commitment to outcomes rather than simply focusing on financial inputs into aid. Let us not forget to put aid spending into context. Total global aid spending currently stands at $133billion. Compare this to the $400 billion spent every year on cosmetics worldwide.

In summary, it is in all our interests for countries around the world to be stable and secure, to have educated and healthy populations, and to have growing economies. As the Prime Minister has said,

“So to those who say we can’t afford to act: I say, we can’t afford to wait”.

This is a promise we have made to the poorest in the world and one that we are committed to delivering.

22:02

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

My Lords, it is a privilege to take part in this debate this evening. I thank the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, for introducing it.

I am wondering whether we are not really part of a changing mood: the weakening of links. Within the UK itself, we have the threat of weakening links with Scotland, Wales and so on. I am thinking, “Gosh, what is happening here?”. People are disenchanted with the present set-up where they are related in some way or another to each other. We see it in Europe, where there seems to be a clamour for a vote on whether we stay in Europe or loosen our links with it.

Are we not somehow part of that mood to weaken the links we have with our past and our record on helping the poorest countries? When you think of the poorest countries, I am told that the average income in the UK is about $34,000; in Africa, some are on $600 a year. We have an obligation. We are, after all, our brothers’ and our sisters’ keepers.

There is some sort of “little England” mentality. I would hate to be described as a “little Englander”; this little Welshman is apart from being a little Englander. However, is there not some sort of isolationist, separatist spirit that says, “Ah, we have to perhaps look again at our relationships”?

When we talk of the 0.7%, people say, “That was 1970; it is yesterday’s commitment”. However, the Liberal Democrat promise in the last manifesto was,

“to reach the UN target of 0.7 per cent of GNI by 2013 and enshrine that target in law”.

The Conservative manifesto said:

“A new Conservative government will be fully committed to achieving, by 2013, the UN target of spending 0.7 per cent of national income as aid”.

The Labour manifesto said:

“We remain committed to spending 0.7 per cent of national income on aid from 2013, and we will enshrine this commitment in law”.

Therefore, we say that this 0.7% is something that we can dispense with, but to do so would be a betrayal of all the commitments we have made, not only at the last election but for many years before then. The coalition agreement, of only 30 months ago—it did not go back to 1970—was to achieve this 0.7% by 2013. We have two months to go; I do not know how we will manage it. However, the commitment certainly must be there, and must be adhered to.

Of course, in time, within that 0.7% we will have to reassess and redistribute. That is the natural thing, because there are strengths, weaknesses, demands, and hopeful areas. However, we must stick to that target, because without it we would be in betrayal not only of our manifesto commitments but of everything that we hope for the poorest countries in the world. Imagine: if the United Kingdom scrapped its pledge, others would surely follow. We would have started the unravelling of this 0.7%.

What will be the impact of any reduction or uncertainty upon the great national aid charities? What would we say to Oxfam, CAFOD, UNICEF, Christian Aid, or Save the Children, and many more? Are we not working with them? If we back out of this commitment we will make it so much more difficult to restore that trust and to achieve the aims that we want. We must say and show: “We’re with you. We are co-operating entirely with you, and we are maintaining our 100% support”.

I will not take very much time this evening, as it is late. Of course, we have our own economic problems at home. The director of policy at Oxfam, Max Lawson, said:

“Aid is such a tiny part of budgets that cutting it has no discernible impact on deficits—it is like cutting your hair to lose weight”.

If we are really committed then we can do nothing—and we should not. The demand—and the tremendous need—are there. The fact that so many parts of the world depend upon our giving was mentioned tonight. If we said that we were to scrap our target, they would be very suspicious. We have to say, “Look, our hands are stretched to meet your hands, and to grasp you and lift you up, as far as we possibly can”.

22:08

[Lord St John of Bletso]

My Lords, I join in congratulating the Economic Affairs Committee, ably chaired by the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, on this extremely comprehensive, informative and constructive report. The effectiveness of aid in promoting development and reducing poverty while ensuring transparency and accountability has always been a thorny issue. What is clear is that economic growth is essential if poverty is to be reduced.

I will focus my few remarks this evening on poverty reduction in Africa. At the outset I applaud the achievements of DfID, which has transformed the lives of so many people, both young and old, in places where, as a result of conflict, climate change, lack of access to clean water, food, healthcare and education, there appeared little hope for them in the future.

However, as the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, said, many parts of Africa are facing a grave crisis of food security, and a lot more should and could be done by DfID to provide more expertise and support for these farmers. I also agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, that DfID should seek to promote more technical assistance. This was reinforced by the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, who said that science, technology and innovation should be promoted.

On a positive note, we have seen dramatic and encouraging political, economic and social developments in Africa over the past 20 years. Almost two-thirds of the population have access to mobile phones, with Africa now the fastest growing mobile market in the world. Will the Minister elaborate on whether DfID has been involved in the drive to promote more affordable broadband access to those in the developing countries of Africa?

The noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, referred to the momentous year of 1989. He may not be aware that way back in 1989, of the more than 50 countries in Africa, only three were democracies. Now we stand with more than half of Africa having democracy. Although it is not full democracy, it is certainly an extremely encouraging development. My noble friend Lord Stern, who has just taken his seat, rightly said that the conditions for effective development aid have greatly improved.

The key question and challenge is: how much of the economic growth achieved over the past decade has been transferred into tangible benefits for those in abject poverty on the continent? Sadly, in sub-Saharan Africa, one child in seven still does not survive past the age of five, with many dying from AIDS, malaria, TB and inadequate access to clean water. Will the Minister also elaborate on what measures are being taken to invest in promoting equality in Africa, with greater recognition needed for the important role that women play in driving economic growth?

We have seen huge growth in the mining and extractive industries but all too often that has not translated into similar benefits for the poor people in those countries. The challenge has to be to ensure that economic growth transfers into improving the infrastructure of roads, railway lines and ports; better access to affordable power; and better healthcare and education. With education comes the need to feed children, as has been shown in South Africa, where many children suffered from not having had a meal before going to school in the morning and then losing concentration after just a few hours at school. There also needs to be improved access to clean water as well as to electricity and power, thereby providing the platform for sustainable employment opportunities.

In recognising that economic growth is the most effective remedy for global poverty, this begs the question as to whether aid should be tied to and linked with trade. Paragraph 127 of the report states:

“The UK has long abandoned tied aid aimed at securing commercial benefits, on the lines of the old Aid and Trade Provision”.

Certainly, in Africa, the Chinese have been most successful in linking aid projects, such as the building of roads and railway lines, with securing control over scarce natural resources and gaining access to new and growing markets for their exports. But there have been grave concerns that the Chinese have used their own workforce and expertise, which has not resulted in a much-needed increase in job opportunities for the locals in those countries. They have presented themselves as partners rather than donors.

While the Chinese certainly continue to play a very valuable role in building much-needed infrastructure in many of the developing countries, sadly, there has been a dramatic increase in the poaching of wildlife, particularly elephants for their tusks and rhino for their horns. Very little has been done to combat this growing crisis.

On the business front, I believe that British businesses, both large and small, could and should benefit from the strong relationships that we have in Africa and the continued aid that we give to those developing countries. I was encouraged by the statistic given by the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, that for every £1 in aid that we spend in Africa, we get £2 back in business. Certainly, a lot more can be done to ensure that British aid is “more conspicuously badged”, as it says in the report.

I wholeheartedly support the recommendation of the report that DfID should consider, with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, how Britain could derive more direct economic benefit from its development aid programmes without worsening quality and effectiveness for recipients. In encouraging the private sector to invest in developing countries in Africa, thus generating much new growth, jobs and trade, it is important that we encourage these African Governments to strengthen local accountability, good governance, respect for human rights, as well as the provision of a reliable legal system, with the ability to enforce contracts and protect licences. One major drawback for small and medium-sized enterprises in these developing countries is their inability to get finance at reasonable rates. There needs to be more bank reform and greater access to banking facilities. In that regard, I agree with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, that DfID should promote more project finance. I welcome the launch of DfID’s joint venture for a prosperity fund, which aims to co-fund projects focused on poverty reduction with the private sector, where both parties share the risk but where taxpayers’ money works harder.

In conclusion, I join those noble Lords who have paid respect to the huge contribution made by the former Secretary of State, Andrew Mitchell. I shall not enter the debate on the 0.7% target. I welcome the decision to focus the bilateral development aid programmes where the need is greatest and where we can have the most impact. My noble friend Lord Stern listed the successes, particularly in Africa, where we have received value for money. Certainly, we need to focus on getting value for money for every pound of aid that we spend. I welcome this report and look forward to the Minister’s reply.

22:16

[Baroness Hussein-Ece]

My Lords, as the 20th speaker in this excellent debate, I, too, have significantly reduced what I was going to say, because so many others have made excellent points that I would have wished to make. I thank the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, and the Economic Affairs Committee for this report and the opportunity to debate and consider its content on foreign aid and its potential and benefits for developing countries.

Whether we measure poverty by the 1 billion who go hungry each day or other factors, such as the 8 million children who die each year from preventable diseases such as diarrhoea and malaria, the fact that poverty on this scale still exists today is unacceptable to our common humanity. Levels of poverty impact beyond national borders and it is therefore of global importance. We live in an increasingly shrinking world. Countries are more dependent on one another for their security, safety and prosperity. It is in all our interests.

There is strong evidence that the majority of the British public, and in particular young people, who are far more aware of what is going on globally, support the United Kingdom’s overseas aid programme. But it is also quite right, as we have heard, that we are vigilant and have a right to demand that aid achieves value for money and is free of corruption. After all, it is the poor who bear the real brunt of the misuse of valuable aid, as the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and others have mentioned.

Over recent years, DfID has identified increasing the number of people with access to clean water and sanitation as a top priority for a number of African countries. There can be few more important and effective interventions than clean water. Diarrhoea, caused by lack of access to these basic human rights, is the biggest killer of children under five in Africa, so it is hardly surprising that the United Nations development programme estimates that for every £1 invested in water and sanitation, £8 is returned to the economy through increased productivity. Oxfam reports that the global fund for HIV, tuberculosis and malaria has a proven track record of delivery, saving more than 5 million lives since its inception. It tells us that continued UK support for the global fund is essential. The 2p a day that every person in the UK gives to the global fund to fight HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria saves a life every three minutes. I believe that these are real outcomes, as the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, said.

The report suggests that there is evidence that in some instances aid fosters conflict, but surely supporting fragile nations prevents conflict and reduces the number of refugees and displaced people. Last year, in response to the now Republican vice-presidential candidate, Paul Ryan, who proposed that the United States should cut back significantly on its foreign aid, US commentators replied that,

“foreign aid is not a luxury but a critical investment in global stability”.

I would appreciate it if my noble friend the Minister could address this point in her response as it has come up on a number of occasions.

I was a little surprised to see that there was little mention in the report of the impact that aid has on the lives of women and girls. Therefore, I would like to mention some of the enormous benefits that UK aid has brought to their lives. Aid, particularly in fragile states or in areas of poverty, brings the greatest benefits to women and their families. We know that once women earn a wage they gain more independence and are more likely to put their earnings into the family, thus enabling their children to be educated. These countries are less likely to condone violence, trafficking and other forms of crime which affect women and girls. Businesses that treat women equally as regards seniority and pay benefit through greater productivity and profit. As a global business leader has said, enhancing economic opportunities for women will result in increased incomes, enhanced skills in business, increased stature within the community and improved potential for the communities.

Earlier this year I attended the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women conference in New York. As a delegate from your Lordships’ House, it was a source of great pride to me that the UK, through DfID’s Strategic Vision for Girls and Women, has put girls and women at the heart of its development programme. We are the world leaders in this area and I can report that DfID’s reputation at the conference was second to none. The vision set out in the report has four key themes for action for girls and women: to delay the first pregnancy and support safe childbirth; get economic assets directly to girls and women; get girls through secondary school; and prevent violence against girls and women. The programme outlines where we are making great strides to support girls and women: for example, primary education for girls; maternal health; and access to financial services.

In the past year alone, UK aid has provided at least 740,000 women with access to financial services, improved the rights to land and property for at least 210,000 women; and has supported 2.5 million girls in primary school and 260,000 girls in lower secondary school. It has supported 1 million additional women to use modern methods of family planning. We know that the benefits of focusing on girls and women are significant. When a girl in a developing country receives more than seven years of education she marries four years later and has 2.2 fewer children and her children are more educated and likely to be healthier. Evidence also suggests that societies that have more gender equality tend to be freer and fairer, have greater female participation in politics, and the labour force is associated with lower levels of corruption.

I am also concerned about discussion on moving away from the 0.7% commitment that all parties gave at the general election and which is not only within the coalition agreement but is an international agreement. I believe that we want a more stable and secure world. As others have mentioned, I do not believe that the 0.7% is excessive, given the scale of the challenges that the world is facing.

If the Government are serious about this commitment, they should bring forward the legislation. Legislating will move the debate forward. We need to look at how effectively aid is spent, far more than at how much aid is spent. The spending of £1 on prevention saves £4 being spent on disaster response. In 2009-10 alone, UK aid ensured that 15 million people had enough food to eat. Nevertheless, there are significant funding gaps, for example, in sectors such as child health. Reducing our spend on aid would risk denying millions of poor and vulnerable people around the world the vital assistance that is helping to lift them out of poverty and disease and encouraging greater economic stability. This is a comparatively small contribution to the global problem but makes a real difference in areas of enormous need.

Ideally, we would like to move to “trade not aid”—of course we would—because we know that aid is not an end in itself. But the evidence of the good it is doing is overwhelming. Backing away from our commitment to the 0.7% will also risk the level of contribution that other richer countries make and may start a ripple effect in that direction, which would not be a positive thing. The UK has a long-sustained commitment to reducing poverty, inequality and inequity in the developing world, and for this we should be proud.

22:26

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, for this welcome opportunity to discuss development and for his excellent introduction to the debate. I warmly welcome the committee’s finding that DfID enjoys an outstanding reputation internationally as an effective aid agent. This is something to be proud of but, of course, my noble friend Lord Boateng is right when he speaks of the need for better cross-government co-operation in relation to aid. In relation to better working with the British Council, for example. I agree with my noble friend Lord Hollick that staff within DfID need to be retained, as far as possible, in order to keep that vital expertise. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the wonderful NGOs in this country, such as Save the Children, Christian Aid, Oxfam and so on, which work in partnership with DfID on the ground, really delivering for the poorest people of this world.

First and foremost, our contribution to fighting poverty and human rights abuses is a moral imperative. However, aid is also effective and provides the soft power mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. Critics such as the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, say that aid does not work. They question its effectiveness and impact on development and growth. This is not my view of aid and it is not Labour’s view. In fact, a number of civil society organisations have labelled it a view that is out of tune with public opinion, out of touch with economic reality and stuck in the 1980s. We are all indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Stern, for his clear explanation of the effectiveness of aid. Aid brings about extraordinary change in poor countries.

According to UNICEF, over the past 20 years, development aid has meant that 4 million fewer children will die this year, 33 million children have had the chance to go to school for the first time and 4 million more people have access to life-saving drugs for HIV/AIDS. Over the next years, the UK’s contribution to the Global Alliance on Vaccines and Immunisations will ensure that 80 million children can be immunised world wide, saving an estimated 1.4 million lives. Health and education contribute to growth. Aid creates the conditions for economic growth. In one year, we helped build or repair 4,500 kilometres of road. In the years 2012-15, DFID will help 77.6 million people access formal financial services. Aid helps to secure peace and strengthen good governance. The UK’s extensive security and development assistance to Sierra Leone over the past decade has helped end its civil war and stabilise and rebuild the country. Over the next three years, UK aid will help 44.9 million people participate in elections. However, aid does not just work abroad—it works for us too. Security, trade and migration mean that it is also in Britain’s national interest and, as the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, said, health is a shared interest. Health in developing countries can be a catalyst for innovation.

The committee recommends putting in place an early exit strategy from the Indian development aid programme. The committee’s recommendation ignores the level of need and inequality that remains in India. Some 456 million people in India, which is equivalent to one-third of the world’s poor and more than all of sub-Saharan Africa combined, live on less than $1.25 a day. DfID staff in India are doing a fantastic job.

I disagree that aid is a perverse incentive to poorer states. I was in some of the poorer states myself this year and I talked to small farmers who have been helped through, for example, DfID’s support for the Orissa Modernising Economy, Governance and Administration programme. This programme has worked with farmers, helping them to get a better price for their products and to find non-farm products by linking them with the market. Their families used to survive on less than $1.25 a day; now they have become entrepreneurs, providing a service to the community and providing paid jobs for people living in the villages, and they are helping the local economy to grow. They are being, as it were, a catalyst for private investment. DfID is also working with the Government of Orissa and WaterAid, providing technical expertise for much needed sanitation projects in areas where only 10% of people have access to a lavatory and a tap connection. This help with sanitation will mean that girls will go to school. It will change their lives and help them to contribute to the economy.

Of course, value for money is important and, as part of our policy review process, we are considering the future of our bilateral development programme, including aid to India. However, any decision that we make must take into account our commitment to reducing global poverty and the need to ensure that the poorest communities are not adversely affected.

I was going to say a lot about the European Commission as the largest multilateral donor in the world and a crucial actor in developing countries and peripheral fragile states. I believe that the European aid programme is a good one. It can do more and better but we must work with it to ensure that it does precisely that.

I come to the most controversial issue—the committee’s rejection of the target of spending 0.7% of GNI on overseas aid. I must part company with my noble friends who sit on the committee because I believe that they and the committee are wrong. I was pleased to see the Government’s firm response to this particular recommendation and I am delighted and relieved that they have retained their commitment. Labour is committed—it is our party policy—to ensuring that the 0.7% target is enshrined in law. It was a target last recommitted at the G8 meeting at Gleneagles. It would ensure that future changes to the budget, irrespective of which party was in power, were permanently related to the economic state of the country. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Bates, that, when in power, perhaps we did not get as far as 0.7% but I could defend—strongly and at length—what we did in power to help the poorest people of the world, especially in terms of health and education. I am very proud of what we did.

I think that my noble friend Lord Lipsey—who is my friend and is noble—is far too cynical about our policy and the Government’s policy on the issue of the 0.7%. I do not think that the policy was reached as a result of cynical opportunism; I think that it was reached because it is absolutely the right thing to do in the world today—a world which is still far too unequal but one which can become more equal as a consequence of the 0.7% commitment.

The choice that some people make between quality and quantity is a false one. According to evidence from Christian Aid, in countries where the target is reached, the discussion has shifted away from the amount given and towards the way in which the aid is spent. In addition, it has been shown that predictability is a key determinant of impact, supporting longer-term planning in partner countries. The organisation ONE has estimated that meeting the 0.7% target would, for example, put 15.9 million children in school and provide more than 80 million children with vaccines, saving an estimated 1.4 million lives. I could go on but time is short.

As I said, I am delighted that the spending commitment is supported by the Government, and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, said, it is also supported by the people of this country. Therefore, I urge the Government to honour their commitment and enshrine it, either by bringing forward the Bill or by supporting Mark Hendrick’s Private Member’s Bill.

Now is the time for big global economic and social change. We want growth which is sustainable, companies that are both profitable and responsible, meaningful agreements on fair trade and climate change, universal access to free healthcare, compulsory education and social protection, global human rights with no exemptions for our allies, and women’s rights at the heart of conflict resolution.

It is right, especially in these difficult times, that we make sure that aid gets to those who need it most and that it delivers maximum value for money. That is why we have said that we would not reverse the Government’s decision to cut the projected aid budget as a consequence of the reduction in GNI—a cut, I hasten to add, that does not go against the 0.7% target.

I agree with the committee’s recommendations on the need to tackle corruption. This is vital. DfID is already doing important work in this area but we need to do more. That is why Labour is working on a new anti-corruption plan for the UK and a strategy for building a new anti-corruption coalition around the world that will identify tangible action that can lead to real change.

However, we cannot ignore our role and that of other rich countries in facilitating corruption. We need to do more to fight the tax dodgers who steal from the poorest people and the poorest countries in the world. Developing countries lose approximately $160 billion annually as a result of tax dodging by multinational companies alone, according to Christian Aid. The better developing countries get at collecting revenues themselves, the less aid they will need from us; and we can help them along the way.

Development aid has made a real and lasting impact in reducing poverty, spreading human rights and fostering growth across the world, and it continues to do so. Our aim is to eradicate aid dependency; and we could do more, and better. We want to move to a world where aid is no longer necessary, but the way to do that is not by abandoning our spending targets at a time when millions are in desperate need. We must continue to defend the crucial role that aid plays in addressing poverty and misery across the world.

22:37

[Baroness Northover]

My Lords, I start by thanking the Economic Affairs Committee for undertaking this investigation, and for the debate this evening. I found the evidence that it received and the evidence sessions extremely informative and interesting, even though this amounted to 700 pages of reading this weekend. I strongly recommend that Members of this House do as I did, as I am not entirely sure that I would have reached the same conclusions on the basis of this material.

As a former academic, I am glad that I went back to the original material to see how the Select Committee reached the conclusions that it did. While many of the cogent points put by the noble Lords, Lord Stern, Lord Hannay and Lord Crisp, and other noble Lords, are indeed woven through the evidence taken by the Select Committee—and I find it persuasive—so too are the challenges, which are especially strongly flagged up by the committee in its report.

I welcome all the contributions to the debate tonight. It is, of course, absolutely vital that we are kept on our toes and that we achieve the very best value for the assistance that the United Kingdom offers through its aid budget. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester, the noble Lords, Lord McConnell, Lord Phillips and Lord Roberts, and other noble Lords have argued, there is a moral case for aid. There is also the case that it is also in our interests.

I agree with the Select Committee, and many contributors to its sessions and to the debate today, that economic growth is the only sustainable road to poverty reduction. It is surely right that sustainable growth is central to our development agenda. However, it would be a gross oversimplification to reduce the role of aid in growth to simply the transfer of money. Growth surely depends on creating the conditions for wealth creation, as other noble Lords have said. I argue, as other noble Lords have done in this debate, and as many did in their evidence to the Select Committee, that aid can and does play a role in building the institutional capacity of Governments, improving the policy environment, strengthening the macroeconomic conditions and providing key public goods that underpin other drivers of growth. We know that those who are looking to invest, for example, in various African countries are indeed looking at these areas.

The noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, mentioned foreign direct investment. That often follows improvements in the human development index. Of course, as the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, said, there is a range of drivers for development. We know that. We also recognise that economic growth in the developing world is not only good for poverty reduction but good for Britain. It is this growth that will build our trading partners of tomorrow. In 2011, the UK’s exports of goods to China and India were worth £15 billion to our economy.

Poverty is closely linked to conflict, as Paul Collier and others have said in their evidence, and it is in all our interests to reduce such conflict. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, on this point when he said that policies must be judged by their outcomes. That is what this is all about.

The committee has argued that the evidence that aid makes a contribution to growth is inconclusive. The noble Lord, Lord Stern, said with stunning clarity just how one can evaluate aid and what effect it has. If you read the material submitted to the committee, you will see much support for that position. It seems to me that sustained rapid growth in developing countries has only occurred in the context of impressive rates of public investment in infrastructure, education, and health. In low-income countries, aid plays an important role in helping to deliver these.

Our aid is very much focused on the very areas identified by the committee as being important for growth. DfID invests significantly in the legal, institutional and macroeconomic environment, human capital, and infrastructure, increasingly in collaboration with the private sector. For example, we know that education matters, and that educating girls matters even more. I can assure my noble friend Lady Hussein-Ece and the noble Lord, Lord St John of Bletso, that we put women and girls at the centre of our policies. Educating girls is intertwined with all aspects of the development process—social, political, and economic—as well as being an end in itself. Its effects last across generations and enable changes in development paths, shaping societies and institutions to allow for long-run change. In Kenya, for example, where women have been educated in a household, the family is more likely to hold bank accounts. Therefore they are better able to participate in the economy. It can be seen that where family size is reduced, as my noble friend mentioned, more girls are in education and the family is more prosperous, which contributes to the prosperity of the community and the society.

Honouring our commitments to the world’s poorest to spend 0.7% of our gross national income on ODA simply does not prioritise the amount of aid spent over the results achieved, as the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, has also reiterated. There are huge disparities of wealth across the world, and the figure of 0.7% has served over the years to galvanise action and responsibility. I thank the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, and others for their congratulations on our being on course for meeting 0.7%. My noble friend Lady Jenkin rather put it in context with the comparison with expenditure on cosmetics.

DFID’s focus on improving results and delivering value for money has intensified, and is entirely consistent with the increased budgetary allocation. The landmark bilateral and multilateral aid reviews moved the focus of development evaluation away from inputs and towards results. That applies not only to DfID’s spending but also to spending by our partner agencies. In this context, I say to my noble friend Lady Falkner that the multilateral aid review put the Commonwealth Secretariat into special measures and we are closely monitoring its progress against clear recommendations on what is required for it to be effective. That is how things should be.

Our commitment to spending 0.7% of our GNI on aid also provides an example to others to do likewise. Of course, as my noble friend Lord Shipley says, it is not an end in itself; it never has been. As we are meeting our aid commitments, we are able to lead by example and hold others to account for meeting their commitments too. A recent appeal to increase Germany's aid to 0.7%, signed by 372 members of the German Parliament, explicitly cited the UK Government's commitment as a positive example to follow.

Of course there are other sources for funding, such as remittances, which we have heard about. Of course we welcome the arrival into the field of philanthropic foundations such as the Gates Foundation. Maybe it would have been good to invite them to contribute to the Select Committee's deliberations. If ever there were an organisation that is about the levering effect, monitoring exactly what results may flow from inputs, it is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, with whom we work very closely and who express great admiration of what DfID does.

I note with some interest and slight amusement that various speakers had very good suggestions for how our aid budget might be spent and expanded; for example, the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, suggested the education of students from developing countries, and the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, mentioned health, science, technology, innovation and the British Council, although I note that the budget has almost doubled there and DfID has just appointed a head of innovation. It seems that noble Lords have countered the Select Committee’s implicit case that perhaps too much is being spent on aid—as did many of those who gave evidence.

Over the long term, poverty will increasingly be concentrated in fragile states. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and others emphasised how important it is to support these countries. It is no coincidence that no fragile state has yet achieved a millennium development goal. Engagement with fragile states undoubtedly comes with additional challenges, as my noble friend Lord Phillips and others have said. However, to leap from that to a conclusion that we should not be working in these contexts would be to misunderstand the relationship between risk and return. These circumstances are precisely the ones where the return to aid spending can be highest, especially when we consider the long-term costs of non-engagement, whether that be in terms of immigration or threats to our national security.

Noble Lords heard of the risks but also the rewards of working in these states, and it is important to note the reduction in conflict in Africa over the past 20 or 30 years as development has taken place. In that regard, I dispute one of those who contributed evidence to the Select Committee who seemed to argue that aid promoted conflict.

In its 2004 report, the UN High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, of which the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, was a leading member, noted this interconnectedness. It commented:

“Development and security are inextricably linked. A more secure world is only possible if poor countries are given a real chance to develop. Extreme poverty and infectious diseases threaten many people directly, but they also provide a fertile breeding-ground for other threats, including civil conflict. Even people in rich countries will be more secure if their Governments help poor countries to defeat poverty and disease by meeting the Millennium Development Goals”.

As my noble friend Lord Phillips said, fragile states present challenging circumstances. That is why these countries are poor and that is why we need to work with them.

Noble Lords spoke of cross-departmental working. Sometimes I think that I personally am joined-up government—DfID, Defra, DCMS, DH and so forth. However, I hope that noble Lords will be reassured about the co-operation that is occurring. It is clearly far more cost-effective to work with the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence to counter potential sources of instability early on than to deal with the consequences later. That is why the tri-departmental Conflict Pool effectively combines expertise to deliver value for money. I want to point out that £742 million of ODA was spent by other departments, including DECC, DH, DCMS and Defra as well as the FCO and MoD, and that DfID has a joint policy on trade with BIS.

From the start of its inquiry the Select Committee flagged fraud and corruption and of course it is right that it did. We will face risks of fraud and corruption and we will not tolerate corruption or misuse of taxpayers’ funds in any form. These risks are faced not only by DfID but by every citizen and entrepreneur surviving each day in these environments. It is, of course, a brake on their ability to lift themselves out of poverty, and that is why it is extremely important that this is systematically addressed. DfID has put in place systems and procedures that enable it to manage risk, deliver results and achieve value for the taxpayer despite the additional challenges of working in fragile states. We will continue to build on what has been learnt and, through transparency, audit and other checks, drive this forward.

The Government have put transparency at the centre of our aid agenda. In answer to my noble friend Lady Falkner and others, we are working to deal with illicit capital flight as part of the G20 Anti-Corruption Working Group, and implementing the Bribery Act 2010. Just this month, the Publish What You Pay fund released its second Aid Transparency Index, which ranked DfID first among 72 aid-spending organisations worldwide. The Independent Commission for Aid Impact has been put in place to monitor UK aid impact and effectiveness. It does not answer to DfID but to Parliament through the International Development Select Committee. It is now bedding in and is making a useful impact, as other countries acknowledge, and we will learn from its work. Having more people see how we make decisions and where we spend money is a crucial plank in achieving better development results, and Britain is leading the way on this. My noble friend Lord Shipley asked about the audit of multilateral aid. I can assure him that this was a major consideration of the multilateral aid review.

When we think about aid, we must understand that healthier, better educated societies are attractive to the investors that drive growth and can deliver a sustainable end to poverty. Aid can and does help in the delivery of these prerequisites, and we should not recoil from doing so in the fragile states where they are most lacking. The UK delivers aid well. We are a global leader in the field of development—here I thank my noble friend Lord Tugendhat and others for making the point—and abiding by our international commitment to 0.7% will serve to strengthen this position.

Perhaps I can be extremely clear. First, our aid makes critical contributions to achieving the conditions necessary for the growth that can end poverty. Secondly, meeting our commitments to 0.7% will not compromise the quality of our aid. Thirdly, what we are buying with UK aid spending represents exceptionally good value for taxpayers. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, flagged up the MDGs, the goals for the relief of poverty largely drawn up by our colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Malloch-Brown. The whole world now knows about the significance of these goals and they have spurred action, just like the 0.7% target. As the noble Lord, Lord Stern, and others have said, they have focused attention. Not enough progress has been made against them, but quite a considerable amount has. It will be a challenge to take the goals forward, given the spotlight that so many countries now place on them. However, we are determined to do so, and transparency and accountability will be integral to that. I look forward to future discussions as to how it is taken forward. Aid is not static, and I too pay tribute to Andrew Mitchell for his forensic focus and his emphasis on the role of private investment, which has been key. Assessing whether countries should “graduate” away from aid resulted in a dramatic reduction in the number of countries being assisted. That process will continue, and the growth in Asian countries, I can assure my noble friends Lord Bates, Lord Tugendhat and others, we note. Of course, in some states it is necessary to work through NGOs, as the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, would wish, but NGOs are not necessarily themselves incorruptible. We have to be vigilant in whatever way we act.

In conclusion, we welcome the Select Committee’s report. We do not agree with all of its conclusions, as noble Lords will have gathered, but it is right that the committee should challenge us to say why we are doing what we are doing. I think that most noble Lords in this debate agree that the work that DfID does is of exceptional importance and I thank them all for their support in this work.

22:54

[Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market]

My Lords, it is impossible to sum up this debate in a couple of minutes, but it has reinforced the point made early on by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay of Chiswick, that we need more opportunities to discuss these issues, for there have been many excellent contributions tonight and we have all been constrained by the requirement to make short speeches.

A number of them, such as those of the noble Lords, Lord Boateng, Lord Shipley, Lord Stern and Lord Crisp, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, were based on the thought that it is real outcomes on the ground that matter. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, gave many examples of what the former Secretary of State Andrew Mitchell had done in this respect and of which he is so justly proud. I was very pleased at the many favourable comments made about the record of Andrew Mitchell in that role and I would be very happy to pass on to him all those compliments from all parts of the House.

Real outcomes on the ground were the basis of much of the evidence that we received and the thrust of many of our recommendations. I paid tribute in my opening remarks, as we did in our report, to the work of DfID and the first-class reputation that it has world wide.

I make no apology for our committee putting emphasis on the effectiveness of aid, for it is the effectiveness of aid which is crucial for those who most need our help. I am grateful to all who have contributed during this debate.

Motion agreed.

House adjourned at 10.56 pm.