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Oral Answers to Questions
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
1. What his latest estimate is of the likely cost of the NHS in 2012-13.
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
The latest estimates of NHS spending are those published in the 2012 Budget. The planned NHS spending for 2012-13 is £108.8 billion.
Mr Bone
The Conservative-led coalition Government are increasing spending on the NHS, unlike what Labour would do. In my constituency, we will get an urgent care centre in a few months as a result of Tory health reforms. People in Corby already have an urgent care centre as a result of Tory reforms. Does the Secretary of State agree that, while Labour talks about the NHS, Conservatives deliver on the NHS?
Mr Hunt
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. Indeed, last week we announced that waiting times are at near-record lows. The number of hospital-acquired infections continues to go down and mixed-sex wards have been virtually eliminated. I am very pleased that my hon. Friend has an urgent care centre, and am sure that Mrs Bone will appreciate it even more than he does.
Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State recognise that the Office for National Statistics survey shows that the mortality rate in north-east England is 12% higher than that in the rest of the UK? Does he recognise the need to invest in more advanced radiotherapy equipment, bearing in mind that 70 of the 212 systems will need to be replaced by 2015?
Mr Hunt
I would not necessarily expect the hon. Gentleman to follow announcements that are made at the Conservative party conference, but we did make the big announcement that access to radiotherapy will be transformed, making it available to everyone for whom it is clinically necessary and cost-effective. Improving mortality rates is extremely important. As I have set out, one of my key priorities is to transform the NHS so that we have the best mortality rates in Europe. I hope that that is welcome news for his constituents.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that there will be less budget pressure on the NHS if we do better with long-term conditions, get better at integrated care and use data better to predict ill health? To that end, will he come and see the work of the Kent Health Commission on those issues?
Mr Hunt
I would be delighted to see the innovative things that are happening at the Kent Health Commission. Looking at how we deal with people with long-term conditions—that is 30% of the population, and the proportion is growing with the ageing population—will be a vital priority for the NHS over the coming years.
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
May I welcome the Secretary of State and his new team to their positions? As the only other person to have made the jump from Culture to Health, I am sure that he will find me a constant source of useful advice.
The Secretary of State has not said much since his appointment, but he did set out his mission in The Spectator:
“I would like to be the person who safeguards Andrew Lansley’s legacy”.
Let us talk about that legacy. Just last week, the Secretary of State slipped out figures on the latest costs of NHS reorganisation. Would he care to update the House on the current estimates?
Mr Speaker
Order. The Secretary of State has been in the House for seven and a half years. I think he knows that we refer to Members by constituency, not by Christian name. It is not difficult.
Mr Hunt
First, may I say how delighted I am that the right hon. Gentleman and I once again have the same brief? I look forward to having a constructive relationship with him, not with total optimism, but I will try my best.
The right hon. Gentleman talked about my predecessor’s reforms and legacy. One of the finest things about my predecessor’s legacy is that he safeguarded the NHS budget—indeed, he increased it during this Parliament by £12 billion—when the right hon. Gentleman said that it would be irresponsible to increase it.
Andy Burnham
Look at the figures: the previous Secretary of State gave the budget a real-terms cut for two years running. Let me give the exact figures, which the Secretary of State did not give the House. The costs of the reorganisation are up by 33% or £400 million, making the total £1.6 billion and rising. And what is that money being spent on? A full £1 billion is being spent on redundancy packages for managers: 1,300 have got six-figure pay-offs and there are 173 pay-offs of more than £200,000. Scandalously, that news comes as we learn today that the number of nurse redundancies has risen to more than 6,100. Six-figure pay-outs for managers, P45s for nurses and the NHS in chaos—is that the legacy that the Secretary of State is so proud of?
Mr Hunt
Let us look at some of the facts. The number of clinical staff in the NHS has gone up since the coalition came to power. The right hon. Gentleman talked about the cost of the reforms, which is about £1.6 billion. Thanks to those reforms, we will save £1.5 billion every single year from 2014 and the total savings in this Parliament will be £5.5 billion. Let me remind him that he left the NHS with £73 billion of private finance initiative debt, which costs the NHS £1.6 billion every single year. That money cannot be spent on patient care. He should be ashamed of that.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State confirm that NHS spending will increase in real terms during the lifetime of this Government, and that there are no plans from anyone to close the accident and emergency department and the maternity unit at Kettering general hospital? Will he condemn those who say that the Government want to close the hospital, when nobody is going to do that at all?
Mr Hunt
My hon. Friend is absolutely right: that is a mendacious scare story that is being put out on the ground. Real-terms spending on the NHS has increased across the country, which has not been possible across all Government Departments. Because of that, we are able to invest more in patient care, cancer drugs, doctors and facilities across the country, and indeed in Kettering.
Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
2. How many patients waited longer than half an hour in an ambulance to be transferred to accident and emergency in each year since 2009-10.
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
The Department’s records date back to 2010-11. The number of ambulance handovers delayed by longer than half an hour was 63,892 between 1 November 2010 and 24 February 2011 and 77,543 between 1 November 2011 and l March 2012.
Tom Blenkinsop
On 27 September, patients and paramedics were left waiting outside James Cook university hospital in Middlesbrough for two and a half hours before being handed over. Dr Clifford of the college of emergency medicine described such delays as being due to an unacceptable mismatch in demand and supply. Does the Secretary of State agree with Dr Clifford, and what steps will he take to ensure that those problems do not recur for my constituents?
Mr Hunt
I am extremely concerned about what happened on 27 September. I can confirm to the hon. Gentleman that all the red 1 calls on that day were met within the target time of eight minutes, but the delays were completely unacceptable. I know that the trust is taking measures to ensure that the problems are not repeated, particularly looking forward to the winter time when there is likely to be extra pressure on ambulance services. I will follow the matter very closely, and I expect the trust to come up with measures to ensure that his constituents are properly safeguarded.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
In the summer, I spent an interesting and thought-provoking day observing the work of a crew of the East Midlands ambulance service. Can my right hon. Friend confirm that ambulance trusts across the country, including the East Midlands ambulance service, are performing well in meeting their response time targets?
Mr Hunt
I can absolutely confirm that. In fact, I was extremely pleased to see last week that all the standards are being met for both eight-minute category A calls— red 1 and red 2 calls—and 19-minute calls. That is as it should be, but it is no grounds for complacency. Although that is a country-wide picture, there are parts of the country where those standards are not being met in the way that we would like. We will continue to monitor the situation closely.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
I will be charitable to the Secretary of State, but he brushed over the figures in his answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop). I have got the actual figures through a freedom of information request. They show that under this Government, 100,000 additional patients are being left waiting in ambulances outside accident and emergency departments for more than half an hour when they need urgent treatment—a totally unacceptable situation. What more evidence does the Secretary of State need of the chaos engulfing the national health service under his Government? It shows that the focus has slipped off patient care and that our accident and emergency units are struggling to cope.
Mr Hunt
The hon. Gentleman speaks as though the problem of ambulance waits never happened for 13 years under Labour, but he knows that we actually had some appalling problems, with ambulances circling hospitals because hospitals did not want to breach their four-hour A and E wait targets. We are tackling the problem, and as I mentioned, if he looks at the figures published last week he will see that we are meeting the standards for ambulance waits that his party’s Government put in place. However, we are not complacent, and we are monitoring the figures closely. Particularly with the winter coming up, we want to ensure that the ambulance service performs exactly as the British public would want.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
Many ambulance trusts are indeed doing extremely well, as the Secretary of State indicated. Does he agree that that is at least partly due to localism in the ambulance service, which may be undermined if, for example, the Great Western ambulance service becomes an amalgamated regional service? Now it has been announced that the call centre in Devizes will be closed in favour of one in Bristol. Does he agree that there is at least a risk that the local service for people in Wiltshire will be reduced if such regionalisation is allowed?
Mr Hunt
I agree with my hon. Friend that the purpose of the changes that the coalition Government have brought to the NHS is to tap into local innovation, ideas and ambitions to transform services, and it is important that no changes undermine that. He should take comfort from the fact that my predecessor introduced clear tests for any major reconfigurations, including that they should be strongly supported by local doctors, that the public should be involved in any consultation, that the changes should improve patient choice and that there should be clear evidence of benefits to patients. I hope that that gives him and his constituents some reassurance.
Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
3. What his policy is on upholding national pay arrangements in the NHS.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)
NHS trusts and foundation trusts have the freedom to determine the terms and conditions of the staff they employ. As the hon. Lady will be aware, the “Agenda for Change” was negotiated and brought in during 2004 by the then Secretary of State, John Reid, to agree a national framework for pay in the NHS. In general, most trusts support the agreed pay framework and the “Agenda for Change”, and they are likely to continue to use national terms, provided they remain affordable and fit for purpose.
Mrs Glindon
In fairness, a truly national health service demands a national pay scheme, and the British Medical Association has warned that the move to regional pay undermines the ethos of “national” in our national health service. How does the Minister intend to act on that warning?
Dr Poulter
I remind the hon. Lady that it was the previous Government who set up the current national pay framework in 2004, and that framework has been amended 20 times to support employers over that period. The previous Government gave foundation trusts the freedom to amend those pay terms and conditions. Regional pay does exist in the NHS. On the basis of what she has said, does the hon. Lady wish to remove the London weighting for those workers who live in London? I am sure she would not want to do that because we recognise that it is more expensive to live in certain parts of the country, and workers should be rewarded for that.
John Pugh (Southport) (LD)
The Lib Dem conference rejected regional pay entirely, but not the London weighting, and 25 honourable colleagues endorsed a submission to the pay review body. With that in mind, is it not odd that the south-west consortium remains part of national pay bargaining?
Dr Poulter
My hon. Friend makes a good point and it is important that we support national pay bargaining where we can. There is an agreement in principle, endorsed by NHS employers, that national pay bargaining is supported throughout the NHS. It was supported throughout the NHS under the previous Government, who set up the “Agenda for Change”, and during their tenure, that agenda remained fit for purpose. Twenty changes during the previous Government’s tenure benefited employees in the NHS, and rightly so. The current Government believe that we must continue to ensure that the system is fit for purpose.
Mr Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Lab)
It is most unusual to find the ghost of Christmas past sitting next to the invisible man. The truth is that in May this year, the Deputy Prime Minister stated:
“There is going to be no regional pay system. That is not going to happen.”
Regional pay will strip millions from local NHS services; it will hit the poorest areas of the country hardest, damage front-line NHS care, and there can be no justification for it. Will the Minister categorically rule out continuing with these ruinous proposals—yes or no?
Dr Poulter
The arguments presented by the hon. Gentleman are fatuous, and the previous Government endorsed regional bandings for London workers. If today he is saying that he does not agree—[Interruption.] You might learn something if you listen. If he is saying that he does not agree with London weighting for London workers, which is a form of regional pay—[Interruption.]
Dr Poulter
If the hon. Gentleman listens, he may well learn something about what his Government did when they were in power. They endorsed the fact that in the NHS it is important to recognise that we need inducements in some parts of the country to encourage workers to work there. That is why we have central London and outer London weighting. If it was good enough under the previous Government, it should be good enough now.
Mr Speaker
Order. We are immensely grateful to the Minister, but we have a lot to get through and we really must press on with rather greater dispatch from now on.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
4. What his policy is on making available all information about the results of clinical trials to patients, doctors and medicine approval bodies.
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Norman Lamb)
The Government support transparency in publishing results of clinical trials, and they recognise that more can, and should, be done. In future, greater transparency and the disclosure of trial results will be achieved via the development of the European Union clinical trials register, which will make the summary results of trials conducted in the EU publicly available. Greater transparency can only serve to further public confidence in the safety of medicines, which is already robustly assured in the UK by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. By law, the outcomes of clinical trials undertaken by companies must be reported to that regulator, including negative results.
Mr Speaker
Order. We are grateful to the Minister but some of these answers are simply too long. If they are drafted by officials, Ministers are responsible—[Interruption.] Order. I require no assistance at all from the Under-Secretary of State for Health (Anna Soubry). She should stick to her own duties, which I am sure she will discharge with great effect.
Dr Wollaston
I thank the Minister for his answer and for recognising that missing data from clinical trials distorts the evidence and prevents patients and their doctors from making informed decisions about treatment. Will the Minister meet a delegation of leading academics and doctors who remain concerned that not enough is being done to see how we can ensure that all historic and future data are released into the public domain?
Norman Lamb
My hon. Friend raises absolutely legitimate concerns, which have been raised by others, including Ben Goldacre. I am happy for my noble Friend Lord Howe or me to meet her and experts to discuss this important issue further.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
I did not have a question on this.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
5. What steps the Government are taking to help people cope with conditions such as diabetes and asthma.
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
We are working on an outcomes strategy for long-term conditions such as diabetes and asthma structured around six shared goals, early diagnosis, integrated care, promoting independence, and steps to support those with long-term conditions to live as well as possible.
Christopher Pincher
Given that type 1 diabetes in under-fives is growing at 5% each year, what can my right hon. Friend do with the innovative Secretary of State for Education to ensure that nursery and primary school staff have the right skills and knowledge to ensure that they can help young children to cope with type 1?
Mr Hunt
The answer is that we are doing quite a lot—a good booklet, “Managing Medicines in Schools and Early Years Settings”, goes around schools, and there are other resources for schools—but we need to do more. We will be announcing a diabetes action plan, a long-term conditions outcomes strategy and a cardiovascular disease outcomes strategy, which will go further to address the issues that my hon. Friend raises.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I declare my interest as someone who has type 2 diabetes and welcome what the Secretary of State says. However, according to the latest report, another 700,000 people will contract the disease by 2020, and 80% of amputations are avoidable. Could he ensure that this very important subject is on the agenda of local clinical commissioning groups?
Mr Hunt
I certainly can. The number of diabetes sufferers overall will go up from about 3.7 million, which is already 5% of the population, to 4.4 million. We need to do a lot better in how we look after people with long-term conditions if the NHS is to be sustainable. We can also do a lot to transfer the individual care of people who have diabetes through things such as technology, which I will look into carefully.
Mr Stephen Dorrell (Charnwood) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the effective delivery of care to people with long-term conditions relies on breaking down the silos within the health service, and between the health service, social care and social housing? Will he encourage the new health and wellbeing boards to follow through that agenda with a serious purpose?
Mr Hunt
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. By 2018, nearly 3 million people will have not one but three long-term conditions. All too often, the system treats them on a disease or condition basis, and not as a human being who needs an integrated care plan. That is the route to lower costs, but it is also the route to transformed care.
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
The Public Accounts Committee has heard that, of 20 trusts that needed to improve their diabetes care, only three took the accepted help. How will the Secretary of State ensure that care through health providers meets the grand targets he has set for himself?
Mr Hunt
The hon. Lady is absolutely right to point out that the consistency of provision is not good, but we will be publishing a diabetes action plan that will try to ensure more consistent provision throughout the NHS. We also need to raise our sights as to what is possible, because as I have mentioned, a third of the population have long-term conditions, and we can do much better at helping people to live with those conditions in a way that promotes their independence.
Mr Nick Gibb (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con)
6. What assessment he has made of the role of community hospitals in the range of local health care and hospital provision.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)
My hon. Friend is right to highlight the importance of community hospitals in his constituency and elsewhere. They can provide high-quality care close to home, particularly for people with long-term conditions and the frail and elderly.
Mr Gibb
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that answer. If there is a conflict between local health officials and local people as to the desirability of a community hospital, as there is in Littlehampton in relation to the Littlehampton community hospital, which most people in the town want to see rebuilt, whose views should prevail—the NHS employees or the local residents of Littlehampton?
Dr Poulter
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. As he is well aware, it is down to local commissioners—local doctors—in Littlehampton to decide, in consultation with local communities, what is good health care. Of course, we must not get fixated on buildings in the NHS. I know there is a local campaign to support the re-establishment of Littlehampton district hospital, and although that may be a very desirable end, there may be many other ways in which high-quality health care can be provided for his constituents closer to home.
Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)
From April, my local health centre will be transferred to a national property company, a quango, in Whitehall. How can local people in Hyndburn regain some influence over this health centre and its use after April?
Dr Poulter
Part of reorganising services and delivering good health care is about clinical leadership—I hope that is supported across the House—and local doctors, nurses and health care professionals saying what is important for their patients and what local health care priorities are. Obviously, local communities need to be engaged in that process, but what really matters is what is good for patients and delivers high-quality care for them. We need to deliver more care in the community, and in doing so we have to recognise that some of the ways we have delivered care in the past—picking up the pieces in hospitals when people are broken—need to change. We have to do more to keep people well at home and in their own communities.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
Given that the maternity unit at Berwick infirmary has been suspended since the beginning of August for safety reasons, with births being referred to a hospital 50 miles away, will the Minister take into account the urgent need to provide the necessary clinical support for community hospitals in remote areas so that they can provide local essential services to the highest standards?
Dr Poulter
I thank my right hon. Friend for that question. We discussed this issue in the Adjournment debate before the autumn recess. He is a strong advocate for his local maternity services. The concern was that only 13 births take place at his local maternity unit every year, and whether staff can continue to deliver high-quality care with such a low number of births. Of course, his local providers will want to consider the rurality of the area and the potential, as outlined in the Birthplace study, of rotating staff in and out of the hospital to support his local unit.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
7. What steps he plans to take to ensure that providers of domiciliary care employ staff who are properly qualified and security checked.
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Norman Lamb)
Providers of services are responsible for the safety and quality of the care they provide. All staff must be properly qualified and vetted, and the Care Quality Commission can and must take action against providers who fail in that regard. Action can range from a warning notice to, ultimately, cancelling a provider’s registration. The commission must be willing to take that action if necessary.
Barbara Keeley
But the Minister knows that a recent BBC programme showed that 217 providers of care at home use staff who are not properly qualified, and that dozens of people with criminal records have not been vetted and are working unsupervised in people’s homes. The Care Quality Commission has reached only just over one in four of its target inspections, with 40% of care at home providers never having been inspected by it. What will the Minister do to ensure that we can have more confidence in care provided at home to vulnerable people and that it is up to a better and safer standard?
Norman Lamb
I absolutely share the hon. Lady’s concern about this. It is intolerable that people receiving domiciliary care do not get high-quality care and that in some cases people are inappropriately employed. The Care Quality Commission must take action where there is evidence of employers not taking sufficient action to guarantee the quality of their staff. It is essential that the people who run those services are held to account if they fail in that regard.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
Will the Minister also consider the matter of the uniforms worn by staff in this sector? I understand that on occasions there has been confusion in members of the general public between such staff and qualified nurses.
Norman Lamb
It is absolutely essential that users of services know exactly who the staff are who are caring for them, and the issue of uniform is something that I would be happy to discuss further with the hon. Gentleman.
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
8. What plans he has to review the health allocation formula.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Anna Soubry)
We will soon publish the final recommendations of the independent advisory committee on resource allocation. That committee reviews the approach and the formula under which money is allocated to clinical commissioning groups and local authorities so that they can fulfil their public health duties.
David Mowat
There have been two problems with how the formula has worked over the past few years. First, it has not placed enough emphasis on ageing as a criterion, and secondly the Department of Health has not implemented it properly, in so far as flat-rate increases have been given to primary care trusts, meaning that there has been no impact from changes. Both these things have worked to the detriment of Warrington. Will the Minister resolve these issues?
Anna Soubry
I am glad to assist my hon. Friend and assure him that fairness is imperative when it comes to distributing money and deciding where it goes. One reason the Government are keen to make the formula fair is our determination to reduce health inequalities, especially given the last Administration’s legacy of increased inequalities.
Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
The former Secretary of State wanted to make age the only factor in the formula, which would have totally ignored poverty and the local cost of care—[Interruption.] He said it. It would have taken £295 per head away from the north-east. Will the Minister confirm that the local cost of care and poverty will be included in the formula allocation?
Anna Soubry
That was not my understanding of the former Secretary of State’s comments, but I can say that we are absolutely determined to ensure that fairness is achieved, and all the factors she mentions are important in ensuring that fairness.
Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)
9. What steps the Government are taking to improve care for people with dementia.
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
Tackling dementia—particularly the shockingly low diagnosis rates—is a key priority for me and the Prime Minister.
Mary Macleod
I welcome the Government’s steps to support carers and the work they have done, especially on the £400 million to give carers’ breaks from their important responsibilities. Will my right hon. Friend explain what is being done to increase awareness and understanding of carers’ health care needs?
Mr Hunt
My hon. Friend is right to highlight this point. In the draft Care and Support Bill, local authorities will be required to meet the eligible needs of carers. That is a particular concern with dementia, because, all too often, someone looking after a partner with dementia gets to a tipping point where there is no alternative to residential care, but, if we can give them better support, they will have a better chance of remaining at home, which, in the vast majority of cases, is where they want to be.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
Many elderly people with dementia remain trapped in hospital, because there is not adequate provision in the community for them to be looked after at home. How does the Secretary of State intend funds to be extracted from hospitals to be spent in the community, particularly at a time when local authority funding cuts mean that many of the voluntary agencies providing that support are actually losing posts in my borough?
Mr Hunt
The hon. Lady is right to highlight this growing issue. One million people will have dementia by 2020, so we have to take it very seriously. It is not an either/or situation, though, because about 25% of patients in hospitals have dementia, and hospitals would like them placed in the community or at home, where they can be better looked after. This is one of those examples where, under the new reforms, we need much greater integration of services to ensure that those people are treated in the way they need to be.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
10. What recent progress he has made on improving early diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Anna Soubry)
We are providing more than £450 million during this spending review period to help diagnose cancer earlier. In January, we are planning to pilot a general symptom awareness campaign that will be relevant to a range of cancers, including pancreatic cancer. Unfortunately, however, pancreatic cancer is often very difficult to detect in the early stages.
Mark Durkan
Has the Minister considered the early diagnosis summit report from Pancreatic Cancer UK highlighting that currently half of diagnoses are emergency diagnoses? It also makes strong cases for new referral pathways, risk assessment tools, direct access for GPs to investigative and diagnostic tools and the development of a National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence quality standard for pancreatic cancer. Can we expect progress on any of these before the 2013 cancer awareness campaign?
Anna Soubry
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his work. I am aware of the campaign that he has been running effectively in his constituency, based on the experiences of one of his constituents. As I say, however, and as he will know, pancreatic cancer is, by its nature, a particularly difficult cancer to diagnose early. We will all, of course, remember the untimely death of Sir Stuart Bell. Unfortunately, he was diagnosed only very shortly before his death. I wish that were not as common as it is, but we are doing everything we can to improve screening. I thank the hon. Gentleman again for his campaign, and I would be happy to meet him to discuss it further.
Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)
Cancer networks have played a crucial role in improving patient care, including by earlier diagnosis. The former Health Secretary promised this House that their funding would be guaranteed in 2011, but the South East London Cancer Network now says its budget was cut by 40% between 2009 and 2011. This year, it has been slashed by a further 55% and its staff have been cut from 15 to eight. Will the Minister now admit that her Government have cut funding for vital front-line cancer experts and have broken their explicit promises on cancer care?
Anna Soubry
My information is that any 40% reduction is a result of cuts in administration—and that, if I may say so, seems the right way to go about things. This Government are determined to make sure that when we make cuts of that nature, they are not actually cuts—[Interruption.] It is about moving money around so that it goes to front-line services. This Government are determined to reduce bureaucracy in the NHS and to make sure that patients get the benefit of our spending—unlike under the last Administration, who had it round the other way.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
11. What steps he is taking to deliver better access to mental health services for school-age children.
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Norman Lamb)
The children and young people’s improving access to psychological therapies project, which we introduced in 2011, is about transforming mental health services for children and young people with mental health conditions. The Government’s mental health strategy implementation framework, published in July, suggests actions that schools, colleges and children’s services can take to provide better support.
Tim Loughton
The Government should be congratulated on tackling the stigma of mental health by their “No health without mental health” policy, but the growing problem of mental illness among school-age children is a concern and with the demise of the early intervention grant, which included the targeted mental health in schools funding, there is a worry that too many schoolchildren will be neglected. Will the Minister liaise with the Department for Education and with school nurses to make sure that appropriate and timely access to talking therapies and others are available for school age children rather than having to rely on the belated chemical cosh of powerful drugs?
Norman Lamb
May I first pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s work in this area? He has been really impressive and dedicated in his work. I absolutely agree with him about the importance of ensuring access to mental health services for children and adolescents. In fact, the Government are investing over £50 million over a four-year period through the children and young people’s improving access to psychological therapies programme and, critically, involving schools and colleges in that work. I would be very happy to work with my hon. Friend to improve access for children and young people.
Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)
Will the Minister confirm that funding for children’s mental health services has actually been cut?
Norman Lamb
I repeat the point that we are actually investing more in a transformation of children’s and adolescents’ mental health services—and it is making a real difference. People within the service can see the benefits that it is bringing.
Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)
12. What recent representations he has received on regional pay in the NHS.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)
I refer the hon. Gentleman to an answer I gave earlier today.
Mr Bain
Has the Minister had an opportunity to study the research done by the New Economics Foundation a few months ago, which reveals that fully regionalised public sector pay could strip up to £9.7 billion a year from local economies, put 110,000 jobs at risk and hit women twice as hard as men? Given that, what possible justification could this Government have for such a crazy policy?
Dr Poulter
Let me bring the hon. Gentleman back to planet earth for a while—[Interruption.] He should have listened to the answer I gave a little earlier about allowing for flexibility in pay frameworks. Some degree of regional pay was introduced by the previous Government in “Agenda for Change”. On principle, then, the previous Government, the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues, including the former Secretary of State, were supportive of regional pay. However, on the current negotiations and discussions, we would like to see a collaborative relationship between employers, unions and employees in the NHS at the NHS Staff Council to make sure that we maintain national pay frameworks as long as they remain fit for purpose.
Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
Why should there be an assumption that local pay will lead to lower pay in the public sector? In a constituency such as mine, where the unemployment rate is below 2%, local pay could quite possibly lead to higher pay in the public sector so that people are attracted to it.
Dr Poulter
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. It was the previous Government who, through the “Agenda for Change”, gave flexibility to NHS trusts to allow some employers to pay a 30% premium in areas with workplace shortages.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
17. At a time when NHS budgets are under exceptional pressure, my constituents simply do not understand why the Government are so intent on pushing trusts to divert money away from patient care and into wasteful local pay bargaining. Is there not a risk that Nottingham’s excellent NHS hospitals and community services will be unable to recruit and retain the best staff if regional pay results in cuts to their salary scales? The Government are supportive of the idea, endorsed by the previous Government, that local pay flexibility allows additional rewards to be paid to staff in areas with workplace shortages, as my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) just made clear. The Government are supporting the unions, employers and employees, as the NHS Staff Council, in coming together to try to agree how we need to modify the “Agenda for Change” and other agreements to ensure that they remain fit for their purpose of protecting employees.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
13. What assessment his Department has made of the extent to which the cancer radiotherapy innovation fund will increase access to intensity-modulated radiotherapy.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Anna Soubry)
The £15 million radiotherapy innovation fund is designed to ensure that from April 2013 radiotherapy centres will be ready to deliver intensity-modulated radiotherapy to all patients who need it. We are working with professional bodies and Cancer Research UK to develop a programme, including support visits, training and criteria for allocating the fund.
Dr Huppert
I thank the Minister for that answer and she will know that the UK’s first clinical trials of IMRT were carried out at Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge, funded by the Breast Cancer Campaign, and showed reduced side effects and improved cosmetic outcomes. How many breast cancer patients a year does she think could benefit from IMRT and how will she ensure that they all manage to do so?
Anna Soubry
We know that 9% of all radical radiotherapy treatment should be delivered using forward-planned IMRT and that that should be used for and will benefit breast cancer patients. A survey of radiotherapy centres was carried out in preparation for the launch of the new fund that showed that 26% of radical activity was being delivered using forward-planned IMRT. The hon. Gentleman might say that that does not exactly answer his question and I am more than happy to make further inquiries and, if necessary, to write to him in full detail.
Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
What is the Minister doing to ensure that such investments are equally accessible to people across the UK?
Anna Soubry
That is important. I have recognised in the short time in which I have been in my post that there is often disparity across the country and in certain areas, frankly, the service is not as good as that in others. One of our aims is to ensure that regardless of where someone lives they will get good treatment from the NHS.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
14. What steps he has taken to ensure that children with profound multiple learning difficulties have their health care needs met while at school.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)
We are working with the Department for Education to introduce integrated commissioning of education, health and social care for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities. This will ensure that children with profound multiple learning difficulties can get the care they need while at school.
Chi Onwurah
I recently visited Hadrian school in my constituency, which caters for children with severe learning difficulties and profound and multiple learning difficulties. I saw fantastic teachers and carers doing fantastic work with fantastic children, but I also saw in the reception classes that more children with more severe health needs were entering the school. What guarantees can the Minister offer that funding will be in place for those children in five or 10 years so that Hadrian school can plan now for their needs?
Dr Poulter
The hon. Lady makes a good point. We know that the Government are putting more money into the NHS. However, this not just about putting in more money, but about how we deliver care in a more joined-up way. At the moment, education works too much in its own silo and the NHS works in another. The Government’s new commissioning arrangements will follow the more joined-up approach that we need to take properly to meet the needs of children with learning disabilities in the round. That must be a good way forward in properly joining up education and health care.
Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
It is my privilege to serve as Health Secretary responsible for the national health service. I have identified four priority areas where I hope over the next two years to make the most progress. They are improving mortality rates for the major killer diseases so that we are among the best in Europe, which we are not at the moment; improving the way we look after people with long-term conditions such as diabetes and asthma; improving the way we deal with dementia, both as a national health service and as a society; and, perhaps most important of all, transforming the attitude to care throughout the NHS and social care systems so that the quality of care is seen to be as important as the quality of treatment.
Mr Spencer
What assistance can the Secretary of State give to the newly appointed chairman of the Sherwood Forest Hospitals Trust as he begins to wrestle with the private finance initiative signed under the previous Government and attempts to find repayments in excess of £40 million a year?
Mr Hunt
The first thing I would say to my hon. Friend about Sherwood Forest is that I know everyone in the House will join me in saying that our hearts go out to the families of the women who were misdiagnosed for breast cancer. We expect the local NHS to come up with a serious package of measures to make sure that that kind of thing cannot happen again.
My hon. Friend is right to talk about PFI. We inherited an appalling scandal. In order to tackle the PFI debts of just seven institutions, we are having to put aside £1.5 billion over the next 25 years, but we are working with all institutions to deal with this appalling debt overhang.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
We know that the Secretary of State’s views on abortion do not have a religious basis, so does he care to share with the House the scientific evidence to support his view that abortion time limits should come all the way down to 12 weeks?
Mr Hunt
Four years ago I voted with my conscience, as I am sure she voted with hers, but I did so as a Back-Bench Member of Parliament and we have made it clear that it is not the policy of the Government to change the abortion law. My job as Health Secretary is to implement the elected will of the House, which voted in 2008 not to reduce the abortion time limits.
Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
T2. What steps is the Department taking to tackle the growing incidence of drug-resistant cases of TB, which increased by more than a quarter in the past year?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Anna Soubry)
We are funding TB Alert to raise public and professional awareness of TB. We also expect the NHS organisations and their partners to ensure early detection, treatment completion and co-ordinated action to prevent and control TB. The Health Protection Agency maintains diligent monitoring of all types of TB and the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence also includes specific guidance on treatment and rapid contact tracing of people in contact with any type of drug-resistant TB.
Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
T5. Before the last election, the Prime Minister promised a “bare knuckle fight” to save district general hospitals and promised that they would be enhanced. Now that we know that the board of St Helens and Knowsley hospitals is looking at a merger with Warrington and Halton to solve its problems, can the Minister give the House an unconditional assurance that no services at Warrington will be downgraded or removed, whether that merger goes ahead or not?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)
There was an option to discuss this issue at the board meeting on 29 August—not of the hon. Lady’s hospital trust but of the Halton hospital trust—because the Halton trust is looking to achieve foundation status. So I can reassure her that the services at Warrington hospital are safe.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
T3. What is the administration overhead cost to the NHS and the Department this year and how does it compare with 2009-10?
Mr Jeremy Hunt
I will get back to my right hon. Friend with the exact details, but the impact of the reforms that the Government have introduced will cut administration costs by a third across the whole NHS, leading to net savings of £4 billion during this Parliament.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
T7. Last Wednesday, the Prime Minister told the House that Kettering hospital was safe. The following day—Thursday—evidence in a document leaked to the Corby Telegraph said that 515 of the 658 beds in the hospital could be lost. Will the Secretary of State ask the Prime Minister to come before the House to put right the statement he made to the House, but will the people of Corby not conclude that whatever the Prime Minister says, the national health service will never be safe in Tory hands?
Mr Hunt
What a disgraceful comment. We do not need the Prime Minister to come before the House because I can tell the hon. Gentleman that Kettering hospital is safe, and that it is totally irresponsible scaremongering by the Labour party in the run-up to a by-election to suggest anything else.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
T4. Will the Secretary of State join me in welcoming the progress that has been made to reduce mixed-sex wards and improve patient privacy at Medway Maritime hospital in my constituency?
Dr Poulter
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the Government’s success in reducing mixed-sex wards not just in his hospital but throughout the NHS—we inherited a very different situation from the previous Government. Medway has been a pioneer in that area and my hon. Friend is right to commend the hospital and I put on record my thanks for all that it is doing.
Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
T8. Will the Secretary of State take a close personal interest in the proposed changes to the NHS in Trafford? Given the uncertainty about alternative accident and emergency provision, and indeed the delays in commissioning community services, will he ensure that any final decisions are deferred so that they can be considered as part of the wider review planned for NHS services across Greater Manchester?
Mr Jeremy Hunt
I should like to reassure the right hon. Gentleman that I take a close personal interest in all reconfigurations because they tend to end up on my desk. In this case, I encourage him to take part in the consultation for Trafford general, which will go on until the end of the month, but I remind him that the Government have put in place four important tests for any major reconfiguration. We must be satisfied that those tests are passed before we approve any reconfiguration, and those include the support of local doctors.
Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)
T6. As breast cancer action month comes to an end, recent research by Breast Cancer Campaign has shown that 76% of women would like more information about breast cancer signs and symptoms. What steps are the Government taking to encourage early diagnosis of breast cancer?
Anna Soubry
Achieving early diagnosis of symptomatic cancer is key to our ambition to save an additional 5,000 lives a year by 2014-15. As I explained in an earlier answer, we are providing more than £450 million in funding over the spending review period to support early diagnosis. From January to mid March 2013, we will be running a regional pilot of our previously tested local campaign on breast cancer symptoms in women over 70. We are targeting those women because that is an area where, unfortunately, survival rates are particularly poor.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
Since his promotion, the Secretary of State has said little and, I assume, read a lot. Did his starter pack include details of the Prime Minister’s promise:
“This year, and the year after, and the year after that, the money going into the NHS will actually increase in real terms.”?
Did it include Treasury figures that show there has been a real terms cut each year since the election? What is he saying to NHS staff and patients who see the cuts and see the Prime Minister’s big NHS promise being broken?
Mr Jeremy Hunt
May I just remind the right hon. Gentleman that there has been a real terms increase in NHS spending? That contrasts rather starkly with what was said by the Health Secretary under the previous Government. He said it would be irresponsible to increase health spending in this Parliament. We ignored that advice and NHS patients are benefiting.
John Stevenson (Carlisle) (Con)
T9. The food labelling consultation closed in August. Could the Minister indicate when the Government response is likely to be issued and confirm that the Government will not bring in unnecessary burdens on the food industry over and above those set out in European regulation?
Anna Soubry
This is an area that is important to the Government’s work. At this stage it is important to make sure that we do not over-regulate but that we work with industry and manufacturers. The four Governments across the United Kingdom will shortly issue a statement about front-of-pack nutrition labelling, and we expect to publish the formal response to this year’s consultation within the next few weeks.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
The excellent children’s heart surgery unit at the Royal Brompton hospital will be pleased that a full review has been announced. Why does it have to report within four months, including the Christmas period, and why were previous referrals by both Brompton and Leeds refused? Will the review be full and impartial or not?
Mr Jeremy Hunt
It will be a totally impartial and very thorough review. This is an extremely important decision, and that is why I asked the Independent Reconfiguration Panel to take the time that it needs to do the review properly; that is the least that the hon. Gentleman’s constituents would want.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
In order to get the Health and Social Care Act 2012 through this House, the Government gave explicit assurances that private companies could not cherry-pick the easiest procedures and patients, yet a recent letter from David Flory, the deputy chief executive of the NHS, back-pedals on the Government’s position, and shows that the Government are dependent purely on guidance. What can the Government do to put a bit of backbone back into that important policy?
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
Given the apparent increase in spending in the NHS and the £4 billion surplus, will the Secretary of State look at lifting the pay restraint for lower-paid workers, to increase morale and boost productivity?
Mr Hunt
The £12 billion increase in spending on the NHS under this Government, which the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) thought was irresponsible, means that we will be able to do a lot more for patients, but there is also rising demand. If we do not have that pay restraint, we will not be able to meet the needs of an ageing population.
Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)
What specific consideration is being given to matching the annual growth funding uplift to actual changes in population? That is essential to my constituency, which has high population growth.
Anna Soubry
It is my understanding that that is already part of the formula, but my hon. Friend makes a good point, and I am sure that he joins me in wanting to make sure that the formulas are fair, so that we reduce health inequalities. I am happy to discuss the issue with him further.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
The Public Accounts Committee says that 11 of the 144 foundation trusts across England are now in serious financial difficulty. What contingency funding is in place for those trusts, to protect patients?
Mr Jeremy Hunt
We have a clearly set out programme for all those trusts, to make sure that they get back to the proper financial controls and proper governance structures that they need. We do not want to get into the business of bailing them out; we want them to stand on their own two feet. That is the vision of the Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Act 2003, passed by the hon. Gentleman’s party when it was in government.
David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend extend the scope of personal budgets? They help not only patients, giving them wider choice, but carers, allowing them to leave their post.
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Norman Lamb)
My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. This is all about giving power to patients. Personal budgets have already been very successful in social care, and there are pilots under way in health care; the indications are that they are proving very successful.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
The NHS has a responsibility for all patients in ill health, especially those who are elderly. Is the Minister aware of the information released last week that 3,000 general practitioners have drawn up a list of 7,000 patients who have less than a year to live—in other words, whose level of care is in question? Will the Minister condemn that list and take every possible step to ensure that every patient gets NHS care, irrespective of age?
Norman Lamb
The whole purpose of that approach is to ensure that patients get appropriate care at the end of their life. There is very strong consensus supporting that approach, including on the part of Marie Curie Cancer Care and Age UK. It is really important that all GPs and others involved in the care of people at the end of their life engage fully with the patient and the patient’s loved ones. That is the right approach.
Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)
My right hon. Friend will know that in this country, over 1,000 people a year die as a consequence of asthma. We have one of the highest prevalences of asthma in the world. Will he outline to the House what action we will take to get those mortality rates down?
Mr Jeremy Hunt
We are doing a lot of work on the outcomes strategy that will directly impact on asthma sufferers. As part of that work—we are as concerned as my hon. Friend is about this—we are looking at every single asthma death in a 12-month period, starting from this February, to try to understand better the causes of mortality, because we need to make very rapid progress.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
Further to the answer that the Minister of State gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), why do the Government not make it a criminal offence for those who recruit staff on the cheap not to bother checking employees’ employment records, qualifications or criminal records? Surely they are putting people’s lives at risk.
Norman Lamb
I absolutely share the hon. Gentleman’s concern. I am looking at the whole issue very closely. It seems to me that the fundamental point is to ensure that the people in charge at the corporate level are held to account for failures of care. We are very serious about ensuring that that happens.
Mr Speaker
The hon. Gentleman has been in the House since 1987; he knows perfectly well that points of order come after statements, not before them. I feel certain that he was just teasing the House and me.
Bovine TB and Badger Control
(11 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr Owen Paterson)
I am delighted that my presence has received such a welcome.
Bovine TB is the most pressing animal health problem in the UK. The importance of the epidemic for our cattle farmers, their families and their communities cannot be overemphasised. This was once a disease isolated to small pockets of the country; it has now spread extensively through the west of England and Wales. The number of new cases has doubled every nine years. Last year, TB led to the slaughter of 26,000 cattle in England at a cost of nearly £100 million. In the past 10 years, bovine TB has cost the taxpayer £500 million. It is estimated that this will rise to £1 billion over the next decade if the disease is left unchecked.
The task of managing bovine TB and bringing it under control is difficult and complex. The Government are committed to using all the tools at their disposal and to continuing to develop new ones as a package of measures to tackle the disease. In high-risk areas, herds are tested annually and any cattle that test positive are slaughtered. Restrictions on cattle movements have been further strengthened to reduce the chance of disease spreading from cattle to cattle. Only last week, we announced plans for a new surveillance testing regime and stricter cattle movement controls. We also continue to look at ways to improve the testing of cattle for TB.
Research in this country over the past 15 years has demonstrated that cattle and badgers can transmit the disease to each other; culling badgers can lead to a reduction of the disease in cattle if it is carried out over a large enough area and for a sufficient length of time. That is why we believe that, based on the best available evidence, culling badgers to control TB can make a significant contribution.
It is crucial that we get this right. The National Farmers Union has taken the lead on behalf of the farming industry to plan and organise the pilot culls. It has been working tirelessly over the past few months, signing up farmers and landowners in the pilot areas and ensuring that contractors are property trained. I have been immensely impressed by the effort, commitment and determination that have been demonstrated by farmers in the two pilot areas. I am also most grateful to the police in the two areas for their support.
The exceptionally bad weather this summer has put a number of pressures on our farmers and caused significant problems. Protracted legal proceedings and the request of the police to delay the start until after the Olympics and Paralympics have meant that we have moved beyond the optimal time for delivering an effective cull. We should have begun in the summer. In addition to these problems, the most recent fieldwork has revealed that badger numbers in the two areas are significantly higher than previously thought, which only highlights the scale of the problem we are dealing with.
Evidence suggests that at least 70% of the badgers in the areas must be removed. This is based on the results of the randomised badger culling trial so that we can be confident that culling will reduce TB in cattle. Despite a greatly increased effort over the past few days and weeks, the farmers delivering this policy have concluded that they cannot be confident that it will be possible to remove enough badgers based on these higher numbers and considering the lateness of the season. It would be wrong to go ahead if those on the ground cannot be confident of removing at least 70% of the populations.
Today I have received a letter from the president of the NFU, on behalf of the companies co-ordinating the culls, explaining why they do not feel that the culls can go ahead this year and requesting that they be postponed until next summer. In these circumstances, it is the right thing to do, and as they are the people who have to deliver this policy on the ground and work within the science, I respect their decision. I have placed a copy of the letter in the Library of both Houses.
By starting the pilots next summer, we can build on the work that has already been done and ensure that the cull will conform to the scientific criteria and evidence base. I know that this will be very disappointing for many, particularly those farmers in the two pilot areas, but I fully support the decision of the NFU to delay the start of culling operations.
I must emphasise that there is no change to the Government’s policy We remain absolutely committed to it, but we must ensure that we work with the NFU to get the delivery right. We also remain committed to our wider TB eradication programme and to continuing to strengthen it, so that we can move towards our goal of a TB-free England. Vaccination is another tool and one that we would all like to be able to deploy more widely. Unfortunately, we are not there yet in terms of its development or practicality. If we had a viable and legal cattle vaccine, we would be using it. It will, however, be some years before this is the case and neither we nor the industry can afford to wait that long. It is for this reason that we must look at all the options.
The Government are determined to tackle bovine TB by all the means available to us. Now, in the next few months, we will ensure that the pilot culls can be implemented effectively, in the best possible conditions, with the right resources. Having looked at all the evidence over many years, I am utterly convinced that badger control is the right thing to do, and indeed the higher than expected badger numbers only serve to underline the need for urgent action. I remain fully committed to working with the farming industry to ensure that the pilot culls can be delivered effectively, safely and humanely next summer. I commend this statement to the House.
Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)
I begin by welcoming the Secretary of State to his post and thank him for advance sight of his statement.
Another day, another U-turn, announced first to the “Today” programme and now to Parliament. Labour has warned the Government for two years that the badger cull was bad for farmers, bad for taxpayers and bad for wildlife. In addition, the Government’s handling of the cull has been incompetent and shambolic. It is right that it has been delayed, but we were not alone. Lord Professor John Krebs, the eminent scientist who first suggested that the culling of badgers be tried to tackle bovine TB, described it as a “crazy scheme”. The Government’s own chief scientist, Professor Sir John Beddington, declined to endorse the policy. The free shooting of badgers in some big society badger cull was always a terrible idea. It had never been tried, never measured.Professor John Bourne, who led Labour’s badger cull trials, called it an “untested and risky approach”.
The cull would cost farmers more than it saved them, put huge strain on the police and spread bovine TB in the short term as badgers move out of cull areas. It would cost half a million pounds a year to police per area, and all for a 16% reduction in bovine TB over nine years. Bovine TB is a terrible disease for farmers, their families and their communities, which is why we, when in government—[Interruption.] That is why we ran the cull trials to see whether culling made a difference—
Mr Speaker
Order. There is too much noise coming from both sides of the House. Mr Kawczynski, I have had reason to indicate this to you before, but you must calm down. I think that you need to go on an anger management course, man. [Interruption.] Order. Get a grip.
Mary Creagh
Bovine TB is a terrible disease, but the Secretary of State’s cull was never going to be a silver bullet. Then, last Thursday, we saw the first signs that the badger cull was shaping up to be another Government disaster. As Ministers went to ground, the Secretary of State’s own press office told “Channel 4 News” that the policy was being scrapped, but an hour later they rang back—it was unscrapped. To have to announce one U-turn may be regarded as misfortune, but two U-turns in one afternoon looks like carelessness, even for a Government as weak and incompetent as this one.
What was the reason for the wobble? I had asked some parliamentary questions, and Ministers’ answers revealed some awkward facts. My first basic question was how many badgers there were in each cull area. The answer was that the Government
“have yet to issue definitive target figures for the two areas”.—[Official Report, 17 October 2012; Vol. 551, c. 296W.]
The cull is predicated on killing at least 70% of badgers in an area. How could it proceed when Ministers did not know how many animals there were? We had said all along that the cull was a shot in the dark, and here was the proof. It was that admission, two days before the cull was due to start, that meant DEFRA was wide open to a judicial review for being in breach of the law. The Government’s own best estimate of badger numbers was far higher than previously estimated, making both culls more expensive than forecast. That would mean more expense for farmers and increasing the contingency fund, the bond that farmers are required to lodge with Natural England. Why did Ministers not ask how many badgers farmers needed to kill before this whole fiasco started?
What sort of announcement is the Minister making today? Is it like the forests U-turn, when they pulled the plug and then set up an independent panel to kick it into the long grass forever, leaving just enough cover to save the Prime Minister face; or is it like the infamous Health and Social Care Bill, when the Prime Minister pressed the stop button, waited for things to calm down and then carried on regardless? Is this delay a proper U-turn or a pretend U-turn? I think that the country deserves to be told.
We welcome the tougher measures on biosecurity that the Secretary of State announced last Friday. He says the cull will start again next summer. He has blamed the weather and the police, yet his own colleague the Home Secretary said that the cull must not go ahead during the Olympics and Paralympics. What happens if the weather is bad next year? What estimate has he made of the impact on the tourism industry of a cull next June? Does he expect MPs and the public to believe him when he says that the cull will happen next summer? If it does not take place, is there not a risk that his Department will be pursued for costs by farmers left out of pocket as a result of his incompetence? Is not the truth that the Prime Minister yanked him back from his festival of fromage and fizz in Paris last night and told him it was game over? Who exactly is in charge?
After months of agonising, with hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money having been spent on consultations, counting badgers, training marksmen and issuing licences, and after thousands have been spent by farmers setting up companies, we have had another U-turn from this incompetent Government. They have spent two years puffing life into a policy that should never have left the ministerial red box. After just six weeks in his post, the Secretary of State has discovered that DEFRA is filled with elephant traps for the unwary. With forests, circus animals and now the badger cull, he has completed a hat trick unmatched by any other Department.
Labour has always said that the badger cull was bad for taxpayers, bad for farmers, and bad for wildlife. This Government are out of touch with the nation. This cull should have been stopped months ago. Today we have the right decision for all the wrong reasons. The cull has been stopped because of the Government’s endemic incompetence. They should have listened to the scientists, the charities and Labour Members, and made policy based on the evidence instead of twisting the evidence to fit their policy. Once again, Ministers present the House with a disaster entirely of their own making. Once again, it is farmers and taxpayers who are left counting the cost.
Mr Paterson
I thank the hon. Lady for her kind words in welcoming me to my place, but it was pretty thin stuff, wasn’t it, Mr Speaker?
Let us start with Professor Lord Krebs, whom the hon. Lady quoted. He confirmed the policy when he said in April last year at a meeting of independent scientific experts:
“The science base generated from the…Randomised Badger Culling Trial shows that proactive badger culling as conducted in the trial resulted in an overall beneficial effect compared with ‘survey only’ (no cull) areas on reducing new confirmed cattle herd breakdowns which is still in evidence 5½ years after the final annual proactive cull.”
The hon. Lady then touched on the comments of the chief scientist, Sir John Beddington, but failed to say that his recent quote in full is this:
“The proposed pilot culls differ from the RBCT in a number of ways. Additional biosecurity aimed at reducing perturbation effects, any predictions as to the efficacy of the culls will be accompanied by uncertainties. However, if the results were similar to those of the RBCT we might expect a 12 to 16% reduction in bovine TB over an area of 150 km sq after nine years relative to a similar unculled area. It will be important to monitor the results and to subject them to rigorous statistical analysis to assess humaneness, safety and efficacy.”
That is exactly what the pilots were for: they were the logical conclusion—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I told Mr Kawczynski that he was making too much noise and he accepted his fate with good grace. Members on the Opposition Front Bench must not yell at the Secretary of State as he is answering questions. The right hon. Gentleman must be heard. Let us hear it from Mr Secretary Paterson.
Mr Paterson
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
The previous Government took forward the RBCT in a whole series of trials and then stopped and decided to do nothing. They presided over a horrendous increase in this disgusting disease. We have taken the logic of the RBCT and extended it, which means conducting it over a larger area with hard boundaries and a more efficient system of culling. We are wholly conforming to the science and to the advice that we have taken. However, as I explained in my statement, at this late stage of the season, because of the various delays and because of the larger numbers than had previously been planned for, the NFU has come to me requesting a delay. I should like to reassure the hon. Lady that this policy is absolutely intact. We will work with the NFU over the coming months and from next summer we will deliver pilot culls that will show the efficacy of what we are intending to do.
Mr Speaker
I call Mr Jim Paice. [Interruption.] Sir James Paice—I apologise profusely to the right hon. Gentleman.
Sir James Paice (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
Apology accepted, Mr Speaker, with good grace.
This is clearly very disappointing news for everybody, including the farmers, who had planned for and expected our getting to grips with this disease as quickly as possible. May I endorse my right hon. Friend’s comments about these being pilots? We have always recognised that in some areas they differed from the original RBCT measures, and that was the reason for having the two pilots—to see whether those differentiations still produced the same results. The increase in numbers to which he refers is surprising—or the fact that it is a problem is surprising—given that most people who live in these areas should have been well aware, as most country people are, of the massive increase in badgers.
Finally, does my right hon. Friend agree that science shows that if the population of any species significantly increases in density, disease spreads more quickly as it is more likely to sustain itself? This increase in the badger population therefore increases the need to carry out the control.
Mr Paterson
I thank my right hon. Friend and commend him for the tremendous work that he did in his job as Minister of State. Wherever I have been in recent weeks, many, many people across the industry have paid him great tribute for the sterling work that he did. I commend him for taking this policy on; it was not easy.
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The two pilots were the logical extension of the trials conducted under the previous Government, which stopped dead once they had finished. The next logical step is to go on to a larger geographical area and use a more efficient method of culling. He is absolutely right to say that the real lesson from these very significantly higher numbers is that the disease will be prevalent among the badger population and spreads more quickly in a dense population. This is a problem that we have to grip. It is no good criticising from the outside without coming up with a policy.
Mr Speaker
Order. A very large number of hon. and right hon. Members are seeking to catch my eye. I am keen to accommodate them, as this is a hugely significant matter, but if I am to do so, economy from Back Benchers and Front Benchers alike would greatly assist.
Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)
In July 2011, Natural England estimated that there would be 3,300 badgers in each 350 sq km cull area, using data from the randomised badger cull trial, yet DEFRA used the figure of only 1,300 badgers for each 350 sq km area. Why did DEFRA get the figures so badly wrong?
Mr Paterson
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that question. It will be helpful if I explain the chronology. In September this year Natural England first determined that there were deficiencies in the sett data. Shortly after I took up my post, it set about a detailed sett survey and came up with these very significantly large numbers. We have to respect the science. It is most important that everyone understands this. The simple facts are that with these increased numbers the NFU did not believe that in the later weeks of this year, as it gets more difficult to get out on the ground, it could deliver the 70% figure. The responsible thing to do is to postpone; the easy thing to do would have been to thunder on and not deliver. We have to respect the science; we are being very clear about that. Over the past few days we have discussed this in great depth with the NFU and it is quite clear that despite a big effort in recruiting and a big increase in resources it cannot deliver the 70% figure. It is therefore right not to go ahead for the time being, and we will go ahead next year.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State give an assurance that farmers in the hotspots will be given all the available legal protection over the coming months, given the uncertainty before the cull can proceed? I welcome the fact that he has confirmed that the science is that of the independent scientific group in 2008. Will he use this pause to make the strongest possible argument within the European Union that the produce of any vaccinated animal, whether vaccinated with the badger bovine TB vaccine or the foot and mouth vaccine, will be legal trade with our European partners?
Mr Paterson
I am grateful to the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee for her question, which touches on security. I want publicly to thank the chief constables and all their staff in the two main areas, who have co-operated a tremendous amount. This has been an extra burden on them in recent weeks. We have worked with them closely and I thank them. They have reassured me at all times that they will ensure that legal protest can go on, but law and order will prevail.
On vaccination—I am glad that we are getting into this so early in our discussion—the fact is that the current vaccine is only about 50% to 60% effective, while that for smallpox, for example, is well over 95%, so we do not have a very effective vaccine. On my hon. Friend’s point, we have developed a DIVA—differentiation of infected from vaccinated animals—test recently, which differentiates between a vaccinated and a diseased animal, but it is still in the early stages. We would all agree—every single person in this House and those outside—that we would like to press a vaccine button today but, sadly, we do not have one.
The European authorities are absolutely clear that if we went about a vaccination programme now, before we have an absolutely scientifically clear and evidence-based system of differentiating between diseased and vaccinated, we would not be able to export any cattle products. We are talking about a trade of billions of pounds. That would be suicide. I am in total agreement with hon. Members who want to see vaccines but, sadly, we are just not there. It is incredibly important that everyone understands that we do not have a button-pressed vaccine today. We are working extremely hard on it. I take on my hon. Friend’s encouragement. I will discuss the issue at the Commission, but at the moment I cannot go to the Commission with a clear, evidence-based programme to use a vaccine.
Mr Speaker
Order. I always listen to the Secretary of State with the closest possible interest, but I am afraid that we do not have time on this occasion for a treatise in response to each question. We need pithy replies, if possible.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
The Secretary of State is right to say that we must address the problem of bovine TB. Will he, therefore, this year, while this delay is in place, use the funding that would have been made available for the cull to improve biosecurity in the cowsheds and byres of farmers, and set minimum standards for biosecurity, which the Krebs report said was a very important element in controlling the disease?
Mr Paterson
I am in agreement with the hon. Gentleman that biosecurity can help, but the problem is that we are dealing with an animal that can get into sheds. When I was in opposition, I went to Michigan and they had clear evidence where they had separated white-tailed deer from cattle herds and invested significantly in fencing off the cattle herds indoors. It is not possible to do that with badgers, because our cattle system has cattle out on the fields, and 1 ml of badger urine yields 300,000 colony-forming units of disease and it takes only 0.001% to infect an animal. That is the problem. We have animals out on grass, mixing freely with wild badgers, and that is where the disease is being picked up.
Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)
I draw the attention of hon. Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. The right hon. Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice), who was until recently a Minister in the Department, is right. People living in the countryside are not surprised, because they report seeing more badgers more frequently. Does the Secretary of State agree that work should be undertaken on the correlation between the increase in badgers and the increase of bovine TB in the cattle herd?
Mr Paterson
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. The evidence is extremely obvious. We can see from 1972 onwards that when there is a big increase in the badger population there is an increase in TB. It is very simple. I do not know of a single country in the western world that does not bear down on disease in wildlife and in cattle.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
The Secretary of State said that vaccination is only 60% or 70% effective, but is that not an awful lot more than 16% effective for the cull? Secondly, he said that a cattle vaccination and the DIVA test are years off, but that is not the case—that is not what scientists are telling us. Will he use the money that has so far been earmarked for the cull to bring those vaccines to market as soon as possible? Will he start negotiating now with his EU colleagues to make sure that the DIVA test will mean that we can distinguish between infected and vaccinated cattle and that we can, therefore, continue to export beef?
Mr Paterson
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question. We are not yet there with a vaccination programme. If this vaccine is only 50% to 60% effective, a significant number of cattle will be either diseased or, perhaps, vaccinated. Until we can differentiate between them, we cannot go to the Commission and no neighbouring country would want to buy stock from us. This is a real, practical problem. I reassure the hon. Lady that I am as keen as her to get to the position of having a vaccine, and I promise that we will work on this over the next year. We are spending £15.5 million over the next four years on top of the £40-odd million that we spent recently. This is a real priority, but we are not in that position yet.
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
When I was lucky enough to serve on the agriculture committee nearly 20 years ago, I remember the then Chairman saying that we had to have a badger cull in selected areas to deal with this disease. Since then, Governments have been hopelessly indecisive and weak and, as a result, our farming community has undergone untold misery. Will the Secretary of State assure us that he will now get a grip and that he will be swayed only by science and not by emotions, and save our farmers from this terrible disease?
Mr Paterson
I am happy to reassure my hon. Friend emphatically that we will stand by this policy. As I have said, there is no country in the western world where such policies do not apply. We should consider the situation in New Zealand with possums and that in Australia with buffalo, and look at what every other western European country is doing. A cull is taking place in Ireland as we speak. On Monday I talked to a farmer in Burgundy, where badgers are not protected. There is no other country where they are not bearing down on disease in wildlife and in cattle. We have to do both.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
This is probably not the auspicious start that the Secretary of State wanted on the DEFRA Front Bench. No one takes the cull of badgers lightly, but what is the Department’s plan B? The Secretary of State has said, in effect, that over the next 12 months, until next summer, 30,000 cattle will be slaughtered and his Department will have to pick up the bill of £100 million. In Northern Ireland it will be £20 million and a vast amount of cattle will be slaughtered as a result of bovine TB. I hope that we are not witnessing the eradication of the Department’s courage to follow through with a policy that could change things.
Mr Paterson
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that, until we get a grip on this, these horrendous slaughter figures will continue at an horrendous cost and cause horrendous damage to famers’ livelihoods and their families. That is clear, but we have to respect the science. The NFU told me this morning that it cannot achieve the 70% and, if we agree with the science, which states that if we cull less than 70% we provoke perturbation, I have to respect that advice. The hon. Gentleman is from Northern Ireland, so he knows perfectly well the value of a cull. The four counties trial showed a 96% reduction in Donegal. There is no question but that bearing down on wildlife and cattle will eradicate the disease eventually.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
Farmers across North Wiltshire will be disappointed about the delay—although they will understand it—but so will true wildlife lovers. Will the Secretary of State confirm that even if a workable badger vaccine was available—there probably is not—it would have no effect whatsoever on badgers that are ill? In other words the hundreds of badgers that are ill, underground and dying in agony would not be affected even if a vaccine was available.
Mr Paterson
My hon. Friend’s constituents will be as disappointed as mine about this delay and postponement. There is actually an injectable badger vaccine, which was licensed in March last year, but everybody needs to consider the practicality. We have an enormously increased badger population. It is certainly 250,000 to 300,000. An injectable vaccine requires injecting every badger every year and, as I have said on cattle vaccine, it is not possible to cure an animal that is already diseased so, with the deepest respect to the Welsh Government, I am doubtful of the value of that process.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Will police forces that have had to commit resources to prepare for the pilots be compensated for the work that they have had to do?
Mr Paterson
Yes. We have made it clear that we will help the police forces that have had to put in extra resources. I talked to all the chief constables of the forces this morning, thanked them personally for their significant effort and the skilful and tactful manner in which they have deployed their teams recently, and I have agreed that we will help them.
Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)
The Secretary of State has made an entirely supportable and practical decision this morning in guaranteeing that this is not a change in policy, but simply a delayed policy. Does he agree that the reaction of Labour Members to his statement will have sent a shiver down the spine of farmers who are watching and will have made them realise that for the Opposition, this is a political issue, not a practical one? So much for one nation!
Mr Paterson
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. I did not want to get into a party political argument, but the Labour party’s record in office is shameful. The disease has gone on and on, but after the trials, the Labour Government stopped dead. We are following the logical conclusion of what they set in place. They stopped; we are going on. We are determined that this is the right thing to do.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
How much compensation will be paid to police forces, as the Secretary of State has just announced?
Mr Paterson
It will be the marginal costs. We will have to discuss that with the relevant forces and come up with a number.
Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)
The Secretary of State has rightly said that the Government will continue to tackle all sources of the disease and to look at biosecurity, as well as dealing with the cull. If there are further problems over the next few months with the designated cull areas, will he look at other areas where landowners and farmers might be keen to be part of the cull trial?
Mr Paterson
That is an interesting question. Yes, I will look at that in detail. At the moment, the NFU is probably thinking of carrying on in the two areas where it has put in such a lot of work and preparation, but I am open to looking at other areas. We want to pull off two pilots that show that this system, in a bigger area and with a more efficient system of culling, does work and does reduce TB.
Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)
Ministers constantly lecture us about the need for their counter-productive austerity measures, so how can the Secretary of State justify earmarking £250,000 for post-mortems on dead badgers following the cull? Is that not a colossal waste of money and an example of an omnivore-shambles?
Mr Paterson
What a ludicrous question. The attitude of some Opposition Members is absolutely tearful. We are heading towards a bill of £1 billion.
Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon) (Con)
I commend the Secretary of State for acting so decisively today, following the change of heart by the NFU. Although dairy farmers in south Devon will, of course, be disappointed, they will understand it, provided that he continues to say, day after day, that this is just a delay, not a change of policy, and that the cull will take place in 2013.
Mr Paterson
I am most grateful for my hon. Friend’s support. As he knows, when I was the shadow spokesman, I went down to his part of the world and I asked 600 parliamentary questions. That made me determined that this was the right thing to do. I wholly commend the last Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice), who did great work on putting this policy into practice. We are determined to push it through, because it is the only way in which we will save our cattle industry.
Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State say how many firearms licences have been issued by the police for the culls, and at what cost?
Mr Paterson
I can give the hon. Lady an accurate reply after the statement. The team in each pilot area is made up of roughly 60 people and the firearms licences had to be amended. I am happy to get back to her with the exact number.
Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)
Cattle owners like me will respect the Secretary of State for taking the advice of the NFU. However, will he take this opportunity to look at the compensation tables, which are causing so much misery to cattle owners who are receiving less than it costs to replace their cattle?
Mr Paterson
My hon. Friend touches on a fraught area. I have cattle breeders in my patch who are producing the most wonderful pedigree cattle of the highest standard and getting adequate compensation is a constant problem. At the moment, we are paying the market rate, but I am happy to discuss the matter with him.
Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State take the opportunity that this postponement allows to meet the 30 leading scientists, including vets and animal disease scientists, who think that their science is correct and that the NFU’s science, on which the Secretary of State is relying, is not correct?
Mr Paterson
I am most grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s question, but he is just wrong. This is not the NFU’s science. The science that the policy is based on comes from the main trials that his Government put into practice. It is the logical conclusion of those trials. I quoted Lord Krebs and I have a meeting with him this week or next week, so I am very happy to meet scientists. We are following on from the logic of the science-based evidence that has been produced.
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
Roughly how many people have been threatened in the two areas, because there have been a variety of reports about that? If he can confirm a number, that would be useful to the House. In his view, have such people been properly protected by the police?
Mr Paterson
I am happy to reassure my hon. Friend that the number is tiny. I strongly commend, once again, the skill and tact of the police forces, which have maintained law and order in a dignified manner, under difficult conditions.
Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)
As the Secretary of State knows, I represent a rural constituency in Northern Ireland. What discussions did he have with Ministers in the devolved Administrations yesterday in the margins of the EU Council of Ministers on agriculture matters? Will he confirm what tools are at the Government’s disposal to ensure that our farming industry is protected?
Mr Paterson
I am sorry to inform the hon. Lady that I did not get to Luxembourg yesterday because my flight was cancelled.
Mr Paterson
By the fog. If Members want a technical update, the flight was delayed and then cancelled. There was only one, so sadly I did not get to the Agriculture Council and I did not have a chance to put the very pertinent points that the hon. Lady mentioned. If she looks over the border, she will see that in the Republic of Ireland there is a reactive cull. As I said, the four counties trial showed a 96% reduction in Donegal.
Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)
As a neighbouring Shropshire MP, the Secretary of State will know what devastation bovine TB has caused in Shropshire, with more than 2,000 cattle slaughtered last year alone. Will he give an assurance that if the trials are successful next summer, other parts of the United Kingdom, such as Shropshire, will be able to move forward quickly to a cull?
Mr Paterson
I commend my neighbour from Shrewsbury and Atcham for his stalwart support on this matter and for the very public stance that he has taken. The answer is emphatically yes. I want the two pilots to go ahead and to conform to the science. I am confident that they will prove to be safe and efficacious, and that we will see a reduction in TB. That is what we want to see rolled out across the country.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
On 8 May, I wrote to the then farming Minister, the right hon. Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice), to highlight how complex it was to assess the number of badgers in the pilot areas and received very glib reassurances in response. Why is the Secretary of State now telling us that it was only in late September that concerns about those numbers came to light?
Mr Paterson
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that question, but I did answer it earlier. It appeared in September that Natural England was not happy with the figures that had been provided locally. That is why it asked FERA to do a full survey, which took some time. That shows how deadly serious we are in respecting the science. It would not have been right to go ahead on the basis of numbers that Natural England believed to be inaccurate, so it was right to take more time and to do a thorough survey, and that came up with dramatically larger numbers.
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
Dairy and beef farmers in my constituency are desperate because of TB. They have been cleaning their cattle for years. There now needs to be clean wildlife to stop the disease spreading. Can I have the absolute assurance of the Secretary of State that the cull will go ahead next year?
Mr Paterson
I am entirely in agreement with my hon. Friend. We want to see healthy wildlife—healthy badgers in this case—living alongside healthy cattle. We will achieve that only if we drive through the two pilots and extend them across the country, as I have just assured my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski).
Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State explain why there was a delay to avoid a clash with the Olympics and Paralympics, and what are the ideal weather conditions for killing badgers?
Mr Paterson
My predecessor was very responsible, because the Government had a request from the police and discussed it with the Home Secretary. There was obviously a huge amount of discussion about security before the Olympics and Paralympics. The whole nation wanted the games to be a success, and of course they were the most outstanding success. It was quite right not to burden the police with an extra task, so I think my colleagues were completely responsible.
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point about the weather. We have obviously had the most extraordinarily wet year, which has made it difficult to get out on the land and difficult to get vehicles out. There is also a technical problem, which mainly applies to Gloucestershire. The maize is still standing, and part of what needs to be done is the cutting of maize, because otherwise badgers come and take the cobs. That is rather more a Gloucestershire problem than a Somerset one, but all in all, he must understand the practical difficulties of getting on the land in a very wet year.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
It is to the NFU’s credit that it has decided not to conduct a cull this year in circumstances in which it could not be confident that it would be effective in reducing the incidence of bovine TB. What are the next steps in developing the DIVA test to the point where it is widely acknowledged to be conclusive?
Mr Paterson
I entirely endorse my hon. Friend’s commendation of the NFU. It would have been quite wrong to go ahead when it was not confident of reaching the 70% target and could have made the position worse.
I was discussing the DIVA test with my senior scientists this morning, and we are determined to go full bore on it. There is agreement throughout the House that in an ideal world we would have a vaccine and a DIVA test, and we could then go to the Commission. I am keen that we look at the new technological developments as soon as we can.
Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
How many discussions has the Secretary of State already had with European colleagues and the Commission to lobby for the DIVA test and cattle vaccination to be rolled out in the UK?
Mr Paterson
We have been in regular discussions with the European Commission, which is very supportive of our position. Only recently DG-SANCO—the directorate-general for health and consumers—stated:
“There is no scientific evidence to demonstrate that badger vaccination will reduce the incidence of TB in cattle. However there is considerable evidence to support the removal of badgers in order to improve the TB status of both badgers and cattle.
UK politicians must accept their responsibility to their own farmers and taxpayers as well as to the rest of the EU and commit to a long-term strategy that is not dependent on elections.”
Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
I am sure my right hon. Friend would agree that it would be preferable if the House could move forward on the basis of consensus on this issue. During the pause, will he undertake to meet the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) on Privy Council terms and see whether she has a single positive, substantive suggestion as to how we should tackle bovine TB? The House did not hear a single suggestion from her today.
Mr Paterson
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I am happy to talk to anyone on the subject. We need to resolve it. We cannot go on carting off 26,000 cattle a year at a cost of nearly £100 million. We have to work together, and I am very happy to work with the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) if she is prepared to listen to me.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
I believe that the plan was ill-conceived from the outset, but today’s announcement was not about the science, it was about incompetence. The Government have had plenty of time, and this is not an uncontroversial issue. It has been scrutinised to death from this side and that, yet they came up with the figures on how many badgers there are very late in the process. What we need a cull of is Ministers who waste public money—we have had the west coast main line, and now this. How much has been wasted this year, and how much more will the cull cost next year?
Mr Paterson
I will come back to the hon. Gentleman with a full reply in writing on the costs. I can give him a breakdown of what we have spent on compensation, the trials and the vaccine. He needs to understand, from his urban perspective, the absolute devastation that bovine TB causes to our rural communities and those involved in the cattle industry. We have to resolve the problem, and we must face up to the fact that —[Interruption.] Just listen to my answer. We have to bear down on disease in cattle and in wildlife.
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)
I am very disappointed by the tone and attitude that the Opposition have adopted on this important issue. I am sure that none of us wants badgers to be needlessly or unnecessarily culled, but we have a major problem with bovine TB. Will my right hon. Friend use this pause to build as wide a consensus as possible in the scientific community, which currently says that a cull is the only practical option?
Mr Paterson
I am happy to take up my hon. Friend’s suggestion. I will obviously talk to senior scientists, but I am also keen to drive forward new technologies. We have already discussed the DIVA test, and there is real merit in considering polymerase chain reaction, which I saw being used in Michigan when I was there in 2005. We can also consider the possible use of gamma interferon, which we have seen in other countries. I am definitely open to new ideas, because we have to bear down on this disgusting disease.
Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
Three times today the Minister has said that we are not yet there with a vaccine, so will he now focus on fast-tracking a vaccine programme and the DIVA test as the only long-term solution to tackling this devastating disease?
Mr Paterson
I have made it clear that the vaccine is like Sisyphus—it is always out there and we are always reaching for it, but it is always a few years out. Sadly, as of this afternoon, we are not in a position to introduce a vaccination programme, because it is only 50% to 60% effective and we do not yet have a fully worked-out DIVA test to differentiate diseased and vaccinated animals. I sympathise entirely with her pained expression, and I would love to go ahead this afternoon and press a button saying “Vaccine”, but we sadly do not have it yet.
Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)
Without certainty that the targeted pilot cull would go ahead as the Government announced last year, my right hon. Friend is surely right to postpone it. Will he emphasise to all those who will be involved in next summer’s cull, which must surely go ahead, that the terms of the targeted pilot cull, based on science, will be strictly adhered to?
Mr Paterson
I am grateful to my hon. Friend and neighbour for his supportive comments. Emphatically yes—it is absolutely right that we go ahead next summer, but we must do it within the constraints of the scientific criteria that are laid down. That is what we intend to do.
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
I was not entirely clear about the answer that the Secretary of State gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith). We are certainly pleased to hear about the progress made on the vaccination and the DIVA test, but can he explain exactly what recent talks he has had with European colleagues? When does he think there might be some real progress, and what is he doing to ensure that it is as fast as possible?
Mr Paterson
My right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice) started talking about the matter two and a half years ago, as soon as we came into government, and he has been in regular contact with European colleagues. I will work with them as closely as possible once we have a practical basis to work on. As I explained to the hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mrs Glindon), we are sadly just not there yet. That obviously has to be an absolute priority, because we have agreement about it not just right across the House but right across the country.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s decision not to proceed in the current circumstances. Above all, the Government should not take action that risks making the situation worse. Given that he emphasises the importance of science, will he take the opportunity provided by the pause until next summer to review all the science, including that recently commissioned by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs itself, which may point to alternative ways of bearing down on this terrible disease?
Mr Paterson
I entirely endorse my hon. Friend’s comment, and during this time we will of course press on many fronts. We have a number of tools in the box, and we are using those that are currently available. As I have touched on, there are new ones coming down the track—PCR, the DIVA test, gamma interferon and others that I would like to investigate with real speed. We cannot just use the current tools, because we are not getting on top of the disease. It is getting worse.
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
The Secretary of State’s Department seems to have a bit of a track record of backing off when the pressure gets high. We previously had the experience of the circus animals debate, which was going to be whipped, but suddenly his Department backed off. Many of my constituents will be pleased to see that there is now to be a pause, but will he reassure us that he will look very seriously at the whole issue again, and that he is not just backing off because he does not want the embarrassment of a debate and a vote?
Mr Paterson
The hon. Lady has rather missed the tone of our discussion over the past hour. Having received these higher figures, and after agonising, the National Farmers Union has—I think very responsibly and despite huge pressure from its grass roots—made a decision. I was in Tewkesbury on Wednesday, and there is enormous pressure from those parts of the country where the cattle industry is being devastated by this disease. Despite that pressure, I must respect the NFU which said clearly to me in a final decision that it could not achieve the 70% required. We are all determined to work together within the science, and no one is backing off at all. The NFU has made a rational decision in the light of the new figures and given its current resources and the time available.
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)
Fifteen years ago there were hundreds of beef and dairy farmers in Northumberland, but they now number a few dozen. They wholeheartedly support the proposed cull and the action that has been proposed today, albeit with regret. Will the Secretary of State confirm that such farmers will continue to receive the proper financial support that they need and deserve, until this disease is finally vanquished?
Mr Paterson
Emphatically, we want to see an expanding cattle industry and more cattle exports. I should actually be in Paris at the world’s largest food exhibition promoting exports of British beef and dairy products. I assure my hon. Friend that we want to see an expanding cattle industry, but we must get on top of this disease first.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) asked how much public money has been spent so far on this misguided cull. Will the Minister confirm what proportion of this year’s expenditure will need to be spent again next year?
Mr Paterson
I cannot give the hon. Lady an exact answer because it obviously depends on how many cattle sadly fall to this disease. All I can say is that we have seen a steadily climbing trend in recent years, and unless we get on top of the disease, we will head towards a bill of £1 billion.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
My right hon. Friend referred to his visit to Michigan, and there are lessons from Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and France. Will he ensure that the experiences of other countries are taken into account when adopting a strategy to tackle this hideous disease and ensure that we have healthy cattle and healthy badgers living alongside each other?
Mr Paterson
Emphatically, yes. I found my trip to Michigan very inspiring, and I saw the real determination of not only the state Government but the involvement of the Federal Government. They are absolutely determined to bear down on disease, and at the time they were withering in their criticism of the then Labour Government.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State believe in evidence-based policy, or policy-based evidence? If it is the former, does he really think that he has more scientific credibility than the former chief scientist, Lord May? May I add that calling the vaccine Sisyphus has not helped the Minister in that?
Mr Paterson
Sorry, perhaps it was Tantalus. I meant that the goal is always rolling away. The Government are completely clear. If the hon. Lady wishes to quote a respected and real expert in this field, let me refer her to Professor Christl Donnelly who surveyed all the evidence in 2010. He said:
“In the time period from one year after the last proactive cull to 28 August 2011, the incidence of confirmed breakdowns in the proactive culling trial areas was 28 per cent lower than in ‘survey only’ areas and on lands up to 2km outside proactive trial areas”.
The Government are going on the evidence and the analysis of respected experts in the field.
Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
As a Conservative Member who is against the cull, I welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement today, and it was upsetting to see Labour Members laughing throughout the statement when bovine TB has such devastating effect on our farmers. Will the Secretary of State accept that the proposed cull will reduce BTB by only 16%, and could, if anything, spread and increase the disease across the UK? Will he reconsider his decision to start the cull next year, and instead focus all his efforts on developing and approving a cattle vaccination as soon as possible?
Mr Paterson
I am glad I have a few months to try and swing my hon. Friend round to my point of view, and I am sorry that she does not support it at the moment. I would not dismiss a 16% reduction in bovine TB in the light of a horrendous annual increase—we are looking at a 25% increase in the disease in the outlying areas. My hon. Friend, and Opposition Members, keep sniffing at the figure of 16% but, as one member of the farming community said, they would not sniff at a wage increase of 16% and it is a significant number. The Government believe that we will arrest the dramatic increase in the disease, and start to bring it down.
Simon Danczuk (Rochdale) (Lab)
How much public money has been spent so far on this misguided cull?
Mr Paterson
There are a number of figures, but I think I had better write to the hon. Gentleman to give him a proper reply. There will be some figures for the policing, which was touched on, and for work on the cull itself and compensation. I will return to the big figure: we spent nearly £100 million last year, and unless we get a grip on the disease, that will look like a round of drinks compared with the figure of £1 billion to which we are heading.
Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove) (LD)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. May I remind him that bovine TB is gradually spreading north through Cheshire, and may I draw his attention to the initiative of the Cheshire Wildlife Trust, which says that it will run a voluntary inoculation campaign? That has attracted the attention and support of local farmers. Can we use this pause to get behind that initiative and see whether it provides a way forward?
Mr Paterson
I thank my right hon. Friend. Similarly, in my patch in Shropshire—I was there only 10 days ago with my hon. Friends the Members for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) and for Ludlow (Mr Dunne)—a trial of injecting badgers is being conducted. Those trials are interesting; we will look with interest at the results, and I commend them. However, is it seriously a practical proposition to inject each of the nation’s 250,000 to 300,000 badgers every year, knowing that we cannot mend a diseased badger? Once a badger has the disease, we cannot get rid of that by injecting it. These are interesting trials; they may have some merit and I am not dismissive of them, but they are not a long-term answer.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
May I pay tribute to Dr Brian May? He took a great deal of time to brief Members of this House and I thank him for that. Will the Secretary of State comment on what contribution he thinks standards of animal husbandry might make when dealing with this problem, and say what assistance Members of this House can give to farmers in that regard?
Mr Paterson
I think I touched on that in my response to an earlier question. There is no doubt that if we can separate wildlife that have this extraordinary debilitating disease—I mentioned 300,000 colony forming units in 1 ml of badger urine—and if we can keep them out of cattle sheds, that obviously helps. However, we have a grass-based system, and for many months in the year, our cattle are out on grass. It is not realistic to live in the countryside and expect to separate cattle from badgers that are going out and hunting for worms. Badgers’ main food is worms, and they go on the ground where cattle are feeding. The hon. Lady is right to say that measures can be taken on farm buildings and it is a nice idea, but that is for the birds when cattle are spending a long time out in the fields, which is where they pick up the disease.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
The sniggers and chuckles from Opposition Members at the start of this statement were clearly despicable, but there is no doubt that there is a lot of concern among the general public about this issue. Can we ensure that over the next year we nail down the science, and engage with the public as much as possible to make the case in favour of this cull, if that is the Government’s view next year?
Mr Paterson
I thank my hon. Friend for his supportive comments. He is right: we need to win the argument in public and there is a clear argument to be made. I am repeating myself now, but if we look around the world, we see that must bear down on disease in wildlife—as happens in every other western country that I know of—including disease in cattle. That is the only way we will eradicate this disease.
Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
May I therefore be helpful to the right hon. Gentleman by asking him to publish all the scientific evidence on which he is relying to come to a decision? Will he agree to open his doors to scientists who take a contrary view, including those who believe the cull is a costly distraction from the nationwide challenge of TB control?
Mr Paterson
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I gave the explanation in my statement but would be happy to send him the numbers—[Interruption.] I cannot do any more to publish the information than say it in the House of Commons. Most of the information is already publicly available, but by all means, if he has not had time to find it on the internet, I shall send him a copy.
Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the blame for the vast incidence of bovine TB in this country and the intense misery it causes to my farmers in Devon can be laid substantially at the door of the previous Government, who did nothing over 13 years to have the courage to get a grip on this terrible disease?
Mr Paterson
My hon. Friend is right that the numbers are absolutely horrendous. In 1998, 4,102 reactors were slaughtered; last year, it was 26,000. Unless we get a grip, it will get worse.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
The Secretary of State talks about winning the public debate, but Lord Krebs, the leading scientist in this field, who oversaw the previous Government’s randomised badger cull trial, has described the current Government’s plan as a “crazy scheme”. Why does the Secretary of State not focus resources on vaccination and the biosecurity route that Lord Krebs recommends?
Mr Paterson
We have been round this course already. I recommend the hon. Lady goes back to Lord Krebs report of 1997. The executive summary, written by Lord Krebs, is a brilliant synopsis of the problem. He said that the evidence of a link between badgers and the disease was “compelling”. He is absolutely clear that there is a link. The debate is on how the cull should take place, which is what he has criticised. What we are proposing is pilots, and we believe we have come up with a more efficient and effective method. In case the hon. Lady missed the statement, I repeat that we are going for a much larger area with hard boundaries, such as major roads, motorways and rivers, and a more effective system of culling. That is entirely consistent with the scientific advice from Krebs and the RBCT.
Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for assisting me in trying to lose weight.
Farmers in Nottinghamshire find themselves in a fortunate position. The county is TB-free, so badgers are TB-free, but the disease is spreading towards us from Derbyshire. My farmers will be glad that the Secretary of State will use the whole toolbox to prevent their cattle becoming infected, but farmers in two-year and four-year testing parishes will want to know whether the testing intervals will be reduced in clean areas?
Mr Paterson
I do apologise, Mr Speaker. I was speaking to the Minister of State and missed my hon. Friend’s question at the end. Could he possibly pose it again?
Mr Spencer
There is a conspiracy to make me bob up and down.
Farmers in Nottinghamshire find themselves in a TB-free zone and currently undergo testing on a four-year or two-year cycle. They will be concerned that there will be an attempt to reduce the interval between tests in clean areas. Does the Secretary of State have any plans to do so?
Mr Paterson
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise that point. The annual testing that we glibly talk about poses an enormous burden on farmers and is a fraught event. Virtually the whole of the west of England is on annual testing, and he is absolutely right to fear for his farmers in Nottingham that the interval might be reduced, because putting a herd through the skin test is an horrendous experience. That is another good reason to get on top of the disease quickly, before it spreads into his area.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
Given the figures we have heard from the Secretary of State, why did his Department’s impact assessment say that the cost of the cull outweighs the benefit to both farmers and taxpayers?
Mr Paterson
We should be concerned about the cost of not doing the cull. The sums involved in our proposals are very modest compared with the cost of carting off 26,000 healthy cattle, and the number will grow every year. We would be heading to a bill of £1 billion—how many times have I said that, Mr Speaker? The hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but the problem is the result of the passive attitude of the Labour Government since 1997.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
The Secretary of State says he intends to press on with the cull regardless of strong scientific evidence and overwhelming public opinion against. Instead, will he take the advantage of the delay to meet the groups and scientists who are opposed? Without doing so, he looks arrogant as well as incompetent.
Mr Paterson
That was not a terribly accurate summary of what I have said. I have said that we will respect the science. Despite huge pressure from the NFU grass roots, which has been reflected by knowledgeable Government Members, the NFU has reluctantly written to me to say that it wants a postponement, because it cannot deliver 70%—I am respecting the science. I am more than happy to talk to anyone about the policy, including the hon. Gentleman and the shadow Secretary of State. If he knows scientists who want to talk to me, I will talk to them, but we are absolutely clear that we are following the scientific logic of the preceding trials in a methodical manner. We are respecting the science, which is why, with a heavy heart, we are accepting the NFU proposal and its request to delay.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
The Secretary of State likes to use figurative language, but he should be careful about buying a round of drinks on the taxpayer. The Department has had months. It knew months ago that the cull could not start until after the Olympics, as he said in his statement. He also said that a cull should have started in the summer to be effective, so why has the policy dragged on for month after month when there was never any realistic possibility of an effective cull this year?
Mr Paterson
No, that is not an accurate statement. There was a sensible delay at the request of the police because of the huge pressures they were under to deliver the Olympics and Paralympics. There were also various judicial processes, which I have outlined. It is worth taking time to think about the impact of the weather, which has made it difficult to organise things on the ground. What really tipped the balance was the accurate and scientifically based verification of the badger numbers, which convinced the NFU. The NFU has reluctantly requested that we postpone at this late stage—with the nights drawing on and as we get into the winter with cold weather predicted, when badgers stay underground—and that is exactly what has happened.
Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)
The Secretary of State has attempted to base his argument on science, but what does he say to Sir Patrick Bateson of the university of Cambridge and 30 other leading animal health scientists, who say his policy is a
“costly distraction from nationwide TB control”?
Was not his predecessor guilty of an appalling error when she decided to cut the budget for research into vaccination against bovine TB as a result of the comprehensive spending review?
Mr Paterson
That is wrong. We are spending £15.5 million over the next four years on vaccines. The debate in which the scientists have got themselves involved is not on whether removing diseased wildlife works. Going back to Lord Krebs’s report in 1997, everyone accepts that there are links from badgers to cattle, cattle to badgers, badgers to badgers and cattle to cattle. We know that that is how this horrible disease transmits itself. The debate is on how best to remove the wildlife. One of my most telling parliamentary questions showed that 57% of the traps were tampered with and 12% were stolen. That and the RBCT showed that that was not the most efficient system for removing the wildlife. We are taking on the logic in the full glare of scientific scrutiny, and seeing whether shooting is a more efficient method, and—I am saying this for about the sixth time—whether going for a larger 150 km area bounded by rivers and motorways is more effective.
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)
Many of my constituents have been in touch with me in recent days. I am sure they will have followed the Secretary of State’s albeit temporary U-turn with great interest, but there is also interest in how much money has been spent on preparations. The Secretary of State referred to the amount as a round of drinks within the wider context—I am not sure what clubs he drinks in. I know he is unable to give hon. Members the run of figures now, but could he commit to putting them in the House of Commons Library this afternoon?
Mr Paterson
Rather than give just a few numbers now, I am happy to put a comprehensive and clear statement in the Library outlining all the different costs—some costs will be on policing, some will be to do with DEFRA and some will be in compensation. However, I must pick on the hon. Gentleman’s use of the word “U-turn”. The statement is not a U-turn. The Government are absolutely determined, unlike the previous one, to bear down on TB, and we will bear down on TB in cattle and in wildlife. We will end up with a prosperous, successful cattle industry because of decisive, robust action by Conservative and Liberal Democrat Ministers in DEFRA.
Points of Order
(11 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Government Chief Whip came to the House to move the writ for the Corby by-election, with Louise Mensch applying to become the steward of the Manor of Northstead in Yorkshire. The Opposition Chief Whip then came to the House to apply for the writs for Cardiff South and Penarth, and for Manchester Central, with Tony Lloyd also applying to become the steward of the Manor of Northstead in Yorkshire. I put it to you, Mr Speaker, that it is not possible, and I do not think that Her Majesty has necessarily agreed, to have two stewards of her Manor of Northstead. The Opposition Chief Whip has therefore not moved the writ for Manchester Central properly, in that there can be only one steward—the steward, not a steward.
Mr Speaker
I am immensely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. He clearly takes a very keen interest in this matter, either on his own behalf, that of his Bosworth constituents or conceivably even Her Majesty. I may tell him that it is possible for there to be serial appointments to the office in question. I do not say that the hon. Gentleman’s interest in this matter is in any way anorakish, but it is certainly intense, and I hope that he will be satisfied when I tell him that the second appointment to the said office has the effect of causing the lapse of the first appointment. I hope that that has brought a little joy into his life.
Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. During Health questions, the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter), gave me an answer in which he confused two trusts and created another, which he called the Halton trust, that does not actually exist. I realise that he may never have been north of Watford, but is there any way in which you can get him to come to the House and correct the record? My constituents cannot rely on assurances given by a Minister who does not even know which trust he is dealing with.
Mr Speaker
The hon. Lady implies that she is seeking a correction of the record. The Minister, like all Ministers and Members, is responsible for the veracity of his own observations in this House. He will shortly hear—not least through the Deputy Leader of the House—about the point of order that she has raised. Meanwhile I hope she will be satisfied with the knowledge that she has made her point in her own way on the record. We will leave it there for today.
Careers Advice in Schools for 12-16 Year Olds
(11 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Gordon Birtwistle (Burnley) (LD)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require schools, together with local businesses and other sectors, to provide a comprehensive careers advice service to 12 to 16 year olds; and for connected purposes.
Over the past few years, I have discussed with businesses in Burnley future career paths for young people starting work with them. We have a serious skills gap in this country. I have looked at four major industries—the aerospace industry, the automotive industry, the green industries and the oil and gas industry, along with the chemical industry—which have advised me that they and their supply chains face a serious skills gap, not only now, but in the future. I have looked into this issue with regard to the careers advice given in schools.
There is a serious lack of careers advice given to 12 to 16-year-olds in most secondary schools. Up to now, there has been no comprehensive package to ensure every student is taught about the local employment and training opportunities from an early age so that they can see how their school studies directly correspond to the needs of local employers. Most careers advice is delivered by teachers with little or no experience outside teaching. They do it voluntarily and with some vigour, but they do not really understand the businesses in their local areas.
Careers advice is not given enough importance in schools, and there are few if any links with local employers. Local professionals do not visit schools, and time is limited for visits by students to local businesses. Careers advice is given too late to students, when they are about to leave school, but it should be given to young people from the age of 12 onwards. They do not need to make a decision then, but they need to know what careers will be available when they leave school. I am presently doing an Industry and Parliament Trust course with Total Oil, which has told me that it has more than 1,000 vacancies in the UK. I have been round lots of schools in Burnley and mentioned this to the young people, and not one has ever been advised about careers in the oil industry and, in particular, with Total.
Employers are also unsure what skills the future work force will have. They receive applications from students who clearly do not understand the industry in which they are applying to work. Students are unaware of the skills that they will need to carry out jobs in specific industries. They do not know what careers are available in other areas and have information given to them by teachers who have only the skills of the teaching profession. This has led to high youth unemployment, when there are many vacancies in industry.
I accept that the Government are doing a vast amount of work on encouraging young people to go into apprenticeships, and I support that wholeheartedly. In time, that will probably help to resolve some of these problems. But at the moment the careers advice being given in schools is not pointing young people to the careers available when they leave school.
I have a local company in my constituency called Aircelle. It is the biggest local employer, with more than 1,000 employees and a turnover of £100 million. It makes high-tech thrust reversers for the Rolls-Royce jet engines. Over the next two years, it has to increase its turnover to £250 million, but it is being held back by a lack of skilled people. It is suffering from a skills shortage, as is its supply chain. The company held an Aircelle inspiration day and invited 600 young people from various schools in Burnley to go and see how a jet engine thrust reverser is manufactured. Before they went, not one child understood where they were going, but when they left every one of them was amazed by what an engineering career involved. I hope that a lot of those young people will be inspired by that.
I would like each school to have a dedicated member of staff who is qualified and experienced in providing careers advice. I accept that not every school could fund a full-time careers post, but there is no reason why four or five schools could not get together and employ a qualified careers adviser. I do not doubt that budgets are tight, but schools now have extra budgets and the pupil premium, which they can invest in this advice. That is extremely important for young people leaving school and starting a career.
Vocational courses and apprenticeships should be pushed more. Careers advisers should be able to explain what apprenticeships are available. As I have said, there is the oil industry, the chemical industry, the aerospace industry, the automotive industry and so on. These are the businesses of the future and the businesses that this country does well in, but they are also the businesses that are being held back in this country by a lack of skills, not only in the capital companies, such as Rolls-Royce and Total, but in the supply chains that work for these companies and deliver the product. At the moment, we import more products in order to keep these businesses going than those businesses export in finished products. So we need to cut those imports, and we can do that if we have the people to do the jobs.
I would like Ofsted reports to take into account the work that schools are doing on careers advice. A lady in Burnley, Lesley Burrows, has started a company called Positive Footprints and set up a virtual and a visual jobcentre in a secondary school. The young people, when entering the school, have to go through this jobcentre. All over the walls of the entrance, she shows what jobs and careers are available. On the walls are shown actual jobs, and she stands there at her own expense, because the local county council will not fund her, which is absolutely ridiculous given what it would cost. She stands there, and if a particular student, whether 12, 13, 14, 15 or 16, wishes to find out more about careers, they can go to her and say, “I’ve seen a job on that wall. What is this industry? Please tell me, because I might like to do it. I might want to take GCSEs that make that possible.” I recommend that the Minister look into what this lady is doing.
I am delighted to put the Bill before the House. I hope it has the House’s full support and that we can create a school curriculum that includes a careers advice service—perhaps linking schools together and delivering it in partnership—that delivers the young people we need into the industries that we need. I do not want young people leaving school thinking, “Goodness me. I wish I’d done that, but I never knew about it.” That is the most important thing. Young people need to know what is available, rather than being told what might be available the day they walk out the school gates to find a job.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Gordon Birtwistle, John Man, Jake Berry, Jason McCartney, Ian Swales, Stephen Lloyd and Ms Gisela Stuart present the Bill
Gordon Birtwistle accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 30 November 2012, and to be printed (Bill 79).
HGV Road User Levy Bill (Ways and Means)
(11 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Norman Baker)
I beg to move,
That provision may be made for charging a duty of excise, to be known as HGV road user levy, in respect of heavy goods vehicles used or kept on public roads in the United Kingdom.
With permission, I would like to move that the House supports the introduction of legislation concerning a new levy for all heavy goods vehicles weighing 12 tonnes and over using the UK road network. We intend that the new levy will apply to all categories of public road in the UK and to both UK and foreign-registered HGVs. The introduction of the charge forms the commitment in the coalition agreement stating:
“We will work towards the introduction of a new system of HGV road user charging to ensure a fairer arrangement for UK hauliers.”
HGVs play a crucial role in our economy by supplying businesses and servicing customers. There are approximately 1.5 million trips by foreign-registered HGVs into the UK each year. Of course, that contributes to the well-being of our economy, but there has been an inequality for some time, in that UK hauliers are often charged when they travel abroad, through tolls and other charging schemes, whereas foreign hauliers can use the UK road network for no charge. This is an inequality that the coalition Government wishes to address through this legislation.
I believe that this levy, introduced alongside other measures, such as reductions in the HGV vehicle excise duty, which means that more than nine out of 10 vehicles will pay no more than now, will help the competitiveness of UK business, while ensuring that we continue to enjoy the benefits of free trade with Europe. My Department undertook consultation on this subject earlier this year that indicated that stakeholders, especially those in the logistics sector, support the planned changes. Subject to the legislation being passed, we plan to introduce the levy from April 2014.
I now wish to open the motion to the Floor, and at the end of the debate the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond), will respond to the points made.
Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
It is good to see a number of Members in the Chamber for this debate, especially the distinguished Chair of the Transport Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman), who is in her place, as ever. I am grateful for the Minister’s brief introductory remarks.
We support the motion in principle. Given that it is relatively unusual to debate the Ways and Means motion, which paves the way for the Second Reading debate, I hope that my comments will be in order. I will make some brief introductory comments and then look at the measures in the draft Bill—I would be surprised if the Bill did not closely follow the draft Bill, but judging from the written ministerial statement, that will become clear later today.
The Eurovignette directive covers this legislation. I must confess that I was tempted to look up the dictionary definition of “vignette”. I was pleased to see that it was
“a small illustration…which fades into its background without a definite border”.
That is clearly not a definition of the United Kingdom and does not take us any further forward.
Both main parties have promised these measures for more than 20 years, however, so I commend the coalition for bringing this one forward. We will be dealing with it over the next few months. I read recently, on the subject of the coalition, that the Lib Dems introduce the nice legislation and the Conservatives introduce the nasty legislation. I am not sure whether that is reflected in the surviving Lib Dem Transport Minister opening the debate and his Conservative colleague concluding it. The Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond), might have something to say about who has been pushing this measure within the Department. None the less, it is good that it is here.
The unfairness felt by the UK road haulage industry is well documented, and it has long pressed for this measure in order to defend British industry, protect UK roads and create a level playing field with European competitors. As colleagues will know, road haulage covers 68% of all goods moved within the UK, is represented by 34,000 workplaces and employs more than 220,000 people. The Freight Transport Association and the Road Haulage Association both support the measures—the RHA strongly and the FTA broadly, as its support is a little more qualified.
I shall come shortly to the questions of hypothecation and whether the money raised will be used for transport spending, which I understood was the original intention of the directive; of the impact on the Government’s policy of moving freight from road to rail; and of the implication for short sea shipping and using that to move freight around the country. I will want to make reference to the Road Safety Foundation reports, including the annual report launched in the other place last week by the noble Lord Dubs, the organisation’s chairman. I will also want to raise questions about how this role will impact on The Times cycling safety campaign, of which I know the Government are very supportive, as well as about the Government’s policy for the introduction of longer and heavier lorries, and how that fits in with the plan. I shall also deal with whether or not this measure might act as a disincentive for road haulage firms to employ green measures or procure green or greener vehicles. I shall come back to these issues later. Even in the proposed measures facilitated by this Ways and Means motion and the Bill to follow, as read in the draft Bill, there are some anomalies, which I shall come to in due course.
Will the Minister clarify, if he can, some of the proposals in the draft Bill and in the written ministerial statement? For example, clause 3(2) of the draft Bill says that the Secretary of State can delegate exemptions for “specified roads”, but there is not much information without the actual Bill before us or in the Library. The Minister might wish to explain which exemptions the Secretary of State will make for which specific roads; if not, we will certainly raise the issue in Committee.
Clause 4 of the draft Bill says that the levy is suspended
“if a vehicle is stolen”
until such time as it is recovered. It is not quite clear whether the recovery is by the police or the owner, or whether, if a vehicle is damaged or unable to be used, it means that the levy will be suspended or re-instigated when the vehicle is recovered—or whether that is entirely fair. These are points of detail.
In respect of the rebates that are covered in clause 7, three matters are worth mentioning. Subsection (5) states:
“The Secretary of State may specify conditions with which a person must comply before making an application for a rebate.”
The implication is that the Secretary of State is going to preview all applications, which is obviously never going to be the case, as it would not be possible for the Secretary of State to do that. The clause mentions that an administrative fee will be levied, again saying that the Secretary of State will determine each case—and happily that is going to be the case—so will the Minister outline the thinking behind the administrative fee and how much it would be? Finally on clause 7, subsection (9) states:
“Matters specified under this section must be published in whatever way the Secretary of State thinks appropriate.”
That is very wide, so I am sure the Minister will have some information about what that means.
Clause 9 provides that money
“is to be paid into the Consolidated Fund.”
Originally, there was an expectation in the European directive that the money raised would be hypothecated, at least in some way, for transport purposes. The Minister will know that the Road Safety Foundation published its annual report last week. It clearly indicates that road engineering can have “an extraordinary effect”—those are the words it uses, which I cited to the Secretary of State at Transport questions last Thursday morning—in reducing deaths and serious injuries. Simple measures such as road markings, traffic lights and barriers to prevent vehicles from careering down off different roads are ways of saving lives. The hypothecation of the levy into road safety measures was very much anticipated, but it is not quite clear whether that is going to be the case under the Bill or whether the provisions saying that the money will go into the Consolidated Fund mean that it will go into the Treasury, so that the Department for Transport will have to bid for its share in due course.
On other safety issues, the Government have clearly indicated that they want to introduce longer and heavier lorries on Britain’s roads. There is a system through which longer and heavier vehicles will pay a greater levy, so that poses the questions of whether some of this money will go to pay for the upkeep of Britain’s roads and how this will impact on the safety campaign that the Government strongly support. I know that the Under-Secretary made a strong speech in support of road safety last week, and particularly cycle safety. His hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker), who is no longer in his place, spoke at the “Love London, Go Dutch” cycling safety conference in Church House immediately after Transport questions last week. The Times campaign to which all parties have signed up says that we should spend more money on cycling safety. The question arises whether some of the money raised through this levy will go towards making cycling safer, particularly given that many more people are cycling today.
I would like to raise a question of principle about rail freight and short sea shipping. What are the Government’s policies on promoting rail freight and taking lorries off our roads whenever possible? What are the Government going to do to promote short sea shipping as an alternative to HGVs on our roads moving freight across the country as happens at the moment?
Clause 10 provides a power to stop by the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency. I went out with VOSA when I was the Minister with responsibility for road safety, so I know that it uses that power efficiently, effectively and diligently. I particularly remember being on the A13 when the inspector I was travelling with in his VOSA vehicle indicated that he was going to stop a particular vehicle and asked me whether I knew why he intended to stop it and take it into the inspection centre. As a good West Ham United supporter with one of my West Ham ties on, I said, “I think I know the reason. He’s got an Arsenal flag in the back of his cab.” The inspector looked at me and said, “No, Jim, that is not why we are stopping him.” I thought that was a fairly reasonable assumption; it certainly worked for me. VOSA is very effective at keeping our roads as safe as they are; the power to stop is a very important one. It is good to see it included in the draft Bill so that the levy that the Government intend to introduce can be enforced.
Clause 11 deals with the offence of
“using or keeping heavy goods vehicle if levy not paid”.
Subsection (3) states:
“A fine imposed under this section that would not otherwise be paid into the Consolidated Fund is to be paid into the Consolidated Fund.”
That reinforces my point about how the money raised is likely to be spent.
A written ministerial statement was published this morning by the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Wimbledon, which says:
“A private company will be contracted by the Department for Transport to administer the payment scheme for foreign-registered HGVs. The contractor will be required to maintain an electronic database of foreign-registered HGVs for which a levy has been paid.”
I wonder whether the Minister is in a position to clarify some of the details of the expected size of the organisation that he anticipates will be needed to do this task. How will the costs be calculated? Does he view the tendering arrangements as a bonus to the Treasury, or will it be cost-neutral? Have companies already indicated interest such a contract or do they already exist? Importantly, what technology might it be anticipated will be used for identifying foreign HGVs when they come into this country?
Let me conclude with six key questions. The background papers indicate that 98% of UK hauliers will see no more extra costs than around £50 a year, and that 94% will see a zero increase in their costs. Does the Minister have any information on the likely cost for the 2% for whom there is no information? At £1,000 per vehicle per annum, some haulage firms might be expected to pay a considerable amount of money. I hope the Minister can tell us whether any assessment has been carried out of the impact on the UK’s road haulage industry.
Secondly, the introduction is being phased between UK and non-UK vehicles. Is any loss of revenue to the Treasury expected as a result of the staging of the introduction of the levy, as and when it happens?
Thirdly, will the lower VED for UK vehicles act as a disincentive for haulage companies to procure greener or green vehicles, or it is anticipated that the size of such vehicles will mean that they would not be covered by the reduced VED? Has the Minister conducted an assessment for the industry in that regard?
Fourthly, will the Government’s decision last year to opt out of the European directive on cross-border enforcement of traffic offences impact on these new measures? I do not think we opposed that, but we were certainly worried about it at the time. Will not sharing that cross-border enforcement data make implementing, monitoring and enforcing the levy easier, harder or neither?
My fifth question is more general. Is the introduction of the HGV levy charging scheme likely to lead to the wider use of road charging schemes? Is this just a taster of Government policy for the future?
Finally, UK companies involved in haulage on European routes will be charged for a six-month or annual purchase of VED, which will incorporate the levy. European hauliers coming into the UK will be charged by the day, by the month or however else, so if UK companies have vehicles on the continent that are being charged to use European roads will they be able to apply for a rebate when those vehicles are not using UK roads? If the principle that one should be charged for using the roads is adopted, which I am sure it will be, it seems unfair that UK hauliers should be charged for using UK roads when they are using European roads and being charged over there.
In conclusion, we intend to support the motion and certainly hope to be able to support the Bill on Second Reading. We will want to examine some of the issues I have raised today in Committee. I do not expect the Minister to be able to respond to every point I have raised today, as this is obviously an unusual way of doing business. I was advised by the appropriate authorities, however, that I could raise issues that I would be likely to raise on Second Reading. Having done so, I do not anticipate raising them again on Second Reading and, given that you have not stopped me making any of my remarks, Madam Deputy Speaker, I must assume that I have been totally in order. I look forward to the Minister’s response in due course.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
I am delighted to support this excellent initiative. Of course, the policy was a commitment of ours at the last election and it is always a joy to stand in the Chamber and deliver on a manifesto promise. I know that it is supported on both sides of the House and was in other parties’ manifestos, too.
We must do more to support the sector across the UK. In the area I represent, logistics and transport are important and employ many people. We have many hauliers locally and I know that they will welcome the Bill. The initiative is good news not only for hauliers and people who work in the industry, but, I hope, for residents in my area. I hope that the Minister will announce how the money will be spent. I represent the port of Goole and most of the arterial routes into the ports of Hull, Immingham and Grimsby and our roads are often well-used by HGVs, which cause considerable damage. We get a lot of complaints from residents about HGVs, so let us hope that once the money has been raised it will be invested back into our road networks, particularly in Brigg and Goole. I do not yet see the Minister nodding but I am sure he will confirm that later.
There is a question of fairness as British hauliers who go to Europe have to pay tolls, which are not levied on any great scale in this country. It is only right that foreign vehicles operating here should pay to use our roads.
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way so soon. He is making a very good speech and he is right to say that the initiative has broad support on both sides of the House, including in my constituency, where hauliers serve Tata Steel, Rockwool Ltd and others. The Minister is introducing a complex little device, so will the hon. Gentleman urge him to think again? Some UK hauliers of certain types and sizes might lose out, or might at least not gain all the benefits that the Minister has intended, so he might want to take some time to reconsider and tie up all the little loopholes.
Andrew Percy
I feel that I have been a conduit for the hon. Gentleman’s contribution to the debate, which is, I think, addressed specifically to the Minister. It is a joy to have been that conduit. The hon. Gentleman has made an important point and I have no doubt that my hon. Friend the Minister will respond to it.
I was talking about the importance of the sector to the Humber, and it is good to see my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), in his place. As we jointly represent the steel works, he will be able to confirm the importance of the sector to our area and the fact that it will see a great deal of growth over the next few months. I am never one to miss an opportunity to promote a good local news story, and in my constituency a studio school is about to be established with a specific focus on the logistics sector. Those involved will be delighted to know that our UK haulage industry will receive a shot in the arm from the proposal.
Of course, we had other good news locally on the Humber bridge tolls not so long ago. I will not miss the opportunity to promote another good news story, and I am sure that the Minister, whose Department was so involved in that decision, will be delighted to know that since the Government provided £150 million to halve those tolls, the most recent figures on road use across the Humber bridge have shown an 8% increase. That greatly exceeds expectations. Hauliers report that they can now use that bridge to get their goods to the other side of the Humber divide.
Andrew Percy
I will, and I look forward to being a conduit for the hon. Gentleman yet again.
Huw Irranca-Davies
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be not only a joyful conduit but a joyful supporter of my argument. He makes a valid point about tolls and I welcome his comments about the absence of tolls in his area. The Severn bridge toll, which is paid on the way into Wales but not on the way out, is a significant drain on the south Wales economy. Does he support those of us who have been campaigning for years to get rid of it?
Andrew Percy
I am afraid I am not an expert on south Wales, having only visited once, but the hon. Gentleman has made his point. In the Humber region, people pay to travel in both directions, so we do not have any argument about whether people pay to get in and out of Yorkshire, whereas a debate does take place between Wales and England. I shall avoid stepping into any debate about local issues in south Wales. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will understand.
The Minister will know that although this provision is welcome, the sector faces considerable challenges. I meet representatives of the sector regularly, and only this summer I was chatting to a local haulage firm at the Ousefleet show. The continuing challenges faced by the sector, particularly in the light of rising fuel costs, were explained to me. I know that the sector will support this measure, however.
It is something of a sadness that we must take this approach, however, and it demonstrates the all-encompassing grasp of the European Union—I cannot miss the opportunity to have a bit of a bash at the EU—that we must follow such a convoluted route, creating a scheme that applies to our hauliers and then providing them with a rebate through VED. That shows how we have lost control of our destiny in this country. We should be able to support our hauliers directly if we want to, and we should be proud to say that.
I do not want to say a great deal more on this, although I think that I have spoken longer than the Minister did—not longer than the shadow Minister, I have to say—but I look forward to contributing again on this subject in the future. I have just two questions for the Minister, one of which I have already asked, but I will pose it again. What will happen to the money that is raised from this? Where will it be spent? Both geographically and within Government Departments, where can we expect that funding to be spent? Will the Minister also confirm that we seem to have an increasing number of vehicles that are dual-registered? Has any assessment been made of whether the measure will result in more or less dual registration? With those few comments, I will end by saying that I welcome this decision and look forward to the Government’s making progress with the matter.
Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome the opportunity to discuss this important issue. It is one that the Transport Committee has considered over a long period. We are nothing if not persistent, so I am glad that we are now not just discussing it but talking about implementing something to change the situation.
The proposal does two things. It recognises the importance of road haulage as an industry in its own right and its significance to our economy, and it seeks a fairer deal for British hauliers. Both objectives are extremely important. The Transport Committee has considered the issue in a major way on several occasions. We conducted a study of freight transport in the last Parliament. We produced a report on road taxes, fees and charges in July 2009, and the levy featured prominently in that. The Committee returned to the issue in July this year, when we again considered freight, charges on freight and foreign hauliers.
The proposal deals with three inter-related issues: one of them is made explicit, but the other two are important and need to be considered in relation to the provisions of the Bill when it is published. Essentially the proposal is about road taxation and the problem of differential tax regimes which put foreign-registered vehicles at an advantage against British registered ones, which has long been a concern and needs to be addressed. Indeed, we have been too long in addressing it; it adds an additional cost to British hauliers.
When the Committee looked at this issue in 2009, we were told that foreign-registered hauliers should have paid £300 million in taxes to cover the costs that they created in the impact on roads, pollution and congestion and in environmental damage. I suspect that that figure has not changed in any significant way since that time. Another background issue does not appear to be mentioned in the proposal, but I am sure that the Minister will wish to comment on it. It goes back to the broader issue of unfairness in the regimes that deal with British-registered and European-registered hauliers. It is the issue of cabotage and the ability of foreign-registered hauliers to conduct domestic haulage in this country when British-registered hauliers have difficulty doing this in other countries.
In July this year we heard once again from the Road Haulage Association and other organisations about the extension of cabotage and the destabilising impact of foreign-registered hauliers becoming involved in our domestic haulage market, not necessarily in the long term but perhaps for a relatively short term. I understand that discussions about cabotage are taking place in Europe and they will have an impact on the haulage industry in respect of the issue that is at the heart of the Bill that is to be published. I ask the Minister to comment on that, if not today then at a later stage. It is part of the general picture.
Safety is another of the background issues. My right hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) mentioned it, but I want to refer to it in a slightly different way. One of the concerns that the Select Committee heard was that foreign-registered hauliers might have lower costs because they had lower safety standards, putting British hauliers at a competitive disadvantage. I and, I am sure, other hon. Members want to raise safety standards, not go to a lowest common denominator, but safety is an issue. There is another question about increasing safety standards for European hauliers.
There is also the question of enforcement of debts that arise in one country but perhaps need to be collected in another. The cross-border directive has not been signed by the Government and again there is a question about how that is going to be realised. Then there is the implementation of the proposed measures. The Vehicle and Operator Services Agency is to be responsible for implementation. Will it have the resources to do it? The Committee will be looking at the broader issue of VOSA in the very near future, but that has to be one of the issues.
In summary, I welcome the proposals. Some significant questions need to be asked once the Bill has been published in full and as it proceeds through the House. We must consider time-based charging and why it is thought the best way to address the issue. We should also look at whether the proposals are equitable in relation to UK hauliers. Will the means for collecting the fees be workable? We were told that one of the reasons why the previous Government did not proceed with legislation on this issue was that they felt the cost would be too high and it was not practical. Have those concerns been considered? Is there a way of dealing with them?
So the questions are about resources, VOSA, cross-border issues, cabotage rules and how this relates to European legislation as a whole. I would like to have an assurance that in dealing with European legislation we do not speak as if we were passive recipients of what someone else does. We are part of the framing of that legislation and we should play an active part in pursuing our interests.
I welcome the proposals. There are some significant issues that need to be considered in detail in Committee and elsewhere in the House. I hope that the Transport Committee will feel that we are getting more success in seeing some of our concerns not only listened to—they were listened to before—but acted on. I hope that it will happen in the near future.
Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)
I am happy to make my contribution to this somewhat technical though important debate. It is gratifying when matters contained in the manifesto or the coalition agreement have been acted on and we, as the governing party as part of a coalition, have delivered on our commitments. This is an instance in which we can be proud of ourselves for having delivered. It is bizarre, as the shadow Minister said, that we have been talking about this for more than 20 years. It seems a rather long time to be discussing something as technical and clear cut as this.
I fully support the levy. It will level the playing field. My constituency is dependent on good transport infrastructure. Spelthorne is very connected to Heathrow, but it also has links with the M3 and the M4 and it is within the M25. This legislation is exactly the kind of thing that haulage businesses in my constituency and neighbouring constituencies want to see. It sends a signal; they see a Government who are very keen on promoting business and enterprise and who are willing to defend the interests of British business against competition, which is laudable. For too long, British firms have been paying road tolls abroad while foreign operators were largely exempt from such taxation in the United Kingdom. It boils down to a simple proposition: is it right that foreign operators do not contribute to the maintenance of the roads they use? Contribution to the upkeep of the roads is not even a competition point; it is simply a matter of equity.
With regard to hypothecation, I am keen that the money that goes into the capital fund stays within the Transport budget, particularly the roads budget. I was lucky enough to go on a Transport Committee trip to Switzerland, where we saw the rail infrastructure and how it was financed. Rail infrastructure in that country is determined by hypothecated funds raised from taxation. That seems a good principle for the funding of infrastructure, and gets rid of any need to borrow money. The Swiss have a balanced budget at every stage of their infrastructure development. I am not making a party political point, but given our recent experience we could learn considerably from that funding model, so I am pleased that we have set aside a fund. I urge the Minister to be scrupulous about using the money for roads.
Everyone knows that haulage services are important to the smooth functioning of the economy. The transportation of goods is exactly what we as an advanced economy should be fostering. I am pleased that members of the Road Haulage Association are keen on the legislation and that we have managed to satisfy their concerns.
Generally, the measure is a step in the right direction. I hope the Minister will clarify some of the points and queries raised by Members on both sides of the House; it is rare that we come together to agree on something that will be helpful and useful to all our constituents and to the wider interests of our country.
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)
I am delighted to speak on behalf of hauliers not only from my constituency and nearby Bridgend, but throughout south Wales. People often forget that the M4 corridor in south Wales is still one of the greatest manufacturing hubs in the nation of Wales, and probably the United Kingdom. There is a wide variety, ranging from the very modern heavy manufacturing—I was tempted to say the very old—of Tata Steel, whose investment sustains many jobs for local hauliers, to Rockwool, the green insulation company in Heol-y-Cyw in my constituency. There are many other manufacturers—for example, in life sciences—and they all use various types of road haulage, sustaining jobs in the south Wales economy.
I echo the sentiments of the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng). The measure is broadly welcomed by all on the green Benches. Resolving the matter has not been unduly complex, given that we are dealing with the interpretation of European legislation in the UK, and the Minister is to be commended for bringing forward proposals. I hope to ask a number of constructive questions, both as someone speaking up for hauliers in my area and as a keen cyclist on the roads of London and in south Wales—the Minister will know where I am heading when I say that.
I commend the work of members of the Transport Committee, in particular my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman). She mentioned the number of reports that the Committee has turned out on issues pertinent to the measure, including most recently a report on foreign hauliers in the UK and how we get the level playing field that everyone wants. The Committee has also examined road charging and freight transport.
In a genuinely constructive way, may I ask the Minister to turn in his response to those who may fall outside the mechanism? I appreciate the complexity and difficulty of trying to devise the right mechanism, but my understanding—the Minister can correct me if I am wrong—is that as many as 15,000 smaller, greener, lighter haulage vehicles may not benefit from the provisions; for example, in Pencoed in my patch, there is a light haulier who may fall entirely outside the measure. If those 15,000 represent 5% or 6% of the whole UK fleet, they are a significant minority, and I suspect they may look with envy at the large hauliers who deal with Tata Steel in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Dr Francis) or with Rockwool in Heol-y-Cyw in my patch. Is there something more the Minister can do to help the small hauliers? They face the same problems and challenges. He may reply that the Government have looked at every possible avenue and it cannot be done, in which case perhaps he could explain why.
Hauliers in my area are specifically asking for clarity about the new levels of vehicle excise duty. I think the Minister is likely to respond by saying, “That’s beyond my payroll. You’re going to have to wait for the Budget.”
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Stephen Hammond)
indicated assent.
Huw Irranca-Davies
The Minister is already nodding. I am slightly disappointed, because hauliers want an assurance that under the provisions VED will be cut proportionately to the levy and that they will actually benefit. I have been in the same situation as the Minister, and it would be great if he could assure them that come what may, there will be proportionality and that people will gain, or at least not lose out.
The measure is all about creating a level playing field with our European counterparts, because we have been disadvantaged. Can the Minister give us an assurance that UK hauliers will not lose out? If many will gain, but some will unfortunately lose out compared with others, can he tell us why that is and who they may be? I suspect I may have difficult messages for some of the hauliers in my patch who assume they will all be winners under the mechanism.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point about the message we need to deliver to our constituents. Does he recognise though that it should not be about the UK being a winner, but making sure that we get money from foreign users? That is the key point.
Huw Irranca-Davies
The hon. Lady makes a good point. It is not a case of us being winners. I think the hon. Member for Spelthorne slightly misspoke earlier when he talked about putting protection in place. As the hon. Lady says, it is not to do with protection for us, but with creating a level playing field. I am sure the hon. Gentleman did not intend to suggest that we want fortress mechanisms; it is about getting a level playing field.
Kwasi Kwarteng
As an attentive observer of and participant in our debates, the hon. Gentleman will appreciate that in my speech I suggested that foreign operators should contribute to their use of the roads. That is the best argument in favour of the legislation.
Huw Irranca-Davies
I could not agree more; the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) make very good points.
On the issue of a level playing field, can the Minister give us clarity on when the start date will be? What is his best guess at the moment as to when the scheme will be introduced for hauliers not based in the UK? I suspect that this is a complex issue, but while I welcome the provision, it would be great if we could have the same date right across the board. If we cannot, why not, and can he give clarity on why not? There are worries that the date may be six months or a year afterwards, or—heaven help us—after the end of this Parliament; at least in this Parliament we know when that will be. Can the Minister give us an assurance that the measure will at least be in place before then? In fact, more accurately, could he tell us when it will be in place? All of us speak to haulage associations in our area; it would be great to get that accuracy for them.
I have a question for the Minister, for whom I am fearful. When I was a Minister, I was frequently told by officials, “Don’t do that, Minister; you could well be open to European challenge.” Sometimes, I would get a risk assessment put in front of me saying, “Actually, it is worth the risk—go ahead.” Has the Minister had those discussions with the Commission, and even if his officials are not happy, is he confident that the decision to have different charging levels for UK and non-UK-based heavy goods vehicles, because of the issues to do with daily, weekly and monthly rates being applied differently and being available differently, will not in any way be challenged on the grounds that it is discriminatory? I hope it will not, but I seek clarity and confidence from him on that point.
My hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), in his splendid opening speech, touched on issues relating to how the measure will be enforced. If I may drive home that point, there are some concerns from hauliers in my area that it may be more difficult to enforce the mechanism that the Minister is bringing forward now that his Government have opted out of the EU directive on cross-border enforcement. I would have thought that that would have been a highly useful mechanism through which to ensure that the measure is in place across the UK and elsewhere. In bringing forward this mechanism, has he had a risk assessment done that says that that does not increase the risk of non-enforcement?
I am genuinely not making a political point, but we know that some of the enforcement will be done by our police. I know that the Minister will say that the issue is not police numbers, but how and where we deploy them, but we face a cut of thousands of officers—I think the current running total is a cut of about 15,000 police officers by 2015. Put that on top of the fact that we are opting out of the EU directive on cross-border agreement and I worry a little, even if the Minister does not, about how we will enforce the measure properly, so that we see a level playing field in practice, as well as on parliamentary paper.
Finally, I turn to an issue that I mentioned at the beginning of my speech. I am a very keen cyclist, and a member of Sustrans—I do not know whether I have to declare that as an interest. My family and I cycle extensively, including in London, where hauliers hoot their horns and yell at me, “What the hell are you doing cycling on the roads in London?”. It amazes me; I have every bit as much of a right to use the roads as they do. There are extremely responsible hauliers and drivers out there, but we know how many injuries and fatalities there are. The Labour party has believed for some time that some of the benefit from the mechanism that the Minister is introducing—some of the levy—should be put towards working with the industry, rather than mandating them, to try to roll out technologically advanced measures that allow hauliers to see pedestrians and cyclists at the side of their vehicle. That would be a major step forward. Too often, around the streets of London and elsewhere, we see sites where there have been inadvertent collisions between soft cyclists and hard vehicles, marked by so-called ghost cycles—bicycles painted white and attached to railings in memory of someone who has lost their life. It would be very welcome if we looked at that.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
I want to support the very important points that my hon. Friend makes. I witnessed a cyclist being crushed by a lorry, and am sitting in on the coroner’s investigation; the sort of practical suggestions that he makes would be welcomed by cyclists and their families.
Huw Irranca-Davies
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I think that I can understand the Government’s opposition; they do not want to put undue burdens on the haulage industry, which, now as always, is suffering stress. I suggest that the Government should not have a closed mind on the subject, but should be open to the idea that, working with the industry, we could roll the technology out over time—and not a long period of time, either. Hauliers frequently renew their fleets; as fleets are renewed, we can roll the technology out. What we are talking about is eliminating blind spots. In London, one sees cyclists in the established blue cycle lanes; someone driving a lorry cannot see the fact that as they turn left, they veer right across that blue lane. Unfortunately, as my hon. Friend says, occasionally they injure a cyclist badly, or even cause a fatality. The technology is there, and there are not massive costs. I think that we could roll it out as fleets renew.
Jim Fitzpatrick
My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. To reinforce his point, some companies have done sterling work in advancing the technology that he mentions. I know that the Minister is familiar with Cemex; after one of its drivers was involved in a fatality, it pioneered technology that it uses in the warning and alarm systems in its cement vehicles. It is doing everything that it can to prevent a recurrence of such an incident. Some in the industry are working hard to achieve aims that the whole House would support.
Jim Fitzpatrick
I should just correct my hon. Friend: I am not right hon. The Transport Committee Chair kindly promoted me. The Minister may want to put a word in for me, but I am not right hon.
Huw Irranca-Davies
As a full-time politician, I am more than happy to over-inflate anybody’s ego at any moment, but I will certainly put a word in for my hon. Friend, right as he was in his point. Rolling out improvements through fleet modernisation would create jobs in the UK relating to the manufacture and installation of those technologies. It is a win-win.
That is not my main point. My main point is that I welcome the Bill, but the Minister could do more, by tweaking and refining it, to make sure that there are not people who lose out while others gain from a level playing field; in so doing, he could take the opportunity to think bike.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and point out that I have been a holder of a certificate of professional competence in road haulage operations for more than 20 years.
I welcome this proposal, as other Members have done. My constituency of North West Leicestershire is in the middle of the country, and is home to East Midlands airport, the second busiest cargo airport in the country, handling some 310,000 tonnes of flown cargo every year. More than a third of the private sector jobs in my constituency are in distribution, or are distribution-related, and as we have no railway station, road haulage is an extremely significant part of our local economy.
The UK road haulage industry is of huge importance to not just my constituency but the whole UK, with 2.6 million people employed in the logistics industry. As the shadow Minister mentioned, more than 65% of all freight is transported by road; last year, that amounted to some 1.5 billion tonnes. By comparison, just 11% is transported by rail. For those who are wondering where the other 24% went, that is transported by pipeline or coastal and inland waterway shipping. Almost all goods involve some element of road transport.
I have spoken to road hauliers regularly, both in my previous business career and in my present role representing them in Westminster. As has been said, the consensus on the issue of foreign-registered heavy goods vehicles can be summed up very simply in one phrase: hauliers simply want a level playing field.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), who is no longer in the Chamber, said, road hauliers in the UK are at a huge disadvantage compared with our European neighbours when it comes to diesel prices. It is estimated that on average road hauliers pay 25p more for a litre of road fuel. When UK lorries go abroad, there are literally dozens of toll roads in countries such as France, Italy and Spain, whereas in this country, apart from bridge crossings, which we have heard about, there is only the London congestion charge and the M6 toll, which can be avoided.
Clearly, charging foreign-registered hauliers would be a step in the right direction if we are to close the gap and address the advantage that they enjoy over UK-based hauliers. Because EU law dictates that the charge has to be applied to UK hauliers too, I welcome the UK Government’s proposal to reduce domestic vehicle excise duty to ensure that this is not just a stealth tax on haulage companies.
I welcome the proposal to make foreign-registered vehicles contribute to the upkeep of UK roads. I remind the House of the costs generated by foreign hauliers as a result of accidents, which have been mentioned. A report by the Accident Exchange estimates that accidents involving foreign lorries on UK motorways cost our economy approximately £57 million a year, which represents an increase of almost a third compared with the 2010 figures.
Foreign lorries are responsible for just over 3% of motorway accidents, which means that one in 31 motorway accidents, according to the report, are the fault of a foreign lorry driver. As the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) said, side-swipe crashes are the most common accident: drivers disappear into a left-hand-drive lorry’s blind spot, and are hit when it changes lanes. According to estimates, costs were not recovered from the at-fault foreign party in 28% of accidents last year because of factors such as invalid insurance policies, untraceable owners, drivers leaving false details, or just failing to pull over at all. I hope that the Minister will help us to address this issue.
There is no doubt that left-hand drive foreign-registered vehicles are far more likely to be involved in accidents on UK roads than their domestic competitors. The Vehicle and Operators Services Agency reports that foreign-registered vehicles are far more likely to be found on inspection to be in breach of rules on drivers’ hours and to have maintenance defects.
As has been said, the Freight Transport Association supports these measures, and welcomes the publication today of a parliamentary Bill to introduce a charge for foreign-registered vehicles that use UK roads. It says:
“Under the HGV Road User Levy Bill all heavy goods vehicles of 12 tonnes and over will be required to pay a levy before being able to travel on UK roads.”
It also says:
“FTA has supported the idea of a charge on foreign vehicles for many years as a way of addressing at least partly the competitive differences between British registered operators and foreign-registered vehicles.”
However, it imposes three important conditions on its support and, if the House will indulge me, I should like to go through them. First, the cost of the levy must be fully recompensed for UK operators by an equivalent reduction in vehicle excise duty. The FTA says:
“The Bill makes explicit that VED will be the means by which rebates will be made to make the overall scheme virtually cost-neutral for UK operators. The precise reductions in VED to bring this about will not be known until the Budget Statement in 2014 where they will be included as part of the Finance Bill.”
I hope that the Minister will give us more details on that. The FTA goes on to say:
“An analysis published by the Department in February of this year showed that about 6,500 vehicles fell into bands where VED rates were already too low to fully offset the cost of the levy before the applicable EU minimum rate was reached. Of these about half were 28 tonne 2+2 articulated vehicles.”
May I point out to the Minister that in nearly all cases the additional cost could be reduced to less than £10 if vehicles are down-plated into the next VED rate band? I hope that he will bear that in mind and that we will have some answers on that issue.
The FTA’s second condition is that the cost and administrative burden of paying the levy must be no greater than those involved in acquiring a normal VED licence. I am pleased that the levy will be administered for UK operators by the DVLA. The Bill makes it clear that the levy will be paid in a single transaction and for the same time period as VED, with levy rates being calculated automatically. The “single transaction” approach means that there will be virtually no additional costs for the domestic haulage industry.
The FTA’s third condition is that there must be meaningful and financially significant penalties for operators who evade the charge. The Bill sets out a detailed enforcement strategy for non-payment of the levy and for mis-payment at the wrong rate. Because each payment will be vehicle-specific, the Bill commits the DVLA to using automatic number plate recognition technology to target vehicles present in the country for which no levy has been paid. There will be on-the-spot fines and a fine of up to £5,000 upon conviction in court. I should like to ask the Minister how non-UK-registered vehicles that have left the country and have not paid the levy will be pursued.
A few issues need to be resolved, so I shall put some questions to the Minister. How will charging work in Northern Ireland across the land border with the Republic of Ireland? How will holders of reduced pollution certificates be compensated through replacement grants? Detailed arrangements have been announced for tow-bar combinations and their inclusion in the scheme. As I have said, we need to look at operators who are using the types of vehicle where there will be a higher net charge, particularly the operators of 28-tonne 2+2 artics. The FTA said:
“Overall, we are pleased with the Government’s plans to address this long-standing disparity between UK and foreign vehicle costs. Our main concerns seem to have been met and we will investigate further outstanding issues with members”.
In conclusion, the Bill is good for the road haulage industry, which is hugely important to my constituency and to the whole country. It is essential that we have a profitable, vibrant and safe road haulage industry for the country now and for our long-term economy.
Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)
I did not plan to make a speech, but I have a question for the Minister. Because the introductory remarks by the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker), were so extraordinarily short—less than a minute, I believe—I did not have an opportunity to ask it earlier.
I welcome the Bill. Anything that provides a level playing field that offers certainty is good not just for the haulage sector—it will be welcomed by the many professional haulage companies in my constituency—but for manufacturing, which relies on those hauliers, and, I do not doubt, for goods coming in and out of port. It will be really important when boxed stuff is being moved. I wonder, however, whether the measure contains an inadvertent loophole. The provision dealing with the time limit on recovery for underpayments says:
“No proceedings may be brought…by the Secretary of State for the recovery of any underpayment”
of the levy
“after the end of the period of 12 months beginning with the end of the period in respect of which the levy was paid.”
I wonder what that means for the very small number of bad hauliers, whether based in the UK or overseas, who try not to pay and think that if they can get away with it for 12 months, they will not have to pay at all. What is the thinking on this sunset clause on the recovery of underpayments? Has the Minister—I saw him nodding and smiling sagely—thought about looking at that again?
I agree with the hon. Members for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) and for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) and although I welcome the measure in principle, it would be far, far better if the vehicle excise duty rates that will apply when the Bill is introduced, were known. I hope—I shall simply reinforce what others have said—that the Minister will reiterate what has been said before, and say that the net impact will be an almost zero increase for home-based hauliers, which is precisely what we need to achieve the level playing field that the Bill is designed to deliver.
Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)
I am pleased to have the opportunity to make a short contribution to this useful debate. Road haulage is an issue of some interest to me, first as a proud member of the Transport Committee. It is, as the Chairman of the Committee, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman), said, a subject that we have studied on a number of occasions. I will not detain the House by repeating the points that she made. Secondly, given the location of Milton Keynes and its strategic position, we are home to a large number of logistics and distribution companies. It is a hugely important sector of the local economy. That is in addition to the usual range of small and medium-sized hauliers to be found in urban areas throughout the country.
Like many Members, I have long been aware of the competitive disadvantage that our hauliers have faced. I have received a considerable volume of representations from hauliers based in my constituency that there is a need to end this unfair situation. That covers a number of points. First, as my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) identified, it is a point of principle that people who use our roads should make a contribution to their maintenance and to expanding the road network. That is a basic common-sense view that is shared across the House.
Secondly, many haulage companies operate on very tight margins. They make only a small profit on the goods that they transport, and when they are faced with unfair competition, that can be a critical determinant of whether they prosper or go under. I had conversations with a local firm that did go under, partly because of the unfair competition that it faced.
A large part of the problem arises because modern lorries have such huge fuel tanks that it is perfectly possible for them to be filled up abroad and drive for considerable distances round our roads without ever having to fill up here. There is therefore no gain for the British Exchequer from duty paid. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside mentioned the cabotage problem. Because of the fuel advantage, they can bid effectively for UK domestic haulage as well as international transport.
The strength of feeling that has been expressed to me by local hauliers is borne out by the strength of the responses to the Government’s consultation document. Well over two thirds of respondents agree that it is a serious problem that must be addressed. I was struck by one of the comments, which was that we need to get on with this quickly. It is an issue that has been debated for many years under Governments of both colours, and I am delighted that the Government have finally found a way to navigate their way round the labyrinthine complexities of EU law. I will not touch on some of the technical issues that might arise, but I hope those can be ironed out quickly when the Bill reaches its later stages.
I want briefly to pick up a point made by the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick)—I was about to say for West Ham, but I think that is a football matter, rather than a constituency one. He touched on the topic of rail freight. There is an important link between the measure, rail freight and strategic freight transportation. I have long been of the view that road freight and rail freight need to operate in tandem. Rail freight is viable and makes sense when goods are transported over a long distance. It is in everyone’s interest that the road part of haulage, when goods are distributed from rail freight terminals, is done as efficiently as possible. It goes without saying that it is good for the environment and for solving congestion on roads if we can transport more long-distance goods by rail and free up capacity for the shorter distances by road.
I have had some concern that because we have been at a competitive disadvantage in road haulage, that undermines the potential for international rail freight from the continent to this country and in reverse. I was on the Transport Committee’s visit to Europe last week, looking at rail issues. There we learned that in the Netherlands there is a new dedicated rail freight line across into Germany. In Switzerland new tunnels have been built through the Alps to aid freight travel from the north to the south of Europe. The potential difficulty is that if all these goods are transported by rail through Europe and they get to Rotterdam, say, and suddenly it is in the interest of haulage to switch to road because it can travel to the UK and pay a very low charge, that surely undermines the whole concept of an integrated freight system throughout Europe.
The measure before us will go some way to addressing that possible problem. We can look strategically at freight across rail and road in the European context. There are ambitious plans to improve rail freight, and plenty of spare capacity through the tunnel. There are new types of freight trains where the lorries can drive on to the low-slung rail wagons, which is extremely efficient. That may not be the main point of the measure but I hope it will be an additional benefit from it. I am delighted to support it today. I hope it makes speedy progress through the House. The subject that has been kicked around for far too long. Our hauliers have been at a disadvantage for far too long and it is about time we put that right.
Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)
I add my support for the measure, echoing Members across the Chamber. Call me biased for saying so, but my constituency produces probably the finest limestone in the world. The quarries try to move much of their product out by rail, but that is not possible, so the majority is moved out by road using their own wagons and by owner-drivers. More worryingly, there is an influx of foreign wagons. The measure is fantastic because it gives us the level playing field that our hauliers need.
In a previous life I supplied engineering equipment, much of which went into haulage companies, and I realised how tight their margins were. They move the product and have very little room for profit, so foreign wagons can undermine their profitability and viability. We have heard about the other things that our hauliers have to pay. When they go abroad, they face road tolls and various other charges that must be paid. The diesel here is dearer, so the measure redresses the balance, giving us the level playing field that our contractors need.
We must remember that haulage contractors employ a significant number of people, not just the guys who drive the wagons. I was particularly taken with a remark from the Opposition Benches earlier. The phrase that was used was “our professional hauliers”. There is a misconception that is slowly but surely disappearing. I remember my days on High Peak borough council, when we had discussions about wagons. Somebody made a comment about wagon drivers, and “professional” is a word that we should never forget to use when we talk about the wagon drivers and hauliers of this country. They are moving huge machines around the country with tonnes and tonnes of product on them, and they must be professional to do such a job. I was pleased to hear that point made earlier.
I hope the Minister will address the question of revenue. I am pleased to see the compensatory factor. My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), who is no longer in his place, commented on the fact that we have had to introduce the measure to get round the vagaries of the EU. I, like him, will not miss the chance to bash the EU on this issue. I am glad we have found a way round, but it is a shame that we had to do so. It would have been nice if it had been simple and straightforward. Thank you, Brussels—for nothing.
I want the revenue to go to our roads, because that is what it is all about. While the Minister is in his place, I shall make the first bid and propose that the Mottram and Tintwistle bypass is the first recipient of such extra revenue. He may wonder where that is, but I assure him that he will soon find out. His boss, the Secretary of State, well knows where it is, as his is the neighbouring constituency.
There is one other point that has not been mentioned—it is more anecdotal than anything else. There is a small part of my constituency where we have difficulty with a low bridge. The local authority has tried everything to divert wagons, because when they get to the bridge, which is at a little place called Chapel Milton—I dare say this is the first time it has been mentioned in the Chamber—they find a dead end with no space to turn around. They then try to go under the bridge but end up taking the corner off it. Local hauliers increasingly realise that, but foreign hauliers rely on sat-nav, which does not pick up on the difficulty. The damage and upheaval caused is often the result of foreign drivers not understanding the danger. Perhaps that something that could be looked at, once we have paid for the Mottram and Tintwistle bypass, of course.
The Bill will enable our hauliers to compete on a level playing field. We are going to have wagons on our roads, so let us make them UK wagons and give them a fair chance. There are some wrinkles in the proposals, to which colleagues have alluded, but I am sure that they will be ironed out bit by bit before the Bill reaches the statute book. The one thing I urge the Government to do is get this done as quickly as possible to give our wagon drivers and haulage contractors in High Peak and across the rest of the country the best chance of survival.
Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)
Like everyone else in the Chamber, I think that the HGV Road User Levy Bill is extremely welcome. Like the hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie), I had not intended to speak, but then something rang in my brain, as I have many road hauliers in my constituency and I thought I would speak up for them. With regard to his comment about the brevity of the Minister’s introductory comments, it is clear that the Bill is so compelling that he needed only a minute to introduce it.
There are two key arguments I have heard from many independent operators as well as larger hauliers, such as the Prince group, in my constituency: the equity argument, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng); and the economic argument, which was raised by my hon. Friends the Members for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), for High Peak (Andrew Bingham) and for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen). The equity argument is an important one that all road hauliers make, which is that it is simply unfair that road hauliers can come here from overseas and use our country’s roads but contribute nothing whatsoever to maintaining them. The Bill goes at least some way towards redressing that imbalance.
In these tough economic times there is also the economic argument. It is unfair that our road hauliers face such marginal costs, especially given the high price of fuel, so trying to equalise what foreign users pay for using our roads will create a little more equilibrium and will not give them the extra marginal cost advantage they have in these tough economic times. Given the equity argument and the economic argument, I wholly endorse the Bill.
Now that the Minister is in his place, I would like to thank him for the financial support he recently gave for the A120, which will help unclog the roads even if they are used by road hauliers.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
I, too, have been tempted to contribute to the debate, as it relates to the port of Felixstowe in my constituency. The port is not known for its roll-off carriers and the immediate access it provides for foreign vessels to the A14, but the A14 is a key artery that starts in my constituency and cuts across to the midlands, passing not far from the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen).
As has already been referred to extensively, hauliers feel that it is right that foreign hauliers pay their fair share. Some points have already been made today about how we can ensure that a fair share is paid. I know that it is planned that the database will be given to a private contractor to follow this through, so I wonder whether at the same time it might be given a bonus for using the database to recover fines for other traffic regulation violations.
It is important to send to our haulage companies the message that this is not a tax on them, that the Government are aware that they cannot keep imposing extra charges on British businesses and that there will be compensation the other way through lower vehicle excise duty. My understanding is that, although there will be no winners as a result of this scheme, there could be some losers, which is concerning for some of our larger firms. We need to ensure that we are careful in how we deploy the regulations that will be introduced.
I can see that the Minister is a bit busy at the moment, but I am meeting him tomorrow with a delegation of MPs from Suffolk, and he will certainly be hearing from me that one of the proposals for the A14 might be to start tolling. I am a good Conservative and not necessarily against road tolling in all parts of the country, but the Government need to think about that where new capacity is brought in, and should not just pick key logistics routes. Therefore, if not all money raised through the levy is to go back to British hauliers through a reduction in VED—I know that the Minister has to be careful with the European Commission in how that happens—I will be asking him tomorrow instead to think about how some of it might be used to avoid tolling on a trans-European network road. I am delighted to support this ways and means motion.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Stephen Hammond)
We have had an informed and educated debate with excellent contributions from both sides of the House. I am delighted that Members on both sides of the House welcome the Bill, but I am also delighted that it is this Government who have finally found a way to introduce it. As my colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Norman Baker), said in his short—perhaps too short for some colleagues—introductory contribution, the Bill will go a long way towards putting in place a fairer deal for UK hauliers and correcting the inequality that has existed for far too long.
As a number of Members who have spoken rightly recognised, freight bodies have long called for the introduction of charging, provided that the cost burden on UK hauliers remains roughly neutral. Introducing this charge will clearly help to level the playing field by ensuring that both UK and foreign hauliers pay equally for using the UK’s road network. The Government believe that it is right that vehicles that cause wear to our roads should make a payment to take account of that. HGVs registered abroad are likely to carry more weight on fewer axles than UK-registered vehicles, which means that they are more damaging to the roads. Therefore, it is all the more unjust that they currently do not contribute towards the maintenance of the roads they use, leaving the burden to fall entirely on the British taxpayer.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
I have been listening to the debate and assume that a foreign HGV will not be allowed to leave a port of entry without a sign on its windscreen showing that it has paid. Is that what the Bill means?
Stephen Hammond
I am delighted to confirm to my hon. Friend that that is what the Bill means, and I will expand on that further in my remarks.
Karl MᶜCartney (Lincoln) (Con)
Can the Minister confirm whether it is true that the wear and tear caused to a stretch of road by one journey by an HGV vehicle equates to 100,000 car journeys?
Stephen Hammond
I would like to be able to confirm that statistic, which may or may not be true, but I cannot do so at the moment. I will seek divine inspiration at some stage and write to my hon. Friend.
Stephen Hammond
I will, although I was going to address the hon. Gentleman’s remarks in a moment.
Huw Irranca-Davies
As the Minister seeks inspiration, could he also try to find some inspiration on what impact the introduction of longer HGVs has had on road maintenance?
Stephen Hammond
I would prefer to write to the hon. Gentleman about that, as I might invite Madam Deputy Speaker’s strictures were I to deviate too far from what we are supposed to be talking about. Having listened to his experiences as a Minister, I know that he will be aware of how easy it can be to do so from this Dispatch Box. Tempting though it is, I shall resist it this afternoon.
The largest and heaviest vehicles will pay a time-based levy of up to £10 per day or £1,000 per year. We consider that fair, proportionate and compliant with the relevant EU regulations. Foreign vehicles will be able to pay daily, weekly or monthly to enable them to maximise flexibility. Linking the levy and the vehicle excise duty payment, and working with the Treasury and the Chancellor to include reductions in VED payments in the 2014 Finance Bill, will ensure that the vast majority of UK hauliers will pay no more than they do today. There will be a zero administrative cost for most UK vehicles. Vehicles that currently pay VED usually do so annually. In future, UK hauliers’ VED will cover both the reduced level of VED and the new charge in one payment.
Stephen Hammond
I will give way, although I was going to try to clarify many of the points raised by the hon. Gentleman and others in a moment.
Huw Irranca-Davies
The Minister is being very generous. May I seek his explanation as to whether the technology that is being introduced by this ways and means measure is the same as that which could be used for further vehicle charging should the Government decide to embark on a wider road charging exercise?
Stephen Hammond
Yet again, the hon. Gentleman tempts me down a line that is grounded in speculation rather than anything else.
Stephen Hammond
I hope in a moment to respond to the hon. Gentlemen’s detailed remarks, and to those of the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), and I will invite them to intervene on me again if I do not do so.
Andrew Bridgen
I have a question that I did not ask during my brief speech. How often does the Minister envisage the road user levy will be reviewed by the Treasury? Will he consider calling it a Brit disc, which would be a nice patriotic name?
Stephen Hammond
I think that my hon. Friend will find that the levy will reflect some fluctuations in the exchange rate, but the level of VED is a matter for the Treasury and it is usually set annually. As to the change of name, we would like to get the Bill on the statute book with this name first before considering anything else.
We will ensure that hard-working hauliers do not face an additional administrative burden, so the levy will be part of one payment when they renew their vehicle excise duty. To ensure that all the benefits of the levy are felt as soon as possible by carriers, the Government intend to bring forward the implementation date for foreign hauliers by almost a year to April 2014. Due to the time needed to change systems for UK hauliers’ payments and to hold a robust procurement of the provision of the payment facility to foreign-registered hauliers, it is not possible to bring the overall levy introduction date any further forward than April 2014.
I should make it clear that this legislation is not designed as a precursor to increased charges on business. The charge has a clear, focused objective. The introduction of the levy is entirely separate from any other reviews that my Department might be undertaking. Whatever the outcome of those reviews, we will ensure that HGVs are not charged twice for using the UK road network.
Jim Fitzpatrick
I apologise for interrupting the Minister’s remarks. He has referred to two of my questions, one of which concerned the impact on HGV hauliers who are not covered and who will be paying extra, and the point that he has just made also reflects a question that I asked. I do not want to intervene on him repeatedly, so will he confirm that, as he said, he will answer my questions later?
Stephen Hammond
We believe that the database developed as a result of collecting charges from foreign-registered hauliers will help us to understand their patterns of road use better and will contribute to our efforts to improve the safety and compliance of all commercial vehicles travelling on the UK’s roads.
Finally, I should like to return to and, I hope, clarify some of the questions asked by hon. Members. The hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse opened his remarks with a welcome for these measures, and I am pleased that he did so. His speech was the sort of speech that we expect from him; it was intelligent and inquisitive. He asked a whole range of questions about the draft Bill.
First, the hon. Gentleman asked about clause 3(2)(a). The clause allows us to consider the future exemption of roads. For example, Wales might want to introduce charging or we might agree with Northern Ireland that certain roads that cross the border should be exempted. On the administrative fee, I hope that my earlier remarks gave him confidence.
The hon. Gentleman asked about clause 9 and the rebate. The Bill allows us to set the administrative conditions that will pertain for rebates. For UK vehicles, charged rebates will be allowed on the same basis as those for vehicle and excise duty. An administrative fee, if introduced at all, will only be set at a level to cover the administrative cost.
The answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question about hypothecation and the money being paid into the consolidated fund is twofold. First, normal taxation rules apply and, secondly, the directive states:
“Member States shall determine the use of revenues generated by this Directive.”
I also point out to the hon. Gentleman that this Government’s spending review committed £30 billion for roads, rail and infrastructure. I should also like to highlight the other transport settlements and, indeed, the good news that we gave to local pinch-point schemes only 10 days ago.
Jim Fitzpatrick
I am sorry to interrupt the Minister again, but does that mean that the consolidated funds will not be hypothecated for transport issues, as has been requested by a number of his hon. Friends? Will the Department have to make a bid to the Treasury to get some of that money back?
Stephen Hammond
I have said that the normal rules will apply and that the directive allows the UK Government to spend the money in the way that they consider appropriate. The money will go into the consolidated fund. The Department for Transport has enjoyed robust discussions with the Treasury and got an excellent settlement for the infrastructure of this country. I have no doubt that we will continue to have robust discussions in the future and I am sure that we will continue to receive a good settlement for transport.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the number of hauliers paying more per year. The analysis so far shows, as he has pointed out, that 98% of hauliers would pay no more than £50 a year and that 94% would pay nothing at all. My understanding—I am sure that we will explore this and I may be able to inform the hon. Gentleman later of the latest numbers—is that the maximum loss for conventional HGVs that are either articulated or rigid and do not have a trailer would be £79 a year, based on current exchange rates. Unfortunately, however, our analysis of 7,000 rigid vehicles that tow a trailer has found that 40 vehicles would probably suffer a penalty of some £300, but that is only 40 out of 7,000, which is a significantly small part of the overall haulage fleet of the United Kingdom.
The hon. Gentleman also asked about the rebate that might be applicable to UK hauliers using foreign roads. As is the case with vehicle and excise duty, it is not possible to get such a refund, so the charge would be cheaper than any daily charge. UK hauliers are unlikely to benefit from such a refund.
The hon. Gentleman then asked some general questions, some of which I tackled earlier. On the staging of the levy, he will have heard me say that we have brought the date forward so that there will be a simultaneous introduction in April 2014. He will have also heard me set out the conditions for paying VED at the same time as the levy, so they will net each other out.
My Department does not believe that the opt-out from the European directive on traffic law enforcement will have any implications. We have a robust strategy of enforcement. Vehicles must pay before using a road in the UK and we can stop any that do not and immobilise them until a fine is paid. Again, I am sure that we will explore that matter in Committee.
The hon. Gentleman made some closing remarks about the environment. There is no change to the incentives for greener vehicles. We are committed to considering charging based on polluting carbon vehicles in the future, but for the moment the charging that will be put in place is practical and enforceable. I believe that there will be no disincentives for the green lobby.
I listened carefully to my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy). I thank him for his welcome. He echoed the remark from my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Andrew Bingham) about the complex way in which we are doing this, because of the EU rules. However, I am sure that he, like me, is delighted that we are doing it anyway and will raise a cheer for that.
The Chair of the Transport Committee raised a number of points. We will tackle cabotage and the safety issues that she raised on Second Reading and in Committee. However, I say to her directly that we will ensure that the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency has all the necessary resources to ensure that its enforcement procedures are workable. We believe that the measures will ensure that the collection procedures are completely workable.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the Minister clarify whether in his future discussions about safety he will raise improving the safety of cyclists, who are particularly at risk from HGVs?
Stephen Hammond
I thank the hon. Lady for those remarks. Her colleague the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) raised that issue and I am about to respond to his points, so I will address her remarks at the same time.
I welcome the recognition by my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) that this is a commitment being delivered upon. He is no longer in his place, but I was delighted that he recognised that. He asked the rhetorical question: is it right that foreign users contribute to our roads? Of course it is. That is why this measure is being put in place and I am delighted that we are doing it now.
The hon. Member for Ogmore opened his excellent contribution with his impassioned support for businesses along the M4 corridor. I will try to answer some of his questions. He, too, asked about enforcement, with particular reference to the police’s role in enforcement beyond VOSA. The police, of course, can enforce this legislation and prosecute offenders. It will not be their main objective, and the primary responsibility for enforcing it will lie not with the police but with VOSA, as I have made clear.
The hon. Gentleman asked whether, if foreign hauliers could pay the bill on a daily, weekly, monthly or annual basis, there would be issues to do with the setting of the rate and the ability to do so. I would say two things to him in response. First, we are allowing that flexibility to ensure that we capture everybody who intends to come to the country. Secondly, at the same time the level of the payments will be set annually in the Finance Bill.
The hon. Gentleman made some remarks about how we will offset the compensation for UK hauliers. I hope that my remarks to the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse will have clarified that matter for him. Equally, on the question of the charge level, as he knows, the Eurovignette sets a maximum of €11 a day for time-based charges. The maximum that that is likely to increase to owing to inflation is €12. Unlike other EU countries, we are not going to have a lower daily rate, but will look at the daily rate that is permissible.
The hon. Member for Ogmore rightly asked what action I and my officials had taken to reassure ourselves that the levy was not discriminatory. I took quite a lot of action because, as he might well guess, my first concern was that if there had been a significant time delay it would have discriminated against UK hauliers. I am delighted that my officials, working with EU officials, have now been able to secure the agreement that we can introduce the duty for both groups in 2014. I confirm that to ensure that was the case, officials spoke to the Commission before the consultation, and it indicated that it was content with our emerging proposals.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the amounts that we intend to charge. We are clear that they are as set out in the directive and that our plans comply fully with it.
I will now answer a question that I thought the hon. Gentleman might ask, just to help him along—I am in that kind of mood this afternoon. I thought he was going to ask me why the Welsh Government might think it necessary to lay a legislative consent motion. He did not, but let me put it on record that in our view, that is not necessary. The HGV road user levy is a tax, and taxation is a reserved matter. I believe the Welsh Assembly is concerned that there will be some problems because EU law prevents double-charging for the same stretch of road except in certain circumstances. However, we have said that if a devolved Administration wanted to introduce a charge or toll, we would modify the HGV road user levy as necessary so that could be done. I confirm that my officials and Welsh officials have spoken about the matter in the past week. The Scottish and Northern Irish Governments have decided that no legislative consent motion is necessary, but it is of course for the Welsh Government to decide whether they wish to pursue one. I thought I might take the opportunity to put that on record.
I believe that I have covered all the hon. Gentleman’s queries, except about cycle safety campaigning. He will know that I was delighted to be able to be at the National Transport Awards the week before last, along with my fellow Under-Secretary of State for Transport who was perhaps on more verbose form that night than in the House today, and to present an award to Philip Pank, the journalist from The Times. The hon. Gentleman will also know that in my second week in the job, I was delighted to be able to launch the Think Cyclist campaign.
As I have indicated, road safety is a key road policy priority for the Government, and the hon. Gentleman will have noted that we have made significant extra money available to local councils in the past six months for local cycle safety solutions. I am happy to work with the industry throughout the Bill’s progress and thereafter to ensure that road hauliers are aware of the need for cycle safety. I am aware, of course, that many of them already recognise that imperative.
My hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen), spoke about his passion for road haulage. He raised a couple of matters on which I may be able to give him some clarity this afternoon. Although he recognised that there would be a charge of £200 for roadside infringements and a maximum fine of £5,000 for cases that go to court, he was concerned about how we would be able to enforce that. We will be able to take deposits from road hauliers if they do not have a UK address and, as has been pointed out, we intend to pursue them so that the charges are made payable before they enter the UK road system. The necessary enforcement measures will be in place if anyone attempts to enter for a second time without paying those charges.
My hon. Friend also asked about Northern Ireland. I have already put it on record that we believe that this is a tax matter, and therefore a reserved matter that will apply right across the UK. However, as I said when the Welsh Government raised the issue, the Government have no intention of reducing the ability of the devolved Administrations to introduce tolling or charging if they so wish.
My hon. Friend asked specifically about the Irish Government, who have written to the Department asking for the charge not to apply in Northern Ireland. That is partly because they make a financial contribution to some road improvements in Northern Ireland, which they do because Irish hauliers use those roads and benefit from them. Furthermore, Ireland already has road charges in the form of tolls, and should the new charge apply in Northern Ireland, it would be roughly the same amount as those existing tolls—a round trip between Belfast to Dublin would incur roughly the same amount. We have suggested that if the Irish Government were to propose a set of roads that criss-cross the border, we will look to exempt them from the charge.
The hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) raised a point about the 12-month period, and I will explore that matter further and write to him if he will accept that. My hon. Friend the Member for High Peak spoke about the finest quality limestone and how it gets moved around the country. I hope that his local press statement will say, “If it’s thank you Brussels for nothing, it’s thank you to this Government for something”—I am sure that is how he will phrase it. I have obviously heard his strictures about the new bypass from Mottram to Tintwistle, and the bridge at Chapel Milton. I have no doubt that an invitation to come and visit those places is already winging its way from High Peak to Great Minster House, and I look forward to receiving it.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
The Minister referred to a previous matter in relation to the Irish Government. A new bridge is to be built across the narrows, near Warrenpoint, and the Irish Government are going to pay for that. There will be no toll on that bridge. Is there an agreement with the Irish Government that they provide the bridge and there will be no toll?
Stephen Hammond
Well—[Interruption.] Mr Deputy Speaker, you are right on all matters, and certainly on that one. If I may, I will write to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) as I am afraid I do not know the answer. Although I could stand here and talk about something, it is better to say that I will write to him when I have the answer.
My hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr Newmark) congratulated a number of his road hauliers—rightly so—and he got to the essence of the argument, which is about equity and economics. He was right to point that out and place it on the record, and I am delighted that his constituency has benefited from the pinch points plan that the Government announced two weeks ago.
This has been a well-informed debate and we heard two contributions, including from my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes East (Iain Stewart), about modal shift.
Stephen Hammond
Sorry. My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South—an important distinction—made an important point about modal shift and the encouragement of rail freight, and I combine that with the contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), who is no longer in her place. She made a point about the A14 being a key artery, and I will be delighted to meet her over the next couple of days to discuss that matter. She also made the point about a modal shift now that improvements have been made to the rail system out of Felixstowe. That is absolutely right, and I am convinced that the Bill does nothing to impair modal shift, but will enhance it.
Andrew Bridgen
One important question has not been asked in this debate, and if the Minister knows the answer, perhaps he will share it with the House. What is the estimate for the amount of money that will be raised from foreign hauliers by the introduction of the road user levy?
Stephen Hammond
That is an important question, and my hon. Friend is right to say that it has not been raised so far. The Department estimates that somewhere between £18.7 million and £23.1 million will be raised at current prices, but I am sure that as the years go by, that sum will increase.
I believe I have comprehensively reviewed my colleagues’ contributions—
Mr Deputy Speaker
The hon. Gentleman has used his intervention up, but I will let him have another go. [Laughter.]
Mr Newmark
Hon. Members have articulated the views of the road haulage industry in their respective constituencies. Will the Minister spend a couple of minutes going into a little more detail on the consultation he had with the industry and on its input, and explain why the Bill is the silver bullet that will make the road haulage industry in the UK happy?
Stephen Hammond
I would like to tell my hon. Friend the dates, places and times of the meetings, but unfortunately the excellent preparatory work on the Bill was done prior to my time in this role—it was done by the current Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office and officials when he was an Under-Secretary of State for Transport. As I have said, an extensive consultation took place and has been published. The measure received widespread support, albeit with a number of questions on how the scheme might work and be implemented, which has been reflected in the debate—a number of the questions were similar to those raised by road hauliers.
However, I am delighted that we have reached the stage we have reached today. The Bill is widely recognised in the House as a welcome measure for UK hauliers and UK industry. All hon. Members have welcomed it. I recognise that this is a slightly unusual way to introduce legislation, but it has enabled us to have an extensive and inquisitive debate.
Andrew Percy
We look forward to welcoming the Minister to Brigg and Goole shortly—he will be getting an invitation in the post. Will he respond to the question I posed to him earlier on whether we could expect an increase in dual-registered vehicles as a result of the measure?
Stephen Hammond
My hon. Friend is right and I apologise for having failed to respond to that part of his excellent contribution. I am not sure I have at my fingertips the exact number of dual-registered vehicles in the UK, or the number of those likely to enter the UK, or the likely growth in the number of dual-registered vehicles—[Interruption.] It is just as my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire points out. However, as I have said to several hon. Members, I am happy to write to my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole. I am sure my letter will include my response to his kind invitation to visit Brigg and Goole, which I look forward to doing. One of the great pleasures of this job is the chance to visit all parts of the UK.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
In order to arrive in the Brigg and Goole constituency, the Minister will travel along the A180, which is heavily used by road hauliers in Stallingborough and Immingham dock in my constituency. One problem is that the A180 has a very old concrete surface that causes great disturbance to local residents. The £18 million to £23 million that he will raise from the measure will more than cover the cost of improvement. I therefore invite the Minister to visit Cleethorpes and Brigg and Goole, and to journey on that rough road.
Stephen Hammond
I thank my hon. Friend for that detailed explanation of the problems with the A180. I have no doubt that the chief executive of the Highways Agency will be on to me in the morning to tell me what his plans may be at some stage in the near or distant future for that road. I am bound to reflect that when I was in this role in opposition, I was spokesman for the rail industry, and by the end of it I had a near-encyclopaedic knowledge of almost every rail station and route in this country. I am increasingly finding in government that that opportunity is being extended to me on the road system. I am really looking forward to visiting the A180 on the way to Brigg and Goole. I have no doubt that my hon. Friend will invite me to stop in his constituency as well.
We have had a long and interesting debate this afternoon and we have fully explored the legislation that is the subject of this ways and means resolution. I was delighted that my ministerial colleague was able to introduce the debate earlier and I am also delighted to commend it to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That provision may be made for charging a duty of excise, to be known as HGV road user levy, in respect of heavy goods vehicles used or kept on public roads in the United Kingdom.
Ordered, That a Bill be brought in on the foregoing Resolution;
That the Chairman of Ways and Means, the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Secretary Hague, Mrs Secretary May, Mr Secretary Grayling, Mr Secretary Moore, Mr Secretary McLoughlin, Mrs Secretary Villiers, Mr Secretary Jones and Stephen Hammond presented the Bill.
Hgv Road User Levy Bill
Stephen Hammond accordingly presented a Bill to make provision charging a levy in respect of the use or keeping of heavy goods vehicles on public roads in the United Kingdom, and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 77) with explanatory notes (Bill 77-EN).
Prevention of Social Housing Fraud Bill (Money)
(11 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Brandon Lewis)
I beg to move,
That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Prevention of Social Housing Fraud Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable under any other Act out of money so provided.
The Government are keen to move forward with this much-needed Bill as quickly as possible. Social landlords are very much in favour of this Bill and while I fully expect them to use the new powers the Bill provides, there will be no obligation on them to do so. Local authorities will be able to choose whether or not to prosecute the new criminal offences in the Bill, and decide if and when to use any of the enhanced data access powers that the amendments tabled last week would seek to confer on them by way of regulation.
Local authorities may incur some administrative costs if they choose to use the new data access powers. Any costs are unlikely to be significant and, in practice, I would expect councils to build on the arrangements already in place for housing benefit fraud. I remind the House that local authorities already have the power to prosecute, seek civil remedies and, for housing benefit investigation purposes, compel certain bodies to provide information on request. We are therefore not conferring new functions on them. I firmly believe that any costs incurred as a result of this Bill will be proportionate when set against the damage caused by those people who choose to abuse the social housing system.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
This is a necessary Bill that builds on what Labour did in government. In 2009, the then Housing Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), took action with the first ever national crackdown on tenancy cheats, and 150 councils signed up. Before the 2010 election, Labour committed to make the subletting of social homes a criminal offence and we therefore support the Bill.
With ever lengthening waiting lists, it is wrong to deny those in need. It is wrong to sub-let unlawfully—where a tenant becomes a landlord—and it is particularly wrong in London, where there is evidence of organised gangs preying on estates, encouraging tenants to move out and then letting out the homes, frequently changing the nature of those estates and streets as a consequence, to the disadvantage of the vast majority of the social tenants still living there.
We are grateful to the hon. Member for Watford (Richard Harrington) for how he has gone about the Bill, including for the all-party dialogue. In that dialogue, we expressed but two concerns, both of which he has taken on board. The first is that although it is right to criminalise those who let these tenancies, we must avoid criminalising those who might inadvertently take out a tenancy without knowing that it has been unlawfully let. Our second reservation is that—dare I say it?—there is sometimes a tendency on the part of some Government Members to demonise social housing and social tenants. That is wrong. The Bill seeks to tackle the behaviour of a small minority—albeit a small minority engaged in absolutely unacceptable behaviour—but the vast majority of social tenants are decent men and women. In my experience, they are the first to complain about the nature of their area being changed, including as a consequence of the kind of behaviour that the Bill rightly seeks to criminalise.
The Bill will now be considered in Committee, and we will be supporting this necessary measure.
Richard Harrington (Watford) (Con)
I would like to thank the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) and the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), for their kind comments, because I have tried to build a consensus around the Bill.
There is a problem. Various estimates from such erstwhile bodies as the National Audit Office show that between 50,000 and 150,000 social houses are being illegally sub-let. The victims of this crime are the people on the waiting list for social housing, many of whom deeply deserve it. When researching the subject at the beginning of the private Member’s Bill process, I was surprised to find that this was not already a criminal offence. As the shadow Minister said, this is not an attack on social housing; it is actually quite the opposite. The intention is to free up social housing for those who genuinely need and deserve it, but who, at the moment, are in inadequate accommodation.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on the way he has introduced his private Member’s Bill. The support of the Labour party has been articulated by the shadow Minister. From my constituency experience, I agree strongly that those on the housing waiting list resent greatly the idea that social housing is being let to people other than social tenants. Does the hon. Gentleman agree, however, that unfortunately this measure will not make a huge difference to people on housing waiting lists, of whom there are 9,000 in Newcastle, or to the length of those lists?
Richard Harrington
I thank the hon. Lady for her comments. I can back them up, because it would appear, having spoken to many housing associations and local authorities, that most of their information on illegal sub-letting comes from neighbours and fellow tenants in the building. So I agree totally with her. I must also agree with her substantive point about the difference the Bill will make to the need for social housing, but one can only do what is in one’s power. This is a limited Bill, but it will free up a lot of social housing. My constituency has 4,500 people on the list, and it seems to me that if it makes some difference, that is better than no difference at all. I hope she will agree however, that the most important thing is that it will deter new tenants from thinking that they can sub-let at will for personal profit, when their needs might be such that they are no longer entitled to social housing, despite there being plenty of people who are entitled to it. So the Bill creates new offences of illegally sub-letting, and there are ample safeguards within it that take the shadow Minister’s points into account. Members of all persuasions—indeed, the full political spectrum of the House—have supported this Bill. With that in mind, I have said enough. Our Bill Committee is tomorrow, and I hope we make progress with it.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
I rise to underline the support of Labour Back Benchers for the hon. Member for Watford (Richard Harrington) and to congratulate him on bringing in this Bill. As my very good friend the shadow Housing Minister said, I was the Minister in 2009 who introduced the first ever national campaign against fraud of this type. The number of properties recovered as a result of that campaign went up by 75%, but there is still quite a long way to go—and this Bill will help.
This is, of course, a money resolution and there should be a net financial gain to the state from this Bill, despite the costs that the resolution will allow to be incurred. The Audit Commission’s estimate of the number of properties in respect of which social landlords have lost control of the allocation is about 50,000—a figure from about three years ago. As a minimum, then, for the costs of temporary accommodation local authorities will be out of pocket by about £900 million each year.
The penalties in the Bill will help to deter people from cheating the system and cheating their neighbours. It will help the detection of those who are cheating taxpayers and will help to take action against them. More than that, however, those who badly need the homes that are available for them and that they should have are being cheated when these homes are sub-let illegally for the private profit of those who cheat the system. I hope we make progress in the Bill Committee tomorrow, and I hope we pass the money resolution to aid that progress.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
I, too, am delighted to support this measure. This must be a record in that I have been able to support in quick succession two items promoted by the Government. We seem to be making progress, Mr Deputy Speaker. I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Richard Harrington), who has worked incredibly hard and pushed forward on this matter; he deserves credit for so doing.
I spent 10 years as a local city councillor, during which time I represented a large council estate. On that estate, housing fraud was a problem—though not a massive problem—and it was difficult to get to grips with it, as we were often unaware that it was going on. We would sometimes find neighbours or other residents saying that they thought someone was letting a property out. Sometimes it was to a family member, further down the family tree, which often made things even more complex. All we could do, of course, was to pursue the problem from a tenancy breach point of view. Frankly, it is staggering that we have got to this stage with it never having been illegal to sub-let. When a property is sub-let, other issues arise about the quality of the property, for example. There are strict rules on landlord liabilities, which obviously do not apply when a property has been illegally sub-let.
I like the shadow Minister a lot, but I do not agree with his phraseology when he talks about the “demonising” of social tenants. I thought it was a bit cheap to get that into a debate like this when we are all on the same page. There is certainly no demonising of social tenants from me. I come from a family with lots of social tenants—my dad and my grandparents—and I would not be a member of a party that demonised people living in council houses or other social properties. I thought that was a little bit unfair. As others have said, this Bill supports decent tenants and decent folk. That is why I think it attracts the support it does across the House.
I take the point of the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah)—the constituency with the middle bit of Newcastle—about waiting lists. The Bill might not have a massive impact on those lists, but it deals with behaviour that we all agree is unacceptable. I thus entirely support it.
Brandon Lewis
I join everyone else in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Richard Harrington) on bringing this Bill forward, and I thank all Members who have spoken in this afternoon’s debate. It seems that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) and I have been in agreement in two successive debates, along the same lines mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy). The shadow Minister might become my hon. Friend before long—who knows? I look forward to taking the Bill through Committee tomorrow morning.
Question put and agreed to.
Business without Debate
(11 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Lead Shot
(11 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this issue, Mr Deputy Speaker. I did not expect to be called to speak so early, but the Whips of both main parties ensured that I was here on time.
I am country sports enthusiast and proud of it, as those who follow such issues will know. As we all know, Members of Parliament work in a stressful environment and it is essential that we have a release valve for that pressure. For me, that is country sports, and I take part whenever the opportunity arises. It does not arise as often as it did in the past, because I am in London. In my maiden speech, I said that the pheasants and ducks of my constituency would have two to three days a week when I would not be chasing them and they were probably more than gratified to learn that.
It is good to be out in the fields, pursuing country sports. That was how I grew up. I remember my cousin, Kenneth Smyth from County Tyrone in the west of the Province, giving a new meaning to the phrase “pigeon post”. When I was a young boy, he would send wood pigeons to me in the east of the Province in Ballywalter. They took two or three days in the post—they came first class—and although sometimes they were not palatable, they were okay when cooked. I survived. That is the truth, and “pigeon post” for me clearly meant a dead pigeon coming from the west of the Province to the east.
I have been eating shot pigeon for years, and pheasant and duck, too, and it has never done me any harm. However, I am prepared to accept the lead shot ban and wait until all the information has come in and been assessed by the lead shot working group. Members might therefore be wondering why we are having this Adjournment debate, and I have secured it because we need to present a balanced view given how the issue is portrayed by certain papers and magazines across the country. There are those who have created a scare without waiting for the full results to come out and I wanted to ensure that the House heard both sides of the argument. I have therefore been in touch with shooting sports organisations as well as the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust and I am prepared to give a balanced review of the issue. I state again that there is no final result yet, but we need balance in the debate and in the argument and we must ensure that all points of view are heard.
The use of lead shot is being considered because of issues that have been raised about environmental and human health effects. As they are in question, I support any investigation. I would not want to be like those doctors who backed cigarettes in the past, saying that they were good for people’s health when the reverse is patently true. However, neither would I like to be like those who jump in with two feet, causing a needless fuss and a scare. A balance should be struck between those two reactions and it is that balance that I seek to provide to the House today.
Regulations across most of Europe prevent lead from falling in wetlands and shooters support that. Some shooters were perhaps not all that pleased when lead shot was banned and they had to turn to steel, but they did it successfully, honestly and truthfully. Steel shot is now the preferred choice of many. Many bird watchers are also bird shooters and understand that sustaining a good environment is essential for both sports. I have been informed, however, that there is little evidence to suggest that lead, when used outside wetlands, causes any significant damage to bird populations.
The unique way that certain water birds feed means that some species are susceptible to ingesting lead if it is deposited in their feeding area and that has been highlighted as a source of poisoning for some wildfowl species, including several migratory birds. It important to consider all the factors that affect migratory birds, however, as the ingestion of lead might have happened not in this country but in other countries. To address that problem, the African-Eurasian water bird agreement, or AEWA, aimed to reduce the amount of lead ammunition used in wetland areas where such wildfowl feed. The feeding habits of non-wetland birds are very different, as they are not affected by lead in the silt layers of wetlands.
However, in order to comply with the AEWA, we have rightly prohibited the use of ammunition containing lead for the killing of certain species in specific areas. In England and Wales—we are here in the mother of Parliaments representing the four regions of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland—the use of lead shot is prohibited below the high water mark of ordinary spring tides, over specified sites of special scientific interest and for the shooting of the following species, regardless of where they occur. The species are mallard, widgeon, gadwall, shoveler, teal, pochard, pintail, tufted duck, and golden eye and the four species of goose—greylag, pink-footed, white-fronted and Canada—but also golden plover and coots and moorhen. In Scotland and Northern Ireland the use of lead shot is prohibited over wetlands, which are defined there as any areas of foreshore, marsh, fen, peatland with standing water, regularly or seasonally flooded fields and other water sources whether they be natural or manmade, static or flowing, fresh, brackish or salt. I am trying to make it clear that legislation exists to protect water birds from this very threat. Action has been taken here at Westminster and in the regions of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Reading through the report, however, there appear to be many inconsistencies and inferences are made from the testing of a very small number of birds. Perhaps work has not been done on the large number of birds that would amount to true evidence for the case.
The Countryside Alliance would say that many of the wildfowl tested in the study are migratory species—that is its opinion; many of us would agree with that—and as such have travelled many miles from different locations. Although the Wildlife and Wetland Trust provides assurances that these birds ingested the lead in the UK, with respect, Mr Deputy Speaker, there is simply no way of proving that. Moreover, lead poisoning can come from many sources, as previous research has shown that birds from urban areas have higher levels of lead in their blood. Lead can be got from the water and from other things. This is not acknowledged, and perhaps it should have been.
For those species that are non-migratory, it must be asked how the birds, which were tested only from wildlife and wetland trust reserves, obtained the lead shot while resident on the reserves. As the reserves are not shot over, the most probable explanation is that the lead was dropped in those areas before any legislation was introduced.
Sir Peter Scott was the founder of the Wildlife and Wetland Trust and a very keen wildfowler—indeed, one of the greatest wildfowlers that we have ever had. I have read some of his books, and they are most interesting. A bust of Sir Peter Scott is displayed at Castle Espie in Comber in my constituency of Strangford. It was put there in recognition of his good work and his contribution. He would have used lead ammunition in his day, long before the legislation was changed and lead shot was banned. This is further evidenced by the fact that no evidence of any other shot type was found in the birds’ gizzards. After 10 years of use of steel shot, would there not be some steel shot in the gizzards of the birds? There does not seem to be, but given that alternatives have been widely used for more than 10 years, this would be expected, and it further confirms that birds obtained the shot from the reserves. However, the Countryside Alliance has informed me that it is upholding the ban and will read the final report in full before making any representations.
I have been contacted by the Wildlife and Wetland Trust regarding its fears about the effects of lead on the animal and human body and, for the sake of parity I, like others, have carefully considered its point of view. It states:
“Lead is toxic to all animals including humans. Even low levels of exposure affect animals and no threshold has been identified below which the effects of lead cannot be seen. The vast majority of shot fired from shotguns falls into the environment, and thus, in the case of lead, causes long term cumulative contamination. Wildfowl, and other birds, ingest lead shot that has been deposited in their feeding areas (such as wetlands and terrestrial habitats including agricultural land), probably mistaken for grit or food.”
It is really nothing new, to be fair. Lead poisoning from shot ingestion has been known to kill wildfowl for more than a century. It has happened for more than 100 years and long before that. In Europe it has been estimated that approximately 1 million wildfowl from 17 species and just short of 9% of the wildfowl population could die every winter from eating the lead that is already in the seashore and the sea.
Although some of the information on which the estimate was based is old, and shot ingestion rates may now be higher or lower in some species, none the less mortality is high. Not only does lead poisoning cause considerable avoidable wildfowl suffering and mortality, concern has been expressed about its potential to contribute to the decline of certain common wildfowl species; for example, the pochard and the pintail, both of which are amber-listed. They are BOCC—birds of conservation concern—to use the correct terminology.
Lead poisoning is known to be a serious threat to certain globally threatened European wildfowl, in particular the white-headed duck. It also causes sub-lethal effects in many other birds and represents a significant welfare problem. We are not walking away from that; we are trying to address the issues and make a balanced argument.
In recent times, a body of evidence has been accumulated detailing lead poisoning in terrestrial birds, including upland game birds, which ingest spent lead shot when feeding in shot-over habitats, and the raptors that prey on or scavenge game species, thereby ingesting lead fragments from ammunition. Eight of the non-wildfowl species documented as ingesting lead or suffering lead poisoning from ammunition sources in the wild breed regularly in the United Kingdom, and are red or amber-listed as BOCC. Clearly it is important to avoid or reduce mortality in those species from all causes.
The negative human health impacts from lead are well established and have resulted in policies to reduce exposure, such as its removal from paint or petrol. The potential risks associated with consuming game shot with lead ammunition have received more attention recently, following an international conference held in the USA by the Peregrine Fund in 2008. As a small proportion of the lead from gunshot fragments is invisible to the human eye, consumers of game may inadvertently eat small lead shards or particles.
Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that even in the most pessimistic estimations a normal human being would have to eat a colossal amount of game even to register in the danger zone? May I offer a crumb of comfort? I suspect I am one of the few Members of Parliament who actually carries 15 bits of lead in my left knee. It was shot there when I was 15 and does not seem to have had any ill effects on my health.
Jim Shannon
I read the hon. Gentleman’s excellent article in the Shooting Times and Country Magazine last week. It shows his commitment to country sports over the years. The lead in his leg has done him no harm, just as the lead in the pigeons, ducks and pheasants that I have eaten has done me no harm.
Research in the United Kingdom showed that a high proportion of the game sold for human consumption had lead concentrations exceeding the European Union maximum. We are well aware of the issue. The European Food Safety Authority expert on contaminants published a scientific opinion on lead in food and has stated that other animals in the food chain—sheep, pigs and poultry—carry lead too. The report details the potential health risks that may be associated with a diet rich in game, but people would need to eat a lot of pheasants or venison every year before they were affected, or in my case, a lot of wood pigeons. They would have to eat a dozen a day.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
I thank my hon. Friend for getting this important subject on to the Order Paper. It is important that the House is aware of the issues he is raising. Does he agree, however, that there could be a self-created crisis by elements in various agencies who want to justify their existence? They point to potential problems if we eat too much of something, but by definition too much of anything is bad for us.
Jim Shannon
It is good to put things into perspective. Too much wine is bad for us. Too much chocolate is bad for us. Too many chips are not always that good for us either. As someone who ate plenty of sweet stuff and is now a diabetic, I know that the sweet stuff I ate over the years was not good for me. Many in the land have to look at those things too; my hon. Friend’s words put things into perspective.
An article I read last week also helps to put the issue into perspective. It referred to the Food Standards Agency, and there was an important reply:
“There is lead in all foodstuffs and we should see the purported risk of lead in game meat in a sensible perspective…There is no evidence of harm to those of us who eat game less than once every week. Compared with other meats wild game is low in fats and entirely natural, representing a healthy option to intensively reared products.”
That certainly makes for interesting reading. There is no better stuff to eat than game. If Members have not eaten a pheasant this year, they should try one. If they have not had duck, now is the time. If they have not had wood pigeon, they should go down the shop and buy one. They will enjoy it; it is excellent. If they are lucky enough to be able to afford venison, that is good, too; I recommend it to everyone in the House.
The body set up to deal with the issue, the Lead Ammunition Group, is taking the matter seriously. It is not ignoring people’s concerns, but it is putting things into perspective. I am sure that the report that will come out will address the subject. I was given a report by the European Food Safety Authority that clearly shows that although game has a higher lead content—we accept that—it is not seen as a contributory factor to having too much lead in one’s diet. Bread, tea, tap water and potatoes provide a significant amount of lead in the diet and they are all things that we sit down and consume on a Sunday, and eat and drink regularly; they have an impact on us, too.
That is one reason why I believe that although there is no need for a knee-jerk reaction, there is cause for investigation. The Food Standards Agency recently issued advice to high-level consumers of game, and I have already quoted what it said. Perhaps that will put the danger into perspective. I stress that the advice is aimed only at those who eat large amounts of small game—more than 100 or 120 pheasants, partridges or ducks a year—and large game, such as venison, is not included. Even the most fervent game-eater would never consume that much, and even if they did, the rest of their diet keeps things in balance.
Now that the advice has been given, small game is added to a list of many other foods, including oily fish and tuna, that the FSA suggests should not be eaten more than twice a week. It also joins the myriad foods that woman are advised to avoid while pregnant; there is no one present in the Chamber to which that would apply. According to data from the European Food Safety Authority, which provided the bulk of the evidence for the report that I am referring to, eating the suggested daily minimum of five portions of fruit and vegetables and drinking one litre of tap water provides enough dietary lead to exceed the threshold for young children by a factor of two. If a person eats their five a day, and drinks water, they will already be over the limit, before game is added. Other foods, including chocolate and mushrooms, have a very high level of lead; some chocolate has more, weight for weight, than pheasant. The EFSA rates many everyday foods as being among those that contribute most to lead levels in the average diet, and game is not among the ones that Europe is looking at.
Game is enjoyed by many people across the country as a lean and flavoursome alternative to other meats, and I recommend it. I have been consuming game for many years, and I am not aware of any person who suffers health-related issues as a result of consuming game shot with lead ammunition; neither is any shooting body with which I have spoken. In addition, data from the NHS hospital episode statistics show that there is a very low number of lead poisoning cases, compared with cases of poisoning caused by other toxic substances. To put this into perspective, between 1998 and 2011, 19.6 people a year on average were admitted for treatment for the toxic effects of lead. By comparison, 125 people a year on average are admitted for the toxic effect of soap and detergent, 982 for the toxic effect of ethanol, 69 for the toxic effect of ingested mushrooms, and 40 for the toxic effect of snake venom. That puts the issue of lead poisoning and lead’s presence in game into perspective. In the vast majority of cases, those admitted to hospital for treatment for the toxic effect of lead were male and in their late 20s and early 30s, which perhaps suggests that occupational hazards involving lead are the greatest risk factor in UK poisonings.
Investigations must take into account butchery and cookery methods involved in processing any game meat shot with lead ammunition. It is usual for wound channels to be removed when processing meat; I know many butchers who do that. Best practice may mitigate any risk and ensure that levels are consistent with those in conventional meats.
There are serious concerns that alternatives to lead ammunition, especially tungsten, could have serious implications for human health—and environmental health, for that matter, because this is an environmental issue—that have not been thoroughly explored or studied. It is important that the Lead Ammunition Group is given time to complete its study. Such studies must be completed before any widespread move is made to any alternative form of ammunition.
There is a real threat that the most recent leak to the media will subvert the work of the Lead Ammunition Group, which follows a clearly established process and is assessing the issues surrounding lead ammunition. I am hoping to prevent that from happening by showing both sides of the argument. We should rely on the scientific data and research that the group has collated as well as taking on board the views of the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, the British Association of Shooting and Conservation, the Countryside Alliance and many other bodies. It is clear from correspondence from all bodies that until the Lead Ammunition Group publishes its results and recommendations, the lead shot ban will be actively upheld and even promoted by everyone involved in shooting sports. It is essential that the LAG is given the respect and time that it needs to reach its conclusions, free from pressure from any side, and from media hype, which is extremely unhelpful. I, for one, look forward to receiving the report and until then, despite my own firm belief about the effects of lead shot, I will withhold judgement. I urge everyone to give the LAG the ability to carry out the job that it was created to do and to cease media hype and scares in the meantime.
Country sports are an essential part of our economy. Health and safety, too, are an essential consideration in any decision that is made.
In conclusion, country sports contribute £45 million to the Northern Ireland economy. Some 70,000 primary and secondary jobs across the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland depend on sporting shooting. Every year, £2 billion is created in goods and services across the United Kingdom by sporting shooting. Some £6 billion is generated by shooting and country sports in the United Kingdom, including money from people who pay for shooting. We cannot underestimate the incredible contribution that country sports make to the economy of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Shooting also provides £250 million a year for conservation: the sport is committed to shooting, but it is also committed to conservation. It is my belief that we can and will find a way forward on the issue, where safety is paramount and country sports can thrive and remain a way of life.
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr David Heath)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) not only on securing this debate on an important subject but on the admirably balanced way in which he presented information to the House. I am glad that he finished by stressing the importance of country sports, particularly shooting, to the economy and the conservation of our landscape. He said that he was a regular shooter, and he is not alone. He is one of 480,000 people who regularly shoot live quarry. I am just glad that I do not appear to be his quarry today: I think his targets are elsewhere.
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to stress that this is a complex issue—it is not a question of black and white. He is concerned to make sure that health and safety and wildlife issues are paramount, just as he is keen to make sure that the opportunities for sport and relaxation persist both in his part of the country and across the country. There are lots of interrelated interests that we have to balance.
I shall try to deal with some of the points made by the hon. Gentleman. He mentioned in particular the recent report by the Food Standards Agency. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) for his intervention, which highlighted the point that the hon. Gentleman was making. Let us be clear: lead is not a terribly good food additive. It is a dangerous substance; it is toxic. We do not want people to eat it. I remember something from my own history. As you will know, Mr Deputy Speaker, Somerset is known for drinking cider, and a study undertaken many decades ago discovered that the practice of making cider, which is acidic, in vats lined with lead, was probably not the best way to secure the public health of the county of Somerset. Eventually, we stopped using lead lining for the vats—historically, lead had been used for that purpose—and our public health improved as a consequence.
It is important that the Food Standards Agency does its work and highlights any concerns that it may have. People who are very high consumers of game birds, if such people exist, should be aware that they may be exposed to a risk. However, we should stress that people would have to eat an awful lot of pheasant or duck on a daily basis to get near the dangerous level. It is important that we stress that it is not dangerous to consume lead shot game occasionally, which is what most people would do, despite the hon. Gentleman’s exhortations to eat wildfowl more frequently, especially wildfowl that he personally has shot. For most of us, wildfowl is a limited part of our diet.
Reducing lead exposure remains a high priority for the Government. We, like successive Governments, want to reduce exposure to lead wherever possible, for both humans and wildlife. That is why I am keen, as is the hon. Gentleman, to wait for John Swift and his team in the Lead Ammunition Group to report in spring 2013. They have been looking at the key risks to wildlife from lead ammunition and the levels of those risks, and they intend to explore possible solutions if those risks prove to be significant. They will also report on the options for managing the risk to human health from the increased exposure to lead as a result of using lead ammunition, if measures need to be taken. I am confident that the group will take a balanced and measured view on the basis of evidence. That is why I am looking forward to that report. I think the hon. Gentleman shares that view and is concerned that there may have been early misrepresentations of what is likely to emerge.
The hon. Gentleman titled his debate “The EU directive on lead shot”. May I reassure him that the Government are not aware of any proposals for an EU directive on lead shot? Should one be forthcoming, of course we will look carefully at any proposal to ban lead shot. We will carefully assess whether there is clear evidence of a genuine risk and, if there is, whether any proposal to control the risk is appropriate and proportionate. Again, I will look to the Lead Ammunition Group’s report to inform our position. I repeat that there is no immediate prospect of an EU directive on lead shot. There are various activities within the European Union that are relevant to lead, but not in the form that the hon. Gentleman is concerned about. There may be some misunderstanding about that.
Jim Shannon
The concerns that we have are about the EU’s attitude to lead in general. As parliamentarians concerned about the impact of Europe, we are worried that the EU may try to introduce regulations on that. We are greatly encouraged to hear the Minister say that that will not happen.
Mr Heath
I believe that to be the case. There is a European regulation for the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals. We know that Sweden has indicated its intention to bring forward by April next year a proposal to restrict the use of lead and lead compounds in consumer products, but that does not include lead shot within its scope. There may be an informal view that Sweden would wish to extend that, but that is not on the table at present. I hope I can reassure the hon. Gentleman, but obviously we will watch carefully and if proposals come forward, we will look at them on their merits in due course.
Let us deal with the real concerns that lead shot may harm our wildlife. We are clear that ingesting lead is probably not good for birds, animals or humans. It is important that we ensure that the right steps are taken to conserve our wild birds, particularly our water bird species. It is not yet entirely clear what risks the use of lead shot might pose for the conservation of our wild birds, but the existing restrictions on its use need to be respected, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out.
The research that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs commissioned from the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust in 2010, to which the hon. Gentleman drew attention, highlighted some concerns about compliance with the Environmental Protection (Restriction on Use of Lead Shot) (England) Regulations 1999. I entirely accept his point about the provenance of any lead appearing in the ducks, but the fact is that 70% of the ducks examined were found to have been shot with lead, which is a cause for concern. Even advocates of hunting game recognise that any clear evidence of non-compliance is a matter for concern. We will be looking at that carefully, but we will also take into account the points he has make, because it seems to me that some of them are balanced and valid.
I stress again what I think the hon. Gentleman was at pains to say throughout his contribution: what we need is balance. We must weigh up the arguments and the evidence, and not in isolation. We must look at matters in the round. I think that at the heart of the debate there is more that unites the various interests than divides them. We all want to see healthy wildlife, a well-managed countryside, thriving communities and a sustainable rural economy. Therefore, we need to ensure that the evidence is looked at carefully by the experts in the lead ammunition group and that we understand the risks so that we can respond in a measured and sensible way. That is why the Government will not rush to any premature conclusions. We will look at the evidence and will not move to any snap judgements. We will evaluate the results of John Swift’s report and consider the evidence it adduces and its recommendations in due course.
I can give an absolute assurance that we understand the importance of shooting, both in the rural economy and as a form of relaxation that the hon. Gentleman and many other people in the country enjoy—it is not simply an economic matter—so we will balance that with the need to protect our wildlife and ensure that its health is preserved, as is the health of the wider population. We will consider the evidence and base our judgments on what strikes us as the best balance between wildlife conservation, supporting traditional jobs and industries, enhancing sustainable economic group and, of course, doing what is best for our health.
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for securing the debate and for the points he raised. We will certainly take careful note of the points he raised on behalf of his constituents and of a much wider constituency across the country. This has been a most valuable debate and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to set out the Government’s case.
Question put and agreed to.
Westminster Hall
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Transport Infrastructure (Essex)
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)
A number of hon. Members have indicated a wish to speak. Even at this early stage, I urge a degree of self-restraint so that everyone can get in.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
I am grateful to Mr Speaker for granting this debate. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I genuinely welcome the interest shown by my fellow Essex MPs in the debate, which is timely. As constituency MPs, we all face many serious challenges and have strong views about the future of our infrastructure.
The coalition Government are halfway through their five-year mission to restore economic growth to Britain while dealing with the deficit, and I welcome the initiatives that Ministers have introduced to highlight infrastructure and investment—in particular the £50 billion provided through the Infrastructure (Financial Assistance) Bill, and the Growth and Infrastructure Bill as well, partly because their provisions are important to economic growth and job creation across the country.
The Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Norman Baker), and his Department are in the process of changing how transport infrastructure is delivered, to ensure that it meets demand, supports growth and provides value for money, which I also welcome. In recent weeks, reforms to rail franchises have been debated at length, and I wish the Minister and his Department well in the vital work being undertaken to resolve the problems with the west coast main line in particular, but also, from an Essex point of view, with the tendering process for the Greater Anglia franchise. We are keen to ensure that that franchise is not delayed, but we feel that it can go ahead only when the specification is ready, and not before; I was in discussion with Abellio last night about that very point.
Air travel and airport capacity remain high on the political agenda, with the launch of the Davies commission last month. New delivery models for investment in our roads are being examined, through the introduction of route-based strategies, all of which I welcome. Yesterday evening, I hosted an event in Parliament with representatives of Stansted airport. It was attended by some of my colleagues. From an Essex point of view, we feel that this is an exciting time for those interested in infrastructure. Essex has been neglected for far too long. The purpose of today’s debate is not just to make a plea to the Minister and his Department, but to make the case for investment. For far too long, we have not come together enough to make a collective case to Government about why we need it.
All my colleagues know that Essex has suffered from a chronic lack of infrastructure investment over the years, and during the good times Essex was overlooked while money was ploughed into projects elsewhere. That neglect has had serious consequences for a county that is growing and growing. Over time, our roads have become more congested and dangerous, and our rail services have become far from ideal, despite the fact that our commuters contribute approximately £110 million to the Treasury annually.
In my constituency, vital plans to improve road safety on the A120, one of the 10 most dangerous roads in the country, have been dropped, and countless other infrastructure projects have been ignored. Although we appreciate that the nation’s finances are in a delicate and precarious position right now, that should be no excuse to overlook Essex for investment in transport infrastructure.
Mr Lee Scott (Ilford North) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that if the infrastructure in Essex does not improve greatly, the burden of people driving to my constituency, which although in Essex is also in the London borough of Redbridge, and leaving their vehicles there so that they can travel on the underground, will just increase and become a bigger problem for my constituents?
Priti Patel
Absolutely. That highlights the fact that we are at breaking point where our roads are concerned. Congestion is extreme. Although we have not had the infrastructure investment—money is tight—Essex is best placed to maximise the benefits of any public money that comes into our infrastructure. If the Minister chooses to come to Essex—that is an open invitation from us all, I think—he will understand and get to see at first hand that Essex is the engine of economic growth.
Even in these challenging economic circumstances, there are about 6,000 new enterprise start-ups every year, the equivalent of one new business being created for every 300 people in the county. In 2011, there were 52,000 entrepreneurs in Essex, supporting a county-wide economy with gross value added estimated at over £28 billion. Few parts of Britain can boast that kind of culture of entrepreneurship, and with so many entrepreneurs and business people across the county it is hardly surprising how diverse the businesses are.
I mentioned earlier that we had a function last night. It was attended by many businesses as well as by representatives from Stansted airport. In my constituency, we have a pioneering and world-leading firm, Crittall Windows, which has won the Queen’s award for enterprise; the world famous Wilkin and Sons jam makers, the finest jam makers in the world; and Simarco International, a worldwide logistics company, to name but a few.
There are thousands more such outward-looking businesses. They want easier access to global markets and trading opportunities but are let down by our poor infrastructure across the county. They are frustrated by that, and also by the fact that the voice of the private sector has not been listened to enough—not just across Government but in other bodies as well, which is why this discussion is vital. We must start to listen to that voice.
Our outdated infrastructure is a considerable barrier to economic growth, and that costs firms millions of pounds. This quote from Ian Thurgood, from Wilkin and Sons, is telling:
“A well planned and maintained road network is critical for the success of Essex businesses. Food producers such as Wilkin and Sons have to meet strict delivery deadlines for most retailers and failure to deliver on time can mean products being out of stock and ultimately delisted from sale.”
Such issues are vital for that industry, and Ian Thurgood’s sentiments are echoed across the board. Essex has a 21st-century private sector but a creaking infrastructure that is simply out of date. That is the business perspective, but of course the problem has a knock-on effect on families across the county.
Our population in Essex is approximately 1.7 million, and it is set to grow by 20% over the next 20 years. I have three local planning authorities covering just my constituency, and with Braintree district, Maldon district and Colchester borough they plan to build 60,000 new dwellings between 2011 and 2031. All those new dwellings will put more pressure on our roads—more cars—and there will be a greater demand for rail services and international air travel. There will also, quite rightly, be more people setting up their own businesses, which we support.
Essex is an attractive county. It is very close to London, and its potential is limitless. We have a world-class airport at Stansted, which serves 18 million passengers and is the fourth most used airport in the country. Some £8 million of cargo goes out of the airport, and about 200,000 tonnes are flown out to 200 destinations. The airport supports 10,000 jobs across the county and contributes £400 million to the local economy. But there is not just the airport; we have seaports as well. We have Harwich, and Felixstowe is close by, while London Gateway will come on stream soon.
Along with all my colleagues, I am passionate about the potential for Essex as a county. I want to see our businesses not just grow but do even more for UK plc. Frankly, Essex could get moving even more with greater infrastructure. Having given some background, I now want to highlight some of the key areas, particularly in my constituency, in which we have major problems and bottlenecks.
I would welcome the Minister’s thoughts on the future of rail in the county. He will be aware that colleagues in Essex and across the region have come together to develop a rail prospectus covering a range of services for the Greater Anglia franchise. I believe his Department is now familiar with that document. We recently went to present the document to the Secretary of State—and, of course, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns), a Transport Minister, is a signatory.
Many of my constituents are paying upwards of £4,000 a year to commute to London, and they are subject to the worst delays and a lack of seating, which forces them to stand in horrible conditions. Even though we are a business-oriented county, those people do not have access to wi-fi connections. As I have already highlighted, a significant proportion of their fares already goes to the Treasury. We are a significant net contributor to the Treasury, and my constituents and all rail users across Essex are concerned that they are simply not getting value for money.
It seems obvious that if a modest proportion of the fees paid to the Government by the train operators were reinvested in track infrastructure and new rolling stock, everyone would benefit and the service would be more attractive to others. Such investment is needed because, since the mid-1990s, there has been a 34% increase in passenger numbers on the Great Eastern route, which places huge demand on current services.
The introduction of a passing loop on the Witham to Braintree branch line would be a crucial investment. The branch line is currently a single track, and the Minister is familiar with our representations on that. The branch line restricts the number of journeys and the number of passengers who can be connected to Witham and the wider rail network, both to London and Norwich. A passing loop would be beneficial to constituents across the district and, of course, could unlock new capacity on the route.
Braintree district council recently conducted a study to demonstrate that, if the loop were constructed, it would deliver a cost-benefit ratio of 2.0 or more. From his work in the Department, the Minister may know that scores of that level and above are regarded as delivering high value for money; a score between 1.5 and 2.0 represents medium value for money. I hope he will give a positive indication about the issue.
I thank all my colleagues for their contributions to the rail prospectus. For many of us, the prospectus has been a labour of love that has brought us together. I pay tribute to Essex county council and the local enterprise partnership, because we have all come together for the first time to forge the prospectus and we intend to continue being strong advocates and strong voices for rail investment.
I now turn to the problems of the Dartford crossing. Just as commuters have become thoroughly dejected by the quality of rail services, businesses are gobsmacked, astounded and appalled, to put it politely, by the state of the roads and the congestion near the Dartford crossing. The crossing, of course, is important not only to Essex but to the south-east, Greater London and Kent.
As regular users of the crossing know—I declare an interest as a DART-Tag holder—the toll booths cause atrocious congestion. Journey time reliability figures, the measure that the Highways Agency uses to monitor delays, show that performance in the year to May 2012 was just 57% for southbound journeys and 60% for northbound journeys, compared with a national average of 83.5% across the motorway and trunk road network. More than 50 million crossings are made each year, and it is unacceptable that half of those journeys should face such considerable delays.
Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)
As the representative of the constituency at the north end of the Dartford crossing, I should say that my constituents probably suffer the burden of the congestion more than anyone else. My hon. Friend refers to the congestion caused by the toll booths. We are advised that, once they are removed, the crossing’s capacity will grow by 20%. Installing free-flow tolling will cost some £100 million. Do her constituents agree with mine that, instead of spending that £100 million, we should just remove the tolls?
Priti Patel
Given the delays caused by the tolls and how much those delays cost our economy, the answer is yes. My constituents would welcome that—they really would.
The Highways Agency has estimated that the economic cost of the delays is some £40 million, which is astronomical. That money is being taken away from creating jobs and growth in our economy.
Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)
I want to get this on the record. When the first tunnel was built by Essex and Kent county councils, and subsequently when the second tunnel was built, it was announced that, once the capital costs had been paid for by the toll, the tunnels would be free. Does my hon. Friend agree that perhaps it is time to honour that pledge?
Priti Patel
I absolutely do. There is a real issue here, because that is what the public were told. The public feel cheated not only because they have to continue paying the current tolls, but because the tolls are going up. The tolls went up this month, and they will go up again in two years’ time. The public are getting an appalling service and, as I said, the cost to the economy is significant.
We have another concern about the Dartford crossing. The proceeds received by the Department for Transport have effectively fallen over the past eight years. In 2003-04, revenues from users totalled £68 million and expenditure was £14 million, which left £54 million in proceeds for the Department. By 2010-11, however, although revenues had risen to £73 million, expenditure had increased by 250% to £36.3 million, leaving just £36.7 million in proceeds for the Department. Most of the increased revenues—I hope the Minister and the Department will look into this—appear to have been swallowed up by the managing agent contractor’s costs, which have more than doubled from £12.7 million to £27.5 million. All colleagues would think that that is completely unrealistic and unreasonable. For those of us who are paying the high tolls—and our constituents are—that is simply unacceptable. Although the money raised from drivers using the crossing rose by 7% in eight years, the amount going back to the Department fell.
I recognise that the Department is working on the free flow, as my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) highlighted, but drivers are paying increased costs year on year. Given the compelling evidence demonstrating that the crossing is now failing to deliver value for money, and given the economic costs of the delays, we must review the entire operation of the crossing. I hope the Minister can explain where the extra tolls being paid by drivers, both this month and in two years’ time, will be going.
How will the Department spend the money and on what projects? I urge the Minister to consider the contractor costs, which I have highlighted. He may not be able to give me a full response right now, but the tolls are a physical and metaphorical barrier to growth, and the sooner traffic is able to flow freely, and the sooner costs are brought down, the better—not just for all our constituents, but for the economy of the south-east.
My constituents, and road users throughout Essex, are fed up with both the A120 and the A12. Those two roads run through my constituency, and my postbag and inbox are inundated daily with all their failures. The roads are vital economic links, but they have not been upgraded and are costing the economy huge sums of money.
John Devall, the managing director of Essex and Suffolk Water, has commented that the
“A12 generally…is the subject of the travel news in the morning—taking over from J28 to 27 on M25, since upgrades there.”
His workers going to east London now regularly travel between 6 am and 7 am to avoid the worst traffic. Essex chambers of commerce has highlighted that the road needs to be widened and improved.
The 12-mile stretch of the A120 between Braintree and Marks Tey is one of the 10 most dangerous roads in the country and needs urgent attention. We have had fatality after fatality. The A120 is a single-carriageway road that carries approximately 25,000 vehicles each day, projected to rise to 30,000 by 2027. As a single-carriageway road carrying many freight vehicles and heavy goods lorries, that section of road is simply no longer fit for purpose.
I emphasise that the A120 is part of the trans-European road network between Dublin and Brussels, which means it is used by freight vehicles and is congested. Although 6% of traffic on the county’s roads is attributable to HGVs, they make up about 14% of traffic on that part of the A120 and parts of the A12. The dangers speak volumes; I have highlighted the fact that there have been fatalities. Local residents and parish councils have campaigned tirelessly for improvements, but have been systematically let down by authorities, including regional development agencies and previous Governments. A £50 million plan to dual the road was abandoned. I implore the Minister to consider the case for investment. Privately led schemes exist already. In an era of little Government money, we appreciate that investment must be led by the private sector and business, but lots of people are working locally. We must listen to businesses’ voices.
I thank the Minister and the Department for Transport for the announcement two weeks ago committing £300,000 to Galleys Corner in Braintree, but I emphasise the dangerous nature of the road. I look to the Department and the Minister for their support in working with the county council, the chambers of commerce and the local enterprise partnerships to consider using regional growth fund money to deal with the problems on that road. I press the Government to consider how we can access European funds.
I cannot emphasise enough that, for too long, Essex’s innovative private sector has been held back by the failures of our infrastructure, frustrating businesses and preventing more jobs from being created. I hope that the Minister will take on board the points that I have raised and the areas of the constituency that I have mentioned. This is all about getting Essex moving and bringing greater prosperity and more jobs and growth to the county and, ultimately, to the United Kingdom, as well as bringing more Treasury receipts to the Government.
Sir Alan Haselhurst (Saffron Walden) (Con)
I am grateful for this opportunity to contribute to the debate initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel). Infrastructure is probably too grand a word for the transport arrangements in our county. We enjoy relative prosperity, yet we have, varyingly, either no transport infrastructure worthy of the name or totally inadequate infrastructure. She said that we are halfway through this Government, and it is to this Government that we direct our pleas, but the situation goes back many years. Sometimes, I think that the inadequacies of the transport system in our county can be traced back to Roman times. We therefore have a great deal of catching up to do. Things are London-centric: everything goes away from London. Therefore, even counties near London have difficulty connecting places in the way required by modern business, as my hon. Friend so eloquently said.
Our principal roads are the A11, the A12, the A13 and the A127, which all go outwards from London. Only one, the M11, has been upgraded to motorway status, although the A11 still runs separately. I understand that when this country’s motorway system was first mooted back in the 1930s, the original plan was that the M11 would be a London-Norwich motorway. If that was so, the county of Norfolk has grounds for grieving that there is still no adequate connection from London to that important city in the east of England. The M11 only happened because people saw it as a way to go faster to an airport at Stansted, if one was developed.
As for cross-county roads, I can add to my hon. Friend’s story about the A120. When I first became Member for Saffron Walden, the constituency included, apart from the district of Uttlesford, the northern part of the district of Braintree, through which ran the A604, the Cambridge-Colchester road. The road was under heavy pressure, and when I tried to argue for bypasses for villages and so on, I was told, “No, no, you must understand the strategy.” On this matter, Essex county council, the highway authority and the Department for Transport were as one. The roads communicating with the east coast ports would be the A12 and then, when constructed, the Orwell bridge on to the A14. The other was the A120, connecting with the M11. That road has still not been completed, as my hon. Friend said. It is the most extraordinary situation. That was the great strategy for a cross-county route, from which everything else was directed, yet it has still not been completed.
Parts of the A130 have been improved, but in my constituency, despite the downgrading of a section to the B1008, heavy transport still ploughs through the villages of Barnston and Ford End and the parish of Great Waltham. Satellite navigation tells lorry drivers the route, rather than the signposts on the road. The road in that part of the county is totally inadequate. We do not have a complete approach to the A130, which would help communications across the county. The trouble is that schemes get mooted, talked about, designed and left to fester, leaving only blight and a great deal of heartache.
On rail services, I will not say anything about the Fenchurch-Shoeburyness line, but it appears to be the only one that has been significantly upgraded in the past 20 or 30 years. The great eastern line is certainly below its capacity needs, and the west Anglia line is the most extraordinary story of all. Successive Governments over 20 or 30 years have designated Stansted as an airport to be developed in varying degrees and have also decided that the M11 corridor is one for development. Despite that fact, one of the most inadequate railway lines of all still serves our county and beyond, running to Cambridge, Ely and King’s Lynn. It has the shortest stretch of four-tracking of any London terminal, not measured in inches but by a considerable degree.
Our commuters have had a rotten deal. Now, belatedly, the owners of Stansted airport have woken up to the fact that the Stansted express is not as express as it was originally and are at last demanding a 30-minute journey time, equal to the time from Victoria to Gatwick airport. Indeed, that is how it should be. We have an airport—it is not approved with enthusiasm by all my constituents, but we are realists—whose capacity can double, but our railway system serves neither the airport and the businesses related to it, nor the vast number of commuters who come from the constituencies of many of my neighbours, including my hon. Friends the Members for Harlow (Robert Halfon), for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk) and for Broxbourne (Mr Walker).
Even stations further south are suffering from the inadequacy of the line. It might be argued, “Come on, you’ve got Crossrail coming along.” Crossrail might make some contribution as far as passengers from Shenfield and other stations are concerned, but the idea that it will be the complete answer to Essex’s rail needs is nonsense, and the idea that £3 billion might be spent on it or on an extension to an enlarged Stansted airport is for the birds.
Cross-county, we have nothing. In the wake of the decision to develop Stansted airport, people would like a line reinstated from Braintree towards the airport and Bishop’s Stortford, but why would one think of spending more money to restore a line when we cannot even find the money to make existing principal lines work effectively? To the extent that we have some cross-county rail operations out of Stansted airport that could be developed, the single-bore tunnel restricts the number of trains and is currently working at capacity. How stupid is that? We need a second-bore tunnel, so that extra trains can serve from Stansted and through. Indeed, we could have more trains going to the northern parts of the east of England.
On air, I am afraid the county is deeply divided, although we speak with unity on most other things. We have two airports: London, Southend and London, Stansted. Those names tell their own story. Stansted has never been Essex’s airport. Perhaps Southend has more of a claim to be an Essex airport, but Stansted airport was never treated by its owners, BAA, as an Essex airport; it was a London airport, part of its system. Fortunately, that is about to change soon, but it is still seen—speculation has started—as part of the London airport solution. I do not believe that it can be, unless one is prepared to say that the Essex countryside should be devastated to the extent of having four runways.
Even our most ambitious business people would not believe that an airport on that scale is necessary, yet we are faced with the fact that, once again, we could be bearing the burden of solving London’s problems without any of the real benefits that might flow from it—an improved railway line and an improved road system. We are bad in this country in that when we have major developments that can be necessary in the wider national interest, we do not give people a commensurate benefit that flows from them, or even adequate compensation.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Witham. We fail to obtain the amount of moneys required to deal with the backlog of problems that we have, so the quality of our transport system is inadequate. We do not have anything that could remotely be called an integrated transport system. Overall, what has happened over the years is that there has been nothing much in it for us. Frankly, there needs to be a lot more.
Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) on setting the scene, pan-Essex, and endorse the points raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst) regarding the west of the county. My hon. Friend the Member for Witham made a powerful case for the economic benefit of investment in the transport infrastructure for Essex as a whole. Essex is indeed an economic power base for the British economy, and more could be done if we were given support in greater transport infrastructure.
The rail manifesto for the east of England united every single MP in the east of England—no mean achievement. As far as my constituents are concerned, and as has been pointed out, they are paying way over the odds in rail fares for the service they receive. We need greater investment on the Anglia line—Norwich, Ipswich, Colchester and Chelmsford to London, Liverpool Street—but I seek the Minister’s confirmation that the “Norwich in 90” campaign will not mean fewer inter-city trains stopping at the Essex stations of Manningtree and Colchester.
On occasion, we in Essex feel that we have been neglected and forgotten by the Department for Transport. I endorse the case that has been made for improvements to the A12 and the A120. The A120 is not in my constituency at either end, but a section of it runs along the A12, as it were, and it certainly brings A120 traffic in and out of Colchester. If my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) were here, he would make a powerful case for improvements to the A120 through the Tendring peninsula to the international port of Harwich, in the same way as my hon. Friend the Member for Witham, and, indeed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr Newmark) would for the A120, so far as it goes through that part of Essex.
We have to look at Essex as a whole. On the Thurrock crossing—I am going to say the Thurrock crossing, not the Dartford crossing, because we need to promote Essex on these occasions—it was a great disappointment that when the Queen Elizabeth II bridge was opened it was not called the Thurrock bridge. I do not see why Kent should get all the mentions.
Bad planning means, I am afraid, that Essex, and my constituency of Colchester in particular, is set to suffer even more road congestion. I draw the Minister’s attention to a proposed development on the fields of west Mile End, which the highways experts think will be okay, even though 1,600 houses will be served by the longest cul-de-sac in Britain—a one-mile cul-de-sac serving this massive estate on land of a quality that, if only John Constable had painted it, would be considered an area of outstanding natural beauty. We need new housing, of course we do. We need new sites for jobs, of course we do. However, they have to be in the right place.
Those 1,600 houses will pile even more traffic on to the road congestion around the Colchester mainline station and North Station road, which is absolutely ludicrous. I hope that people in the Department and in Essex county highways, and wherever else these theorists sit, will realise that in the real world it is impossible—science has proved it—to get a quart into a pint pot. To suggest that, somehow, vehicles can do the equivalent of getting a quart into a pint pot is not on.
Something that I am sure will appeal to the Minister is the fact that we have had the case made for improvements to road and rail infrastructure, but I am going to make a special plea for buses, whether they be local buses serving a community or bus networks serving surrounding villages and people across Essex. I should not forget the express coach services and the services for Britain’s first city—our tourism industry. Of course, we were a city in 49 AD, when Chelmsford was the Roman equivalent of the Little Chef on the way to London. We need to have greater interest in and promotion of our bus services. A decent bus service and all that goes with it means a proper bus station. That is for local consumption. Before Christmas, Colchester’s bus station will be shutting. That is a retrograde move in a time when we should be promoting public transport.
Cycleway provision is important and relatively low cost. One only has to go to Denmark and Holland to see how investment in cycleway provision encourages people out of their cars and on to cycles. The more we can encourage people on to safe cycle routes, the more we will ease congestion.
I shall conclude with something that I failed to interest the previous Government in, and in which I suspect this Government and Department for Transport have an equal lack of interest. The Victorians were successful, as can be seen in many of our European towns and cities and in a few parts of the United Kingdom, in producing urban tram systems, or light railways. A tram system or light railway would move us a long way forward, because far more people can be carried, in an urban environment, on trams or light railway than by continually putting more and more cars on to the roads.
I again congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Witham on putting a powerful case for Essex. I hope that some good will come from it.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), who is a fantastic champion not only for transport, but for business, in Essex.
In Harlow, we face three major challenges: reputation, skills and infrastructure. We are dealing with the first two. We now have the highest business growth in the UK, as Experian has shown. An enterprise zone is opening next year, a new university technical college is opening in 2014, and 600 more people are in work in the town, compared with January, but transport infrastructure is holding us back in three ways. First, as my hon. Friend the Member for Witham and my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst) highlighted so well, we are not getting enough investment in trains in the east of England. Secondly, Harlow lacks proper motorway entrances. Thirdly, a sense of unfairness has built up over decades, due to only a fifth of fuel duty receipts being spent on our roads. I shall consider those points in turn.
I welcome what the Government have done to limit train fare rises. Many people in Harlow are on below-average earnings and commute into London, and could not afford some of the bigger rises that were initially mentioned. Of course, expensive rail fares have not happened overnight. Simon Carter, a Harlow resident who is also a councillor, has the ticket stubs to prove that a season ticket from Harlow to London went up by some 40% over the past 13 to 15 years, but Harlow commuters still suffer from the worst overcrowding in the country.
I recognise and welcome what the Government have done to invest in new rolling stock and to negotiate with Abellio to run a short franchise when National Express dropped out. I appreciate that Abellio has hired 100 extra security staff on the west coast main line, protected all Harlow services from cuts and smartened up our train stations, but Essex is a major engine of the English economy and our train fares are still too high, compared with the inward investment in the network. That is why I, along with my hon. and right hon. Friends, urge the Minister to consider the East Anglian rail prospectus, with targeted schemes, such as a third line in the Lea valley, and line improvements along the Stansted Express route, so that trains can get up to speeds of 100 mph. Improvements in infrastructure in the Roydon and Sawbridgeworth stations would be welcome.
Sir Alan Haselhurst
On my hon. Friend’s point about increased rail capacity through the Lea valley, we do not want to be sold short on just a third rail. For that job to be done properly, we need four rails, ideally, as far as Broxbourne. That would separate the more localised traffic from the traffic to more distant destinations, such as his constituency and mine.
Robert Halfon
Of course, my right hon. Friend is correct. He is an incredible champion for commuters across Essex.
Crossrail is estimated to have raised property prices along its line of route by about £5.5 billion, meaning that one third of the scheme’s cost has already been recouped by local home owners. This is the value that major transport projects can unlock.
I urge the Minister to expand the Oyster and other smart card systems to include Harlow commuters, because most people who commute to London from there use the London underground or London buses.
The Minister is aware, from a previous debate, that I have long campaigned for an additional junction on the M11. A new junction is critical if Harlow is to continue to grow and attract new businesses. Harlow town alone has a population of some 81,000 or 82,000, in addition to that of the villages in my constituency, but we have only one entrance to the town, which is crazy for a huge employment hub close to London. The industry is located at the opposite end of the town, meaning that lorries must trundle back and forth, almost through the town centre. Almost every day, our town faces gridlock because we do not have the extra junction.
I welcome work done by the local council on a £500,000 study into building a new M11 junction 7a, which will report in November—in a few weeks. I urge the Minister to consider that report. The case for a new M11 junction is simple: it would cost only around £15 million, would create jobs and growth, cut congestion and the cost of traffic, and would generally make Harlow a much better place to live. Our local enterprise partnership has secured a small amount of funding for road improvements, and I welcome some things that the Government have announced, but this is a sticking plaster. We will not solve our transport problems in Harlow until we get the extra junction.
I want to talk briefly about how our infrastructure is funded. My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) has brilliantly highlighted how, unfortunately, money raised for the railways by commuters through fares is not spent in the east of England; most of it goes to other parts of the country. We must move to a situation where money raised in the region by commuters paying high rail fares is spent in the region. The same thing has happened with fuel duty. Through the 1920s, the road fund was repeatedly raided to prop up the Treasury, and from 1937 it was treated as a general tax. By 1966, just one third of the revenue was spent on roads, and by 2008 the figure was just one fifth. The proportion of fuel duty being spent on roads has shrunk hugely, but at the same time that duty has risen. Motorists regard that as unfair because they do not see any benefit from the huge sums in fuel duty tax that they pay. The same is true of train ticket price rises. How can we justify those without proper investment in our local road and rail networks?
The cost of living is the No. 1 issue in my constituency. People want cheaper travel and they want every penny that the Government take from them to be recycled back into the community. I urge the Minister to refocus the Department on extra infrastructure investment in the east of England, in our trains, motorways and road networks—a cause that is close to our hearts. We need more radical transparency, so that people can see whether fare increases are genuinely being ploughed back into their area.
I am glad that the Government have fulfilled their election pledge and stopped a second runway at Stansted airport. The answer to infrastructure spending is not to spend millions on an extra runway, but to spend that money, if it is ever available, on our roads, rail and other transport infrastructure. Stansted is running at only 50% of full capacity, so there is no economic case for a second runway. Some say that people in Harlow would benefit, but Stansted has some 10,000 employees, of whom only a few hundred come from Harlow. I am yet to be convinced that Harlow people would benefit if there were an extra runway.
The Government should look seriously at the case for a new airport, but my constituents ask me time and again for a new M11 junction and extra train capacity to London.
Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)
I associate myself with the comments made by all right hon. and hon. Members about the economic contribution that Essex makes to our economy. I say to the Minister that we mention such things only because we are entrepreneurial and people work hard in their businesses. It is incumbent on the Government to ensure that the conditions are right for people to take those risks and invest, and central to that is transport infrastructure. I am afraid to say that in recent years the wealth-creating capability of Essex has been rather taken for granted by Governments. I hope that this debate will kick-start a more engaged interest from Governments about what really needs to be done to help Essex be the best it can be.
Hon. Members have said that Essex is a powerhouse of the economy. I hope that my right hon. and hon. Friends forgive me for saying that Thurrock is a major powerhouse of the UK economy. My hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) mentioned the upcoming new port at London Gateway, which has the potential to create upwards of 36,000 jobs. We should remember that Thurrock already has massive port infrastructure, with the established port at Tilbury, a major roll-on/roll-off ferry operation at Purfleet and any number of manufacturing industries along the Thames, bringing in their supplies by river, including companies such as Unilever and Proctor and Gamble. As I have said before, Europe’s entire supply of Fairy liquid is manufactured in and exported from my constituency.
Although supplies come in by ship and along the Thames, manufactured products have to get out by road, and that is the real challenge. We talked about the Dartford crossing, but the wider road infrastructure in Thurrock is getting close to breaking point. Every winter, mainly because a lot of people do their Christmas shopping at the fantastic Lakeside shopping centre, we often find our roads in a state of severe gridlock.
The Minister will not be surprised that I have a little wish list of projects, as my hon. Friends do. Top of the list has to be improvement of junction 30 and 31 of the M25, which is a major source of gridlock. To set the scene, that is where the A13 meets the M25 and it is the last junction before reaching the Dartford crossing and so, necessarily, a pinch point. I highlight again the frankly incompetent decision making by the previous Government, in the sense that they invested billions of pounds in widening the M25 only to send everyone to a bottleneck at the Dartford crossing—failing to fix that junction or the capacity issues. The Department has plans to investigate and to develop proposals for an additional river crossing but, if we examine that expenditure, it was poor value for money and has made the existing problems so much worse.
With Dartford the bane of many motorists’ lives in Thurrock, the Department is looking at three proposals for a further crossing, all of which in some way, shape or form go through Thurrock. Motorists in my constituency, although they recognise the problems caused by congestion, are not happy at the prospect of absorbing yet more road infrastructure. We already have severe problems with air quality, which is caused in great part by the fact that traffic is not moving enough, and road infrastructure investment could deal with that, but we are particularly concerned that we will end up with more of Thurrock being dug up to create new motorways, which would be unacceptable to many of my constituents. We need to be sure that any new crossing will genuinely alleviate congestion at Dartford, so the location is important. The arguments for a new crossing have not been made effectively at all for my constituents.
As I mentioned in my intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Witham, by removing the toll barriers, we will increase capacity at Dartford by 20%. We are making a significant investment by putting in the free-flow tolling, but motorists are finding the additional toll punitive, and increases will happen again. I need to ask whether those tolls need to be kept at all—that case needs to be made—particularly bearing in mind that, as the hon. Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell) said, the deal when the crossing was first created was that the tolls would be removed once the crossing was paid for.
My next point relates to level crossings. When London Gateway comes on stream, the commitment is that much of the freight coming into that port will be moved by rail. Obviously, there will be additional impacts on the road infrastructure as well, but there is a double whammy because we still have a number of level crossings in Thurrock, such as at Purfleet, on the London road and at Stanford-le-Hope, where the town is bisected. Some of those freight trains will be long, so when the barriers at the level crossings come down, they will slow down the traffic substantially, creating real potential for significant gridlock.
I have had a frustrating exchange of letters on level crossings with Network Rail, which seems to think that there will be no problem because the freight trains will not move at peak hours. When we are talking about road infrastructure that supports a logistics industry and heavy goods vehicle traffic, avoiding rush hour, frankly, will make no difference, because lorries already do that. We would be putting an additional significant strain on the road network, so I ask the Minister to look into the matter in considerable detail. Although, in principle, we want to move more freight by rail, we must still ensure the continuing operation of our road network.
Finally, we cannot have a debate on transport infrastructure without straying into the area of aviation. I hear clearly what some of my hon. Friends said. We seem to have got ourselves into the position of talking only about an airport that is a major international hub with four runways or nothing, but there is a good argument for the New York model of air capacity. I have some sympathy for what my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) said, but the one point to make about proposals for expansion at Gatwick, Stansted and Heathrow is that they would all be privately funded, while the proposals for a four-runway airport in the Thames estuary would not be. We cannot, however, divorce aviation capacity from the other issues that face our county: rail capacity and road capacity. My final message to the Minister is about whether we can join all that up.
James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East) (Con)
I should say that it is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price), but it is frustrating that my parents, having met her, think that she is the best Member of Parliament in the place. I keep pointing out to them that they ought to be a little more loyal and say second best, but they still do not take the point.
The debate has been absolutely fantastic, and I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), who not only represents her constituency superbly but the surrounding areas and the whole of Essex—greater Essex, with Thurrock, Southend and, it appears from earlier interventions, Ilford. Unfortunately, having said that the debate has been good, focusing on the whole of Essex, I would like not to follow her example; I shall be slightly more parochial, touching on rail, road and air issues as they affect my constituents directly.
I have always seen the rail line from Fenchurch Street into Shoebury as something of a pipeline of money—coming from the City, bringing money backwards and forwards, whether earned or spent in London, and encouraging businesses to come into the town. I am somewhat concerned about the tender for the c2c line. My right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst) says that it is one of the few places where money has been spent, which is entirely correct, but I am rather concerned that some of the excellent rolling stock will be removed as part of the franchising process. That process is flawed, and the Department should look at it again; it focuses too much on the numbers and not enough on service quality. Quite possibly, one and perhaps more of the four tenderers would remove some or all of the stock with air conditioning on that line. That would be bad for my constituents, bad for all the constituents down the line and bad for Essex. We have had some good news to do with rail, with the new station of Southend Airport opening, but I gently say to the Minister that to open a railway station seems to be the most difficult thing in the world to do—liaising with Network Rail and the various agencies—and it was far harder than it should have been to open that station and to help to generate growth.
Turning to roads, industrial estates in the west of my constituency can charge about 25% more than those in the east. That is not only about the time it takes to get from A to B, across Southend and out on to the various roads going into London, but about the predictability of time it takes. We have seen benefits such as at Sadlers Farm, where the work has taken far too long to deliver but is almost complete now, shaving several minutes off the time and, crucially, improving predictability. Also Southend council worked to improve Cuckoo Corner as an alternative to dualling and that has proved to operate incredibly well. Broadly speaking, we would like an outer relief road, from Shoebury, by-passing Southend; but in all candour, all alternatives at the moment would involve housing all along the side of the road, which would put congestion back into the system.
I want to mention the Dartford crossing. I accept the reprimand from the hon. Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell), and perhaps we should start calling it the Thurrock crossing, branding it the Essex crossing only when we have sorted it out.
I turn to air transport. London Southend airport is in my constituency, which borders on two others. My right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst) asked whether they are Essex airports or London airports. I and the majority of my constituents were pleased when we were able to call it London Southend airport. Essex people still get to use it, because it is not just for Londoners, but someone travelling to Canary Wharf can fly into London Southend airport, get on a train within 15 minutes and be in Canary Wharf within 40 minutes, which is much quicker than going via London Gatwick or London Heathrow. People travelling into the City from international destinations should use London Southend airport. They can clear customs all the way through to New York via Ireland. They can nip across to Amsterdam, which is a hub airport, and go anywhere in the world. London Southend is a real alternative to other London airports.
It would be wrong not to mention the various proposals for a larger airport in the estuary. There are many arguments against that, but if it happens, we must ensure that we get the right infrastructure and benefits, not only in Essex, but in Kent and the surrounding areas. We must go in with our eyes wide open. There are opportunities, but at the moment I cannot see a way through all the objections; if others can see a way through, we must ensure that we have the right infrastructure for Essex and Kent.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) for securing this debate, which comes at an important time when difficult decisions are being made on transport spending, both locally and nationally. She made a persuasive case for investment in Essex’s transport system, and it is important that all hon. Members make the call to support vital spending on infrastructure.
In July, we debated “Once in a generation—A rail prospectus for East Anglia”, and I, with several hon. Members here today, spoke in praise of that important document. It made a serious, positive case for investment in rail services in East Anglia, and I am glad that some of those issues have been revisited today. There is no doubt that Essex has complex transport needs, and a strong rail network is vital if they are to be met, not just to improve the experience for passengers—many hon. Members described why that is necessary—but to enable greater use of rail and to help relieve the pressure on roads, as hon. Members have so powerfully described.
Essex is a vibrant county, and it makes a vital contribution to the national economy, but that contribution is dependent on a transport system that is already under enormous pressure. Passengers face unsatisfactory services, with too much congestion on the roads, and trains at or above capacity during peak times. Passengers should not have to stand day in, day out when they are paying £4,000 or more for a season ticket. The county’s population is due to grow by 10% by 2018 and 20% by 2025, so investment is needed just to keep pace with that demographic change. However, still more investment is needed to enable regeneration and to help Essex to realise its full potential.
Some specific projects have been mentioned, and I will return to future investment. We must make sure that we do not lose what we already have. Under the Government’s plans, capital infrastructure spending on transport will fall by 11% over the course of this Parliament, and future infrastructure spending has been threatened by the uncertainty arising from the botched franchising of the west coast main line, throwing the future of the Essex Thameside franchise into doubt.
In a county that contains pronounced contrasts between rural and urban communities, as well as affluence alongside pockets of deprivation, bus services are particularly important. In Basildon, which is part of the Thames Gateway regeneration project, a quarter of households do not own a car. Essex county council’s own transport strategy acknowledges that bus services connecting Harlow and Basildon to other towns and cities are inadequate. The 28% cut to local transport funding and the 20% reduction to the bus service operators grant are putting the bus network under strain, with at least 18 services being reduced or withdrawn in Essex since 2010.
Although this is a debate on infrastructure, as the hon. Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell) recognised, we must not lose sight of the importance of bus subsidy, which is vital for sustaining a true transport network. Bus services are under pressure, but commuters are also feeling the impact of fare rises. We have heard from the Government that rail fares are set to rise by up to 4.2% in January, but that is not the whole story. The decision to reintroduce flex could lead to fare increases of up to 9.2% at a time when household budgets are being squeezed on all sides.
Passengers reasonably ask when they will see service improvements, but under the guise of the McNulty report, the Department is pushing ahead with ticket office closures, which could lead to the withdrawal of staff from Alresford, Colchester Town, Dovercourt, Frinton-on-Sea, Great Bentley and Harwich International, among other Essex stations. Those closures will hit women and those on the wrong side of the digital divide, including many pensioners.
A spokesperson from Ontrack, a passenger group in Tendring, said:
“We've already had letters from some women who travel on their own, so we know it's a real concern not to have staff at the stations”
and
“in a coastal area like this there”
is
“a high proportion of elderly people who prefer to go to a ticket office and talk to someone rather than use a complicated machine. This will put people off using the trains.”
Those threats to public transport provision should not be allowed to threaten the good progress that has been made.
The hon. Member for Witham and other hon. Members have spoken about the vital role of Stansted airport, and we should celebrate the fact that 49% of Stansted passengers arrive by public transport—the highest proportion of any major UK airport. The East Anglia rail prospectus called for public transport links to Stansted to be strengthened, and I hope that that call is listened to as we enter cross-party talks on aviation capacity. Whatever the conclusion of those talks, I hope that the decline in passenger numbers at Stansted can be reversed, because both Stansted and the growing London Southend airport have an important role to play in alleviating pressure in the capital.
Improvements to infrastructure will play an important role. We need better integration between transport modes, especially between aviation and rail. The 45 minutes that it takes to travel 35 miles from Liverpool street to Stansted is, as the hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe) said, far from express. I hope that the means and the funding can be found to reduce that journey time.
In some respects, the problems encountered at Stansted are representative of those of the county as a whole. Existing transport links have enabled Essex to emerge as an important driver of national economic growth, yet those same transport links are clearly in need of improvement. To strengthen the transport network, we must look at both funding levels and the mechanisms through which that funding is delivered.
We want to devolve transport spending decisions but, unlike the Government, we would devolve that spending to democratically accountable regional transport partnerships based on elected local authorities. That would allow Essex or East Anglia to decide their own priorities, whether improvements to congested and dangerous roads or junctions, development of tram systems or better cycling infrastructure.
The current review of the franchising process should be allowed to consider alternative models for the rail industry, including the proposal to allow local transport authorities a greater say in how services are run. In Essex, where overcrowding is the norm and passenger satisfaction rates are low, that could allow the development of services that are more responsive to passengers’ needs. Above all, it would give local transport authorities the oversight they need to lead the integration of different modes of transport.
Sir Bob Russell
Is the hon. Lady saying that all the transport problems in Essex commenced in May 2010?
As the hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) said, rail commuters in the region return substantial amounts to the Treasury, but see little return on the investment, while millions are lost each year due to the fragmentation of the industry. If the Government were serious about improving efficiency in the railways, they would look at alternative models for delivering services, instead of closing ticket offices in Essex.
The current uncertainty over the franchising model has been compounded by needless distractions that have beset the Department. It must be a source of frustration for Members here today that Government time is being taken up by the franchise fiasco, wrangles over High Speed 2 and fantasy islands in the middle of the Thames, when the time could be used to drive forward the improvements that their constituents require.
The need for improvements in Essex is acute, as today’s debate is proving. The answer is investment in transport infrastructure, both for commuter travel and to meet local transport needs. This debate is important and I am sure that the case for investment has been heard in the Department. I hope that a way forward can be found, so that Essex can develop the infrastructure it needs for the 21st century.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Norman Baker)
I welcome the opportunity that the debate offers to discuss in detail the issues that my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), her colleagues and others have raised today on transport in Essex. Those matters fall within my portfolio, as well as those of my right hon. Friend the Minister of State and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary. I will do my best to respond to all the points in as much detail as I can.
As I am sure everybody will agree, transport is the artery of any economy. It gets people to work, children to school and food to the shops. Everyone depends on it. The coalition Government is in no doubt about the importance of transport infrastructure in supporting the economy, and we have already announced increased Government funding to deliver improvements targeted at supporting economic growth projects. By the way, I say to Hansard that the coalition Government “is” committed, because the Government is of one mind on this matter. It is a single-minded, cohesive unit on the need to deliver substantial and significant economic growth.
The Government believes that continuing to invest in the strategic road network in Essex through major upgrades to the M25 is important. Back in May, the £400 million widening between junctions 27 and 30 was completed ahead of schedule and in good time for the summer Olympics.
My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) referred to the M25, junction 30. As I hope she knows, we announced in May that the pre-construction development work of six Highways Agency major road schemes has been selected for funding, to maintain a future pipeline of major investment in the strategic road network. The pipeline included proposals for a M25 junction 30/A13 congestion relief scheme, and it means that that will be developed in this spending review period for potential delivery in the next spending review period.
Advancing the development work now does not, of course, guarantee that the delivery of those proposals will be funded. Decisions about which schemes are to be delivered in future periods will be taken at the next spending review by the Chancellor. In the meantime, however, some interim improvements to the junction are being funded by DP World as part of their planning obligations for phase 1 of the London Gateway port development off the A13 to the east at Corringham. Those works will be undertaken in 2013.
My hon. Friend the Member for Witham raised the issue of the A12 and the A120. Of course, given the financial situation that we inherited from the previous Government, funding has been limited, and we have had to prioritise plans for future investment. As everybody will be aware following the Government’s 2010 spending review, there are no proposals for major improvements to the A12 or A120 in the Highways Agency’s current road programme.
However, in May this year we published our response to Alan Cook’s independent review of the strategic road network. In that response, we fully accepted the recommendation to take forward and develop a series of route-based strategies for the network. I am pleased to say that the A12 in Essex has been selected as one of the first locations in which we are developing such a strategy. It will cover the A12 between its junctions with the M25 and the A14 and include the A120 between Colchester and Harwich.
The route-based strategies will seek to set out what may be needed in terms of the maintenance, operation and possible enhancement of routes to keep this country moving and help support economic growth. That will help us make informed future decisions on the need and timing of investment in infrastructure on the network. The Highways Agency is currently working closely with local enterprise partnerships and local authorities along the route to take forward the strategy, which will be completed in early 2013.
It should also be noted that the Highways Agency is undertaking a series of small-scale improvements along the A120 this year, and that earlier this month the agency confirmed, as my hon. Friend said, £0.3 million of funding through round two of the pinch point fund for the A120 Galleys corner roundabout improvement. That scheme should be completed in 2013 and will help to reduce congestion and improve safety by widening the roundabout to encourage A120 traffic to use both lanes. I will ensure that my hon. Friend’s other comments are fed back to my colleague, the Under-Secretary, who has the lead responsibility for that matter.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst) referred to Norwich, and I put on the record that an A11 major road scheme is included in the programme. The massive improvement on the A11 between Fiveways and Thetford will be delivered by December 2014, so Norwich will finally get the road that it has perhaps been after for some time.
I noted that my right hon. Friend blamed the Romans for the state of the road network—I suppose that that is a bit different from blaming the previous Government—but he is right to say that we have had an historical problem with cross-country connections, going back a long way, whether on rail or road. I recall spending many an hour on the A414, as it was then, travelling from east to west across the country, prior to the M25 being built. We have seen some improvements, but I agree with the general thrust of my right hon. Friend’s comments, which was that cross-country connections are not as good as linear ones into London. The country needs to look at that as a concept.
The Thurrock and Dartford crossing was raised by Members from a number of constituencies. The Government recognises the importance of that crossing as a vital transport link for the both the national and south-east economies. The economic cost of delay is estimated to be around £40 million per annum, as my hon. Friend the Member for Witham said. We have been clear about the need to reduce the levels of congestion and delays at the crossing, which in themselves are barriers to economic growth.
The charge increases, introduced on 7 October, are part of a package of measures for the short, medium and long term to improve the performance of the crossing. The measures include: the suspension of charges at times of severe congestion, as introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) when he was a transport Minister; the introduction of free-flow charging technology; and reviewing options for additional crossing capacity in the long term.
The charge increases provide benefits to businesses, commuters and other transport users in terms of improvements in travel time. The impact assessment showed that businesses are estimated to benefit by about £104 million, commuters by about £9.6 million and other transport users by about £34.4 million.
My hon. Friend the Member for Witham asked about contractors’ payments. I understand that the costs of operating and maintaining the crossing from 2009 were part of the M25 design, build, finance and operate contract. The costs are estimated and not separately paid for, and the estimates are based on methodology agreed by the National Audit Office, in which costs are evenly spread over 30-year contracts, so it is difficult to compare with historical costs prior to that date. Additionally, from September 2009, transferring the traffic officer service and meeting EU tunnel safety requirements have increased costs.
A number of colleagues raised the major issue of the tolls themselves. It is perfectly true that when a toll was envisaged, it was for the lifetime of the structure, as my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell) said. That was then changed to a charge related to congestion by the previous Government under the Transport Act 2000, and it was therefore, at that point, no longer connected to paying for the bridge.
Sir Bob Russell
Is it still the Government’s policy, as it was with the previous Government, to sell the Thurrock crossings—both the bridge and the tunnels? If so, should not the financial benefit go to the council tax payers of Essex and Kent?
Norman Baker
As my hon. Friend will know, consideration is being given to the general capacity of the crossing. We face a strategic choice whether to enhance the strategic road network at the existing crossing or to add a new link into the network, with a crossing further downstream, and I noted the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock on that matter. That is why we are currently analysing the relative merits of the three potential locations for the new crossing, and the findings will inform public consultation in 2013. That is a way of saying that such issues will be wrapped up in consideration of the crossing in total, and it would be wrong to isolate one instance without looking at future plans for the crossing.
On rail and rail infrastructure, I am aware that my hon. Friend the Member for Witham has campaigned hard for improvements in rail services in the region and for increased investment to reflect the level of fares paid, particularly by commuters. I am grateful for the recognition that the Government has taken steps to ensure that the possible increase in rail fares of RPI plus 3% has been averted. We have worked very hard on that in the Department for Transport and in the Government generally, and therefore rail fares will increase by RPI plus 1% for the rest of this Parliament. That was the formula put in place by the last Labour Government in 2004.
The issue of flex, which the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) referred to, was, I think, a little disingenuous, because flex was abolished for one year by the last Labour Transport Secretary. The intention, as shown by the paperwork in the Department for Transport, which I quoted in a previous debate, was to reinstate flex after the election. We are following the policy of the last Government in terms of both RPI plus 1% and the ability of companies to use flex while still maintaining the overall RPI plus 1% result.
Lilian Greenwood
To be clear and honest with the Essex constituents of the hon. Members here today, will the Minister confirm that the implication of the Government’s reintroducing flex is that some people could face increases in their rail fares of up to 9.2% in January 2013?
Norman Baker
As I mentioned, we have followed the intention of the last Government. It is also true that, with flex, some people can face an increase of zero, because flex, by definition, has fares above RPI plus 1% and below RPI plus 1%. That is the purpose of flex. By the way, I say to the Opposition spokesperson that trying to use scare tactics about the future of rail services and ticket offices does not help. We are trying to get more people on to the railways and to provide a better service, not to frighten people off the railways, as she seemed to be intending to do.
I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Witham will agree with me that there have been some service improvements in the region—for example, the cleaning of trains and the programme of refreshing of stations that is under way. Greater Anglia is investing in improvements to ticket retailing, additional car parking and cycle storage facilities across the franchise. A closer working relationship with Network Rail is seeing improvements in how access for engineering works is approached. That is something within my portfolio and something I have been pushing very hard, because when people want a train, they want a train, not a replacement bus service. It is expected to lead to better provision of services at weekends where large-scale closures have been the norm for a number of years. Frankly, that has to end.
I recognise the valuable work done in putting together the rail prospectus to which my hon. Friend and other colleagues refer. It makes the case very powerfully for investment in rail services in the Greater Anglia region. I can confirm that due consideration will be given to those aspirations when the Department is in a position to go to the market for a new franchise proposition.
The point about access to Stansted airport by rail was well made. It has been raised by a number of stakeholders and hon. Members and is very much on the Department’s radar as well.
The issue was raised of the link between Witham and Braintree—the branch line there. We are working with local stakeholders, who are currently developing a business case for the work. Consistent with our approach in other areas, we are happy to consider including such proposals in future franchises if a positive financial case can be made.
The good news, if my hon. Friend looks at what is happening elsewhere in the country, is that the largest rail building and investment programme since Victorian times is now being undertaken in this country. That includes passing loops and redoubling of lines in some cases, such as between Swindon and Kemble. It even includes lines being reopened, such as that from Oxford across to Bedford. There is heavy investment in rail, and it has a good economic return. I encourage my hon. Friend to continue to argue in favour of investment in her area for such upgrades.
On aviation, it is pleasing to see Southend airport making great strides towards becoming a modern, 21st-century transport hub, with a new railway station and terminal, and the successful launch of commercial flights to a number of European destinations earlier this year.
Colleagues have referred to the future configuration of air capacity. Of course, that matter will be considered by the commission. We look forward to receiving its interim report at the Department for Transport. It is probably not sensible to spend very much time on aviation, speculating about the future. However, it is true, as I think one hon. Member said, that there is unused capacity at Stansted at the moment. That situation might be improved if there were an improved train service to the station, which I think was a case being made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden.
Let me pick up some other points that hon. Members raised. My hon. Friend the Member for Colchester referred to the “Norwich in 90” campaign and asked for an assurance that that would not affect his constituency. I can say that we all share the desire to improve services north to Norwich and the intention would not be adversely to affect existing services. In an ideal world, we would look at improved rolling stock, improved line capacity and so on. That is how we would ideally look at delivering a better service. It certainly seems to me that if we are robbing Peter to pay Paul, there is not much of a gain to be had.
My hon. Friend also raised, as did the hon. Member for Nottingham South, the issue of bus services. I put it on the record that we regard bus services as very important. The bus is a primary means of getting to work for most people. There was a recent, very healthy publication called “Greener Journeys”, which I recommend to colleagues. It identified the key link between employment and bus services—how they are two sides of the same coin. The number of people on buses has marginally increased recently, the latest figures show, and the commercial sector is holding up very well. There is an issue about subsidised services from local councils, but that is a matter for local authorities to deal with.
We are seeing a mixed picture across the country. Whereas some areas are making very few or no cuts, other areas are making swingeing cuts, but the consequence of localism is that there will be a different response from different local authorities. Therefore, bus services in Essex are really a matter to pursue with Essex county council, rather than with the Department for Transport.
Norman Baker
I will not, if the hon. Lady does not mind, because points were raised by hon. Members that I want to cover.
My hon. Friend the Member for Colchester also raised the issue of cycleway provision, which was right. He will know, I hope, that the current Government has produced a brand-new sum of money, £600 million—the local sustainable transport fund—which, by encouraging match funding, has now produced more than £1 billion of funding for schemes on the ground, which are now being delivered. I have that rare pleasure as a Transport Minister of both approving the funding and still being there to open the schemes when they finally arrive. Many of those schemes involve cycleway provision. We are now seeing a commitment to cycling—a commitment right across England—that we did not see before. That is very good news. The number of people cycling is going up in this country.
My hon. Friend also mentioned light rail systems. I can assure him that we are doing a great deal to promote light rail. I refer him to the Department’s document “Green Light for Light Rail” and the fact that we have granted extensions to light rail systems in Manchester, Birmingham and Nottingham, as well as authorising a tram-train project between Sheffield and Rotherham. The current Government is very supportive of light rail.
Of course, these sorts of scheme, whether they involve light rail, bus or cycle provision or, indeed, local roads, will be handled in future to a large degree by local people through the devolution proposals that the Department is bringing forward and through the creation of local transport boards, which are accountable through local authorities. Therefore, to a large degree, these sorts of discussion in the future, I hope, will be held in Essex, rather than necessarily in this House.
Robert Halfon
Will my hon. Friend agree to meet me, the local council and the enterprise partnership, as well as the other Under-Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond), once the study by Essex council on the extra junction on the M11 has been completed, so that we can make the case to the Department?
Norman Baker
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s tenacity on that matter. He has raised it before, when I responded to a debate that he introduced. I am very happy to make my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) aware of his continued interest in the matter. I am sure that the Under-Secretary will be looking at the report on junction 7a, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow referred earlier, but I will pass on his request for a meeting and ensure that my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon replies to that accordingly.
My hon. Friend the Member for Harlow also raised the issue of smartcard delivery and how that can be rolled out. The Department is very keen on that and I lead on it for the Department. We believe that the availability of smartcard technology can transform public transport by making it far more attractive and easier to use, as has been proven to be the case in London. We are now seeing pilot schemes across the country.
For example, in the Southern train area, we will shortly be seeing three-day season tickets being piloted with smartcard technology. We are very committed to that. The local transport White Paper, which I launched last year, “Creating growth, cutting carbon: making sustainable local transport happen”, has an objective of the majority of public transport journeys being undertaken with smartcard technology by the end of 2014, and we are on target for that.
I hope that I have dealt with most points. If there are any outstanding points, one of my ministerial colleagues or I will write to hon. Members about them.
Democratic Republic of the Congo
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I thank the Speaker for selecting this important debate on the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I also thank the Minister for coming to reply to the debate.
I will start by making three points that I want everyone here to remember. First, a staggering 4 million lives are estimated as lost due to conflict and conflict-induced poverty in the DRC. Secondly, although it is a country rich in resources, which if used properly could transform it, it is one of the poorest nations in the world, ranking 187th out of 187 in the UN human development index. Thirdly, the average life-expectancy for a man is only 47 and for a woman, 50. The infant mortality rate is around one in 10.
The DRC is the second largest country in Africa by area, and the 11th largest in the world. With its population of 66 million, it is the 19th most populous nation in the world and the fourth most populous in Africa.
The DRC is a vast country with immense economic resources, although it has been at the centre of what could be described as Africa’s world war, which has left it in the grip of an ongoing humanitarian crisis. The five-year conflict pitted Government forces, supported by Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe, against rebels backed by Uganda and Rwanda. Despite a peace deal and the formation of a transitional Government in 2003, people in the country still remain in terror of marauding militia and the army. It is estimated that the war claimed in excess of 3 million to 4 million lives, either as a direct result of fighting or because of disease and malnutrition.
Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate. She mentioned Rwanda. Does she not find it extraordinary that the UK Government reinstated aid to Rwanda when, on the basis of UN information, the Rwandan Government have been aiding rebels in eastern Congo?
Pauline Latham
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that point. The situation is difficult, because Rwanda has itself suffered terrible conflict. I understand that the money that has been given to Rwanda was not to support the Government but for humanitarian reasons.
The war has had economic as well as political implications. Fighting was fuelled by the country’s vast mineral wealth, with all sides taking advantage of the anarchy to plunder natural resources. That vast mineral wealth has also led to illegal exploitation.
In September last year, the DRC held its first democratic elections. Observers hoped that for the first time the Congo’s history of poor governance and rebellious factions could be put to rest. However, for those living in many parts of the country there has been no such relief.
In April of this year, a rebel military group, the March 23 movement commonly reported as the M23, was formed. It is based in eastern areas of DRC and mainly operates in the province of north Kivu. The group is currently involved in a conflict in the DRC that has led to the displacement of large numbers of people. On Friday, the United Nations Security Council reiterated its condemnation of and demanded an end to all external support being provided to armed groups, particularly to the M23, which has been destabilising the DRC over recent months.
Several experts currently based on the ground—for instance, the director for central Africa of the International Crisis Group—recently confirmed to the all-party parliamentary group on the African great lakes region that many facts point to a likely resumption of attacks from rebels and army in the coming weeks or even days. That has been confirmed by the M23, which declared in a statement released last Saturday to announce the new name of its military wing, the Congolese Revolutionary Army—ARC—that it expected imminent attacks from the armed forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, FARDC.
The M23 mutiny has also contributed to a less commented-upon consequence: the increase in activities of other armed groups in other parts of the Congo, especially the Ituri region of the Orientale province and the Masisi territory of the north Kivu province. Rebel groups took advantage of the security vacuums created by redeployments of the army to M23-affected areas. Casualties since April are hard to assess precisely, but the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights declared that preliminary findings from missions of the UN joint human rights office in the DRC, carried out in Masisi territory, suggested that civilian massacres perpetrated by the FDLR—the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda—and the group known as Raia Mutomboki may constitute crimes against humanity.
In particular, the DRC’s eastern provinces of north and south Kivu have witnessed increased fighting over recent months between Government troops and the M23. The ongoing violence has led to an alarming humanitarian situation, marked by rape, murder and pillaging. The fighting has displaced hundreds of thousands people, including many who have fled to neighbouring Rwanda and Uganda, as well as within the DRC. Peacekeepers from the UN organisation stabilisation mission in the DRC—MONUSCO—have been aiding the DRC Government’s troops in their efforts to deal with the M23. Last week, six UN peacekeepers and a local interpreter were wounded in an overnight ambush, while returning from a patrol with 12 other peacekeepers, near Buganza in north Kivu province, after finding the bodies of four civilians.
As well as expressing deep concern about the deteriorating security and humanitarian crisis in the eastern DRC, caused by the M23 and other armed groups, the UN Security Council also condemned the M23’s attacks on civilians, humanitarian actors and UN peacekeepers, and its abuses of human rights, including summary executions, sexual and gender-based violence and the use of child soldiers. An M23 combatant, who recently spoke to Human Rights Watch, was candid about the recruitment of child soldiers in Rwanda. He said:
“We recruit everywhere in Rwanda and street children are very susceptible to recruitment.”
Let me very clear about where I stand on the issue. As far as I am concerned, Rwandan military and civilian officials who recruit children under the age of 15 for the M23, or any other group, are responsible for war crimes. Sexual violence is a common tragedy facing women and children in the DRC and the charity Tearfund estimates that 48 women and children per hour are raped in the country, mostly by armed groups as well as civilians. If that happened in this country, there would be an outcry.
The correlation between rape and the spread of HIV has been demonstrated in several cases. Some reports estimate that 20% of raped women are HIV-positive. Diseases such as cholera, diarrhoea and nematode infections resulting from poor water, sanitation and hygiene are also commonplace in the area. The links between sanitation and sexual violence become apparent when, owing to the lack of access to private latrines, women face no choice but to find private places to defecate, often at night and a considerable distance away from their homes, further increasing their risk of sexual violence. The organisation War Child states that this is the
“most dangerous place in the world to be a woman”.
Those sentiments were echoed by Hillary Clinton, who added:
“It truly is one of mankind’s greatest atrocities. This country has witnessed humanity at its worst.”
Rape as a tool of war is, in my opinion, a war crime and must be condemned in the strongest manner possible by the whole international community.
There are now more than 2 million internally displaced persons—IDPs—in the DRC, the highest number within the past three years, with 1.5 million IDPs in the Kivu provinces alone. There are now more than 320,000 new IDPs from north Kivu since April, owing to the M23 mutiny alone—as mentioned in the latest UN Security Council presidential statement released on Friday, which I referred to earlier—and more than 400,000 new IDPs across the provinces since the mutiny.
Aid workers in the region claim that they have exhausted their resources and capacities and that numerous IDPs are unreachable either because they are in remote areas or for security reasons, and dealing with that would require humanitarian corridors to be set up. The global UN-led DRC humanitarian action plan is still only 47% funded. The UN refugee agency has launched an appeal for almost $40 million to cover the needs of 400,000 internally displaced people in north Kivu, south Kivu and Orientale provinces and of 75,000 refugees—25,000 in Rwanda and 50,000 in Uganda—who have appeared since the M23 rebellion started in April.
The UNHCR has warned that the situation remains volatile and that it expects further displacement this year. It fears that the number of new IDPs may reach as many as 760,000 in the coming months. The agency also said that it was particularly alarmed about the large number of human rights violations in north and south Kivu, where more than 15,000 protection incidents, including, murder, rape and forced recruitment, have been reported since April.
Given the magnitude of the new displacements, the World Food Programme has launched a new emergency operation from September 2012 to June 2013, which will assist approximately 1.2 million people in five provinces. Three weeks ago, it declared:
“We need additional funding to be able to continue to assist this very poor population. So far we have mobilised only 15% of the total cost of this emergency operation.”
UK aid to the DRC will increase from about £147 million in 2011 to £258 million a year by 2015, which amounts to £790 million between 2011 and 2015, with £176 million to be spent on wealth creation, £130 million on humanitarian aid and £109 million on governance and security.
In 2010-11, the DRC was the UK’s seventh largest recipient of bilateral aid and the third in terms of bilateral humanitarian assistance. In the past five years, western countries alone have invested more than $14 billion in the DRC. International aid is now equivalent to nearly half the DRC’s annual budget. As such, donors have considerable leverage over the DRC. Yet despite all that aid, nothing substantial ever seems to happen to stop the suffering of the people of the DRC.
The DRC will continue to receive billions in aid, including in humanitarian assistance, to help to relieve the suffering of the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the numerous ongoing conflicts, while the lack of efforts by the Congolese Government on good governance, on structural reforms in the security sector, the army and the justice and administration sectors and on decentralisation will thwart any positive developments in stabilisation.
Despite all the ongoing work and the amount of aid being given by the UK and the international community, the DRC will not meet any of its millennium development goals. However, if the UK Government continue with their current policy, which I sincerely hope they will, then by 2015 we will without doubt fulfil the targets for the DRC, set by the Department for International Development. Those targets include delivering more for poor people by promoting economic growth and wealth creation; helping to build peace, stability and democracy; and meeting various specific targets such as safer births, clean water for 6 million people, and protection from malaria for 15 million adults and children.
Eric Joyce (Falkirk) (Ind)
I simply want to refer to the destabilisation effect. Does the hon. Lady agree that one of the problems is that the lack of movement on the reformation of the armed services creates enormous pressures on Rwanda and Uganda to act over their borders into eastern Congo?
Pauline Latham
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He has a huge experience of this subject.
Finally, at a time of such economic hardship at home, there are those who question the purpose and the amount of aid going overseas, but this is an investment. I passionately believe that providing aid to people in such desperate conditions is morally right. It is also in our national interest to have a safer and more secure world and less suffering in such destitute conditions. It is time to move the world with us in embracing the 21st century.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr Hugo Swire)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) on securing the debate. She has shown a strong interest in humanitarian issues in this part of Africa, both before and since entering the House. She has raised some interesting points and I welcome the opportunity to debate the topic, as I share her concerns about the situation in eastern DRC, as do a number of hon. Members, two of whom also spoke this morning. The region has also been the subject of a number of recent parliamentary questions. The topic itself is the responsibility of the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Mark Simmonds), who is unable to be here today.
The deteriorating humanitarian situation in the DRC is extremely worrying. There are 2.3 million internally displaced people, up from 1.7 million at the end of last year. The strengthening and proliferation of armed groups in 2012 as the national army has redeployed to tackle M23 has led to a sharp increase in the number of attacks on civilians, including alarming levels of sexual violence, forced recruitment and other human rights abuses.
Access for humanitarian agencies to affected areas is limited. The UN humanitarian action plan called for $791 million, but only $412 million has been raised to date. My hon. Friend asked about UK aid to the DRC. As she notes, the UK is one of the largest contributors of development aid to the DRC, and over the next four years the UK will deliver significant results to the poorest and most vulnerable people. We are committed to providing a minimum of £27 million of assistance each year until 2016. We call on others to follow suit and give this crisis the attention and support it deserves.
The DRC remains one of the most challenging environments in which to deliver aid. Questions over further UK aid support to the DRC are first and foremost for my colleagues at the Department for International Development, and I will ensure that the debate is brought to their attention. I am also aware that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development will continue to review the programme to ensure that the money is reaching the right places in the DRC while also achieving value for money for the British taxpayer.
Looking beyond the humanitarian crisis, we want a stable and prosperous DRC. The international community needs to respond to the drivers of the conflict. We therefore welcome the presidential statement issued by the United Nations Security Council on Friday 19 October. The statement condemns M23 and all its attacks on the civilian population and emphasises the need for countries to respect the principles of non-interference, good neighbourliness and regional co-operation. We want a regional solution to what we believe is a regional problem. We welcome the leadership that the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region has shown thus far. The ICGLR has achieved a ceasefire, or, more accurately, a lull in the fighting. I say that because clashes have, alas, continued. Although they are not at earlier levels, they are enough to remain a concern. The fact remains that a rebel group with external support is in control of part of the DRC. That is clearly unacceptable.
We also welcome the ICGLR’s proposals for a neutral international force to tackle armed groups in eastern DRC, though details remain to be decided, and an extended joint verification mechanism to monitor the border between the DRC and Rwanda. We urge its rapid deployment.
Mr Swire
No, I will continue, if I may. In a moment, I will answer the question that the hon. Gentleman put earlier.
However, the crisis requires a sustainable political solution—something that the ICGLR has not yet been able to address in depth. The UN is working on the problem and it held a high-level meeting in New York on 26 September, which my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary attended, during the UN General Assembly. We were disappointed with the outcome, but it is crucial that we continue to work with the UN, with regional groups such as the ICGLR, the Southern African Development Community and the African Union, and with our international partners to ensure there is support for regional efforts to find common ground for a lasting political solution. We should not pretend that this will be a quick and painless process, but it is vital that we see progress soon, given the terrible impact of the crisis on the ordinary people of the DRC, which my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire described.
We want to explore what more the UN peacekeeping and stabilisation mission in the DRC—MONUSCO, or the United Nations Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo—can do to support efforts to find a solution, as well as fulfilling its vital and primary role of protecting civilians. In addition to working through the UN and supporting regional bodies such as the ICGLR, we will continue to maintain pressure on the Rwandan and DRC Governments about their roles.
For Rwanda, the message is that it must play a constructive role in resolving the problems in eastern DRC and stop all support for M23. That message has been given many times over the past six months. For example, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister gave it during a meeting with the President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, in July, and my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary did the same during a telephone call with the Rwandan Minister for Foreign Affairs on 29 September. Our high commissioner in Kigali has reinforced the message on many occasions with a number of senior Rwandan figures.
I want to address the question put to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire by the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) on the continuation of aid to Rwanda. The decision to disburse £8 million of general budget support while reprogramming the remaining £8 million to targeted programmes on education and food security took account of the fact that withholding the money would impact on the very people we aim to help. By reprogramming some of the general budget support, we signalled our continuing concern about Rwanda’s actions in eastern DRC.
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman was not trying to make some kind of cheap political point about the issue. The point is that we are committed to helping the poorest people in the world and we believe that there are people in Rwanda who are still deserving of our support. The decision to continue that support was taken across Government.
Mr Swire
No, I will not.
The message for the DRC Government is that they have a major role to play if the cycle of violence in the east of the country is to be broken for good. They need to show leadership and to address, in practical ways, the underlying causes of instability in the region. A sustainable peace can be found only if all external support for armed groups in the DRC stops and if the DRC Government show leadership in finding long-term solutions.
My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire rightly focused on the issue of sexual violence in the DRC and the appalling stories—those which we hear of—emanating from that part of the world almost daily. We utterly condemn the use of sexual violence in conflict, wherever and whenever it takes place. In the DRC in particular, that horrific situation persists and will leave lasting scars.
My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary recently launched a new initiative on the prevention of sexual violence in conflict. We are setting up a UK team of experts who will be deployed to conflict areas in support of efforts to prevent and investigate sexual violence. The initiative will provide crucial funding support to the UN, and we will also work to help other countries to develop their capabilities to prevent and investigate those terrible crimes. I hope that the initiative will also enjoy the support of all parties in the House.
As my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary also announced, the UK will use our presidency of the G8 to secure commitments from others to tackle sexual violence in conflict. With the UK showing international leadership in this area, that is an appropriate point at which to draw my remarks to a close.
Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)
To enable Members to attend Prayers and Question Time, the sitting is suspended until 2.30 pm.
Post-2015 Development Agenda
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir. I am pleased to have secured this debate on post-2015 development goals at a very appropriate time.
The issue for debate today is what should happen to the set of international goals for development when 2015—the date by which the development goals adopted in 2000 were meant to have been implemented—is reached. Should the world community create entirely new ones? Should we incorporate the 2000 millennium development goals, in so far as they have not been fulfilled? How do the goals after 2015 relate to the sustainable development goals adopted at Rio? Do we need goals at all?
Those are important issues and this is an appropriate time to discuss them, for a number of reasons. First, the international community—states, non-governmental organisations, charities and the rest—in both richer and developing countries is now seriously beginning to address those issues. In the UK, we have a particularly good opportunity to influence the debate about the strategic approach to be adopted after 2015, because the Prime Minister has a role as the co-chair of the UN Secretary-General’s high-level panel, which is looking at the global development agenda after 2015. The first full meeting of that panel takes place in London next week.
The first question to be addressed is whether there should be a new set of international goals like the millennium development goals. I strongly believe that there should, although not necessarily in the same format. The idea of an internationally recognised set of targets is, I believe, a good one. Targets such as the MDGs can focus attention, action and funding, and set achievable objectives. We can see how far progress is being made in particular areas. There is plenty of evidence that the existence of the millennium development goals of 2000 did encourage the world community to focus efforts. Without them some, maybe much, of the progress would not have been achieved.
Indeed, some of the millennium development goals have been met ahead of the deadline set during the various negotiations leading up to their adoption. For example, the proportion of the world’s population living in extreme poverty—that is, on less than $1.25 a day—fell in 2010 to less than half the 1990 rate, according to the World Bank’s preliminary estimates. That fall in extreme poverty applies in every region of the developing world, including sub-Saharan Africa, where the situation is sometimes the least positive.
The proportion of people without access to safe drinking water was also halved by 2010 and there were significant improvements in the lives of 200 million people living in slums around the world. That is more than double the millennium development goal of 100 million people having their lives improved in that way.
Other targets are on track to be met, such as the target to halt and begin to reverse the spread of TB by 2015. As for universal primary education, the overall enrolment rates of children of primary school age in sub-Saharan Africa increased from 58% to 76% between 1999 and 2010. Mortality rates for children under the age of five have fallen markedly and 6.5 million people at the end of 2010 were receiving antiretroviral therapy for HIV or AIDS in developing regions.
The number of children not attending school, which was 108 million in 1999, had fallen to 61 million in 2010. There has been progress and it is important to emphasise that, to answer those who suggest that there is no point in doing anything in the field of international development, that it is a waste of money and that we cannot do anything about it. We can make progress; the world community can do something if we act together.
There is no doubt that in many areas progress is slowing down, no doubt partly due to the economic crisis. Development assistance at a global level has now fallen for the first time in 14 years. In 2011 it fell by 2.7%, turning back an increase in the previous 14 years, during which the UK had, of course, been a leader. I am certainly glad that the UK has remained committed to the 0.7% target, which we hope other countries will follow.
We have reached the time to discuss what should replace the existing millennium development goals. The issue is being debated by NGOs and Governments, and our own Select Committee on International Development in the House of Commons is starting its own inquiry. It is inevitable when such debate takes place that all sorts of options will be put forward for inclusion in a new list of development goals, and it is difficult to choose between them. I am certainly not going to cherry-pick today and produce my preferred list of specific targets. Indeed, part of the reason why I was keen to secure this debate was to find out more about the Government’s thinking on these issues before the 1 November meeting, to which I have already referred.
However, I do want to suggest some main themes on which a new list or programme—whatever form the new international development agenda takes—can be based, and the reasons why. My first theme is responding to climate change and environmental sustainability. There are two reasons for that. The first is that the existing millennium development goal on environmental sustainability is arguably one where, in some areas, some of the least progress has been made overall. The second is that the extent and urgency of the threat from climate change is much clearer now than it was in 2000.
It is frequently the poor in the poorest countries who are the biggest losers from the potential effects of climate change. I do not have time to go into the detail today, but issues such as flooding and desertification come to mind. Access to sustainable and affordable energy is a big issue. There is still a big question mark about how climate mitigation and adaptation is to be financed; it is still far from settled following negotiations in Copenhagen and Cancun.
Sir Tony Cunningham (Workington) (Lab)
To emphasise the importance of climate change and flooding, I should say that I was in the Philippines earlier this year. Floods occurred in an area that had not been flooded for 50 or 60 years. The total number of deaths was between 25,000 and 30,000, among the poorest people of that area. That demonstrates the importance of doing something about climate change.
Mark Lazarowicz
Absolutely. We are seeing that kind of example in many other countries in the world. While we must always be careful of trying to ascribe every natural disaster to climate change, the evidence is building about the effect on countries such as the one referred to by my hon. Friend.
I would characterise the second theme that should feature in whatever development goals are adopted by the international community as equity and inclusiveness. That is to take account of the fact that general development targets can frequently fail to address the particular difficulties faced by particular sections of society. There is most obviously the need to ensure that targets take account of the biggest part of the population: women. The need for gender equality in the post-2015 framework has already been widely recognised. I would also point out that there are other sections of society that can also lose out when their special issues are not taken into account in the agenda that is developed—children, people with disabilities and ethnic minorities, to name but some of the groups.
Clearly, the answer is not to add more and more targets covering more and more sectors and groups to a list of development goals. What is needed is to ensure that there is sophistication in how broad targets are translated into specific programmes. As more countries in the formerly developing world have experienced substantial economic development, we have seen how poverty and deprivation can exist side by side with rapid economic development. That is why a sophisticated approach is important.
The third theme is tackling hunger and the causes of hunger. Again, eradicating extreme poverty and hunger is a target under the existing millennium development goals and some good progress has been made. In recent years, we have seen plenty of examples where hunger and malnutrition have worsened, with famine in a number of areas in the world. As food prices rise globally, there is considerable concern that the situation will become significantly worse, not better. There is now an increasing consensus that tackling food insecurity and supporting agricultural development needs should be a major focus of common action by the world community, and that certainly needs to be reflected in whatever post-2015 agenda is agreed, however it is structured.
The most recent estimates of undernourishment from the Food and Agriculture Organisation suggest that 15% of the world’s population now live in severe hunger. There has also been only slow progress in cutting child undernutrition. About one third of children in southern Asia were underweight in 2010. Of the 20 countries worst affected by food insecurity, the majority are in sub-Saharan Africa or south Asia, and we have seen some very recent examples of severe problems with famine and hunger in those parts of the world. As well as tackling the immediate outbreaks of famine and issues related to hunger, it is important to have a major emphasis on agricultural development and food security. We need to provide long-term answers to the problems that will be faced by increasing numbers of people in the world unless action is taken by the international community.
Some of the themes I mention could be regarded as part of the building blocks on which we develop new goals. There is a need to break down the barriers to world trade, which is important if developing countries are to make the best of their economic potential. Everyone here will be aware of the almost imperceptible movement following the Doha round negotiations. It is 11 years and there is still no sign of progress. We should not forget that for many developing countries, being able to get the benefits from trade is important and one of the top priorities that the international community must seek.
Another theme that should be part of the overall picture is the need to recognise the importance of peace and security, controlling the arms trade and preventing conflict. The biggest single factor that undermines and sets back development is war, big and small, and it is a stark fact that no low-income, conflict-affected or fragile state has yet to achieve a single millennium development goal.
I have outlined a number of themes that should be part of the debate. Clearly, we also have to consider how far some of the existing MDGs have been reached and how far those that are furthest from being reached should be incorporated in a new set of goals. I am not suggesting that the five themes that I have set out should be reflected in five specific targets. Indeed, each of the themes could in itself bring forward a number of specific goals, but those themes at least set out some of the key issues for development in the forthcoming years and should be the basis from which a post-2015 agenda, in whatever form it finally takes, should be developed.
I am interested to hear what others in the Chamber consider should be the key priorities for the post-2015 development agenda and to hear from the Government how they are to take that agenda forward.
I urge the Government, and the Prime Minister in particular, to play as active role as they can in setting this agenda and helping to develop it. Previous Prime Ministers achieved results on an international level because they gave the matter a high priority, and had the backing of the House and support from much of the public. I hope that the current Prime Minister will rise to the challenge of helping to set the agenda, to reflect both the concerns in this country and those that affect the international community as a whole.
We are in difficult times, but that means that there is even more of a case for fulfilling our moral duty and showing our solidarity with those who, in many cases, are the worst victims of the economic crisis that they had no part in causing. On many of the key issues of international development, the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister have been saying the right things. The Prime Minister in particular now has an opportunity, through his role in the high-level panel, to show leadership, both at home and internationally, and I urge him to do so.
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)
I apologise for arriving a few moments late for this debate, Mr Weir. I congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) on securing this debate, which is extraordinarily timely not just because of the International Development Committee’s inquiry into the issue and the Prime Minister’s appointment as a co-chair of the high-level panel on future development goals after 2015, but because of the coincidence of roles that the Prime Minister is taking on at this time. He will also be chairing the G8 meeting in 2013, and taking on a role in the Open Government Partnership in which the UK should be playing a positive role in increasing transparency, particularly with issues such as transparency through the extractive industries and trying to increase accountability and transparency generally in development. It will also coincide with the historic moment when the coalition Government finally deliver on that 30-year pledge to devote 0.7% of the UK’s national wealth to international development, which gives us, at the very least, a great moral authority in talking about development issues and demonstrates that the UK, even in difficult times, has been willing to take a leadership position on development.
One of the things that the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith has emphasised and that we should talk about in this debate is that the millennium development goals were supposed to be global goals. They were not just aid targets for poorer countries but targets that applied to all countries. We need to make it clear when we consider possible successors, such as sustainable development goals or whatever we want to call them, that they, too, should be global goals, which apply to rich and poor countries, developing nations, emerging economies and established economies. That is one theme that I ask both the International Development Committee and Ministers to pay attention to.
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that it is worth while having such high-level objectives. Certainly, the objectives that we have set ourselves as a country on climate change have helped to trigger domestic action, and with this Government, we have the acceptance of the targets in the Climate Change Act 2008 and the carbon budgets recommended by the Energy and Climate Change Committee, which have helped to incentivise the Government to deliver on energy reform, the green deal, the green investment bank, smart meter roll-out and emissions performance standards for power generating stations. They have also encouraged us to look at other issues that have been addressed in the sustainable development debate, such as the valuing of natural capital, which the Deputy Prime Minister, when he reported back from the Rio+20 summit, emphasised alongside the sustainable development goals. He said that in valuing natural capital, we were setting an important goal for ourselves as a developed economy in our use of resources and our approach to waste and growth and so on, which is important.
The Government set out an ambitious agenda on valuing natural capital in the natural environment White Paper in 2011. I am sometimes a little unsure of how we have fulfilled the potential set out in that White Paper so far and whether or not the Government now need to do a lot more in the valuing of natural capital and in ensuring that it is paid attention to. In an economic crisis, it is always easy to slip back into the idea that growth is the be-all and end-all of Government policy and that only through economic growth can we improve society. It is also easy to forget what we have been saying, which is that economic growth is not a perfect indicator of the quality of a society or of its success. The sustainable development argument is one that can help us to focus again on some of the slightly deeper questions around growth and sustainability.
I was always told in management training that objectives should be SMART—specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound—but at the very least they should be SMT: specific, measureable and time-bound. When such objectives are set at a high level, we should not fall into what has sometimes been the trap at United Nations level of producing lots of slightly woolly, well-meaning, well-crafted and well-negotiated words that are not very specific. The millennium development goals actually achieved those things: they were quite specific; they were time-bound and measurable; as the hon. Gentleman said, they provided a marker on how different states are performing; and they led to some interesting lessons—for instance, as he pointed out, on the impact of conflict and war on achieving development goals. So the high-level panel and the new targets should be focused on delivering goals that are specific, measurable and time-bound.
The Deputy Prime Minister suggested in reporting back from Rio that there should be three important focuses for the sustainable development goals—food, energy and water—and the hon. Gentleman has referred to some of them. Many people also suggest other things that the goals should focus on. Climate change has rightly been referred to. It is crucial; the environment in which we all live and exist as a planet is the one that determines whether development is really possible. Other people have mentioned, for example, disability. Sightsavers has made the specific point to me that disability and poverty are interrelated, both in this country and in developing countries, so disability needs to be considered.
Many NGOs have made the point that human rights and social justice need to be reflected in the successors to the millennium development goals, because it is the poor who are not only most vulnerable to climate change and problems such as rising food prices and the lack of availability of food but who are most vulnerable to economic exploitation, injustice and oppression.
Noting what the hon. Gentleman said about conflict, it is perhaps important that the reduction of conflict and the achievement of peace should be reflected in the new goals. However, that leads to a slight problem and a risk that we end up with a kind of Christmas-tree approach, where everybody has contributed dozens of focused objectives and we try to have 100 priorities. Clearly, there must be some guarding against that. It has been suggested to me that perhaps there should be one overarching sustainable development goal that frames the debate and informs the other development goals. That overarching goal should focus on the poor; it should address sustainability; and it should refer to working within planetary boundaries.
“Planetary boundaries” is a really important concept that goes to the heart of what sustainability really means. Earlier today, I had a discussion with someone who I recommend to Ministers as a source of very sound and well-researched advice: Professor Melissa Leach of the STEPS—Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability—centre at the Institute of Development Studies in the university of Sussex. She told me that she did not like talking about environmental limits, because “limits” implied something that we could not go beyond, and that she preferred the term “zones of ecological stress”. I suggested that, for a politician, that phrase was not going to roll off the tongue terribly easily, but we agreed on the concept of planetary boundaries.
The idea of planetary boundaries is that in looking at development—this relates to economic growth as well—we have to be aware that not only with climate change but with, for example, biodiversity, water resource and other material and mineral resources, we have to work within the planet’s available resources and that, as we start to move over certain thresholds in all these areas, we enter, as she called them, “zones of stress” in which it is possible to advance development but it becomes more stressful and more difficult, and there is more tension and more conflict.
That idea of working within the planet’s resources—of observing planetary boundaries—is a very important concept for what could be an overarching sustainable development goal. However, it is very important that underneath that overarching goal we do not lose the detail and fail to address some of the issues that I have mentioned, such as food, energy, water, climate change, disability, human rights and so on.
Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
In that list of the underlying tools and objectives, would my hon. Friend include financial inclusion? Well-regulated savings and insurance products, for example, are very important in triggering developments to achieve other goals.
Martin Horwood
I might have to think about that suggestion. I appreciate what my hon. Friend is saying and she makes a very important point, but there is a slight risk involved in considering financial inclusion. For people who are living on less than a dollar a day, the idea of savings products may be a little bit unrealistic. In framing global goals, we want to ensure that they are applicable to populations across the world.
Professor Leach talked to me about the three Ds: direction, diversity and distribution. “Direction” was the clear path that the sustainable development goals had to take. “Distribution” was looking at who gains, who loses and the social justice element of the development goals. “Diversity” was a really interesting one, in that it encompassed the idea that different countries might approach the development goals in different ways. Perhaps that is where my hon. Friend’s suggestion about financial inclusion might be brought into play. In looking at sustainability in terms of rich and developed countries, what she is saying is very important, but for some other countries the idea of financial inclusion might be a later step in the process. I recommend the three Ds to Ministers.
There are a few other points that I want to make about what form the new sustainable development goals should take. First, they certainly should be global; they should quite clearly apply to richer countries and more developed economies, as well as to the lowest-income countries.
Secondly, the goals should be steering the world to look at development within “planetary boundaries”—we might use that term. How can I put this idea in terms that might appeal to my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Conservative side of the coalition? If we look at it as a business, we are talking about operating the world as a business within a safe operating environment that does not take us into high-risk areas. So this is about observing the limits of climate change, biodiversity and resource use.
Thirdly, the goals must be ambitious. The millennium development goals were ambitious. The fact that, as a planet, we achieved some of them but failed to achieve many of them has been a useful tool in identifying where we had problems and in focusing on those countries that had the greatest problems. The sustainable development goals must not be woolly; they must be as ambitious and specific as the millennium development goals.
Fourthly, the goals could follow a formula that has been used in the climate change process of the United Nations framework convention on climate change: the idea of common but differentiated responsibilities, whereby because countries will respond in wildly different ways to the challenge of new development goals, different goals may apply with different degrees of rigour to different countries. For instance, for a country such as the UK, the goals may not be so much about involving women in education or achieving greater access for disabled people, because we would fancy that we would meet such goals already, but they might be about addressing waste, consumption, having too great a focus on relentless economic growth, inefficiency in using our resources and in overstepping planetary boundaries in the way that we handle our economy.
In that respect, I commend to Ministers a policy that unfortunately did not make it into the coalition agreement but that the Liberal Democrats adopted in opposition. Alongside a climate change Act, we wanted to have a waste and resource efficiency Act that took the same kind of target-setting and framework approach to the use of natural resources and natural capital. That would fit very neatly with the framework set out by the White Paper on the natural environment in 2011, and I still commend the policy to Ministers. I think we are talking about “coalition 2.0” or something, so perhaps it is a policy that we could still adopt in the remaining years of the coalition Government before the next election.
The final point I will make about the future sustainable development goals is that sustainability must be mainstreamed within them. One of the failings of the original millennium development goals, which I think the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith referred to, is that environmental issues were slightly pocketed in the last of the development goals and the inter-relationship between environmental sustainability, poverty, justice and development was not really fully developed in the millennium development goals. We need to see that corrected. That was the message not only of the Rio+20 summit but of the original earth summit in Rio 20 years ago. As I say, it is very important that sustainability is mainstreamed within the agenda that we are discussing.
This is a remarkable opportunity for the UK to provide leadership in this area and a remarkable personal opportunity for the Prime Minister, as co-chair of the high-level UN panel, alongside his responsibilities with the G8 and the Open Government Partnership, while the Government are delivering on the historic pledge to devote 0.7% of our national wealth to international development. I hope that the Government make the most of this opportunity and provide real global leadership on sustainable development.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Weir, for giving me the opportunity to close the debate from this side of the House.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) for securing this important debate and commend his work in the previous Government as special envoy to the Prime Minister on climate change issues. Both he and the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) have stated that, as we speak about the millennium development goals and what comes next, climate change issues should feature significantly.
As we debate these issues, we face one of the biggest ever economic challenges, both at home and internationally. In that context, we must recognise that we are calling on the UK public to support international development at a difficult time, but that is the right thing to do. We are pleased that this Government are following in the Labour Government’s footsteps and continuing the commitment to increase aid to developing countries to 0.7% of gross national income—GNI. It is important to maintain that commitment.
From some of the things that the British public have done, we can see that they are hugely committed and generous where development and humanitarian disasters are concerned. During the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal to help some 13 million people in need after the east Africa drought last year, about £79 million was raised. We must continue our defence against the relentless attacks that some sections of the press and a number of parliamentarians have made on international development. We must continue to argue that development provides good value for what it achieves in developing countries. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith and the hon. Member for Cheltenham pointed that out and highlighted some of the achievements. More importantly, with our current commitment of 0.56% of our national income, we are making great strides, and have done so over the past decade, in reducing poverty in some of the world’s poorest places. We have also reduced inequality, but much more needs to be done.
Tackling global poverty and inequality is the paramount issue of our time, and I think that all of us, across the board, agree that we must continue to redouble our efforts, even in these challenging economic times at home, to reduce poverty and inequality, whether in the poorest or in middle-income countries. We must all focus our attention on the challenges posed by poverty and inequality around the world, and by unemployment, especially among the young. In focusing on what happens post-2015, we need to give even greater priority to ensuring that people have economic opportunities—opportunities to work and to develop their own countries by making that contribution themselves.
In the developing world, more than 1.4 billion people live on less than $1.25 a day, yet developing countries’ economic potential is enormous. We are already seeing signs of that in many countries, including India and China, but inequality is of great concern. We must ensure that, as we discuss what happens after 2015, we have a clear answer on how we will address the poverty of middle-income countries, which is where the great majority of the world’s poorest people are concentrated, and increasingly so. We must work with countries that are doing better economically, and help them to start to solve their own problems with our support and partnership.
We have achieved a great deal that we can be proud of over the past 10 to 15 years. I am really proud that when Labour was in government we acted as a global leader in international development, and I am pleased that this Government are pursuing the same agenda. The commitment to the millennium development goals was a central part of that story. My right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) and Tony Blair, both former Prime Ministers, created the Department for International Development to ensure that development was high on the agenda of the British Government and of the international community; that we decoupled the development agenda from economic, trade and defence interests, and focused on poverty alleviation in particular; and that we maintained the commitment to 0.7% of GNI.
Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)
Would my hon. Friend care to comment on one particular policy? I think, and the Minister might confirm, that the Government have not taken up the baton handed over by the previous Government regarding carbon reporting. Does she agree that limiting carbon reporting to the top 1,800 companies is not in the spirit of the commitment that the Labour Government gave when they talked about fulfilling the millennium goals?
Rushanara Ali
I could not agree more, and I hope that the Minister takes the opportunity, as the last man standing in his Department, to answer that question. The hon. Member for Cheltenham, who highlighted his interest in and commitment to tackling climate change, will also want to hear the Minister’s answer.
On my point about the previous Government and about focusing on the future and building on the commitment to the millennium development goals, the argument was about ensuring that the international community saw tackling poverty in developing countries not just as in its economic interest, but as its moral duty. That argument must be maintained, and we must maintain, too, the consensus on moving forward and continuing to make the case for tackling poverty and inequality in the developing world.
Martin Horwood
The hon. Lady seems to be slipping slightly into the trap I described, talking about sustainable development only in terms of what needs to be done in the poorest countries. Does she accept that this is also about setting ourselves goals for resource use, carbon reduction and so on?
Rushanara Ali
I certainly did not intend to do so. I did mention middle-income countries, and I will come on to our own work and what we should be doing. As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, the Climate Change Act 2008, which Labour introduced, is a key part of the argument that we have a responsibility on those issues, as much as on what happens in developing countries, so I completely agree with his points.
Let us remind ourselves of what has been achieved over the past 10 to 15 years. Between 1990 and 2005, the poverty rate fell from 46% to 27%—that is 400 million people lifted out of extreme poverty. As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith said, the mortality rate for children under five has fallen dramatically, from 12 million in 1990 to 7.6 million in 2010, but we must continue the effort to keep reducing that number. This year, we reached the millennium development target of halving the number of people without access to clean water, but further work remains to be done. Millions more children, particularly girls, in the developing world are going to school and getting the education that will help them to create a better and more prosperous future for themselves and their families. Reminding ourselves of those achievements is important, particularly when some people would prefer to imply that development assistance is not making a difference. Development assistance clearly has made and is making a difference, and those of us who believe that we must continue that effort need to continue to make those arguments.
We have also made great strides in improving aid effectiveness. We did so when we were in government, and I know that this Government have spoken a great deal about the importance of aid effectiveness and transparency. I encourage the vigorous pursuit of that agenda. We need to be able to have public confidence in the way public money is being used when, rightly, more and more questions are being asked about how that money is used to achieve the goals that we all seek.
There are economic pressures here at home and in other donor countries, and as my hon. Friend said, we see that budgetary pressure in the reduction in aid money for particular countries. That is why it is crucial that the UK, which has been seen as an international leader on those issues, makes the most of its position to put the case for continued commitment to the millennium development goals, learning from the things that have been successful and identifying the areas that we need to prioritise. That means that we need to see the Prime Minister carrying out a strong international leadership role through his position as chair of the UN committee that is developing the post-2015 millennium development framework.
As my hon. Friend and other hon. Members said, that is an important opportunity to build a genuine partnership between donor and recipient countries to ensure that development is being done not to countries or to people, but with those countries. We must keep the focus on sustainable development, not philanthropy and charity. There are great concerns that the emphasis on charity through Departments is not what developing countries and the people of the developing world need or want. They want development and self-sufficiency, and we need to play our part in ensuring that happens.
We call on the Government and the Prime Minister to ensure that the focus on empowerment, human rights and labour standards is maintained. It is worrying that one of the first things the Government did in their reviews was withdraw funding from the International Labour Organisation, which does a great deal of work to improve labour conditions in developing countries.
We also hope that the Government will continue to prioritise the other rights agendas, particularly women’s rights, which are integral to the post-2015 millennium development goals, and that there is a strong voice for women. In conflicts, we know that women face a great deal of violence and that rape is used as a weapon of war. It is important that UN Women and other such agencies are supported so that they are strong advocates for speaking up about human rights violations against women, both in conflict zones and, more generally, in developing countries. I ask the Minister to ensure that that is central to the Government’s response and to the Prime Minister’s work as chair of the UN committee, and that gender, equality, human rights and labour standards issues are not neglected or ignored.
Sir Tony Cunningham
Does my hon. Friend accept that there is an interconnection with, for example, education? If we are to get more and more children into school, we need to address gender and disability issues.
Rushanara Ali
I totally agree. As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith mentioned, we need to highlight that issue. We also need to recognise that disability rights are anathema in many countries. We have a responsibility to share the learning on some of the things that have been successful in our country. The rights agenda goes beyond one group and includes those with disabilities and other groups that are particularly marginalised.
Despite economic growth in middle-income countries, we know that in countries such as, say, India there are still some 400 million people living on less than $1.25 a day and more than 800 million people living on less than $2 a day. There are important questions to explore on how we can enable countries such as India to do more for themselves while ensuring that we do not pull out our aid efforts, which would leave large numbers of people in more challenging, difficult circumstances.
We should continue to support efforts to lift those people out of poverty and, over time, allow those countries to take more responsibility. Although there are pressures on such middle-income countries, we need to ensure that our efforts and focus remain on the poorest. Even if the Governments of those countries do not act and respond to those challenges in the immediate future, we should work with them to enable them to do so.
Martin Horwood
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way a second time. Rather than whether Britain should be giving aid to India and how many poor people we could help there, is not the important lesson from the Indian experience that, as Institute for Government studies emphasise, distribution is quite an important part of the sustainable development goal process?
India has achieved remarkable economic growth, but that has not benefited the whole population. As the hon. Lady points out, there are vast numbers of poor people still suffering in poverty in India. That is one reason why we should not hook the new sustainable development goals in too narrow-minded a way to economic growth. Instead, we should consider issues such as social justice and distribution, too.
Rushanara Ali
I agree. We should consider things more broadly and do more to overcome some of the simplistic critiques that those countries are doing well in some respects but are not addressing poverty and growing inequality. That is why we believe that the post-2015 millennium development goals should place greater emphasis on inequality. As the United Nations Development Programme stated, the lack of focus on inequality should be of great concern, because understanding the drivers of inequality can sometimes indicate whether a situation might lead to conflict, so the focus on inequality should be as important as that on poverty.
In countries with greater economic growth, there is a big question whether that growth is pro-poor. That is where the Department for International Development is making interventions through, for example, private-sector funding. The Minister must answer the question whether those interventions will create jobs and opportunities and generate income for the poorest. Does the DFID funding that is being channelled into countries such as India through the private sector meet the same accountability standards that we expect of non-governmental organisations and other recipients? Are the same kinds of standard applied and is there clarity on the monitoring of those measures? I hope the Minister can address that point as well.
If, in future, there is greater emphasis on channelling aid funding through the private sector—we are not averse to that in principle, but we need to know whether such investment is going to be about development and addressing poverty—that has to be looked at closely, and the monitoring arrangements have to be as rigorous as they are, or should be, in other sectors.
I want to focus on questions about what happens next. A key thing that needs to be looked at is how the post-MDG goals are developed. They must be considered in co-operation and consultation with the developing nations, and they need genuinely to be in the form of partnerships. We need to ensure that we are ambitious about tackling inequality as well as poverty, and the focus on economic development must be pro-poor. We have already seen that, even in countries where there has been a great deal of growth, not enough effort has been made to ensure that some of the poorest people are not left behind. More attention must be paid to that by ensuring that those countries play a bigger role in addressing the economic inequalities that have arisen, as well as by ensuring that we play our part to address those challenges.
The Opposition believe it is vital that, as we look to the post-2015 millennium development goals and what replaces them, we should not only recognise what has been achieved, but identify where the big challenges remain and ensure that we stay ambitious and aspirational about what can be achieved in the coming decades. We do seek to eradicate poverty over those coming decades, and if the international community has the will and there is international leadership—I hope the Prime Minister will take that role seriously—there is no reason why we cannot address and tackle poverty. It is important that we keep that momentum and maintain our efforts to tackle poverty and inequality.
I want to highlight a few key issues. First, I hope that the Government continue to keep to their commitment and start to deliver on increasing aid to 0.7% of GNI. I hope that that promise will be maintained. Media reports of the new Secretary of State’s comments about her belief, or lack of belief, in development have been worrying for many people in the developing world, as well as in the communities that work on those issues. I hope the Minister can reassure us that the new Secretary of State is still absolutely committed to this agenda and that the promise will be kept—[Interruption.] If I can have the Minister’s attention, I hope that the promise will be kept on that agenda.
Secondly, there has been a great deal of focus on issues such as tax avoidance, which the Government have said a great deal about, but we need to see action, because billions of pounds of public money and potential tax revenue are lost to developing countries, so I would welcome a response from the Minister on what his Government are doing practically to address that issue.
My final point concerns climate change. The Government and the Prime Minister have said that they want to be the greenest Government ever. We need action, not just rhetoric. I hope that the Minister can shed more light on what will be done, both domestically —[Interruption.] If he will stop heckling, I hope he can shed more light on what will be done both domestically and internationally on the issue.
We introduced the 2008 Act. We hope that the Minister will work with his coalition partners to step up the effort on climate change. If we do not do more to support developing countries in the face of what is likely to be catastrophic for many sections of the population in some of the poorest countries, our efforts in development will be undermined. I hope that he can take this issue seriously and answer the questions seriously.
The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Mr Alan Duncan)
I thank the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) for securing a debate on such an important topic.
Securing global agreement on a framework that updates the millennium development goals is a priority for the coalition Government as we approach 2015. I welcome the broader parliamentary engagement that is occurring. The Government are pleased that an independent inquiry into the post-2015 development agenda has been launched by the International Development Committee. The Department for International Development is keen to work with the House on this topic. The inquiry provides an opportunity for key players to contribute their views on the post-2015 agenda, and I look forward to reading the final report.
The eight MDGs launched in 2000 have generated an unprecedented degree of global consensus on development and have also worked well as a communication and advocacy tool, both with the UK public and internationally. The framework has helped to focus people’s minds and efforts on tackling global poverty in terms of real, practical action. It has channelled actions logically and consistently and released the full effort of the world on the issues covered by the eight goals. As a focused set of targets and indicators, the MDGs have encouraged better availability and quality of data in developing countries, making it easier to increase the focus on results. We now need to build on that success.
In terms of how the world has done against the MDGs, the picture is mixed, as we heard earlier. We have seen unprecedented reductions in poverty rates, and achievement of the targets on increased access to safe drinking water and primary education. Progress has been slower, however, for nutrition, basic sanitation and child mortality rates, and maternal mortality is lagging a long way behind. The MDG framework itself has its doubters. One criticism is that the MDGs’ focus on results at the global level has masked uneven progress both between and within countries. The degree to which the set of goals has fitted closely with countries’ own development strategies has varied, and a number of critical issues were not covered, such as growth or conflict.
In some cases, the framework’s focus on quantitative results has skewed incentives—for example, the focus on measuring school attendance rates rather than the quality of education actually received by those who attend the school. As we approach the 2015 deadline for the targets set just over a decade ago, there is a big question to be answered about what should happen next. Unsurprisingly, there are a number of different views. An updated framework for development needs to build on success so far, while also addressing the weaknesses of the current MDGs. The world has changed significantly since 2000, so it is vital that any new international framework for development is able to reflect the new challenges and opportunities that we face both today and in the future.
Agreeing a development framework to replace the MDGs will be challenging. There are a number of intellectual challenges and debates around them that are both technically and politically complex. First, there are clear questions around what should be included in a post-2015 framework for development and how each issue should be measured. Given that some of the MDGs under the current framework are unlikely to be reached by 2015, some argue that the goals should simply be rolled forward post-2015. However, that would collide with the fact that a number of important issues such as conflict, corruption, poor governance and climate change were not included in the MDGs in the first place. Simply rolling forward the current goals would ignore the importance of quality as well as quantity in the development process.
Secondly, although this is covered in part by MDG 7, there is a view that the MDGs should be replaced by a framework focusing much more on environmental sustainability and not just on poverty eradication. Our ability to manage environmental risks and use natural resources sustainably is critical to increasing the living standards of the poorest people in the world, but would such a shift risk losing the sharp focus of the current set of goals?
Thirdly, there is an argument for adopting development goals that apply to emerging and rich countries as well as the poorest countries. The actions of the rich—for instance, on carbon emissions, which have been mentioned—should not perhaps be allowed to damage the interests of the poor.
Those debates are crucial for the poorest people in the world and must be addressed in any new framework for development. The UK is an intellectual leader on international development issues, and we have an important role to play. The Department for International Development has set up a new team dedicated to thinking about those issues and to engaging with international Governments, civil society, business and individuals.
More broadly, the process for debating many of the issues and deciding on an international development framework post-2015 is well under way. The UN Secretary-General has launched a high-level panel on the post-2015 development agenda; the panel will deliver a report by May 2013, making
“recommendations regarding the vision and shape of a post-2015 development agenda”.
I am pleased that the Prime Minister has been asked to co-chair the panel alongside the Presidents of Indonesia and Liberia.
The panel met in New York on 25 September. Subsequent meetings will be in London imminently, on 1 November, and in Monrovia and Jakarta early next year. The meetings will focus on development challenges at three levels. The London meeting will focus on poverty at the individual level, while the following meetings will tackle national challenges and international issues—in other words, people, then countries, then global.
The panel’s overall aim is to set out an ambitious new agenda for ending poverty in the years beyond 2015 while maintaining the simplicity contained in the current MDGs. The panel is clear that it does not want the new framework to focus on aid only. A new framework should focus on helping the poorest people get out of poverty and stay out of it. It should apply to very poor countries as well as to countries where aid plays a less important role, but where large numbers of poor people still live. It is not simply about handouts from rich countries. The panel wants its outcome to reflect a new global consensus on how development works and what matters in practice for success.
Alongside the panel’s London meeting next week will be a series of discussions with civil society, business and young people. It is a critical part of the panel’s work and is vital if its conclusions are to be taken seriously by the international community when the panel reports at the end of May next year. I reassure the hon. Member for Glasgow South (Mr Harris) that the process to support the Prime Minister in Whitehall involves a cross-ministerial team, with DFID, the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs all working together to enable coherence with the Rio+20 follow-up and the climate change agenda.
Mr Harris
While the Minister is on that subject, can he touch on the two-year delay so far in the Government’s setting up of the network of marine conservation areas? It has not received an awful lot of Government attention and I am extremely concerned about it, as are other Members. It offers a poor example to other developing nations when we lecture them on how to conserve marine areas.
Mr Duncan
I do not think that that is immediately relevant to the topic on the Order Paper for this debate, but it is an important issue, so I am happy to write to the hon. Gentleman with as much information as we have on that question.
The hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) discussed jobs and economic opportunities. I assure her that the issue will be addressed through a dedicated session during the panel’s meeting here in London next week. That panel will draw on this year’s comprehensive world development report by the World Bank, which deals specifically with jobs.
Although the high-level panel report is an important input into the international debate on the post-2015 framework, it is not the only one. The UN Secretary-General will produce his own report for the special session of the General Assembly next September. Numerous other forums are discussing the post-2015 development framework, but the UK Government will work hard to maintain coherence among the different processes.
To reply to some of the comments made earlier, the hon. Members for Edinburgh North and Leith and for Workington (Sir Tony Cunningham) both mentioned climate change. The Rio+20 meetings have established an open working group specifically to propose sustainable development goals, as that is another strand of the activity in play at the moment. On inequality, we must focus on the poorest and not just measure average success, which can disguise a lot of facts beneath a simple headline figure.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) gave us a master class on how the MDGs might be broadened after 2015 by the introduction of some more thoughtful concepts of sustainable development. He said that they might include planetary boundaries and zones of ecological stress. [Laughter.] Although some might laugh, I assure him and the House that the team at DFID are very familiar with planetary boundaries, and particularly with the idea of doughnut economics, as it is described, which combines planetary boundaries with social minimums—in other words, the constraints of the environment with some of the basic needs of human life. I have to say that when it comes to doughnut economics, I prefer to keep it simple.
The hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow mentioned our withdrawal from the International Labour Organisation. I urge her to stop repeating her party’s mantra. Let me say it one more time so that she understands the decision that we took after the multilateral aid review. Our conclusion after considering the ILO was that its main activity does not coincide sufficiently with DFID’s prime objectives, so it is true to say that we have terminated our core funding, but we work with the ILO on a case-by-case basis in countries and on programmes where its work is useful for the elimination of poverty.
Rushanara Ali
On labour conditions, a number of people were killed in an accident at a factory in Pakistan, to use a recent example. There is a role for organisations such as the ILO or domestic organisations to campaign for basic human rights and working conditions to be maintained in garment factories, for example, in Pakistan, Bangladesh and many other countries. Does the Minister agree that development funding should support such organisations to ensure that people can go to work and expect to leave in safety without their lives being at risk? Surely he ought to agree that our efforts should support organisations that campaign to ensure decent labour conditions and labour rights and challenge companies to do the right thing and protect the lives of people at work.
Mr Duncan
No one questions the objectives that the hon. Lady has just outlined, which is why they are contained in the programmes and actions of DFID, and in all the bilateral programmes relative to such issues. That is why we have a pioneering initiative called RAGS, the responsible and accountable garment sector challenge fund, which covers employment conditions. Where the ILO can contribute to helping us in the field, we will work with it. However, where we get better value for taxpayers’ money working with other people, we will work with other people. It is on that case-by-case basis that we are happy to work with the ILO. Core funding given centrally does not represent value for taxpayers’ money.
Let me finish by saying a few words about what we hope the panel will achieve on the main topic of the debate. The three co-chairs of the panel believe that ending absolute poverty should still be the primary objective of any new framework for development. We hope that the panel can agree on that key message and rally support from Governments, citizens, civil society and business around the world.
The UK also believes that there are five principles that a new framework needs to uphold. First, poverty eradication should remain at the centre of a new global framework for development. Secondly, any new framework needs to speed up efforts to reach the targets in the current MDGs, and hold Governments to account for the promises that were made to achieve them. Thirdly, it should tackle the root causes of poverty, not just the symptoms. Fourthly, it must be based on, and take account of, the views of the poorest people in the world. Finally, simplicity is essential. The new framework should be bold and ambitious, but must maintain the clarity of the current MDGs.
I conclude by once again thanking the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith for securing the debate. It is interesting, stimulating and important, and I am sure we will come back to it in the months ahead.
Fuel Poverty
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)
Some of our poor souls may be waiting for tomorrow for the big debate on fuel poverty. I hope that we will prove that they have missed the boat and that the real debate took place this afternoon, when the Minister announced precisely what the Government will do. Indeed, the Government need to announce what they are going to do after the difficulties into which the Prime Minister threw himself the other week. All of us who listened to or read what the Prime Minister said accepted that he was on to not only an important issue but the worry that most of us as consumers have that we have no idea what we are buying, let alone whether it is the best buy. In my parliamentary experience, that is very similar to the position that people face when trying to buy a pension. We could argue that buying a pension is somewhat different from heating our own homes, but there are certainly similarities between the industries, which make it difficult to understand what is the best and safest buy.
Today’s debate could not be better timed as a dry run for the Government, and I hope that the country can hear how they will respond to the Prime Minister’s special initiative. The day after he announced what he thought should happen, Ofgem in its wisdom responded—always well behind the curve—suggesting that if only people had enough information they would be able to make the right decisions. We all know, however, that merely providing people with information does not necessarily mean that they are informed or that, when informed, that information helps them to make the right decisions.
I want to sketch the size of the problem, what previous Governments have done to tackle the issue of people being cold in winter and what the Government could do today to make a break with the past, to extend a helping hand to some of our most vulnerable constituents and to get an issue behind them. The Government, among many other things, inherited a definition of people in fuel poverty—where the definition came from, which Mount Sinai it came down from, I do not know—which is those who spend more than 10% of their income on keeping warm. If we look at the detailed Government analysis of consumer expenditure, about 4.7 million people are technically in fuel poverty and, of those, 4 million are actually vulnerable.
In this debate and in the slightly bigger debate tomorrow, we need to look at how we have protected that group from dying unnecessarily in winter or from being unnecessarily cold. There were two previous schemes, of which the first was the voluntary social agreement, which ran from 2008 to 2011. Not much was wrong with it, except for three main disadvantages: people could be covered by the agreement but not on the cheapest rate, so they could be confused consumers and think they were getting the best deal, while being far from actually getting the best deal possible; the companies were allowed to decide who could apply, so they were the gatekeepers to their own scheme; and there was no link to an idea such as a social tariff, whereby people who were on it got the best deal that the company was offering. I want to return to the concept of a social tariff, because it is important if we are looking at how to move to the next stage of the debate and, moreover, how to help people.
The current scheme—to be charitable to the Government, I think that they inherited it—was to run from 2011 to 2015 and is called the warm home discount scheme. Under it, the companies again act as tax masters; they can put a levy on each of our bills and use the money to persuade people that they are helping them. Again, it is a brilliant scheme, except that we might expect a company paying a rebate to which the rest of us as consumers had contributed to give those people their lowest rate—far from it. Which? tells us that 75% of us—the figures are not broken down for vulnerable and other consumers—are not on the cheapest rate that we could be on, given the companies from which we buy our power. It is reasonable to suggest that the vulnerable might constitute 75% of that total. Therefore, probably 75% of those households, families and individuals who are helped by the warm home discount scheme are, on the one hand, getting a rebate paid for by the rest of us consumers and, on the other, paying it out in fuel bills that are unnecessarily high.
Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)
Has the right hon. Gentleman taken on board the issue of those who simply do not or cannot have a choice? I am thinking in particular of those on prepayment meters. Consumer Focus research has shown that, on average, those on prepayment meters pay £1,306 a year, whereas those on direct debit pay £1,222 a year. Many of those individuals are undoubtedly poor and have no choice, because they are rental tenants and do not have the opportunity to take up the Government schemes. Has the right hon. Gentleman given some thought to how to help those vulnerable people?
Mr Field
Indeed I have, but, sadly, what is important is not whether I have but whether the Minister has, because he is in a position to do something about it. The proposals that I will outline shortly cover that group as well, because they put the onus on the company, not on the individual or the landlord, thereby shifting the responsibility and, in that sense, the subsidy from us as consumers paying energy companies that oversell or overprice their products to companies having responsibility to offer everyone the cheapest rate if we fall within the vulnerable groups, which includes many of the people mentioned by the hon. Lady. The problems with the current scheme include the rebate on a bill that might not be the lowest possible bill. The core group of people who qualify for such help—there is also an extended group—is narrowly defined, and my guess is that many of the core group would not include those whom the hon. Lady was thinking about, because many of them are in their own properties, whether owner-occupied or rented, and have control of their meters, so they would not be subjected to the landlord practice of which she spoke.
Under the current scheme, we have a core group that qualifies and then an extended group that is still defined by the company—not by us or the Minister, and not approved by Parliament as one might expect, but by the companies themselves. They are still in the driving seat. The problems with the warm home discount scheme include getting a rebate but not necessarily qualifying for the lowest rate or being trapped in how to buy our energy and therefore paying through the nose. Although the bulk of the funding for the rebate comes from us, many of those who are vulnerable are outside the core group, even though the core group gets 75% of the money in the scheme.
I have a plea for the Minister, and I will give him piles of time to reply, so that we can probe him further. It is a proposal that he could adopt, that would give the Government credit and that would dig the Prime Minister out of the hole that he is in, thereby perhaps earning the Minister promotion. The other day, we saw his skill in defending what the Prime Minister said on the Floor of the House. How much easier life would be for the Prime Minister if he had a proposal that the Minister thought was workable and might carry some weight in the country!
My proposal is that the Government should insist that companies do not have a licence to sell fuel unless they offer their most vulnerable consumers their lowest rate, not an artificially lowest rate, but the lowest rate at which they sell fuel. Unless they have a loss leader, one assumes that they will make a profit on that lowest rate, so they would not be asked to act in denial of Mr Scrooge. They would even make money, although perhaps not as much as they might make from other people. That would cover the group to which the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) referred and about whom she is rightly very concerned, in that those in the vulnerable group—I will come to that in a moment—would have the right to be sold fuel at the lowest rate. Account would have to be taken of the fact that some people have meters and receive their fuel in various ways, but such a scheme would be simple, and everyone would understand it.
It is important that people understand whether they qualify. In another role, in another place, Mr Weir, you have often referred to cold weather payments and who is eligible and who is not. We could spend a lot of time having great fun thinking about other people who should be added to the groups that are defined as being eligible for cold weather payments. Most of us would admit that they cover the most vulnerable in our society, if not all the vulnerable. They cover 4 million of those who are likely to suffer fuel poverty.
Switching back to the beginning of my speech, I said that the Government’s own data show that 4.75 million people are in fuel poverty but that some of them, like some people on higher incomes, spend more than 10% of their income on fuel because they want to be ultra-warm, or do not think about it, but 4 million households in fuel poverty are vulnerable and would be covered by the cold weather payment definition.
My suggestion is that the Government could win applause in the House tomorrow by being the first Administration to introduce proposals that effectively deal with our constituents who, particularly during winter, are cold because they cannot afford to heat their homes properly—those who are most likely to die during the winter because they are cold and those who are simply waiting for the Government to act. Ofgem, in its brilliance, said yesterday or today that nothing in the regulations, the law or anywhere in this land could stop the Government announcing that scheme and compelling companies to operate it. With 17 minutes to go, I hand over to the Minister, who could put us all us out of our misery within a minute or two.
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Mr John Hayes)
It is a delight to speak in this debate under your chairmanship, Mr Weir, and a delight to respond to the right hon. Gentleman, whom I congratulate on securing it. He is right that it is a trailer for tomorrow’s debate on the Floor of the House, but it is more than that because it is an opportunity for us to rehearse some of the important arguments. I do so mindful of the fact that he is an authority on these matters, whereas I am new to energy. However, like him, elevation of the people is central to my political mission, and I go further than many of our colleagues because I believe in the redistribution of advantage in society, as he does.
Redistribution of advantage requires knowing when the Government should act and when they should not, knowing when the Government need to step forward in some of the ways he described and knowing when stepping forward might obscure or limit opportunities to achieve that goal. Chesterton, whom I hope the right hon. Gentleman admires as much as I do, said:
“The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.”
I hope to be rich—I am certainly not at the moment—but I aspire to be honest, and I hope that I can deal honestly with some of the issues he raised.
The right hon. Gentleman is right to divide his remarks. Similarly, half of my remarks will dwell on what we can do to support the most vulnerable in respect of the cost of fuel, but it is also appropriate to talk about how we can change the character of demand and consequently deal with the other part of the equation. The big debate about energy sometimes neglects how to attune people’s demand for energy more precisely to their circumstances. That is the other part of what the Government can do.
I will deal with some of the specific points that the right hon. Gentleman raised. I often think that Ministers do not do so sufficiently, and I do not want to be accused of falling into that camp. He spoke about when the definition of fuel poverty emerged, and he will probably recall that it emerged in formal terms in 2001 as part of the UK fuel poverty strategy.
Before that, the definition came from a series of academic studies that began to look at how being fuel-poor was defined in relation to the average or aggregate spend on fuel in households. That was deemed to be around a median energy spend of 5%, which meant that if someone was spending 10%, the median would be doubled and they would be deemed to be fuel poor. The average spend on energy may have changed over time, and perhaps that is why we need to update our understanding of fuel poverty. However, that is the history.
I will say a bit more about the core group of poorest pensioners who lie at the heart of the warm home discount, which the right hon. Gentleman spoke about at some length. He was right to say that the measures we put in place must not be just about the provision of information, for provision of information alone is not enough. Some people with simpler minds than his believe that the provision of information and the exercise of choice are not only virtues in themselves, but automatically lead to virtuous outcomes. I have never believed that, never having been preoccupied with the concept of choice in those terms. The right hon. Gentleman may want to read “The Paradox of Choice”, which argues that sometimes not only does it not lead to a virtuous outcome, but it can positively inhibit virtue.
None the less, information matters to some degree. For example, there is a strong case for being clear about what information people should receive, and for making that information comprehensible so that instead of being presented with all kinds of different options and having to navigate a system that is ever more confusing, simplified information is provided to people about energy costs and bills.
A strong argument that has been put to me, and is part of what the Government have and will continue to consider, is that there should be some obligation, and that is consistent with what we have already done in our voluntary arrangements on energy suppliers. I wholly agree with the right hon. Gentleman that provision of information is not a sufficient end point, but it is part of the package, and we might agree that it is appropriate to address the issue.
By the way, none of my comments has been prepared for me by my officials. I would not want to be limited by that.
The other important point made by the right hon. Gentleman was that the mechanisms we devise to identify those with the greatest need must be as sensitive as possible to circumstances. Of course, that is partly because need is dynamic. People’s needs change—by their nature, they are not static—and to that end, there is a real opportunity to engage with some organisations that are experts in particular areas.
As the right hon. Gentleman will know, Age UK prepared a briefing for the debate and there are organisations that represent the interests of chronically sick people, who have profoundly significant energy needs, in terms of both heating and light. Disabled organisations and charities also need to be engaged in the process, and we need to be open-minded enough to draw in a number of sources to identify need. That is also true of Departments, and I shall cover that in more detail in a moment or two. It is important that we learn from the policy levers used by other Departments to alleviate poverty and that we share good quality information.
I turn to the warm home discount, which the right hon. Gentleman spoke about. We want to provide immediate assistance to those who need help with their energy bills and to help energy companies find vulnerable people so that they can be offered longer-term support. The four-year warm home discount scheme provides that help. Launched in 2011, it requires energy companies to provide help with energy bills to about 2 million low-income households a year, and it is worth about £1.1 billion over four years.
The energy suppliers are required to provide the majority of that support to pensioners on the lowest income. As a group, such people are particularly vulnerable to the ill effects of a cold home over winter, as the right hon. Gentleman highlighted. The characteristic of that group—I have also mentioned other groups to which this point relates, such as housebound disabled people and the chronically sick—is that, by nature, they tend to spend more time at home. They are often in poorly insulated homes and may be using energy highly inefficiently, as well as which, put simply, very old people, like the very young, need to be kept warm, so a coincidence of factors make that group particularly vulnerable.
To return to the point about information, it is also true that the most vulnerable often have the greatest difficulty with complex forms and the provision of information in an insensitive, over-complicated way. They may find it hard to navigate the system and, as a result, become relatively undiscerning consumers through no fault of their own. Therefore, rather than having to apply for the warm home discount, most receive it automatically without needing to claim. The right hon. Gentleman has spoken about that matter in the broader context of welfare reform many times, and I am hesitant even to address—I will not say “lecture about”—the matter in his presence, because he knows so much about it and I know my limits.
However, further to my remark about sharing information, I would advertise that through innovative work we have developed good systems to match data between the Department for Work and Pensions customer records for those on pension credits and the information held by energy companies. Although it is true that energy companies play a key role in the process, we have engineered an appropriate level of co-operation between Departments and the energy companies to identify the target group. This winter alone, that means that 1 million pensioners will receive an automatic £130 discount by 31 December, providing them with the certainty that they need about heating their home over the coldest months.
Mr Hayes
Yes, the right hon. Gentleman is correct. It is, of course, true that a number will not be found through such mechanisms so we have set up a dedicated line and a call centre will be established for people to make a simple claim. All those who we believe may be eligible will also receive a letter telling them whether they receive an automatic discount or need to claim by the end of January.
The warm home discount also provides help to other low-income and vulnerable households who may be struggling to heat their homes, including those on a low income with children under five and those on a low income who are disabled. I accept that the eligibility for that broader group is determined by each energy supplier, but it is against criteria that must be approved by Ofgem. There is, therefore, an independent voice in that process, and it is not entirely a matter for energy suppliers.
A further 230,000 homes have benefited in that way from those discounts. The big six energy suppliers are all offering those schemes, which I encourage every hon. Member to advertise to their constituents. They should broadcast the availability of the schemes and work with local community organisations, voluntary groups and charities in their areas to ensure that we get the best value from that work.
We could discuss fuel payments, cold weather payments and so on, but we do not have time; the other part of what we are working on is the Warm Front scheme, which is about demand and dealing with the consumption of energy in a way that reduces costs. The scheme provides assistance, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, to low-income, vulnerable households through the installation of a range of heating, insulation and energy efficiency improvements to private sector households. We have recently made changes to the Warm Front regulations to broaden the eligibility criteria and allow even more fuel-poor households to access the assistance available under the scheme, which has assisted more than 2.3 million households vulnerable to fuel poverty. It is, however, the scheme’s final year, so we again urge people who are eligible for assistance to apply to Warm Front.
The obligations on energy companies are an important part of addressing the problems. I share the right hon. Gentleman’s view that it is simply not enough to stay where we are in respect of tariffs. That is precisely why the Prime Minister addressed that matter last week and why I was able to say the next day that we would use the energy Bill to facilitate change in that area. A strong case can be made around the kind of proposals set out by the right hon. Gentleman and others, which essentially are about creating greater obligation in the system. I want energy companies, consumer groups and other organisations that I have described to help shape that, so that it is deliverable. The imposition of such an arrangement now, without a proper discussion, would be inappropriate, but the Bill will come before the House in weeks rather than months. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, the Prime Minister has made it clear that the Bill provides a great opportunity for us to address this issue.
Like one of my political heroes, Joseph Chamberlain, I am in favour of tariff reform. They may be different tariffs and different reform, but if it was good enough for Joe, it is good enough for me.
Mr Hayes
I am a unifying figure. I bring together all the elements of my party and the coalition around an absolute, undiluted, unabridged determination, as I have described, to redistribute advantage, address poverty and elevate the people; my party and I regarded Disraeli as a hero before it became fashionable. To that end, we will address the issue of fuel poverty in a new way, mindful of the right hon. Gentleman’s comments. We are determined to make it work; the response will no longer be supine, but proactive, and it will assist those in the greatest need.
School Funding (Worcestershire)
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Weir. I should start by placing on record my interest in this matter as a governor and associate governor of Hallow primary school in my constituency for many years.
Worcestershire is one of the lowest-funded counties in the country for education. It is 147th out of 151 for per pupil funding and a long-standing member of the f40 group. According to the National Governors Association, the guaranteed unit of funding for pupils in Birmingham is £5,689, yet in neighbouring Worcestershire it is only £4,601—a difference of 20%. That has been going on for years. Mrs Susan Warner, head teacher of Lindridge primary school, said to me in one of the many letters that I have received on the subject:
“There is very little reasoning behind this unfair distribution and it appears to be purely historic, with no-one really understanding how the allocations were made in the first place.”
Last year, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State signalled his intention to deal with the national unfairness of the school funding formula with “Consultation on School Funding Reform: Proposals on a Fairer Funding System”. That was welcome, but in an environment in which the overall school budget is only rising with inflation, it apparently will not be implemented this side of 2015.
In the meantime, the Department has decided to simplify the allocation formula for the direct schools grant, replacing the outdated and unfair national formula with a clearer one by reducing the number of allowable factors from 40 to a maximum of 12. The principle of a single flat amount per pupil in each stage of education from primary to sixth form makes sense. It is intuitive and, given that 80% to 85% of the cost of each school place relates to the salaries of teachers whose rates are set nationally, it makes sense to have a per pupil amount of funding that is broadly the same nationally.
Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important and useful debate for the county of Worcestershire. She talks about the ratio of staff costs being 80% to 85%, but in Wyre Forest we see that rising as high as 95% as more experienced staff go up the internal pay scale. That puts even more pressure on schools locally to try to perform with these very limited budgets.
Harriett Baldwin
I thank my honourable constituency neighbour for that observation. Staff costs certainly form by far the largest part of a school budget. It makes sense to have money follow the pupil, as that gives a clear signal to schools that they will do better if they can attract more pupils. The pupil premium, which has been welcomed at £600 per pupil on free school meals, will be even more welcome in Worcestershire when it is increased from 2013 by 50% and set at £900 per pupil. As the pupil premium now links to the pupil level the concept of income deprivation, it stands to reason that the main pupil funding allocation should be set more equally at national level as well. If the pupil premium is a national amount, why should not the main per pupil amount be more equal, too?
Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing this very important debate. I want simply to strengthen her case by pointing out that Gloucestershire has the same argument as her own county. We, too, are underfunded compared with, say, Bristol. That is obviously unfair, and we need a national approach to the matter.
Harriett Baldwin
I thank my hon. Friend for highlighting the examples in Stroud.
If, as the formula seems to do, we move closer to a per pupil amount across the county of Worcestershire without making any correction to the national unfairness, we shall run into a crucial problem. Small, mainly rural primary schools form an integral part of the fabric of county life in a dispersed constituency such as mine. Where distances are large and sparsity is high, we find that the village school is the focus and beating heart of the village. Rural schools are likely to have fewer children on free school meals, for a couple of reasons. There is a lower chance of meals being served and a much higher chance of the possible social stigma being known, and there is therefore lower take-up. Those schools thus miss out on the pupil premium, as can be seen from the fact that Worcestershire has just over 1% of the pupils on roll in England, but less than 0.75% of the pupil premium for 2012-13.
Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. She has made the case admirably for the small rural schools in her constituency, but she will be aware that some of the smaller schools in my constituency, which are urban schools and receive quite a lot of pupil premium, are also negatively affected by the changes. Does she agree that for the Government’s pupil premium policy to work and for their funding reforms to work really well, we need fairer funding on an underlying basis to make progress?
Harriett Baldwin
I do agree. How lucky my hon. Friend’s constituents are to have such a tireless champion and voice for fairer funding for Worcestershire.
Today, I ask the Minister to allow the county council to have more sector-variable lump sums that can be set locally. Some flexibility at local level is essential. Small rural primary schools are a priority for Worcestershire county council and it has a democratic mandate to take that approach. In addition, it is in its interest to do so, as travel and building costs would rise sharply if there were a consolidation of the smaller local primary schools. Furthermore, parts of Worcestershire support a middle school system, and the local authority should have some flexibility to reflect that.
I welcome the Minister’s letter of last week, confirming that there is a minimum funding guarantee extended out to 2015—a per pupil guarantee of minus 1.5%—which will help to moderate the impact of the changes up to 2015. However, Worcestershire needs more flexibility—it needs more money. More flexibility over a lump sum from the local authority could insulate small rural schools from too much fluctuation. Even after that guarantee, a school such as Eldersfield primary in my constituency would have a 5.5% fall in its budget by 2015, despite educating each child to an excellent standard for a frugal £3,523 per child.
I have so far been contacted by primary schools in the villages of Castlemorton, Martley, Broadwas, Grimley and Holt, Clifton-upon-Teme, Astley and Hallow, Great Witley, Eldersfield, Lindridge, Kempsey and Pendock, many of which have asked whether the funding formula is a deliberate attempt to close or merge village primaries and move towards a system of larger urban primary schools. Will the Minister please assure the dedicated teachers and governors and the parents of children at those rural primary schools that there is no such policy and that the value of village primary schools to their communities is fully recognised by the Government?
I hope that the Minister can also resolve the funding problem. Village schools should be considered unviable only if they do not attract pupils on a sustainable basis. Allowing local authorities, such as Worcestershire county council, to have a larger amount to use as a flexible lump sum to support those valuable schools would allow them to continue to serve the large rural areas that still make up such a large part of Worcestershire and, indeed, England.
Peter Luff (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)
I rise to take part in the debate with the consent of my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin), and my first duty is to congratulate her on securing it and expressing her case so clearly and compellingly. I associate myself with everything she has said and that my hon. Friends have said in interventions.
I rise primarily because the schools in the Evesham pyramid in my constituency would be most seriously affected were the policy to proceed unamended. The schools in the Evesham pyramid would lose about £1.3 million, and that, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire made so very clear, is against the backdrop of a very unfair funding formula. They cannot afford to lose that amount of money. No school could, but certainly not schools that are in a badly funded authority to begin with. I say in parenthesis that even the minimum funding guarantee, with a maximum reduction of 1.5% per pupil, threatens the viability of some smaller schools. A cumulative two or three years at 1.5%, against a very low base, is threatening for many schools.
There are a number of reasons why in Evesham the situation is particularly serious. There are more smaller schools perhaps, and also a middle school arrangement, which is not always understood by officials at the Department for Education. I understand why—middle schools are not very prevalent these days—but they are an important part of the education landscape in Worcestershire, and certainly in Evesham, and their particular needs must be taken account of in funding arrangements.
We have talked about small village schools, but I must emphasise that it is smaller schools that are affected, not just village schools. There are two high schools in Evesham, which would both lose money under this arrangement. One—the smaller of the two—would lose £250,000. It cannot afford to lose £250,000. So, it is not only the small village schools that are affected, but, surprisingly, some significantly larger schools.
I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that perhaps the Government were wrong to attempt this welcome reform—I entirely agree with the reform itself, because it is absolutely right in principle—before they had digested the underlying problem in relation to having a fairer funding formula at national level. Change in distribution in a badly funded county is fraught with danger, and I fear that it will be difficult to find any arrangement that prevents some significant loss for some schools unless we first have the fairer funding that the county so desperately needs.
However, I am confident that a solution can be found that mitigates the effect. I am encouraged by the attitude that the Government have taken so far, and I have reassured head teachers and governors in my constituency that I believe that the Government’s heart is in changing this policy and ensuring that it does not have the devastating impact that it would have if it proceeded unamended.
I am grateful to the extent that there is a minimum funding guarantee, for example, for a third year, but a higher lump sum does no good in Worcestershire—we cannot afford it and do not have the money to fund a higher lump sum. However, a variable lump sum, certainly between sectors, could lie at the heart of a solution that I believe would reduce the devastating impact of this policy and give smaller schools some hope of survival in the face of what would otherwise be a very arbitrary and unfair policy.
Karen Lumley (Redditch) (Con)
Thank you for allowing me to speak, Mr Weir. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) for securing the debate. I must also declare an interest as a governor and trustee at Vaynor First School academy.
This year, although the number of students receiving good GCSEs fell across the nation, in Redditch we had nothing short of an exams boom. Despite funding challenges, three secondary schools in Redditch gained results that placed them in the top tier of the most improved schools across the country. Two schools, Arrow Vale and Trinity high, are recently converted academies, and that has had a hugely beneficial effect on the way that they run and operate, and ultimately on the success that they have had.
More importantly, from speaking to the head teachers it is clear that those schools now have greater ambition and, crucially, believe that they can compete with the best. However, while the structure, with the rolling out of academies, is finally in place for our county to achieve, funding is not. On funding, my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire pointed out that the county is ranked nationally 147th out of 151. Worcestershire is more affected than other counties by this funding arrangement because we are at the bottom of the schools funding league.
The way out of that is a fairer national funding formula, which this Government have promised following 13 years of a Labour Government who completely failed to address the issue. It is absolutely vital for the children of Worcestershire that we receive a fair deal. The crucial point is that the recent exam results from a few schools in Redditch are on the back of unfair funding, so imagine what we could achieve if we had fairer funding. The truth is that in the age of an ever more competitive national and global work force we cannot continue unfairly to disadvantage the future of our children, whose only fault is that they were born in Worcestershire.
The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)
Thank you very much, Mr Weir, for calling me to speak.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) on securing this debate on an issue that is extremely important for her constituency and that is obviously also important throughout the country. Once again, she is proving to be a most effective champion of her constituency interests.
My hon. Friend warned me before the debate started that the MPs from Worcestershire have a tendency to hunt in packs and her pack is behind her today, if I may say so, in the form of my hon. Friends the Members for Mid Worcestershire (Peter Luff), for Redditch (Karen Lumley), for Worcester (Mr Walker) and for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier), who have all backed up the points that she made in a very effective way. We have other Members from Gloucestershire and Devon, who are clearly also taking an interest in this debate.
As the Minister for Schools, I am very well aware of the strength of feeling in Worcestershire schools and in schools in some other parts of the country. There is concern about some of the changes that we are seeking to make to the school funding system, and my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire has set out some of those concerns very clearly today. I have received a number of representations from other hon. Friends, and from concerned local head teachers and governors throughout Worcestershire.
Therefore, I am grateful for this opportunity to address some of those concerns and to offer a reassurance that, as we move to a fairer funding system, we will do so very carefully and at a pace that enables proper consideration, consultation and sensitivity about the issues that are being rightly raised today by local MPs.
Our aim is for every child to succeed in school, regardless of their background. That is why the Government, despite having to make difficult decisions elsewhere in public spending, have made school spending a priority and protected school funding over the course of the spending review period, as my hon. Friends will be aware.
We have also introduced, as my hon. Friend mentioned, the pupil premium which, by the end of the Parliament, will have targeted an additional £2.5 billion to disadvantaged pupils. My hon. Friend mentioned that sometimes the take-up of the pupil premium is a concern in rural areas. She might be interested to know that the Department will publish in a few weeks’ time some interesting national figures showing the take-up of the pupil premium and free school meals in different parts of the country, and highlighting the challenge there is in some of the more rural areas to ensure that take-up is as high as it should be.
The Government need to work with local councils, schools and MPs to ensure that in some of the areas where there is a low take-up we address that, to ensure not only that youngsters get the free school meals to which they are entitled but that the extra funding we are making available gets through to the schools that need it.
We also need a system to support the investment that we are putting in through the pupil premium and to ensure that pupils are not disadvantaged as a result of a school funding system that, as my hon. Friends have indicated, does not distribute funding fairly. Sadly, under the previous Government, when there was a much bigger opportunity to increase education spending, the opportunity was missed to bring in a more rational formula. The current system for funding schools is in need of reform. It is based on an assessment of need that dates back to at least 2005-06, and that has not kept pace with changing demographics and the needs of pupils across the country. It is very complicated, meaning that head teachers, governors and parents are often unable to understand how their school budgets have been calculated and why.
That outdated funding system has meant that Worcestershire, as hon. Friends have already mentioned, is one of the relatively lowest funded authorities in England, ranking at 147 out of the 152 authorities. It is not right that schools with very similar circumstances can receive, without good cause, vastly different levels of funding for no clearly identifiable reason. Data taken from the 2010-11 section 251 returns, which set out local authority budgets, show that funding between similar secondary schools can vary by up to £1,800 per pupil, which is an enormous amount and clearly not fair.
It is also not right that the system is so complex that school leaders are often unable to understand how their budgets have been calculated. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education made a statement on 26 March 2012 announcing the Government’s clear intention to introduce a new national funding formula during the next spending review period. I appreciate that hon. Friends would like that to be as soon as possible, but there are obviously a lot of constraints that I will discuss in a moment on the introduction. However, the commitment is clear and is something I feel strongly about, as does the Secretary of State.
A new national funding formula would distribute money fairly across the country, targeting need properly and getting rid of some of the anomalies that make the current system so opaque. However, dismantling a system that is so entrenched and complicated is far from easy. It is important that we introduce full-scale reform at a pace that schools can manage. The last thing that we want, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire said, is to cause destabilising changes to school budgets that cause anxiety in schools and among parents and distract schools from delivering high educational standards for their pupils.
That is why we are trying to move gradually towards introducing a new funding system, at a pace that gives us sufficient time to agree the construction of a new formula and to allow schools enough time to adjust to changes in their funding arrangements. Making the local system simpler and more transparent will mean that, when we do come to address the national system, there is far less complexity for us to untangle.
The first step we are taking is to ensure that within local areas pupils begin to attract similar levels of funding regardless of where they go to school. At present, local authorities can use up to 37 factors and countless sub-factors when distributing money to schools. I understand that in the past there has been a tradition of funding schools based on the facilities that they offer, the pay scales of their teachers, the size of their buildings and, even in some cases, the number of trees and ditches on their estate.
Our view is that the majority of money that we spend on education should be based on the pupil, not on the school characteristics. If a pupil chooses to go to a particular school then the funding is available to fulfil that choice, and it is not locked in to the school down the road because it happens to have more expensive teachers or a swimming pool to maintain. Rather than giving money to schools based on their size or other circumstances, local authorities will now have to distribute the majority of funds based on pupil numbers and characteristics. That is very much in keeping with the aims of a funding system that is pupil led and that is fair and transparent.
The new arrangements will mean that funding will be distributed differently, and there will be some shifts between school budgets as we move towards a more consistent way of funding schools. Our aim is to start to iron out inconsistencies and unfairness, which pupils in schools are currently experiencing, to create a fairer system. We remain committed to ensuring that good, small schools are able to thrive under the new arrangements.
We know that small schools often play a vital role in communities, not least in rural areas, and it is not our intention that any good school should be forced to close as a result of these reforms. That is a commitment that my hon. Friend asked for in her speech, and I hope that she will take that as a commitment from the Government. There is no secret agenda to close small, successful schools. I hope that she and her hon. Friends will take that message back to their constituencies.
We are allowing local authorities to allocate a lump sum of up to £200,000 in their formula. The intention of the lump sum is to cover the fixed cost of a small school—for example, a head teacher, a caretaker and some administrative support—and no more. It is not intended to protect the historic grants that were given to some schools and not others to pay for things such as floor space, specialist teachers and so forth.
We have heard a number of concerns—we heard them from my hon. Friend today—about the requirement to have a single lump sum for primary, middle and secondary schools. Although I recognise that the curriculum costs are different in each phase, I reiterate the point that the lump sum is not intended to pay for the curriculum costs. The lump sum should pay for fixed costs, and the per-pupil funding should pay for the curriculum costs. We will, however, review those arrangements, and I will explain more about that review shortly.
The reforms will require local authorities and school forums to break out of historic approaches and to think radically about the way in which money is distributed to schools in their areas. I realise that it is the implementation of the new simplified arrangements that is causing anxiety among schools in Worcestershire, and that there are particular concerns about the impact the changes will have on small and middle schools in rural areas such as Evesham, Pershore and Upton.
Officials in the Department have been in contact with staff at Worcestershire county council to understand why the concerns have arisen and to offer advice. I understand that Worcestershire county council has already agreed to the new funding formula—it did so on 18 October —but it has done so for one year only. I am informed that Worcestershire county council will review its local formula in light of the issues raised during its recent consultation, and in line with any changes made by the Department for 2014-15.
As I said, our main priority is stability and certainty for schools, which is why these reforms will be implemented carefully and with great consideration, as my hon. Friends have requested. The Secretary of State already announced in June that schools will continue to have planning certainty through the minimum funding guarantee, which means that, in most cases, no school will lose more than 1.5% of its budget per pupil in 2013-14 and 2014-15.
In addition to that and in response to concerns raised by my hon. Friend, her colleagues and other hon. Friends, the Department has confirmed within the past few days that a minimum funding guarantee will continue to operate beyond 2014-15. We cannot confirm the exact value of that guarantee as it covers the next spending review period; we need to know our budget for that period and to have Treasury approval before giving any such guarantees. None the less, we are absolutely committed to protecting school budgets from unmanageable falls, and I hope that that will also be an assurance for my hon. Friend.
Mr Laws
At the moment, we have made it clear that we will continue it beyond the period of 2014-15. Although we are not in a position to make an announcement yet, given that we are seeking to move to a national funding formula, it is highly likely that we will need some form of protection for a considerable period. I will be happy to update my hon. Friend when we are in a position to say more.
Mr Robin Walker
The minimum funding guarantee is excellent, and I am sure we all welcome its extension, but is it not the obvious answer to the turbulence of moving towards a national formula? Therefore, is there any reason for the Government not to move towards a national formula, using the minimum funding guarantee, before 2015?
Mr Laws
Moving straight to a national funding formula without the transitional arrangements would be even more challenging and would create an even larger departmental postbag. I understand my hon. Friend is doing his best to push Worcestershire’s case, but the Secretary of State is right to be going about this in a measured way as we are seeking to bring about a complex change.
In any case, the extension of the minimum funding guarantee beyond 2015 should reassure the several Worcestershire schools—including the Hanley Castle pyramid, Prince Henry’s high school and Evesham high school—that have contacted me to express concerns about a potential cliff edge in funding from 2014-15 if the minimum funding guarantee were to end. I have no doubt that my hon. Friends will take that message back to other schools concerned about a cliff edge. The last thing we want is for parents not to send their children to those schools because of fears that are not well grounded.
I also reassure my hon. Friends that we have decided to carry out a thorough review in early 2013, starting now effectively, of the impact of simpler formula factors. We will work with local authorities to explore the effect of the different factors that we have, including the lump sum, which is a key element of Worcestershire’s formula, as well as those that we have eliminated.
We have made it clear that we want to prevent the changes from having unacceptable consequences for good schools. That is why a review will be so important in evaluating the effects and will enable us to make any necessary adjustments in the following year, 2014-15. As a consequence of the representations that have been made today by my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire and her colleagues, I will ask officials to add Worcestershire to the shortlist of authorities that have been particularly assiduous in making representations to the Department and that I would like officials to talk to over the period of the review, which we hope will report back in the springtime—spring being a slightly flexible season.
I am enormously grateful to my hon. Friends for drawing attention to the concerns of Worcestershire schools about our school funding reforms. I hope I have been able to provide some reassurance that our aim in making the reforms is ultimately to ensure that England has a fair and transparent funding system in which funding follows pupils and there is consistency within and between different areas of the country. I know that Worcestershire shares that ultimate aim with the Department. I also hope that my hon. Friends understand that we are listening carefully to their concerns and, where necessary, are responding to them.
I commend my hon. Friends for making their representations so effectively to the Department that the Worcestershire file is probably the largest of any county. I look forward to maintaining contact with Worcestershire in the run-up to the decisions, which we will make and announce next year.
Question put and agreed to.
Written Ministerial Statements
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Government Olympic Executive (Quarterly Report)
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Hugh Robertson)
I am publishing today the Government Olympic Executive’s final quarterly report—“London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games Quarterly Report October 2012”. Following the successful conclusion of the games, this report explains the latest budget position as at 30 September 2012, and outlines the investments which are being made from the public sector funding package for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games. The overall cost of the games is forecast at £8.921 billion, a saving of £377 million on the £9.298 billion budget. Including contingency held for the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) and the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) risks there remains a total of £480 million of uncommitted contingency within the £9.3 billion public sector funding package (PSFP).
The anticipated final cost of the ODA’s construction and infrastructure programme is £6,714 million, a £47 million reduction since the previous report in June this year. With additional savings in the period to 30 September 2012, the amount saved by the ODA against the original budget has now reached £1,032 million.
The published figures include additional funding made available to LOCOG in the run up to the games, while the costs of policing and wider security, and venue security, have reduced in the period.
The London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games are viewed as a success by athletes, spectators, dignitaries and the media. Team GB and ParalympicsGB finished third in both the Olympic and Paralympic medal tables with 185 medals won across both games, 63 of which were gold.
The handover of the Olympic park from LOCOG to the London Legacy Development Corporation, the mayoral body responsible for delivering the transformation works, is under way and on track.
Any underspend in the PSFP will be retained by HM Treasury, though any moneys remaining at the conclusion of the programme in the Olympic Lottery Distribution Fund will be transferred to the National Lottery Distribution Fund to benefit lottery good causes.
I would like to commend this report to the Members of both Houses and thank them for their interest in and support for the London 2012 games over the past few years. This is the final report on the games, but further public updates will be made as required until the completion of the programme in 2014.
Copies of the quarterly report October 2012 are available online at: www.culture.gov.uk and will be deposited in the Libraries of both Houses.
Balance of Competences Review (Progress Report)
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)
I wish to inform the House that, further to my oral statement at the launch of the balance of competences review on 12 July 2012, Official Report, column 468, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is today publishing the timetable for the review including departmental responsibility for the reports into each individual area of competence.
The review will complete its work during 2014 and will look at the scope of the EU’s competences (the power to act in particular areas conferred on it by the EU Treaties) as they affect the UK, how they are used, and what that means for Britain and our national interests.
The review will be divided into four semesters, each containing six to 10 reports. This will allow reports on related topics to be grouped together. The reports from each semester will be published at the end of that semester. If necessary, changes to this timetable will be made in order to take account of any events which could impact upon the timing of a report. The semesters are:
Semester one: | autumn 2012—summer 2013 |
Semester two: | spring 2013—winter 2013 |
Semester three: | autumn 2013—summer 2014 |
Semester four: | spring 2014—autumn 2014 |
The first semester reviews will be:
an overview on the single market;
taxation;
animal health and welfare and food safety;
health;
development; and
foreign policy.
The single market encompasses such a broad area of competence that it is being split, with further reports on the four freedoms—goods, persons, services and capital—in semesters two and three.
Departments will take a rigorous approach to the collection and analysis of evidence. The Government Department leading each review will, at the appropriate time, publish a call for evidence which will set out the scope of their report and include a series of broad questions on which they would like contributors to focus. The calls for evidence for first semester reports will be published shortly and will be available through the FCO website and through the website of the Department leading each review. The reports into the first six competences will be published in the summer of 2013, along with the evidence received, subject to the provisions of the Data Protection Act.
Government Departments will consult widely, including Parliament and its committees, business, the devolved Administrations, and civil society in order to obtain evidence to contribute to their analysis of the issues. Our EU partners and the EU institutions will also be invited to contribute evidence to the review.
The result will be a comprehensive, thorough and detailed analysis of where competence lies and what it means for the United Kingdom. It will aid our understanding of the nature of our EU membership; and it will provide a constructive and serious contribution to the wider European debate about modernising, reforming and improving the EU. The review will not produce specific policy recommendations.
I am placing the timetable in the Library of the House. It will also be published on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office website:
http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/global-issues/european-union/balance-of-competences-review
Report Title | Departmental Lead | |
|---|---|---|
Semester 1 (Autumn ’12—Summer ’13) | ||
1 | Internal Market: Synopsis | Department for Business, Innovation and Skills |
2 | Taxation | HM Treasury |
3 | Animal Health and Welfare and Food safety | Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs |
4 | Health | Department of Health |
5 | Development | Department for International Development |
6 | Foreign Policy | Foreign and Commonwealth Office |
Semester 2 (Spring ’13—Autumn ’13) | ||
7 | Internal Market: Freedom of movement of goods | HM Revenue and Customs |
8 | Internal Market: Free movement of persons | Home Office |
9 | Asylum and Immigration | Home Office |
10 | Trade and Investment | Department for Business, Innovation and Skills |
11 | Environment | Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs |
12 | Transport | Department for Transport |
13 | Research and Development | Department for Business, Innovation and Skills |
14 | Tourism, Culture and Sport | Department for Culture, Media and Sport |
15 | Civil Justice | Ministry of Justice |
Semester 3 (Autumn ’13—Spring ’14) | ||
16 | Internal Market: Services | Department for Business, Innovation and Skills |
17 | Internal Market: Capital | HM Treasury |
18 | EU Budget | HM Treasury |
19 | Cohesion | Department for Business, Innovation and Skills |
20 | Social and Employment | Department for Business, Innovation and Skills |
21 | Agriculture | Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs |
22 | Fisheries | Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs |
23 | Competition | Department for Business, Innovation and Skills |
24 | Energy | Department of Energy and Climate Change |
25 | Fundamental Rights | Ministry of Justice |
Semester 4 (Spring ’14—Autumn ’14) | ||
26 | Economic and Monetary Union | FCM Treasury |
27 | Health and safety and consumer protection | Health and Safety Executive |
28 | Police and Criminal Justice | Home Office |
29 | Education | Department for Education |
30 | Enlargement | Foreign and Commonwealth Office |
31 | Administrative co-operation, citizenship, information rights and statistics. | Cabinet Office, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Ministry of Justice, UK Statistics Authority |
32 | Subsidiarity, Proportionality and Article 352 | Foreign and Commonwealth Office |
Note: | This order and sequencing may be subject to change as the review progresses. |
British Embassy (Madagascar)
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)
I am pleased to announce the reopening of Britain’s embassy in Madagascar after seven years. The ambassador, Mr Timothy Smart, will take up his appointment in Antananarivo this month, and the embassy will be fully functional by March 2013.
This marks Britain’s full diplomatic re-engagement with Madagascar after the decision by the last British Government to close the embassy in 2005. The new embassy replaces the British interests section which was set up in the German embassy in November 2008, which was run by a locally engaged member of staff and reported to Britain’s high commissioner in Mauritius.
Having a fully accredited British ambassador and embassy in Antananarivo will enable us to provide more effective systematic support to British business, a stronger trade and investment relationship with Madagascar, and full consular assistance to British residents and visitors.
The resources of a full embassy will also allow us to work more effectively with the international community to support Madagascar’s return to a fully recognised constitutional Government after free and fair elections, as set out in the Southern African Development Community’s road map.
This decision sends a strong signal of British interest in and engagement with Madagascar and the region. And it is part of the expansion of Britain’s diplomatic network in key regions of the world. By 2015 the British Government will have opened up 11 new British embassies and eight new consulates, and sent over 300 extra staff to over 22 countries in emerging economies.
As I said in Parliament on 11 May 2011, there will be no strategic shrinkage of Britain’s diplomatic influence overseas and we will work to extend the reach of British diplomacy. Reopening the embassy in Madagascar is part of that commitment.
Schengen Evaluation Mechanism
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (James Brokenshire)
The Government have decided not to exercise their right, under protocol 19 to the treaty on the functioning of the European Union (the Schengen protocol) and the treaty on European Union, to opt out of the regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the establishment of an evaluation mechanism to verify the application of the Schengen acquis.
The Government have taken this decision in accordance with the commitment in the coalition agreement which states that we will approach legislation in the area of security and criminal justice on a case-by-case basis, with a view to maximising our country’s security, protecting Britain’s civil liberties and preserving the integrity of our criminal justice system.
The Government believe that our national interests are best served by participating in this regulation. Through this mechanism we can ensure that member states implement and continue to apply the correct standards, as required by the Schengen acquis, in order to maintain an area of lowered border controls which is secure for its citizens. Our participation will ensure our existing active role in the scrutiny of those policing and judicial co-operation elements of the Schengen acquis in which we participate.
Specified Proceedings Processes
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
Today I am announcing that we will grant the police new powers to prosecute a wider range of offences under specified proceedings provisions. These include driving without due care and attention, and criminal damage when the damage is valued at £5,000 or less.
I informed Parliament in May that, as part of the wider reform of the criminal justice system, the Attorney-General and I intend to simplify and extend these processes, to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy and ensure swifter justice. The new offences will build on the changes already made to enable police to continue to prosecute these cases when the defendant fails to appear in court or enter a plea by post, or where a driver pleads exceptional hardship to avoid a driving disqualification.
These changes will deliver more professional discretion for the police and allow the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to focus on more complex cases, and offer the chance for better outcomes for victims and savings for the taxpayer. They eliminate the need for the police to hand over cases to the CPS where these are straightforward, uncontested and dealt with in the magistrates court.
Economic Crime Committed by Commercial Organisations: Deferred Prosecution Agreement (Government Response)
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Damian Green)
I am today publishing the Government response to the “Consultation on a new enforcement tool to deal with economic crime committed by commercial organisations: Deferred Prosecution Agreements1”.
Economic crime is far from victimless and has a pernicious and damaging effect on our economy and on that of the wider world. Options for dealing with offending by commercial organisations are currently limited and the number of outcomes each year, through both criminal and civil proceedings, is too low. The Government’s consultation paper set out their proposals for an additional tool for prosecutors to deal effectively with white collar crime committed by organisations, the deferred prosecution agreement (DPA).
Some 86% of responses to our consultation agreed that DPAs can play a vital role in helping to overcome the challenges of bringing organisations that commit wrongdoing to justice. There was widespread support for an approach that ensures that redress is available, with wrongdoing seeing the light of day, victims properly compensated and offending organisations facing stringent sanctions. Respondents also endorsed our proposed operational model and processes.
Primary legislation is required to provide for deferred prosecution agreements and accordingly the Government are today tabling amendments to the Crime and Courts Bill which is currently being considered by the House of Lords.
Copies of the document have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses, in the Vote Office and in the Printed Paper Office. The document is also available online, at: www.justice.gov.uk/consultations.
1Command Paper 8348, 17 May 2012.
Effective Community Sentences (Consultation Response)
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)
I am today publishing the Government’s response to its consultation “Punishment and Reform: Effective Community Sentences”, which began on 27 March and ended on 22 June 2012.
While community sentences can be effective in tackling the causes of reoffending, they do not always inspire public confidence. Some community orders do not contain an element that the public would consider demanding or punitive. The average length of a community order has fallen in recent years, and the percentage of successfully completed orders is also still too low. There is also scope for community sentences to do more to repair the harm that crimes cause to victims and communities.
That is why the Government set out a package of proposals to increase public confidence that community orders provide a proper sanction for criminal behaviour, while also reducing reoffending and ensuring a better deal for victims. The consultation received nearly 250 written responses. The response I am publishing today summarises the responses we received and sets out the policies we will now take forward. The Government will be tabling amendments to the Crime and Courts Bill to deliver a number of the reforms.
The reforms include:
Requiring courts to include a punitive element in every community sentence, unless there are exceptional circumstances;
Making use of new technology, subject to appropriate safeguards, to track offenders during their sentence to protect the public and help prevent criminals committing further offences;
Working with the courts, judiciary and probation trusts to explore improvements in operational procedures for dealing with breaches of community orders, so that offenders are aware of the consequences of breach and face swift sanctions if they do so.
Expanding courts’ powers to defer sentencing so that restorative justice can take place pre-sentence between victims and offenders. This will form part of the Government’s wider strategy to develop a coherent vision of how restorative justice should apply across all stages of the justice process: including how we build local capacity within available funding, and how we ensure a consistently high quality of delivery through accreditation and training standards;
Making clear that courts can take into account criminals’ assets as well as their income when setting financial penalties;
Giving the courts access to benefits and tax information from the Department of Work and Pensions and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs when setting and enforcing financial penalties;
Removing the current £5,000 limit on compensation orders in the magistrates’ courts.
Copies of the Government response document will be deposited in the Libraries of both Houses. Both the Government response and associated documents will also be available online at:
https://consult.justice.gov.uk/digital-communications/effective-community-services.
HGV Road User Levy
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Stephen Hammond)
For the benefit of Members of the House, I am today setting out some details of the HGV Road User Levy Bill, debated in the House of Commons on Tuesday 23 October. The Bill itself will be walked in after the debate on the Ways and Means resolution.
The HGV Road User Levy Bill with introduce charges for all HGVs that weigh 12 tonnes and over for using the UK road network.
The Government realise the importance of haulage services provided by both UK-registered and foreign-registered vehicles to our economy, ensuring that goods are brought in and efficiently moved around the country. The key aim of this Bill is to ensure a fairer arrangement for UK-hauliers to help improve their competitiveness.
The legislation being introduced fulfils a commitment in the coalition agreement and is designed to remove an inequality, whereby UK hauliers pay to use many roads abroad, but foreign-hauliers do not pay to use roads in the UK. The levy is designed to be cost neutral for UK hauliers, through offsetting reductions in vehicle excise duty (VED) payments. Changes to VED will be included in the Finance Bill 2014.
The levy will be time based and will vary according to the vehicle type, weight and number of axles. This seeks to ensure that the charging scale is linked to the amount of damage a HGV causes to a road. The levy will be a maximum of £1,000 per year or £10 per day for the largest vehicles. UK-registered HGVs will pay the levy for either a six-monthly or annual period. Foreign-registered vehicles can pay the levy either daily, weekly, monthly or annually. Rebates will be available under certain circumstances. Revenues will be paid into the consolidated fund.
The Bill makes it an offence to fail to pay the levy and, on summary conviction, a fine of up to level 5 on the standard scale (currently £5,000) will be payable. The Bill also provides for the offence to be subject to a fixed penalty and it allows the Secretary of State to refuse to issue a vehicle licence if he is not satisfied that the appropriate levy has been paid.
The scheme will be administered by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) or the Driver and Vehicle Agency (DVA) in Northern Ireland. A private company will be contracted by the Department for Transport to administer the payment scheme for foreign-registered HGVs. The contractor will be required to maintain an electronic database of foreign-registered HGVs for which a levy has been paid. UK enforcement agencies will have access to the database.
The scheme will be enforced by the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (VOSA) in Great Britain and the Driver and Vehicle Agency (DVA) in Northern Ireland. These agencies currently enforce UK and foreign hauliers’ compliance with regulations on vehicle roadworthiness, drivers’ hours and other road safety regulations. The police also have enforcement powers.
The Department for Transport conducted a consultation exercise in early 2012, and the findings of this are also being published today, and will be available on the Department for Transport’s website at the following address:
www.dft.gov.uk/consultations/dft-2012-03
Grand Committee
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Arrangement of Business
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Geddes)
My Lords, it is now 3.30 pm. As is usual on these occasions, I must advise your Lordships that if there is a Division in the House, which I am told is singularly unlikely, the Committee will adjourn for 10 minutes.
Official Secrets Act 1989 (Prescription) (Amendment) Order 2012
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Official Secrets Act 1989 (Prescription) (Amendment) Order 2012.
Relevant document: 7th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord McNally, I beg to move that the Grand Committee do consider the Official Secrets Act 1989 (Prescription) (Amendment) Order 2012. This order is made under the Official Secrets Act 1989. Under that Act, it is an offence for a Crown servant or government contractor to make a damaging disclosure of any information within particular categories which is or has been in his possession by virtue of his position, unless he has lawful authority to do so. People who are not Crown servants can be treated as such for the purposes of the Act by being designated in an order. They are then subject to the duties and offences relating to the handling and disclosure of information as set out in the Official Secrets Act 1989.
The order does this by amending the Official Secrets Act 1989 (Prescription) Order 1990 by adding the holders of certain offices to Schedule 2. These officeholders are police and crime commissioners and their deputies, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime and its deputy, the Lord Mayor of the City of London and the representative of the Court of Common Council acting in its capacity as the Police Authority for the City of London. Noble Lords will know that the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 establishes a directly elected police and crime commissioner for each police area in England and Wales outside London, with the functions of securing the maintenance of an efficient and effective police force and holding the chief constable to account for the exercise of the chief constable’s functions. A commissioner is able to appoint a deputy. The Act also establishes in London the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime with identical functions in relation to the Metropolitan Police Service and the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis. The person who is the Mayor of London occupies the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime and may appoint a deputy.
In the City of London, the Common Council has the function of overseeing the City of London police force and its commissioner under the City of London Police Act 1839. The Common Council is headed by the Lord Mayor and is able to discharge its policing functions by means of a police committee. Police and crime commissioners, who will be elected on 15 November 2012, their deputies and the officeholders having similar functions in London, will need to receive and be briefed on police information in the exercise of their functions. This may include information on one or more of the categories protected by the Official Secrets Act 1989. They are particularly likely to be briefed on information which, if disclosed, is likely to result in crime or impede the investigation or prosecution of crime. We also envisage that they will be briefed regularly on security and intelligence material.
The Government are clear that they wish to maintain the operational independence of the chief constable, and that he or she should be responsible to the police and crime commissioner for ensuring the safe and effective maintenance of the Queen’s peace. We therefore envisage that a chief constable may on occasion need to brief a police and crime commissioner on operational matters which may involve the disclosure to the commissioner of sensitive material that has been sourced by the police service and/or the security and intelligence agencies, such as material on counterterrorism. The degree to which the police and crime commissioner is briefed on operational matters and intelligence will be at the operational discretion of the local chief constable in close consultation with the security and intelligence agencies where necessary. The commissioner’s role in democratic accountability and transparency needs to be balanced against the public interest in maintaining community safety and justice. Unauthorised disclosures could lead to risk to the public, damage police operations and impede criminal proceedings.
The Government consulted on how to address these concerns as part of our consideration in introducing police and crime commissioners and have concluded on the basis of responses that, as elected representatives, commissioners should not be vetted in advance. We consulted further and there was a consensus that making these officeholders subject to the duties and offences applying to police officers was a proportionate safeguard. We need to maintain the trust and confidence of the public and, of course, the police service. Bringing the commissioners and other officeholders under the Official Secrets Act 1989 will provide the reassurance that there is a strong deterrent to prevent unauthorised and damaging disclosure of sensitive information. These officeholders will be Crown servants for the purposes of the Official Secrets Act 1989 only, as are Ministers and police officers. That, of course, does not affect the status of commissioners and other officeholders.
The draft order is an appropriate and proportionate safeguard and I hope it will be acceptable to the House.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, the forthcoming elections for police commissioners may not be an official secret but I can vouch for the fact that, so far as most of the electorate are concerned—at any rate, the ones I have been canvassing over the last few weeks—they remain very much a secret. They are not aware that these elections are going to happen; maybe that will change over the next few weeks.
Certainly, so far as the Opposition are concerned, we have no objection to the order. Indeed, it seems sensible to include the bodies and persons cited within the requirements of the Official Secrets Act. Perhaps where the Mayor of London is concerned, the Prime Minister would like to take it even further, but that of course is not a matter for debate today. However, there is possibly an issue around vetting. In the consultation document reference was made to the issue of vetting. The response to the consultation was published as long ago as December 2010. I have to say that it was not very accessible from the site mentioned in the Explanatory Memorandum today, so perhaps official secrets have overtaken that too, but I was able to obtain a copy from the Library. In it, the Government said that:
“A few respondents identified a need to apply to”,
police commissioners,
“at least the same level of vetting checks applied to police officers”.
That is not an entirely candid description of the response, as in fairness the Explanatory Memorandum points out that,
“the Association of Chief Police Officers, Association of Police Authorities, Association of Police Authority Chief Executives, the Superintendants’ Association and the Police Federation all raised concerns with regards to vetting of the proposed Police and Crime Commissioners”.
Those are not just five individuals. The implication of the response to the consultation might have led one to believe that a handful of people had expressed concern about vetting, but these are serious organisations.
Without wishing to prejudge the argument, and noting the position that the Government have now reached on this, will the Minister at least keep matters under review? Could he assure us that if it is decided at some point that vetting at some level might be required in either a particular instance or more generally, there would be the capacity to institute it without further recourse to legislation? Police and crime commissioners will not just be dealing with matters affecting their own force—of course, some of them in themselves may constitute crimes or suspected crimes within the ambit of national security and the like, and hence be covered by the Official Secrets Act—but potentially they could also be involved in matters that require a national response, which by implication are very likely to include matters to which the Official Secrets Act would apply. In those circumstances and given the potential risks—remote risks, I hope, but they arise nevertheless in areas where the magnitude of a failure might have significant consequences—it might be helpful for a chief constable to have the assurance that, if necessary and if he or she has doubts about the matter, a vetting procedure might be entered into. It may not be the case that government Ministers are thoroughly vetted, but I understand that some procedure applies even to them. It would be strange if there were not the possibility, at any rate, of inquiring further into the elected police and crime commissioner should the occasion arise, even if it is not deemed appropriate to make it a matter of course on their election.
Having said that, we do not object to the order and we look forward to hearing the Government’s response to these points.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his support for this order. On his concerns about the elections that are arriving on our doorstep on 15 November, at least for those outside London, of course there is a concern about low voter turnout, just as there would be in any election. It is incumbent on noble Lords and indeed on anyone involved in the political make-up of our country to ensure that we have an effective turnout across the country for these most important elections. I know that all sides will support me on that.
The noble Lord also raised a minor point about access to the particular sites, and the fact that it was not as easy as it perhaps should have been. I shall certainly be taking that up with the department. On his final point about vetting, what has been put forward we believe to be a proportionate response, but as with most things, we will keep this procedure under review and, if deemed necessary, we will look at it again. For now, however, what has been put forward is appropriate and proportionate.
Finally, I have just been updated. As I am sure that the noble Lord is aware, even certain Ministers, including the Home Secretary, have not been vetted; nor has the Prime Minister. However, they are subject to the Official Secrets Act, as are Ministers. Coming back to the issue of vetting policy in general, as I said, we will keep it under review. It is very much a matter for the Cabinet Office. If required, I shall certainly write to the noble Lord on this.
Lord Beecham
I am grateful to the noble Lord. For the avoidance of doubt, I certainly join with him in encouraging people to vote. I do not share the views of the noble Lord, Lord Blair, on this matter. Although I opposed and continue to oppose the concept, now that we have them there certainly ought to be as large a turnout as possible in the election. If there is to be consideration—hopefully the situation might not arise—would that require further legislation of either a primary or secondary kind to institute a procedure, or would it be the decision of a Minister, presumably the Home Secretary? I would assume the latter, but it would be as well to have it on the record.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
I thank the noble Lord for his question. I do not believe that there will be a need for further legislation.
Forestry Commissioners (Climate Change Functions) (Scotland) (Consequential Modifications) Order 2012
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Tankerness
That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Forestry Commissioners (Climate Change Functions) (Scotland) (Consequential Modifications) Order 2012.
Relevant document: 7th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.
The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Wallace of Tankerness)
My Lords, I will provide the Committee with a brief summary of what this order seeks to achieve. It is made under Section 104 of the Scotland Act 1998, which allows for “necessary or expedient” changes to UK legislation in consequence of an Act of the Scottish Parliament and subordinate legislation. This order is made in consequence of the Forestry Commissioners (Climate Change Functions) (Scotland) Order 2012, made by Scottish Ministers under Section 59 of the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009. For convenience, I shall refer to this as the Section 59 order.
Scottish Ministers are keen to make full use of the national forest estate in Scotland for generating renewable energy. The national forest estate is land owned by the Scottish Government and put at the disposal of the Forestry Commission. While the commissioners have powers to enter into joint ventures in Scotland for the purpose of exercising their functions under the Forestry Act 1967, these functions do not expressly include the development of the renewable potential of the land put at their disposal by Scottish Ministers.
Section 59 of the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 enables Scottish Ministers to modify the functions of the forestry commissioners in or as regards Scotland where this is necessary or expedient in order to comply with their duties as regards emissions reductions or otherwise in relation to climate change. The Section 59 order amends the 1967 Act to place upon the forestry commissioners a new general duty to use land placed at their disposal by Scottish Ministers in the way best calculated to contribute to the delivery of the targets set under Part 1 of the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009.
However, the Section 59 order does not itself enable the forestry commissioners to use the National Forest Estate to generate electricity. The Scottish Government have indicated that because the forestry commissioners will have a duty to use land to contribute to the delivery of climate change targets, it would be expedient in consequence of this new duty for the commissioners to be able to use the national forest estate for renewable energy purposes.
This Section 104 order will modify the forestry commissioners’ functions under the 1967 Act in order to confer express powers on the commissioners to use the national forest estate for the purposes of generating and supplying electricity from renewable energy projects, thus developing the renewable energy potential of the land put at their disposal by Scottish Ministers. Of course, the generating and supplying of electricity from renewable energy projects is a reserved matter, hence the need for this order.
I can assure your Lordships that this Section 104 order will not affect the requirements under the Electricity Act 1989 with regard to consents. It will not exempt the forestry commissioners from the requirements of Part 1 of that Act.
This order is necessary or expedient in consequence of the Forestry Commissioners (Climate Change Functions) (Scotland) Order 2012 and demonstrates the Government’s continued commitment to working with the Scottish Government to make the devolution settlement work. I hope the Committee will agree that this order is a sensible use of the powers in the Scotland Act, and that the practical outcome is something to be welcomed.
I commend the order to the Committee. I beg to move.
Lord McAvoy
My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord the Minister, who, as usual, has made his staff available for any advice and/or assistance. I have a slight regret about the noble and learned Lord’s ever so polite attitude because, being used to another place, I sometimes like a wee bit of aggression but I am still waiting for the Minister to show that quality.
Turning to the legislative context, where in Scotland did the push for this come from? Although I do not stay near a lot of forest, nevertheless it is quite a big issue in some parts of Scotland. Why was this initiative taken, and what was the background to it? The policy background mentions wind farms. That is not an uncontroversial issue. I was wondering how that came about.
I have always tended to suspect the reporting of consultations because it is usually in the eye of the beholder, who wants a particular result. What is the current position on the consultation? Is it completely finished or are there still ramifications because people are making complaints or expressing their support? Is it still an issue? In addition, it is stated that a number of the concerns that were expressed have been addressed. Does the Minister know the specific issues that were identified and then responded to? Can he give an indication of how the consultation was handled? Was it just an exercise from on high or was there a definite consultation?
Paragraph 10 of the Explanatory Memorandum is headed “Impact” and states:
“This instrument has no impact of a regulatory nature”,
and goes on to say that the,
“impact on the public sector is insignificant”.
The one thing missing from that is public opinion. If it was insignificant, that is fine, but if there was a reaction, it would be a crucial factor. I would like to know if there were any expressions of public opinion. Is that the reason why a full impact assessment was not produced?
Although paragraph 12 states that the:
“Forestry Commission Scotland publishes an Annual Report and Accounts which is laid before the Scottish Parliament”,
is that the scope of the accountability? I know about devolution, but is there any further scope for the Westminster Government to be consulted? In short, is the whole issue of accountability now devolved to the Scottish Parliament? Obviously this is a comparatively minor arrangement, but never the less it is right to ask questions here in your Lordships’ Chamber and thus subject the order to a bit of gentle scrutiny.
The Earl of Mar and Kellie
My Lords, speaking as a backwoodsman, I approve of giving explicit powers to one of the largest landowners in Scotland and thereby removing all the Forestry Commission land from the renewables area. I certainly approve of the widening of the geographic scope for renewables, especially as it takes the pressure off other areas that may be more beautiful and which are worth retaining in that context. The order considerably widens the already broad remit of the Forestry Commission, which is now far wider than its remit in 1919, which was to produce timber. The commission will now get involved with leisure, recreation, health, landscape management, footpaths, cycle paths, biodiversity, wood fuel and still, indeed, the production of timber. I support all forms of renewable energy, and especially hydro. I am pleased to see that two hydro schemes have already been identified. I would encourage the commissioners to have another look at small-scale hydro projects on the hill burns. I also suspect that they are bound to put up some wind turbines, or allow a partner to put them up.
My final point is particularly related to that. Once a site has been established, it is grid-connected pretty much for all time. It is hoped that the generating technology may well improve and something other than wind farms will come to take their place. The important point is that the sites themselves are grid-connected.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Geddes)
My Lords, there is a problem with the sound system. The Grand Committee will adjourn.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees
My Lords, it is now 7.05 pm—oh! Let us try that again; it seems like an eon. It is 4.05 pm. Perhaps now peace and quiet has been resumed, the Minister would also resume.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Mar and Kellie and the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, for their contributions to this debate and for their general welcome for the proposals. The noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, asked from where the impetus for this had come. The origins go back to the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009, which in its generality was setting targets for carbon emissions and the amount of electricity that can be generated from non-fossil fuel renewable sources. The Scottish Government were very keen to make full use of the renewable potential of the estate, which is operated by the forestry commissioners. Indeed my noble friend Lord Mar and Kellie remarked that widening the geographical scope of renewable energy production perhaps takes the pressure off other parts of the country, bearing in mind that the Forestry Commission’s estate is almost 10 per cent of the Scottish land area.
My noble friend asked if there were any further potential hydro locations. I am advised that the commission is taking a proactive approach with developers and communities to identify further locations. I think it is important to emphasise the fact that this embraces electricity generation by means of hydropower. It is not solely wind power. The forestry commissioners, however, made it clear that they do not intend to go down the route of biomass, because that could lead to a conflict of interest with their role as timber suppliers. My noble friend expressed the view that it was vital that sites should be connected to the national grid. I can confirm that proposals would only go ahead if there were grid connections.
The noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, asked about the position with regard to consultation. The consultation took place in relation to the 2009 legislation. It took place ahead of that, although part of the consultation specifically related to the role of the forestry commissioners. The consultation document explained that the provision would facilitate the development of renewable energy potential of the land in Scotland put at the disposal of the forestry commissioners by Scottish Ministers. There were 368 responses to the specific question:
“What are your views on allowing the Forestry Commissioners to enter into joint ventures, with the intention of participating in renewable energy programmes on national forest estate?”.
Seventy per cent of respondents expressed positive views on the option, although a number added caveats; 15% expressed negative views; and the remainder appeared to be neutral or undecided. The noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, asked about some of these concerns and whether indeed they had been taken into account. I can confirm that, yes, there were concerns that related to a possible conflict between the regulatory activities of the Forestry Commission Scotland in respect of renewable developments. As a consequence, a forest renewables unit has been set up; it separates the operation of the development role of the commission from its regulatory role.
The noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, also asked why no impact assessment had been prepared for the order. The position is that orders made under the Scotland Act are required to be laid in draft if, among other things, they vary the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament, executive competence of Scottish Ministers or make changes to reserve UK primary legislation in consequences of Acts of the Scottish Parliament. Usually such orders do not in themselves have a direct or indirect impact, whether in benefit or cost on businesses, charities or the voluntary sector. They would therefore not normally have any regulatory impact. On this occasion, a full impact assessment was not produced as this instrument simply allows the forestry commissioners to enter into voluntary joint ventures with commercial partners should they wish. It does not impose on private sector or civil society organisations.
I conclude on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, that wind developments tend to be controversial. I reiterate what I said in my opening remarks, that any specific proposal that is brought forward will be subject, if it is 50 megawatts or over, to the regime under Section 36 of the Electricity Act 1989. If it is lower than 50 megawatts, it will be subject to the planning regime. Therefore this order does not in any way detract from the planning arrangements that are already in place.
Cyprus
(11 years, 6 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Sharkey
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their current assessment of the prospects for the reunification of Cyprus.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Geddes)
My Lords, before the clerk calls the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, I remind Members of the Committee that this is a one-hour debate and contributions from Back-Benchers are therefore limited to three minutes. Hopefully, the Clock will be working. The last time I chaired Grand Committee it was not, and we all had to add up on our fingers and toes. I think that today it is working.
Lord Sharkey
My Lords, I start today’s debate by congratulating my noble friend Lady Hussein-Ece on the recent award by Coventry University of an honorary doctorate, partly in recognition of her contribution to the Cyprus peace process. I also thank the House of Lords Library for its very helpful and comprehensive briefing pack. It is clear from even a quick scan of this document that the prospects for the reunification of the island can seem quite remote and the issues involved quite intractable.
The current dispute is now over 40 years old. Over those 40 years there have been many serious attempts by people of good will from both sides of the island and from outside organisations to bring about a resolution. All those attempts have failed and all had one very significant factor in common—they all used, as you might expect, the political machinery of the island as the primary, if not the sole, mechanism for negotiation. Perhaps repeated failure of essentially the same process, albeit with different actors, should come as no surprise. However, at some point those involved have to address the obvious question of whether it really makes sense to do the same thing over and over again and expect something different to happen.
It is fairly easy to see why the prospects for success may now seem remote. Earlier this year, the UN admitted that talks were deadlocked and saw no immediate way ahead. The Republic of Cyprus’s assumption of the EU presidency has had an obviously chilling effect on dialogue. Research conducted in July shows that over 70% of both communities now feel that they should assert their own rights even if it means members of the other community would be negatively affected. The same survey revealed that only 14% of Turkish Cypriots and 39% of Greek Cypriots would prefer a feasible solution now to an optimal solution some time in the future. Perhaps this is not very surprising. As the International Crisis Group pointed out as long ago as 2009, there appears to be a growing younger generation on both sides of the island who have never interacted with each other and see no reason to do so. They do not have a stake in the property issue and may not wish to face the uncertainties and potential problems that a settlement neither side likes, but accepts, would create. There are additional factors that give weight to the ICG’s comments. The economies of both the north and the south are fragile and both rely on external support, but the intrinsic wealth and prospects of the two sides are widely divergent. It would be quite reasonable to see, in the latest failure, the lack of a real desire in the political machines of the north and the south to actually achieve unification.
That is all very complex and distressing, but does it in fact really matter? The two sides are de facto separate states. Does the de jure status actually matter? I believe strongly that it matters very much indeed. It matters to the people of Cyprus, it matters to the people of the eastern Mediterranean, and it matters to Britain. The eastern Mediterranean is now more troubled and unstable than at any time in the last decade. We have a civil war in Syria, enormous tension between Iran and Israel and unresolved situations in Libya and Egypt. Now, added to all that, there are the problems raised by the huge gas finds in Cypriot territorial waters. Exactly who that gas belongs to and in what quantities, how to develop the fields and how to transport the gas, are all questions that, if unresolved, are highly likely to add severely to the political tensions. It would be absurd and tragic if the division of the island effectively prevented any exploitation of those gas fields, yet that is exactly what a senior energy industry executive has predicted to me privately.
But there is a clear positive side to the existence of those fields, quite apart from their potential for the economy of the island. Over the summer, it seems to have given fresh energy to those seeking renegotiation. In September, Alexander Downer said that the Greek and Turkish sides now had a strong economic reason to agree to a reunification that would reduce the sovereign risk of investing in Cyprus, clear up the problems of investing in property, grow GDP and offer the capacity to service and pay off debt. The British Foreign Secretary made the same point when he said recently in Nicosia:
“We have supported the rights of Cyprus to develop resources but I hope that doing so can somehow be an incentive for the settlement of the problem, rather than a disincentive”.
All that is good news. It is a sign that the parties may understand that there is a new and compelling reason to negotiate. However, it does not address the failure of the traditional methods of negotiation. The UN Secretary-General’s report of March this year notes that:
“Civil society also has a crucial role to play in building public confidence in the process. Unfortunately, civil society organizations, and women’s groups in particular, remain outside the framework of the negotiations. I therefore call on the sides to step up their engagement with civil society and women’s groups, with a view to building public confidence in the benefits of a settlement”.
Most involved countries and supranational institutions and many commentators have recognised the force of that. James Ker-Lindsay of the LSE, writing in May this year, concluded that:
“Having comprehensively exhausted the elite focused approach to conflict resolution in Cyprus, it does seem time to radically rethink the ways in which we try to resolve the Cyprus Problem … a truly Cypriot-led process needs to be far more inclusive than has hitherto been the case … the case for involving civil society in any future effort to resolve the Cyprus issue is certainly compelling. After all, everything else has been tried—and failed”.
The Commons Foreign Affairs Committee had this to say on the subject in its report of March this year:
“We … recommend that if this effort fails”—
referring to the then current round of negotiations, which did fail—
“and there is still no settlement on Cyprus once Cyprus’s period as President of the EU Council is completed … the Government should consider whether any alternative approach to the Cyprus situation, by itself and the international community, might be more likely than previous efforts to yield a settlement”.
Fortunately, some organisations have believed in that approach for some years and have made substantial funds available to help encourage the development and inclusion of civil society. That financial help is absolutely critical. As INTRAC noted last year in its extensive briefing paper on the subject, key challenges are sustainability and funding, staffing and maintaining CSO networks. Funding is absolutely the key issue. If we believe that the involvement of civil society can advance reunification, then money needs to be found. In 2009, the EEA awarded €1.5 million in grants to civil society projects in Cyprus. In June this year the EU approved funding of €26.5 million to the Turkish community with the goal of promoting confidence-building and reconciliation between the two parts of the divided island. Beneficiaries of the new funding will include civil society organisations.
But what is Britain’s contribution to the encouragement of civil society in Cyprus? On 11 June this year in a Written Question, I asked Her Majesty’s Government,
“which bi-zonal or bi-communal civil society organisations or projects in Cyprus they currently support”.
This was the Answer:
“We welcome bi-communal work in Cyprus, which is an important way of preparing the ground ahead of a settlement by building trust between the two communities. The UK supports directly the Committee on Missing Persons through both financial donations and by providing its accommodation. In the past 24 months, our High Commission has hosted the Stelios award for successful bi-communal businesses”.—[Official Report, 11/6/12; col. WA 156.]
That does not seem to be a lot and it does not seem to take civil society very seriously. It does not measure up to our history or our obligations in Cyprus. I hope very much that today the Minister will tell us about a much greater effort and much greater funding. After all, a lot is at stake here. I look forward to hearing the contributions of all noble Lords on this matter.
Baroness Knight of Collingtree
My Lords, I declare an interest as the current chairman of the all-party group for Northern Cyprus. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Sharkey for securing this brief debate. For years, Northern Cyprus has been treated unfairly, and even spitefully, by Greek Cypriots. Considering that Britain is a guarantor, I believe that we have failed in our duty to the north to get things right. These people really do not deserve to bear the suffering and hardship that is inflicted on them—and many of us have seen it for ourselves.
In my three minutes, I shall deal with the case of Meliz Redif, a Turkish Cypriot athlete who sought to compete in the Olympics. She had every right to do so, but she was not allowed to unless she changed her nationality, lied, denied her own country and claimed to be from Turkey. The Olympic charter specifically states that taking part is a human right without discrimination of any kind. I cannot believe that Britain, as a guarantor, can stand by while people whose only fault is that they live in the wrong part of Cyprus are treated in this way. It seems that only the reunification of the island will end this suffering. I long to hear that my own Government fully appreciate and understand the unfairness and suffering that is going on, and will seek again to end it.
Lord Harrison
My Lords, the European Union was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and I hope that the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, will congratulate the European Union on achieving the aim of providing peace in Europe over the past 60 to 70 years. But one big failure has been the inclusion of Cyprus in the Union when peace has not been secured on the island. My sympathy for Northern Cyprus was increased when I learnt that it had agreed to the Annan plan but southern Cyprus had not. I can assure the Minister that the European Union Select Committee, which is currently writing a report on enlargement, will ensure that never again will anyone come into the European Union represented by a divided nation.
I have had the benefit of twice visiting Turkish Northern Cyprus. At the moment, the EU presidency is held by southern Cyprus. A missed opportunity there was the chance for the two sides to work together both informally and formally to welcome the other countries of Europe. Can the Minister say what help the United Kingdom has given to the presidency—it is the first presidency to be held by Cyprus—in these very difficult times? I hope that we have given administrative help and advice. Perhaps I can press her to take other opportunities after the six-month presidency expires to try to deal with some of the other outstanding problems, not the least of which is that we are still not allowed to operate direct flights from the United Kingdom to Northern Cyprus. Under the Bologna process the vibrant universities of Northern Cyprus are still excluded from exchanging and learning from other universities around the whole of the European Union.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, I have seen NGOs, civil society and particularly the business community come together on the island of Cyprus. These could use opportunities such as gas exploration to help revive the island of Cyprus, which is experiencing some real financial problems on both sides of the dividing line.
If it is the case, as we have learned, that Turkey is now Greece’s number two trading partner—if their two presences are beginning to come together in the economic sphere—it should also be the case for Northern Cyprus. Will the Government make a new initiative to help out and resolve this issue?
Baroness Hussein-Ece
My Lords, I declare an interest as the secretary of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Cyprus. I thank my noble friend Lord Sharkey for securing this debate. I have spoken many times over many hours on Cyprus, but I have never had to do it in three minutes, so I hope that I will get in the key points I wanted to raise today.
As has been mentioned, the UN peacekeeping forces have been in Cyprus since 1964—48 years later they are still there. The problems did not start in 1974, as we so often hear, and like so many others of a Cypriot heritage—in my case, Turkish-Cypriot—my family have been directly affected by decades of unrest, conflict and loss. All Greek and Turkish Cypriots have suffered. There are victims on all sides.
Following the failure of the biggest opportunity, the 2004 Annan peace plan, and the ensuing failed referendum, many of us were hugely disappointed when Greek Cypriots voted overwhelmingly no and Turkish Cypriots voted emphatically yes. This no vote cemented the status quo. In 2004 a categorical promise was given to Turkish Cypriots by the EU to lift and alleviate isolation. What representations have the UK Government made to honour these promises?
The recent efforts of the United Nations towards Cypriot-led talks have failed and I believe they have retrenched divisions. Both the UK and, in my view, the EU have hidden behind the United Nations and are in danger of contracting out any responsibility to help and support new ways towards a solution. Disappointingly, lobbying by some here in the UK has become a campaign to preserve the status quo. I must stress that the groups doing this are a minority, but a vocal minority, adept at lobbying parliamentarians who often lack background knowledge and experience of Cyprus, and simply listen to the loudest voices and form their views after a few days visiting some parts of the island. This is not helpful, and only seeks to polarise opinion and reinforce divisions.
I believe that the United Kingdom, as one of the guarantor powers, has a responsibility to be more proactive and an honest broker. Neither Greek nor Turkish Cypriots can fulfil their potential on an island whose future is so unequal, divided, uncertain, militarised and facing new economic difficulties—and, as we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, educational difficulties as well. Are we really saying that Turkish Cypriots should be denied recognised qualifications until there is a peace plan at some point? I do not think so.
I believe strongly in the need to unblock the situation on the island and engage civil society, as so eloquently mentioned by my noble friend Lord Sharkey. Both Greek and Turkish-Cypriot NGOs argue that by focusing solely on the talks at the leadership level, we are losing out on real opportunities. The UN formula of two men—and I am afraid that it is always men—locked in a room, disengaged from their respective communities, until they agree on all points, has not worked.
In the north, there is a new civil society movement, spearheaded by Dr Kudret Özersay, the former UN chief negotiator, called Toparlaniyoruz, which in Turkish roughly means, “We are pulling ourselves together” or “We are getting our act together”. I call on the Government here to get their act together a bit more and support NGOs, civil society and organisations working on the ground to bring far more peace, equality and dialogue. If you ask any Greek or Turkish Cypriots, here in London or in Cyprus, about the peace process, the response is likely to be the same: complete apathy and resignation. Can we please see efforts from Her Majesty’s Government and the EU to change this?
Lord Kilclooney
My Lords, this debate, introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, asks the Government what their current assessment is of the prospects for the reunification of Cyprus. I am sorry to say that my opinion is that they are nil and I shall explain why. I have been to Cyprus for every one of the past 50 years and I am also a regular attendee of the Anglican church in Kyrenia. I well remember 1975, after the coup d’état, when the collection plate went around in the church and we were told, “British pounds or Greek Cypriot pounds but no Turkish lira”. Unfortunately, that was the attitude at that time.
In 1963, the Turkish Cypriots were driven out of the partnership state of Cyprus. In 1974, there was a coup d’etat by the Athens-inspired Government, bringing in the former EOKA leader, Sampson, as the president. In 1975, I was there when, only a few months later, the Turkish Federated State of Cyprus was created, which subsequently in 1983 became the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. We are now celebrating the 29th anniversary of peace since the TRNC was created.
In 2004, a peace agreement was proposed by the United Nations. The Turkish Cypriots voted for it, but the Greek Cypriots rejected the peace agreement. What was their reward? The European Union immediately appointed the Greek Cypriots as a member state, which was a disastrous decision yet again by the EU. It was not the first one it has made but this was a very bad decision. It means that the Greek Cypriots no longer have any incentive whatever to reach agreement within the island of Cyprus.
There are three jurisdictions in Cyprus: the Greek Cypriot jurisdiction, known as the Cyprus Government; the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus; and, of course, there are United Kingdom sovereign bases. Therefore, we must have talks. As one who took part in the Belfast agreement settlement, I know the importance of talks. But those talks must not be under the auspices of the European Union in any way. It is biased in every respect: Greece is a member, Greek Cyprus is a member and there is a background of accepting Greek Cyprus even though it voted against the Annan agreement.
What is the way forward? We can have unity with Turkey; we can have independence for the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus; or we can have a bizonal agreement. Unity with Turkey is already taking place—they have the same religion, the same currency and free trade. Unity is on its way. I do not think that that is the answer and we have to try to do something to stop it. I find independence of the TRNC diplomatically impossible to accept.
Lord Kilclooney
You do not want to hear any more. I have some questions for the Government. First, will they investigate how Cyprus, as present president of the European Council, employing 700 people in Brussels, employs only one Turkish Cypriot? Is that fair play? Let us hear the answer to that. Why has that not been raised by the United Kingdom Government? Secondly, why does our sovereign base in southern Cyprus, in Akrotiri, refuse to issue any statements or contact the press in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus?
The Lord Bishop of Guildford
My Lords, I declare an interest as a vice-president of the Conference of European Churches, of which the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Cyprus is a member.
First, I will offer a personal reminiscence. Way back during the summer of 1974, I was preparing myself to take up a post at Lambeth Palace in the then international affairs department. The breaking news of course that summer was the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in response to the provocative tactics, already mentioned, of the Greek-speaking south, instigated by Athens. There the division of Cyprus seems to have remained. I am not unaware of the significant local and international attempts at reconciliation, which we have heard, and we know, have had no success so far.
The points I want to make are simple. First, before the intervention and its provocation, there were many villages and communities where there was a well documented positive relationship between the local communities. The partition and then the movement of populations have made that much more difficult and, indeed, in most places locally impossible. Yet there were places where the two religious communities, Greek Orthodox and Muslim, in part shared, in a local way, each other’s local feasts and festivals. Some restoration of this local community respect and mutual celebration needs to be considered, alongside political initiatives. That is very much alongside what the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, said in terms of civil society.
The second point is about the UN and the Green Line. The softening of the Green Line in part in latter years is, of course, welcome—it is easy for tourists. This needs to be further encouraged in terms of the ability of the local communities. Some time ago, I spent some time on the Green Line with the British Army chaplains seconded to the UN force. I could go across either side at will because I have a UN pass and privilege to do that. The local communities need to be enabled to do that again too.
Thirdly and finally, in Turkey there are reasonable and constructive religious relations and dialogue, at least at the level of the Ecumenical Patriarch and the Muslim leaders in Istanbul and elsewhere. Obviously that does not apply to more extreme groups, but there are external ecumenical bodies, such as the Conference of European Churches and the World Council of Churches that might in part, alongside a reengagement of civil society, be constructive instruments of reconciliation. In a taxi on the way here this afternoon, I noticed an advertisement for North Cyprus as a unique Mediterranean experience—“beautiful North Cyprus”. I encourage everybody and Her Majesty’s Government to do all we possibly can to make that experience even more beautiful in terms of the reconciliation of communities, in spite of all the international road blocks so far.
Lord Northbrook
My Lords, as a relative newcomer to the Cyprus question and as a member of the all-party Northern Cyprus group, I have listened to many experts speaking in that group and here today. The recent Congressional Research Service paper entitled, optimistically, Cyprus: Reunification Proving Elusive, reiterates that roughly 18% of the population are of Turkish origin, so any settlement must take fair account of this representation. The Treaty of Guarantee of 1960 promised the Turkish population security, which was in danger of being breached by a more hard-line president in Greece, who was encouraging union of the island with Greece. Hence, there was the need for Turkey to invade in 1974 to protect their minority on the island.
I can understand more clearly the history of negotiations since the 2002 Annan plan. The best chances of reunification appeared to be the Christofias-Talat negotiations between 2008 and 2010. However, since Mr Eroglu came to power, relations between the two sides seem to have become much more difficult. President Christofias comes out with little credit and it remains to be seen what the attitude of his successor will be after the election in 2013.
With regards to the issues, the paper makes clear why negotiations have been so difficult. First, there is the very basic issue of how a new united Cyprus would be created. The Greek Cypriots assume it would be evolved from the existing Republic of Cyprus. The Turkish Cypriot view, which I have much more sympathy for, is that the new state would be based on two equal founding states. Mr Eroglu has hinted that he is not prepared to give up the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus or its flag. Disagreement has also continued over the process for appointing the president and vice-president.
The next very difficult area is the thorny issue of property. Since 1974, it is estimated that over 150,000 Greek Cypriots living in the north have been forced south, and close to 50,000 Turkish Cypriots living in the south have fled to the north, with both communities leaving massive amounts of vacated property. The establishment of the Immovable Property Commission—the IPC—to hear cases related to Greek Cypriot property in the north was a positive step. It is interesting to note that a few private Greek property owners have filed claims for compensation. As in past negotiations, the gap in the respective Cypriot positions had been great and appears to remain so.
Then there is the by no means small issue of overall territory that would come under the jurisdiction of the two equal states. The Turkish Cypriot side of the Green Line includes approximately 37% of the island and includes several areas that had been almost 100% Greek Cypriot-inhabited before the 1974 division. Greek Cypriots want that territory returned, which would leave the Turkish Cypriot side controlling about 29% of the territory. Next to the property issue, the issue of security guarantees continues to be one of the most difficult bridges to cross. At the end of all this, I feel that the only way forward will be to involve civil society more, but I fear that formalised partition may be a possibility.
Lord Anderson of Swansea
My Lords, the recent reports contained in the helpful Library pack make gloomy reading for those of us who strongly favour the reunification of this beautiful island. The Congressional Research Service report ended by asking whether unification can be achieved at all, with the increasing possibility of a permanent separation; a view shared, for example, by Jack Straw. Historians may look back and see the events of 2004, 2008 and 2010, with the good relationship between President Christofias and Mr Talat, as failed opportunities, leading possibly to an ultimate separation.
Does the Minister see any signs of hope in the current position, for example on the apportionment of resources from the recently discovered gas fields? On demography, is it her understanding that many—some say up to 50,000—Turkish settlers have returned to the booming economy of the mainland? Will the election in February 2013 of Mr Anastasiadis of DISY, who voted yes in the referendum, have a positive effect? Does the Minister agree that the key to any possible settlement still lies in Ankara, which, after the EU dimension, has less incentive to press for an agreement?
Surely the grim reality is that there seems to be insufficient political will to make progress. There is currently a sense of drift, with both sides, particularly the younger generation, becoming used to the status quo of a divided island. The lack of confidence has been increased by recent border provocations. In classical Greek drama, when there was no clear ending, a “deus ex machina” was brought on to the stage. Alas, there appear to be none on the horizon, save, perhaps, the greater involvement of civil society as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey. The beautiful island of Aphrodite slides towards greater separation all because of a lack of trust on both sides and a continued failure to make progress on the core issues such as property and territory. Can the Minister cheer us by signalling any windows of opportunity?
Baroness Scott of Needham Market
My Lords, in 2014 it will be 50 years since United Nations troops started peacekeeping in Cyprus. Despite their best efforts, not only has there been a lack of progress but resolution is further away than it has ever been, as public attitudes harden and the economic disparities increase. The international view is that this is entirely a matter for Cyprus. Indeed, the main victims of this failure of political leadership are the Cypriot people. We owe it to them to think about whether it is time to approach this differently. There is also a much wider set of strategic issues that make progress imperative. There is the whole question of Turkey’s membership of the EU and what that means for where Turkey sees its future alliances, and the growing instability in the eastern Mediterranean and how Cyprus plays into that, particularly since the discovery of offshore gas.
Of course, the solution cannot be forced on anyone and nor can you make people undertake fruitful negotiations. However, I believe it is possible to change some facts on the ground, and here are a few possible thoughts. There is currently a proposal to expand the port of Limassol and no doubt an EU grant will be sought to do the work. However, as an alternative, real consideration should be given to developing the port of Famagusta. There is a viable option that would see it operating under the auspices of the European Union and open to all trade. The economic benefits would be significant and it could help unlock the ban on Greek-Cypriot trade using Turkish ports.
Secondly, the EU must turn its attention to meeting the commitment it made to introduce the direct trade regulations that will free up businesses in the north to trade directly with EU countries. The Turkish Cypriot Chamber of Commerce told me two years ago that direct trade would go a long way to bridging the economic gap with the Republic of Cyprus. At the very least, the EU should ensure that barriers are not placed on the transit of goods from north to south under the Green Line regulations.
Thirdly, regional agreement needs to be reached on the development of the offshore gas resources. Currently, the Republic will struggle to develop the fields because of the political uncertainty, and because the cost of liquefying the gas and sending it by sea is unlikely to be economically viable. On the other hand, a gas pipeline through Turkey is a completely different matter. News came from Ankara last week that work has started on a water pipeline from Turkey to Northern Cyprus, to which an electricity pipe will be added. Either the EU or the UN should act as a broker for a deal that develops these new infrastructures for the benefit of the whole island.
Finally, we should build on the work that has been carried out by the UN and EU to build civic society and foster links between the communities. Strengthening these communities, and creating cultural and sporting links on both sides, across the border and internationally, would over time help to change the terms of the debate on the future of Cyprus.
Lord Maginnis of Drumglass
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, for raising an issue that has preoccupied me for more than 25 years. Rather than repeat what I and others have articulated in support of the human rights of Turkish Cypriots over that period, I want to try, in these few moments available to me, to examine the role and responsibility of the United Kingdom in the context of the 1960 Treaty of Guarantee, where we were, and still are, one of the three guarantor powers.
Sadly, I have observed over my 30 years in Parliament the extent to which successive UK Governments have allowed themselves to delegate authority to the United Nations, to the United States and, worst of all, to the European Union—to an extent where Ministers are no longer in a position to state a government position but merely seek to interpret extraneous influences that are used to excuse their own political impotence.
It is, at the time when we ponder 50 years of BBC moral ineptitude, not inappropriate to remember the not dissimilar behavioural vulnerability the United Kingdom exploited in order to force Archbishop Makarios into an agreement that was never going to work, had no historical precedent and abandoned Turkish Cypriots to a form of ethnic cleansing that was virtually overlooked until we encountered the later events in the Yugoslav or Balkan wars 20 years ago.
Our culpability was that as a guarantor power we abdicated to the United Nations, which, not for the last time, stood by while innocent women and children were slaughtered by terrorists like Nikos Sampson and EOKA-B. Thank God Turkey, albeit 10 years too late, intervened in 1974. That was 38 years ago and our feeble reaction to this period has been to isolate the victims and to embargo their rights to their identity, their travel, their businesses and their educational opportunities. What arrogance and what injustice. Still, after two generations we merely subscribe to an unrealistic United Nations premise, which was contrived in panic in 1963. We seek to perpetuate a failed process—the Annan plan—which was voted down at the 11th hour by Greek Cypriots when, to our shame, we cravenly abandoned every conditional promise that we had made to the Turkish Cypriots who accepted it.
Time beats me but I conclude with this challenge. I ask the Minister to show me a single episode in this sad 50-year tragedy that brings credit to the United Kingdom. Is the Minister aware that this and the previous Government do not even have the courage to turn up on 11 November each year to show respect at the memorial in Girne, Kyrenia, to the 371 of our soldiers who died during the Cyprus emergency between 1956 and 1959? I ask the Minister: when will this Government find adequate time to fully debate the Cyprus issue and contribute positively towards a plan that has some modicum of humanity and circumspection, in contrast to our past ineptitude?
Lord Liddle
My Lords, we should thank the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, for posing this Question, which allows us to have this debate. Many noble Lords have spoken with great passion about the intractable problems and multiple injustices of the island of Cyprus. The Government should listen hard to what has been said. For my part, the Cyprus issue is a 21st-century equivalent of what Lord Palmerston quipped about the Schleswig-Holstein question: “Only three people understood it; the prince consort who is dead; the German professor who is mad; and me, who has forgotten all about it.”. I am afraid that this issue is of such complexity that that is what it is like.
When Labour was in government and I was in No. 10, we tried to resolve this complexity by sending for the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, who tried to negotiate a deal. Indeed, he made quite a lot of progress and it is a great pity he is not here to bring his wisdom to this debate.
Our options are limited. What happened in 2004 was a tragedy but we were acting under a threat of Greece vetoing the major enlargement of the European Union and one had to make a realpolitik choice in truth about what was the best thing to do, which was very difficult. What can be done now? What does the Minister think that we can do, as Britain, as a guarantor power in trying to promote reconciliation on the island? Given our history, we have a special responsibility and we should exercise it.
More than that, I have always thought that the solution to the Cyprus problem was part of a wider solution to the relations between Greece and Turkey, and the whole situation in the eastern Mediterranean. It is very important that, as committed members of the EU, we are trying to proceed with Turkish membership. That is what will give us quite a lot of leverage in order to get a solution to this problem.
In terms of Greece and Cyprus, and the economic difficulties that Greece is presently in, if things go wrong there, this will make the situation in that part of the world much worse. We have to exercise our best endeavours to make sure that we do not have an economic collapse that leads to a return to extreme nationalism in that part of the world. I fear for the consequences were that to happen. We look forward very much to hearing the reply of the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, to this excellent debate.
The Senior Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Warsi)
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to respond for the Government to this debate brought by the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey. I start by endorsing his words of congratulation to my noble friend Lady Hussein-Ece.
The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, quite usefully laid out how the previous Government dealt with some of these challenges, and once again I am reminded of the great experience and expertise in this House on foreign relations and Foreign Office matters. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, missed me yesterday at Oral Questions, but I am sure that he will agree that campaigning for re-election to the Human Rights Council in Geneva was as important.
Cyprus has been too long divided, as I am sure all Cypriots and friends of Cyprus would agree. The current round of settlement negotiations, under way since September 2008, unfortunately is in hiatus. The United Nations is doing what it can to move the process along in the absence of political-level meetings. It is focusing on the work of the technical committees, trying to make them more productive and focusing on practical co-operation. Alexander Downer, the UN Secretary-General’s special adviser on Cyprus, believes that there has been some success.
The Greek Cypriots continue to express willingness to continue talks, but not constrained by a timeframe. The Turkish Cypriots say that they want to continue talks but wish for a timetable that would include a deadline for a multilateral conference in order to create the environment for give and take, which they say is necessary to address the internal aspects of the negotiations. The leaders of the two communities have not met since March this year and it seems unlikely that any such meeting will take place until after the presidential elections next February.
Her Majesty’s Government continue to take a keen interest in the situation in Cyprus. We are very aware of our role as a guarantor power, but we must not lose sight of the fact that this is a process by Cypriots for Cypriots, and that it is for the leaders of the two communities, whoever they may be, to work constructively together to deliver a new future for Cyprus. We will continue to support this process and to encourage all who have a role to play to seize the opportunity of a new political era to find a solution to this long-running human tragedy.
As a guarantor power, the UK has undertaken by treaty to prohibit,
“any activity aimed at promoting directly or indirectly, either union of Cyprus with any other State or partition of the Island”.
A settlement will bring long-term stability, peace and security for all the people of a united island within the European Union, supporting the prosperity of all Cypriots and ending the isolation of those who live in the north of the island. More widely, it will create an arc of greater stability from the Aegean to the eastern Mediterranean by removing the major impediment to good relations between Cyprus, Turkey and Greece.
Only through a fair and lasting settlement can we ensure that all the people on the island are the beneficiaries of a fair and sustainable future and that the EU acquis can be extended to the whole island. It would deliver significant economic benefits for both communities, opening up greater opportunities for regional trade and investment. Reunification would also provide the space for civil society to flourish and for leaders to look outwards, spending time on the global issues that confront us all, such as climate change and energy security.
Living on a divided island cannot be a situation that any Cypriot would want to continue without a long-term solution. Ordinary citizens cannot move around the island as noble Lords would move around the UK, and this was raised today in the debate. There are checks on persons as they cross the Green Line that divides the two communities, and checks on the movement of goods have an inevitable negative impact on the prosperity of the island as a whole.
The division of the island has resulted in the dislocation of ordinary Cypriot families, and the resulting disputes about the ownership of property continue to impact on people today. Many Cypriots born after 1974 do not know anyone from the other community. Where there is no contact there can be no understanding, and negative stereotypes tend to dominate the image each community has of the other.
My noble friend Lady Hussein-Ece raised some valid points about views on the issue not being fully informed. She always speaks with great passion and expertise and expresses very personally the frustration felt by so many in Cyprus. My noble friend also asked specifically what the UK is doing in relation to alleviating the isolation of Turkish Cypriots. The UK is in contact with many civil society groups in Northern Cyprus. It supports the direct trade regulation blocked in the EU and is working to support a comprehensive settlement as ultimately the most effective way of ending the isolation of Turkish Cypriots.
There are some positive signs and it is important that we do not lose sight of them. Following the dreadful explosion in July last year which killed 12 people and knocked out the main electricity plant in the south, the two communities were able to come to an agreement which saw the north of the island supplementing the electricity supply for the south. This mirrors the arrangements made in 2006 when the Government of Cyprus agreed to supply the north with electricity after an explosion in the main power plant. That type of co-operation and practical assistance shows that it is possible to move forward from the difficulties of the past.
The noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Swansea, referred to the recent gas finds. The UK is optimistic that efforts to achieve a settlement will eventually be successful. The gas finds and the presidential elections next February are a part of this. In this difficult and long-lasting situation, my noble friend Lord Sharkey is absolutely right to say that civil society within and between the two communities has an important role to play in developing the key missing ingredient, that of trust. Civil society can reach out to those beyond the bounds of politics to establish practical working relationships and foster co-operation that will lay down the grounds for a long-term improvement in relations.
Perhaps I may give some real examples of where civil society contacts and initiatives are working. Over the past five years, our high commissioner has worked closely with Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou’s Stelios Philanthropic Foundation to encourage bicommunal business. It also directly supports the bicommunal Committee on Missing Persons through financial and practical support. This important committee is working on one of the most difficult and distressing aspects of the whole situation, seeking to identify bodies and find resolution for families who do not know what happened to their loved ones. There are also important locally driven initiatives looking at best practice and learning lessons from other long-running, complex intercommunal conflicts, such as those in Northern Ireland and South Africa. Valuable efforts are also being made to bring the two communities together that include school children.
Lord Maginnis of Drumglass
I just want to point out that the Minister is in error when she compares Northern Ireland or South Africa where the language is the same, the people live side by side, and they have not been deliberately divided for almost 50 years.
Baroness Warsi
I take the noble Lord’s point, but there are lessons that can be learnt. The FCO funds a small number of projects to support this.
I agree that more could be done, and I turn to the specific point raised by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford on bringing together religious communities in order to foster reconciliation. The UK would support any efforts made to encourage the coming together of the Muslim and Greek Orthodox communities on the island. The right reverend Prelate is aware of the work I support in relation to inter-faith understanding.
My noble friend Lady Knight spoke of the important case of Meliz Redif. Her Majesty’s Government do not recognise the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and so we were unable to make representations to the International Olympic Committee about the inclusion of Northern Cyprus as a participant country in the Olympic Games. Turkish Cypriots are able to compete under the Cypriot flag, but I am afraid that I must presume that that is not the answer my noble friend wished to hear.
The noble Lord, Lord Harrison, asked what help could be offered through the Cypriot presidency of the European Union. The Government have provided support through practical assistance, including the provision of secondees across government. The noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, raised the issue of the employment of Turkish Cypriots in Brussels. Who is employed has to be a matter for the Republic of Cyprus. However, the British high commission employs staff from both communities.
Lord Kilclooney
I was not talking about the British high commission. I was talking about the so-called Cyprus Government, the Greek Cypriot Administration, which totally discriminates against Turkish Cypriots in Brussels. The United Kingdom is a guarantor power. Are we doing nothing, as a guarantor power, to exercise our powers in respect of fair employment by the Cyprus Government?
Baroness Warsi
The specific question that the noble Lord asked was in relation to employment in Brussels. We, of course, only have a say in relation to the people that we employ at the British high commission. It is therefore important to stress that we employ staff from both communities. The high commission represents—
Lord Kilclooney
Is the Minister saying that the United Kingdom is washing its hands of its position as a guarantor power for Cyprus?
Baroness Warsi
No, my Lords, the British Government are not saying that. I must move on as a number of matters were raised by noble Lords. The noble Lord, Lord Northbrook, raised the issue of the Immovable Property Commission. We support that commission and agree that property is one of the key and most complex areas for any final settlement.
My noble friend Lady Scott raised the issue of direct trade for Turkish Cypriots. The UK is committed to liberalisation of trade with the Turkish Cypriot community but the relevant draft EU regulation is being blocked at the moment by the Republic of Cyprus.
Many of the issues surrounding any debate on Cyprus are understandably difficult and emotive. The noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, outlined some of these, including issues such as the fate of missing persons and the loss of one’s home, things that thankfully most of us will never have to face. Those who lived through the events in Cyprus’s turbulent past, and their children and grandchildren, are now living with the legacy of those events. It is absolutely right that we do not forget the past and that we acknowledge the pain suffered by the ordinary people of Cyprus, but we must also look to the future and continue to have faith in the UN-led settlement process. We must look to the leaders of the two communities, who ultimately are responsible for working together to deliver a package that the Cypriot people can believe in and which will secure the future for the reunited island, so that her people can live together in peace.
Until that future is secured, we hope, through the work of the technical committees, confidence-building measures and grass-roots initiatives such as the Stelios award for business co-operation, that the everyday lives of Cypriots can be improved and, in parallel, that trust between the two communities can regrow. It is only through building such trust that a stable and prosperous future for all Cypriots can be assured. I am sure that I have not answered all questions raised by noble Lords—
Lord Maginnis of Drumglass
I wish the Minister well in her new position in Government. However, it is a huge disappointment when we get a response to a debate that has been pre-prepared and does not answer a single question that has been raised. I would have thought that, at a time when the Prime Minister is talking about remembering the sacrifices of 1914, she might at least have had the initiative to address the matter I raised about 371 of our soldiers who died during the Cyprus emergency. I am disappointed that she has failed to do so.
Baroness Warsi
I was about to say in conclusion that I am sure I have not answered all the matters and questions that have been raised by noble Lords in an hour’s debate on such an important issue, about which there is so much expertise in this House. I can assure noble Lords, including the noble Lord, that I will respond to them in writing on any specific questions that have not been answered today.
Housing: Park Homes
(11 years, 6 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Baroness Scott of Needham Market
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they intend to undertake legislative and policy changes to the park homes sector as a result of their recent consultation exercise.
Baroness Scott of Needham Market
My Lords, I am very pleased to have secured this slot for a Short Debate on the problems facing the park homes sector. There has been a flurry of activity in the past couple of years. The Government have concluded their consultation on the future regulation of the sector; the Communities and Local Government Select Committee carried out a full inquiry and produced an excellent report; my Suffolk colleague from the House of Commons, Peter Aldous, has sponsored a Private Member’s Bill on it, which had its Second Reading on Friday; and just last week Consumer Focus published its report into the sector, called Living the Dream?—with an all-important question mark. I am really pleased that such a well respected independent body has carried out research into park homes because their work has confirmed what we knew from a lot of anecdotal evidence. I will not say too much about it because I know we will be hearing from the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, who is very familiar with the work. We have a very good opportunity this evening to hear from the Minister where government thinking is on this matter.
I am very pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, is with us this evening. He has been such a clarion voice crying out for this sector over many years and I pay tribute to you, Ted, for what you have done.
Baroness Scott of Needham Market
There are more than 2,000 park home sites in this country, predominantly in rural areas, and they house around 160,000 people in 85,000 homes. The residents are almost all approaching or beyond retirement age and many are of modest means. The Consumer Focus report notes that a quarter of these residents are over 75, so many of them are vulnerable. Determined not to be reliant on the state, they have chosen to live in park homes, often using the surplus equity from the sale of their previous home to supplement their pensions.
These dwellings are often called “mobile homes” but this is highly misleading. While they might be technically mobile, they are permanent residences and this is much more than a matter of words. It means that the legal framework that is set out in three main pieces of legislation, predominantly the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960, is entirely the wrong legal framework and woefully out of date.
I first became aware of problems in the sector more than 20 years ago when I was a district councillor and things have not improved. In its submission to the government consultation, the Local Government Association gave examples of site owners who overcrowd the sites, ignore licence conditions, make inadequate provision for drainage and sewerage, and dump rubbish. The current maximum fine is £2,500 and it is often cheaper for the site owner to pay the fine than to do the work. In any event, it costs councils to do the enforcement. In effect, local council tax payers are subsidising this abhorrent behaviour.
The solution proposed by the Local Government Association is that the sector is brought in line with the Housing Act 2004, which would allow for the issuing of improvement notices, prosecution for serious non-compliance, the power to carry out work and re-charge for it, and the registration of enforcement notices as local land charges. The current licence system is often manipulated because responsibility for compliance with site conditions does not necessarily transfer to new owners when sites are sold.
Service charges often bear no relation to the actual expenditure of the site owner on the site but it is difficult for the residents to dispute the bills. Some site owners are levying a VAT rate of 20% on the re-charges for gas and electricity. Many charge what home owners regard as excessive fees for site maintenance that is often not done at all.
It is the growing evidence of serious criminality within the sector that gives most cause for concern. I am indebted to Detective Chief Inspector Colquhoun of the West Mercia Police, who has become a nationally recognised expert in the field. He has successfully prosecuted 74 individuals, who received a total of 64 years in prison. He is personally leading efforts to increase awareness throughout the police force of the ways in which fraud can be perpetrated. The growth of criminality in this sector is a combination of the economics of the industry and the inadequate regulatory framework.
Most park homes are owned by their occupants, who must separately buy the pitch that it is standing on and pay ongoing service charges. A pitch can cost anything from £20,000 to £250,000, so this can be big money. Consumer Focus has shown that only around 1% of purchasers take legal advice before they buy, which is a serious problem. The restrictions on park home owners are so onerous that I imagine it simply would not occur to buyers that such a framework could exist, but it does and they often do not know until it is too late. A park home owner cannot sell their home without the approval of the site owner of the prospective purchaser. The site owner then receives 10% for doing very little. The purchase of the new pitch applies only to the original home. When it is replaced, a new fee has to be paid.
The service charges are peanuts compared to the money that site owners can make from their share of the sale of homes, particularly from buying and selling homes themselves. The abuses vary. Some allow the site to decline to a point where everyone who can leaves and the remaining residents are encouraged to sell their homes at knock-down prices to the site owner, who redevelops the site and sells new pitches at a very high price. Prosecutions have taken place of individuals who have decided to speed up this process by adding intimidation to their ways of encouraging people to leave.
Where owners wish to sell their home, site owners often veto numbers of prospective purchasers until in desperation the seller accepts a very low price from the site owner himself. Site owners have been known to intercept potential buyers at the entrance of the site or to pass on false information about the state of the home. There are examples of site owners visiting local estate agents to tell them that they are wasting their time marketing the homes because any new purchaser will be vetoed.
Site owners have been known to write to residents telling them that their home is defective and they will be evicted if they do not remedy it. Luckily, the ever-caring site owner is there to offer to buy their home from them, at a price far below its real value. Conversely, people who want to improve or refurbish their homes are often told that they need the site owner’s permission and that it will not be forthcoming.
A culture of intimidation and fear has grown up. Consumer Focus reports that one in 10 residents has experienced abusive and threatening behaviour. Many do not go to the police because they are simply too frightened. Let us remember that these are mostly older, often elderly, people. Some residents have organised themselves and have set up groups. We should recognise how much courage it takes to organise in this way because there are reports of serious intimidation against the organisers and members of such groups. The National Park Home Owners Congress held its meeting in Birmingham in the summer and it was attended by more than 4,000 people. It takes real guts to do what they are doing and we should support them not just with warm words but by providing a legislative framework that is fit for purpose.
Mr Aldous’s Bill, which I am very pleased has the support of the Government, will go a long way to creating that, but it is not of itself enough. The Bill is not retrospective and I understand that is because of legal advice that the Human Rights Act could be invoked if there were a retrospective change of contract. However, this leaves the current 160,000 people vulnerable to the sort of abuse I have described, in fact possibly even more vulnerable—I fear that there will be a sort of crime bonanza later on as the rogue operators see their cash cow disappearing. I would like the Government to think again and see whether there is a middle way of introducing this for existing tenants, perhaps a few years down the road, in such a way that does not impinge on the Human Rights Act. Can the Minister also undertake to look at the question of park homes and the Green Deal? Fuel poverty is a real problem in this sector.
Finally, while the Bill will include a fit and proper person test for site owners, it will not be implemented until it is deemed necessary later. Will the Minister accept that all the work I have referred to earlier has demonstrated that there is ample evidence of the need for such a test now? It is not just about driving the crooks out; we also need to provide comfort to the good operators who are being tarnished by these criminals.
I look forward to hearing the contributions from other noble Lords in this short debate and to hearing the Minister’s reply.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, for initiating this debate. She is quite right that a significant number of our fellow citizens now live in park homes on permanent sites. Some do so through lifestyle choice but, as she rightly says, the majority of them are quite elderly people who have done so at a stage in their lives when they wish to downsize. Their families have left home and this, in the face of an endemic housing problem, is their only choice. Some people of working age live in them because the cost of mortgages or rent is too high for them to live in the villages where they were born or in the towns in which they work. We have a significant population in this situation.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, has said, many sites are well run by responsible site owners. We should note that right at the beginning. However, there are also far too many site owners who abuse their tenants, pay scant attention to the law and seem almost untouchable by the authorities. If the authorities do engage with the site owners, they pay little attention. As she says, the law needs substantial change. I welcome the consultation which Grant Shapps issued last year. I welcome Mr Aldous’s Private Member’s Bill and a similar Bill, which I think will appear in the Welsh Assembly this week, but we need a head of steam and the Government to get behind the action.
Before I go any further, I should declare my past and present interests. I am chair of the campaign group, Housing Voice, a vice-president of the Trading Standards Institute and a past chair of Consumer Focus. In the past few weeks, Consumer Focus and Consumer Focus Wales have produced damning reports of caravan owners’ experience on sites in England and Wales. I will refer to those in a moment. We have also had the Select Committee report in another place. The committee found that malpractice is widespread across the park home sector and the current law is inadequate. It neither deters unscrupulous park home site owners from exploiting residents nor provides local authorities with effective powers to monitor or improve site conditions. It particularly identifies sale-blocking as a significant problem.
I am calling for legislative changes, some of which are in the Private Member’s Bill before the House of Commons, to amend the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960, the Caravan Sites Act 1968 and the Mobile Homes Act 1983. It brings together the licensing regime that applies to mobile homes in England. A similar proposition is coming up in Wales. The issue of whether a site owner is a fit and proper person, however, is key to this. The Bill currently is quite weak on that proposition.
My first engagement in this area was brought about by two forces: first, my interest in energy and, secondly, the activities of my noble friend Lord Graham of Edmonton. During the passage of every energy and water Bill—we have had a good few over the past few years—he has brought up the position in relation to gas, water and electricity supply to those homes. In a mobile home park there is no standard way in which residents receive their water, electricity and gas, but the number of sites with individual metering is fairly small. Some are attached to the gas main but the vast majority are off the gas grid. In those situations, the site operator, the owner, has substantial powers in terms of selling on and resale. Significant numbers of residents have problems with their site owner, including, for example, more than a quarter of gas and electricity-supplied caravan owners in Wales.
The reports by Consumer Focus have come up with a number of suggestions in this area outwith changes in the primary legislation. It has asked the regulators, particularly Ofgem, to clarify and issue updated maximum retail price guidance to energy resellers and the rules surrounding reselling energy. It has also asked them to consider how they can help residents who are billed for their energy use by the site operator through a third-party billing company and to make sure that the standards and accuracy of those bills are guaranteed. It has also asked them to look at the level of reduction in energy costs which would be permitted under the maximum resale price rules guidance.
With Ofwat, Consumer Focus is looking for amendments to existing legislation to ensure that those who purchase their water and sewerage through site operators have equivalent rights to those who purchase direct, and, again, to clarify and update the maximum resale price. There is an agenda there for these 160,000 people, for legislation in this Parliament and on the activities of the regulators.
To pick up on a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, it is also obvious that park homes are not the most energy-efficient dwellings in the land. However, it would appear that very few of them have had any benefit from past fuel poverty or energy-efficiency schemes. In relation to the Green Deal, which is just now being launched, it is not at all clear how owners or tenants of park home sites will benefit. The previous Secretary of State, who was asked about this in 2011, said that park homes would be able to apply for the Green Deal. As matters stand, it is not at all clear that that can be the case. Access to finance is dependent on carrying out a methodology to assess the energy efficiency of the home, which is the standard assessment procedure. That is very difficult to apply—in general, it does not apply—to permanent caravan-site dwellings. The Department of Energy and Climate Change needs to look at this and see whether the potential for a Green Deal for owners of caravans could be enhanced. There is also the question of how the billing for that would operate when the site operator had an intermediary.
Outside the energy, gas and water areas, there are of course more general issues: the level of service charges, the failure of maintenance and the breach of various licensing conditions. In addition, regrettably, behaviour, as the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, has said, can amount to intimidation, threats and organised antisocial behaviour, and has inflicted great distress on a lot, albeit a minority, of these sites.
The licensing process is pretty inadequate, and the resources available to trading standards and others to enforce those licensing conditions are not at all adequate. The fit-and-proper test needs to be set in lights in this process. If we could build on the option of going down that road in the Private Member’s Bill, that would be useful, because there are people in this trade who clearly would not pass even a minimum fit-and-proper test.
The last issue that I want to raise is sale-blocking. In the course of its research, Consumer Focus Wales came across many disturbing cases of people wanting to sell and move away being faced with hostility, threats and what I might call physical and financial sabotage on the part of the site owners. Consumer Focus has come up with a number of such cases.
At the moment, the site owner has a veto over the ability to resell. In one such case, for example, the mobile home residents sold their home to an unscrupulous site operator for a fraction of its market value. In another, the home owner told how she had received just £2,000, despite the fact that the home had been valued at £110,000. In another case, a couple bought their home directly from the site owner for £150,000 but, when they tried to sell it, the site owner blocked the sale of the home to any other purchaser until eventually the couple agreed to sell it back to him for just £50,000, of which, in reality, they received only £35,000. That is gross deception and dishonesty but it arises from the anomalous power position between the owners and tenants of the homes and the site owners. In that case, having paid £35,000 for the home, the site owner subsequently sold it for £95,000.
So far, there have been no criminal proceedings of any sort against such people, and that is unacceptable in our society for a significant number of our citizens. We should start by following through with the Private Member’s Bill and the repeal of the relevant provisions on sale-blocking and the veto of the site operator.
I hope that the Private Member’s Bill succeeds but, even more, I hope that the Government take up this case and look at it across the board, perhaps strengthening the Private Member’s Bill or coming up with their own propositions which will ensure that the legislation, the regulations and the enforcement resources are available to end the distressing effects of the present situation.
Lord Best
My Lords, having given prior notice, I rise to make a brief intervention, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, for initiating this short debate.
I have been honoured to accept the invitation from Peter Aldous MP to take the mobile homes Private Member’s Bill through your Lordships’ House when it finishes its passage through the other place. I was present at the Second Reading debate on the Bill in the other place last Friday and I was extremely impressed by the unanimity of approval for the Bill. As a Cross-Bencher, I was delighted to see that party politics played no part in that high-quality debate. Rogue site owners were named, powerful examples of malpractice were given, and the solutions contained in the Bill were commended from all sides.
I congratulate Peter Aldous MP on introducing the Bill and securing such strong support for it. Congratulations are indeed also due on the long-standing campaign for justice for park home residents by the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, who has waited a long time for this Bill.
Lord Best
Thanks go, too, to the right honourable Grant Shapps, who was the Housing Minister who got behind this legislation and gave it government backing. Tribute must also be paid to the wonderful campaigners in the other place led by Annette Brooke MP, with backing from Natascha Engel MP and others associated with the APPG on this theme, propelled by faithful campaigners outside of Parliament, for whom this has been a long journey. I know that Members in the other place were greatly helped by the new Consumer Focus report, Living the Dream?, and the excellent analysis from Consumer Focus Wales, Park Life: Residential Mobile Home Living in Wales, and it is clear that the report from the CLG Select Committee, to which reference has been made, undoubtedly helped to win approval for the inclusion of the clause introducing the back-stop of a fit-and-proper-person test.
I noted five issues in the debate, a number of which have been considered by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, and the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. None of them is a deal breaker, but all are worth discussing in more depth. My anxiety is that some existing park home residents may feel let down if their current defective leases have to remain untouched and those long-suffering owners continue to face appalling treatment at the hands of site owners, but it may be possible to address that, and I am sure the Bill will be even better when it comes to us.
This is an incredibly important piece of legislation. It may affect only relatively few people scattered across the country, often in remote places, but it is going to make a vast difference to the quality of life of so many of them. I look forward very much to helping to steer it through its stages in this House, where I feel sure it will get tremendous support.
Lord Graham of Edmonton
My Lords, it is a joy and a pleasure to have this opportunity, given to us by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, to have a canter over the course. Undoubtedly when the Bill was passed last Friday, and I was there, many people, not least the Minister here today and the civil servants who have been frustrated over the years, were pleased. When I was in the Commons, I served on the 1983 Bill. Time after time the issues that have caused the problem have been raised. We made some progress, but all too often we were thwarted, not least by the change of ministerial responsibilities. Every time a Minister is led and schooled and has a grasp of the issue, unfortunately for the issue, he is moved on to other things. When Mr Grant Shapps came to the all-party meeting, I said that if he was not careful he would make a name for himself. Of course, he has made a name for himself. At that meeting he told us that time was precious and that if a Private Member’s Bill could be found, or if someone won the ballot, he would assist. I congratulate the Minister, who did what he was able to do, and we are all very grateful.
The Select Committee is invaluable. It is led by Clive Betts in the other place. The summary of the Select Committee’s first report states:
“Malpractice is widespread across the park home sector and complaints from residents about unfair fees, poor maintenance and site owners making it difficult for residents to sell their homes are common. Though we recognise that there are some good site operators, it is clear that action is needed now to improve the sector and drive the worst offenders out”.
There is no doubt that there are vast numbers of good site owners who have served loyally and long. However, I shall give the Committee an illustration that I have received. In Cornwall, there is a Mr Jeffrey Small, who is well known to those of us who have been following the issue. His wife is Barbara Small and his son is Jeffrey Small. They have been in trouble. Cornwall County Council said:
“The Smalls have been operating mobile park home sites for around 10 years, at times trading as J and B Small Park Homes and JBS Park Homes and often via offices … in Taunton”.
One of the problems is, of course, that it is not just the owner of one site—it is a site owner with many sites. Let me rattle through them. The park homes owned by Mr Small and his family include Battisford Park, Plympton; Beauford Park, Taunton; Beechdown Park, Paignton; Bickington Park, Barnstaple; Brimley Gardens, Bovey Tracey; Brookmeadow Park, Swindon; Broughton Park, Taunton; and others. Although I could go on, time would beat me.
The other problem is that we are talking not just about blocking the sale of park home sites but about other factors. One issue on which I am grateful to the Minister and his colleagues is the establishment of the Residential Property Tribunal, which is a mark along the way. It has been doing good work. I have here a report of a situation where Mr and Mrs Tony Glew raised some issues, but the site owners were found by the tribunal to have,
“failed to comply with the procedure incorporated into the agreement by Schedule 1, Part 1, Chapter 2 of the Mobile Homes Act”,
and so on. What is interesting here is that mention has been made of frail and elderly residents. This is what happened to the people in this case. The tribunal decision stated:
“On or about the 10th May 2011, they, or their servants or agents, entered the pitch of the park home address, removed and destroyed 2 gates and part of the fence, destroyed a large part of the garden, took up concrete slabs which had been used for parking a car and moved another section of fence all belonging to the Applicant and his wife. They then erected another fence to exclude most of the garden and all the car parking area from the pitch and to allow only pedestrian access to the park home”.
All this arose because the occupants, Mr and Mrs Glew —willing sellers—had found a willing buyer. Yet the landowners could not care tuppence about that. All the owners were interested in was whether the park home was making money for the business. They have a business and they are entitled to carry it on, but not to the detriment of the health or pockets of other people.
I am delighted that we have started on a journey. I know that I might have felt alone at times over the past 30 years, but this time I will not be alone and I am very grateful.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, we should be grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, for initiating this debate. I suspect that we will have a wide degree of consensus in our contributions—there certainly has been already. We have the benefit of the introduction of the Mobile Homes Bill—a Private Member’s Bill in the other place—which had its Second Reading just last week, of the CLG Select Committee report in June of this year, and of the Consumer Focus report that my noble friend Lord Whitty spoke to.
It should be clear from our contributions in the other place that we support the Private Member’s Bill, and I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Best, has been asked to take it forward in our House. I am sure that it will have strong support right across the House, as he suggested. We also support the need for comprehensive measures to address the abuses that are all too prevalent in this sector, some of which have been mentioned. These abuses continue despite some measures being taken by the previous Government to improve matters; and, sadly, more measures never made the statute book. However, like other noble Lords, we should not let this occasion pass without acknowledging the role of individual campaigners—the most prominent of which has been my noble friend Lord Graham. His faith and determination over 30 years has kept the flame alive.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, the Minister in the other place accepted that the practical constraints on the size of the Private Member’s Bill mean that it cannot include every issue on which the Government consulted. Perhaps some space in our legislative programme created by the lack of a House of Lords Reform Bill could give the Government time to take up more fully the issues that they feel have been left out by this Bill.
Perhaps the Minister could say, if extra time were available, what would be included in the legislation that the Private Member’s Bill currently excludes.
The problems with the sector are well documented. Inevitably, we have concentrated this afternoon on unscrupulous site owners—the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, referred to the “growing evidence of serious criminality” and that clearly is the case—but we should acknowledge that many site owners take their responsibilities seriously, as my noble friend Lord Whitty and the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, acknowledged. The need to stop abuses is especially great because most residents of park homes are elderly and increasingly vulnerable. I have a statistic that says that 70% of them are over 70 years old. Many of them moved to park homes in retirement, into what they saw as idyllic homes in attractive locations.
As my honourable friend Natascha Engel MP pointed out in the Second Reading debate last week—a point echoed by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott—the current legislation may be the Mobile Homes Act and the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act, but we are talking about people’s homes. They may not be made of bricks and mortar but they are essentially static.
The noble Baroness and others have highlighted the key issues: lack of maintenance of sites, deliberate miscalculation of pitch fees and utility charges, sale-blocking and intimidation. The Second Reading debate in the other place highlighted some of the disgraceful practices around sale-blocking, which is often coupled with intimidation and harassment.
Perhaps the question we should be addressing now is: will the Private Member’s Bill be the effective way of tackling these abuses? The Select Committee recommendations in particular made reference to the removal of a site owner’s existing right to approve the buyer, an interim measure to give the residential property tribunal the right to award damages and compensation when sale-blocking takes place, and modernising local authority licensing arrangements.
The capacity and funding of local authorities to conduct their licensing activities is an important matter. Clearly, the ability under the Bill to charge for that will help with resources. Perhaps it would be inappropriate on this occasion to debate the wider issue of the capacity and resources available to local authorities, but funding by way of charging for licensing activities would not necessarily deal with the support that is needed—but it is a start.
We support the discretion to grant or transfer a site licence that will help and deal with the problem created by mandatory current requirements, and the powers to serve a compliance notice on site owners and to intervene to carry out work when compliance is not forthcoming are important, as stressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott.
A long-standing point of contention is whether or not site owners and operators should be fit and proper persons, just as they need to be for HMO licence holders. As the Communities and Local Government Committee pointed out, although it may be difficult to apply retrospectively, and would need to consider who would take over the management if somebody was disqualified, nevertheless there should be regulations to that effect—and we support that recommendation. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, I ask the Government what will determine whether and at what point regulations should be brought in so that people have to be fit and proper persons.
The Select Committee recommendation was that,
“removing a site owner’s right to approve prospective buyers provides the only effective way to eliminate sale blocking”.
For new agreements, this seems to be a pretty straightforward arrangement but for existing agreements I think it is more protracted; the provisions in the Bill are less secure. I would appreciate the Minister’s view on that.
The Private Member’s Bill would appear to put us on the road to an effective regulatory regime for park homes. We are delighted to be able to support that and look forward to its passage through your Lordships’ House. However, it is not a panacea. My noble friend noble Lord, Lord Whitty, referred to issues that could or should be dealt with by regulation, particularly the rules around re-selling of energy supplies. Perhaps the Minister could say what is intended on that front, and address the question raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, on the fact that this is not retrospective. How can we inculcate the provisions that are in the Bill in a way that could operate for the future, and will protect all of those who are at serious risk under current arrangements?
This has been a short but very important debate, and one that is timely, given the legislative process that is under way. I hope that that, in particular, will be a great comfort to my noble friend Lord Graham, for everything that he has done in the past.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Hanham)
My Lords, I believe I can say without risk of being challenged by anybody at all, that this is a debate, perhaps unusually, for the noble Lord and myself, where there is absolutely no disagreement at all.
Baroness Hanham
We all welcome this legislation, and we will look forward to it when it gets to this House. As did other noble Lords in this debate, I pay tribute to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Park Homes, which has raised the profile of the sector in Parliament and beyond. Absolutely crucial to that has been the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton. He may not remember, though I do, that as a rather new and very wobbly Front-Bencher, I took forward one of the many debates that he organised in this House, about 10 years ago. I remember that well, and I remember being persuaded by what he said, that here lay a big problem. It is a pity that it has taken us 10 years to get here, but here we are.
A number of noble Lords have mentioned my right honourable friend Grant Shapps. He grasped the situation when he became a Minister, and it was due to him that the residential tribunal was set up. It may not have had time yet to show all its teeth, but it is certainly starting to make an impact on this.
A number of important issues have been raised. I will try to deal with some of those; if I leave any out, then I will of course write to noble Lords. I also wish to comment on the Select Committee, which did an extremely good job, and to mention the Consumer Focus report, which absolutely confirmed the findings of the Select Committee.
As others have said, living on a park home site is an affordable choice of housing for many people. I have the figure of 85,000 households here—I do not think that we probably have much disagreement about that—and they are mainly elderly. It would also be fair to say that some or many sites are properly managed and maintained by decent, honest and professional site owners who look after the rights and the welfare of their residents and community.
However, the good work that they do is often completely masked by the unacceptable conduct of the minority—and we have had many examples of that today. They cause misery by not maintaining the sites properly, bullying residents, and interfering unreasonably or unlawfully when residents wish to exercise their rights, and their rights to sell—something that the noble Lords, Lord McKenzie and Lord Whitty, raised. The park homes sector should have no place for these people. We want the good site owners to thrive and we absolutely want the bad to wither and go away. We are therefore committed to targeted reform, which does not place unnecessary burdens on those site owners who operate in a well regulated and lawful manner.
The Communities and Local Government Select Committee’s inquiry received 250 pieces of written evidence and held four oral sessions in the spring, including one in Bournemouth at which it took evidence from home owners and site operators. As has been mentioned, the committee’s report showed that the catalogue of problems that people had been raising were a fact. It formed the view that malpractice was widespread. Many of the responses to the Government’s consultation, which ran from 16 April to 28 May this year, found that that was the conclusion. We received 621 responses, many of which corroborated the evidence to and findings of the Select Committee. The Government’s response has been published on the Department for Communities and Local Government website.
In the mean time, my honourable friend the Member for Waveney introduced, with government backing in the other place, a Private Member’s Bill for which reference has been made to reform the law on mobile homes. It may not cover all the points and aspects that everyone wants. Maybe during the course of its passage through one or other House it may be strengthened, but at the moment it is as it is. It received its Second Reading and will now proceed to its Committee stage. I understand that when it passes all stages—my brief says “should it”, but I am reasonably satisfied that it will do well—the noble Lord, Lord Best, will pilot it in this House. I am sure that he will have good support here as well.
I must emphasise that the Bill focuses on permanent residential sites and will not apply to holiday homes, even those where the residents live there for up to 10 or 11 months in a year, with just a month away from it. It applies purely to those sites that are residential where the home owners have agreements under the Mobile Homes Act 1983, including mixed-use sites such as those that are partly residential and partly holiday.
The provisions in the Bill relating to changes to the Mobile Homes Act will not apply to local authority traveller sites either because sale blocking is not in question on such sites, as sales are not permitted. But there was also no evidence that the other changes to site rules and pitch fees were required where ownership was in the hands of local authorities. I ought to say that I am quite glad about that.
The Bill’s objective is to put the park home business on a proper footing for the future, where honest and professional site owners can prosper, while those who abuse their legal powers and have no regard for the welfare and rights of their residents or their health and safety will no longer be able to profiteer. As we have heard, the Bill aims to achieve this by introducing light-touch reforms that target the worst practices, minimising the burdens on good operators. Through these measures, we hope that residents will be able to live peacefully in their homes, secure in the knowledge that their lives, health and safety will not be endangered and their rights respected. The Bill contains most of the key measures on which the Government consulted earlier in the year and builds on the Select Committee’s recommendations following its forensic inquiry into the park homes industry and its practices.
The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, referred to unlawful sale blocking, which was one of the most serious complaints. It is clear that the practice is not confined to a small number of rogue operators. In some parts it appears to be acceptable practice that the landlord should be able to put their foot down for a sale, but it is not acceptable practice.
Park home owners are as a matter of law entitled to sell their properties on the open market. However, also as a matter of law, the site operator must approve the buyer. To some this seems a sensible way of ensuring that the purchaser would meet the rules that apply to the site, for example on age, family composition or the keeping of pets. However, some site owners abuse this process to thwart a sale by not responding to the request for approval at all or by making contact with the buyer and putting them off proceeding.
Although there is a right of appeal to a residential property tribunal, which was brought in by this Government in 2011, if an approval has been unreasonably withheld, very few cases reach the door of the tribunal because the purchaser has normally withdrawn from the transaction by the time this happens. In fact, of the few cases that have been decided by the tribunal, in every case they found the site owner had acted unreasonably in not responding to the request or in refusing the approval.
As has been said, site operators are legally entitled to a 10% commission on the sale of a park home, so if one was sold for £80,000 they would be entitled to £8,000 of the sale price. The Government do not intend to interfere with that aspect. However, an unscrupulous operator realises that he can make significantly more than £8,000 by refusing to approve the purchase. Often if the home owner urgently needs to move or if purchasers are persistently refused, the home owner is forced to agree to sell. Indeed, we have heard today of some who have sold for as little as £2,000. No other form of home ownership sales is subject to such interference and abuse. I confirm that we fully support the measures in the Bill to restrict the role of site owners in approving buyers of homes from existing residents and to remove that role altogether in respect of future sales by new residents.
Allied to this is the strengthening of the criminal law against harassment and to make it a criminal offence to make false or misleading representations to prevent a sale from proceeding. There is also widespread concern that pitch fee increases lack transparency and unlawful charges are often included. The Bill addresses this by requiring site owners to set out in a notice precisely what is included in the proposed pitch fee and if this notice is not used the pitch fee review will be invalid.
Another major problem identified from the consultation and in the committee’s report is the condition of many sites and the poor quality of services and amenities to them because of either underinvestment over the years or, in some cases, a deliberate policy of allowing or causing whole sites or parts of sites to fall into disrepair. This was underlined by the noble Lord, Lord Graham, telling us about the site owner who had effectively wrecked one of the homes. The Bill will permit local authorities to address such problems through a more effective licensing regime that will enable enforcement action to be taken against those who do not keep their sites properly maintained. I am sure that local authorities that are affected by these problems will be only too happy to take up the cudgels.
The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked whether there would be room for more and more legislation on this. I am sure he does not really expect me to answer that. There are people who make decisions about legislation other than me, but we will enthusiastically follow this Private Member’s Bill through from beginning to end.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
If the noble Baroness will forgive me, the question was that if there were scope, what would the Government be happy to support further in terms of primary legislation?
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, at the moment the Government support everything that was in the consultation. There are areas where we are waiting to see what happens as a result of the Bill’s implementation and further consultation; the fit and proper person test is probably one, but it is very much on the radar because it was brought up very significantly in the Select Committee report.
The noble baroness, Lady Scott, asked about the human rights aspect. We cannot take away altogether the site owner’s contractual right to approve, but we have in fact reversed the burden of proof. Refusal can be made only on certain grounds and only with agreement of a residential property tribunal.
Baroness Scott of Needham Market
I am grateful to the Minister for allowing me to intervene because I know that she is short of time. My concern about the way the Human Rights Act is being interpreted means that it cannot apply retrospectively. Current owners will remain vulnerable; only the new owners will have protection. I am very nervous for current owners, particularly as I fear a kind of bonanza where people will see this money-making opportunity drying up in the future. The situation could inadvertently become even worse for the existing tenants than it is at the moment.
Baroness Hanham
I am sorry if I misunderstood the point, but it is one that is extremely well made. As my noble friend says, the Bill is not retrospective, as indeed most legislation is not. Potentially, however, it will offer protection in a perilous situation. Unfortunately, there will be bad site owners until they are stopped.
The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, asked about fuel poverty. We are talking to DECC about the application of the Green Deal to park homes. However, as this is a Private Member’s Bill, we cannot connect them together. Someone may wish to try to strengthen the law as time goes on.
I think that I have dealt with the issue of the fit and proper person test as best I can, and as I say, there is going to be very much a watching brief on that. That probably covers most of the aspects that have been raised in our debate. I hope that I have made clear that we strongly welcome and support the measures in the Bill. They are indeed long overdue because too many people have been put in jeopardy for too long a time. I hope that the Bill will get as far as this House and that it will be passed unanimously in the other place. We will then have an opportunity to consider it—it is hoped in the not too distant future. A Private Member’s Bill will provide at least some protection for those who have been suffering for a long time.
House of Lords
European Defence Agency
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Anderson of Swansea
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what has been the outcome of the review of the status of United Kingdom membership of the European Defence Agency announced in October 2010.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Astor of Hever)
My Lords, first, I am sure that the whole House will wish to join me in offering sincere condolences to the families and friends of Lieutenant Andrew Chesterman of 3rd Battalion The Rifles, Lance Corporal Matthew Smith of 26 Engineer Regiment, Guardsman Jamie Shadrake of 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, Guardsman Karl Whittle of 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, Sergeant Lee Davidson of The Light Dragoons, Lance Corporal Duane Groom of 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards, Sergeant Gareth Thursby of 3rd Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment, Private Thomas Wroe of 3rd Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment, Sergeant Jonathan Kups of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, Captain James Townley of the Corps of Royal Engineers and Captain Carl Manley of the Royal Marines who died on operations in Afghanistan recently.
My thoughts are also with the wounded, and I pay tribute to the courage and fortitude with which they face their rehabilitation. Once again, we are reminded of the immense danger that our Armed Forces operate in to uphold our safety and security. Their families and the whole country should rightly be proud of their heroic service and we shall always remember them.
Turning to the Question, Ministers are still considering the case for UK membership of the European Defence Agency with the aim of announcing the outcome of the review before the end of the autumn. As part of that review, we are looking at the activities of the agency’s four main directorates of capability, research and technology, industry and markets and armaments to assess the benefits received by our membership, including on our international relationships and what improvements there have been in the agency since 2010.
Lord Anderson of Swansea
My Lords, we all join the Minister in those condolences and tributes to our brave soldiers.
The two-year period of review has now passed with no outcome. Does that mean there is some rift within the coalition? Will the Government now recognise, as indeed EU Sub-Committee C recognised, that we benefit from the pooling and sharing within the agency and that the agency does valuable work in niche areas such as counter-IED, medical support, helicopters and cyber warfare? Further, if there were not a positive response, there would be an almighty row with our French partners.
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, there are no rifts and there is no hidden agenda. We said that we would review our membership after two years. We will then provide an Explanatory Memorandum and notify both Houses in the normal way as soon as possible. I am aware of the benefits that the EDA has delivered, but we need to review the full benefits and improvement goals that it has set for itself. In an age of financial austerity, we must ensure that every pound of taxpayers’ money counts for defence.
Lord Jopling
My Lords, did the Minister see the recent report of the same sub-committee which the noble Lord just referred to? The committee’s report said that given that the EDA,
“is deemed to be well directed under its current management, it should be given the proper tools and commitment to do a proper job. The UK and France should take the lead”.
Will the Government take that opinion into account in coming to a decision?
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, I have read the report of Sub-Committee C and, as I said in my reply, we will take this into account in the review.
Lord Liddle
My Lords, does the Minister accept that, in the age of financial austerity that he referred to, there is a very strong case for common defence procurement if it can be done economically within Europe, and that potentially the agency has a huge role to play in making that work much better than it has in the past?
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, I agree with that. If we can do it economically, this makes a lot of sense.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill
My Lords, first I wish to identify these Benches with the sad condolences expressed by the Minister. Does my noble friend agree that some of the successful examples of European Defence Agency initiatives are both the air-to-air refuelling and the helicopter training exercises which have been completed this week? Could he detail any other recent achievements of the EDA?
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, the EDA has seen significant success in a number of capability areas; for example, as my noble friend said, helicopter training which has directly increased the number of pilots available for operations in Afghanistan. By enhancing the capabilities of smaller member states, we receive an indirect benefit through better burden-sharing in operations. I understand that 114 crews—that is 1,300 personnel—have been trained, of which 63 have been deployed to Afghanistan. My noble friend mentioned the air-to-air refuelling initiative. As part of pooling and sharing, the EDA is taking a lead in facilitating European capability development in this area. This has not yet delivered results but the initiative is at an early stage. This issue was highlighted in operations over Libya where the US provided the vast majority of air-to-air refuelling capability. If I may, I will write to my noble friend on the other achievements—European military air-worthiness, the requirements initiative, industry and markets, and the capability development plan.
Lord Soley
Are the Government looking at sharing with the French the facilities recently opened at RAF Waddington for the control of UAVs?
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, I went up to RAF Waddington a couple of weeks ago and saw for myself what the noble Lord has talked about. I cannot answer from the Dispatch Box whether the French will be involved in that. As I have said previously from the Dispatch Box on many occasions, I welcome as much co-operation with the French as possible. We are working with them in a lot of areas. Noble Lords may have seen in the Daily Telegraph today the photograph of our Royal Marines training off Corsica with the French marines.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom
My Lords, would not European defence co-operation have been enhanced if the merger between BAES and EADS had gone ahead? Was it not a tragedy that this deal was bombed by Chancellor Merkel?
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, I agree with my noble friend that there would have been some benefits from the two companies joining up. However, having said that, I think that BAE will continue to thrive on its own. It has some wonderful products and Ministers in the Ministry of Defence do their very best to help BAE sell them.
Lord Williams of Elvel
My Lords, are the Government seriously considering withdrawal from the EDA? Is that one of the options under review?
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, it is an option; we are doing a review. As I said earlier, we will report back to the House as soon as possible.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, if the Minister and the Government had to choose between a row with our French partners and the lasting disengagement of the United States of America, which would they choose? When the Minister writes to the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, listing all the glorious achievements of this agency, will he commit to putting a copy of the letter in your Lordships’ Library?
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, to answer the noble Lord’s first question, I try to be as diplomatic as I can in relations with both the United States and the French, and I would certainly not want to get involved in any disagreement.
Small and Medium-sized Enterprises
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Cotter
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to address the issue of late payments to small and medium-sized enterprises.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, central government policy is to pay undisputed invoices within five days and to pass 30-day payment terms down supply chains. Moreover, the Crown representative team in the Cabinet Office is encouraging prime contractors to pay more quickly than the 30-day commitment on a voluntary basis. We have tasked departments across Whitehall to manage their contracts to ensure that prime contractors pay their subcontractors within 30 days.
Lord Cotter
I thank the Minister for his Answer. Will he and his officials look at the important reports and surveys carried out by the Federation of Small Businesses and the British Chambers of Commerce and note their recommendations? There is a lot of very good information in there. I am glad that the Government have improved their record on payment, but it is still not satisfactory that local councils and other departments are not paying as promptly as they should. I am encouraged by the Minister saying that government departments are going to look at their suppliers. I ask him to ensure that they sign up to the prompt payment code.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I have it in my notes that the Local Government Association, in the form of no less an important person than the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, has agreed that local authorities will be encouraged similarly to follow best practice in this regard. The Cabinet Office has among other measures introduced a “mystery shopper” service through which small contractors who are dissatisfied with the service they are getting, either from a department or from a prime contractor, can anonymously feed this information through to the Cabinet Office.
Baroness Sharples
What is the average time taken by ministries to settle their bills?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I suspect that the answer is that because there are so many bills that have to be paid it would take a great deal of time, effort and cost to acquire that information.
Baroness Wall of New Barnet
My Lords, does the noble Lord take assurance from the fact that, certainly in the health service, we have penalties for not paying small and medium-sized businesses first, before we do anything else, no matter where we are in the budget? I think that that ought to apply perhaps in other places as well. I had intended to save my question for the next debate but I just could not resist saying that.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
Thank you. It is an aspiration of this Government to increase the proportion of government contracts which go to small and medium-sized enterprises. When we entered government, the proportion of government contracts going to SMEs was 6.5%. Our aspiration is to reach 25% by 2015. The latest figures we have are that we are almost at 10.5%, so we have some way to go but are going in the right direction.
Lord Borrie
The Minister has confined his answers so far to government or governmental bodies which owe debts to small and medium-sized firms. What about simply the failure of large firms to pay small firms the money they owe them? So far, it is left to the initiative of the SMEs. Since there is a significant Bill going through Parliament at the moment dealing with financial services, I wonder whether one might get more results if the public officials of those bodies that are to take over from the Financial Services Authority under the new Financial Services Bill had a responsibility to ensure that debts were paid.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the Government are not yet convinced that we need to take legislative action, but we are thoroughly in favour of all pressure possible to encourage large corporations to pay their small contractors as fast as possible. There is indeed a new booklet produced by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, Experian, the Forum of Private Business and the Institute of Credit Management which is a guide on how to ensure prompt payment and has been produced in co-operation with the Government. I must say that a number of newspapers, including in particular the Telegraph, have been very helpful in exposing the tendency of some large corporations deliberately to delay payment to their subcontractors. We all know that transparency and reputational damage are things which multinational companies are well aware of, supermarkets included.
Lord Trefgarne
My Lords, if my noble friend wishes to increase the number of small and medium-sized enterprises which tender for and secure government business, will he have a look at the complexity of government tendering processes which tend to put off smaller companies from competing in those competitions?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we are also well aware of that. My right honourable friend Francis Maude and others have been looking in particular at the complexity of the pre-qualification questionnaires. We are doing our best to get rid of those for all contracts below £100,000 per year and to simplify the pre-qualification questionnaires for all others.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
My Lords, following the last question, I ask the Minister also to look at the contracts offered by the Department for Work and Pensions. In terms of getting people back to work, these contracts are going to very few, very large contractors, and as a result charities and voluntary organisations which in the past have done this work are now being pushed out of the bidding process.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
We are well aware of this problem. We are talking about a culture change within Whitehall. We are conscious that it is often easier when drawing up a large contract to give it to a prime contractor who will then subcontract, rather than having to go through the more onerous processes of distributing it around the country. That is part of the culture that we are trying to change.
Baroness Brinton
My Lords, the Minister’s earlier response on the problem with large companies was illuminating. However, if we are going to rely on investigating journalists to uncover such cases, would it not be better for the Government to consider forcing large companies to publish how many days they take to pay people in their annual reports?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I dare say that that is a question which will come up if and when we next move on to a company law reform Bill.
Lord Mitchell
My Lords, small companies in particular depend on prompt cash flow—indeed, it is their lifeblood. However, it is still true that many organisations in different areas, but particularly those in the public sector, are notorious for paying late. Despite the assurances that the Minister has given, I ask the Government to issue a firm directive to all organisations in the public sector stating that payments to SMEs are to be made within a short time after the receipt of an invoice.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the Government have done that and are introducing a number of practices to ensure that that is done. The mystery shopper and other efforts are always feeding back to ensure that where it is not yet done, steps are taken to improve matters.
NHS: Accident and Emergency Services
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Gardner of Parkes
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether, in relation to proposals to restructure NHS services in north-west London, the Department of Health has entered into dialogue with Transport for London regarding traffic levels and their impact upon speed of access to accident and emergency services.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and declare my interest as a local resident.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)
My Lords, the reconfiguration of front-line health services is a matter for the local NHS, and any decisions regarding changes to services will be taken locally. I understand that the local NHS has worked closely with Transport for London and also with the London Ambulance Service in developing its proposals for the future shape of health services across north-west London under the Shaping a Healthier Future programme.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
I thank the Minister for that Answer. My Question could really apply to anywhere in the country. The general principle is how long it takes to get patients to hospital, particularly in emergencies, when it is a matter of life and death in some cases. In London, there is only one air ambulance; I understand that in Paris, there are four and in Sydney there are six. We cannot rely on one air ambulance to deal with the problem. Will the Minister consider the general principle of a national view of traffic in relation to access for ambulances?
Earl Howe
My noble friend makes some important points. As a general point, it is important to say that each ambulance service should plan to provide appropriate resources to meet local demand, because demand varies according to where you are in the country. Planning assumptions in meeting that demand should take into account the likelihood of severe traffic congestion. Plans of that kind may well include resources in addition to traditional ambulance provision, for example, using rapid response vehicles and motorbikes as well as utilising staff such as community paramedics or emergency care practitioners.
Lord Harris of Haringey
My Lords, how many accident and emergency departments in London does the Minister expect to close in the next four years? If he does not know the answer, can he say who is responsible for that and how they are accountable for making a strategic judgment across London about the level of accident and emergency services?
Earl Howe
The premise behind the noble Lord’s question is that it is automatically worse to have fewer A and E departments in an area. I beg to disagree with that premise. In serious or complex cases, the noble Lord will know that patients need to access exactly the right care, so it is often better and safer for them to travel further to see specialists in major centres than to go to a local hospital. Although it may be closer, it may not have the right specialists, the right equipment or sufficient expertise in treating patients with their condition. The prime example of that has been stroke care in London, where 32 centres were reduced to, I think, eight and there has been a dramatic reduction in the number of deaths following admission.
Baroness Jolly
My Lords, does the noble Earl agree that wherever there are improvements to patient care that involve restructuring not only of services but premises, the impact assessment in the consultation document should include general transport and ambulance access?
Earl Howe
I agree with my noble friend. The planning assumptions made in north-west London, which is the subject of the Question, are a good example of that, where Transport for London is co-operating actively by producing some sophisticated analysis not only of ambulance transport times but of bus and car journey times to make sure that nobody loses out in any reconfiguration.
Baroness Whitaker
My Lords, in the noble Earl’s answer to my noble friend Lord Harris, I did not hear an answer to any of his questions about numbers, who makes the decision and who is accountable. Would it be possible to hear that?
Earl Howe
My Lords, I apologise. The Question on the Order Paper relates to north-west London, so I do not have pan-London figures in front of me. The answer to the question is as I gave it in my initial response: those decisions are subject to local determination. That is right, because it is only local commissioners and providers who can assess the situation on the ground properly. As the noble Baroness will be aware, there is a system for escalating decisions—ultimately to the Secretary of State, if necessary, who takes advice from the Independent Reconfiguration Panel in the most extreme cases—but normally, we hope and expect those decisions to be resolved on the ground in the local area.
Baroness Masham of Ilton
My Lords, does the Minister agree that many patients have difficulties accessing their GPs and out-of-hours services? Does he realise that the only resource might be the A and E department? In a case of meningitis, that could be a death sentence if they cannot get that access.
Earl Howe
My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness. That is exactly why the Government are planning to roll out the 111 service, which will run alongside the 999 service for emergency calls. But where the situation falls short of an emergency, the 111 service will instantly direct the patient to exactly the right service, without a call back being necessary. I am pleased to say that that programme is on track and should be rolled out next year.
Baroness Wall of New Barnet
My Lords, I declare an interest in Barnet and Chase Farm, which is currently being restructured. Does the Minister agree that, with any restructuring of services in the health service, the public are very concerned? A lot of effort is being made by the trust to assure people, but one of the things that keeps coming back—certainly for Barnet and Enfield—is that the bus services do not always work in the way in which the noble Earl has suggested, and that Transport for London is not always co-operative. Very often it is, but sometimes it is not; we are having a great deal of difficulty reorganising bus services in cases where Transport for London will just not hear of it.
Earl Howe
My Lords, in north London and Barnet in particular, Transport for London has diverted the 307 bus route into the grounds of Barnet Hospital, thus improving the link from Enfield. Transport for London has also installed new CCTV cameras in the underpass at North Middlesex University Hospital, in order to enhance its safety. There was a proposal to improve the local underpass at Silver Street station, and that was carried through. I am concerned to hear the noble Baroness’s perception, because all the briefing I have had indicates that Transport for London is very constructive in these situations and will often change bus routes in response to changes in service configuration.
Taxation: International Companies
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Harries of Pentregarth
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that international companies pay a fair proportion of United Kingdom tax.
The Commercial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Sassoon)
My Lords, the vast majority of taxpayers pay the right tax at the right time. However, the Government are alert to the risk that some companies may try to structure their tax affairs so that profits from UK-based economic activity are not taxed here. The UK has specific tax rules to combat tax avoidance by international companies and fully supports the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development initiative on base erosion and profit shifting, which has been endorsed by the G20.
Lord Harries of Pentregarth
My Lords, I am very glad to hear that the Government are alert to the situation of international companies, but would the Minister agree that, when they are being assessed for tax purposes, they should be required to reveal every country in which they are operating and the tax they pay in each country, with full financial details of their own company and link-companies? In addition to insisting on this for UK purposes, would the Government be prepared to work for an international agreement so that all transnational companies were required to give a fully transparent country-by-country report for any country in which they operated?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, I certainly agree with the underlying premise behind the noble and right reverend Lord’s question, which is that there is still a lot more work to be done in this area. The international tax architecture was developed in an age of fixed factories and plant and machinery, with much less interconnectedness. Now we live in a connected, corporate world in which internet commerce and so on make it much more complex. That is why the OECD is again looking fundamentally at whether countries have the right weapons, whether it is tax treaties, under which the exchange of information would come; transfer pricing; aggressive tax planning; or harmful tax practices. I certainly agree that tax information is important to that but, as far as the authorities are concerned, that really comes under the tax treaties and the work that the OECD will be looking at.
Lord Barnett
Does the Minister accept that the Prime Minister’s, and indeed the Chancellor’s, definition of aggressive tax avoidance needs clarifying? In any case, does he accept that all tax avoidance schemes are always one step ahead of the Treasury and the Inland Revenue? Would it not be sensible and simple—all past Governments have always refused to do this—to have simple legislation to say that any tax avoidance scheme has to be approved by HM Treasury? Would that not solve the problem?
Lord Sassoon
The noble Lord, Lord Barnett, always wants me to be clear and simple, so the answer is no to his first two questions. On the third question, he has an underlying, quite proper, concern, which is why the work that Graham Aaronson has done for the Government on a general anti-avoidance rule, the so-called GAAR, is a very important part of ongoing work.
Lord Campbell-Savours
What are the Government going to do about Starbucks and its transfer pricing arrangements?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, the noble Lord does not expect me for one moment to start commenting on the tax affairs of any individual taxpayer. As a general response, it may interest the House that the 800 or so largest companies that come under the large business service of HMRC to be assessed pay £136 billion in corporation tax, PAYE and VAT each year. Almost 50% of that tax comes from foreign-owned businesses, so I do not think we should have in mind that foreign-owned companies as a group are somehow doing something that we have to be vigilant about. We must keep this in proportion.
Lord Avebury
My Lords, do the OECD rules apply to internet-based companies, such as Amazon, and when will they come into effect?
Lord Sassoon
My Lords, a series of measures has been agreed internationally through the OECD over many years. The fiscal affairs committee of the OECD is having a new look at this, and this work was endorsed by the G20 at the Los Cabos meeting in June, to get those rules into a fit state for the 21st century. They are the rules that govern the relationships between countries and the base on which all companies should operate their tax regimes, but they need to be modernised.
Lord Davies of Oldham
My Lords, in responding to an earlier question, the Minister said that there was much work to be done in this area. Who is to do it? What is the point of the Government cutting Inland Revenue staff when there is so much work to be done? Staff concerned with revenue collection can collect 30 or 100 times the annual salary they receive.
Lord Sassoon
I am very grateful, as I often am, for the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Davies, because it enables me to tell the House, as I have done before, that £900 million has been reinvested in the compliance activities of HMRC precisely because we need to do more work to attack avoidance, evasion and criminal attacks on the tax system. Compliance revenue has more than doubled in six years so that by 2014-15 an additional £7 billion per annum will be coming in. The noble Lord’s concerns are quite right, and this Government are very actively on the case.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, the Minister did not answer my question on transfer pricing, which is the mechanism used to avoid paying corporation tax. Why will he not answer my question?
Lord Sassoon
Because, forgive me, there are other Peers wanting to get in. I completely agree with the noble Lord that transfer pricing is one of the most serious areas that need to be looked at, which is precisely why each one of those 800 large companies has a dedicated tax professional looking at this area. The focus on transfer pricing has meant that in the past four years £4 billion has been recovered precisely by going after transfer pricing schemes. On average, £1 billion a year is coming in through effective action.
Trusts (Capital and Income) Bill [HL]
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 Trusts (Capital and Income) 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.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord McNally, I beg to move that the Bill be now read a third time.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
My Lords, before we wave goodbye to the Bill, and in congratulating the Government on its provisions, perhaps I may ask my noble friend to ensure that the Ministry of Justice understands that this was only a very small step and that there are many other aspects of the Bill as they affect charities which could usefully and properly be followed through.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My noble friend is correct. The Bill makes minor modifications and there is obvious scope to look at this issue further.
Lord Lloyd of Berwick
My Lords, I add my tribute to the work of the Law Commission in relation to the Bill. It is a short but useful Bill. In Clause 1 we say farewell to a number of old friends familiar to generations of law students, if to nobody else. Clause 4 is important since it gives greater flexibility to the trustees of charitable trusts. All in all, the Law Commission is to be congratulated on producing a valuable reform of the law and I look forward to its next instalment.
Bovine Tuberculosis
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord De Mauley)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement made in the other place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The Statement is as follows.
“Bovine tuberculosis is the most pressing animal health problem in the United Kingdom. The importance of the epidemic for our cattle farmers, their families and their communities cannot be overemphasised. This was once a disease isolated to small pockets of the country. It has now spread extensively through the west of England and Wales. The number of new cases has doubled every nine years. Last year, TB led to the slaughter of 26,000 cattle in England at a cost of nearly £100 million. In the past 10 years bovine TB has cost the taxpayer £500 million. It is estimated that this will rise to £1 billion over the next decade if the disease is left unchecked.
The task of managing bovine TB and bringing it under control is difficult and complex. The Government are committed to using all the tools at their disposal and to continuing to develop new ones as a package of measures to tackle the disease. In high-risk areas, herds are tested annually and any cattle that test positive are slaughtered. Restrictions on cattle movements have been further strengthened to reduce the chance of disease spreading from cattle to cattle. Only last week we announced plans for a new surveillance testing regime and stricter cattle movement controls. We also continue to look at ways to improve the testing of cattle for TB.
Research in this country over the past 15 years has demonstrated that cattle and badgers can transmit the disease to each other. Culling badgers can lead to a reduction of the disease in cattle if it is carried out over a large enough area and for a sufficient length of time. That is why we believe that, based on the best available evidence, culling badgers to control TB can make a significant contribution. It is crucial that we get this right. The National Farmers’ Union has taken the lead on behalf of the farming industry to plan and organise the pilot culls. It has been working tirelessly over the past few months, signing up farmers and landowners in the pilot areas and ensuring that contractors are properly trained. I have been immensely impressed by the effort, commitment and determination that have been demonstrated by farmers in the two pilot areas. I am also most grateful to the police in the two areas for their support.
The exceptionally bad weather this summer has put a number of pressures on our farmers and caused significant problems. Protracted legal proceedings and the request of the police to delay the start until after the Olympics and Paralympics have also meant that we have moved beyond the optimal time for delivering an effective cull. We should have begun in the summer. In addition to these problems, the most recent fieldwork has revealed that badger numbers in the two areas are significantly higher than previously thought. This only highlights the scale of the problem we are dealing with.
Evidence suggests that at least 70% of the badgers in the areas must be removed. This is based on the results of the randomised badger culling trial so that we can be confident that culling will reduce TB in cattle. Despite a greatly increased effort over the past few days and weeks, the farmers delivering this policy have concluded that they cannot be confident that it will be possible to remove enough badgers based on these higher numbers and considering the lateness of the season. It would be wrong to go ahead if those on the ground cannot be confident of removing at least 70% of the populations.
Today I have received a letter from the president of the NFU on behalf of the companies co-ordinating the culls, explaining why they do not feel they can go ahead this year and requesting that they be postponed until next summer. In these circumstances, it is the right thing to do and, as they are the people who have to deliver this policy on the ground and work within the science, I respect their decision. I have placed a copy of the letter in the Libraries of both Houses.
By starting the pilots next summer we can build on the work that has already been done and ensure that the cull will conform to the scientific criteria and evidence base. I know that this will be very disappointing for many, particularly those farmers in the two pilot areas, but I fully support the decision of the NFU to delay the start of culling operations.
I must emphasise that there is no change to the Government’s policy. We remain absolutely committed to it, but we must ensure that we work with the NFU to get the delivery right. We also remain committed to our wider TB eradication programme and to continuing to strengthen it, so that we can move towards our goal of a TB-free England. Vaccination is another tool and one that we would all like to be able to deploy more widely. Unfortunately, we are not yet there in terms of its development or practicality. If we had a viable and legal cattle vaccine, we would be using it. It will, however, be some years before this is the case and neither we nor the industry can afford to wait that long. It is for this reason that we must look at all the options.
The Government are determined to tackle bovine TB by all the means available to us. Now, in the next few months, we will ensure that the pilot culls can be implemented effectively, in the best possible conditions, with the right resources. Having looked at all the evidence over many years, I am utterly convinced that badger control is the right thing to do, and indeed the higher than expected badger numbers only serve to underline the need for urgent action. I remain fully committed to working with the farming industry to ensure that the pilot culls can be delivered effectively, safely and humanely next summer”.
Lord Knight of Weymouth
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for repeating the Statement and for advance sight of it this morning. We welcome this statement and it is right that it should start by setting out the scale of the animal health problem, and the cost to farmers and to taxpayers of slaughtering infected cattle. This is an acute problem for farmers and I know from talking to them in the West Country over many years what a toll it is taking on them personally and financially. It is therefore also right that the Statement concludes with the need to work with farmers. But as the president of the NFU says in his letter to the Secretary of State,
“all decisions must be based on the science”.
Why then no mention of working with the scientists?
I am pleased to see the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, in his place. He is one of the leading scientific authorities on this issue. What meetings has the new Secretary of State had with the noble Lord and his colleagues? Did the Minister read the comments of the noble Lord in last week’s debate on scientific advisors? He said,
“it is still the case that the Government, perhaps too often, prefer policy-based evidence rather than evidence-based policy … The fact is that the overwhelming majority of scientific experts have concluded that the policy of killing badgers to control TB in cattle will have only a small beneficial effect, if any. It is essentially a waste of effort and money, and a distraction from the business of getting on top of a serious animal health problem that can have devastating effects on the livelihoods of farmers”.—[Official Report, 17/10/12; col. GC514.]
The truth is that this is yet another humiliating moment for the Government and for Defra because they put prejudice and ideology before science and evidence. Can the Minister confirm that this is more of an NHS Bill type of pause, rather than another government U-turn? It is certainly another in a chain of weekly incompetent humiliations: plebgate; the west coast main line fiasco, when they also got the numbers wrong; the energy policy on the hoof last week; the great train snobbery; and now this from Defra.
From Defra we have had the abandoned forestry sell off, chaos over circus animals, a U-turn on shooting buzzards to protect game birds and now a pause on shooting badgers. No wonder the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, said this weekend in the Observer that the Government,
“seems unable to manage its affairs competently”.
He described it as a,
“dog of a coalition government”.
I do not think the noble Lord likes dogs. I suspect he would like the country to put it out of its misery and have this “dog of a coalition” put down. However, beyond the endemic incompetence in Defra and the Government there are serious specific questions to answer. As my colleague Mary Creagh MP said in the other place today:
“Labour has warned the Government for two years that the badger cull was bad for farmers, bad for taxpayers and bad for wildlife”.
The Secretary of State is right not to proceed because the cull this year could not deliver the 70% mortality rate needed for the possible positive effect on bovine TB—up to 16% over nine years. His decision is based on there not being enough time to cull that many badgers in the limited time available, particularly given the growing number of badgers in the pilot areas. However, the numbers and the limited time were predictable and demonstrate the incompetence in Defra and that this announcement was inevitable. His Statement blames the weather, the police and the Olympics for a limited time window.
Was it not the Home Secretary who ruled out policing the cull this summer, not the police? Was not the limited window therefore predictable and decided by Ministers? Is it not the case that in July last year Natural England gave Defra badger population figures that projected from the randomised badger-culling trial that the numbers of badgers in pilot areas was 3,300 per 350 square kilometres? This is broadly the same as the current estimate of 3,000 per 300 square kilometres, so the larger number of badgers was predictable too.
Why did the Secretary of State in the other place today say that it was only in September this year that Natural England determined deficiencies in the numbers of badgers to be culled? Is it just to cover Defra’s incompetence or is it that those projections last year were ignored because it was inconvenient evidence not policy-based evidence? Can the Minister tell us whether the estimates of badger numbers in the planned pilot cull areas were reviewed by the independent expert panel overseeing the pilots? I have heard not. If so, that is shameful.
What is the department going to do during this pause before doing the cull next year? Will it need to secure more money? The Secretary of State said today in the other place that the Government will compensate the police forces in Avon and Somerset and Gloucestershire for their costs in preparing for the abandoned cull. If it is a more intensive cull of the larger numbers of badgers, will he need more than the current projection of £500,000 per cull area per year? Will there be any compensation for the two companies engaged to do the shooting? I gather £850,000 was to be spent on surveying badgers; £248,000 on post mortems; and £713,000 on checking the humaneness of the cull. Will those contractors be compensated?
Beyond the finance questions there are other areas of work between now and when the cull starts next summer. Will Ministers meet representatives of the tourism industry in Somerset and Gloucestershire? The notion of marksmen across the countryside that I know well shooting badgers at night has clear risks. Those risks are heightened because the location of shoots will be kept secret to frustrate protesters, but if the location of shooting is secret how will visitors in the summer months be warned to keep away?
How will Ministers work with farmers to maximise the effectiveness of the welcome announcement last week on changes to the testing regime and cattle movement restrictions? These sorts of biosecurity measures are a key component in controlling this dreadful disease. Can more be done with government support to improve biosecurity?
Finally, there is the core question of vaccination. The possible benefits of a cull are marginal. Sir John Beddington, the Chief Scientific Adviser, has said that it will, at best, result in a 12% to 16% reduction in the disease after nine years. The Statement pays tribute to the tireless work of farmers and contractors in preparing for the cull and funding it. What is the Government’s estimate of what can be done on vaccination over nine years with the same unity of purpose? The emerging DIVA test is an encouraging development to allow a diseased animal to be differentiated from a vaccinated animal. Surely this now makes it possible seriously to engage with the EU in lifting the ban on exports from vaccinated animals. The vaccine itself is 50% to 60% effective. We need more efficacy but it appears that good progress is being made in finding a scientific solution. Surely it is right to focus on this rather than on what the 30 eminent animal disease experts writing in the Observer 10 days ago described as a “costly distraction”.
My party is clear that bovine TB is a blight on dairy farming and causes untold misery to dairy farmers. We take it very seriously and we all want a solution. We know that growing numbers of diseased badgers are passing the disease to cattle and costing the taxpayer a fortune, but, unfortunately, the logic of then culling them does not follow because the science tells us that that is most likely to spread the disease unless such a scale of geography and intensity is used that it is clearly nigh on impossible to then deliver the cull. We must be led by the science and the science leads us to vaccination with interim efforts on biosecurity. That is what we want. That is what the nation wants. I hope that, after reflecting on this shambles today, the Secretary of State will abandon his dogmatic view and get it right by listening to both farmers and scientists.
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his response to the Statement. I start by reiterating that bovine TB is the most pressing animal health problem facing our cattle farmers. No one wants to kill badgers but we absolutely have to bear down on this terrible disease.
What has been announced today is a postponement until next summer of the pilots that were due to start this autumn. There is no change of government policy. We and the farming industry remain committed to taking forward this evidence-based policy. We are totally committed to tackling bovine TB through a range of measures, including a controlled cull of badgers. The cull in the two pilot areas will go ahead next summer when we are completely satisfied that all the arrangements are in place.
The leading experts whom Defra brought together last year agreed that the evidence shows that culling done in the right way and carried out over a sufficient area and length of time in a co-ordinated and efficient way can reduce the spread of the disease to cattle with benefits remaining for many years. The policy is firmly based on evidence from the randomised badger-culling trial. Using the results of this trial, culling over an area of 150 square kilometres could be expected to lead to an average 16% reduction in TB incidence in the local area. This figure was agreed by an independent panel of scientists at a meeting with Professor Bob Watson, Defra’s Chief Scientific Adviser, on 4 April last year. We are clearly not saying that this is the whole answer but it is a very important part of the answer alongside testing and surveillance, movement restrictions and the removal and slaughter of affected animals. We wanted to be absolutely sure that we had the most robust data available to ensure that the right logistics were in place for an effective cull. The population estimates show the problem of badgers spreading bovine TB to be even worse than expected. The right decision has been taken, based on the available evidence.
Natural England’s figures were estimated on RBCT data and, in validating the estimates provided by the applicants, some gaps were found that raised concerns. Due to the importance of this data for the effectiveness of the policy, it was responsible, in taking a science-based approach, to check these numbers through further fieldwork. This further fieldwork has led to updated estimates of the badger population that are higher than originally expected. The discovery that there are far more badgers than previously thought shows the problem could be much bigger than we feared. All of the preparations for the pilot culls were geared up for a smaller number of badgers, so it is absolutely right that the NFU looks again at what resources it needs to make sure we get it right.
The noble Lord, Lord Knight, asked about policing. It was agreed with the Home Office that the cull should not proceed before the Olympics. The noble Lord asked about the costs of the culling operations and whether they would be met by the participating farmers. The costs that fall to Government are those to do with ensuring that the pilots meet their purpose. It is right to pilot the policy and confirm our assumptions about the effectiveness, safety and humaneness of controlled shooting. As regards costs more generally, the Secretary of State has said that he will have a comprehensive breakdown of the money spent so far prepared and laid before Parliament. The noble Lord specifically asked about policing costs. These will depend on the extent of protester activity and it is right that the Government should recompense the police for additional costs.
The noble Lord asked about vaccination, which is an important issue. Work to develop an oral badger vaccine and a cattle vaccine is continuing and is a high priority. Defra has been investing significantly in developing bovine TB vaccines for both badgers and cattle for a long time. We have a licensed, injectable vaccine that can and is used on badgers. The problem with it is, however, two-fold. First, it is very expensive to catch all the badgers. Secondly, it has to be done every year. So it is a very expensive process and is not really practicable on a wide scale. Since 1994, Defra has invested more than £43 million in badger and cattle vaccination and associated diagnostics and expects to spend another £15.5 million over four years. Even if these vaccinations were available, they are not a magic bullet and additional measures would still be necessary.
The Government fully support the NFU’s decision to postpone the culls as the responsible thing to do to ensure the pilots are carried out effectively. It would be irresponsible to rush ahead and risk making the problem worse if it is not carried out properly. This disease led to the slaughter of 26,000 cattle in England last year and cost nearly £100 million. Without further action it would cost the taxpayer an estimated £1 billion over the next decade.
Baroness Northover
I remind noble Lords that ministerial Statements are made for the information of the House. Although brief comments and questions from all quarters are allowed, Statements should not be the occasion for an immediate debate. I am acutely aware that many noble Lords wish to get in. It would therefore be courteous if noble Lords could be as brief as possible, to enable their noble colleagues to get in as well.
Lord Krebs
My Lords, as has been said, bovine TB is a serious problem, and it deserves serious science to underpin policy. I do not want to take up too much time, but I hope that your Lordships will forgive me as an individual who has been involved in this over the past 15 years and, as has been said, instigated the randomised badger culling trial and took part in the review of the evidence with Sir Bob Watson last year. It is worth briefly repeating the facts: the long-term, large-scale culling of badgers is estimated to reduce the incidence of TB in cattle by 16% after nine years. In other words, 84% of the problem is still there. To reflect on what that means, this is not a reduction in absolute terms but actually a 16% reduction from the trend increase. So after nine years there is still more TB around than there was at the beginning; it is just that there is 16% less than there would have been without a cull. The number is not the 30% that the NFU quoted; that is misleading—a dishonest filleting of the data. The other thing that the experts conclude is that culling makes the situation worse at the beginning so it will take a long time to emerge into this Nirvana of a 16% reduction, and 84% of the problem is still there.
That is just the background. I turn to questions that I hope the Minister will answer. Last Friday we were told by the Minister of State for Food and Farming that between 500 and 800 badgers would be culled in each of the two areas. The number, thanks to rapid badger reproduction over the weekend, is now 5,530 over the two areas—a fourfold increase. I am impressed. What this underlines is that if the policy is to cull at least 70% of the badgers, we have to know what the starting number is. This variation from just over 1,000 to more than 5,000 in the space of a few days underlines how difficult it is for us to have confidence that the Government will be able to instruct the farmers to cull 70% if they do not know the starting numbers. So my first question to the Minister is: how will he assure us that these numbers are accurate?
If we ask why the NFU has backed out, it is because it was due to pay those who were going to shoot the badgers on a per-badger basis. The NFU calculated it on the basis of shooting 1,300 badgers. Suddenly it is told, “It’s 5,500 badgers”. The farmers thought it was worth doing—but not that much. They have done their own cost-benefit calculation and say that it is not worth the candle. So my second question to the Minister is: in next year’s cull, who is going to pay? Are the farmers going to stump up on a per-badger basis to shoot 5,500 badgers or are we, the taxpayer, going to pay?
Finally and briefly, we have a pause and time to rethink. I urge the Minister to gather together scientific experts and rethink the Government’s strategy altogether, starting from square one.
Lord De Mauley
I am grateful to the noble Lord, for whom I have a huge amount of respect. I am grateful to him in particular for confirming the 16% figure to which I referred in my answer to the noble Lord, Lord Knight. On the question of whether culling is not a huge part of the answer, it is a very significant part of the answer but I said earlier that it is not the whole answer. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, will at least accept that.
He asked about the numbers. I explained to the noble Lord, Lord Knight, that previous estimates of the number of badgers to be removed from the pilot areas were based on the RBCT. We have recently carried out field surveys to look at the badger populations in the areas where the pilots are taking place. However, what is important in answering the question of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, is that we have commissioned a national badger survey in England and Wales to quantify any changes since the previous survey.
The noble Lord asked about the cost and, in particular, whether the farmers will continue to bear the cost. Yes indeed, they will; that is entirely the plan. The bearing of the cost will be done in exactly the way that has been planned.
I should say to noble Lords, on the issue of the evidence and the science, that, following the March 2012 visit to the UK of the European Commission’s bovine tuberculosis sub-group of the task force for monitoring animal disease eradication, it stated:
“It is however of utmost importance that there is a political consensus and commitment to long-term strategies to combat TB in badgers as well as in cattle ... There is no scientific evidence to demonstrate that badger vaccination will reduce the incidence of TB in cattle. However there is considerable evidence to support the removal of badgers in order to improve the TB status of both badgers and cattle”.
So the European Commission is pushing us and we have to deal with TB in badgers.
Baroness Parminter
My Lords, I will be brief. Our priority on these Benches was always that the pilots were safe and rigorous in testing how effective and indeed humane the culling of badgers could be. However, given that the NFU does not have the resources to deliver this, we welcome the fact that the cull is being postponed. Will the Minister confirm that the Government will use this pause, before any evidence-based pilots proceed, to seek approval to use in the field the cattle vaccine and the diagnostic test, which has recently been approved, and in particular seek to use the EU animal health directive, which is upcoming?
Secondly, the Secretary of State confirmed today in another place that all options will be looked at in order to curtail this disease. Will the Minister confirm that those alternatives will not include looking again at the issue of gassing, which was condemned in a review by Lord Zuckerman, a Member of this House, in the 1980s?
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for her supportive words. We have had discussions with the EU that essentially involve persuading the EU to accept the DIVA test. They have told us to get international validation and we are determined to do so.
Lord Soulsby of Swaffham Prior
My Lords, in view of the great success in controlling rabies in foxes in western Europe with an oral vaccine, has much thought been given to the production of an oral vaccine for TB in badgers? I realise, of course, that the organisms are entirely different; one is a virus and one is a bacterium. However, surely the same process of trying to select an organism that is protected before it gets into the gut and immunises the badger is worthy of investigation. Can the Minister give some indication of some of the work that is going on, if any, on the production of an oral vaccine similar to the one developed for fox rabies?
Lord De Mauley
I am grateful to my noble friend because this is an important subject into which considerable work is going on. The evidence that he has referred to will of course be taken into account. Progress on the development of an effective oral badger vaccine relies, of course, on scientific breakthroughs in this field, and it is uncertain in outcome and timing. Compared to an injectable vaccine, an oral vaccine is technically more difficult to formulate, as my noble friend alluded to, and it requires bait, which encourages the uptake of the vaccine by badgers and minimises the potential of other species to eat it. Developing an oral vaccine against TB in badgers is proving more difficult than originally hoped, which means that I cannot say with certainty when one might be available for use in the field.
Lord Winston
My Lords, will the Minister inform us whether the Government intend to cull the seven or eight other common species which also affect tuberculosis and spread it among cattle?
Lord De Mauley
That is an interesting question. Although bovine TB is present in other wildlife, such as deer, badgers are the main species responsible for transmitting the disease to cattle because of their specific ecology. Evidence from the RBCT demonstrates conclusively that badgers contribute significantly to bovine TB in cattle. While deer in Britain are generally considered to be a sentinel or spillover host of infection in cattle, rather than a source of the disease in cattle, current evidence suggests that TB infection from deer is not a significant disease risk to cattle.
Lord Plumb
My Lords, as a farmer, my question is based on some history. I will be very brief. In 1944 we eradicated TB on my farm. In 1964, as a junior officer in the NFU, I had the privilege of announcing that we had totally eradicated bovine TB from this country. Since then, of course, history has shown us a different picture. The noble Lord, Lord Knight, posed a large number of questions, and I noted all of them. Those questions were posed more than 10 years ago, and we have gone through that period of time with few decisions being taken. To say, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said, that farmers are dishonest is an insult to the farming community and I cannot accept it. That is not the reason. All the farmers concerned, particularly those who have been held up for 12 years, have been unable to sell one beast off their farms over that time. They do not see this problem as scientists see it; they see it as men who are concerned with the welfare of animals and they do not want to see their herds suffering, as they are doing and have done throughout this period.
My question is exactly the same as that raised by the noble Lord, Lord Soulsby. Surely we have to move towards vaccination. However, if the current vaccine is effective for only one year, that is a very expensive mechanism for doing the job. Surely to goodness we are in an age when an oral vaccine can be found to cope with this situation. It can be put in either the water or the food so that the affected animals are removed. Perhaps that would be a better way of dealing with the matter than the ways that have hitherto been thought of.
Lord De Mauley
I can only say to my noble friend that we are pursuing vaccine options as hard as we can and as a high priority. We have been investing significantly in developing TB vaccines for both badgers and cattle for a long time. I have mentioned a licensed injectable vaccine that can be and is being used on badgers but, as I have explained, it is extremely expensive and needs to be repeated annually. As my noble friend says, we need an oral vaccine, which we are still searching for. We will continue that search and expect to spend another £15.5 million over four years.
Lord Patel
My Lords, the Minister referred to other species that are affected with a similar strain of tuberculosis and specifically mentioned wild deer. Are not mice, particularly field mice, and rats also affected by the same strain and do they not come into closer contact with cattle?
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, the point about mice, rats and indeed deer is that there is no restriction on culling them.
Lord Clark of Windermere
My Lords, I agree entirely with the Minister, as indeed would most people in the country, when he says that this is the most pressing animal health issue facing the country. In the light of that, I welcome the announcement today because I think that it exposes how shambolic the Government’s proposals have been in trying to tackle this real problem. As scientists said last week, the policy was little more than a costly diversion and we will end up with more cases of TB in four or nine years’ time than we have at the moment. The four-year pilots have now, with the stroke of a pen today, become five-year pilots. I believe that we ought to follow the recommendations of the European Union representatives and, although it will not be easy, continue to seek political consensus so that we can move on to vaccination and increase the amount of money that we are spending on research in this field, especially in the form of cattle vaccination.
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, the area in which I disagree with the noble Lord is clearly that of pursuing the cull, which I have said we are planning to do. The area in which I agree with him is that of vaccination, which is another tool in the box that we must find, and I assure noble Lords that we are continuing to work on that.
Lord King of Bridgwater
My Lords, the Minister may be aware that my former constituency was one of the areas that were being considered for this cull. For very many years, including 13 years of a Labour Government, I prayed that positive progress would be made by the Government in tackling this problem. I join the noble Lord, Lord Plumb, in saying that I bitterly regret the very party-political way in which the noble Lord, Lord Knight, intervened in this matter. His Government did nothing effective and left it as a problem to be tackled now. Some have had to live with the personal challenges of the issue—as my noble friend knows, there are suicides, despair and family breakups, so it is not just the financial consequences but the destruction of people’s whole lives that have followed from this. It is also not just dairy herds, which I think the noble Lord referred to, but anybody with cattle. Certainly in the West Country they have faced appalling problems. This should be pursued on an all-party, bipartisan basis, as my noble friend said, not by trying to score points and accusing people of dishonesty in filleting the statistics or anything else. We are trying to get a cohesive approach to this challenge because if we do not, in many parts of the country, it will destroy the whole cattle industry as we see it.
Lord De Mauley
I absolutely agree with my noble friend about the effect on farmers and their families. Perhaps I may do something unusual and come to the defence of the noble Lord, Lord Knight, who began by acknowledging how very horrible this disease is. If I may, I would like to pour a little soothing balm on the political argument.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, perhaps I may defend the previous Government, who undertook a long series of randomised trials and worked with scientists to try to find a scientific base for future action. Does the Minister accept that there is much relief in the Forest of Dean this afternoon as a consequence of this Statement? The majority of people in the forest, including many farmers, did not want a badger cull that was not based on scientific evidence, was not economic and would not provide the necessary solution to the devastating effect of bovine TB on herds and farmers but that would decimate the badger population. I should add that the police of Gloucestershire are also much relieved to have their leave restored. Can the Minister reassure me that the Government will now use the pause to pursue a firmly scientifically-based solution which will also have a sound economic basis? Will he also agree to update this House regularly so that we can try to find a solution on which there can be some political consensus? We all want to be involved in pursuing that.
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, I have said that we are pursuing all options and I do not think that I can say much more than that. However, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her offer of help.
Lord Willis of Knaresborough
My Lords, the Minister has rightly referred to scientific evidence, as has the noble Lord, Lord Krebs. It is clear that the scientific evidence that the Minister and his colleagues are getting is different from that which a significant proportion of the scientific community is getting. What reassurance can he give us that an independent group of scientists will be brought together to examine this process transparently and that a regular report will be made to this House, as the noble Baroness said, rather than waiting for another crisis until such a report is made?
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, my noble friend will know that a great number of professionals, scientists and experts are already involved in this process. There is also, indeed, an independent panel which will monitor the results of the cull, and we are extremely grateful for all the advice that we get.
Lord Christopher
My Lords, there have been probably inescapable pressures on farmers to manage cattle as they do. Will the Government also look, among the options, at any evidence suggesting that the resistance of our present herds has been lowered not least as a result of inbreeding? For example, how many bulls are responsible today for our white cattle herds of Holsteins and Friesians?
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, I have heard no evidence that inbreeding contributes to the incidence of TB.
Infrastructure (Financial Assistance) Bill
(11 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Newby
My Lords, I am delighted to be able to open the proceedings on the Infrastructure (Financial Assistance) Bill. The purpose of the Bill is to help accelerate significant investment in major infrastructure projects and it will increase the number of homes being built and occupied.
Before I set out the main features of this legislation in more detail, I briefly remind your Lordships’ House of the Government’s commitment to delivering a sustainable, private sector-led recovery. This will be possible only by maintaining our credible fiscal stance and so keeping interest rates low. We want to see a recovery that is balanced across industrial sectors and across geographic regions. To achieve this ambition—
Earl Attlee
My Lords, long experience in this House tells me that the best way of handling these events is to allow my noble friend the Minister to lay out his stall and then noble Lords can ask questions at the appropriate point.
Lord Newby
I hope that my speech will answer the noble Lord’s question adequately.
Firms will have access to the communications and transport networks that they need, wherever in the UK they happen to be, enabling Britain to compete on the world stage.
Our national infrastructure plan published last November sets out an ambitious but credible roadmap to deliver on that vision—a pipeline of upcoming investment worth £257 billion in crucial large-scale projects, of which more than two-thirds will typically be financed and delivered by the private sector.
A number of key infrastructure projects close to starting construction are being delayed because of the difficulties they face in securing the finance and investment required, and the housing market continues to suffer from an undersupply of homes to meet the UK’s demographic needs. Even under favourable credit conditions, raising the amount of private finance required to deliver these projects and to meet our overall infrastructure investment goals would be a challenge. However, the disruption caused by the instability of international financial markets and the adverse effect that this is having on long-term debt provision have not abated. Proactive, decisive action by the Government is therefore needed now. The Bill will allow us to take that action and will bring forward the investment needed.
The principal aim of the Bill is to make investment in major infrastructure and housing schemes possible. The Government have agreed in principle, subject to strict approvals criteria, to make financial support available to infrastructure projects using the strength and credibility of our balance sheet to support the investment that we need.
Through this Bill, guarantees provided by the Government will help to ensure that where projects are struggling to access private finance due to adverse credit conditions, these projects can now go ahead. It authorises the Treasury and, where appropriate, other Secretaries of State to incur expenditure necessary for providing financial assistance.
The Bill will allow the Government to support crucial investment in key areas of economic and public service infrastructure: utilities, such as energy and telecommunications; transport, such as railways and roads; infrastructure to provide public services, such as hospitals and schools; and housing development to deliver much-needed homes.
The Treasury estimates that up to £40 billion of investment in infrastructure and an additional £10 billion in housing investment could be accelerated under the guarantee schemes using the powers in the Bill. Importantly, we will put in place strict guidelines and eligibility criteria for the schemes to protect the taxpayer and ensure that the Exchequer does not take on unacceptable fiscal risks.
Any proposal that receives a guarantee from Infrastructure UK will as a minimum have satisfied the following requirements. It must be nationally and/or economically significant; financially credible; good value for money for the taxpayer; not solely dependent on a guarantee to proceed; and ready to start construction within 12 months. Any proposal that receives a housing guarantee from the Department for Communities and Local Government will, as a minimum, need to deliver an agreed number of new homes; undergo an investment appraisal and full due diligence and be subject to ongoing monitoring requirements; meet a risk capital contribution at the outset; and provide recourse to the secured housing assets.
Since the projects that we expect to back will be structured to minimise the potential losses to the Exchequer, there will be minimal impact on public sector net borrowing as a result. The exception is under the extreme circumstances that a guarantee is called upon or other forms of financial assistance are provided, but we expect such circumstances to be rare. Furthermore, the Government will levy a commercial charge. This will cover the services received by infrastructure providers and beneficiaries of the private rented sector housing guarantee. It will ensure that companies pay a fair price for the benefits that they receive, and that taxpayers receive a fair price for any risk being taken. It will also ensure that schemes do not fall foul of EU state aid rules.
The Bill raises a number of questions. The first and most fundamental is: will it work? Is there any evidence that the guarantee being offered will really facilitate the speeding up of infrastructure projects? There is already substantial evidence that it will. Infrastructure UK has received some 60 enquiries from projects that might qualify, and more are expected. There is also strong interest across the housing sector. Negotiations on these projects are ongoing so it would be inappropriate at this point to run down a list but, as an example of the kind of thing that is likely to benefit, we have indicated that the Crossrail rolling stock and depot services procurement meets the eligibility criteria.
A number of people have asked why the Bill is necessary at all. Can the Government not already do this kind of thing without explicit legislative cover? The Treasury and Secretaries of State already have common-law powers to make guarantees, make loans and give other financial assistance. In addition, some Secretaries of State have express statutory powers to support infrastructure. However, the Treasury does not have the authority to incur expenditure in relation to guarantees on the scale that I have outlined. Moreover, there is a longstanding convention—
Lord Peston
The noble Lord was kind enough when I asked him why we needed a Bill to point me to an answer given in the other place, which I have to tell him I found completely incomprehensible. I am still stuck. Will he say in terms that we need a Bill because of the scale of the operations? Is he willing to place on record that that is the point and it is the size of the operations which requires legislation? I find that very odd but at least I would like to hear him say it.
Lord Newby
It is partly the scale of the operations and the length of the guarantees, and also because the current rules have gaps in them, as I understand them, or there are certain parts of the whole infrastructure world, as it were, that are not covered by the existing rules. To finish my sentence, there is a longstanding convention known as “Baldwin cover”, dating back to 1932, that Governments should not rest significant and regular expenditure under common-law powers on the sole authority of general supply legislation. That is the noble Lord’s point. It is significant and regular guarantees, not expenditure, that could have a very long period of operation.
Questions have also been raised about what kinds of project can potentially be covered by this legislation. In particular, the Institution of Civil Engineers has asked about what constitutes a nationally significant project—a phrase that does not appear in the Bill but did appear in last year’s national infrastructure plan. I should make it clear that projects that could potentially benefit from this Bill are not limited to the nationally significant projects identified in the national infrastructure plan. In addition to the areas covered by the plan, we will be prepared, for example, to look at waste management and university projects that are economically viable and simply want for finance. As to the scale of project that can potentially benefit, again there is considerable flexibility. A project does not necessarily have to be valued at several hundred millions of pounds to be considered.
The Bill is one part of the Government’s overall approach to ensuring that the United Kingdom invests in the infrastructure that it needs for the future. I look forward to our debate today and I commend the Bill to the House. I beg to move.
Lord Adonis
I am very grateful to the Deputy Chief Whip for explaining the Bill and I am delighted to be debating with the noble Lord for whom I have the highest regard. I am also very glad that Paul Deighton is to become Minister for Infrastructure. It was specifically to shadow him and his vitally important work that I have returned to the Front Bench and I much look forward to engaging with him. I understand that Paul Deighton will not be joining the Government until January so this is an unusual, if not unprecedented, case of the shadow materialising three months before the substance, which sort of sums up the Government’s infrastructure problem: all shadow, no substance.
If I can continue the metaphor, this Bill is one of the most shadowy I have ever seen. Its four clauses simply give the Government power to spend up to £50 billion on infrastructure in very broad areas—water, electricity, gas, telecoms, sewerage, railways, roads, health, education, courts, prisons and housing—with little indication in the Bill or in the debates in the House of Commons beyond a single announcement about Crossrail trains of what real infrastructure projects it is intended to assist and when.
The Minister did not enlighten us much further, saying that,
“it would be inappropriate … to run down a list”,
which is a phrase redolent of Sir Humphrey at his very best. Our consideration of this Bill is a mere shadow since it is a money Bill which we cannot amend or even debate amendments to. However, before this phantom passes into law, I should like to set out some issues for debate and would be grateful for the Minister’s response.
In 2009, expenditure on infrastructure was at the highest real-terms level for about two decades. Three years later, the Construction Products Association is warning that infrastructure is in free fall. It is expected to decline by 13% this year compared to last. The CPA is projecting even bigger falls in key sectors—for example, a 40% drop in road construction this year—not least because of the coalition’s wholesale cancellation of road schemes in 2010. Will the Minister confirm these figures and tell us whether, in retrospect, it was wise to cancel essential schemes of national importance such as the dualling of the A14 east-west route from Felixstowe port to the Midlands and the dualling of the A21, a key route from London to the Kent and Sussex coast?
In the case of the A14, this project has now resurfaced as a proposed toll road. My officials told me that tolling of the A14 was unworkable when I was Secretary of State, but the coalition clearly has a higher source of wisdom. So, could the Minister tell me, first, whether the Government are considering a state financial guarantee for the privately financed A14 project, as it will surely need one; secondly, what tolling scheme is proposed, because I can find no reference anywhere to a scheme that appears even vaguely workable; and thirdly, when the tolled and dualled A14 will be open? If the work had gone ahead as a conventional road scheme in 2010, the opening would be taking place in stages from now. The only reference that I can find on the web is to a tolled scheme that will open from 2018.
Equally concerning is the delay and prevarication over energy policy, which is holding up investment in new infrastructure, including the £210 million Siemens investment in a wind turbine factory in Hull and huge investment in new wind farms and renewable energy. There are big delays, too, in rolling out superfast broadband and 4G. When I was on the Norfolk coast earlier this month, visiting Statoil’s new Sheringham Shoal offshore wind farm, a particular concern was the lack of fast broadband and the poor quality of mobile phone reception. Britain’s lack of 4G mobile phone provision is pushing us behind the United States, Germany, Sweden and parts of Asia. As for broadband, the Country Land and Business Association recently described the superfast broadband situation as lamentable saying:
“It is becoming clear that the Government’s strategy will not meet the target date of 2015”.
The shadowy case for this Bill is that it will help unlock the capacity of the private sector to invest in infrastructure, but it is important to understand that a critical obstacle to infrastructure investment is the Government’s own failure to lead and deliver.
I mentioned road schemes a moment ago. It is the same story with airport capacity in the south-east, where the Prime Minister has just appointed a review which is going to take three years. It is now three-and-a-half years since the previous Government announced their decision on airport capacity in the south-east. In the House of Commons, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury said that any decision on airport capacity would be taken by the next Government. In other words, this Government have given up. If I may say so, that is one of the most brazen abdications of responsibility that I have ever heard from a Government.
It is the same story on HS2—another project that I know intimately—where dither and delay since 2010 have put the project back by at least two years and may again delay the key decisions until the next Government. It is a similar story too in London, where one of Mayor Johnson’s first cuts in 2008 cancelled the desperately needed Thames Gateway Bridge which would have provided another Thames crossing in east London, for which both planning and funding were already secured. Instead, all we have is a new cable car offering a tiny fraction of that capacity and—you could not make this up—the beginning of a planning process which might ultimately lead to a new bridge not far from the one which was cancelled for short-term political reasons. It is the same story now with the extension of the Northern Line to Battersea, a key development area. In June, a Treasury source told the Evening Standard:
“The entire weight of the Government is being thrown behind the extension of the Northern Line”.
Now, Transport for London can only say:
“Subject to funding being in place and permission from the Secretary of State for Transport, the new stations could be open by 2019”.
So much for transport, energy and broadband. Let us look at education. One of the Government’s first acts in 2010 was to slash to ribbons the school building programme. If that had not happened, hundreds of schools would be being built or refurbished as we speak, pumping billions into the construction industry and providing modern school premises which will now have to be built at far greater expense hereafter. It is the same story too with housing. The number of housebuilding starts fell by almost a quarter between March last year and March this year, with starts by housing associations, in the quasi-public sector, down by a similar proportion.
I have always taken it as a golden rule that the state should not preach to the private sector until it has got its own act together. Well, let us be clear: we are now confronting a situation where the state itself has slashed or delayed infrastructure spending across the board, and failed to agree planning decisions for key privately funded infrastructure projects, while deploring delays in the private sector. That is not leadership, but complacency masquerading as concern.
It is not just on investment that the state is failing to lead. The Government talk constantly about reducing planning delays, something which is within the power of the state to determine. Yet I note that last year only 60% of major planning applications were processed within the target date of 13 weeks, a big reduction on the 68% determined within 13 weeks in 2010.
Turning to the national infrastructure plan, which the noble Lord said was “ambitious but credible”, I note that in the latest reissue, 63 projects have disappeared without explanation from the 2011 plan—I assume that they were ambitious but not credible. Of the 357 projects in both the original plan and the updated version published this April, almost two-thirds were in pre-procurement stages. Only 38 had proceeded to procurement or construction. More than 300 projects in the national infrastructure plan therefore are still mere shadows, and 63 have vanished into thin air. Honing down to the most important projects, the British Chamber of Commerce identified 13 critical infrastructure projects before the last election. There has been little or no progress on eight of those 13.
Will the Bill help with any of this? It entirely depends what the proposed assistance is going to be used for. The Bill simply says that the Government may provide any kind of financial assistance up to the absolute limit of £50 billion. The only further limitation suggested by Ministers is that projects should be of “national significance”, a definition which looks to be in the eye of the beholder. Will the Minister give us just a few examples, beyond Crossrail trains, of projects which will now go ahead through the proposed guarantees to the private sector, as the CBI has said that we need urgent action from Ministers to identify further projects?
Will the Minister also give us an indication of when the first project financed under this guarantee scheme will actually go ahead? When the Crossrail trains announcement was made, the Financial Times said:
“The government appears to have relaxed one of its key criteria for guarantees—neither the super sewer”—
another possible project for this scheme, funding for which is apparently stuck in the Treasury—
“nor the Crossrail rolling stock schemes will be ‘shovel ready’ within 12 months”.
Will the Minister tell us about the relationship between the Bill and the Growth and Infrastructure Bill, which was published last week? The Bill was supposedly going to unlock a string of major infrastructure projects. Now, before it is even enacted, another appears whose Explanatory Notes state that its purpose is,
“promoting growth and facilitating provision of infrastructure”.
There are to be yet more changes to the planning system intended—and have we not heard this before?—
“to enable applicants to avoid delays in local decision-making”,
while respecting localism. The next Bill also includes changes to the infrastructure financing regime, which overlaps directly with this Bill: for example, removing so-called unviable Section 106 agreements for affordable housing.
The CLG blurb accompanying the Growth and Infrastructure Bill states that those further changes could:
“Unlock investment decisions across a range of technologies, bringing thousands of new jobs and billions of pounds of investment”.
Those are almost precisely the same words used to justify the present Bill and a host of other initiatives over the past two years, each of which has been succeeded by another intended to achieve precisely the same objectives before it has even been enacted, let alone implemented. They are also the justification for the regional growth fund, only a tiny fraction of whose allocated funds have yet been released to businesses, as catalogued in the highly critical report from the Public Accounts Committee.
I have asked a lot of questions, and I entirely understand if the Minister writes to me about those to which he cannot get answers by the time he replies. I fully recognise that it may take longer than two hours —perhaps two years or even two centuries—to come up with a viable scheme for tolling the existing A14.
Let me end on a broader note. When the Bill was debated in the Commons, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury said that it would,
“facilitate headline schemes for infrastructure and housing investment, accelerate and bring forward investment in major UK infrastructure projects and increase the number of homes being built and occupied”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/10/12; col 121.]
Those are fine words, but what we need now is action. At the moment, we are simply chasing shadows.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
My Lords, I am glad that infrastructure is defined in Clause 1(2), as it is a word that has such a wide meaning and without it I would not feel entitled to speak on the Bill, because I do not have expertise on the financial aspects of it. Guarantees are of such importance and relevance at present, when we need jobs to be created. I believe that the guarantees under the Bill will enable works presently delayed to be carried out so that they will be of benefit both to the nation and to individuals. My comments will be directed towards subsection (2)(e), housing, which will also automatically involve subsections (2)(a), because of the linkage of services, and (2)(b), roads and transport.
For a good many years, until I reached their retiring age, I was a vice president of the National House Building Council. I hold it in high regard and it provides an excellent service for small builders and individuals. When I had to rebuild my own home in the 1980s—sadly, it had split asunder due to subsidence—I valued the security provided by its guarantee, which I believe covered the first 10 years after construction.
Later, I learnt of the wide support that it gives to the home building industry and I know that it plays a very necessary part in the provision of homes which are again so badly needed. Awards were given annually to various categories, such as small builder of the year, rather like a mini-Oscar ceremony. I hope that the NHBC will, among others, encourage builders to produce commonhold developments. It is time that we got rid of the antiquated leasehold system for residential property, which exists only in England and Hawaii, I believe.
In the Housing Reform Act 2002, we introduced commonhold, but it has hardly been used at all. I believe that the main reason is that developers prefer to make more money by selling the freehold to one body and the leasehold to another. That means that owner-occupiers, particularly in blocks of flats, have little or no control over the work carried out on their properties or the costs of them. I am sure that your Lordships are aware that I have spoken about leasehold reform many times. I still have my flat in Australia, where our commonhold is called strata title. Under that system, all flat owners are members of the body corporate and all decisions about the block are made collectively. I am convinced that once a reputable company such as Persimmon—and lots of others—builds and sells one commonhold block, it will see how popular and effective the system is; once it takes off, there will be no turning back. Getting the advantages known to the public will prove the value to home owners.
In our 2002 housing Act on this matter, there is provision for leaseholders in existing blocks to apply to convert to commonhold, but the provisions of the Act make it almost impossible, as 100% of leaseholders must agree. Apart from the fact that more often than not one owner is not contactable, it is open to abuse by any superior landlord not wanting to change. They need to buy out only one person’s vote to secure retention of the property for the superior landlord. Would it not provide a wonderful example if the Government were to support commonhold as the choice of tenure for the buildings to be converted to residences on the former Olympic site? This would provide a real legacy for the Games.
Returning to the wider issues of housing, we are all aware of the desperate need for more housing. Finance has been in short supply and mortgages have been almost unobtainable. Small builders cannot employ staff or begin construction unless they are sure of financial backing. From the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, I thought that the flexibility in this scheme should clearly mean that small builders can be supported in the same way as anyone else; it does not have to apply only to huge construction firms. Many of these small builders have huge skills and capabilities.
A lot of noble Lords will remember the late Lord Taylor. He told me that his career began when he built one house—I think in Liverpool. Selling that house provided him with the funds to build two houses and he went on to head Taylor Woodrow, which was a great achievement for him and a wonderful example for anyone looking for a future in the industry. We should not overlook that; we should support small builders who are ready and able. I like the expression “shovel ready” used by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and builders are shovel ready and often desperate for work at the moment. If they cannot employ staff, they cannot get going.
There is another aspect of housing on which I must comment. At present, there is a great argument about green belt and non-green belt land. I made this point during the passage of the Localism Bill, but consider it worth repeating in the context of this debate and all recent debates on the subject. There are small pockets of land in so-called green belt land that are sited in the midst of fairly built-up areas. These infill sites already have all the infrastructure in place and homes could be built on them without the delay of waiting for services, such as power, roads, and so on. This would mean that builders could get working much more quickly. Naturally, whoever owns the adjoining house will not want new neighbours, but nimbyism is not to be encouraged. Providing the new build is in harmony with the neighbours, it would rapidly become acceptable.
Reading page 3 of the Library note on this Bill today, I was disappointed to see the negative comments from the Opposition in the other place. To speak as pessimistically as Rachel Reeves did for the Opposition—in col. 689—is most disturbing. Surely we should all welcome this hope of producing not only more jobs, but also more homes. All parties must surely support the principle of this Bill. To oppose it, which in fairness she said she would not, would be to kill off hope for people who would definitely benefit if this finance made the difference between action and no action on infrastructure.
I can better understand Nick Raynsford’s remarks about “deep scepticism” and his wondering whether the Bill will deliver all that is expected of it. We have heard similar comments from the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. We all hope that it will deliver, but no one can know these things for certain. Without this Bill, I believe there is no hope for this necessary progress. It is a money Bill and I understand the significance of that, but I do not mind speaking on it. It is not something that we have any right to do anything about. We must go ahead with this financial assistance scheme; we must look to the Government to ensure that the money is put to good use to provide homes, systems, schemes and developments to the benefit of those needing work and homes.
I found many of the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, very interesting, such as his comments on toll structures. I have just come back from Australia, and I was very interested to see how well the toll roads work out there. Whether they are appropriate for here, I do not know. That is not my field of expertise. The noble Lord said that things have not progressed but perhaps this Bill will help them to progress. We have to look at this positively and go ahead with this action by the Government. The important thing is that the money has to be spent wisely on guarantees. No one seems to be able to get a guarantee now from a bank for pretty well anything, particularly for major projects but also for small projects. My appeal today is that we try to help small builders to get going so that homes can be built immediately for those who desperately need them and so that builders can provide employment. I support the Bill.
Lord Desai
My Lords, as I came into the Chamber this afternoon, I was told that I had missed the U-turn on the badger cull, but I am glad that I am here to see the U-turn on the Treasury’s economic policy. Unlike the badger cull, it is as if only some badgers are not going to be culled, but others will be. It is a very minor regression from their policy by the Government. I guess it will do no harm to spend £50 billion doing something, although I still do not quite understand why it is necessary.
There are two problems. The Government’s economic case—I thought I was one of the few people who understood it—was that they would withdraw from spending money because we do not have any money, which is fair enough, and the private sector would take over investment. The private sector is flush with money. There is absolutely no shortage of funds in the private sector. The balance sheets of private corporations are very generously funded. Therefore, if these infrastructure projects cannot get money from the private sector, one needs to know what the market failure is. If the market failure is that the Government should have been spending this money anyway, why are we doing it? If the problem is that the Government have to spend money because projects will not be funded by the private sector, I understand that. I grew up with that argument and have no problem with it, but in that case, £50 billion is not enough. As my noble friend Lord Adonis pointed out, there are many more things that could be done.
The Government are not doing that, but are doing this. I still have not seen an intellectual case or any evidence that significant numbers of people are unable to get money, although it may be the case. One reason could be that people need some kind of pump-priming investment so the Government have to start something for other people join in. The Government have to show some confidence in the long-term prospects of the economy by, for example, starting a third runway, upgrading the A14 or whatever, and then there would be supplementary investment. But this says that the Government will not do anything except stand there because in 1932 Baldwin prevented the Government doing it. I find it very surprising that the Government cannot do this in any case, but that is a bureaucratic thing, a regular Treasury thing, and so I will never understand it.
I find it intellectually impossible to understand why it is being done now, why, if it is being done now, it could not have been done two years ago and why a much more ambitious scheme could not have been done many years ago. Why have the Government waited two years and had a massacre of infrastructure projects before we got to this? Lastly, have the Government any idea whether this is going to work? I still do not know which projects are stuck because they cannot get a bank loan. If they cannot get a bank loan, is it because the project will not make money? If that is the case, is the taxpayer about to lose more money than before?
Baroness Maddock
My Lords, I always enjoy the contributions of the noble Lord, Lord Desai. I declare an interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. This is an important Bill, particularly for housebuilding, which is what I shall concentrate on. It was interesting that Radio 4 yesterday morning highlighted rapidly rising rents in the private sector and highlighted one of the reasons for this—the shortage of homes that we face in the United Kingdom. Housing is a vital part of our United Kingdom infrastructure. Not only does housebuilding help to boost the economy, particularly the construction industry—a point made by my noble friend Lady Gardner—it also solves a number of other significant social problems, including social housing waiting lists, high rents, the affordability of homes for first-time buyers and overcrowding, which is becoming acute in housing in this country. However, despite this, the coalition Government inherited a housing crisis in May 2010.
Under successive Governments, the number of homes being built has been declining. In particular, social housing stocks have been extremely badly hit. The coalition Government are committed to building more homes. We have already said that we expect to build 170,000 new social homes by the end of this Parliament. However, while the Government are investing state money in many of these projects, there is also a real need for support for private developers to get housebuilding projects under way, a point made by my noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes. The Bill will allow the Government to provide loans, guarantees and other financial support for infrastructure of up to £50 billion. As I understand it, £10 billion of this could be used to support housebuilding.
One of the problems of our housing infrastructure is its age. Very many of our houses were built in the last century, the century before and even before that. This means that our housing stock is incredibly energy inefficient and this does not help other matters that we are trying to deal with in reducing our carbon emissions. We just do not have enough houses. As I understand it, in 2011 390,000 families were created, but we managed to provide just in excess of 100,000 new homes.
The previous Government, despite the wide-ranging but scathing opening remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, did not do a lot for housebuilding. Housing construction—perhaps it was not all due to the previous Government—actually fell off a cliff during the financial crisis. In 2008-09, fewer than 100,000 new properties were started. Although the number has increased since then, we are still a long way off building enough new homes. I understand that the revised figure for 2011-12, as I mentioned earlier, is something in excess of 100,000 properties. Despite this positive news, a far higher percentage of these new starts were public sector-led, either by housing associations or local government, than were privately funded. In 2010-11, 24% of constructions were publicly financed compared to between 9% and 13% in the decade before.
The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, did not talk too much in his opening comments about his own Government’s record on housebuilding. During 13 years of the Labour Government, the social housing stock fell by well over 400,000. Although they had ambitious targets, they did not meet them in the 13 years. In fact, they consistently failed to meet their social housing target and, in their last year of office, they missed it by 78,000.
The lack of social housing and delivery of new private sector housing has led to a number of very serious consequences. Average house prices in January 2012 were estimated to be under £200,000, and for those of us who spend our time in London, we know that here—and particularly in Westminster—the position is even worse. This is an increase in the past decade of almost 70%. An average of 21,658 properties has been deemed to be overcrowded at any one point in the past three years. The lack of supply has also meant that homes cost more to rent. The mean rent of the private rented sector in 2010-11 was £160 a week, and that has risen considerably, leading to very large bills for housing benefit. That bill has increased from £11 billion in 2000-01 to £21 billion in 2010-11. If we look at other figures to do with the private rented sector, which is where a lot of people have to find their homes now, because we have not built so many social properties, there has been an 86% increase in working families claiming housing benefit. We now have more than 400,000 people receiving housing benefit. What is more worrying is that we have another 10,000 applying for housing benefit in the private rented sector every month. The total number has risen by 37% in three years. We can see why it is important that we find some way in which to support the construction of more homes in our country.
I shall spend a very short time on the area I come from, the north-east of England, where housebuilding numbers have suffered greatly since the financial crisis. They have slightly improved on the latest figures, but again in the north-east it is housing associations and local authorities that have taken up the greater number of starts. That shows a real need for more support for private sector housebuilding.
I have spoken on housing matters in this House for more than 20 years and in that time housing has never been really high up the political agenda. For many years we have not had a Housing Minister sitting around the Cabinet table, which is one reason why housing has been a little bit down the agenda. Instead of having its own department, it has been part of another, now called the Department for Communities and Local Government. In my time in Parliament, that is the fourth name for that department. It is not one of the highest performing departments, yet housing and housing infrastructure is such an important part of what happens in our country and in our economy.
I am very glad that the Government have brought forward this Bill. If there are technical details about why we could not do it before, that is a good reason to have it. We need to do all we can—and personally I want to see greater progress in the number of homes keeping up with the number of people and in building homes that produce less carbon. I give my support to the Bill.
Lord Giddens
My Lords, I hesitate to disagree with two distinguished professors of economics from the same institution as me, the London School of Economics, and with my noble friend Lord Adonis. Actually, I do not mind; it is good to have a bit of controversy in these debates, even from the same side of the House. Anyway, I feel more positive about this Bill than they do.
To me, the Bill is quite interesting, set against a background of previous government policy and the Government’s previous approach to cuts. It seems to mark something of a move away from the Government’s formerly—if I may say so—somewhat primitive approach to cuts, which everyone accepts have to be made. In many areas the Government have looked for cuts in a simplistic and even counterproductive way by not analysing their knock-on consequences. As a result, we do not even know in some important areas whether the cuts that are made truly are cuts.
I will give an example from the sector that I know best, the university sector. In this country we have a number of world-class universities. However, the consequences for the economy of the Government’s migration policy are very debatable. I have looked at the figures provided by the country’s main university groups, and it seems to me that these measures have cost the country money, not saved it. If you do not look at knock-on consequences, you simply do not know what a cut amounts to.
It is also very important to say that the obverse applies—renewed investment does not necessarily imply more borrowing, even in the short term. Again, it depends wholly on the economic consequences for jobs, revenue and demand. Whatever the limitations of the National Infrastructure Plan 2011, it seems to make clear that infrastructure spending can have a multiplier effect on productivity, employment and demand. The Government should always seek to balance these things when looking to produce a more effective system of savings and growth for the economy.
Infrastructure investment is a key area for other reasons. The professor at Oxford, Dieter Helm, a writer I much admire for his work on energy and infrastructure, has recently edited what seems to me to be the definitive book on British infrastructure, which rejoices in the sexy title of Delivering a 21st Century Infrastructure for Britain. I do not know how many copies it will sell but it is a pretty good book. He makes the point forcefully that not many businesses would want to locate in the UK because of its infrastructure which,
“is not fit for the digital age and much of it is very carbon-intensive”.
It depends which ranking system you chose but in the most well used one, the Competitiveness Index, the UK ranks only 24th in the world for competitiveness in the area of infrastructure. The outgoing Labour Government must shoulder quite a bit of the blame for this situation. Even though I am a Labour supporter, the Labour Government’s record—my noble friend Lord Adonis will forgive me—in transport, energy and housing was not impressive.
I have four questions to ask the Minister. I know that he is going to want to reply to the bombardment from the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, but he might perhaps spare a bit of time for my pathetic little inquiries. First, infrastructure is a very wide category and the Bill makes it open to a diversity of investors. How will balance be achieved if too much funding concentrates on certain areas? How will priorities be determined? There is a lot on priorities in the national infrastructure plan but I cannot see the relationship between that and the Bill at the moment, especially if it is driven too much by who is actually prepared to stump up money rather than by an overall plan.
Secondly, the Government claim initial successes for their pension infrastructure platform but the problems of linking pension funds to infrastructure investment are well known. Only 1% of pension funds globally are invested in infrastructure projects—for good reason, as there are often high risks in the early stages of such investment and pension funds are not normally geared to such risk-taking. How will the Government confront this issue?
Thirdly, and importantly, where will the burden of risk end up? As these are long-term projects, will the burden of risk in the Bill end up with the public sector in most cases, and therefore will they, as I said earlier, involve far greater cost to the public purse than might appear in the system that is set out?
Fourthly, energy is mentioned often, but what will be the relationship between this Bill and the new Energy Bill, which I believe will be published next month? At the moment energy policy seems to me, and I think to most people in the industry, pretty chaotic, with the Prime Minister saying one thing and other Ministers saying something else, with the Treasury apparently holding different views from the Department of Energy and Climate Change. Do the Government recognise the need for at least a 20-year planning cycle for core energy supplies? Does this not imply getting well away from a strategy based largely on short-term market fluctuations? In other words, I do not see from this Bill and the plan how long-term planning is to be achieved. We know that it cannot be achieved by the methods of the 1960s and that it is difficult to plan on a long-term cycle when technological innovation and other innovations are inherently unpredictable. Planning there must be, though, and the Government should devote a lot more attention to what form this will take if their interventions in infrastructure are to be at least a little bit more successful than the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, thinks is possible.
Lord Skidelsky
My Lords, as someone who has never been averse to having a go at the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I start by saying how idiotic and puerile it is for newspapers to make a lead story of which ticket he used for his journey from Chester to London. It is George Osborne’s stewardship of the economy, not his travel arrangements, which deserves censure. However, we have an infantile press.
Three big mistakes stick out over the past two and a half years. The first was the belief that cutting down government spending would automatically produce recovery. I know the Government now claim that they never believed anything so simple or idiotic, but they did, and there is plenty of evidence to prove it. Austerity is not a recovery policy.
The second has been the Chancellor’s failure to distinguish between current and capital spending. This has made the deficit seem more dangerous than it was. The prime example of this blind spot was the £50 billion cut in capital spending. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, has drawn attention to the devastating consequences of this for the construction industry and for house, transport, education and hospital building.
The third was the Chancellor’s belief that without a severe fiscal contraction Britain would go the way of Greece: that is, interest rates would go through the roof. This was doubly wrong. First, with an independent central bank able to buy government debt in whatever quantities were needed there was never any chance of gilt yields rising to the levels experienced by Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Spain. Secondly, and perhaps even more importantly, a reduction in the cost of government borrowing is no guarantee of a reduction in the cost of commercial loans sufficient to offset the collapse of the private demand for loans. That is the explanation of a point mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Desai, regarding cash mountains sitting in corporations.
All three mistakes were interrelated parts of the wrong theory of the economy. Anyone who is interested in economics must start the analysis there. I am not going to go into it, but it is well known to those who are economically literate. The results have been zero growth since George Osborne took office. That was entirely predictable and was predicted by some of us. I have been saying for two and a half years—and I am not alone—that austerity would not produce growth and it has not produced growth. Now the international agencies are saying the same thing. Slowly but surely, the Government are being driven to plan B, though the Prime Minister prefers to call it plan A-plus.
It is against that background that I give a cautious welcome to the proposals in this Bill. Better late than never, better too little than nothing at all. As I understand it, the Bill aims to do three things. First, it provides for the Government to guarantee up to £40 billion or £50 billion of “nationally significant” private infrastructure investments which have to be ready to start within 12 months of the guarantee. As the Treasury explains it, the aim is,
“to kick start critical infrastructure projects that may have stalled because of adverse credit conditions”.
That is Treasury language. The guarantees might cover key project risks such as construction, performance or revenue.
Secondly, the Government will lend money directly to private investors to enable 30 public/private partnership projects worth £6 billion to go ahead in the next 12 months; I do not think that has been mentioned yet in the debate. Finally, a £5 billion export financing facility will be available later this year to overseas buyers of British capital goods; in other words, an export credit guarantee scheme of the type we are all familiar with. I would like to reinforce what the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said. Having cancelled about £50 billion of certain public capital spending, the Government are hoping to replace it with an equivalent amount of private capital spending, much of which will never happen. That is completely illogical.
The main difference between this Bill and the British investment bank, which I have been urging, is that my bank—I call it “my bank” because I feel a certain sense of paternity in the idea, having been floating it for the last three years—would actively raise money in the private markets for its own investment projects whereas UK Guarantees, the government scheme, merely provides some finance for projects initiated by the private sector. In other words, the government scheme is still governed by the ideology that the private sector is more likely to pick winners than a state investment bank and that that is sufficient justification for waiting for the private sector to produce its projects.
Lord Peston
My Lords, the logic of what is being said is not that it is more likely to pick winners but that it already has all those winners. The only things holding them back are the risks of the projects which the taxpayer is taking over. It is a new theory to replace classical economics which—as the noble Lord well knows—says savings cause investment. Now we have loan guarantees causing investment and it is just as nonsensical as a serious piece of economics.
Lord Skidelsky
The noble Lord is quite right. The argument can be developed, but my point about picking winners and losers is that there is no empirical evidence for it being true, as a general proposition, that the state is more likely to pick losers than the private sector. We have had many examples of that not being true. The economic collapse of 2008 is a very good one.
Lord Giddens
Would the noble Lord accept that there is actually evidence that the state is quite often better? If you look at the history of energy industries and most technological innovations, they have normally been kick-started by government investment. This applies to all the major technology that has transformed our lives over the past 20 or 30 years.
Lord Skidelsky
I am happy to accept that. I was making a more modest claim.
A mere guarantee for privately initiated schemes is bound to be less successful, apart from in the efficiency of the schemes, at securing the required volume of investment than a commitment by the Government to a definite infrastructure programme. So while I wish UK Guarantees well, a certain amount of scepticism is in order.
In the final part of my speech, I want to consider what is happening to the economy. When an economy is crawling along the bottom, any small wave is likely to lift our spirits. Over the past three quarters—that is, the past nine months—the economy has shrunk by 1%. Even if, as now expected, it achieves a positive growth of about 0.8% this quarter, that still leaves it in roughly the same place as it was a year ago. Moreover if, as commentators suggest, this boost is due to the Olympics, it will be in the nature of a windfall. However much we may rejoice in the achievements of our athletes, 28 gold medals is not enough to turn the British economy around.
However, there is still a puzzle, which is that unemployment has been static in the past few months, and even falling slightly, despite the fact that output is flat and the economically active population has increased by 550,000 over the past two years. You would therefore expect unemployment to have increased. Why has it not done so? That is the puzzle. There are several possible explanations, none of them conclusive, because the facts necessary for a convincing answer are buried in a labyrinth of tricky statistics and slippery definitions. It may be that employers have been hoarding labour, but that becomes less plausible the longer the recession goes on. Part of the answer at least must be that productivity—that is, output per hour worked—has been falling. As the Guardian put it,
“it now requires many more of us to labour away to churn out the reduced volume of stuff”.
Falling productivity is just as serious a problem for the economy as rising unemployment, and a greater problem in the longer term.
The Prime Minister claims that 900,000 extra jobs have been created in the private sector over the past two years. I never know how many it is—sometimes it is 900,000 and sometimes it is 1 million; it goes up every day, but I am sticking to the 900,000 figure for the time being. That is not of course the net increase in jobs, given that 400,000 jobs have been lost in the public sector. The net increase in jobs has been 500,000. Can the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Newby, tell us how many of the net gains in employment are full-time? Labour market statistics suggest that more than half of them are part-time or self-employed. Can the Minister also say whether those registered on government work programmes count in the Prime Minister’s extra 900,000 private sector jobs? The point is this: if a lot of the private sector job creation consists of part-time low-skilled jobs at the bottom end of the service sector, it would explain the decline in productivity that limits the rise in unemployment, but it is a poor omen for that vibrant, high-value economy that is supposed to secure our future prosperity.
I wish the Government well in these plans because I wish the country well, but we will need much more solid evidence than we have seen so far to believe that we have turned the corner and started to repair the damage of the past two and a half years.
Baroness Wheatcroft
My Lords, I will return to the narrow interpretation of the Bill, which is about infrastructure rather than employment figures. We all know that this country needs investment in our infrastructure which is second class. Our housing stock is too small. The Government are trying to address these problems. The Bill is a welcome contribution, although it is just one of many measures now being implemented, as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, pointed out. However, as I listened to him and to the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, and their criticism of projects postponed, I had to disagree. The noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, may well term me an economic illiterate, but it was right to postpone these projects because it was a simple matter of the accounts.
When the Government came to power, they were faced with a dreadful deficit, and their priority, quite rightly, was deficit reduction. However, not only were they seen to be reducing the deficit, but they had to persuade the financial markets that they were serious. Clearly, they have succeeded in persuading them of that and that is why we have the ratings we now have. Under the previous Government there was much talk about prudence, and prudence with a purpose, but profligacy was the reality. We now have a more prudent approach, and it is only because of that approach that the Government are now in a position to bring forward the scheme in this Bill.
We heard much talk from the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, about the rise in rents and the problems that this is bringing to housing benefit. Providing housing benefit for those who cannot meet their rent now costs taxpayers almost twice as much as it did three years ago. We cannot afford that bill, let alone more. We need more affordable homes to rent and we need to enable those who want to own their own home to get a foot on the housing ladder. This Bill will help by giving backing to those who will provide the new homes. However, our needs go far beyond housing. If we are to compete as an economy, we must make long-overdue improvements to our road and rail networks, to our energy supplies, and to our airports. We cannot wait too long for that.
This Bill pledges some useful support for projects that need a helping hand, but the private sector can, and should, finance most of the infrastructure projects, with the Government in the role of enabler. I am glad to say that, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Newby, the Treasury is looking at £257 billion worth of projects to come forward over the next five years. I gather that 180 projects are now earmarked for development. These include the new, and crucial, nuclear power stations. Negotiations with the suppliers have now reached a very critical stage, when they have to be persuaded that there will be some guarantee of long-term price stability. I do not know how that can be done, but it is clearly extremely important that we should have nuclear power. The question is: how are these to be funded? The Government are now striving to find some innovative ways of securing that funding, because banks will not provide long-term funding. Five years is the longest that many of them will now contemplate.
We are due to hear more about these funding plans in the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement. It is interesting that, thanks to the Indian summer we have just had, autumn now comes in December. Apparently, the Statement will include details of the new-look PFI. I do not want another PFI. They are profligate, foolish, and inept, and we will be paying through the nose for many years to come for too many of those schemes that came forward through the old-style PFI.
The public were duped into believing that we could have new schools, hospitals and bridges without paying a penny. If it looks too good to be true then it is; and it was. Too many of the investors, many of them offshore, have made fortunes out of PFI, while the public have been saddled with long-term future commitments. These were heads-I-win, tails-you-lose commitments. We do not want PFI again, or anything like it. We need something new and innovative, and I hope that the Government will come forward with some means of providing funding that will not leave the public sector on the hook, as it has been. For example, as regards roads, the need for improvement is clear; there are potholes everywhere. However, if we are to have new roads, someone has to pay, and the Government simply cannot afford to. Surely it is right that those who use the roads pay; whether through tolls or through other electronic means of road pricing. That is surely the way forward. We have to avoid things such as the M6 toll road, where Macquarie, in its various guises, is now said to be making a return of about 150% a year.
There are sources of long-term financing that we need to tap into for such projects. The insurance and pension funds have long-term liabilities which could fit neatly with these schemes. The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, made mention of the pension funds. Clearly, they are right to have some qualms, but the Government are working with various trade bodies, including the Association of British Insurers, to try to devise ways in which the funds with long-term liabilities might come together to provide funding for major infrastructure projects. I hope that we will be able to hear more about that in the Autumn Statement. The talking has gone on for a while; it would be good if we were soon to see some action.
Finally, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, for reminding us that this country can do infrastructure rather well. We should not lose sight of the fact that the Olympics were a great success, and the gold medal tally was pretty good too. However, we can do infrastructure and we need to get moving on it.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, I thank Ministers for briefing some of us about the Bill last night. It was a very interesting introduction to it.
First, I should like to spend a few minutes examining the wider problems, beyond the financing, associated with getting projects off the ground, such as the approval process, planning and, of course, the appraisal criteria. I think it was two years ago that Infrastructure UK published a report comparing the civil engineering costs of big projects in the UK and Germany. The costs of construction were remarkably similar, but what was different was the enormously greater cost of getting projects off the ground in this country. It was very interesting that in his introduction the Minister said that one of the criteria for financing was that you had to get the project off the ground within 12 months of obtaining the finance. That is quite a challenge. First, presumably one has to get through compliance with the Treasury Green Book, which is an incredibly complicated document. You need lots of consultants’ reports to support your case, which costs time and money, and sometimes the results are such that you wonder whether the exercise is worth while. A similar document is required for transport projects and, again, it is incredibly complex. It goes down to fractions of a second, timing millions of cars, and that decides whether you build a motorway, a road or something else. Again, that costs an enormous amount of money. What will the criteria be for allowing these projects to be financed in this way? At the same time, does the Minister agree that it is about time that the Green Book and the equivalent transport document were reviewed to make them cheaper and simpler?
The next issue is planning, alluded to by my noble friend Lord Adonis. Planning delays are getting longer and longer. I declare an interest as chairman of the Rail Freight Group. Some rail freight terminals in the south-east have gone through two planning inquiries. The Minister lost the last judicial review on one of them, so he is now thinking of a reason for having another planning inquiry. One might suggest that, in considering these things, Ministers should obey the law and look at these things objectively, as I am sure their legal advisers will have asked them to do. However, it all adds up to an enormous cost for developers and enormous time delays. Getting planning permission for some of these projects can cost £10 million or even £20 million because of all the consultants involved. Therefore, while I welcome the finance in the Bill, I am not sure how much it is going to help things to go ahead.
Secondly, I want to cover briefly what the Minister said about this Bill having minimum impact on the public sector finances. I would say that I have not been speaking for 10 minutes yet; that may be wishful thinking on someone’s part. There are so many here who are experts on finance that I deign to tread there, but if we have a £50 billion fund for investments or guarantees, does that not affect the PSBR somehow, if it still exists? A couple of years ago I asked the Secretary of State for Transport—it was Philip Hammond, who was two Secretaries of State ago—whether he had any views on whether Network Rail’s debts should be on the government books. He said that he was agnostic about it; I do not know whether that still applies. There is also said to be a debt liability of £1 billion on the Channel Tunnel going back 25 years, so I do not know how all this works. However, I cannot believe that a £50 billion fund or guarantee from the Government has no effect on government finances. I am sure that the Minister will be able to put me right on that.
While everyone is encouraging projects to go ahead with a kick-start, I find one in particular a bit odd. This is the second Bill this year that would authorise government funding for the Thames tunnel. The previous one was the Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Act 2012. Why is there this enthusiasm for pouring public money into a Chinese-owned so-called public-private sector utility? Are the Government not aware that on 18 October the European Court of Justice, in its judgment C-301/10, found that the UK had not complied with directive 91/271 in respect of the Thames and another river somewhere up north, but that in seeking to comply the Government should look at the best known technology that does not impose excessive costs? I think that £4.2 billion—the equivalent of £80 every year for 30 years on every water payer within the Thames Water catchment area, which goes as far as Oxford and beyond—is probably excessive if there is an alternative. Paragraph 64 of the relevant judgment says:
“The concept of BTKNEEC”—
that is what it is called—
“thus enables compliance with the obligations of Directive 91/271 to be secured without imposing upon the Member States unachievable obligations which they might not be able to fulfil, or only at disproportionate cost”.
Even without this government money, then, the Thames tunnel will put all that money on. It may or may not comply but the judgment requires the Government to look at this again and at alternatives, which I believe exist. The noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, said that money should be put to good use and spent wisely. This is an example where, if it goes ahead, it certainly will not be. I hope that the Minister will impress upon his colleagues in Defra the need now for an independent review of the different options for complying with the ECJ ruling and for mitigating the fine which, at its worst, I am told could reach £1.5 billion. There is big money at stake here and a lot of it could be saved by looking at different options a little creatively. I will be meeting the Minister in a couple of weeks’ time to discuss this, when I shall expand on it further.
Lord Newby
My Lords, as predicted this has been an extremely interesting debate. I think I have been grilled by three LSE professors, which is probably par for the course in your Lordships’ House. I will do my best to respond to many of the questions raised. As an introduction, I have two points for the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. First, as far as I am aware, under the previous Labour Government’s plans there was an intention to have significant reductions to the deficit, about which not one word escaped the noble Lord’s lips. Presumably, had he had some ongoing responsibility he would have been trying to make sure that all that reduction had no impact on infrastructure spending. But that was wishful thinking. There would have been significant changes in infrastructure spending, even if the noble Lord was still in his former position.
Another point was made earlier by my noble friend Lady Maddock. Labour's record on housing and other areas of infrastructure expenditure, particularly social housing, hardly stands forensic scrutiny. It has certainly left us with a legacy on housing which we are struggling to put right.
The noble Lord asked a plethora of questions and I can respond to only some of them. His concern for the A14 is touching. I can confirm that it is a priority project. The Government announced in July that there will be support for an upgrade of the A14. As he surmised, the proposed scheme involves tolling. We are continuing to work on the funding package and are focusing on finding ways to bring forward construction earlier than 2018 by, among other things, streamlining the planning and procurement processes and identifying local contributions to the costs of the scheme. As my noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes said, although circumstances are different in Australia, if other countries can do tolling it should not be beyond our ability.
The noble Lord asked about airport capacity and was scathing about the fact that we have now embarked on a review. Sadly, he did not tell us what Labour’s policy was in terms of hub airport capacity. The fact that I do not know what it is is no doubt a failure on my part. He also asked about HS2 and I can assure him that we are expecting a Bill on HS2 in the next Session. The Government are pressing ahead with the scheme.
The noble Lord referred to the fact that some 63 of the projects in the national infrastructure plan had vanished. That is true. It is the nature of large projects: some are brought forward and disappear and others come forward that were not there then. He will be relieved to know that next month there will be an update on the national infrastructure plan and he will be able to see not just which projects have dropped out but which new ones have dropped in.
The noble Lord asked why a second Bill concerning infrastructure was coming forward with infrastructure in the title—the Growth and Infrastructure Bill. That Bill has a completely different purpose from this one, although they have a single objective, which is to bring forward economic activity. That Bill deals with the planning and other non-financial constraints around getting housing in particular going. This Bill is purely a financial Bill.
My noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes raised the desirability of getting more small builders operating. We agree. There has been a big reduction in the small building sector. We intend to support the establishment of a debt aggregator, which is an inelegant phrase. Such a body will be able to raise relatively large volumes of finance to lend to organisations such as builders needing smaller amounts of funding than a typical bond. It acts as a collective that will allow the money to filter down.
My noble friend also asked about the green belt and infilling. We are committed to safeguarding the green belt, but we recognise that there is some previous developed or brownfield land in many green belt areas that could be put to more productive use. We are encouraging councils to make best use of this land while protecting the openness of the green belt in line with the requirements of the National Planning Policy Framework.
The noble Lord, Lord Desai, accused us of doing a U-turn, or perhaps he congratulated us—I am not absolutely sure. He said that one of the problems is that the system is flush with money and he asked what the market failure is. There are two components, possibly. First, many companies are short of confidence to invest, largely because of the international economic situation. And secondly, the banking sector has not fully recovered from the great heart attack of 2008 and long-term lending in particular has not returned to the conditions that we saw before the crash. This is trying to help make it easier for banks which are very unwilling at the moment to lend in the long term, even for projects which in normal times they would lend on. As I mentioned in my opening speech, the volume of interest we have had suggests to us that this will be effective. The noble Lord said that many people are stuck because they cannot get a bank loan, which is undoubtedly the case. That is because of the problem that I referred to that the financial markets are not in a normal mode for long-term lending.
My noble friend Lady Maddock helpfully referred to the fact that the Government are committed to building 170,000 new social homes during the course of this Parliament. But she made the point that there are 390,000 new households being formed every year. We have a big problem and it is partly a cultural problem across the political parties. In the 1950s parties had in their manifestos figures indicating the number of houses that they were going to build. This was one of the key things that made Macmillan’s career. Housing has slipped down the political agenda and different sectors—health and education, for example—are vying for funds. We are all having to reassess the urgency of the need to get more funding into housing. It is a long-term issue and it is becoming more and more clear that it is a difficult issue; all parties, if you look at their performance in recent years, have tended to give it a broadly equal degree of priority, but it has probably not been a high enough degree of priority.
The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, asked me four exam questions and I will do my best to answer at least some of them. He asked about priorities and how Infrastructure UK decides between all the proposals coming forward. We have set out a menu of things, all of which are important, but there is not any artificial predetermination of priorities before we see what the applications say. Every application will be looked at on its merits.
Lord Newby
That is a philosophical question, almost. When is a menu a plan and when is it not a plan? If I am making a dish, it very often lists a number of things that are absolutely required to make a successful dish but it does not necessarily say in what order I need to chop them up. The menu taken together would undoubtedly represent the implementation of a very significant plan.
Lord Adonis
Is the Minister not confusing a menu with a recipe? A recipe is the plan; a menu is options which then lead to recipes thereafter, if I can be philosophical.
Lord Newby
I am always in awe of the culinary skills of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and am extremely grateful for that way of looking at it. However, whether it is a plan, recipe, menu, or none of the above, the key thing is that, as far as risk is concerned, which was the second question that I wanted to address, the Treasury will be responsible for managing the risk and assumes the contingent liabilities. Value for money, as I said earlier, is key.
The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, asked about the pension infrastructure platform, about which I should perhaps have said more. As he may know, last week, seven pension funds announced that they would be initial subscribers to the platform. They will each invest at least £100 million. We hope that the system will be up and running early next year and that it will be the first element of a much larger fund. As to why we think that pension funds might now get involved in this kind of investment whereas they have not in the past, the answer is that, in the past, they have been able to get better returns through conventional means of investing the money. At the moment, with interest rates so low, they are getting very low returns. The other problem that they have had is that, where they have gone via private equity houses which have managed infrastructure programmes, they have often found that the programmes have not worked very well and that they have been charged an arm and a leg for it. So this is a way for the funds, with support from the Treasury, to get into what could be very important new form of investment without what they have seen as being the unreasonable cost of going down a purely private sector route.
The noble Lord also asked about the relationship between this Bill and the energy Bill. The purpose of the energy Bill is to set a framework for investment in the energy sector over the medium term. Once the energy Bill, which will come forward relatively soon, is enacted, and against the framework that that Bill sets out, people looking to invest in the energy sector can form a view about what they want to do and individual projects will be eligible for support under the Bill.
The noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, started with three nonsenses and will not be surprised that the Government do not agree absolutely with everything that he said. I find it almost incredible to think that if the Government had not been seen to get the fiscal position under control, interest rates would not have gone up. Even if they had not gone up to the levels that they are at in Greece or Spain, a single percentage point increase in interest rates, among other things, costs mortgage holders in the UK an extra £12 billion a year and would over the course of a Parliament, with all other things being equal, cost the Government about £25 billion. These are very important considerations. Interest rates would almost certainly have been higher if we had turned on the tap.
On his proposal for a British investment bank which would raise money in the private market, the noble Lord will not be surprised to know that the Treasury view is that, if that bit of the state is raising money in the private market and conventional government borrowing is happening in the same private market at the same time, the markets will judge the pair of them together as a common pool of demand from the UK Government. Therefore, we could not segregate borrowing for a British investment bank without it having consequences for the way in which all government borrowing was viewed.
The noble Lord asked how many of the net gains in employment were self-employed or part time. There is a false assumption that working for oneself or working part time are somehow second-class things to do or things that people do not necessarily choose to do. Some people are forced to do one or the other. However, when I was made redundant in the last property crash in 1992, I in effect became self-employed by setting up my own company and it was one of the better things that I have ever done. It did not mean that I was economically out of the market or that I was not able to grow anything. Many people who become self-employed find that they are successfully self-employed. Equally, many people who work part time—and even the Guardian accepts that the figure is at least 80%—do so through choice rather than because they are forced to.
Lord Skidelsky
Would the Minister be kind enough to answer my question? What proportion of the Prime Minister’s 900,000 new jobs are part time and what proportion are full time? Further, are those employed under government work schemes included in the figure of 900,000?
Lord Newby
I am afraid that I do not have those figures to hand but I will write to the noble Lord.
The noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, raised concerns about continuing the old system of PFI. Many people share her concerns about the way that PFI has worked, and in any future schemes I know that the Government will seek to avoid the problems of the past in that respect.
The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, asked several questions, one of which concerned the criteria were for which projects come forward. As I said in my opening remarks, the five principle criteria are that the schemes be nationally or economically significant, financially credible, good value for money for the taxpayer, not solely dependent on a guarantee to proceed, and ready to start construction in 12 months. He asked whether the £50 billion affects the PSBR. The answer is that it affects the PSBR only if guarantees are called upon. My understanding is that if it is a contingent liability, this does not affect what I still think of as the PSBR.
The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, also asked about the Thames tunnel and whether we might have an independent review. Living as I do on the Thames and being subject to many public meetings about the Thames tunnel, it seems to me that the current programme of proposals on the tunnel involves a huge amount of consultation and much discussion of alternatives. Having got this far on what seems to be an unavoidable necessity, I certainly would be extremely loath to think that we had to go back to the drawing board and start again with an independent inquiry.
Lord Berkeley
Could the Minister answer my question about whether there will be a review or abolition of the Green Book?
Lord Newby
It will not be abolished. I will pass on the noble Lord’s concerns to my colleagues in the Treasury, who I am sure are already aware of them.
This is an important and much needed Bill. It will allow critical infrastructure projects that are being held back by adverse credit conditions to proceed and will support much needed investment in the rented housing sector. It contains measures that will support growth, jobs and families, all at minimal cost to the taxpayer. It will help to unlock the investment that the UK urgently requires to make it one of the predominant places in the world to do business, and to support sustainable growth that is balanced across sectors and regions. I request that the Bill be given a Second Reading.
Bill read a second time. Committee negatived. Standing Order 46 having been dispensed with, the Bill was read a third time and passed.
Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules
(11 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Smith of Basildon
That this House regrets that notwithstanding welcome but limited measures to ensure the deportation of foreign criminals and tackle sham marriages, and notwithstanding the importance of greater protection for the taxpayer, the Government have not demonstrated that the specific minimum annual income requirement which has been introduced through the Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules (HC 194) is the most effective way to protect taxpayers and deliver fairness for UK citizens who wish their spouse or partner to settle in the United Kingdom.
Relevant document: 6th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee
Baroness Smith of Basildon
My Lords, I should say at the outset of this debate that we support the Government in their efforts to address and manage levels of immigration to this country and to make it easier to deport foreign criminals, but my Motion of Regret is on the specific aspect of HC 194, that part of it which sets an income threshold of £18,600 for British citizens and people settled here who wish to sponsor their spouse or partner to come to live with them in this country and of £22,400 for couples with children. I would also like, during the course of the debate, to raise with the Government the issue of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights—that is, the right to respect for private and family life—and the Government’s proposal to find greater legal clarity by balancing Article 8 with public interest considerations.
On income threshold, of course it is right that if an individual wishes to bring their family to settle here in the UK, they should not assume that the state will support them. That is why it is already a requirement for an individual to demonstrate that they have access to sufficient funds at a level that will put them in a similar position to someone on income support here in the UK, so that they will not seek recourse to benefits. Unlike a blanket income threshold, the current position allows authorities to take into account the different ways in which a couple may be able to demonstrate that they can meet that requirement. For example, currently, the joint income of a couple can be taken into consideration when assessing whether their funds are adequate, as well as the likely employment prospects of one or both of the parties. Couples are also able to use an undertaking by members of their family in the UK to provide them with adequate funds for maintenance as evidence that they will be able to support themselves without recourse to the state.
I understand that that leaves a level of discretion in decision-making, and we support efforts to provide greater clarity in the rules, to eliminate opportunities for abuse, but we must also recognise that, nowadays, we live in a world where it is commonplace to travel, to study, to do business and to work abroad, so it is only natural that people from here in the UK will travel, fall in love and form long-term and permanent relations across borders. Family circumstances are not always as straightforward as government policy assumes. Many in your Lordships’ House will know of couples of different nationalities, friends and family members, who have established long-lasting relationships through living and working abroad.
When my Motion of Regret was published, I received several letters by e-mail and fax from those who have been affected by government policy. I do not know the circumstances of all those who have contacted me, but as a generalisation, I would class those who have contacted me directly as strivers—a term that the Prime Minister has used. They are people who work hard to provide for themselves and their families, not rich or wealthy people, but often people who work hard in useful jobs on wages lower than most of us in your Lordships’ House have come to expect in our working lives.
I want to refer to a couple of examples that I think may help your Lordships’ House in considering the issue. I shall call one family Mr and Mrs M. They are a married couple. She is from a Commonwealth country; she is Canadian. Both of them have children from previous marriages. They married in 2005 in the UK and lived in the UK for a year, when she went back to Canada to go to university to complete her education, which would no doubt lead to a better job. As she puts it to me in her correspondence, it was,
“short term suffering for the long term benefits”.
Her husband visited Canada a couple of times and they then decided that they would settle in Canada. For a number of reasons, not least being his responsibilities to his family here in the UK, including his parents, who were getting old, he moved back home in 2010 and they agreed that she would follow him once he found work. In the mean time, his wife sent him money from her earnings in Canada to buy household items for the new home that they were going to set up here in the UK. Again, these are people trying to do the right thing in seeking to support themselves. Alfred got a job; he was doing well and she started to complete the visa application form. However, in July 2012, their world just fell apart because he did not earn the £24,800 that the Government said he had to before his wife and two children could join him. His father was a miner in Wales; he had a low income—both were proud men and proud of their work. They estimated that his wife—when they thought she was going to join them—would get a job in the region of £18,000 to £24,000. Yet despite all their planning, and all their efforts to provide for themselves, they have fallen foul of this rule and are now living on different sides of the world.
There is another lady who contacted me, Miss BF. She and her non-EU partner plan to marry in December 2012. She wrote:
“I do not earn £18600. I work part time as a healthcare assistant for the NHS. I am unable to work full time as I have a 14 year old son … If I worked in London I could earn the £18600 however the cost to rent in London would probably be triple the cost of my current mortgage. The income threshold does not allow for variations in circumstances. It does not allow for the earning potential of single parents, or for women in general. Our wedding plans are now on hold”.
So no regional variation—or, again, partner’s income—is taken into account.
Mr S—a highly qualified man who has worked in government in the past—also outlines in his letter to me the perverse incentive of an absolute threshold. He lives some distance from London. He says:
“I’m desperately trying to find a job that would make the required £18,600 a year. In this area, that scenario is a difficult one, so I’m looking for work in London. If I secure such a job, earning the required salary, it’s likely that most of this would be spent on the high costs associated with living in London. Yet the government deem this ok. However, I could probably find a job in this area earning around £14-15,000 and would have more disposable income to support my family whilst having the assurity of living with my parents in the short term.”.
All these are people trying to do the right thing—trying to support themselves. As there is now no flexibility in the system, but a very blunt policy of a blanket income threshold, the rules can unfairly penalise couples like Mr and Mrs M, and people like Mr S and Miss BF. Can the Minister confirm that we have members of the Armed Forces serving overseas who, if they were to marry somebody they met on duty overseas, would have an income that would fall below the level expected by the Government and who therefore would not be allowed to bring their new wife or husband back to the UK with them?
People who are trying to do the right thing and who are strivers—and the Prime Minister has used both those terms—and who would so easily be capable of supporting themselves and are determined to support themselves without relying on the state, are being turned away. We need a system that delivers protection and fairness for existing tax payers, but also fairness to families like this who will ultimately be net contributors to the system.
This is about the right to family life for British citizens and those permanently settled in this country. That is not an absolute right but one that is rightly qualified by the public interest test. None the less, it is of the utmost significance to the lives of many British citizens who wish to settle their families in the UK. Did the Government properly and adequately examine all the options for the most effective method of delivering fairness to both families and taxpayers? We contend that the Government have failed to do so. The Government have relied on the response of the Migration Advisory Committee for justification of the policy and the level at which the income threshold has been set.
So, what was the question that the Government asked the Migration Advisory Committee, which provided the evidence that this was the correct policy? Did the Government ask: “Is an income threshold the most effective way of delivering fairness for the taxpayer and families and preventing abuse of the system?”. Perhaps the Government asked the Migration Advisory Committee: “What would be the best way of ensuring that those bringing a spouse or dependent children into this country would not have recourse to public funds?”. It was neither of those questions. Instead, the initial question that the Government asked the Migration Advisory Committee was framed in a way that made it clear that they had decided the policy before asking the question. It was,
“what should the minimum income threshold be for sponsoring spouses/partners”.
The policy of a single income threshold had been decided, and the question was asked in such a way that it could only be answered with an assessment of the amount. The Government pre-empted any independent advice from the Migration Advisory Committee on what would be the most effective and fair process for determining adequate means of support without reliance on the state because they had already unilaterally decided on an income threshold policy.
Baroness Browning
My Lords, I join this debate briefly because I was intrigued by the noble Baroness’s Motion. I have discussed it informally with the noble Baroness. Having looked at this and made a study of average wages, I think it would be helpful if my noble friend in replying could confirm what is in the instrument, as was drawn to the attention of the House by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee in its report back in July. The committee said:
“The changes to immigration rules contained in HC 194 are extensive although mainly intended to strengthen or clarify the current position and reduce overall numbers claiming a right to settlement on the basis of family life”.
I welcome the fact that we are having a much more open and honest debate about immigration than perhaps we would have had three or four years ago. I read the memoir, Back from the Brink, by the right honourable Member for Edinburgh South West, Mr Alistair Darling, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, where he confirms that perhaps things were not spoken about in the past. Immigration is an issue, and it is something about which we should be a lot clearer and have a discussion.
If it is the intention of this rule that we are to reduce overall numbers, which is how I have interpreted it, equally the rule changes before the House in this instrument seem to make it absolutely clear that financially, among other things—and it is among other things, because the financial aspect of this minimum threshold of income is part of a package of rules—people who live in this country and have dependants can afford to maintain them as well as live an average life. I always think that it is difficult when we talk about averages. Therefore, the bar has been set at £18,600, although the appendix to the instrument refers to a,
“minimum income threshold of £18,600 for those who wish to sponsor the settlement in the UK of a partner of non-European Economic Area nationality”,
and says that a,
“higher threshold will be required for sponsoring any dependent child under the age of 18 in addition to the partner: £22,400 for one child and an additional £2,400 for each further child sponsored before the migrant parent qualifies for settlement”.
It would be helpful to the House if my noble friend could clarify how that threshold was set. If I have understood it correctly, it is the sort of policy that one sees elsewhere. It is a level set to ensure that people are not dependent on the state. But, equally, there is another dimension to people’s wealth within the family. I wonder whether my noble friend could touch on something that was debated in some fullness, along with the economic impact of immigration, by the Economic Affairs Committee of this House. I have a copy of the committee’s report from the Printed Paper Office. In 2007-08, noble Lords discussed the question of capital. Apart from the threshold of income, how is capital considered? I realise that the noble Baroness, in tabling this Motion, looked at those on low incomes and the impact that this measure might have on them, equally there are families for whom capital can be a substantial part of their income. Will my noble friend say a few words about those who sometimes would be regarded as capital rich but income poor? Capital does not seem to be mentioned here at all, so, going back to that very good report that came out of the Economic Affairs Committee of your Lordships’ House in 2007-08, will my noble friend touch on that issue?
In adverts that encourage people to migrate to other countries, one often finds a focus on certain occupations. In English-speaking Commonwealth countries, they are particularly focused on people with certain skills, who are able to carry out certain occupations. Presumably, apart from the need to recruit those skills into those countries, there is also a focus on the ability to be financially independent. I thought that I would contribute to today’s debate as earlier in the week I went through some research that looked at levels of pay. I realise again that we are dealing with these dreadful averages, which are never quite what our personal experience is of individual cases. For example, if we look at teachers’ pay, the scale point for people newly qualified starts at £21,588. Looking at the salary bands that might apply here, we are looking at professionals and we are probably looking at people who have gained qualifications in a trade or a profession that would make them employable on coming to this country.
I also took a quick look at regional variations, particularly the average salaries in cities and the different categories there. In London, the average salary is £33,000 a year, which is not typical perhaps because of the nature of London. I went up to Aberdeen and found it was £33,000—no different from London. In Bristol, in the south-west, the average was £27,900. I will not read them all out to the House but I did not find any figures in the average city salaries below the £18,600, or anywhere near it, that would sustain a family with two children.
I want to ask my noble friend this question and I ask for a frank reply to it. If we are reducing the number of people allowed to come to live and work in this country—which is what the instrument is about and this is an open policy as we realise these matters need to be brought under control—are we gauging it at £18,600 plus the additional amounts for dependent children on the assumption that people will have qualifications or professions in which they can work which would add to the British economy? Is that what is steering it? Can my noble friend give some indication as to whether that figure is to recruit people where we have skills shortages or just a bar that has been set to make sure that in opening our shores to people from abroad we are not encouraging dependency on the state?
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Browning. She has raised some very pertinent questions. While I want to focus on the income thresholds, I want also to draw attention to the concerns raised by BID, Bail for Immigration Detainees, about the implications for children of measures to ensure the deportation of foreign criminals.
BID’s experience is that wide powers already exist to deport foreign national ex-offenders, and in the very few appeals against this which are successful it is often because the courts have found that grave harm would be caused to a child by deporting the parents. It says that the Government are now seeking to prevent the courts from upholding the law to protect these families. In the view of BID, the measures do not allow for adequate consideration of the child’s best interests. For example, it does not follow that it is in a child’s best interests, if there is another relative that they can live with in the country, to live with that relative and to be permanently parted from their parents; or, say, if the parents have been in prison and the child has been living in foster care, for them to be deported with their parent to a country that they have never visited before.
Liberty, too, raises concerns about the implications of the changes for children and concludes:
“It is clear from the Government’s proposals that it is paying little more than lip service to the importance of UK children’s interests in immigration decisions … Far from placing children at the heart of immigration decisions, the proposed changes seek to relieve officials of the responsibility for weighing up the interests of a child in any but the most clear cut cases”.
I would welcome the Minister’s response to that and his explanation of how children’s interests will be safeguarded.
As we have heard, the Home Office’s human rights statement and the Home Secretary have emphasised that Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, on the right to respect for privacy and family life, is a qualified right. As my noble friend Lady Smith has already said, we accept that. However, as Liberty argues, there is,
“a delicate balancing exercise to be struck between the rights of the individual and wider social interests in, for example, the reduction of crime and disorder and the protection of the economic interests of the UK”.
Liberty and I do not accept that the proposed changes,
“properly accommodate the fact-sensitive balancing exercise that the right demands”.
Liberty argues that instead they,
“represent a one-size-fits-all approach to complex immigration decisions. … Far from better reflecting the proportionality required under Article 8, the proposed changes seek to circumvent the crucial fact sensitive consideration of decisions involving fundamental rights”.
The Government argue that the income threshold is proportionate in meeting their legitimate aims of safeguarding the economic well-being of the UK. It is a sad day when the economic well-being of the UK depends on keeping apart a few thousand poor families each year without adequate attention being given to safeguarding the well-being of children and their families.
The Migrant Rights Network points out that, because of differences in earnings across different social groups, the new income requirement will disadvantage women, who we know are still on average paid less than men, some minority ethnic groups and people living outside the south-east. My noble friend gave an example that illustrated the unfairness of that fairly arbitrary or one-size-fits-all limit.
The Home Office human rights statement acknowledges that the income threshold may be challenged under Article 14 of the European Convention of Human Rights in terms of its equalities impact, particularly with regard to whether this constitutes unjustified indirect discrimination against these groups—for example, women and those nationalities who the evidence shows are likely to have lower earnings. Having raised this possibility, the Home Office’s only answer was that this will be mitigated in some cases by the exemption from the income threshold of those in receipt of carer’s allowance, and that certain contributory benefits such as maternity allowance will be allowed to count towards the income threshold. That is welcome as far as it goes, but it does not go very far. Otherwise, the Home Office considers that any indirect discrimination is proportionate to public policy objectives. We will see, but I imagine that this will be tested in the courts.
I find it repugnant that we are going to means test family life. Means-testing generally purports to target help on the needy and exclude the better off. This is a reverse means test that excludes the needy, as if people on low incomes have nothing to contribute to this country. The existing “recourse to public funds” rule is already designed to prevent the supposed burden on the taxpayer that we hear so much about. According to Liberty, and as my noble friend has already said, it is being replaced by a far blunter instrument.
The impact statement makes a virtue of the shift from a more discretionary approach, which it says is complicated for caseworkers to operate, yet in other areas of policy the Government favour more discretionary approaches and say that we have to get away from a one-size-fits-all approach. Indeed, as Liberty argues, the proposed changes as a whole contain an armoury of blunt instruments which, far from better reflecting Article 8 and the Immigration Rules, may well leave the rules in breach of it.
The changes reflect badly on a Government who claim to be the most family-friendly Government ever and who are supposed to be applying a family test to all their domestic policy decisions, as they suggest that some families are considered not to matter because of their immigration status and their poverty.
Lord Avebury
My Lords, this is a very important debate, focusing as it does on family and children’s rights. We have all heard from organisations such as the ones that have been mentioned, including by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister—Liberty, Bail for Immigration Detainees, and so on—and I shall rely on the evidence that has been given to them in my later remarks.
Since these changes were published, a further three sets of changes have appeared: HC 514 of eight pages, HC 565 comprising 56 pages and Cm 8423 with 276 pages. These latter two statements spell out in detail how decisions on leave to enter or remain are to be made, following the rulings of the Supreme Court in Alvi. To summarise, at the risk of oversimplification, Alvi said that statements in guidance and elsewhere that were not in the Immigration Rules, such as particular types of evidence that have to be submitted with an application, were unlawful because they had not been laid before Parliament as required by the parent Act. I realise that we are not talking about these subsequent statements of changes this evening, but obviously the legal advisers and their clients who are considering the effects of HC 194 will have to look at these other instruments as well. It would be astonishing if, given the length and complexity of all the changes taken together, there were not a steep rise in the number of applications rejected because of some minor omission or mistake.
My first example is from the organisation BritCits, which defends the interests of families who are affected by this set of changes. Rob is a British professional musician with a first-class degree in music. He has taught music and performed at concerts, has an eight year-old son and lives in a detached house in Huddersfield. He fell in love with and married an Indonesian woman and his wife applied for a spouse visa on 26 June. As a self-employed worker, he submitted three years of bank statements—originals and copies—and everything as requested, leaving no stone unturned. For over two months the message was that the application was under process at the British embassy, until early September when an e-mail arrived asking for the spouse to take an SELT English test. The e-mail indicated that if she did not submit this within seven days, the application would be rejected. Despite the short notice, the wife took the test and submitted it on time. A month later, they received a message saying that the application was refused because of the English test. Rob was amazed because his wife’s English was extremely good. On inquiry, they found that she had passed the reading, writing and listening requirements but had inadvertently omitted the speaking part. A lawyer advised them that the only remedy was to lodge a fresh application, at a cost of £900. The same thing happened to a friend of mine. It is not an uncommon experience for people to make a minor error and find that the whole application has been rejected. The UKBA does not give applicants a chance of remedying minor omissions of this sort.
The Motion says that the Government have not demonstrated that the specific minimum financial requirement is the most effective way to deliver fairness. That stricture can also be extended to the provisions dealing with savings. This may answer part of the question put by the noble Baroness, Lady Browning: I quote the example of a woman with three children applying to join her husband who would have to show evidence of savings of £62,500, which is well beyond the resources of most young families.
A four-page guide produced by UKBA tells applicants that they need to read Appendix FM-SE, another 26 pages of dense prose, which was added to the rules on 20 July, specifying what supporting documents may or not be supplied as evidence of compliance with particular financial requirements. The sums involved are undoubtedly substantial and they mean that many spouses and children who would have been able to satisfy the previous requirement—that they could be supported and accommodated without reliance on public funds—will now be denied entry. That is, indeed, the letter of government policy. The Migration Advisory Committee estimates that if the financial requirement in this set of rules had been in force in 2011, it would have excluded 45% of successful applicants, even though all those spouses and children were assessed as not needing access to public funds.
The Lord Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich
My Lords, I do not mean to detain the House for long, but I would like to echo some of the concerns that have been mentioned today, particularly on the inflexibility of the income test. Looking at what is laid before us —a specified gross annual income of at least £18,600, an additional £3,800 for the first child and an additional £2,400 for each additional child—a clergy family with three children would not earn enough stipend to meet that test. The reason why they survive very well is because their housing costs are met, as are their council tax, and there are other means of keeping them housed in areas where the Church wants them to live and minister.
I can think of two examples of a UK passport holder, a member of the clergy, whose spouse holds a foreign passport outside the EU, one of whom has three children. Whatever you think of the mission of the Church, which is of course promoting the Christian religion of the Church of England, one of them also lives in an extremely deprived area, and the social capital that he has added to that area is considerable. This is not simply someone coming to take advantage of the state but someone who has given an awful lot, which has been recognised by local authorities.
Inflexible rules cannot deal with these sorts of difficult anomalies, and so discretion needs to come in. The overall thing that I would like to echo is: how is this now being monitored? How is it being applied, and is it applied fairly? When UK Border Agency hard cases come into the public domain, anxiety is always raised, and of course it is easy to do that. I appreciate the fact that these are hard-working officials, and indeed, when given an opportunity to meet some of them I appreciated their frankness and their willingness to look at how they might help. Nevertheless, there are too many stories of the difficulty that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, described as happening in some of these applications. I can think of another member of the clergy, a UK passport holder, who was going through the whole process to help his spouse to get leave to remain. They were told that they could not apply before a certain time limit. They applied at the time limit and then, when they applied for a slot for her interview, they were told, “There are no slots left”. These are intelligent people who can cope with that sort of thing, but there are many people who cannot.
I do not think that anyone in this Chamber would want to deny the scale of the problem that we must face as a country, but against that background, having realised the problem, where are fairness and justice going to be helped to be seen to be done, and how is the UK Border Agency being monitored to see that it is applying standards of fairness to the best of its ability?
Lord Teverson
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, very much for bringing this regret Motion before the House. In fact, if anything, I regret that it is only a regret Motion. I would certainly have followed her through any Lobby if it were more of a fatal Motion because I feel that there are some fundamental issues here.
It is interesting that this regret Motion has been put forward this week. My weeks are often imaged by the cover of the Economist, which I read most weeks. This week it is inaccurate in one way, although accurate in another. It says:
“Immigration. The Tories’ barmiest policy”.
Of course, that is wrong. It is not a Tory policy; it is a coalition policy. It includes my party as well. Its argument is that the policy on immigration very much restricts the economic and financial potential of this country, but here we have pinpointed an area where we are restricting the moral, ethical and family aspects of our society within the UK.
I say to the noble Baroness that I was probably one of the few people in this country to be very disappointed that the leader of the Opposition apologised for Labour’s “migration mistakes” in 2004, which allowed the best talent from the new European member states—which in many ways we had treated treacherously in the settlement after the Second World War—to come to this country, because they were restricted in going to other EU states. They repopulated much of Scotland, and in the south-west, where I come from, they manned much of the tourist industry, which had found it difficult to find talented and energetic workers. Therefore, I regret that that happened.
I understand entirely that sham marriages exist. They are a cancer on the institution of marriage and they are probably growing in number. That has to be stopped by whatever means possible. I also agree that there cannot be limitless migration. However, our society is becoming more and more international. Taking my family as an example, some of my wife’s children live in Singapore and others live in Argentina. Her grandchildren have mixed religious affiliations and mixed nationalities. People meet other people more and more on an international basis, particularly when they are youngsters and in their first areas of work. Therefore, this problem is going to get worse.
I say to the Minister that I believe this matter comes down to two important issues. Those are fundamentally moral and ethical, with human rights perhaps coming third. First, it must be fundamentally in the DNA of the UK that its citizens can marry whomever they want. That has to be a basic right of our citizens, who have one of the greatest and deepest histories in terms of being able to exercise individual rights. I also say to my Conservative colleagues—perhaps not the ones who are here but some of the others—that it is absolutely wrong for the state to intervene so strongly in deciding whom you are able to marry and live with. It is wrong that the state should be able to intervene to that degree. If the marriage is a real one—and that is always the important question—then people should be able to marry exactly whom they like and to live exactly where they like.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I confess to a number of areas of confusion, the first being what the rules actually say. Other noble Lords have referred to their complexity. For me, looking at any set of Immigration Rules is a quick route to a migraine. I have been used to reading rather more than glossy magazines in the course of my career, so if I find them difficult—without wanting to be too big-headed—then so will many, many others.
I was reassured, in a sense, by the briefing from the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association but that reassurance is very limited. It tells us that it is running advanced courses for solicitors and barristers on the financial requirements that are a part of these rules and has sent noble Lords an extract from its training notes, just to give us a glimpse of the complexity. Our laws should be accessible. Immigration is so difficult that legal practitioners have to be specially licensed. I, for one, am very grateful to the organisations that have briefed us. They helped me to short-circuit the work for this debate quite a lot, but that is not good enough when you are actually advising individuals.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Taylor of Holbeach)
My Lords, I welcome this debate. The Motion tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, has given us an opportunity to debate this matter in this House. It has been a good debate and a lot of very interesting aspects of these rules have been raised. I am sure that noble Lords will not expect me to comment on individual cases. My noble friend Lady Hamwee did me a good turn by referring to the complexity of the rules because they are indeed extremely complex. If I fail to cover particular aspects of the points made and questions asked, I hope that noble Lords will forgive me if I address them in correspondence after the debate.
These new rules are a major reform of the requirements for family migration by people of non-European Economic Area nationality. They form part, as noble Lords have said, of the Government’s overall programme of reform of all routes of entry into the UK. The new family rules have three aspects, and I thank my noble friend Lady Browning for her welcome of these three aims. My noble friend Lord Teverson pointed out that the coalition has taken a different view from his own. I accept that but I think he will agree that the coalition is being consistent in its approach of this vexed problem of immigration.
I would also like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, for her general support of elements of these rules. First, they tackle abuse; for example, by extending from two to five years the probationary period before partners can apply for settlement to test the genuineness of the relationship concerned. My noble friend Lady Hamwee questioned that, but I believe that it is a reasonable expectation which should help to deter applications based on sham marriages.
Lord Avebury
My Lords, if that is the case, why have the Government refused to take into account the income provided by the spouse? Surely, if the £18,600 figure is sufficient to ensure that recourse to public funds is not on the cards, then that £18,600 should apply to the joint incomes, not to the income of the sponsor.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
That is the decision that was made. The Migration Advisory Committee was asked to look at the amount of money that a couple would require on the single income—the sponsor’s income. Indeed, it is the sponsor’s income that is vital to understanding this case.
My noble friend also asked how the capital should be dealt with. As pointed out by my noble friend Lady Hamwee, the multiplier is two and a half times the shortfall in income, and that, too, I believe, came from the same recommendation from the Migration Advisory Committee.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, while the Minister is on that point, it would be helpful to the House if after today we could have an explanation of what lies behind both that action, which is less of an issue because it is a judgment, and my noble friend’s question about why a spouse’s income is disregarded. Indeed, one could add to that the question of why support from a third party, such as a parent of one of the spouses who would be prepared to guarantee the income, which I am sure is not uncommon, should be disregarded. What lay behind those decisions? What was the rationale? I do not expect the Minister to answer that now.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
It would be much easier for me if I could inform myself before I sought to inform the House on that issue. I have stated the position as I know it to be, without knowing fully the policy development that led to that conclusion.
There has been criticism of the fact that there is no regional variation but, once people are in this country, they are free to move wherever, and it was felt that there could be great difficulties if a regional variation were permitted for that very reason.
The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, expressed concern about what will happen to people who lose their jobs. We will expect a migrant to be able to meet the same financial threshold when they apply for further leave but, once the migrant is in the UK, we count any income that they earn, as well as money from their sponsor, towards the threshold. That is an important response to the question raised by my noble friend Lord Avebury. In some circumstances, we will allow the migrant to continue at a lower rate on a longer route to settlement to allow that transition to take place. Both the noble Baroness and my noble friend asked about prospective earnings and I will seek to answer that in correspondence, as I promised.
We have also built significant flexibility into the operation of the threshold—for example, by exempting sponsors in receipt of certain disability-related benefits or carers’ allowance. I was asked specifically by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, about the Armed Forces. The Armed Forces are exempt from these rules.
The noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, felt, as did several noble Lords, that the rules were not sufficiently focused on children. We understand the importance of the statutory duty, which goes back to the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act, to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in the UK. That is why we have reinforced our approach by bringing consideration of the welfare or best interests of children into the Immigration Rules. After all, the best interests of the child will normally be met by remaining with their parents and returning with them to their country of origin, subject to considerations such as long residence in the UK, their nationality and any exceptional factors. The new rules lay out a clear framework for weighing the best interests of the child against the wider public interest in removal cases.
The minimum income requirement that we have introduced is, I believe, the most effective way to protect taxpayers and deliver fairness in respect of family migration to the UK. I invite the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, to reflect on my response.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
My Lords, I will reflect on the Minister’s response and will read and consider his comments in Hansard. However, I have to say that at this stage I am disappointed by his response; I wonder if he took on board any of the comments around the House about the devastating impact that this threshold is having on so many families. All of us in your Lordships’ House understand the need to tackle abuses—this was said to the Minister—but this measure goes beyond that and I do not think, as other noble Lords have illustrated, that it actually achieves the Government’s policy objectives.
The Minister said that it more effectively reduced the burden on the taxpayer and was fair to families. Based on the examples he has heard this evening, however, it does not seem a very effective way to protect the taxpayer. The issue is not just the level of the threshold but the principle of the threshold. He claimed that one of the questions I asked was what happened if somebody lost their job. That was not the question I asked at all; the point that I was putting to the Minister was that a threshold is an inadequate way of making an assessment, as someone could be above that threshold and then lose their job but still have the right to remain, since a judgment was made at one point in time based on a person’s income, rather than on a package of measures that was available previously.
I appreciate that he cannot comment on individual cases, but Mr and Mrs M, the lady from Canada and her husband from Wales; the lady who was the NHS care worker; and the clergymen referred to by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich who wanted to come or bring their spouses to this country will all listen to the Minister’s comments with some dismay.
I appreciate that he was not able to answer all the questions but I was disappointed that he answered so few. I mentioned one to him about the perverse incentive where an individual would have to go and live in a more expensive part of the country to see their income increase, even though their costs would increase, including their rent or mortgage, and their disposable income would fall. That would qualify them to be able to bring their spouse into the country because they had a higher income level. That is a perverse incentive, to have a lower disposable income. The Minister did not comment on that. Nor did he comment on any of the examples—I am sure that this was not intended—of Church of England clergy’s partners being excluded from the UK. He also said that the Migration Advisory Committee supported the level but my understanding is that the committee was asked what the level should be; it was not asked to comment on the proposals generally or on whether this was the most appropriate way to achieve the Government’s objective.
I was especially hoping that the Minister would respond on the following issue that I raised. The Migration Advisory Committee, in its response to the Government, said that, of those who satisfied the current criteria of being able to show they had access to sufficient funds to support themselves and their families, 45% would no longer be eligible under the new criteria to have their spouses come to this country. I asked him how many of those who were eligible under the current procedures would not be allowed under the new rules and have since claimed access to public funds. He has not answered that. The answer that he gave was that 267 individuals now claim some kind of public support or assistance, but he was unable to tell us how many of those had come to this country through the existing rules on family visas. If he does have that figure, it would be extremely helpful to have it. I suspect that it might not be available but it might have been provided to him. It would have been a more useful figure and the one that I asked for.
Obviously we understand the need to ensure that the system is not abused, but I fear that what is being done here today will not protect the taxpayer in the way that the Minister seeks, and it certainly does not protect the family. I beg to withdraw the motion.
Motion withdrawn.