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Oral Answers to Questions
(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)
1. What steps he is taking to ensure that foreign conglomerates carry out their responsibilities to UK pension-holders.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)
As this is the first session of DWP questions since the announcement of the untimely death of Malcolm Wicks, I hope that you will allow me, Mr. Speaker, to place on record, on behalf of the whole ministerial team, our appreciation of Malcolm and all that he contributed to our debates on pensions and welfare.
The Pensions Regulator has “anti-avoidance” powers to take action against employers when they have acted to avoid supporting the scheme. That includes taking action in foreign jurisdictions when necessary. For example, four financial support directions were issued last year against companies in north America in the Nortel case.
Dan Jarvis
I thank the Minister for his response, and for meeting my constituent Alan Hunton and me to discuss the matter. He is aware of my concern about foreign companies that have purchased and asset-stripped businesses in the United Kingdom. In some cases, those firms have discarded their pension responsibilities in such a way as to endanger the pensions to which their employees are entitled. Will the Minister explain how he is working with the Pensions Regulator, and with his colleagues in the Government, to curtail such predatory behaviour?
Steve Webb
This is indeed an important issue. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the Pensions Regulator has engaged during the last 12 months, and continues to engage, with more than 1,100 schemes that are linked to overseas employers. Between April 2010 and August 2012, it has exercised its powers on at least 10 occasions in relation to such schemes.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
The Minister is aware of a case in my constituency in which the BMI pension fund was placed in a pension protection fund by Lufthansa. In this case, Lufthansa voluntarily paid over £84 million in compensation to the fundholders. However, under current HMRC rules the money is being treated as income, and the lifetime and annual allowance rules are being applied to the compensation. Does my hon. Friend agree that the position is unfair and should be reviewed by HMRC?
Steve Webb
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that case. I have corresponded with Treasury colleagues about the issue, and, subject to their consent, I shall be happy to share with him the reply that I have just received.
Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)
2. What progress he has made on the Government's disability strategy.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Esther McVey)
Fulfilling Potential, our disability strategy, is being co-produced with disabled people. We published “Fulfilling Potential—The Discussions So Far” and “Fulfilling Potential—Next Steps” on 17 September. Our key themes, which we intend to make a real difference, are early intervention, choice and control, and inclusive communities.
Stuart Andrew
Can the Minister explain what the role of the disabled people’s user-led organisations will be in the strategy?
Esther McVey
I can indeed. User-led groups will be a key element in everything that we do. It is essential for disabled people and their organisations to be at the heart of that. We have also created a £3 million fund, and I was delighted to be in Redbridge last week when we delivered £1 million of it.
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
An important part of the disability strategy is to get people into work. Can the Minister tell us what proportion of the people in the work-related activity group who have been mandated to join the Work programme have actually found work?
Esther McVey
The figures have not been published yet, but as soon as they are published, I will give the hon. Lady the information.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
There are many excellent disability organisations in the Bradford district, notably the Bradford and Airedale mental health advocacy group. Can such groups join the disability action alliance to help with the Government’s strategy, or will they be excluded from it?
Esther McVey
We are trying to reach out to as many user-led groups as possible. Those who want to become part of the alliance should visit fulfilling.potential@dwp.gsi.gov.uk. Everyone is welcome: we want the strategy to be embedded in all our local communities.
Mr Michael McCann (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (Lab)
Given the cumulative impact of welfare reform on disabled people and the criticism of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, can the Minister explain how the disability strategy will comply with the United Nations convention on the rights of persons with disabilities?
Esther McVey
It fully conforms with the UN rights. In fact, we are a world leader in that regard. It has been noted that we are—as I have said—reaching out to all disability groups and disabled people, and I have given the House the address of the website.
Karen Lumley (Redditch) (Con)
3. What recent steps he has taken to expand the new enterprise allowance.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mr Mark Hoban)
Because self-employment is the right option for many unemployed people, on 22 October we expanded the new enterprise allowance so that additional jobseekers could take part. We have also extended it so that jobseekers can take part from the first day on which they claim jobseeker’s allowance, rather than having to wait for six months.
Karen Lumley
In Redditch, more than 40 people have taken up the opportunity to be mentored under the enterprise allowance scheme. What else can be done to encourage more jobseekers to start their own businesses?
Mr Hoban
My hon. Friend has made a good point. I think that we should try to give good examples to jobseekers about where they can start businesses. Under Get Britain Working, we can set up job clubs to encourage people to see self-employment as an option for the future. I think that that is a good route out for many people with great skills.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
Self-employed people in my constituency are experiencing increasing difficulty in finding work because of the Government’s austerity measures. Does the Minister accept that the bureaucratic requirement for self-employed people to produce two forms of evidence relating to their income is making it very hard for them to claim benefits and to find a way back into work?
Mr Hoban
We try to do as much as we can to reduce the burden of red tape on businesses. That is why the Government set the red tape challenge and introduced the one in, one out rule. All those measures lift the red tape burden from businesses to help them to focus on what they should be focusing on—creating jobs and wealth.
Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)
22. One great barrier for people in work and indeed for people not in work is the cost of child care. Would the Minister look at allowing people on the new enterprise allowance to deduct the cost of child care from their tax bill? That could be taken out of the profits of their company when it was up and running. Will he meet me to discuss the idea further?
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
5. What recent assessment he has made of the barriers that prevent jobseekers getting back into work.
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)
Jobseekers can face a number of barriers to work, about which my hon. Friend has spoken to me on a number of occasions. Those include a lack of work experience, a lack of essential computer skills, an incomplete education, which leaves them ill qualified, or coming from a family where worklessness is entrenched across generations. We are taking cross-Government action to tackle all those barriers, and reforming the benefit system so that it more closely resembles life in work, rather than people having to face those huge barriers.
Robert Halfon
Since 2011, the Department has through procurement encouraged its private suppliers to hire apprentices, and 2,000 apprenticeships have been created as a result. Will the Secretary of State share his success with other Departments, so that we can roll out this programme across Whitehall and remove barriers to work?
Mr Duncan Smith
I take this opportunity to congratulate my hon. Friend on the huge work that he has done in encouraging apprenticeship starts. I know that he is particularly keen on that and I take a real steer from him. I also remind him and the House that, since we brought in our changes, over the past two academic years more than 950,000 apprenticeships have been offered by over 100,000 different employers. On top of that, the youth contract offers 160,000 wage incentives for those who wish to start apprenticeships. Therefore, the scheme has been a major success for this Government. The coalition has done far more than the previous Government.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
Will the Secretary of State concede that the greatest barrier to returning to work is the lack of jobs locally and that that is particularly the case for people with long-term sickness and disability?
Mr Duncan Smith
The hon. Gentleman is right—those people face particular difficulties. The Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey), referred to those earlier. Our job is to ensure that we help all those people to overcome those difficulties. Organisations such as Work Choice and Remploy, which are helping to get people back to work, are hugely important. We are making big strides in that regard. The simple answer is that still not enough people with disabilities are back in work, although the situation is improving. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point. We all want to ensure that disabled people join mainstream work and get a full life out of it.
Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)
In welcoming my right hon. Friend's last answer, may I particularly urge him to look at organisations such as the Shaw Trust when trying to assist disabled people into work, rather than having focus desks in jobcentres?
Mr Duncan Smith
I absolutely agree. It is important to extend the net as widely as possible. My hon. Friend is a huge campaigner for public sector organisations and he is right about the Shaw Trust, which I have visited. It is a phenomenal organisation. We will use the trust and every other organisation we can. In fact we set up desks in jobcentres, which were manned by the Prince's Trust on behalf of all other charities, so that we could extend that net to enable anyone who needed it to get support, not just from the Government but from other organisations.
Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
The unemployed former Remploy workers in my constituency have seen little or no help from the DWP or Remploy since they lost their jobs. What will the Secretary of State do about that?
Mr Duncan Smith
I am very happy to take any particulars from the hon. Lady and to hear more detail from her, but the really successful part of Remploy is the part of the organisation that works to get people back to work. It has had a very successful record. We have put extra money into that organisation. We have made more money and more support available to try to get people who were working in the factories at Remploy back to work. However, I must say that during the period that the Government she supported were in office, next to no support was given to people who left Remploy when it closed up to 29 factories.
Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)
6. What assessment he has made of the recommendations in the Harrington report that have not been implemented; and which such recommendations he plans to implement.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mr Mark Hoban)
The work capability assessment was introduced by the previous Government through the Welfare Reform Act 2007, for which the hon. Lady will doubtless have voted. There have been two independent reviews by Professor Harrington. We implemented, or are implementing, all his recommendations on how to improve the WCA.
Joan Walley
It is impossible to convey the distress, heartache and anxiety caused by this Government’s failure to get a grip on Atos. Whatever the Minister might say about the spirit of the Harrington recommendations, it is essential that he get back to me with clear details on the availability of audio-recording equipment, the recruitment of mental health champions in all offices around the UK, how we will ensure judges give full feedback to DWP decision makers, and advising sick and disabled claimants that they can submit evidence.
Mr Hoban
We are implementing the Harrington recommendations, so the things that the hon. Lady mentions are happening in assessment centres across the country. For example, audio recordings are available if people request them. Progress is being made, therefore, but the hon. Lady needs to recognise that it was the previous Government who set up the WCA and recruited Atos. We are trying to make the system work better and be fairer so as to get the right outcome for all claimants.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
Does the Minister welcome Professor Harrington’s comment in his latest assessment that things have noticeably changed for the better? I have heard it said that 40% of appeals are successful. Is that right, or is the proportion lower than that?
Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)
19. On the “World at One” on 11 October the Minister claimed that one of the reasons for so many successful appeals and wrong decisions was claimants withholding medical evidence. Given that the average time for assessment and appeal is 31 weeks—almost eight months—will he explain exactly what evidence he has for that assertion?
Mr Hoban
There are situations in which new evidence is brought forward by claimants. We all should recognise the importance of getting people into work, to give them the hope and the improvements in their well-being that work brings. We should also, therefore, all recognise the importance of finding ways to improve the system, and I would hope that the hon. Gentleman would welcome our efforts to improve it.
Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)
Last week in Scotland, the Daily Record ran a story about Kieran McArdle and the death of his father, Brian. Brian was paralysed down his left side, blind in one eye and unable to speak properly, and yet was declared fit to work. Atos said in response that
“our trained doctors, nurses and physiotherapists strictly follow the guidelines given to them by the Government”.
Given the crescendo of complaints about the implementation of the work capability assessment, should the Minister not abandon his mantra that progress has been made and instead accept his responsibility and undertake a fast and fundamental review of the test, as called for by the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne)?
Mr Hoban
Our condolences are with Mr McArdle’s family at this time, and I believe that the Secretary of State is writing to his son, Kieran, in response to his letter, which was delivered to the Department late last week. We know that going through the WCA process can be difficult for claimants and their families, but we and Atos go to great lengths to make it as fair as possible. That is why we are undertaking this process of refinement, taking the system left to us by the previous Government through the Harrington reviews and ensuring we improve it so that it is fair. The previous Government set up this system, and Opposition Members should not shirk responsibility for that.
Mrs McGuire
I am getting weary of the charge that this contract is somehow—[Interruption.] No; the reality is that we would not have managed the contract in the way this Government are managing it. Although the work capability assessments have been controversial to say the least, Atos, which delivered that contract, has recently been awarded two out of the three contracts for the personal independence payment. Did the company enhance its bid by naming disability organisations with which it would work, and what due diligence was done to test the authenticity of such assertions before awarding the contracts?
Mr Hoban
The right hon. Lady might be weary of that charge, but she will have to get used to hearing it. This Government are taking forward the changes that are necessary to get this system to work well. I think all Members on both sides of the House recognise one thing, however: as the evidence demonstrates, it is better for people to be in work where possible so that they can look after their families and provide dignity. That is exactly what we are trying to do in getting this process right. We are making progress, and we await Professor Harrington’s third review, which is due in the near future. Let me just say this to the right hon. Lady: when Atos bid for the PIP contract, it made it very clear that it would look to work with disability organisations to improve outcomes. We should try to work together on these matters, rather than make partisan political points.
Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)
7. What steps he has taken to introduce a new sanctions regime for jobseeker’s allowance.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mr Mark Hoban)
A new sanctions regime for jobseeker’s allowance was introduced on 22 October. The new regime is clearer and tougher. For example, someone who has turned down a reasonable job offer three times in a year will lose their JSA for three years. Those who can work should work.
Mr Jones
I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. In my constituency, many low-paid, hard-working people get more than frustrated with this cohort of people who continually refuse to take up work. Will he go into a bit more detail about the sanctions now in place to deal with able-bodied jobseekers who continually refuse to take up work they are able to undertake?
Mr Hoban
My hon. Friend is right to highlight the frustration among those who are working at seeing people who can work turn down jobs and simply get away with it. That is why we have introduced a new, tougher regime of sanctions, so that someone who turns down a job without good reason for the first time will lose their benefits for 13 weeks. That then escalates so that someone who turns down a job three times in a year will lose their benefits for three years. That is a very clear sanction, it is a very clear deterrent and it sends a very clear message that we expect people who have reasonable job offers to work and pay their own way.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
We are talking about sanctions, carrots and sticks, and the Work programme is supposed to help people back into work. A constituent who had been on the Work programme and recently found part-time work has contacted me. He was concerned that the Work programme had been little or no help and that, although his employment was due to his own hard work, the Work programme contractor was paid anyway. What has the Minister done to prevent this deadweight loss?
Mr Hoban
The hon. Lady should examine some of the schemes that the previous Government introduced, under which people were paid regardless of the outcome—regardless of whether they helped people get back into work. Our Work programme pays people by results; it ensures that contractors are paid only where people get jobs, and sustainable jobs at that.
Lorely Burt (Solihull) (LD)
8. What steps he is taking to protect members of pension schemes from being incentivised to transfer their pensions.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)
The Government have worked closely with the pensions industry to address concerns regarding incentive exercises. As a result, an industry code of practice was published in June, which we fully support. A monitoring board has been established to evaluate the effectiveness of the code.
Lorely Burt
I am grateful for that answer. Can my hon. Friend provide evidence on the number of companies that have signed up to the code of practice? Is it achieving its objectives?
Steve Webb
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that. The industry’s response to the code has been very encouraging. Some 49 individual firms and, perhaps more importantly, 14 representative organisations have publicly signed up to support the code, and the figures are growing. The supporters include the major employee benefit consultancies engaged in these exercises and their representative organisations.
Mr David Crausby (Bolton North East) (Lab)
Auto-enrolment of pensions is a wise and overdue step forward, especially for low-paid employees. However, with workers changing jobs an average of 11 times in their working lives, does it not make much more sense for them to park their pensions in low-cost aggregator schemes? If not that, what will the Minister do to ensure that fundholders will not have incurred high charges throughout their working lives as a result of numerous transfers?
Steve Webb
The issue that the hon. Gentleman rightly raises is one of the many loose ends left for us by the previous Government. When auto-enrolment was set up, they simply left us with a situation where people could accumulate a dozen small pots and leave them fragmented. We propose under auto-enrolment that where people leave behind a small pot it will, by default, transfer to their new employer, so that they will accumulate what I have called, in technical terms, a big fat pot.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
9. How many people have found jobs through Jobcentre Plus since May 2010.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mr Mark Hoban)
Since May 2010, more than 8.6 million claims for jobseeker’s allowance have ended, of which an estimated 68%—or more than 5.8 million—saw the claimant enter work.
Mr Bone
I have good news for the Minister: another 2,000 are coming off jobseeker’s allowance because of a new development in my constituency—well, between my constituency and the Corby constituency. It is supported by Wellingborough council, East Northamptonshire district council, Higham Ferrers council and Rushden council—all Tory councils—but it is opposed by Labour Corby council. Can the Minister explain that?
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
How many unemployed people now go through the fast-signing procedure at Jobcentre Plus and therefore do not get to see an employment adviser?
Mr Hoban
We must work out how much support jobseekers need to get into work to ensure that those who need the most support get into work quickly. The hon. Gentleman might also want to know that more people came off the unemployment register in Corby last month than in any other constituency in Northamptonshire.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
11. When he plans to announce the recipients of universal credit whose children will be eligible for free school meals.
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)
We are working closely with all the Departments that administer the staggering number of passported benefits—some 25 benefits in England, as well as about 20 in Scotland and Wales. The administration of passported benefits and determining who will receive them is the responsibility of various Departments—in the case of free school meals, it is the Department for Education. With different eligibility criteria all over the place giving rise to the massive complexity that has built up over the past few years, we are looking to simplify the system under universal credit while ensuring that those benefits continue to be available to the families who need them most.
Diana Johnson
Does the Secretary of State agree with the Church of England’s Children’s Society, which states that all children in families receiving universal credit should be eligible for free school meals? If he does not, why not?
Mr Duncan Smith
I do not agree, because that would mean a huge increase even on the numbers with which the previous Government left us. If we did that, it would include an extra 2.5 million children and an estimated cost of up to £1 billion. I wonder whether the hon. Lady has talked to her hon. Friends on the Front Bench about whether that is another spending commitment they would like to make.
Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)
The previous Labour Government left some 3.9 million children living below the official poverty line, about half of whom did not qualify for free school meals. Is it not time that the children who are most in need got the free school meals that they did not get under the Labour Government?
Mr Duncan Smith
The introduction of universal credit will hugely help families with the lowest incomes. Something like 80% of the money is transferred to the bottom 40% on the income scale, so that helps hugely straight away. Secondly, it is very important that we have an opportunity for Departments—they will do this in discussion with us—to consider how best they can ensure that those most in need get the money and support they require.
Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)
13. If he will make it his policy to begin monitoring the number of people who die as a result of (a) illness and (b) suicide whilst awaiting the result of employment and support allowance appeals.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mr Mark Hoban)
My Department publishes information on ESA appeals when they have been heard by Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service. We have no plans to capture or publish official statistics relevant to the specific circumstances described. In July, we published data on the number of deaths of incapacity benefits recipients. They include claimants awaiting appeal where benefit is still in payment.
Julie Hilling
With Atos failing on 40% of its work capability assessments, with an estimated 30 to 80 people dying each week between assessment and appeal, and with 6% of doctors surveyed reporting that they have patients who have either attempted or committed suicide as a result of work capability assessments, does the Minister not think that he has a duty to monitor the effect of his policies?
Mr Hoban
As I said in answer to earlier questions, we are monitoring the effect of our policies. We are ensuring that the work capability assessment is fit for purpose and that is why we asked Professor Harrington to carry out a third review to ensure that the process is right and fair. The hon. Lady should also remember that the work capability assessment is an assessment of people’s ability to work, not a diagnostic test.
Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)
Will the Minister confirm that all Atos doctors, nurses and physiotherapists are fully trained and registered with their relevant professional body?
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
14. What recent discussions he has had on the auto-enrolment charging regime for employees.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)
It is vital that people are enrolled in schemes that offer transparent and value-for-money charges. The National Employment Savings Trust’s low charge structure has set a benchmark, prompting several competitive alternatives in the market, and I have called for providers to guarantee not to enrol people into high-cost legacy schemes.
David Mowat
The Minister will be aware of the recent Cass business school report that says that many older defined-contribution schemes charge 3% or more. That is six times the best practice of newer schemes, and it is costing many tens of thousands of people the chance of having a decent pension. Will he act to ensure that people cannot be auto-enrolled into those schemes—by using either a kitemark or a charges cap?
Steve Webb
On the sort of legacy schemes that my hon. Friend refers to, I am pleased to announce that, only today, another provider—Fidelity—has said that fees in its default funds will not exceed 1% and that existing scheme members will have the opportunity to switch out of their current funds. That follows Aviva’s statements that its schemes will have a charge of not more than 1%. It will not allow auto-enrolment into any older-style schemes. I encourage other firms to follow suit.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
Auto-enrolment schemes will still be subject to stock market vagaries, the effects of varying interest rates and inefficiencies of scale. Is not what we really need a 100% state system, where we get defined benefits, as well as defined contributions, and efficiencies of scale and best possible value?
Steve Webb
Two sorts of risk are associated with pensions: financial risk and political risk. We have had SERPs—the state earnings-related pension scheme—which successive Governments cut and cut again. So that scheme did not provide any guarantee either. I want a balance of risks for people, a state promise and a private sector entitlement as well.
Mr Speaker
I say to the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones) that the choreography of when to stand up is an important parliamentary skill, which he is now developing.
Andrew Jones
16. I am developing it as fast as I can, Mr Speaker.
Can the Minister update the House on how employees have responded to auto-enrolment?
Steve Webb
Yes. The first firm to auto-enrol was RBS bank, which did so in July. It had 86% scheme membership before auto-enrolment. That has now risen to 93%. The early signs are encouraging.
Gregg McClymont (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (Lab)
We now seem to have a consensus across the House on the need for a charge cap. The leader of the Labour party has called for a charge cap on old-style legacy schemes, and the hon. Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) has just done the same. Can the Minister confirm that, when he refers to Aviva charging no more than 1%, that is an average and does not apply to all schemes?
Steve Webb
On the hon. Gentleman’s first point, this is another of the loose ends left by Labour on auto-enrolment. When Labour legislated, it put in practically no quality requirement at all. So Labour required millions of people to auto-enrol but set practically no standards for what they were auto-enrolled into. This is one of the many issues that we are actively tackling.
Gregg McClymont
The Minister has not answered the second part of the question, so I will ask it again. He just told the House that Aviva—I do not single out Aviva, as this is a broader issue—is charging no more than 1% on its schemes. My understanding is that that is an average of 1%, so a scheme could charge 0.4% and another could charge much more. The hon. Member for Warrington South, the leader of the Labour party and I are calling for a cap on old-style legacy schemes. Why does the Minister not get on with this, so that everyone can have a decent retirement scheme?
Steve Webb
Let me clarify the specific point. The statement by Aviva is that
“its schemes for automatic enrolment will have an average total product charge of less than 1%... It will not allow auto-enrolment into…older-style schemes.”
On the charge cap, the danger of the hon. Gentleman’s idea of having, say, a 1% across-the-board cap is that someone can tick the box with 0.99%. Actually, many in the market will offer below that. There is a danger that people will be misled if they are just below the cap, when many lower prices are available in the market.
Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)
15. What recent assessment he has made of the level of employment.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mr Mark Hoban)
There are more than 29.6 million people in work—the highest number since records began over 40 years ago.
Gavin Barwell
In my constituency, unemployment is down by nearly 10% since its peak in February this year. We clearly need to do better still. Does my hon. Friend agree that, contrary to some suggestions, the evidence shows that that is not down to an Olympic blip, but that we are seeing welcome progress month on month, with more and more people finding work?
Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
What assessment have the Government made of the increasing level of part-time employment?
Mr Hoban
The most recent unemployment figures indicated that 80% of people who work part time actually want to work part time. Many find that part-time work meets their needs in terms of flexible working and returning to the labour market. We need to find more full-time jobs, but we should recognise that 80% of people want to work part time and the labour market is able to accommodate them.
Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)
17. What progress his Department has made on its plans to support separated families.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)
The Government have already announced a £20 million investment in the development of support for separated families in the current spending review period. This will include provision of an online distributable web application to be launched later in the autumn, and up to £14 million for the new innovation fund to support separated families.
Pauline Latham
I thank the Minister for that answer. Will he reassure the House that the £14 million innovation fund will be spent on projects that will ultimately benefit children, and will he explain how that will be achieved?
Steve Webb
Yes. We have had 100 expressions of interest from voluntary groups and charities, and we have whittled that down to about 30. All are trying to build on existing work that enables parents, when they are separating, to deal with each other in a mature way in the interests of the children. That is the central aspect of our new strategy.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
When family breakdowns occur, grandparents, aunts, uncles or other relatives often have to step into the breach and a kinship care situation arises. Will the Minister assure me that he is talking to his colleagues in other Departments to make sure that when that situation happens, particularly in an emergency, support is given to those who step up to the plate?
Steve Webb
I agree that we need to support kinship carers, such as grandparents. One change that our Department has made is that, for example, where a mother is going out to work and is not using the national insurance credits that she would have gained for receiving child benefit, they can be passed to a grandparent, who may not be of pension age, to make sure that they are not financially disadvantaged. That is just one of the things we are doing to support that important group.
Jonathan Evans (Cardiff North) (Con)
18. What steps his Department is taking to ensure that older workers with little private pension provision are not disadvantaged by the introduction of auto-enrolment.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)
Our research shows that even under the current rules 99% of savers will get back at least as much as they put in under auto-enrolment, and around 70% will get back twice as much. In addition, our state pension reforms will support planning and saving for retirement by delivering a simpler, single, flat-rate pension set above the basic level of the means test.
Jonathan Evans
I accept that those were the calculations made in 2010 as part of the auto-enrolment review, but since that time we have seen investment returns fall so much that the Financial Services Authority is ordering the industry to downscale its forecasts and we have also seen annuity rates fall. Have the Government recalculated their figures to take account of that?
Steve Webb
The short answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question is no. However, one important point I would raise is that if someone only builds up a very small pension pot, they have a legal right to take it, in most circumstances, as a cash lump sum with a quarter tax-free. Even someone later in life can get an employer contribution tax relief—a lump sum taken with a tax-free contribution. That will be attractive, even in later life.
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)
20. What steps he is taking to tackle the causes of social breakdown.
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)
Last week we published the social justice outcomes framework, which has a set of indicators that highlight our priorities: to eradicate family breakdown, educational failure, worklessness, addiction and crime, and to grow the social investment market—a big area for us. The framework will measure our progress towards achieving these aims, shifting the policy focus and spending towards outcomes rather than inputs.
Stephen Metcalfe
Can my right hon. Friend tell the House how projects supported by the innovation fund will tackle social breakdown?
Mr Duncan Smith
Indeed I can. The innovation fund was set up by me when I came into the Department. It consists of approximately £30 million of seedcorn funding to enable voluntary groups, charities and organisations—beyond the normal organisations that one comes across in the work process—to show that their programmes, which help people to deal with drug addiction, family breakdown or gang violence, actually work, to prove that concept, and to set them up to be able to run those programmes. At least 11 social impact bonds have come out of this and we have just launched a second round.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the Secretary of State agree that much social breakdown stems from intergenerational worklessness? Is he as enthusiastic as many Opposition Members are about the Heseltine review, “No Stone Unturned”? Will he ensure that he takes a positive role in bringing some—indeed, most—of those recommendations to fruition?
Mr Duncan Smith
When one of the big beasts from the past roars, it is always difficult not to be incredibly enthusiastic about what they are roaring about, so I accept the hon. Gentleman’s invitation to express my interest and support for the report. Obviously there are details in it, but he makes the vital point that in too many communities there are families of two and three generations that have been beyond the work cycle. This is about getting them back into the idea of work not just for the money but because their whole lives disintegrate without it. I agree with him and will certainly make sure I tell Lord Heseltine how supported he is.
Gemma Doyle (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab/Co-op)
21. What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the youth contract; and if he will make a statement.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mr Mark Hoban)
The youth contract was introduced in April 2012 to provide additional support worth almost £1 billion to unemployed young people over the next three years. Although it is too early to make any judgments of its effectiveness, we have commissioned an external evaluation of the youth contract to examine delivery and outcomes, and the first report will be available early next year.
Gemma Doyle
I notice that the Minister gives a cautious response. Is it true that millions of pounds that we should be using to get young people into work are sitting unallocated and helping no one, because the Government cannot get employers on board with the youth contract?
Mr Hoban
A number of young people have been helped by various aspects of the youth contract. Twenty young people in the hon. Lady’s constituency have had work experience as a consequence of it, and another group has been helped into work as a result of the sector-based work academies. I hope that she is doing all she can in her constituency to champion the youth contract and to get more young people into work.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
23. What assessment he has made of results of the housing benefit demonstration projects.
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)
The demonstration projects are testing direct payment of housing benefit to social rented sector tenants in six areas across England, Scotland and Wales. Their purpose is primarily to help people manage their rent in advance of a move into work and the introduction of universal credit. We have commissioned an independent action research-based evaluation of the projects, and the results of initial research will be published in early December.
Bob Blackman
I thank my right hon. Friend for his answer. Will he elucidate on some early learning that has come from the second learning report, which was recently published via the learning network?
Mr Duncan Smith
That is a lot of learnings, but I will do my level best to help my hon. Friend. I shall tell him what we know so far. Some of these are early figures, but interestingly, after all the scaremongering about how people would be unable to cope, which, as we know from the local housing allowance, is not the case, the centre at Sheffield Hallam university has found so far that only 2%—less than people thought—of claimants moved because of eviction or a landlord refusing housing to housing benefit tenants, and few claimants gave financial reasons for actually moving. So we are making some good discoveries. We are on the right track and heading in the right direction.
Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)
24. What discussions his Department has had with Baroness Grey-Thompson following the publication of her report on the effect on disabled people of the introduction of universal credit.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Esther McVey)
Since Baroness Grey-Thompson’s report was released, I have attended meetings with her twice where the contents of her report have been discussed.
Teresa Pearce
“Holes in the Safety Net”, the report just mentioned, indicated that about 450,000 disabled people lose out under the universal credit rules. This number was also raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, in a recent Westminster Hall debate that the Minister attended. Will she listen to these two highly respected women and amend her plans?
Esther McVey
We have been listening very much. We found some of the reports to be highly selective and quite skewed. They did not take into consideration how much extra support was going to people with disabilities, but we are listening, there is transitional protection and we will be releasing the assessment criteria later in the year.
Mr David Ward (Bradford East) (LD)
The Minister has no doubt read today’s copy of Bradford’s The Telegraph and Argos and the letter from Mr Barry Thorne about his son. He felt compelled to write the letter following the comments from Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson. The fear is that those with clearly defined medical concerns, such as his son Stephen, will feel threatened and fearful at the prospect of reapplying and being interviewed. Are those fears unfounded?
Esther McVey
I believe that those fears are unfounded. Everybody tries to put information into the public arena that is meant to help, but frequently they do not, and instead raise fears. The whole reason for having a face-to-face interview is so that the claimant can explain clearly why they might need the benefit.
Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)
25. Whether he plans to withdraw eligibility for housing benefit from people aged under 25.
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)
My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will announce the Government’s expenditure plans in the autumn statement in a few weeks. Until then all discussion about further reform remains, as it always will do, somewhat speculative.
Yvonne Fovargue
Would not removing entitlement to housing benefit from people aged under 25 increase youth homelessness and youth unemployment?
Mr Duncan Smith
As I said, we are happy to look at all these proposals. We are discussing them right now, as has been made clear by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and by the Chancellor. But it is worth putting a few features in the public domain. The key issue is that young people who are not eligible for benefits do all sorts of things such as sharing flats and working hard. They use much of their expenditure, on low pay sometimes, to get themselves accommodation. What we are looking to do is make sure there is parity—fairness—in the system so that those who are in a slightly different situation do not get an advantage which is not necessary. It is worth telling the hon. Lady something about that group. About 400,000 claimants who are under 25 are receiving around £2 billion a year, and shared accommodation rates extend to under-35s. That is a lot of money and it is worth looking at.
Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)
The Department’s own family resources survey shows that only 10% of under-25s live independently. When we take out all the essential exemptions for people who cannot live with family, the number covered would be very small, so why are we talking about a policy that does not add up economically?
Mr Duncan Smith
As I said previously, we are looking at all this. Anyway, entitlement would never be removed from those who are already on housing benefit. The review is about flow and about re-establishing fairness in a system which many think has become unfair and does not help those who are not eligible for such benefits. I accept that there would be people who would be ineligible. That is the point of examining the system and figuring out how the policy would go, but like all policy reports, it is worth looking at. It deals with an element of unfairness and the thing about the benefits system is that if it is unfair, people who should support it will not support it, such as taxpayers.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)
We have been rolling out the innovation fund, which has so far been very successful, as I said in answer to an earlier question. About 11 social impact bonds have now been launched. The successful bidders in the second round, Prevista, Social Finance and 3SC, will deliver support for our most disadvantaged 14 and 15-year-olds, restoring hope and aspiration to young people in care who are disengaged from school and involved in gangs, crime and drugs. It is a very, very good project.
Lilian Greenwood
Dr Sue Atkinson, a mental health professional in my constituency, recently told me about the appalling misjudgments that she and her colleagues have witnessed, when their clients’ needs and capabilities have been completely ignored in the work capability assessment process. Why will the Secretary of State not act now to review and revise a system which is clearly failing?
Mr Duncan Smith
There is an awful lot of lost memory among Opposition Members. It was they, when they were in government, who set the process up. It is this Government who have made all the alterations, thanks to Professor Harrington, that have improved the situation. We are doing exactly what the hon. Lady requests. I wish she would speak to members of her Front-Bench team and avail them of that information.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
T2. Disability Cornwall has expressed concern to me that its good name has been used by the company Atos when bidding to undertake the personal independence payment assessments, when in fact no such discussion regarding a potential local partnership has ever taken place between Atos and Disability Cornwall. Does the Minister agree that this may have resulted in Ministers being misled? Will the matter, therefore, please be investigated?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Esther McVey)
To correct my hon. Friend, what the contract said was, “Should we win the contract, the sort of people we would look to negotiate with would be Disability Cornwall”—[Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire) is passing comments from a sedentary position; she may be thinking of a different matter altogether. In regard to Disability Cornwall, Atos’s position was that should it win the contract, it would look to negotiate with Disability Cornwall.
Mr Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
May I first associate everyone on the Opposition Benches with the words of commemoration for our much treasured colleague, Malcolm Wicks, who is sorely missed?
Will the Secretary of State confirm that the introduction of universal credit is proceeding according to its original timetable?
Mr Duncan Smith
I can indeed. As we have said, we will start the process nationwide in October, although we have introduced an earlier start for a pilot programme, as the right hon. Gentleman is aware, because he came into the office to talk to me about it. He knows very well that, as I explained then, the four-year process will be completed exactly as we have intended, on time and on budget.
Mr Byrne
That is curious, because last year the Secretary of State told us that every new claim for out-of-work support would be treated as a claim for universal credit from next October, but the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban), told Parliament on 26 October that the rules for universal credit from 2013 onward are still “under development.” What on earth is going on? On Atos, on caps on pension charges and now on universal credit, it does not appear that the Secretary of State has got a grip.
Mr Duncan Smith
If the right hon. Gentleman does not mind, I must say that that is a rather pathetic question. The reality, as he knows very well—he came into my office to discuss these matters and we showed him exactly what we are doing—is that there is no change. The reality is that over the four years we will bring universal credit completely online—it will be completed by 2017. I wish he would spend more time working on his brief, rather than writing books on China.
Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)
T3. Like all hard-working taxpayers, I support the Government’s attempts to reduce benefit fraud. However, I have recently received correspondence from a terminally ill constituent whose support has been wrongly withdrawn. Will the Minister assure me that those who truly deserve support, such as my constituent, will benefit from our introduction of a fairer welfare system?
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mr Mark Hoban)
My hon. Friend makes an important point. That is exactly why we have been working with Professor Harrington to implement the findings set out in his report. One of his findings relates to cancer sufferers, which is why we published new guidance last month on how they should be treated under the work capability assessment.
Fiona O'Donnell (East Lothian) (Lab)
T6. Many of my constituents who devote a great deal of effort to providing Atos with detailed medical supporting evidence will be deeply disappointed with the Minister’s earlier answer. What steps is he taking to ensure that Atos takes full account of medical evidence when determining work capability assessments—
Fiona O'Donnell
I appreciate that the Minister is eager to answer and look forward to hearing from him. I ask that because at the moment Atos is simply ignoring that evidence.
Mr Hoban
What the work capability assessment does is assess people’s ability to work. It is a review of their capability and functionality, not a diagnostic assessment. That is why the assessment takes place. Of course, it is right that claimants bring along medical evidence, but it must be read in conjunction with the Atos assessment. Decisions about eligibility for employment and support allowance are made by DWP staff, not Atos.
George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)
T4. The Government have made it clear that although they are keen that most people should be able to deal with the direct payment of housing benefit, that will not be appropriate for all. Will my right hon. Friend reassure the House, and those outside who are concerned about women’s refuges and their futures, that direct payment may be waived in those circumstances?
Mr Duncan Smith
My hon. Friend raises a very important issue. We are already in discussions with such groups and have made it clear that anybody suffering domestic violence will immediately be taken through the system and the money will be paid directly. The refuges, as we have already said, will get their money and there will be no hesitation. That is an absolutely critical area and it will be provided for completely by universal credit.
Mr Stephen Hepburn (Jarrow) (Lab)
T9. My local citizens advice bureau is getting 30 new work capability assessment cases every week, and 80% of them are won on appeal. That is because the Government are forcing sick people who have cancer or brain damage or who are dying back into work. It is a disgrace. When will this barbarity end?
Mr Hoban
As I have said a few times today—I will continue to say it—this process was put in place by the previous Government, a Government the hon. Gentleman supported. What we are looking to do is ensure that those people who can work get the support they need to get into work, rather than abandoning them to a lifetime on incapacity benefit, which he seems to think is the better option.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
T5. Is the disabilities Minister satisfied that the proposed descriptors for the personal independence payments adequately recognise the impact of Crohn’s disease, colitis and irritable bowel syndrome on the daily lives of our constituents who live with those conditions and the invisible disabilities that they endure?
Esther McVey
I am indeed. As my hon. Friend will know, it is not about the condition, but about how each individual person copes with the condition; and yes, I am happy with the criteria.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
T10. The Fair Pensions report, “Whose Duty? Ensuring effective stewardship in contract-based pensions”, highlights the relative lack of quality standards being applied to UK schemes, as opposed to other jurisdictions such as Australia. The Minister referred to active steps being taken in relation to auto-enrolment. Do those steps extend to re-visiting actively the qualifying criteria and the default fund guidance?
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)
The hon. Gentleman is right to raise the important issue of governance. We do not think that we have a significant problem with the early stages of automatic enrolment for the biggest firms. They are coming in at a low cost and are well governed. The issue will arise further through the process and we are indeed looking at the quality of schemes into which people are auto-enrolled, including charges and governance.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
T7. What progress is being made to ensure that work capability assessments are sensitive to fluctuating medical conditions such as stroke care?
Mr Hoban
My hon. Friend makes a useful point. Professor Harrington highlighted in his second review the issue of fluctuating conditions. We are working on an evidence base to look at descriptors for fluctuating conditions, to make sure that they are taken properly into account in the work capability assessment.
Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)
When the Government started to move people from incapacity benefit to employment support allowance, provision was made for those who were particularly or very disabled so that they would not have to go through the work capability assessment and would go straight into the support group. However, a number of my constituents have been moved from incapacity benefit and on to the work-related activity group of ESA without first going through a work capability assessment. How widespread is this, how many people is it happening to, and why is it happening?
Mr Hoban
I would be grateful if the hon. Lady supplied me with the evidence she mentions. There are clearly situations in which people go straight into the support group without undergoing a work capability assessment. It depends on the information supplied when they originally make the application.
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
T8. The scandalously high rate of youth unemployment was perhaps one of the previous Government’s worst legacies, and my constituents warmly welcome the creation of 1 million new jobs and 600,000 apprenticeships. Does the Secretary of State agree that in rural areas young jobseekers face particular challenges in accessing small, fast-growing companies in the rural economy, and will he join me in supporting the local voluntary big society initiative launched by The Norfolk Way—it started a work club and enterprise bursary in which local entrepreneurs support jobseekers—in Mid Norfolk last week?
Mr Duncan Smith
I pay tribute to the work that my hon. Friend does in his area. I absolutely agree with and support what he says. It is really interesting that youth unemployment was rising in the previous Government’s last six years, even in a time of growth. They fiddled with the figures so that anybody who was unemployed for more than 10 months went on a course; most of them ended up returning to unemployment, where they started from zero again. The then Government deliberately and falsely capped the figure. We are honest about it and tell the truth.
Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)
We have been told that Professor Harrington’s recommendations on the introduction of mental health champions to improve work capability assessments have been implemented, yet only two mental health champions cover the whole of Scotland and both of them are based in the central belt. What steps have Ministers put in place to measure the effectiveness of mental health champions?
Mr Hoban
We have introduced a mental health champion in every single assessment centre throughout the country. We have asked Professor Harrington not only to look at new changes, but to review changes that have already been proposed and to monitor their effectiveness. We will continue to follow that process.
Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)
On the housing benefit demonstration projects, what assessment has been made of potential budgeting accounts—so-called jam-jar accounts—to help people manage all their finances and build up a savings pot?
Mr Duncan Smith
My noble friend Lord Freud has already discussed with all the financial institutions how to construct systems that support people who may have budgeting issues. The phrase “jam-jar accounts” is an unsophisticated term for such systems, but by and large they help people apportion the money necessary for their rent, food and so on, so that they can see that money flow in and then take it out. On housing benefit, a key area of the local housing allowance will be that we will not allow people to build up arrears of debt. We will intervene early to make sure that that does not happen, which should help landlords understand that we will support them.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
Ministers assured us that the flexibilities introduced for lone parents on jobseeker’s allowance under Labour would continue, yet the number of lone parents who have been sanctioned has risen dramatically. In a written answer on 24 October the Minister said that the reasons for sanctions were exactly the same as those for other jobseekers. Can the Secretary of State explain exactly how those flexibilities are being properly applied and what training is being delivered to personal advisers in Jobcentre Plus?
Mr Hoban
I think we all believe that it is important that where lone parents can work, they should work, because that helps to boost their income and that of their family. Guidance is given to personal advisers on jobseeker’s allowance to ensure that the sanctions regime is applied appropriately to lone parents, as in the case of all jobseekers.
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
What, hitherto, has been the fraud and error rate in child benefit?
Mr Duncan Smith
It would be pretty negligible because it is paid to everybody, and it would therefore be impossible to figure it out. Across the board in the Department for Work and Pensions, we are beginning to see a downward pressure on fraud and error. My hon. Friend will be pleased to see that over the next few years we will be saving considerable amounts of money.
David Wright (Telford) (Lab)
How many people who have been medically retired from their jobs with severe conditions are being put through the work capability assessment and having their benefits attacked?
Mr Hoban
I do not have the precise figures to hand, but I will look into them and write to the hon. Gentleman. It is important to remember—I think there is agreement on both sides of the House about this—that working helps many people’s medical conditions; there is very strong evidence to support that. That is at the heart of the work capability assessment that Labour introduced when in government, and we are trying to sort out the problems with it.
Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)
With 70% of social housing tenants having no access to the internet, will the Secretary of State update the House on what progress he is making for a low or no-cost social housing tariff to be overlaid on the existing BT Basic package to enable social housing tenants to access universal credit online?
Mr Duncan Smith
In fact, many more people access the internet daily than a lot of people think. Some 78% of all benefit recipients access the internet, and about 48% do so on a daily basis. Obviously it is our job to try to get that figure up, because if people cannot access the internet that affects their employment prospects given that 92% of all jobs require some computer skills. This is an opportunity and, yes, we are looking at that passported benefit to make sure that those who need the money get the money directly.
Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
Universal credit is due to be up and running in less than a year. Surely by now the Secretary of State should be able to give us some detail about who will be eligible for free school meals.
Mr Duncan Smith
We are talking to the Departments involved about how best they want to make this work. They will make it work, and we will come forward very soon with some very clear indication of how it is going to work. The hon. Lady should rest assured that the purpose of this is to make sure that those who need and deserve the money get the money, and I can guarantee that that will be the case.
Dog Micro-chipping
Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)
It is a pleasure to present this petition on behalf of the pupils and staff of Our Lady of Hartley primary school, an excellent school in my constituency. The children there held a first-class debate on the subject and collected signatures at the school gates. The children have asked me to present this petition to the House.
The petition states:
The Petition of pupils and teachers at Our Lady of Hartley Primary School,
Declares that it is sensible to have all dogs micro-chipped as puppies; further that the Petitioners believe that this will reduce the amount of lost or abandoned dogs and will also help to ensure that the owners of dangerous dogs can be held to account as the Petitioners believe it is the owners, not the dogs, who are at fault; further that the Petitioners do not wish for micro-chipping to be made compulsory but wish it to be strongly encouraged and made accessible for all in terms of cost.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to consider measures to encourage dog owners to have their dogs micro-chipped and that the Government seek to reduce the cost of micro-chipping puppies.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P001127]
Business of the House
(12 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Andrew Lansley)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I should like to make a short business statement.
The business for tomorrow will now be:
Tuesday 6 November—Motion to approve the Second Report 2012-13 from the Standards and Privileges Committee, followed by Second Reading of the European Union (Croatian Accession and Irish Protocol) Bill, followed by motion to approve European documents relating to Banking Union and Economic and Monetary Union.
The business for the next day will be:
Wednesday 7 November—Opposition day [8th allotted day]. There will be a debate on regional pay in the NHS, followed by a debate on the criminal injuries compensation scheme. Both debates will arise on an Opposition motion.
The business for the rest of this week remains unchanged, as follows:
Thursday 8 November—Debate on a motion relating to the medium-term financial plan for the House of Commons administration and savings programme, followed by general debate on stimulating growth through better use of the prompt payment code. The subjects for these debates have been nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.
Friday 9 November—Private Members’ Bills.
I will, as usual, announce further business during the business statement on Thursday.
Mr Speaker
The hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) does not wish to contribute. We are grateful to the Leader of the House, and if there are no questions—this is almost unprecedented in respect of anything said by the Leader of the House or any other Government representative—we shall move on.
Growth and Infrastructure Bill
21:56 - The House divided: - Ayes: 305 / Noes: 213 - Question accordingly agreed to.
The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Two years ago, the coalition Government were formed to take the country from difficult times to better days. In the coalition agreement, we pledged to build a new economy from the rubble of the old, to support sustainable growth, balanced across all industries and parts of the country, and to champion enterprise and aspiration. We pledged to shift power from unelected quangos to elected representatives, communities, neighbourhoods and individuals. Most urgently, we pledged to take immediate action to tackle the deficit and get the public finances back on track.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State give way?
Mr Pickles
I will give way in a few moments.
Since those heady days of May 2010, the economy has been buffeted by the problems of the eurozone. All western economies face the ongoing consequences of the banking collapse and the last decade of boom and bust. The world has changed, however, and so must we. The west is slipping down international league tables as emerging economies push ahead with energy and drive. Countries that make it will be those that step up to long-term challenges to get the economy growing, build more homes for a growing population, and provide factories, offices and infrastructure for the 21st century.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
The Secretary of State talks about building more homes. Tens of thousands of homes could be built on land banks, but builders are holding back until the economy recovers and house prices increase, so that they make more profit.
Mr Pickles
I am sure the hon. Gentleman was delighted to see the latest figures that show a net increase of 11% in the number of homes—the biggest increase since 2007. I hope that he will work hard to persuade fellow Labour Members to get behind the Government’s schemes.
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
Will the Secretary of State confirm that, whatever details the Bill contains to allow greater flexibility in housing development, the Government are absolutely committed to having more affordable homes in England, and for more of those homes to have social or target rents for constituents such as mine?
Mr Pickles
My right hon. Friend can rest assured that the Government are confident of being able to deliver 170,000 homes, and of ensuring affordable homes for those who need housing. That is considerably better than in any of the past 10 years when the Labour party was in power.
Mr Pickles
I will, of course, give way to the Chair of the Communities and Local Government Committee.
Mr Pickles
No, it is accountable to Ministers and directly to this House, which I think restores the political balance.
The coalition has taken a number of measures to ensure that Britain can compete in a global world. The Local Government Finance Act 2012, which received Royal Assent last week, provides new incentives for councils to support enterprise and local firms, through the local retention of business rates. Local enterprise partnerships are ensuring that local councils work hard with local businesses to bring about growth. We are also looking in detail at Lord Heseltine’s practical recommendations on how we can further devolve power and funding. Through the wide-ranging Localism Act 2011, we are abolishing unelected quangos such as the Infrastructure Planning Commission and regional assemblies, replacing them with democratic accountability at national, local and neighbourhood levels. We are also scything through the reams of planning red tape imposed by Labour’s Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, Planning Act 2008 and Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the Secretary of State reassure my constituents, many of whom have fought hard for traditional community and village greens? He will know that some of the developers are absolutely ruthless. In Huddersfield, a company called Padico has bought up bankrupt stock and then spent enormous amounts of money trying to reverse a High Court decision about a village green. He knows how ruthless some of the developers are, so will he say whether our traditional village greens will be more vulnerable as a result of this Bill?
Mr Pickles
The national planning policy framework actually strengthens green spaces.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
Is the Secretary of State aware of how much work his Minister of State is doing to unfreeze the blockages that some projects face because of red tape? Only recently our hon. Friend visited Wellingborough to cut through the red tape facing the Wellingborough East development and help with the Skew Bridge retail development, which is opposed by Labour in Corby.
Mr Pickles
I am delighted to hear about the magnificent work done by my hon. Friend the Minister of State. I have to say though, it comes as no surprise to me that he is working very hard indeed.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend confirm that, despite what is being said in the media, the planning guidance hands back local power to local people, in particular through the neighbourhood plans?
Mr Pickles
Of course it does, and it is pleasing that so many local authorities now publish a plan much more quickly and in a much better way than under the old system.
To return to the national planning policy framework, we have streamlined 1,000 pages of planning guidance down to a mere 50 pages and opened up the planning system, which is no longer the preserve of lawyers, town hall officers and non-governmental organisations, but there is more to do.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr Pickles
I think it would be reasonable to make a little progress now.
Now some reforms can be delivered by circular and some by order, while others rightly require primary legislation in Parliament. The Bill we are introducing today has three key themes: boosting Britain’s infrastructure, cutting excessive red tape and helping local firms to grow. Let me deal with each in turn.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
I welcome the wish to get on with sensible infrastructure development, and I see that there are provisions to speed up planning permissions for power stations. As EU carbon dioxide regulations will entail the closure of a lot of necessary power stations quite soon, how much quicker will things be under the new procedures? We need to get on with it.
Mr Pickles
The new procedures remove a lot of the old regulations, which have been superseded by time, and make it much easier for those providing power to adapt to modern conditions. Technologies have improved, and the new procedures will enable us to adapt to them.
Mr Jim Cunningham
Is the Secretary of State aware that in Coventry there is a considerable need for social housing in particular? Does he have any incentives on offer to unlock more housing and make a bit of progress?
Mr Pickles
I am sure the hon. Gentleman will be pleased that Coventry has made enormous strides in recent months to ensure that planning applications—particularly for large sites—have improved considerably, so that they are now pretty close to meeting all the necessary requirements. I am sure that he will be delighted with the additional effort the Government have made on social housing and that, as someone who cares about it deeply, he will have felt highly embarrassed by the failures of his Government.
Mr Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)
May I thank my right hon. Friend and his colleagues for the assurances that they have given so publicly about the green belt? I represent a constituency that is wholly within the metropolitan green belt, where the green belt is at its narrowest around London, and he will understand the anxiety of my constituents over this matter. What concerns does he have about threat to the green belt posed by the regional spatial strategies that were introduced by Labour?
Mr Pickles
The regional spatial strategies represent the single greatest threat to the green belt. In them, the Labour Government imposed housing targets on local areas that would effectively have ripped up vast sections of the green belt. We are consulting on the strategies, and I assure the House that I have a completely open mind on that consultation. Once it is over, we will come to a decision on their future.
Kick-starting infrastructure will not only promote construction jobs but ensure long-term, natural expansion. The Bill will unlock billions of new investment in energy projects through repealing outdated energy laws. Thankfully, the Energy Act 1976, which sought to restrict gas use because of the energy shortages at the time, is now redundant. We no longer have to legislate in that way to keep the country’s lights on. This Bill will allow companies to vary consents to incorporate the latest technology and to make their plants more energy efficient.
The Bill will remove the excessive red tape that hinders superfast broadband from being rolled out to local homes and businesses. It will especially help those parts of rural Britain facing a digital divide. As hon. Members will recall, it was telecommunications deregulation in the 1980s that created the modern communications industry that we enjoy today. Measures such as abolishing the special TV licences for satellite dishes and introducing permitted development rights for those dishes are the reason that we have television channels such as Sky News and our own beloved BBC Parliament channel. Satellite dishes can be put up without planning permission. Why should not we be able to do the same with 21st-century broadband technology?
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
My constituency covers part of the Dartmoor national park, where there is real concern about a proliferation of radio masts. Does the Secretary of State accept that there is good evidence that national parks around the country already work sensitively to promote rural broadband?
Mr Pickles
And I am sure that they will under this Bill. These regulations are not a free-for-all. All that they will do is apply the prior approval regime. Local planning authorities will be able to object to inappropriately placed posts and wires. For the sake of clarity, given the appalling scaremongering by the shadow spokesman in the Labour party on these issues, I should like to point out that these measures do not relate to 4G. We are a long way from considering 4G improvements; these measures relate exclusively to broadband, and to ensuring that my hon. Friend’s constituency has an equal chance with those of constituencies in other parts of the country that have broadband.
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)
I represent the constituency that contains the Northumberland national park. Kielder forest has more than 200,000 trees but no mobile phone or broadband coverage whatever. The Forestry Commission says that it is the only place in the country where it cannot contact its representatives at all. We welcome these provisions.
Mr Pickles
I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman, who I am sure will entertain us.
Bill Esterson
When the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) gave evidence to the Select Committee a few weeks ago, he was asked repeatedly about how the issue of the correct size of extensions in back gardens would be dealt with. He made it very clear that planning departments would rely on people to dob their neighbours in if they had exceeded the permitted size. Does the Secretary of State think that this will lead to the snoopers’ charter that his colleague suggested when he gave that evidence?
Mr Pickles
That question might have sounded like a good idea earlier this morning, but this is the wrong Bill, the wrong matter and the wrong debate in which to raise it. If the hon. Gentleman writes to me, no doubt we will do our best to help.
In an internet age, Britain must be able to compete virtually; otherwise, businesses will literally select another country at the click of a mouse. We live in a connected age, but technologies also make our society interdependent. Everyday families take for granted the “just-in-time” technologies that stock our supermarkets and drop off internet deliveries to our doors. To make them work, however, we need to build and provide the storage depots, warehouses and rail exchanges, and the supporting energy infrastructure to keep the economy moving.
The number of large-scale business and commercial applications taking over a year to determine is rising, so this Bill will allow an alternative process to decide nationally significant business and commercial projects within 12 months of the start of examination. Existing requirements to consult local communities will be retained, as will democratic checks and balances.
Mr Pickles
Of course I will give way to the very distinguished gentleman. [Interruption.] Or were there two distinguished Members standing together?
Mr Speaker
On this occasion, I believe the Secretary of State is referring to a former Minister of State—with no disrespect to the hon. Member for Northampton South (Mr Binley), whose distinction is universally known.
Mr Raynsford
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way, and hope this will not cause him any difficulty with his colleague. How will “nationally significant developments” be defined? What definitions will be used to decide whether developments are nationally significant and thus fall within the remit?
Mr Pickles
First, there are national policy statements, in addition to which we are going to consult. Let me be absolutely clear that it is our ambition to ensure that, providing local authorities put together a planning performance agreement with these large developments, this measure will not be necessary; it is there to help. I give way now to my distinguished hon. Friend.
Mr Binley
I am grateful and I understand why my right hon. Friend gave way to a much more distinguished Member than me.
Let me refer to the issue of infrastructure—not only of utilities, but housing. I know that my right hon. Friend is very aware of the need to build on brownfield sites first, so can he tell me what work his Department is doing to ensure that, when planning permission is given, proper surveys of brownfield sites in a given area are undertaken before greenfield sites are built on?
Mr Pickles
That is a reasonable point. My hon. Friend will know—I know he is an assiduous reader of these things—that the national planning policy framework indeed lays out a test to look at brownfield sites. In a few moments, I shall come on to a few additional measures that will make my hon. Friend even happier than he is currently.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
May I press the Secretary of State on the point raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford)? The Bill extends to commercial and business developments the system for nationally significant infrastructure projects. The Secretary of State has just said that there will be national policy statements for reference, so is he saying that national policy statements will be prepared for commercial and business developments? Otherwise, I think he might have mis-spoken; perhaps he could make himself clear.
Mr Pickles
There are obviously national policy statements—full stop. In addition, we are consulting on where these should bite in. We will be looking most carefully at those authorities that have not been able to meet these targets, but there is a big distinction—[Interruption.] We are not including housing or eco-towns. We are not suddenly going to impose big developments without local people having a say. That is the difference between Government and Opposition Members.
Cutting excessive red tape is the Bill’s second theme. The Bill will enable us to implement the reforms recommended by the Government’s Penfold review, which examined the multiple, overlapping development consents that were needed for many projects on top of planning permission. While much of the review is being implemented via secondary legislation, other parts require primary legislation. The Bill removes or streamlines duplicate regimes for highways, rights of way, and town and village green registration.
Let me stress, for the avoidance of doubt, that we are maintaining the strongest protection for England’s village greens. Indeed, the national planning policy framework has created a new planning protection for valuable green open spaces. However, we will need to prevent the registration system from being misused to hinder and slow legitimate, planned development. A review conducted by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in 2009 slammed
“the existence of two parallel systems”
—village greens and planning—
“between which there is minimal communication”.
It added that, in the view of the Government of the day,
“this seems to be problematic”.
The problem lay with the last Government’s Commons Act 2006. Labour DEFRA Ministers told Parliament in 2009 that there would be a consultation to streamline the confusing regime and that the results would be published in 2010, but nothing happened. I wonder why. Perhaps the former Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), will take the opportunity this afternoon to apologise to the House for his tardiness.
We are also reforming special parliamentary procedure to remove a duplicate consent regime, introduced as a result of the poor drafting of the Bill that became the Planning Act 2008. As the Ways and Means Committee in this House and the Chairman of Committees in the other place have stated,
“since the 2008 Act did not amend the 1945 Act, we now have a statutory framework which is internally contradictory.”
The Bill removes that overlap, while retaining parliamentary safeguards for land with genuinely “special” historic and parliamentary protection, such as National Trust and common land.
The Bill also cuts red tape by allowing the renegotiation of economically unrealistic section 106 agreements. These measures go hand in hand with changes to secondary legislation on which we have consulted. In our sights particularly are affordable housing requirements that were negotiated at the height of Labour’s unsustainable housing boom. Now that the Brown bubble has burst, bringing us back to reality with a bump, we recognise that 75,000 homes, with planning permission, are lying unbuilt.
Mr Pickles
Not for a while.
Unviable section 106 agreements have led to no development, no negotiation, and no community benefits.
Mr Pickles
I will give way in a moment. I ask the hon. Gentleman to be patient, and allow me to develop my point.
More affordable housing will be delivered by the unlocking of those stalled sites than would be delivered without our reforms. The new powers will be used when negotiation is not already under way, and, as the House knows, it has the opportunity to send a clear message to all parties to get round the table and start negotiating now. We can all have pie-in-the-sky targets, but the hard truth is that the houses will not be built unless the sums add up. The reforms will complement our affordable housing programme, which will lever in £20 billion of housing investment over the spending review period.
I will now give way to the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris).
Grahame M. Morris
I am grateful to the Secretary of State. He is very kind. Does he accept the view of David Orr, the chief executive of the National Housing Federation, who says that the abolition of the section 106 agreements is likely to cost us 35,000 affordable houses each and every year?
Mr Pickles
Only in the fantasy housing figures. The truth is that 41% of local authorities have already started these negotiations. That is one of the reasons why we have seen the number of houses start to increase. Eighty per cent. of authorities are willing to negotiate. Some lack the skills and experience to do so. We are willing to help there, but the truth is that, if we have a 50% target and nothing is built, 50% of nothing is nothing. The idea is to move things on. We have found in the negotiations that, rather than have a 30% target, many authorities have dropped to 26%. Many have managed a little higher than that, but they have shown flexibility to get the whole process moving.
Simon Hughes
Of course none of us wants stalled sites and there are many of them, but will the Secretary of State be helpful, as his Ministers have indicated, and ensure that we have a much more transparent check on what developers say is economically viable? Our experience on the south bank is that they say certain things are not economically viable. They then build the housing and flog it off at higher prices that were not revealed at the beginning.
Mr Pickles
Of course this is not going to be done on the basis of a developer’s word—developers will have to demonstrate clearly to an inspector that the current targets are uneconomic. I believe that we will get more social houses built because of this measure and I believe that we will have more affordable houses. We have put additional sums in, as my right hon. Friend will recall, and fairly soon the schemes will be going out to tender.
Mr John Redwood
I think that this is the best bit in the Bill. It is so obvious that we have to allow the developers and the council to decide what is affordable and realistic. It may be that in some cases all we can get built is houses for sale. What is wrong with that?
Mr Pickles
There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but I am afraid that a strange municipal machismo has grown up—if one authority managed 40%, another would say, “Well we managed to negotiate 50%.” It is wholly unrealistic.
Mr Pickles
That is absolutely right. That goes to the heart of what we are doing. We are pleased to be introducing healthy competition.
Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend accept, from his experience of local government, my experience and that of the Minister, that one of the concerns many of us may have is that for a planning authority and a planning committee to understand what is economically viable will be difficult? There may be a slight flaw and a problem there.
Mr Pickles
I think that is precisely how we got into this problem. That is why we are looking to developers and local authorities to work together in open negotiation and, to use the words of the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones), to be much more competition and market-oriented. We want to get a degree of realism into the process.
Bob Blackman
Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is not just the targets on the percentage of affordable housing and the mix of dwellings, including flats, that are important? The targets on design, density and everything else that goes with it are crippling the market right now. Those decisions were taken years ago, when the housing boom was at its height.
Mr Pickles
My hon. Friend makes a reasonable point. I want to make it clear that we do not want to go back to the bad old days when we were doing swaps. I think we should be building real communities, which means that there should be a mixture of market houses and social houses. That is the way real communities live together. To get that mix right and to get social housing moving, we need, again in the words of the hon. Member for Warrington North, greater competition and a much more market-oriented approach.
Our approach is working. Official figures show that more affordable housing is being provided under the coalition Government than under Labour. On average, a third more affordable housing has been built every year than during Labour's last decade.
Local authorities have an important role in promoting development and shaping where it should go.
Mr Pickles
I say I will give way for the final time more often than Frank Sinatra said he would be performing for the last time. Therefore, I want to make it clear that, until I have moved off the planning stuff, I will not take any more interventions.
The Bill will make it easier for councils to choose, if they wish, to dispose of surplus land held for planning purposes, thus helping get more brownfield land back into productive use. Councils will also be given more local discretion over when they review the planning conditions for mineral sites, rather than following rigid, centrally-set targets.
The Localism Act 2011 has also given councils more control over local plans to determine where development does, and does not, take place. Some 65% of planning authorities have now published an up-to-date local plan. That is great progress, but the planning system needs to be fair and responsive to applicants and local residents. Alongside tackling the small number of councils whose performance on planning is exceptionally poor, we want to deal with those councils that insist on demanding large amounts of unnecessary paperwork to support planning applications. The Bill will therefore ensure that information requests from councils are genuinely related to planning and proportionate to the scale and nature of the development proposed. The reams of documents demanded have now got out of control. They do not make the planning system more accessible; they achieve quite the reverse. So this practical reform will save everyone time and money.
Planning includes a quasi-judicial process which, of course, puts fairness at its very centre, yet in some cases it is taking far too long for that process to be concluded. Justice delayed is justice denied. Unreasonable delays are unfair to both applicants and local residents because of the uncertainty delays create. The Bill will therefore help speed up planning decisions where councils have a poor record in deciding applications. This will be a help to localised planning, as it will make the worst councils up their game.
The planning system is at times Kafkaesque, with applicants having to wait months, sometimes years, for different pieces of consent from different people. Our proposed change squares with localism. In a quasi-judicial system, there should be minimum standards of due process. That principle is no different from that for the intervention powers that address rare cases of public service failure such as on best value, care homes or education. In the longer term, however, our goal is that no council should find itself in a position where these powers need to be used.
The Bill also contains a series of measures to help local companies grow. We want to help companies introduce a new employment status that gives employees a stake in the company. Employee-owners will benefit from shares in the company worth between £2,000 and £50,000, as well as a different set of UK employment rights than for normal employees. This is particularly aimed at fast-growing small companies and enterprises that will benefit from a flexible work force. We are currently consulting to ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place so people fully understand the consequences of this new type of contract. Only the enemies of aspiration would oppose this modern embrace of co-operative values.
The Bill also provides for tax stability in the business rates system. Business rates are the third biggest outgoing for local firms after rent and staff, but an unpredictable business rate revaluation would be costly to British firms, so this Bill reschedules revaluation to 2017. This will give businesses five years of tax stability and certainty, leaving companies looking to grow and improve the economy free to concentrate on delivering growth. This revaluation comes off the back of Labour’s unsustainable property boom. Rents have been falling, but at any revaluation that would be offset by a soaring multiplier.
There is a popular misconception that postponing the revaluation means delaying falling rate bills. That is not the case. The postponement will be revenue-neutral. It is most important to stop a game of Russian roulette with municipal finances. Initial Valuation Office Agency estimates suggest that the revaluation would see up to 800,000 firms paying more in business rates, with only 300,000 paying less. The decision will avoid local firms and local shops facing unexpected hikes in their business rate bills over the next five years. Places that would be particularly hard hit are small shops, petrol stations and public houses. We cannot know with complete certainty without spending £43 million on a revaluation, but there is a significant risk of the revaluation going very wrong and harming growth. Small and medium-sized firms will be the hardest hit if we do not take action. Without action, there will be massive volatility, which, in itself, could close down businesses and, at the very least, discourage business investment. This reform will provide certainty for business to plan and invest, supporting local economic growth. So these measures complement the local retention of business rates, go hand in hand with the Localism Act’s reforms to small business rate relief and build on the abolition of Labour’s “ports tax”, which threatened to sink Britain’s export trade because of a botched, unfair revaluation.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
I share the Secretary of State’s desire to try to use this mechanism to boost our high streets. However, I get a bit lost by his argument, because many small shops in a town centre such as Denton had their business rates set on the basis of their rents before the recession and would benefit from a revaluation on the basis of the current lower rents.
Mr Pickles
The hon. Gentleman should not be mocked for not understanding this, because the misconception is a common one. If London values went down enormously, we would have to adjust the multiplier to ensure that the same amount of money was in the system as whole. Initial estimates of the multiplier suggest that a massive increase would be required, so those very places that have seen a drop in rents—a drop in rateable values—could find themselves paying much more through this process. That is the very nature of it. He may recall that when a revaluation took place last time the values had gone up so high that there had to be a small reduction in the multiplier to compensate. Our feeling is that the multiplier would be likely to have to go up considerably, which is why we have taken the unusual decision of trying to do the revaluation against a more stable position.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
None the less, businesses in my constituency have expressed dismay at this announcement. What analysis has the Secretary of State, or his Department, carried out on the geographically distributional spread of the impact of this measure?
Mr Pickles
We cannot definitively model geographical spread. All we can do is rely on our officials’ best professional judgment and initial reports—I stress that they are initial—from the Valuation Office Agency. Big changes are likely to be seen, even within an area. We can see what has happened in the City. We recognise that banks and a lot of financial institutions are likely to see a colossal drop in their rates bill, but compensating that will be enormous increases in other parts of London to pay for it. So the hon. Lady’s constituents should not feel aggrieved. They should feel that we have taken a sensible decision, and we hope that we can get broad consensus on it.
The measures I have outlined today will help Britain compete in a global world. They will support local firms, local jobs, local housing and local regeneration. They will remove the unnecessary red tape that holds our country back and they will ensure that sustainable development goes hand in hand with environmental safeguards and democratic checks and balances We are speeding up the system, cutting excessive regulation and giving employers a helping hand to compete on the global stage.
We are being true to the aspirations that brought the coalition Government together. We are taking the bold action needed to fight for Britain’s future and ensure that we succeed in a changed and uncertain world. We are promoting economic growth, rebalancing our economy, backing the industries of the future and allowing Britain to compete in a modern, 21st-century world economy. I commend the Bill to the House.
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
That was a valiant attempt by the Secretary of State to try to pretend that the centralisation of power at the heart of the Bill is nothing more than a bit of his muscular localism. The truth is that the whole House knows where the Bill comes from. It is the product of the Government’s panic over growth during a summer in which Nos. 10 and 11 Downing street thrashed around, trying desperately first to find people to blame and then to find things to do about the state of the economy and the longest double-dip recession since the second world war.
It is the Secretary of State who has been told to try to explain what on earth the Bill is for, and it certainly cannot be described as a growth Bill. First, it will not help to get the economy back on track. For example, he mentioned housing. Members should remember that construction output is estimated to have declined by 2.5% in the three months until September—there is a sector in trouble—and if the Government wanted to boost growth and tackle the housing crisis, the Secretary of State could have adopted our proposal to use the proceeds of the 4G auction to build 100,000 new affordable homes. He could also have repeated the bankers’ bonus tax to build 25,000 affordable homes. What would those two measures do? They would take people off the waiting list and unemployed building workers off the dole queue. The Bill does not do that.
Secondly, in a survey in the summer when the construction industry was asked—and it ought to know—what the main deterrent to investment in infrastructure was, what did 60% of the respondents say?
Hilary Benn
No, they said it was the lack of clarity from the UK Government.
Thirdly, the reason we have been one of only two G20 countries in a double-dip recession is not the planning system but the Government’s failed economic policies. The Secretary of State is in a very uncomfortable position today as his whole argument, which is that the Bill will give us growth, has been undercut by the Prime Minister. Let me remind the House of what the Prime Minister said in the summer:
“If you could legislate your way to growth, obviously we would. The truth is you can’t.”
That is what the Prime Minister said.
Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
Against that background, will the right hon. Gentleman explain why under the Government of whom he was a member the UK fell from fourth to 89th in the global rankings for the burden of Government regulation? How would he put that right if he were in our place?
Hilary Benn
I do not know which survey the hon. Gentleman means, but as he knows, we did a great deal.
Robert Neill
I mean the World Economic Forum’s global competitiveness report—those reports run from 1997 through to 2012-13. I can show it to him if he would like to see it.
Hilary Benn
As the hon. Gentleman has a wee bit more time on his hands these days, I would very gladly read a copy of that report. He knows that the previous Government did a number of things to boost the economy and economic development, and he must acknowledge that when the coalition Government took over, the economy was growing. The Chancellor’s spectacular achievement has been to put that growth into reverse.
This is a flawed and incoherent Bill that shows why the Prime Minister was right to say that it is not possible to legislate for growth. It is no wonder that Sir Merrick Cockell, the Conservative leader of the LGA, described it as a missed opportunity. The only thing that will grow as a result of the Bill will be the power of the Secretary of State, who is mentioned 144 times in just 45 pages—that is going some.
Now, why is that? The truth that the right hon. Gentleman would not utter is that the Bill marks the death of his commitment to localism—the localism that he used to proclaim with such passion and sincerity. It is actually a Bill that says, “You know what? You can’t trust local people to take the right decisions, so we’ll take the decisions.” It was noticeable that clause 1 was the bit of the Bill that he was most reluctant to talk about. It is extraordinary. Ministers have tried to dress it up today—the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), who has responsibility for planning, did so when he appeared before the Communities and Local Government Committee—as a minor change that will be used sparingly in a few authorities, apparently, he said, for a maximum of one year. But the Bill says none of those things. Nowhere does it say that. The Government are making this up as they go along. What the Bill does say is that the right hon. Gentleman would take for himself the power to decide on planning applications and cut local communities right out of the process for as long as he likes.
Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
Is it not noticeable that the Secretary of State refused to give way to answer the key question: how would he define what a failing local authority is in planning terms?
Hilary Benn
If my hon. Friend bears with me a moment, I shall come presently to precisely that point. The first question that the House must ask the Government is that if they are to propose such a fundamental change to the way in which planning decisions have been taken since 1947—that is about 60 years of local decision making—the Secretary of State must have had really strong evidence on why such a change is needed, so where is the evidence? I will make this very easy for him, and I will happily give way. Can he name one example of a so-called failing planning authority? Will he name an authority now?
Mr Pickles
As the right hon. Gentleman knows and, more particularly, as other Opposition Members know, I have been more than helpful to those Members who have had trouble with planning authorities and I have done my best to move things along, but I am very happy to name the worst, which is Hackney.[Official Report, 6 November 2012, Vol. 552, c. 5-6MC.]
Hilary Benn
That is extremely interesting. If the Secretary of State can name what is in his view a failing planning authority, he must know the criteria for judging a failing planning authority, yet the criteria are nowhere in the Bill; he is allowed to make them up as he goes along. Officials watching this will be thinking, “Oh, my goodness, he shouldn’t have done that,” because he has just fettered his discretion and the consultation that he will probably have to undertake in deciding which are failing planning authorities.
Mr Pickles
I also made it absolutely clear that, of course, we are working with the LGA and local authorities to define this, and we are prepared to consult on it. But the right hon. Gentleman asks what the worst planning authority is, and I have named it. Whether that will be regarded as a failing authority will be a matter of consultation.
Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Hilary Benn
Perhaps my hon. Friend will just bear with me for a second, as I am very interested further in the Secretary of State’s answer because he has not defined the worst. I have here before me a list of the slowest decision makers on all applications and the slowest decision makers on major applications. The top three—or the bottom three, depending on our interpretation, in those two categories are Stratford-upon-Avon, Stafford and Warwick for all applications, and for major applications Torbay, Kensington and Chelsea, and North Norfolk.
Government Members really ought to see where their authorities are in the league table that the Secretary of State is in the process of making up as he goes along. They may well find that, unless we remove clause 1, planning decisions will be taken not by locally elected councillors—that is my definition of localism—but by the Planning Inspectorate. The truth is that if he knows the criteria he should make them clear now. Clause 1 will in effect give the Secretary of State the ability to nationalise planning decisions in respect of as many authorities as he likes. It will completely change the basis on which planning applications have been traditionally considered by local communities. That is the very opposite of the localism that he used to speak about, because decisions will be taken not by councillors but by the Planning Inspectorate on behalf of the Secretary of State. There will be a strong reaction when the first local authorities discover that the power to decide has been taken away from them by the Secretary of State under the Bill.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman needs to go back a little in history and look at the imposed housing targets that local authorities were expected to deliver. This scaremongering—that the Secretary of State, in a micro-managing sort of way, will look at every planning authority and decide the plans himself—is frankly ridiculous. I sincerely hope that the right hon. Gentleman gets back to the real nub of the argument, which is that the coalition Government are trying to get away from imposing things on local people and are letting them choose how they want their areas to develop.
Hilary Benn
I say to the hon. Lady that it is not ridiculous; it is what clause 1 says. If she has not read the clause, I suggest that she does so carefully. On housing targets, the truth is that under the new arrangements the figures that local authorities will have to come up with for housing numbers in their area will not be very different from the figures produced by the regional spatial strategy, because there is still the same housing need. That is certainly the case for the authority in Leeds, because I have spoken to the chief planning officer about that.
The truth is that if hon. Members read the Bill, they will see that the Secretary of State will decide which authorities will lose the right to decide applications for themselves, he will decide what kinds of applications will come to him for decision, and he alone will take the decision in the place of local councillors. Of course, there will be no right of appeal—something the Bill also states.
I want to turn, as my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) invited me to a moment ago, to the grounds on which the Secretary of State may designate authorities. Clearly, he has made up his mind; he is just not telling us how he has done it. The clause gives him the power to do that anywhere, on any basis, for as many authorities as he likes, and there will be no check or balance from anybody else.
As for the criteria, when the Minister with responsibility for planning appeared before the Select Committee he said that speed and poor quality measured by decisions overturned by the Planning Inspectorate would be the factors that Ministers would take into account. On speed, I am genuinely puzzled. First, councils currently decide 82% of applications within eight weeks and 93% within 13 weeks. Those are the facts. The percentage of applications approved reached a 10-year high in 2011-12. Secondly, developers can already appeal to the Planning Inspectorate on grounds of non-determination in the required time under section 78(2) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. What does the Bill add to that power? Thirdly, there is a practical problem, as the planning Minister had to admit. He said that there was a wrinkle in the statistics. The data on timeliness do not take account of planning performance agreements. As hon. Members will know, that is where developers and councils jointly reach agreement to say, “Hey, this development could take a bit more time to approve. Can we agree, in effect, to set aside the time limits?” Instead of there being a simple measure, the Secretary of State will have to decide whether he thinks the reason given by an authority, when decisions are apparently slow, is good enough to justify his not taking the power away from them.
Bill Esterson
In an intervention a few minutes ago, the Secretary of State said that he would be working with the Local Government Association. Of course, the LGA has said that the barriers to growth are nothing to do with the planning system. Does my right hon. Friend intend to come on to that point—I am sure he does—and comment on the fact that it is the lack of funding that is the problem, not the planning system?
Hilary Benn
I certainly will come on to that point, but those conversations with the LGA will be jolly interesting. The Secretary of State is apparently going to say, “Can we sit down and talk about the criteria? By the way, whatever they are, they have to include Hackney, because I have just told the House of Commons that Hackney is the worst of the lot.” He has fettered his own discretion and will regret that answer.
The argument that this proposal is like the regime for failing schools falls at the first hurdle. We can judge whether a failing school is improving, because it will still be treating the children, but if we take responsibility for planning applications away from local councils and decide them centrally, we will have no way of knowing whether the planning authority is improving because it will not be taking any decisions. That is nonsense. And as for quality, I say to the Secretary of State and the Minister with responsibility for planning that there can be no real measure of it, because it is a matter of opinion and local democratic accountability, which is why we have had local decision making on planning applications for 60 years.
Robert Neill
Where was the local democratic accountability in the regional spatial strategies?
Hilary Benn
I accept the hon. Gentleman’s argument. The regional spatial strategies meant that local authorities had a responsibility to build houses. He has to acknowledge, however, that the regime before us, which I recognise he played an important part in setting up, will produce exactly the same numbers. That is because the same number of people will need to be housed and there will be the same increase in population. They are two different ways of doing it. However, it is the Secretary of State who has made great play of localism but who is now turning it on its head.
If the Secretary of State is thinking of using as his proxy the speed and percentage of planning applications overturned, people should, as I have indicated, go away very quickly and see where their local authorities are in the league table. To add insult to injury, however—this is pretty bad—he is taking the power to require local authorities to do all the work in connection with applications, even though they will not be taking the decisions and even though the Planning Inspectorate will be paid the fees. That is what he is doing in the Bill.
These are the same planning officers in whom the Secretary of State, in effect, had no confidence to start with—that is why he chose to designate authorities. It is therefore crystal clear what the clause is about: it is about his saying, in respect of councils whose decisions he does not like or which he thinks are being too tardy, that it is the elected council members whom he does not trust. That makes the purpose of the clause plain. He is saying, “I want this power because I think I’m in a better place to take decisions than the local communities themselves.” That is why the clause is so objectionable.
Mr Betts
My right hon. Friend makes a good case against the Secretary of State taking from local authorities the power to determine planning applications. He has also pointed out that the applicant will lose the right to appeal. When this matter came before the Select Committee, the Minister with responsibility for planning accepted in effect that the consultation arrangements for local communities would not have to be the same as if the local authority was taking the decisions, but that the statutorily required level of consultation would apply, which could be somewhat less. Local communities could suffer in that way as well.
Hilary Benn
My hon. Friend, who chairs the Select Committee so ably, is absolutely right. That is another example of how local communities will lose out as a result of this change.
I am genuinely surprised that the Secretary of State has turned out like this, especially given what he said in his speech to the Conservative party conference last month. He explained, in a purple passage, why, alongside the bust of Disraeli and the poster of Winston Churchill, he had a photograph on his wall of Che Guevara smoking a large Havana cigar. He told the delegates:
“It is there to remind me that without constant vigilance, the cigar-chomping Commies will take over. Well, that isn’t going to happen on my watch.”
Well, it has happened—with this Bill. There are a couple of words for what he is doing. It is a concept much loved by communist parties the world over. It is called democratic centralism—telling other people what to think and do. The powers he is asking the House to give him in clause 1 are, frankly, enough to make any self-respecting democratic centralist slap him on the back in gratitude and give him a cigar to chomp on. In no time at all, he has gone from claiming to be the friend of localism to taking a hammer and sickle to local democratic decision making. He fools nobody by trying to describe it as muscular localism. The really puzzling question is whether this is a genuine conversion. The House must ask itself whether the Secretary of State decided of his own volition to dump everything that he previously believed in. I doubt it; I suspect that the truth is rather different.
I think the truth is that the Secretary of State lost control of planning policy during the summer. He told us just a few months ago, “Here’s my shiny new national planning policy framework. It’s fit for a new century”, and he must have been bewildered to read those unattributed briefings suddenly appearing in the newspapers—the criticisms of his shiny new planning system from the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and I bet he was particularly irritated by the summonses to attend urgent meetings at 10 Downing street. Whoever was in charge of planning policy over the summer, I do not think it was the Secretary of State.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
Does the right hon. Gentleman count it a success that the previous Government had a planning policy which ran to 1,300 pages? Does he not think it is a success that the policy these days is much simpler and accessible to all?
Hilary Benn
I made it very clear, I think in my first speech after taking on my new responsibilities last autumn, that everybody is in favour of sensible rationalisation. I have never opposed that, but the Government have to get it right, and the Bill self-evidently does not get it right. I suspect that the Secretary of State’s heart is not really in these changes; maybe the planning Minister’s heart is. I do not know whether the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford, smokes cigars, but a photo of him smoking one ought to go on the Secretary of State’s wall behind him as a reminder of what can happen if he lets down his guard.
Mr Raynsford
I have been following my right hon. Friend’s remarks with considerable interest. Does he think it significant that the ministerial team surrounding the Minister is entirely different from the one that sat with him in the early period, when he was formulating the national planning policy framework? Might that also be an indication of what has happened in Government?
Hilary Benn
That is an extremely interesting suggestion by my right hon. Friend, and only those on the Government Front Bench can say whether that is the case or not.
Clauses 2 and 3, which I do not think the Secretary of State mentioned, would allow the planning inspectorate to award costs. What is the purpose of this? Perhaps the Minister could say when he winds up. How can he assure us that it will not turn into a tax on local democratic decision making? Why should the Planning Inspectorate want to impose costs of its own volition, when developers can already ask it to do so under the law as it currently stands?
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the purpose of clause 2 is possibly similar to that of clause 1, which is to blackmail local authorities into giving in to the worst property developers, and that this is a belated compliment to the Conservative Property Forum, which has given £4 million to the Conservative party over the past few years?
Hilary Benn
I can only say to my hon. Friend that I do not know whether there is any connection between the two things, but it is quite an interesting pair of clauses. What are they for? Why do Ministers apparently want to make it easier for the Planning Inspectorate to fine councils for the decisions that they have made?
Clause 5 proposes significantly to weaken the contribution that section 106 agreements make to the much needed provision of affordable housing. If section 106 really was the cause of stalled housing developments, why does the clause focus only on the affordable housing requirements, rather than other section 106 requirements—for example, contributing to transport, other infrastructure or new schools? I ask because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) pointed out, the National Housing Federation tells us that 35,000 affordable homes are provided each year because of section 106 agreements, yet the Secretary of State failed to make the case that the lack of house building is because of the affordable housing element.
Where is the evidence? This will be a familiar theme in this debate. We are told that there are 1,200 sites and 75,000 homes that are stalled. Apparently the figure comes from something called the Glenigan database. When I asked the planning Minister if he would publish it so that we could see for ourselves the information on which the statement is based, he refused to do so. So we cannot see—[Hon. Members: “Why?”] Apparently it was something to do with commercial confidentiality, but are we as Members of the House not entitled to see the evidence base on which the policy is allegedly founded?
Perhaps that is why, when the planning Minister was sensibly asked by the Select Committee how many of these sites were stalled because of section 106 requirements, he came over all vague.
He said:
“It is very difficult to say. It is quite hard to say why nothing is happening.”
Let us look at what others have to say about section 106. The chief executive of the Homes and Communities Agency stated in a letter to my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), who chairs the Committee:
“We are not aware of any current issues relating to section 106 agreement on the very small number due to start on site this financial year.”
What about the National Housing Federation? It has stated: “No evidence has been provided to suggest that planning obligations are routinely stalling development.”
What about the Council of Mortgage Lenders? It has stated:
“We are not convinced that section 106 obligations are necessarily the key sticking point”.
Well, if it is difficult to quantify and really hard to say why nothing is happening, and if the HCA does not think it is a problem, the National Housing Federation does not think it is a problem and the Council of Mortgage Lenders, which ought to know, does not think it is a problem, what is the purpose of clause 5? Everyone knows what the real problem is: people cannot get mortgages or raise deposits, so developers are not building houses because they do not think that they will be able to sell them if they do.
The Government admit that clause 5 will reduce the number of affordable homes built, which is why they have come up with an extra 300 million quid. If that really is the cause of the problem, I do not for the life of me understand why the Government do not just approach the developers on the 1,200 sites and offer them money to get them moving and bring forward the affordable housing numbers that were previously agreed. To reduce the number of affordable homes through the Bill and then come up with £300 million to try to replace the lost homes in an alternative way seems to me to be an extraordinarily roundabout way of addressing the problem. The truth is that everyone wants to get stalled sites moving. As the Secretary of State has acknowledged, to be fair, many local authorities have demonstrated that they are perfectly willing to enter into negotiations with developers in order to vary the conditions relating to affordable housing because they, too, want to get the homes built, and Leeds is one example of that.
The other thing that is puzzling about clause 5 is this: what will it give developers that they do not already have? I hope that the Minister will answer this when he responds. Under the existing arrangements, could not a developer who wants to change the affordable housing requirements on an existing permission simply put in a new application with the lower figure and then, if it is turned down by the council, go to the Planning Inspectorate on appeal and cite the new provisions on viability set out in paragraph 173 of the national planning policy framework?
What is the problem that this clause is trying to solve, and will it work? I doubt it. This is my last point on section 106 agreements. For a measure that is supposed to speed up movement on stalled sites, it might result, as the Royal Town Planning Institute has pointed out, in the very opposite. A developer that hopes to reduce the affordable housing obligation will now have a clear incentive to wait for the Bill to reach the statute book rather than entering into negotiations with the local authority—in other words, delay.
Mr Redwood
Does the shadow Secretary of State agree that, given the weakness of the banks and the problems in the credit markets, section 106 deals will be far less generous than they were prior to the boom going bust?
Hilary Benn
Of course, and the fact that local authorities have been willing to renegotiate the section 106 affordable housing requirements is proof of that—[Interruption.] Well, lots of them have done so, and no doubt the planning Minister will tell us about those that have not.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
Why does the right hon. Gentleman think so many local authorities have been unwilling to renegotiate section 106 agreements up to now? Will the Bill not encourage them to do so?
Hilary Benn
The hon. Gentleman says “so many”, but the Government have not given us the evidence. The whole Bill is based on supposition, what was whispered in someone’s ear, what was in the newspapers and what the Prime Minister fulminated against. We are legislating, and we should do so on the basis of evidence. I look forward to seeing that evidence.
The third leg of the Secretary of State’s assault on local democracy is clause 21. It, too, gives him wide powers to take planning applications away from local communities. It significantly extends the lists set out in the Planning Act 2008 by including business and commercial projects, as we have heard. We have seen the lists the planning Minister gave the Select Committee, but can he or the Secretary of State clarify whether that would include major retail or leisure developments? I will happily take in intervention. Any takers? No? It is interesting that we have not received an answer.
Do the Government intend to develop national policy statements for the new categories? The Secretary of State floundered when my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) asked that question earlier.
What is this change for? The press notice issued by the Department on 6 September states:
“Thousands of big commercial and residential applications to be directed to a major infrastructure fast track”.
It only took about a month for that policy to change—another example of the Government making it up as they go along—because residential applications appeared to be pulled from it, as clause 21 now makes clear. Instead, the Government seem to have decided to make greater use of their call-in powers, as the planning Minister set out in his statement last week, but that will have the same effect—Ministers, not local people, will decide what happens in their community.
The Bill Committee will no doubt explore the extent to which the Government intend to use that call-in power to deal with applications for residential developments. If they call them in, Government and Opposition Members will suddenly find that, as a result of the change in policy, their local councils are not taking the decisions. Given that call-in powers have existed for a very long time, will the Minister who responds to the debate explain what the clause gives Ministers that they do not have already under existing planning law? How will the Planning Inspectorate cope with the additional work load? It is a mess.
Charlie Elphicke
My reading of the clause is that it is directed at projects of a national significance, particularly in the field of energy, which will cut through the problems with getting power stations built. That is important. The lights are likely to go out in 2015, because the previous Government were asleep at the wheel on power station developments, which are needed to keep our lights on.
Hilary Benn
I say gently to the hon. Gentleman that we made changes to the system and that one of the groups that we brought into the new national set-up was, indeed, energy. The Government’s provision does not change how decisions are taken—it adds big commercial applications. We await an answer on whether that will include leisure and retail. The hon. Gentleman needs to consider that carefully.
A number of other clauses give rise to concern and will be scrutinised carefully in Committee. Clause 7 seems to propose to scrap the special protection enjoyed by our national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty, and to allow telecoms companies to install cabinets and masts wherever they want. First, the Secretary of State told us earlier not to worry and that that applies only to broadband, but could he please point to where in clause 7 it says that that is the case? It does not.
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend see the irony, as many Opposition Members do, in the fact that the Government, after a great hue and cry over wind farms last week, are now intent on dismantling the very special place of our national parks in British culture?
Hilary Benn
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and that is why those who care passionately about the national parks are so concerned about the clause.
Secondly, the Secretary of State said that the clause would make no change to the power of planning authorities to object. I draw his attention, however, to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport press notice of 7 September, which says that the Government will legislate to do a number of things, one of which is to ensure that
“broadband street cabinets can be installed in any location other than a SSSI”—
in other words, in national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty—
“without the need for prior approval from the local council”.
The notice then goes on to say, in paragraph 5(c), that
“overhead broadband lines can be installed in any area without the need for planning or other permission”.
No wonder there is great confusion and concern about this clause, because it is not clear what the Government’s policy really is. Section 109 of the Communications Act 2003 refers to the use of “electronic communications apparatus”, not “broadband boxes and cabinets”. I listened carefully to the Secretary of State, and he did not give one single example—again, there was no evidence—of the problem specifically in relation to national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty. As he should know, the national parks want broadband to be rolled out, but they want it to be done in the right way. I can give him lots of examples of national parks authorities that are taking precisely this approach, but here is just one: in the past five years, North York Moors national parks authority has approved 94% of planning applications and notifications for telecoms equipment. Where is the problem and where is the evidence? In the light of this, I can entirely see why the English National Park Authorities Association and the Campaign for National Parks want the clause removed. The current protection to which the Secretary of State must have regard—conserving the beauty of our national parks and AONBs—cannot be allowed to be undermined by the Government’s desire to look as though they are doing something about growth.
The Secretary of State used to boast that he was protecting village greens, but his proposals will make it much more difficult for people to register them. For instance, there is the positively Kafkaesque proposal that the moment a planning application is published, someone can no longer seek to register a green. Since the first that most people will hear of an application is when it is published, this seems to be a pretty clever way of stopping people exercising their rights, unless they happen to be mind readers. In a very small number of cases there is a problem—that is why we published the consultation paper when we were in government—but this is a heavy-handed, disproportionate and clumsy measure, and we will table amendments in Committee to create a more balanced way forward.
Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)
Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise, as many of us do, that the provision for registering village green status is routinely used by people who are serial campaigners against any type of development in their area and causes huge delay and cost in the planning system?
Hilary Benn
Having looked at this when I was Secretary of State, I recognise that there are some such cases, but there are also lots of others where the provision in the Commons Act 2006 is used quite properly to protect in perpetuity the public’s use of green space—village greens and so on—which they have had the right to enjoy for many years. Like lots of things, it is about getting the balance right, and this clause, as formulated, has not got it right; that is certainly the view of the Open Spaces Society.
I listened very carefully to what the Secretary of State said about delaying business rates revaluation. We all want to support measures that will help businesses at a difficult time, but we will want to scrutinise this in Committee to understand the balance of the argument. It would be extremely helpful—I put this to him in all sincerity—to see his and the Department’s assessment of who would gain and who would not, because a lot of businesses are saying that an earlier revaluation would help them. It would also be of assistance if he could set out the impact of a change on the finances of local authorities now that the Local Government Finance Act 2012 is on the statute book.
Mr Pickles
The right hon. Gentleman makes a very reasonable point. Of course we will publish an impact assessment and the calculations of the Valuation Office Agency on Report.
Hilary Benn
That is extremely helpful, and we look forward to seeing those documents.
Amid all the centralisation, there are some clauses that seem sensible and that we will support—the Secretary of State smiles—such as those on the energy industry, on removing the anomaly on disposal of land for less than best consideration, on the review of minerals permissions, and on allowing the process for stopping up or diverting highways and public paths to run alongside the planning process— which is perfectly sensible recommendation of the Penfold review. Overall, however, the bad in the Bill far outweighs the good.
That brings me to clause 23, which is an absolutely astonishing proposal. Labour Members are in favour of businesses giving shares to employees and think it a jolly good thing. We do not, however, need the Bill for that because companies are already perfectly free to give shares to their workers. The clause does something completely different, and, for the first time that I can recall, employers will be allowed to buy their way out of legislation that protects their workers. The legislation is explicit and there is a tariff—[Interruption.] I hear the cry of “voluntary”, and we shall come on to whether that is the case.
The fact is that for between £2,000 and £50,000, a company can pay to strip its workers of their rights. That is what the clause does. Never mind cash for questions; this is cash for repeal. What on earth is the connection between giving an employee shares, and taking away their fundamental rights in the workplace? Given the wording of the clause, some might say that such a change could happen only if the company and the individual agreed on it. That, however, is true only for existing employees at the time the legislation comes into force. Their choice will be quite simple: take the cash and lose the rights, or lose the cash and keep the rights. Many of them will ask, “How lucky do I feel today and when I think about the future of the company?”
The Government have made it crystal clear that in future employers will not have to get an agreement and will be able to offer only contracts involving shares. It means that the only way someone will be able to get a job with that company is if they give up their rights—[Interruption.] The Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford, shouts from a sedentary position that it is a choice, but one feature of this Bill seems to be that those who are sponsoring it have not actually read it.
A Treasury background note published at the same time as the Bill states that
“new start-ups can choose to offer only this new type of contract for new hires.”
The English is a bit dodgy, but I think it refers to new workers whom a company is taking on—[Interruption.] The Under-Secretary says it is a choice, but—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. It is unhelpful in a debate to have Ministers shouting from the Front Bench, and then for their question to be answered when the rest of us are not exactly clear about what is going on. If you wish to make a point, Minister, you should step up to the Dispatch Box; otherwise, I hope that the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) will concentrate on his speech and ignore the heckling.
Hilary Benn
I was trying to encourage the Under-Secretary to provide clarity to the House, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I take your strictures.
If someone wants to take a job but finds that it is offered only on the basis that they give up their employment rights, that is not a choice. If that is all an employer offers to someone who is unemployed and wants to do the right thing and contribute to the economy, that is no choice whatsoever. As for shares, what if the company is not listed on the stock exchange? Who will assess the value of those shares? They could be worthless. Who will buy them? Will they carry voting rights? The Secretary of State said nothing about any those points this afternoon, and the House must ask why holding shares should mean that someone loses the right to protection against unfair dismissal. What is the argument for that?
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)
I wonder whether my right hon. Friend can help me to understand this despicable proposal and explain where in the Nuttall report it is stated that someone has to sacrifice their employment rights and protections in order to extend share ownership? I have read that report in detail and cannot find it anywhere.
Hilary Benn
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; the Bill has nothing to do with that report at all and is about something else entirely. Why should holding shares mean that someone has to give up their right to redundancy payment? What is the argument for that? Why should they give up their right to apply to undertake study or training?
The Government rightly remind us how important it is to have the right skills for the future. Without a hint of irony, however, the background note published at the same time as the Bill tries to claim that this measure is particularly aimed at small and medium-sized companies
“that benefit from a flexible workforce”.
In clause 23 we find that one right workers will lose is the right to request flexible working. You could not make it up, Madam Deputy Speaker, except that that is exactly what the Government are doing.
The director general of the CBI described, in very polite terms, this provision as a “niche idea”—a pretty underwhelming endorsement. The clause will, however, be a lawyers’ paradise, because one of the consequences of it—if it passes into law—is that dismissed employees who find themselves in the position of being employee owners will try to shoehorn their unfair dismissal claims into the rights that are still left to them. That is exactly what will happen—the clause will not even work in the way the Government intend.
One might think that the Employee Ownership Association would sing the praises of the Bill, but, of the clause, it has stated:
“There is no need to dilute the rights of workers in order to grow employee ownership”.
The clause is Beecroft by the back door, and Labour Members oppose it. When the Minister winds up the debate, will he give me a very simple assurance on process? The Government are currently consulting on the employer-owner idea. Will he therefore promise the House that they will make any amendments to the clause either in Committee or in remaining stages in the Commons?
In conclusion, the Bill is not a growth Bill. It will not get the economy moving and will not build infrastructure. It is a “must be seen to be doing something” Bill. The tragedy is that the only thing it does is take power from local people and locally elected councillors and give it to developers and the Secretary of State. Today marks the halfway point of this Parliament, and all we have to mark the occasion is a shoddy, clumsily cobbled together, half-baked Bill. That really shows, and I urge the House to reject it.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I remind Members that there is a 12-minute time limit on Back-Bench contributions to this debate, starting from now.
Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s aims for the Bill—boosting infrastructure, cutting red tape and helping local firms to grow are laudable ambitions. I should like to focus on four aspects of the Bill: first, the balance between localism and centralism; secondly, the importance of securing proper infrastructure, both national and local, to support development; thirdly, the importance of the Government’s broadband programme, including in national parks; and fourthly, the overall role of the planning system against the background of wanting to promote growth.
First, on localism, clause 1 allows, as has been noted, direct applications to the Secretary of State if a council is placed in what could be described as special measures. The criteria for so placing a council have yet to be set out. However, I hope we remember all the reasons why, over the course of the past two and a half years, the Government felt it was important to devolve power to people and communities, not least in housing and housing policy.
Devolving power in planning decisions is also important, because there is a great danger that people will feel that decisions may be taken away from them. If decisions are taken away from local communities, the danger is that responsibility is also taken away—the responsibility of community leaders to take decisions that are sometimes difficult. Another danger is the paradox of the top-down housing targets of the previous Government. The very high stated housing numbers that were never achieved did not deliver, but merely set up conflicts between local communities and the Government.
Mrs Main
Not only did the previous Government create conflict within communities, they skewed how communities developed. Developers moved into my constituency to deliver the targets—particularly density targets—and we ended up with heaps of flats, which were bought speculatively, but not enough of the family homes that the communities wanted. I therefore welcome this Government’s approach. We can actually start to determine what we would like to be built rather than be told what to build.
Nick Herbert
My hon. Friend expresses eloquently one virtue of ensuring that decisions can be taken on a local basis.
The power of the Government’s changes to the planning system, which were set out in the Localism Act 2011, is this: they introduced the idea of neighbourhood planning, with communities judging for themselves where best to site housing and what is necessary for their areas. Neighbourhood planning is an incredibly good concept. I would like to see it flourish, but it is in danger of being undermined by a series of things. I hope that the Government will look again at the neighbourhood planning process and how it might be boosted, because it is the right way to provide sustainable levels of housing provision.
First, the concept has been undermined by the continuation of regional spatial strategies. I know that there has been a problem with the European Union holding up the effective abolition of the strategies, which has been legislated for by this House. However, while they remain in place—for instance, the south-east plan affects my constituency—the danger is that, in the absence of effective local plans, the countryside can be vulnerable to speculative housing applications, with communities powerless to oppose such applications, which, if rejected by local authorities, can be appealed to the Planning Inspectorate. The consequence of such applications is that the process whereby communities come together over planning in the neighbourhood is undermined, with local consent—which can be built for reasonable levels of housing—undermined too. The swift abolition of the regional spatial strategies is therefore essential if the process of neighbourhood planning is to proceed.
Second is the issue of expense. The Government provide some support to local communities to proceed with neighbourhood planning, but it is an expensive process. More support—not necessarily financial—has to be provided to local communities. That issue is not addressed in the Bill; it usefully could be. Such support is essential also from district councils. Some councils are unwilling to yield power. Localism is not a process whereby power is simply handed down to elected district councils; where possible, power should be placed in the hands of the people and communities. That is being undermined by some district councils that do not wish to support the process of neighbourhood planning.
Thirdly—this issue has already been raised in the debate—there is the question of whether the overall housing numbers set by the regional spatial strategies will simply be reinstated if the assessment of housing need undertaken by district councils comes up with the same number. We need to take a close look at the instructions being given to district councils as they assess housing need. Otherwise, the very principle that we set out in the Localism Act 2011—that regional spatial strategies should go and that powers should be handed down to local communities—will, in effect, be undermined. If the Planning Inspectorate ends up taking decisions that should have been taken locally and imposes the same numbers as those proposed previously, nothing will be gained and localism will be undermined.
It is worth restating the virtue of the neighbourhood process. It means that communities will plan responsibly, with local democratic buy-in to the housing levels arrived at, because there will have to be a referendum. I know from my area that where parish councils are setting up local plans, they are—perhaps for the first time—looking carefully and responsibly at where a sustainable level of housing provision could be sited. The sustainable provision we wish to see in future years will be threatened if we slip back into a top-down approach, which is clearly the risk in clause 1.
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)
I commend the right hon. Gentleman on the points he is making. Does he agree that one of the problems is the difference between housing need and housing demand, which in some areas is virtually insatiable, and that it was important for the national planning policy framework that local councils should be given the power to balance economic growth with social and environmental requirements, even though this has not yet been taken very seriously by many local planners?
Nick Herbert
My hon. Friend puts his finger precisely on the right point. If that balance were not achieved properly, it would be possible to come up with huge projected levels of housing in the areas I represent, because there is an almost infinite demand for housing from people wishing to come and live in West Sussex. Unless that balance is achieved, there will not be a sustainable level of housing provision in the local area.
The Bill rightly focuses on the need to secure national infrastructure, and on the importance of speeding up decisions so that that can be achieved. I strongly support that, but I want to talk about the related issue of the levels of local infrastructure necessary to support housing development. I represent a rural constituency with no large towns; it has only villages, small towns and countryside—and important countryside, at that. It already has problems with congested roads and, in some villages, of over-subscribed local schools, although I am pleased to say that the latter issue is partly being addressed by the Government’s policy of allowing free schools to be set up.
Worst of all, however, is the problem of sewage. The levels of development in some villages have not been matched by adequate sewerage provision. When combined with the lack of an adequate water supply in the area, that can result in sewage flowing though people’s gardens after not particularly heavy rainfall. There is inadequate local infrastructure to support the present level of housing provision in those villages. What are we going to do to ensure that proper levels of infrastructure are put in place to support the necessary additional development?
There is a general acceptance in the communities I represent that additional housing is needed. There is a lack of affordable housing in the villages, and people recognise that some additional housing will be necessary. The question is whether it will be provided on a sustainable basis with proper provision for the infrastructure necessary to support it. I want to ensure that the provisions in the Bill will continue to allow funding for such infrastructure provision, so that the appropriate level of development can go ahead.
A further issue relating to infrastructure is that of broadband. West Sussex is a rural county that is relatively close to London—my constituency is only 50 miles away—and it is surprising that it should contain three of the four “not-spot” areas in the country, in which broadband can barely be obtained at all. One of them is in my constituency, where broadband provision is already very poor. I therefore strongly welcome the Government’s measures to secure a reasonable level of broadband speed and 100% coverage across the country, followed by a high level of provision of superfast broadband. Such provision will be essential if we wish to foster local economic growth and the levels of infrastructure provision that businesses require in today’s connected world.
Such broadband provision is no less important in national parks. The outstanding landscape of the South Downs national park is in my constituency, and the communities in the park will also require high-speed broadband. Farmers who wish to diversify, for example, do not want to be disadvantaged, and the local economy will not be sustainable unless such broadband provision is secured. Last year, I raised the issue of a local farmer who was paying huge sums of money for broadband provision, which was creating an impediment to the successful diversification of his farm enterprise. I therefore welcome the proposals to improve broadband provision.
I am concerned about the provision in clause 7 that will override the key purpose of a national park to conserve beauty, and I would like to hear more from the Government about that. I need to understand more about the practical effects of that provision, and about the precedent that it will set. I need to be persuaded that it will not damage the landscape, which it is so important to preserve, although I of course see the importance of securing improved broadband provision.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
I support my right hon. Friend’s remarks. My constituency contains areas of outstanding natural beauty, and the provision could be interpreted as undermining the protections that are at present afforded to his and my constituencies. Will he join me in asking the Government to look at the measure carefully, to ensure that it does not set a precedent for other projects?
Nick Herbert
I am grateful for my right hon. Friend’s remarks. She expressed herself in the same way as I have sought to express myself—by seeking reassurance that these provisions will not damage the landscape. The whole purpose of these high landscape designations, whether they be areas of outstanding natural beauty or national parks, is that they ensure a level of protection that cannot be overridden. That is their very purpose, so we need to be careful before legislating for any provision that might then set a precedent for further erosion of such protection in future. I simply say that we need to be careful and that I need to be persuaded of the benefits of these measures.
My final point is about the role of the planning system in relation to growth. There is a simple fact here—that we have had high levels of growth with the existing planning system in this country under Governments of both persuasions over the course of the last few decades. The planning system is not in itself necessarily an impediment to growth, and the lack of growth cannot be laid at the door of the planning system. Nevertheless, in an increasingly competitive world—despite the fact that we can observe Britain’s projected growth as being higher than that of our European partners and approaching that of the United States—we need to compete with the best. That means that any blockage on the speed of planning decisions needs to be removed. I welcome Lord Heseltine’s review to that effect. He said that it was not about undermining the principles of the planning system; it was about ensuring that it works more speedily. That is what I suggest we need to focus on—policy clarity and speeding up decisions, not undermining the process in its entirety.
Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)
I welcome the contribution of the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert). Unlike in the opening speech from the Secretary of State, the right hon. Gentleman has, I suspect, reflected the genuine concerns of many Government Members about whether the safeguards are sufficient and whether the importance of sustainable development is recognised, as it barely features in the Bill. I very much hope that we will have an opportunity to look at some of the issues raised.
If anyone ever wanted a master class in how to oppose what a Government are doing, they need only look at the contribution of the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), as he provided exactly that. He absolutely made mincemeat of the hot air we heard from the Secretary of State, and we saw what this Bill is really about.
I rise to speak to the inquiry into “Sustainable development in the national planning policy framework” and draw the House’s attention to the recent Environmental Audit Committee inquiry, which is available to the House this evening. In that report, we examined the extent to which the national planning policy framework reflects sustainable development principles. On the strength of the evidence we received, we collaborated with the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government—I see in his place my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), who I know is going to make an important contribution later—to press the Government, in producing their revised version of the NPPF, to ensure that there is no potential for confusion about the equal importance of all three aspects of sustainable development. It is clear from the interventions so far that this is at the top of Members’ priorities. Sustainable development is not just about the economy; it is about social and environmental considerations, too.
While we recognised the rights of local councils to determine what constitutes sustainable development in their area, we concluded that they need a national planning policy framework that does not push them to regard economic dimensions as predominant. We thus called for a clear definition of sustainable development. Perhaps naively, when the initial flawed proposals were superseded by a much more acceptable NPPF, we welcomed it. Uppermost in our minds—this stemmed from the relevance of the Brundtland report, the further benefits of the 2005 sustainable development strategy of planning policy statement 1 and was in light of preparations for the Rio+20 conference that was taking place at the time—was the need to accept the primacy of environmental limits. Indeed, what we wanted was to see local councils include in their local plans a requirement for some types of development to include environmental gain.
Additionally, and perhaps not surprisingly, as ours is a cross-cutting Committee—a concept which I believe is increasingly no longer cherished, understood or aspired to by the Government—we wanted the final version of the NPPF to be signed off not just by the Department for Communities and Local Government, but by Ministers in other key Departments. They would include the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Department for Transport—we heard just now about the importance of local transport structures—the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Department of Energy and Climate Change, the Cabinet Office and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Above all, in view of its strategic significance, they would include the Treasury.
Our other key reports, most notably the one on the green economy, reach the same conclusion. We continue to urge the Government to back green growth, rather than locking us into short-term fixes with no regard for future long-term costs and environmental degradation, which is what the Bill will do. After barely six months, we have seen a complete turn-around on the Government’s part. This is a truly irresponsible Bill, which I think reveals the Government in their true colours. Members who sat through the presentation that we have just heard have every right to be concerned. The Bill shows the Government abandoning any claim to be the greenest Government ever, and it undermines their position on the world stage, where the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister seek to take forward the principles of the sustainable development goals at the United Nations negotiations.
Damian Collins
I welcome the placing of growth at the heart of legislation such as this. One of my criticisms of the proposals for the sites of the new nuclear power stations that were drawn up by the last Government was that the process involved no consideration of the local economic benefit of building a new power station. In the case of Dungeness in my constituency, that was much to the detriment of the consideration of the benefits of that site.
Joan Walley
The point is well made. Investment in power should be for the benefit of the whole community; the aim should not be for the profits to go into the hands of a very few people.
The Government cannot lead by example abroad if they cannot back up their principles with deeds at home. I believe that the Bill condemns a whole generation of people who desperately need jobs and hope for their own future now to a waste land without jobs and homes, and no say whatsoever in local affairs. So much for localism. This way lies a real threat to our parliamentary participatory democracy.
We have a U-turn on localism, a set of incoherent proposals for the financing of investment in new homes, and an NPPF which, in the light of the Bill, we shall be hard-pressed to find fit for purpose. We have a Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government—I am sorry to see that he is no longer present to listen to the argument—who is taking responsibility for the ability of his friends the developers to get their own way, and a fast track to development and the profits that come from that, without any of the responsibilities for the people, the places, the footpaths, the heritage and the environmental protections which his Department ostensibly promotes. That is a very flawed definition of localism.
I assume that Parliament will vote for the Bill tonight. Incredibly, just as we forgo all rights to planning safeguards and local democracy, it seems that the Secretary of State has not already taken enough of the cake. He is just not satisfied. As we heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central, the shadow Secretary of State, he is venturing to trump employment rights in the workplace as well. I feel very strongly about that. We need only read the notes issued by his Department to realise how justified he feels it is to prevent people from going to employment tribunals by the back door. He is dressing it up as employee ownership, but in all but a very few cases it will be a smokescreen for depriving people of rights at work. The Government ought at least to be transparent about that.
Let us look at what the Government are doing. They are introducing drastic measures to kick-start a building programme, or so they tell us. As we have heard, it is necessary to look no further than the Local Government Association to see that the Government have got it wrong. We have been told already that
“Approval is in place for 400,000 new homes and councils are green-lighting planning applications at the fastest rate in a decade. The big problem is that developers can’t borrow to build and first-time buyers can’t get mortgages. Taking planning decisions away from local communities and placing them in the hands of an unelected quango isn’t going to fix that.”
That was a quote from Sir Merrick Cockell. The Government should be listening to find out how to address these issues.
I have many concerns about the lack of activity in construction, but the Bill will not deal with them. I am also concerned about the Climate Change Act 2008. As well as centralising the system and undermining local government, the Bill will fail to tackle climate change. I hope that there will be an opportunity in Committee to see whether duties can be placed on the Secretary of State when national policy statements are drawn up to consider climate change, whether section 19 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, which deals with the duty on climate change and local plans, can be strengthened to link to the Climate Change Act, and whether an obligation can be created with regard to the survey of plans so that carbon issues are considered. Those are all issues that need to be addressed constructively in Committee and in the other House.
Mention has been made of the concerns of local authorities, as if they were not strapped for cash enough with all that is happening under the comprehensive spending review. How on earth will they be able to carry out their responsibilities? I fear that the Bill paints a picture of a local community where there are few affordable homes. We have seen already how people in London will be forced out of the capital to cheaper homes elsewhere. There is no joined-up consideration by the Government of where we need the social housing.
I believe that the Bill will create a situation in which commons and village greens become something to resist rather than to celebrate, where the community is busy trying to develop ideas for a balanced community through a neighbourhood plan but where those who want to develop in the area can go straight to central Government, and where it may be easier to reduce or block people’s access to the countryside by changes to procedures on rights of way. I have sat through many debates about rights of way, footpaths and stopping up orders and how to get people to keep their local footpaths. This Bill could take all that away.
Our Committee had real misgivings about the NPPF at the time. We did what we could to change it for the better. Now that it is in place, what is needed is stability to allow local authorities time to get their local plans in place and to develop procedures to co-ordinate with one another under the NPPF “duty to operate” on higher-than-local issues, which were previously dealt with in regional spatial strategies. On that, we need look no further than the fact that the DCLG, when it got rid of those strategies, also got rid of the environmental appraisals that were required. There is no joined-up approach to all this. Instead the goalposts are being moved again. The NPPF was sold on the importance of local decision making in planning matters, but the Bill takes control and influence away from local authorities and centralises planning decisions. I believe that it is just plain wrong.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
I want to take us back to the Planning Act 2008. There was a sense that it had an element of a fast-track system in it, but it is instructive to learn that business leaders believe that it has had no effect. We moved on and introduced the Localism Act 2011 and the national planning policy framework to lay the foundation for an improved planning system. These aim to deliver a simpler, faster, less bureaucratic system that is also infinitely fairer. It cannot be right that only those in the know knew what it was they should know. It is right that the system broadened that out so that we can all have a share in the planning system.
The first phase is complete. The Localism Act 2011 is through, and the nation is now busy planning. The national planning policy framework is through, too, and it has laid the foundations for a simpler and quicker system. However, as the Secretary of State has said, there is still much more to do. What is going to happen to the remaining 6,000 pages of guidance, which the committee chaired by the Under-Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), is tackling, and how are we going to speed up the system? We must also encourage councils to deliver.
The planning system has failed to deliver the infrastructure that the UK requires. I am not alone in saying that: some 97% of business leaders questioned in a CBI and PricewaterhouseCoopers survey said that the planning system had failed to deliver, and 76% regarded the planning regime as a significant barrier to infrastructure development.
Tristram Hunt
The hon. Gentleman is setting out an interesting narrative. Is he seriously suggesting this Bill was planned before the summer recess?
John Howell
Yes, I am suggesting that parts of this Bill were planned before the recess. Its proposed changes are a natural result of the changes we introduced through the Localism Act and the national planning policy framework, and if the hon. Gentleman looks more carefully, he will see the links between the bits that came before and the bits that are coming now.
The Local Government Association stance that planning is not the problem is fundamentally misleading. It is based on an analysis—I use that term loosely—of 400,000 planning permissions that have been granted, but we are not told whether they are viable or even where they are. We are asked to believe that 400,000 houses have been given planning permissions and are ready to go today as if nothing stood in the way.
Grahame M. Morris
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the two points he has raised are not material planning considerations?
John Howell
I accept that they may not be planning considerations, but they are certainly considerations in whether to move a development forward. The issue is that the planning permissions have been given but the houses have not been developed.
The problem lies not in the planning permissions that have been given, but in those that have not been given. The cost of producing rural planning applications is higher than the cost of those in other areas, and the Country Land and Business Association states that in many cases local planning authority staff clearly hope that the applicant, if faced with enough demands for expensive reports and surveys, will withdraw the application. In practice, that frequently does lead to withdrawal, especially in respect of minor developments: for instance, a proposal costing £5,000 to implement is unlikely to justify information costing £5,000 to produce. Indeed, prospective applicants often simply do not submit a proposal in the first place, which means that desirable rural economic development does not go ahead. This tends to bring the planning system into disrepute. It is therefore right for the planning system to be accused of holding up development.
The Bill is also accused of being centralising, rather than localist. This ignores the fact that the changes are meant to be part of a double devolution. The first was a devolution down to district and borough councils’ local planning authorities. The second was a devolution down to local people, so that they could put together their own neighbourhood plans. Devolution to local people is working better than devolution to councils. At the recent neighbourhood planning seminar in Thame in my constituency, which is one of the neighbourhood planning frontrunners, I was as surprised as anyone when a little old lady said, “Isn’t planning such fun?” I hope that that feeling is occurring all around the country, as people begin to get their hands dirty in doing the planning necessary to make these neighbourhood plans successful.
John Howell
No, I will not.
Devolution to councils is being held up, either because they are incapable of dealing with it or because they are not performing well—neither is acceptable and I would expect this to be dealt with as it has been in the Bill. It is time for our councils to deliver. This approach is all part of encouraging councils, but there can be no doubt that our historical under-supply of homes, over some 20 years at least, is the result of a planning system that is not fit for purpose. That was the conclusion of the Barker review of housing supply in 2004. The Killian Pretty review in 2008 found that only five out of 64 planning applications went ahead without difficulties, with the rest often having substantial problems that either delayed them or changed the nature of the development. According to the National Audit Office, planning laws create the highest regulatory costs of any type of regulation. The Opposition have thus totally missed the point of localism, which was the double devolution down to local communities which are engaging in the production of their own local plans; they are empowered to do so and they are seizing those opportunities fully with both hands to make the best of them.
Clause 4 deals with the information requirements. There is a sense that the clause is unnecessary because other more general powers are available to ask for the right amount of information when looking at an application, but that is utter nonsense. Information requirements are now pretty wide. We have all sat through planning committees where the information requested has been wide of the mark and, in particular, has borne no relation to what might be a material consideration. I am grateful that the Bill has included information that will be a “material consideration” in the terms of the information that will be collected.
Mr Slaughter
I am slightly confused as to whether the hon. Gentleman is the same MP for Henley who said in support of a third-party right of appeal:
“We will make the system symmetrical by allowing appeals against local planning decisions from local residents, as well as from developers”.
Does he see any contrast between that view and what is in the Bill?
John Howell
I am not sure I see the relevance of the quote, but it was overtaken by time, by the way in which the Localism Act was put together and by the way in which that would have been an absurdity in how neighbourhood planning was put together. It is no use the hon. Gentleman looking up old quotes from four years ago and expecting them to somehow blow me off course, because he has not taken account of history on the way.
Let me turn now to the subject of village greens, as we have all seen how that status has been abused. In Oxfordshire, although not in my constituency, village green status has been pursued for an area that largely consists of an old gravel pit that is now a lake. It is absurd to continue in this way, particularly when legislation has given communities the ability to designate green open spaces that mean something to them. We do not require them to be the most beautiful grounds in the parish or to have special environmental significance; their significance lies in their importance to the local community. That element of the Localism Act 2011 and the national planning policy framework is sufficient.
John Howell
I will not, because I do not have much time.
The clauses that deal with section 106 agreements do not, as David Orr suggested, abolish section 106. They offer an opportunity to renegotiate section 106 agreements undertaken at the height of the boom when things were going well, and it is quite right that they should do so. It is important to recognise that when development cannot go ahead no affordable housing will be built, so renegotiating section 106 to ensure economic viability will mean that more such homes can be built. In other words, if we do not do this, we will get no section 106 affordable homes as opposed to some.
For those reasons, I think that the Bill attacks the issues correctly and in a balanced manner. It continues many of the reforms we introduced in the Localism Act and national planning policy framework and it does so in a way that I am happy to support.
Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell), although he will find that I do not agree with his views on the Bill.
I have to agree with the Local Government Association that the Bill represents a blow to democracy and is at odds with the Government’s localism programme. As a former councillor and planning committee member, I fully appreciate the importance of the links between community decision making and planning. As democratically elected and accountable representatives, councillors are in the main fully aware of residents’ needs, concerns and aspirations in making decisions about how their area should be developed for economic and social benefit. Any legislation that would foster that accountability would be welcome, but in the months since the then Planning Minister, the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), promised in March that the national planning policy framework would support growth and allow
“people and communities back into planning”,
quite the opposite has happened.
Instead of offering local accountability, the Bill hands decision making to the unelected Planning Inspectorate and hands increased powers to the Secretary of State that turn localism firmly on its head. In Battle Hill ward in North Tyneside, a ward in which I live and which I represented as a councillor, a planning application for 66 houses on a former school playing field was rejected by the planning committee at the beginning of March. To my mind, the planning committee’s decision was quite right.
The developers have appealed, and the council has now been advised that the appeal will be heard under the new rules and that objections made at the time will no longer be relevant. I wonder what the Minister thinks of that, as many of the objections were made by local people and related to the safety of a school access road becoming a general access road and the fact that some designated open space was being lost. Where is the accountability in that?
Alison Seabeck
I am listening carefully to my hon. Friend’s local experience and paralleling it with the experience of the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell), who said that an elderly lady said that planning was fun. Planning will hardly be fun if decision making is taken from local people, as in my hon. Friend’s case, and handed straight to the Secretary of State.
Mrs Glindon
I agree with my hon. Friend, and for the people of Battle Hill this will be not a fun experience at all but a very serious one that will keep their concerns going. That is exactly what the Secretary of State is doing with planning matters in the Bill, and it is why there is such great concern about his proposals.
Local councils, on average, determine householder planning appeals in fewer than eight weeks and non-householder appeals in fewer than 13 weeks. Currently, the averages for such determinations by the Planning Inspectorate are seven weeks and 17 weeks respectively. If the Planning Inspectorate is given additional responsibilities, as set out in the Bill, to take over the designation of failing councils and in setting the viability of affordable housing requirements, that could lead to further delays and worse decisions.
Moreover, by stripping a designated failing council—whatever that might be—of its powers, the Bill will enable developers to have their applications decided by the Secretary of State, without being reviewed by the local authority and with no right of appeal against the Secretary of State’s decision. No wonder the Local Government Association has misgivings about the Bill. There is nothing in it to say what criteria will be used to define a failing council, as has been said a number of times today. The LGA would, quite rightly, rather central Government gave support to councils that might have performance issues ahead of any intervention. I fully support the LGA in its premise that it makes more sense adequately to fund locally accountable decision making than to fund a quango, such as the Planning Inspectorate, to make such decisions.
It is well documented that planning is not the problem for growth. What is actually needed is investment to build houses and infrastructure, and the Bill does not provide scope for real growth. It will weaken the ability of councils to negotiate with developers on desperately needed affordable housing within local developments under section 106 agreements, with, as my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) and the shadow Minister have said, an estimated loss of the building of 35,000 affordable homes a year—a statistic that does not bode well for the 4,500 people on the waiting list of North Tyneside council.
With the Bill, the Secretary of State is reneging on his promise to let councillors and communities run their own affairs. May I say as an aside, Madam Deputy Speaker, that that undemocratic attitude is rubbing off on one of his favourites? The elected mayor of North Tyneside, who now, having only 12 members on a council of 60, with 43 Labour members and four Liberal Democrats, has at great expense to the people of North Tyneside engaged counsel to put a new interpretation on the powers of elected mayors, so that she can ignore the two-thirds majority rule. So our mayor, like the Secretary of State, has become something like a dictator, taking decision making away from the majority of democratically elected members and, ultimately, the electorate.
There are many more problems with the Bill, but the fact that it will make the planning process far less democratic and will seriously threaten future housing and infrastructure development, with no real growth—except, as the shadow Minister said, in the Secretary of State’s powers—tells me and, I hope, the House that the Bill should not get our support.
Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
My starting point is that I want to support and achieve growth in our economy and good-quality infrastructure, but I also want good-quality local planning decisions. I have reservations about certain aspects of the Bill, and I seek reassurance.
As the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) reminded us, a great deal of time was spent on the Floor of the House and in various Committees debating the national policy planning framework, which has only recently been approved—in particular, the need for a definition of sustainability that encompassed environmental, economic and social factors. Personally, I was very pleased with the final wording and outcomes. I thought it was an example of good government: Government listening and making changes to the draft document as a consequence of consultation.
In our consideration of the Bill, we must not lose sight of the underlying principles that we have only just agreed. I am concerned that the Bill appears to propose a massive shift away from local decision making to a centralised approach. At the very least, there should be a clear evidence base for the proposals, as well as full scrutiny of their potential outcomes. In addition, the question should be asked: can we achieve the stated objectives in a better, more effective way that would be compatible with local decision making and local community involvement?
I would like to look at four of the areas in the Bill concerning planning, the first of which is the designation of a local planning authority, with the Planning Inspectorate making the decisions. It is interesting to note the cross-party Local Government Association view of this proposal as counter-productive, centralist and at odds with localism. That raises the question of whether planning is the problem, and I am not at all sure that I would follow entirely the analysis made by the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell).
Clause 1 provides the Secretary of State with a wide-ranging power to remove planning decisions from the local level, but it does not provide any detail of the criteria. What scale of intervention are we talking about? Are we talking about intervening on a handful of authorities, or dozens of authorities? That is highly significant. We are asked to think about speed and quality of decision making. Clearly, there is a lot of variation in council performance in meeting the time targets on both minor and major applications, but we need a starting point to look at the reasons, with the Department—perhaps it has done so already; I would be happy to learn of it—working with the local authority and asking: what is it that is holding up the authority’s decision making? What is it that means councils are missing the determination targets for eight weeks and 13 weeks?
I represent an area that includes some small district councils. Their planning departments have a heavy work load in relation to the number of officers employed. The question of whether that is a matter of the council reallocating its resources, or adequate resources being provided, needs to be addressed. All in all, it seems to be a massive decision to take planning decisions from a local authority, but I am not at all sure, from what I have heard, that it is as big as it sounds. It could just be sensible intervention: working with local authorities, establishing the facts, proceeding, and then, perhaps at the end of the line there may be a case for taking stronger action with one or two authorities. However, my reading suggests that the Bill could permit a massive intervention.
I am concerned about the potential scale of the changes to section 106 agreements. Section 106s have delivered affordable housing. We know that councils are already overwhelmingly responding to changed economic circumstances, including renegotiating section 106 agreements voluntarily, and they can do that within the context of their local plans. I am not clear on the evidence that it is the affordable housing element of section 106s which, on a very large scale, is holding up planning applications. If we had that evidence, it would be much easier to make a good decision. We need to identify and sort out the problems. A big worry about losing section 106 housing requirements is that there will be no general consideration of development plan policy, such as the need for homes at a range of prices in local communities. The National Housing Federation mentions the rural exception sites, for example, which are of course very dear to my heart.
The policy could be counter-productive, and I ask the Minister to address that concern. There is a risk of stronger local opposition to developer plans if the perception grows that new developments will be just for expensive new homes, or, as in my area, for more second homes, and that local people will end up with no affordable homes. Having an assurance that there would be homes for local young people would mean that the community could sign up to them, and that is important.
There could be further delays to housing, with developers waiting for the Bill to be implemented.
Annette Brooke
I would like to proceed.
Enforced renegotiation means that benefits from 106 agreements may be lost for ever, regardless of the needs and views of the local community. If renegotiation outcomes were in line with local planning policies, I cannot see why a local council would not renegotiate on a voluntary basis. Developers’ profits will rise, but how transparent and independent will the appraisals be of the viability of a development with and without the section 106 obligations? It is important to have mixed communities of housing. One of my favourite places that I visit is a large housing estate. As I knock on the doors, I do not know which house was built originally as social housing and which was built originally as private housing—that is what we must aspire to. My problem is that even if the developer finds that a development is not economically viable and we all agree with that in a transparent way, we would lose that social housing. Could the £300 million not be targeted to make sure that the local planning authority keeps the housing it needs?
Annette Brooke
I am indicating clearly that a large number of areas need to be scrutinised very carefully, and that it would be wrong for me not to raise my concerns.
I want to look at positive measures, too. For example, Eastleigh council has worked well to secure affordable housing, achieving the mixed developments to which we aspire. It has worked with developers to offer a guaranteed purchase model for developers that have sites with existing planning permission but which are unsure whether they could sell the houses and where, as a result, development has stalled. The council offered to act as a purchaser of last resort if the developers could not sell them. The developers then went ahead and built new homes, and so far the council has not had to buy any new stock, and will rent out any it does purchase at a discounted rate. There is a lot of scope for innovation, if we truly believe in localism and give those powers to local councils.
On the designation of town and village greens, I have examples of applications holding up development, but I do not have overriding evidence that it is the case. The evidence is anecdotal. That again is why we need to scrutinise the proposals carefully. Through neighbourhood plans backed up by the national planning policy framework, the local designation of green open spaces is a good way forward. We have to move from one system to the other, however, and I am concerned that the transition will not be a smooth one, because there remain cases in all our constituencies where we want open spaces protected but where, for example, the neighbourhood plan has not been worked up sufficiently. Some major groups are not satisfied with the explanations given so far, and we must come up with clear reassurances and a clear outline of the transition from one system to the other. Urban green spaces, as well as the long-established village greens, are very important, so we need these assurances. I ask Ministers to address that point tonight.
Finally, on electronic and communications infrastructure, there are fears that the proposals could cause serious damage to designated landscapes, including national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty. As I know from my own constituency, where access in rural areas is lagging, the Government are right to prioritise broadband access in rural areas, but it must be possible to roll out superfast broadband in these areas and conserve beauty at the same time. Again, I am concerned about irreversible damage. We have to get this right.
We should also consider historic urban locations that could be damaged by inappropriately placed street cabinets, which, under the proposals, as I understand them, could be placed in any areas other than sites of special scientific interest. Throughout this, I am thinking of both urban and rural areas, because the same theme applies to both. Is there evidence that the proposals will deliver what the Government—and I—want? It is a difficult time. We have rightly scrapped regional spatial strategies, and we have introduced many excellent measures, but they need time to bed in. We need time to look at each case carefully, to consider the evidence and to look outside the box—for example, at lifting the cap on local authority borrowing in order to jump-start the housing market.
Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)
This is the Growth and Infrastructure Bill, but it could more accurately be described as the English local government (planning change) (miscellaneous orders) Bill with some additional provision for energy, which is important, and, in clause 23, what the Government euphemistically call “economic measures” but which appear mainly to be another attack on employee rights. It certainly is not a Bill for growth in any way, shape or form. If the Secretary of State really wanted the factories, offices and infrastructure he spoke of in his introduction, instead of this mishmash of a Bill, the Chancellor would be reintroducing the industrial buildings allowance to provide a real incentive for the supply-side investment that will bring the necessary economic enlargement.
The Bill is a bit of a guddle. Paragraphs 11 to 23 in the explanatory notes describe those bits that are executively devolved, fully devolved and reserved, and those elements, mainly in clauses 17 and 18, that require a legislative consent motion from the Scottish Parliament. I shall speak about the reserved and devolved parts later. Given that much of the Bill relates to this matter, however, I want to start, unusually, by looking at the changes proposed to the English planning system, mainly to determine the Government’s thinking.
The Government are suggesting the option to make planning applications directly to the Secretary of State when the local planning authority is designated to be performing poorly. On the other hand, the Scottish Government are concentrating on improving planning authority and other stakeholder performance by linking fees to performance, and are committed to performance across the entire planning service. They have worked with local government agencies and the private sector to introduce a new planning performance framework that carries a firm commitment to continuous improvement.
The Scottish Government have also drawn a clear link between performance and planning fee levels. Authorities that do not improve will have their fees reduced, and the Scottish Government are pursuing the legislative powers to do that. They already have a system that allows the applicant to appeal on non-determination of a planning application. I ask the Minister, therefore, why the UK Government have chosen to allow applications to be made directly to the Secretary of State, rather than linking performance to the fees demanded by local authorities or LPAs, in order to improve poorly performing councils.
The Bill suggests broadening powers to award costs at planning appeals. The Scottish Government have not considered that change necessary in Scotland, and instead have concentrated on streamlining the appeals process in an effort to reduce costs. In 2009, they streamlined the appeals process even further precisely to prevent developments from becoming bogged down in lengthy and expensive inquiries. Why, then, have the Government chosen to broaden the powers to award costs, rather than to take different steps to streamline the appeals process, which is a sensible thing to do in any circumstances?
Under the Bill, the Government have also proposed limiting the power of LPAs to require supporting information for planning applications. In England, LPAs can specify the content of applications, but provisions in the Bill attempt to limit that. In Scotland, the Government specify the content of applications in national regulations. Under clause 4, the UK Government plan to go about this by amending the primary legislative framework governing what local authorities can ask for in support of a planning application so that such requests are reasonable and relate to matters likely to be material planning considerations.
The regulations in Scotland specify what accompanies an initial application and allow additional information to be requested when the planning authority considers it necessary to determine the application. That might well be in response to information required by statutory consultees. The emphasis on pre-application discussion between applicants, planning authorities and statutory consultees to identify information requirements in advance seems to make sense. Will the Minister explain, therefore, why the UK Government have chosen to amend primary legislation to limit information, rather than going down the route of national regulations, which would allow information to be required over and above a de minimis level, where it is necessary to determine an application?
The Bill also allows for the reconsideration of economically unviable section 106 affordable housing obligations, with the sensible objective of freeing up stalled housing sites. In Scotland, we have the power to modify or discharge section 75 planning obligations—the direct equivalent of section 106 agreements—whether or not they relate to affordable housing. Whether in England, Wales, Northern Ireland or Scotland, however, the problem with freeing up stalled affordable housing sites has little to do with the planning system, and far more to do with the unavailability to developers, including housing associations, of the lending required to start or complete sites. Would Government time not have been more constructively spent trying to free up cash from the banks and lenders to allow those developments to proceed? I believe, and I hope the Minister can confirm, that the Scottish Government already have the powers to modify or discharge planning obligations equivalent to those under section 106, and I hope he can confirm that nothing in the Bill would change that.
On the major infrastructure changes—non-planning changes—clauses 17 and 18 relate to the ability of the Secretary of State to vary consents for generating stations granted under section 36 of the Electricity Act 1989, and therefore to avoid the need for the full panoply of consent application requirements to apply for changes in a proposal. The existing consent power is executively devolved and the related power under planning legislation for Ministers to direct that planning permission is deemed to be granted for any development that receives consent under a section 36 order. That removes the need for separate planning application and was devolved in the Scotland Act 1998. It therefore makes sense that the Bill should include provision for Scotland, although because of its devolved nature, the provision clearly needs to be ratified by the Scottish Parliament.
Clause 15, however, repeals section 14 of the Energy Act 1976 which requires developers or operators to give written notice to the Secretary of State for proposals to establish or convert electricity generating stations to be fuelled by gas or by petrol. An initial look would suggest that this is a minor removal of red tape where a section 36 consent under the Electricity Act would be required in any event. I wonder whether the Secretary of State did not rather overstate the ripping-up of the red tape to which he referred in his opening remarks.
There is also the opportunity here to correct the anomaly in the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997 where, when granting consent for offshore wind farms, Ministers cannot at the same time direct that planning permission for onshore ancillary development be granted. A joined-up approach to that makes sense but because, as I said, many of these things are executively or fully devolved, that will also require a legislative consent motion from Scotland.
There are only two economic measures in the Bill. One is clause 22 which postpones the next non-domestic rating revaluation from 2015 to 2017. The argument is that that provides certain businesses with increased certainty about their business rates bill and allows them to focus on running their businesses. At face value that is sensible, and I am sure that Scottish Ministers will take their own decision on the equivalent revaluation postponement or not in good time.
Clause 23 is the key to the Bill. It represents another erosion of employee rights. I am all in favour of employee share schemes. Such an incentive is good. Employees owning a part of the business that they work for makes sense. At no time ever have I thought that that should be purchased at the cost of the removal of the basic rights that everybody else takes for granted, and I am deeply concerned about that. Even the briefest look at the explanatory notes tells us that in return for this new employment status, employees will have to forgo certain unfair dismissal rights, meaning that in certain circumstances they can be dismissed in a way that would now be unfair. That seems utterly ridiculous.
Employees will forgo statutory redundancy pay, on the off-chance that the shares that they have been awarded may have some value—any value—or, indeed, any market at all for them. That raises a serious question. Should there not be an open market, do the Government intend that the business buy that stock back, which might put the employer in an invidious position at that point? In order to become an employee owner, certain rights to flexible working will be forgone. As we heard earlier, businesses—we all know them—want their employees on occasion to be able to work flexibly. This is an important drive forward, and the provision is a huge reversal of that trend.
Employees will also have to forgo certain rights to request study and training. The next time a Conservative or a Liberal bemoans skills shortages in a company, sector or geographic area, we should remind the governing parties that they are asking people, in return for being an employee owner, to give up the right to request study and training leave—precisely the opportunities that people need to get the skills that their employers require now and in the future.
Giving up the right to go back to work early after maternity or adoption leave is incredible. We all understand that businesses have costs when they put interns or temps in when someone is away on maternity or adoption leave. I have never had a single employer say to me, “I don’t want my employee who is off on maternity leave to come back earlier.” Normally employers are desperate to get back their experienced staff, so the idea that the ability to become an employee owner will mean having to forgo the ability even to request coming back early is ridiculous.
I hope the Minister can answer the technical questions that I posed. I look forward to hearing what he has to say.
Mr David Ruffley (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)
Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s former chief of staff, said that one should never let a good crisis go to waste. He was right in the following respect: the economic crisis that this Government inherited in 2010 should allow us to be radical in our thinking, radical in our approach to economic growth policy, and radical in our approach to more and better infrastructure, for it is more and better infrastructure that will drive up productivity and total output.
It is two years since the Government announced the national infrastructure plan, and it is fair to say—I say this in a spirit of friendly candour—that it has not been progressed as rapidly and as efficiently as Ministers would have liked. In September this year the Public Accounts Committee looked at the regional growth fund. Of the £1.4 billion allocated, it found that only £470 million had been paid out; £364 million had been parked in intermediary bodies under an endowment programme. Only £60 million out of the £1.4 billion had found its way into front-line projects. It was calculated that that had bought 5,200 jobs. So a lot more remains to be done in driving through and delivering those projects.
There are signs that Ministers in this Government get it. I had the advantage of going to visit the new roads Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond), with my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), who is in his place. When we indicated that the excellent proposal to toll the A14 around Cambridge was one that we wanted to see earlier rather than later, the Minister was able to assure us that he had knocked 12 months off the initial timetable for when concrete would be poured. He also helpfully indicated that that road toll project would not be a compulsory road toll on heavy goods vehicles, and there was a clear sense of urgency on the part of that Minister.
What about the Bill before us? To what extent will it speed up and make more efficient the delivery of the infrastructure that all of us, in all parts of the House, want to see? I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), who is not in his place but who made an excellent speech, that we should not get carried away with the idea that more residential housing development will give us a permanent boost to long-term trend growth of the UK economy. If I may say so, we have heard too much in this debate about residential housing development. In my view, the reason that we have less of it is insufficient demand from buyers, insufficient capital being supplied to developers, and the state of their balance sheets. It would therefore be a mistake to bet the farm, so to speak, on housing development getting the UK economy going.
My hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) offered an explanation for the backlog of planning consents of around 400,000 for residential and other developments and said why that is not really as bad as it sounds. In my part of East Anglia, no developers have been beating a path to my door to say that we are not building enough homes because of a lousy council or a sclerotic planning regime. Furthermore, I understand from the Local Government Association that the approval rate for residential and commercial planning applications is now at a decade high; 87% were approved in 2011-12.
I must say that I am not a doctrinaire localist and, therefore, do not view some of the clauses in the Bill with as much trepidation as some of my colleagues on the Opposition Benches. I am more concerned about legislation that works and gets the planning system moving. Therefore, on clause 1, I will say only that, although the Secretary of State is taking quite wide powers, it is ridiculous to suggest that they will be unfettered, because subsection (8) makes it perfectly clear, in paragraphs (a) to (d), that guidance will be published setting out what constitutes a poorly performing authority. That is set out in the Bill and will come in time, so I do not think that we should get too excited about it.
However, those wide powers should be concerned with designating local planning authorities that are failing because they are tardy and inefficient in disposing of business. I would not want to see—I am sure Members on both sides of the House agree—a planning authority put into special measures simply because it had not built enough houses in a particular area, according to the lights of the Minister involved. I would find that pretty offensive, and it would certainly not be to the liking of my constituents.
I declare an interest, as I represent one of the United Kingdom’s great and iconic market towns, Bury St Edmunds. There has been a cross-party petition to keep that jewel in the crown of the east of England special. We already have a local planning agreement from the Conservative-led St Edmundsbury borough council, planning for a smaller number of residential homes in the next 20 years than was insisted upon by the previous Administration’s regional strategy. We have been able to use local council power to come up with a compromise that satisfies local housing demand. The last thing I want to see is any ministerial power being used to overturn the decisions of councils simply because they do not appear, in the Minister’s view, to have approved enough residential homes.
Clause 21 has already been mentioned. I am very relaxed about it. If we want to get the big infrastructure projects moving, whether energy reactors, rail electrification or increased aviation capacity, it seems to me to be perfectly legitimate and proper to give Ministers the power to fast-track those kinds of major national projects in the interests of efficiency, given the economic problems we face and the fact that we need to give nationally significant infrastructure projects a shot in the arm.
That brings me to a big national infrastructure project that we have not heard much, if anything, about today: the vexed issue of creating more aviation capacity. I think that it is now viewed as a mistake that my party’s 2010 manifesto ruled out making any decision on a third runway at Heathrow in this Parliament. I think that the noble Lord Heseltine was absolutely correct to say—I summarise colloquially—“Get a move on. Let’s make a decision sooner rather than later.” I also agree with the Mayor of London that we should not just go headlong towards building aviation capacity for the sake of it but should weigh up having a third runway at Heathrow with other options, as some colleagues, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), have suggested, such as extending Stansted or Gatwick or maybe even having a new airport in the Thames estuary. But we need to get on with it. It seems to me that any discussion of growth and infrastructure in this Chamber demands a grown-up, civilized, intelligent and well-informed debate about how aviation capacity can not only boost short-term growth, but improve long-term trends in GDP growth.
I want to say something about a type of infrastructure that is very dear to the hearts of those of us who are worried about broadband apartheid. I mean the parts of apparently affluent rural Britain—parts of which are in my constituency—where there are concerns that they will be left behind not only on superfast broadband, but on any kind of fibre-optic access at all. There seem to be clauses in the Bill that would allow fast-tracking, whether through compulsory purchase orders, the purchase of land or planning applications, so that we could get those fibre-optic channels dug out. I was lobbied on that question by Battisford parish council only a couple of Fridays ago. There is new housing there and small rural businesses, but they cannot possibly grow and thrive if they are at the tail end of any broadband roll-out. Therefore, to the extent that it will facilitate faster broadband roll-out, I welcome the Bill.
I broadly welcome the Bill, but I also have reservations about the future and about delivery. I am glad to see my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon) on the Front Bench. He is, not only as the Tory Minister for growth, but as a man with a track record in the private sector and, in a former incarnation, as an Education Minister, a man who gets on with delivery. I hope that when he winds up the debate tonight he will give us an indication of the Government’s renewed sense of purpose in boosting economic growth and infrastructure in this country.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
It is no surprise that we are talking today in this Chamber about growth, or rather the lack of growth, given the parlous state of the economy. Only today the Construction Products Association revealed that in the third quarter of this year, whatever slight improvement there might have been in the rest of the economy, construction activity declined again, in both the public and private sectors, and there is no expectation of any growth in the sector until 2014, despite all the Government initiatives and those that are proposed.
What is more surprising, however, is that we are talking once again about planning. It is only a matter of weeks since we were here discussing the revised version of the national planning policy framework, which had been subject to months of consultation. To be fair to the Government, they had listened. The Communities and Local Government Committee produced a report, which was agreed unanimously by its members, and the Government accepted nearly all its recommendations. There was a general welcome for the statement, both across the Chamber and by most outside organisations. Only a few weeks after that general agreement on the way forward for planning, we are talking about measures that were not even part of the consultation that took place over many months last year and the early part of this year. It seems that we are back to the old situation: when in doubt, blame the planners.
It was interesting to listen to the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert). I think that he is right: there is simply no evidence for the claim that the planning system in this country is an obstacle to growth. When the Select Committee took evidence about the national planning policy framework, we could find no such evidence, and Ministers never brought forward any. If there is any, will someone please stand up and say so? We really need to put that argument to bed once and for all. We have heard that 87% of applications last year were approved and we know that 400,000 homes could be built on sites that already have planning permission. Those are the figures and that is the current situation.
When Governments start to change, or even suggest changing, the planning system, there is always a danger that that in itself will create uncertainty, both for councils and for potential applicants, and that that uncertainty will create delay and have the opposite effect of the Government’s initial intention.
What is the situation and why are we here today? My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) got it right. Over the summer, we could almost see the wringing of hands at No. 10 and No. 11 because the economy would not move. They were worried about why there was no growth, not sure what to do about it and looking for others to blame. We could almost hear the call to the Secretary of State: “Find me some initiatives. Anything will do, so long as we look as though we’re doing something.” They came up with what can best be described as a rag-bag of measures which have not been thought through. Ministers at the Department were then given the job this afternoon of trying to justify the measures with some sort of coherence, and to work out how to implement them.
In his first appearance before the Communities and Local Government Committee, the planning Minister had a difficult job explaining why there were no criteria to justify so many of the measures and why there were still going to be consultations. I thank him for replying to us, as we requested, with the list of consultations on secondary legislation that the Government intend to undertake—there are rather a lot of them—in order to implement the measures that they think will stimulate growth in this country.
I am not going to say that this is the end of the planning system as we know it, but clause 1 is a fundamental attack on localism. This goes to the heart of what the Government have been talking about for a long time. First we had localism, which is about transferring power to local communities. I support that principle and some of the things that the Government have done. We then had guided localism, which is about giving powers to local communities and then telling them how to use them. For example, local authorities have the power to decide how often to empty their bins, but the Secretary of State knows best and will tell them how to do it. Now we have muscular localism, which is a wonderful phrase. The Secretary of State embodies it—it is his own and he has taken it to himself—and we are now able to see what it means. It is about giving powers to local communities, telling them how to use them and then, when they do not use them in the way in which the Secretary of State thinks they should, taking them back. For muscular localism, read centralism, with or without the cigar to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central alluded.
We are in a peculiar situation. The Government have said that local plans should be at the heart of the planning system, but they are now proposing that local applications made by local developers should be judged against the local plan not by the local authority, but by the centralised Planning Inspectorate. That is a complete contradiction of the Government’s policies.
We do not know how this system will operate or whether it will have any great impact. When the planning Minister gave evidence to the Committee, he said that it might only apply to a few cases for a short period. He did not anticipate many problems and thought that councils would up their game and respond, but we do not know what criteria they are supposed to be upping their game against. We have some idea about the criteria, because the Minister mentioned the speed of applications and the number of decisions that will be overturned on appeal. He then recognised, however, that there were problems with the statistics on the planning performance agreements with individual applications, because they may be skewed in such a way that the Secretary of State would have to have even more powers to decide whether authorities were falling down on their set targets. I thought that the Government were against targets and central assessments, but how can the system be run as defined by clause 1 without centralised targets and centralised assessments? Surely they are inherent in what the Government now propose.
In effect, clause 1 abolishes—this is an attack on the fundamentals of our planning system—the applicant’s right of appeal, which has always been at the heart of the planning system. Anyone who has a planning application turned down has a right of appeal to someone independent of the body that took the initial decision.
As I said when I intervened on my right hon. Friend, the Minister had to accept that consultations on planning applications with the local community will now simply be those that are statutorily required. Most planning authorities go beyond that by calling public meetings, staging local exhibitions where people can see what an application means, and sending letters to far more people than statutorily required, but the Planning Inspectorate will not be required to do any of that. Local authorities will still have some of the requirements, but no fees to pay for them. What a situation to get ourselves into!
As for the nationally significant infrastructure projects, we do not know what they will be. We know that they will involve business and commercial developments, but we do not know whether that includes retail. It would be helpful if Ministers could tell us whether retail schemes are included and whether we are going to drive a coach and horses through local shopping centres without the local community having a say in such decisions. At present, national policy statements—I congratulate the Government on ensuring that they are now approved by Parliament—represent democratic accountability for such decisions. However, Ministers now tell us—the planning Minister was clear, for example, on office development—that there will be no national policy statements. There will be no democratic say on how the schemes should be judged and no democratic involvement in the initial decision. Ministers might seek to defend that, but it is another fundamental change.
Why—the Minister could not explain this—will business and commercial developments follow the route laid down by the Planning Act 2008, but housing will be subject to increased and enhanced call-in powers by the Secretary of State? Why is housing being treated separately? If the Government are concerned about the scale of some housing projects in various council areas, why do they not beef up the duty to co-operate, which is what the Select Committee asked them to do when we addressed these issues some time ago? This is about getting agreement for big schemes across authorities, so surely the duty to co-operate is the way forward, if it means anything at all.
There is no evidence of a problem with section 106 agreements for affordable housing. The letter that the chief executive of the Homes and Communities Agency wrote to me said that it was not an issue. Where is the evidence that there is a problem? Local authorities are renegotiating the agreements where appropriate and in line with local circumstances, but why determine the viability of individual schemes in different localities on a national basis? That is simply not acceptable. The danger is that if developers think they will get a better deal by delaying and going to the Planning Inspectorate once the Bill is enacted because fewer affordable homes will be required, the result of the measure will be the opposite of that intended. Ultimately, we could end up not only reducing the number of affordable houses being built, but, as the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) has said, reducing mixed communities, because those schemes will all end up being private and the extra £300 million to produce affordable houses will go elsewhere. That is not acceptable either. In some areas there will be no alternative sites, other than those that currently have planning permission to build affordable homes. That is the reality.
I am also concerned about the proposals to use telecommunications equipment in the national parks. Other hon. Members have already made those concerns clear and I support them.
With this Bill, the Government are turning localism on its head. It is a fundamentally centralising measure. If the Government were able to argue that, pragmatically, it was worthwhile for them to go back on their principles because it would result in stimulating growth as intended, I would be able to understand. The likelihood, however, is that they will abandon their principles without achieving any extra growth whatsoever.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
I rise to welcome the Bill and to speak particularly about infrastructure issues, which I hope the Committee will explore when it examines the Bill clause by clause.
The Bill’s long title says that it is
“To make provision in connection”
with “the provision…of infrastructure”. In that context, I particularly welcome clause 7, which deals with the speeding up of broadband infrastructure provision. However, not all infrastructure comes cost-free; much of it is paid for out of public funds. Broadband infrastructure is made great use of by content providers, not all of which contribute to public funds as they perhaps should. Google, a big content provider, had declared earnings for the financial year of £2.5 billion, with a pre-tax profit, estimated on the basis of its global operating margin, of £836.7 million, and a tax charge of just £3.4 million, which is equivalent to an effective tax rate of 0.4%.
Payment for the provision of infrastructure is an important matter, particularly in the case of companies based overseas—big multinationals—which, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings, have much higher effective tax rates in their home territories: 21% in the case of Google, whose effective tax rate over all its foreign territories is just 3.25%. The same is true of Amazon, which had declared UK earnings for the financial year of £3.9 billion, a pre-tax profit, estimated on the basis of its global operating margins, of £76.9 million, and a tax charge in the UK of £1.9 million—equivalent to an effective tax rate of 2.5%, while back in the States it had a rate of 31.2%. It is very important to tackle the abuse of the tax system and make sure that people pay their fair share to the UK authorities. I welcomed the statements that the Chancellor and Wolfgang Schäuble made about this. When the Committee considers clause 7, I hope that it will focus on how infrastructure can be paid for, because that is an essential issue, particularly when the money comes from taxpayer funds.
I welcome clause 3, which deals with the cost of compulsory purchase inquiries. In Dover we have an office building called Burlington house which is the subject of a compulsory purchase order application that will go forward in due course. There is great concern about the cost of CPOs, and it is important to speed up inquiries and ensure that resisting a CPO is not penalty-free.
Clause 5 relates to section 106 obligations. I hope that the Committee will explore in more detail the question of infrastructure contributions where a business is clamouring for infrastructure to be put in place. For example, the east Kent access extension of the A256 in my constituency cost public funds £87 million, but the contribution from the business that was clamouring for it—Pfizer, which has a plant in Sandwich—was only about £1.6 million. Business is making a very small contribution. We should be rather more robust in saying, “Perhaps you should pay a bit more for the infrastructure you’re clamouring for”, particularly when, once it is built, the company closes down its plant, losing a lot of jobs. Pfizer had declared UK earnings for the financial year of £1.8 billion and a pre-tax profit, estimated on the basis of its global operating margin, of £347 million, and it did not pay a penny in tax in the UK in the previous financial year or the year before that. We should say to large multinationals, “You ought to contribute to the cost of this infrastructure. You shouldn’t play the game of transfer pricing and royalties—you should think of helping to pay for, improve and invest in UK infrastructure, thus helping the UK to grow.”
Clause 5 deals with the important aspect of viability. My own district council in Dover has been very positive in relation to viability by engaging with developers and talking about affordable housing contributions, but I recognise that that is not true of every district council or planning authority. We need to consider the whole issue of viability and how to ensure that there are strong, overarching powers should the need arise.
On the chapter entitled “Economic measures”, I welcome the provision on employer owners, but I hope that the Committee will explore the growth side in terms of open and competitive playing fields and level markets. For example, why should Costa Coffee pay tax while Starbucks, which has declared UK earnings for the financial year of £397 million and made a pre-tax profit, estimated on the basis of its global operating margin, of £59.6 million, paid no tax at all? That is a matter of great concern. I hope that we will examine transfer pricing and the abuse of our tax system to make sure that a fair share of tax is paid in the UK as well.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
Whatever this Bill is about, it is not about growth. I have the authority of the Prime Minister on that, as he said in May this year:
“If you could legislate your way to growth, obviously we would. The truth is you can’t.”
I am afraid that, as many hon. Members have said, the Bill is about turning localism on its head and it is an utter centralisation of planning policy that has served us fairly well over the past 60 years. The question therefore is why the Government are doing it. I fear that this is about finding ways in which the rights and interests of local communities can be overridden in the interests of private profit and of vested interests. I will explain why I say that on the basis of my own experience. Given the time constraints, I will speak about clauses 1 and 5, with perhaps a digression on village greens if I have time.
I represent an area where the local authority already practises the policies that the Secretary of State would like to see in operation nationwide. That is not a coincidence; he describes Hammersmith and Fulham as the apple of his eye. The Government have already adopted many of the housing policies that that authority has set out. Near-market rents, no security of tenure, no obligation for permanent re-housing, little or no capital investment, and discrimination in allocations against those in housing need: all these policies were pioneered in Hammersmith and Fulham.
Similarly, the two guiding principles of planning there are to make every decision on the side of the developer under the catch-all title “Open for business”, and to ensure that not a single new social housing unit is built in the area despite there being 10,000 people on the housing waiting list. One might describe this approach as a little pimping for developers on the one hand, and gerrymandering on the other, and both seem to be admirably reflected in clauses 1 and 5 of the Bill. We therefore have a warning of what is to come if these policies are adopted nationally. There is some irony in the fact that local authorities currently have huge discretion in being able to put into practice many of the things that the Bill aims to achieve.
There are three opportunity areas, primarily in my constituency, on which the local authority intends to construct 22,000 new homes—in one of London’s smallest and most densely populated boroughs. These are not sustainable homes. Generally speaking, two and three-storey Victorian or Edwardian houses, or similar, are being replaced with 30-plus-storey blocks of flats. The guiding principles are that not one of those 22,000 homes should be a new social home for rent, that very few of them should be for families, and that very few should be for occupation—they are, in effect, investment properties that are principally advertised abroad. This is the developer’s agenda. These types of development, which replace affordable or low-rise housing, generate the maximum profit.
Let me give an example. The largest inner-urban development outside China is called Earl’s Court and West Kensington. It is an £8 billion development involving the demolition of 760 newly modernised affordable homes and the construction of 7,500 primarily luxury high-rise homes by Capital and Counties, a large property developer. That is a matter of such contention that there are already three judicial reviews under way or planned—on the consultation process, the planning process, and the viability issues. There is a Scotland Yard inquiry and a separate inquiry that is being run by the council’s chief executive into misconduct in public office on the basis that, given that residents of the area voted four to one against the new development, there are 22 witness statements saying that individuals were offered, as a bribe or an incentive, an early mover home in the new development in order to induce them to move. The local authority will receive £105 million as a capital receipt for giving vacant possession of an area in which 760 tenants, leaseholders and freeholders currently live. The development will take 20 years and there is no guarantee that it will ever be finished. It is being organised by shell companies, and in part by a company whose principal shareholders are the Kwok brothers, currently under arrest in Hong Kong. At best, thousands of my constituents will spend up to 20 years effectively living on a building site.
The Secretary of State talked about viability, but that cuts both ways. He meant, I believe, that local authorities are over-demanding when asking for affordable housing on sites, but equally we have the spectre of developers doing a deal and knowing that their final profit—particularly over a 20-year period—will be excessive. How do they maintain that position? They do it by ensuring that agreements contain confidentiality clauses that no one can see other than members of the council’s planning committee. Once the clauses have been viewed—under conditions of great security—members of the committee are not allowed to repeat what they have seen. Although an independent valuer suggested reappraising the public benefit, over a 20-year period, of the development I have mentioned, that was not reflected in the planning report. Members of the planning committee were not informed that that was the case, and the officer’s recommendation was to turn the suggestion down.
The Secretary of State has a role in that scheme, not just in planning call-in, but in approving a significant land sale. He has refused to meet me to discuss that, however, on the basis that the matter should be dealt with locally, and there is some irony there. In such cases, when developers snap their fingers, local authorities that take the same view as the Secretary of State in this Bill, and simply jump.
I wish to give three examples of how section 106 planning agreements have been renegotiated in my constituency. First, a 100-unit housing development near Hammersmith Broadway was given planning consent that included provision for 10% affordable housing. The developer came back and said, “I’m sorry, we can’t afford any affordable housing in this development”, and the local authority said, “Yes, that’s fine.” The development was advertised not locally but in The Straits Times as a location between Heathrow and Harrods for people who wish to have a property in the UK. Clearly, the elimination of any affordable housing units in that area helped to ensure that the development was more prestigious and luxurious.
Secondly, several areas of affordable housing were granted as part of the planning consent for the Westfield development—a major shopping centre in my constituency. The first was built when there was still a Labour authority, and is an award-winning development of 80 affordable homes. The other two areas were returned to the developer in return for other benefits, because they were “not needed” in an area with 10,000 people on the housing waiting list. Thirdly, at the St George development at Imperial Wharf, another 250 properties—affordable rented homes in the main—were handed back to the developer because they were “not needed.”
That is what can happen under present legislation if the local authority wishes. Anyone who saw the front page of The Guardian today will have seen that thousands of people are being evicted from properties in London, and in some cases made to move hundreds of miles away because there is a shortage of affordable property. Last week, The Daily Telegraph ran a story that Hammersmith council, along with two neighbouring Conservative-controlled boroughs, wished to build a middle-class housing estate using the borrowing power it would obtain because of the value of its council housing stock. At the same time, that council is selling 300 properties on the open market and hopes to raise £100 million. The money is, in part, being used to assist developers to assemble sites by compulsory purchase, in order—again—to demolish affordable homes and build luxury homes on the site. I admit that is clever, but I do not see that it is either moral or the way in which planning policy should operate.
We do not have a lot of village greens in Shepherd’s Bush, but nevertheless the local authority wishes to “sweat the asset”—its own phrase—and build on public parks. In one case, it wanted to sell a third of a public park in Hammersmith to build a car park, a bar, and commercial sports pitches that would be unusable by local residents. We do, of course, have recourse to existing legislation. When the council tried to build on Shepherd’s Bush green, for example, a successful planning inquiry was held and because it was common land, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs had the final say and the Planning Inspectorate became involved. I do not claim that the power to designate something a village green is never misused, but it is one of the few weapons in the armoury of the David and Goliath battle that takes place every week and month between local residents and developers. I would, therefore, be loth to see it legislated away in this way.
Even without the heavy hand of central Government coming in on the side of the developer, current planning policy can still be used by bandit local authorities such as mine, and by dodgy developers, to ensure that local residents always come last. Any development that takes place is unsustainable and does not serve the interests of local residents, just those of private profit. It is a great regret that, as I said in my intervention, such things are done by a number of developers who are also significant contributors to the Conservative party, and I believe that the Government have lost their way on the issue. They are putting residents last and developers first, and this Bill is another nail in that coffin.
Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
I always appreciate forays into family history from those on the Opposition Front Benches, and I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) is not in his place. I imagine that democratic centralism was imbued into him at the paternal knee. His references to it were undoubtedly entertaining, although the House might appreciate a modest reality check thereafter. A reality check, it seems to me, is an old advocate, and in my experience a fair one. The weaker one’s opponent’s case, the more rhetoric they feel obliged to use. I hope that my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench will take on board the reality, which is that the Government inherited a planning system that was seriously failing. We have put in place important measures to improve things through the Localism Act 2011 and the national planning policy framework, and improvements are being seen.
Under the previous Government’s watch, the Killian Pretty review pointed out that only three out of 64 major schemes proceeded without delay and referred to the expense that that brings. This Government have been trying to put that right. A number of measures in the Bill pick up on issues that were flagged up in the consultation on the NPPF, so the suggestion that they are incompatible is nonsense. The NPPF did not require primary legislation because it was a matter of policy. The issues that were flagged up and are dealt with in the Bill do require primary legislation, so it is perfectly logical to legislate to put those measures in place.
Let me deal with clause 1, about which there has been much heat and not much light from Opposition Members. I take on board—I have no doubt the Minister will confirm this—the response by the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) to the Communities and Local Government Committee. In reality, most planning authorities do a good job, but there are issues about the capacity of smaller local planning authorities. Some matters do not require legislation, but are gradually being dealt with by good practice within the local authority sector itself. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) referred to the capacity of planning departments, particularly in some small rural district councils, and, increasingly, shrewd councils in such circumstances are sharing their planning departments. Those of us who have spent many years in local government hope that that will become the norm rather than the exception, and that valuable and comparatively expensive professional services will be shared across a number of planning authorities. That does not alter the position of local councillors, who are accountable to their electors as members of the planning authority, but sharing professional advice makes obvious common sense in the circumstances I mentioned.
That said, although there is good progress, and although the planning guarantee has been an important factor in raising the performance bar, a small number of local authorities consistently do not meet that requirement. As my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State set out, that is exactly what the Bill intends to deal with. It does not take many planning authorities to hold up important schemes. That stance is echoed by the Home Builders Federation, which does not regard the Bill as sweeping away the majority of planning authority procedures. In my experience as a Minister and shadow Minister, house builders work hard with local authorities. Good volume house builders such as Berkeley Homes and Countryside Properties generally do not end up on appeal, because they “roll the turf” first, using the requirement for pre-engagement and consultation with councillors, council officers and their communities. That works in many cases. The Home Builders Federations has stated that it welcomes
“the option of, in extremis, enabling home builders to apply to the Secretary of State where a local authority has a record of very poor performance.”
That is what clause 1 is about—it is sensible and proportionate.
Mr Raynsford
The hon. Gentleman has said twice that a small number of authorities have, in his view, an unacceptably poor standard of performance. Will he please name them?
Robert Neill
The right hon. Gentleman tries the same old trick as the shadow Secretary of State. Importantly, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made it clear that there will be criteria, and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary has said there will be criteria and an objective test. I am not foolish enough to go down the route the right hon. Gentleman suggests, because I am not privy to the work that we did to develop the objective test, but I have complete confidence that the test will be a sensible one. The point he attempts to make is a bogus one, as he well knows. With every respect to him, I ought to be used to that by now.
The second point to remember about clause 1 is that, although it has been suggested there is no right of appeal, the clause shows common sense. If in a rare number of cases a decision is taken by the Secretary of State, he can hardly appeal against it—that would be nonsense. However, the option of judicial review on that decision remains. As all hon. Members know, recent experience indicates that developers and other groups have not been slow to exercise the right of judicial appeal when they think there are grounds. The safeguard that remains is therefore a significant one.
Martin Horwood
The hon. Gentleman is too wise to fall into the Opposition’s trap of naming specific authorities that, in the phrase he used, were guilty of poor performance, but will he define what he means by poor performance?
Robert Neill
I do not have all the information that Ministers have to draw a distinction, but the statutory time limits in which decisions must be taken, the planning guarantee and adherence to the mechanism of voluntary local planning agreements would be a starting point in determining performance. I have perfect faith in Ministers to develop sensible and transparent criteria, and that they will assure us on that. Those proportionate and sensible proposals complement existing policy.
The same applies to clause 2 and the question of costs. Some fuss was made about costs, but I hope it was based on a misunderstanding of the proposal. Clause 2 enables the Secretary of State to claim the costs of an appeal proceeding against unreasonable behaviour by any party to the appeal. It does another important thing: at the moment, in the limited circumstances in which costs can be awarded, there is an all-or-nothing situation—a party can get the whole of the costs or none. The position set out in subsections 2(1) to 2(5) is a sensible one. They mean that, where appropriate, a proportion of costs can be awarded, to reflect the fact that more than one party is responsible for delays in the conduct of the appeal. Currently, costs tend to be thrown away only when there is a public inquiry, but clause 2 sensibly says that costs can be awarded, when appropriate, when delays arise from written representations. That system works perfectly normally in virtually every other kind of civil and commercial litigation in this country. To introduce a similar and equally proportionate measure for planning is more than reasonable.
This Government have given local power to local authorities. The previous Government authored the imposed regional strategies and a standards regime that was often regarded as intimidatory by many councillors who spoke out on behalf of their residents, and they gave us 13 years of rate capping, to name but a few of their measures. It is understandable that local authorities felt they had no power in such centralising circumstances. We have returned genuine power in all those matters to local authorities, and it is not unreasonable to say, “With power comes responsibility.” In quasi-judicial matters such as planning, it is not unreasonable for us to say, “You must carry out the decisions entrusted to you in a timely and efficient manner.” In reality, that is what clauses 1 and 2 are about. It is nonsense for the Opposition to suggest otherwise.
I welcome other important measures in the Bill. I was particularly pleased to see the tidying up in clause 6 of loose legislation that this Government inherited from the previous one. The duplication of consents regimes needed to be dealt with.
I also welcome the provisions of clause 8, which deals with minerals planning. The ready supply of minerals and aggregates is important to the economic growth of this country. Generally, the minerals planning industry has shown good social and environmental sense in carrying out what is sometimes sensitive extraction. The extraction can happen only where the minerals exist, so giving more flexibility to local authorities in when they carry out minerals plans reviews is sensible. It is localist, but it also enables investors in minerals planning to have appropriate confidence to make the investment necessary. That is a small but critical step, because minerals and aggregates are critical to the construction industry. It will be worth flagging that up during debates on the Bill.
On business rates, I urge my hon. Friends the Ministers not to be put off by some of the specious arguments from the Opposition. The previous Government have on their track record one of the worst examples of abuse of the business rates system to the detriment of small and medium-sized businesses that I have ever come across. They obdurately refused, in the face of overwhelming evidence, to remove an effectively retrospective tax on businesses in our ports, which put firms out of business and put British workers out of jobs, and caused serious British investors, such as DFDS Seaways and others, to rethink their UK investment plans. The previous Government did nothing about that despite having the clearest evidence in front of them. One of the first legislative acts of this Government reversed that injustice and safeguarded that important British business sector. I therefore hope my hon. Friends the Ministers will take no lectures on that from Labour.
As has been amply demonstrated, there is good evidence to suggest that, because of the interaction of the rental values that are used to calculate business rates and the multiplier, it would be misleading to tell people that revaluation will automatically result in a reduction of the amount of business rate paid. I therefore hope that Ministers will not be put off course on that. It is also worth bearing in mind the other assistance that this Government have given, particularly through small business rate relief, which we extended for an unprecedented period—again, something that Labour did not do. The democratic centralists—[Interruption]—or, lest there be any confusion, what I might call the “cradle” democratic centralists, have been long on rhetoric, but rather short on evidence. I hope the House will see through them and support this sensible and constructive Bill.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)
I think Ministers know that this is a rubbish Bill. We have seen no defence at all against the attacks from the Opposition Benches, particularly from the shadow Secretary of State, who, if I might say so, did a decapitation job on the Bill.
The Bill contains clauses with which I find myself in contention—namely clause 23 and its provisions to diminish workers’ rights—but it also provides us with opportunities to devolve power to the Welsh Government, so that they, too, can promote growth and boost infrastructure. I will focus on those provisions that are not currently in the Bill, but which would improve it in achieving its billing, namely the proposals behind the “Build for Wales” programme, as promoted by my party, which is a far more cost-effective alternative to private finance initiatives. The “Build for Wales” project would establish a Welsh infrastructure investment and management company to tackle the constraints on public sector investment in Wales. A not-for-distributable-profit company limited by guarantee, it would be responsible for the funding and implementation of public sector infrastructure projects, with any profits invested in other Welsh public sector infrastructure.
As the Minister will be aware, despite the fantastically vague announcement made by the UK and Welsh Governments last week, the Welsh Government are still unable to borrow and cannot raise taxes to increase their income. Indeed, if money is unspent at the end of the financial year, the Treasury can claw it back. If memory serves, the amount clawed back in that manner last year was £400 million—money that should have been redirected to the Welsh capital budgets, which have been slashed, with 42% cuts in the current spending review. Were the Welsh Government able to establish a not-for-distributable-profit company, as we have suggested, the Welsh public sector could plan capital expenditure in the long term—a prudent approach normally favoured by the Treasury. It would also lead to the creation of a specialist company with a knowledge base in procurement and negotiation with contractors, which would help to deliver projects efficiently. Finally, the fact that profits would be reinvested in other public sector projects would increase employment in the construction industry and so boost growth in the economy. I plan to table amendments to the Bill at later stages to take those points forward, and I look forward to fruitful discussions with Ministers on these possibilities.
Many clauses in the Bill as it stands evidently aim to speed up infrastructure projects by cutting unnecessary red tape and amending existing legislation. I hope that the Minister will share my view that our “Build for Wales” proposals are very much in the same vein. Clauses 17 and 18 provide powers to vary planning consents for energy infrastructure projects, which gives the UK Government a fantastic opportunity to devolve energy planning powers to the National Assembly—a provision they unfortunately failed to include in their draft Energy Bill earlier this year. As Ministers will be aware, at present the Welsh Government have powers only over proposals for energy generation projects of up to 50 MW on land and 1 MW at sea. This arbitrary set-up means that a generating station that would generate 49 MW is decided on by Welsh local planning authorities, but those generating 51 MW or more must be decided on by the Secretary of State in Whitehall.
The Pen y Cymoedd wind farm in south Wales, for example, will generate an estimated 250 MW, so the decision to grant permission for it was made by the Secretary of State in Westminster, not the democratically elected Welsh Government in Cardiff. In my constituency I have two TAN 8 areas—so-called after technical advice note 8—one of which, area G, is in Brechfa forest. Currently, two planning applications are going through: the Llanllwni project, which is below 50 MW, and the Brechfa West project, which is above 50 MW. Local people are confused—I am confused, and I am their Member of Parliament. It would be far more reasonable to extend the Welsh Government’s remit in line with that of the Scottish Parliament, so that the people of Wales have complete control over how their natural resources are utilised. I have previously argued for exactly that provision in amendments to the Localism Act 2011, during its passage through the Commons last year, and in a ten-minute rule Bill that I introduced last January. I will be tabling similar amendments to that end at later stages of this Bill’s passage.
Clause 22 postpones the next non-domestic rating revaluation, in a bid to allow businesses in England to focus on growth. As the Minister will no doubt be aware, the current situation is disadvantageous to Wales, as the Welsh Government hold no power to alter the non-domestic rates multiplier, which is currently set by the UK Government. Devolving business rates to the Welsh Government, as in Scotland, would allow them to use the rates more strategically to promote growth and incentivise local authorities to expand their economic bases. The recent business rates review, published by Professor Brian Morgan of Cardiff university and commissioned by the Welsh Government, argues for the full devolution of business rates, describing it as
“an anomaly which needs to be addressed.”
I would suggest that the Bill affords the UK Government the opportunity to correct it.
Finally, as the son of a trade union shop steward, I must express my concern about clause 23. It would create a new employment status—“employee-owner”—which would mean workers losing vital employment rights in exchange for shares in their employer’s company. Although we support co-ops and workers’ rights, they should not be transferred in this backhanded way. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) set out earlier, in return for shares in the company to a value of between £2,000 and £50,000, workers would lose their rights on unfair dismissal, redundancy and flexible working, along with some maternity rights. The Government have rightly been accused of introducing back-door deregulation of the labour market on a huge scale with this provision. Many fear that if it is implemented, employers will use it to get round labour market laws. It is a drastic and retrograde provision, and it must be removed from the Bill.
The Bill as it stands will do nothing to promote growth and investment in infrastructure. I hope that Ministers will engage constructively with some of my suggestions this evening, which will help the Bill to achieve its aims, at least in Wales, by empowering the Welsh Government with the necessary tools to do the job.
John Stevenson (Carlisle) (Con)
I would like to make a small contribution to this important debate about what are serious issues, with the potential to benefit our economy. Even with the recent positive growth figures, it is clearly acknowledged that everything needs to be done to ensure that our economy continues to grow and expand. In itself, the Bill is no panacea for our economic difficulties; indeed, no legislation is or can ever be. Nevertheless, it is a welcome addition to the efforts to help our economy to recover, not just in the short term but, just as importantly, in the longer term. Of course we all want to see growth now, but it is critical that we have the ingredients in place to ensure that our economy has the wherewithal to expand, not just in the coming months, but in the future. Quite simply, we need modern infrastructure to achieve future growth. The Bill makes a small contribution towards that.
I wish to concentrate on two issues. In the short term, the more immediate need is to ensure that the economy continues to grow over the next few months, particularly as we have some momentum from last quarter’s growth figures. There are clear immediate benefits from continuing with the Government’s aim of simplifying the planning process. It is critical that planning applications are encouraged and, where they have merit, passed as quickly as possible. I fully accept that this is not the whole solution, but it is certainly one of them. We need to ensure that the process is efficient and that bureaucracy and red tape do not get in the way. Indeed, where councils are failing to provide such a service, it is absolutely right that the Secretary of State has the power to intervene. Arguably, where councils are failing, they are effectively letting down their communities. It is incumbent on the Government to step in and sort it out.
It is also right that, where appropriate, section 106 agreements are revisited. We live in a different economic environment now. If altering a section 106 agreement helps to bring forward a development or make it stack up financially, that is exactly what we should be doing. Indeed, even if only a handful of section 106 agreements are revisited and improvements are made to them, that will clearly be beneficial.
Another immediate issue is the postponement of the business rates revaluation. I would normally have concerns about such postponements, but I believe that, in the present climate, it is far more sensible to create as much certainty as we possibly can for businesses. They need to plan for the future, and their most common criticism of the Government involves a lack of certainty. Even more relevant in these difficult times is the fact that we must do everything possible to ensure that businesses have certainty, and if they know that their rates will stay broadly the same for the next five years, they can concentrate on their core business and plan accordingly.
As I have said, the long-term growth potential of the economy is equally important. To achieve this, we need to have infrastructure such as roads and railways in place that will allow expansion in the years to come. Clearly, we need to bring forward or encourage capital projects and serious infrastructure investment by the private business sector as well as by the state sector. One of the key areas for growth is broadband.
I have always been a great fan of the Victorians, and I am particularly in awe of the huge number of infrastructure projects that our Victorian ancestors completed. We forget that they effectively transformed this country in a remarkably short time. Their communications revolution involved the railways, which connected our great cities. For example, they connected my city of Carlisle with London, Manchester and Glasgow. That brought great benefits to businesses and consumers, and we are still reaping the benefits of that revolution today.
Broadband, from a business point of view, is the modern equivalent. Superfast broadband is absolutely vital for businesses and consumers. It will allow businesses to compete, develop and grow. In addition, it has the potential to help rebalance the country. Proper broadband infrastructure will create business opportunities in such places as Carlisle, which would then be able to compete on a more equal footing with businesses in places such as London and Manchester. Anything that will help to roll out broadband should therefore be welcomed and supported.
As I have said, changes to the planning process will have an immediate effect as well as long-term benefits for our economy. Critically, simplifying our planning process will give developers confidence that applications will be heard expeditiously. Planning applications—particularly the large ones—can be hugely expensive. It is therefore vital that we encourage businesses to plan for the future and to have confidence in the system.
James Wharton (Stockton South) (Con)
I am listening carefully to the powerful case that my hon. Friend is making. He has not yet mentioned the role of local authorities in planning. Does he agree that, whatever changes are made, it is important that local authorities and the communities that they represent should continue to have a role right at the centre of our planning system?
John Stevenson
I completely agree with my hon. Friend.
I was about to make the point that it is crucial that central Government do not lose sight of the importance of local authorities. We often talk about national issues, national solutions and national policies, but many of the solutions lie in our local communities where local solutions for local issues can be just as effective. It is therefore vital that central and local government do everything possible to encourage the upgrading, improvement and development of our nation’s infrastructure. That will go a long way towards boosting growth in the short term and the longer term. Our Victorian ancestors were hugely successful at that, and I see no reason why we cannot do likewise today. I fully support the Bill.
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson). He and I spent many a happy afternoon on the Joint Committee on House of Lords reform, which was a hugely effective use of our time. The failure to use that time effectively is why we are here today, as the Government try desperately to fill the gaping hole in their legislative agenda.
I would like to begin at the beginning. The Government inherited a difficult economic scenario, then proceeded to make it infinitely worse by slashing capital spending, sucking demand out of the economy and sending us into a double-dip recession. Since then, they have been in catch-up mode, trying desperately to find policies that will get us out of our economic situation. Their first attempt to find a solution involved the national planning policy framework. There was no real evidence base for that proposal, but we none the less spent a happy spring and summer debating it. There was no evidence that relaxing planning permissions would give the kind of economic boost that we needed.
When we looked at the economy of Ireland, which has one of the most liberalised and disastrous planning systems in Europe, at the economy of Spain, with its equally unregulated planning system, and at the economy of Italy, it became clear that the deregulation of planning was not going to provide the economic boost that we were looking for. We went through chaos and U-turns with the national planning policy framework. It was an absurd idea, and we are now told that this legislation is the follow-up to it. I remember sitting through those debates, however, and no Minister at the Dispatch Box ever said, “Hold on, we’re going to come back with the Growth and Infrastructure Bill in the autumn. This is all part of a grand plan, an organic process, a strategy for growth.” No; we had an enjoyable debate on the framework and it was signed off, but there was no hint at that time that we would be back here debating these issues now.
We are back here debating these matters, however, and once again we have heard unpleasant abuse and ridicule being heaped on environmental and civil society groups such as the National Trust and the Campaign to Protect Rural England, which have dared to come up with objections to the growth-at-all-costs plans of this Government. The new planning Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), has called members of the National Trust “luddites” for daring to suggest that we should value such things as beauty and planning in our natural environment.
This is a dog’s dinner of a Bill, brilliantly dismantled by the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), in his clinical dismemberment of the provisions before the House. I am pleased to see that the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) has beside him a copy of the report by Lord Heseltine, “No Stone Unturned”. If he turns to page 2 of that document, he will see a picture of Joseph Chamberlain, complete with an orchid on his jacket. If he turns to the final page, he will see a picture of Manchester town hall. The point of the Heseltine review is that it is a celebration of local government, of regional identity and of local civic pride. Yet, one week later, we are debating this Bill, which is all about the destruction of local democracy and the dismantlement of local action by local people.
Clause 1 is dirigiste and Napoleonic. Above all, it represents a massive U-turn by the Government from their localism agenda. We have only to look back to the passage of the Localism Act 2011, when the former planning Minister, the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), said that
“we should move away from a system of planning by development control, where recourse is made to the Planning Inspectorate rather than local decision makers, which is how the future of our communities has been developed. I want fewer appeals to the Planning Inspectorate and more decided locally.”—[Official Report, 17 May 2011; Vol. 528, c. 273.]
[Interruption.] It is no wonder, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) says, that that Minister has now gone.
Instead, we are seeing a remarkable U-turn from localism to centralism, which is stripping designated local planning bodies of their capacities. We do not know how the capacities are going to be designated in the case of failing local authorities. When the Secretary of State was asked today for an example of such a local authority, he cited Hackney. We have discovered, however, that when efficiency and the time taken to process planning permissions are taken into account, there can be no suggestion that Hackney would fall into that category. The Secretary of State was making it up as he went along.
The language being used is instructive. It is the language of special measures, similar to that used of schools that the Secretary of State for Education deems to be failing. The same relentless centralism that we are seeing from the Department for Education is now being spread to local government. Any pretence of localism has ended today. There will be an end to pluralism and an end to natural rights, with no right of appeal.
Is the Bill a solution to the problem? We understand that there are problems promoting growth, but is further deregulation of the planning system the answer? I know that this Government are not particularly interested in evidence-based policy making, but the evidence suggests not. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the Chairman of the Select Committee, set out in great detail, 87% of planning applications are approved and 400,000 new dwellings have approval. It is not the lack of planning policy that is preventing their development. More than 90% of applications are decided in 26 weeks. Where, then, is the problem when it comes to planning policy? As we know, the problem is the ability to gain mortgages, the lack of demand in the economy and the lack of confidence in the economy: none of these problems is going to be solved by this kind of reform of the planning system. In fact, we shall see more confusion, more disarray and more delays in the planning system as a result of yet another bout of “initiative-itis” from the Government.
Again, where is the problem with the section 106 agreements? We have heard various curious statistics from the planning Minister, the basis of which he has refused to reveal. Everyone who has something to say about construction and development and the role of 106 agreements says that there is no problem with how these matters are currently dealt with. The provisions in the Bill could slow up development, as developers wait for changes to happen and will not get on with the construction that we all want to see.
Clause 21 deals with the major infrastructure regimes. It will continue the instability and the confusion. Under the clause, businesses and commercial projects of national significance can be taken into the hands of the Planning Inspectorate. However, these will not be subject to national planning policy statements, and we do not know whether retail parks or indeed leisure parks will be included, so all that the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk), has tried to do with respect to high street development, the Portas review, city centre development and so forth could be undone at a stroke by what is in the Bill if development law suggests that retail parks assume this national development significance.
Let me deal with clause 7. As you well know, Mr Deputy Speaker, the national parks movement grew out of the inter-war sprawl when our natural environment was under attack. Our green and pleasant land was being ruined by urban sprawl and excessive deregulation. This was the precursor to the development of the green belt and the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, but also to the national parks movement. The Bill begins the dismantling of that very important protection for our great landscapes of Exmoor, Dartmoor, the Lake district and the Peak district. It begins with broadband boxes, but then what? Once the sacrosanct nature of these developments is taken away, we will be on a very slippery slope.
Clause 23, which deals with employee owner shares, provides us with a sense of chaos in that we can go from national parks to employee owner schemes in the same Bill. How can that be any cohesive plan for economic development? As a rule of thumb, we can all agree that policies announced at the Tory party conference are never a particularly good idea. Labour Members adore shared ownership, as it is part of the heritage of mutualism, co-operatives and socialism, but we do not promote it at the expense of the fundamental rights of an employee. If we look at international examples, it does not seem to me that the great success of the German economy over the last 10 years was the result of an attack on employee rights in any shape or form.
This is a wretched little Bill, which should go no further. What is interesting is that it speaks to the current state of the Conservative party. I can trace no influences from the Liberal Democrats. We have heard speeches saying how bad the Bill is, but that they will have to vote for it. The most influential speech this afternoon was expressed, I felt, in the rather elegiac tones of the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), who lamented the loss of his vision of what this Government should be about, as localism and decentralisation died—sacrificed on the altar of a failing economic strategy as centralism took over. With that came an attack on what the Conservative party is meant to be about. What is it that they are “conserving”; what are they interested in looking after in this country? It is another assault on the British cityscape and on the British landscape.
Good planning—not confusion, disarray and hapless deregulation—is essential for sustainable economic growth. If we want growth and infrastructure, we need stability and order in the planning system, not this dog’s dinner of a Bill.
Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)
I refer Members to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
It has been an interesting debate. The topic of growth is certainly front and foremost in all our minds, although we all want to address it in different ways. The fundamental focus has been on planning issues, and I certainly welcome the simplification and the removal of the need for excessive document production. The construction industry needs all the help it can get. I welcome anything that can help our broadband.
If I may, however, I would like to focus mainly on clause 22, which relates to business rates. The Government have proposed to defer revaluation from 2015 to 2017. It is argued that this will provide stability—clearly a good thing for any business, large or small—and that the only concern in the short term will be inflation. I would like to speak up for the small businesses in my constituency, which would say that they are hurting and that even just inflation gives them a pretty big bill. There is a growing sense that it would be useful to review inflation and to freeze it as we go forward.
The Government’s explanation and justification for the provision relates to how the business rate system works. They are right that this is a complicated mechanism: rateable value is taken and then multiplied by a multiplier. It is rather like a seesaw, and when the rateable value comes down, the multiplier goes up—the net-net bottom line is that the same sort of figure will be paid. I and many of the small businesses I speak to would like to see that explained. They find it bizarre when they look at the rate rise of 2010. One of my constituents said, “My rate’s doubled; this is all very peculiar.” We need a proper explanation from the Government as to exactly how this works, because it seems to work only in favour of increasing the tax take.
There are a number of good reasons for thoroughly overhauling this type of taxation. If I had a thought for the Government, it is that in some ways this is a missed opportunity. If action is not taken in this Bill, I hope the Government will take the matter more seriously in a future Bill, because the valuation method is simply not fit for purpose. I have businesses telling me that they are based in a street called “the High street” and that their rates are levied as if they really were based in the town’s main high street. Something is not right there.
The multiplier is a very blunt instrument. There are three levels: one for England, one for Wales and one for London. There is not much between them, but it makes it difficult—in my view and in theirs—for small rural or coastal communities to have a fair business rate set. The appeals system is not helpful either because it requires a business to show that the rate they are paying is unduly burdensome and inappropriate, and it requires them to show their year’s accounts to demonstrate how they suffered. By that time, however, for very small businesses, they are already out of business.
The empty property rate is another area that the Government could look at. It is a real challenge, particularly in today’s climate. After three or six months of vacancy, people can suddenly find themselves stuck with the rate without having the time to sort out the system. To the Government’s credit, however, the small business rate relief shines out as a wonderful step. The increase was made when we came into government—I say very well done; it is greatly appreciated. Indeed, if the mission of this Government is about stability, I would thoroughly recommend that they extend the small business rate relief to April 2015 and the end of this Parliament. If it comes to an end as currently predicted in 2013, it will coincide with the rise in inflation: there will be a double hit. I think that a number of aspects of small business rate relief could be changed apart from the timing. If a change in the timing is not accepted, the Government might consider extending the value of properties that are within the net, and/or reducing the small business multiplier.
One element that people running businesses really value is transparency. They want to understand how the valuation is carried out, they want to understand how the multiplier works, and, most important, they want to understand what services they are receiving. Some of them say to me, “My bins are not emptied, but they would be emptied if I paid council tax.” I do not think that we, as a Government, have made clear how they might benefit. Can they share the services of a town centre manager, for instance? Are they enjoying an improved street scene? What exactly are businesses getting in return for the tax that they pay? I should like to think that the changes resulting from the Local Government Finance Bill will give the Government an opportunity to incentivise local government to repay, with the part of the business rates that they retain, what has been taken from businesses that are contributing to the pot that they have to spend locally.
Let me summarise what I have said about just one clause in the Bill. I think that business rates need a thorough overhaul. We need a tax that is fair to individual businesses as well as being fair to the taxpayer, and we need transparency. We are trying to show individuals where the money that they pay in tax is going, and I think that we should do the same for businesses. I hope that the Government will take the opportunity to review the position at some time in the future, if not in the Bill. I hope that they will recognise that even now small businesses are hurting, and that if we proceed with an inflationary rise, they will really hurt.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
I am pleased to be able to follow the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris). I thank her for praising the last Labour Government for introducing the small business rate relief, and for describing it as a great success. I am sure that Members on both sides of the House will give her credit for those comments.
In my speech, I want to concentrate both on housing and the impact that the planning changes will have on my constituents, and on the effect of the changes on businesses—particularly small businesses—and jobs. One would have thought that a Growth and Infrastructure Bill would address both the construction of housing and the growth of business and creation of jobs, but a big question mark hangs over its impact on both. What exactly will it achieve? There is so little meat on its bones when it comes to the way in which the housing that people need will be built, the way in which business will benefit, and the way in which growth will be created. It makes no mention of the possibility that the £4 billion to be raised from the 4G licences, or indeed a repeat of the bankers bonus tax, could enable houses to be built and support the construction industry, helping to create jobs and growth.
My constituency has a great need for housing, jobs and economic growth, but that must be set against environmental constraints. The fact that the constituency contains a series of small towns and villages surrounded by green-belt land, most of it high-quality agricultural land, inhibits the local plan that is being prepared. Developers have been queuing up for many years, buying up plots in the green belt with, no doubt, the intention of building on them at the earliest opportunity.
People in my constituency need homes. Many young adults there live at home or with friends. What do they need, and what do developers want to build? Those are two very different questions. What the constituency needs are homes to buy and homes to rent, but the homes to buy must be affordable starter homes and the homes to rent must also be affordable, in either the private or the social landlord sector. There must also be “part buy and part rent” arrangements. However, affordability is simply not being offered. What developers in my constituency are offering are executive four and five-bedroom houses, and they want to build them on green-belt land because they know that they will then be able to sell them for more money.
David Wilson Homes held an exhibition in Formby, in my constituency. Its representative told the hundreds of residents who attended the exhibition that they considered an affordable home to be one priced at £300,000. That would be out of the reach of most people on average pay in London, let alone on Merseyside. It is clear that that definition of an affordable home was addressed to a group of people who do not live in my constituency, but who might come in from outside.
No wonder there is suspicion about the motives and approaches of developers, and huge resistance to building on the green space both in and outside the towns and villages in my constituency. No wonder there are public meetings attended by hundreds of people in each of the small towns and villages that I mentioned earlier. Residents have formed action groups to campaign against the plans of developers to build on green belt and on urban green space. That is not because they do not want houses; they do, but they know that it takes eight years to reach the top of the housing waiting list, and they know that people in Formby and Maghull do not earn enough to buy any of the £300,000 housing that is being made available. They also know that developers are not interested in helping them, their families or their friends who need affordable homes. Residents believe that there is nothing in it for them, and the Government intend to make matters worse rather than better by cutting the number of affordable homes.
A 500-home development by Ashworth hospital in my constituency has already been given planning permission, under the old system—before the NPPF—and without any affordable housing element. The applicant engaged a QC to demonstrate to Sefton council that the site would be economically viable only if the affordability element was dropped. Even before the NPPF was published, councils were negotiating with developers on section 106 matters, as they always have. Quite why legislation is needed is beyond me, although my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) suggested that it might be intended to fill up time because of the gaping hole in the Government’s agenda, and that may well be true. Meanwhile, my constituents have been denied the prospect of decent affordable housing, first by the Government’s economic failure and now by the centralising of planning in favour of developers at the expense of local people.
The proposal to allow developers to remove affordable housing will be music to their ears, and no doubt it will result in money in the coffers of the Tory party to say thank you. That will follow the £4 million already provided by the Conservative Property Forum. However, it is homes to rent and affordable starter homes that my constituents need. The proposed green belt development offers them nothing except more congestion on the roads and more flooding on the floodplains, because the whole constituency lies on a floodplain.
Have we not learnt yet about the impact of building on floodplains and concreting over areas where rain water currently drains away? Have we not learnt from the fact that the level of rainfall has increased over the past few years, and the fact that we have just experienced a summer featuring exceptional rain and flooding? Is it not time that the Government gave more consideration to the impact of flooding in drawing up planning policy, rather than allowing developers to do as they wish? Perhaps if this were a proper infrastructure Bill, the Government would be finding a way of replacing our antiquated drainage system.
Councils used to build homes, and large sums are tied up in housing stock. The reason developers are not building is the shortage of funds. If we put those two together, we start to see some solutions. The Local Government Association said of the Bill that it failed to tackle
“the real barriers to growth”,
that
“Further changes to the planning system will not address the key issues stalling development”,
and that
“The Government should use this Bill to lift restrictions on local authority borrowing for housing, freeing councils to build new affordable homes and kick-start job-creating infrastructure projects.”
It also said:
“Councils have a proven track record of prudent borrowing. Their credit rating is excellent and interest rates would be low.”
According to the LGA, the Government must let British councils
“take advantage of these conditions in the same way as municipalities in competing countries, like Germany, already are.”
If the Secretary of State is serious in his offer to work with the LGA, its ideas are there on how to unlock the funds to build the housing, especially the affordable housing, that is needed not just in my constituency but up and down the country. He might also choose to consider the report of the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government following its inquiry into housing finance supply and the opportunities available not just in housing stock within local government and housing associations, but in pension funds and other public sector sources.
Developers are not building because people are not buying and the banks are not lending. Mortgage lending is still falling—it is still at a record low—but in local government there are examples of Labour councils building five times as many social homes as Tory councils with which they can be compared. So there are examples in local councils that the Government could choose to follow if they wanted to.
Without intervention, developers will want to build on the best sites, to build the most expensive houses they can and to make as much money as they can. After all, they are in business to make as much profit as they can. That is why regulation and Government intervention are so important. It is why we have a planning system. There are examples across the country of what happened when planning was not sufficiently robust, whether in commercial or residential developments. That is why we should have a planning system that ensures that developers meet the needs of the country and do not just maximise their profits.
In my constituency, we need affordable homes and the infrastructure to support the people who want to live in them. It is the role of Government at both national and local levels to ensure that developments meet the needs of local areas. That is what the Localism Act 2011 should have been about and now it has been overtaken by this Bill and all the disastrous implications of its proposals and what we are debating tonight.
The reason we have local plans that designate land for residential or commercial development is to ensure that planning is done properly and that communities are given what they need. The Bill would put the power in the hands of developers and prevent any chance of my constituents from benefiting from the housing that they need.
There is nothing in the Bill to recommend it to small businesses. Small and medium-sized enterprises have the ability to grow, to innovate and to drive economic recovery. Where is the intervention with the banks to help small businesses? Why is that not in the Bill? Where are the tax breaks, such as the VAT cuts that Labour has proposed for a number of years? Gimmicks and removing workers’ rights are no way to stimulate growth. Creating greater uncertainty among staff will do nothing to encourage people to spend money, which is needed to kick-start the economy. Business understands that and is saying that.
The Federation of Small Businesses says that its members lose thousands through poorly maintained roads. I have mentioned the problems with drainage. Where are the measures in the Bill to replace the infrastructure that business needs? If this were a proper growth and infrastructure Bill, there would be measures to deal with those issues. This is anything but a growth and infrastructure Bill and the House should oppose it.
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)
I am going to make quite a critical speech of the Bill and even perhaps agree with some of the remarks of the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), although I have to say that it is rather tough to take lectures on local democratic accountability from Labour Front Benchers who were the authors of the regional spatial strategies that, in the south-west alone, generated 35,000 objections, volcanic local opposition and legal challenges. They wasted tens of millions of pounds and, in the south-west, the strategy was never even finished.
Mind you, the right hon. Gentleman, and the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Mr Ruffley) and the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) on the Conservative Benches, were right to worry that we may accidently recreate some of the same tensions at local level, through over-reliance on the same national statistics that the regional spatial strategies used, and on the Planning Inspectorate. I hope that Ministers emphasise to local planners and officers in planning authorities and to the Planning Inspectorate that they should take the NPPF more seriously and, in particular, emphasise its provisions for local authorities to balance growth with social and environmental considerations. They should pay attention to, and proactively use, the new local green space designation in the NPPF and clearly distinguish between housing need and housing demand. The confusion of the two different things threatens valuable and treasured green spaces in areas of high demand such as my constituency.
I have been an enthusiastic supporter of the Government’s localist agenda, partly as a reaction against Labour's regional spatial strategies and partly because, as a Liberal Democrat, I plead entirely guilty to being a doctrinaire localist and environmentalist. I was proud to support the Localism Act and the final draft of the NPPF. I was very proud to support the natural environment White Paper, which is a significant improvement on the previous Government’s policies, particularly in its emphasis on valuing natural capital, but in many respects this rather hasty looking Bill seems to take the Government in the opposite direction. As a Government, we were supposed to balance the dominant pursuit of economic growth with other factors such as the quality of life. This might be a timely moment for that rhetoric to be put into practice and for us to rethink some of the clauses.
Clause 1 threatens local authorities with loss of local power to determine planning applications. The criteria on which that will be done remain unspecified. That, in effect, leaves the Secretary of State with a rather vague and arbitrary power to define those criteria himself. That looks to me profoundly anti-localist and contradicts the Secretary of State's very good record as a doughty champion of localism—so much so that I suspect that it was not his idea. Whoever thought of it, it is a disappointing measure to put in a Bill from this coalition Government.
Clauses 9 and 10 have the worrying new power to stop up and divert local footpaths and bridleways. There is a rationale for that to do with the timing of planning applications. Nevertheless, in the context of other measures in the Bill, I find it rather concerning.
Clause 12 threatens the power to create village greens. On this I do not agree entirely with some of the criticism of the clause. The existing provision has become a tactical device to protect local green spaces from particular developers’ planning applications. That has been pretty unreliable, so it is good that we aim to replace that hotch-potch and accidental approach with the specific designation of local green spaces, which are to be determined at the time of plan making, rather than in response to planning applications. That is an improvement. Of course I would support that because I was responsible for putting it into Liberal Democrat policy, from where it went into our manifesto, into the coalition agreement and then into the NPPF.
However, it is proving pretty difficult to use that in practice at a local level. I have not even managed to persuade or completely convince planners and officers in my constituency proactively to look for and identify areas that could qualify as local green space designation areas. There are good candidates at Starvehall farm, Weavers field and, above all, in the green fields at Leckhampton in my constituency, yet even we do not seem to be developing and using that power properly, so in that respect I suspect that clause 12 may at the very least be premature.
Clause 21 seems designed to use a system designed for national strategic infrastructure, for planning applications for commercial and business use which are not national, not necessarily strategic and may not even be infrastructure. In its current form it looks to me as though it is undermining localism, too.
Then we come to the extraordinary clause 23. I proposed a policy on employee ownership and workplace democracy to this year’s Liberal Democrat conference. I would strongly commend the contents of that and its many recommendations to Government, including the option to bid for employee ownership at the time of transfer of an undertaking, which we believe could result in a step change in employee ownership. However, we strangely overlooked the need to link that to the trashing of people’s employment rights. Why should we remove the right to request training, when we are supposed to support training? Why should we allow more unfair dismissal, when we support fairness? Why should we remove the right just to request flexible working, when we are supposed to support flexible working? I have worked in business, and I have employed many people, and I have never found it very motivating to threaten my team’s employment rights. These rights have never deterred me from employing anybody. This looks like a nasty, vindictive little clause and Ministers should chop it out completely.
Lord Heseltine’s report makes many useful recommendations that would support sustainable economic growth. He talks about promoting unitary authorities, better marketing of the UK as a destination for inward investment, the promotion of investment in new technologies, and better promotion of British interests within the European Union. He also talks about having a definitive and unambiguous energy policy and about better links between further education and local enterprise partnerships, and between industry and higher education. These are all sensible proposals. As a Liberal Democrat, I find it surprising that I am endorsing the work of Michael Heseltine, but this is a very good report, and it was very good of the Government to commission it. A Bill based on Lord Heseltine’s ideas could generate cross-party support.
The Bill in its current form seems guaranteed to generate cross-party opposition, however. Some of its planning ideas look half-baked and undemocratic. It unnecessarily threatens people’s employment rights. None of it was in the Liberal Democrat manifesto or the Conservative manifesto, and none of it was in the coalition agreement. It is unworthy of this Government, and it is very uncharacteristic of this Secretary of State. We should pause it and rewind, and rewrite it along the lines of the Heseltine report. Until we do that, I cannot support the Bill.
Mr Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
First, may I draw attention to my interests as declared in the register?
I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood), and I agree with most of what he said. He rightly dissected the elements in this Bill that have nothing to do with growth and very little to do with infrastructure, and which are probably in part the product of ideas that were floated by a Mr Beecroft in a report that gained notoriety and should have been consigned to the dustbin. I advise the hon. Gentleman to think about who he sups with in coalition, because his views as expressed this evening are not very close to those that seem to be driving this Bill.
It is a curious Bill, and it has a grand title referring to “Growth and Infrastructure”, thereby implying that it will have a substantial impact on the economy and on development. If it were to stimulate the economy and ensure long-overdue new investment in infrastructure, we would be able to welcome it. Sadly, however, it follows the same line as its predecessor, the Infrastructure (Financial Assistance) Bill, which we dealt with in this House just a few weeks ago. When that Bill was announced in the summer, the Government claimed it would unlock some £40 billion in new infrastructure development and a further £10 billion in housing investment. One of the Lords Ministers stated in July that there was £40 billion-worth of shovel-ready schemes ready to go by the autumn. We are well and truly into the autumn now, yet so far the Government have not been able to identify a single new scheme to benefit from that legislation.
In the final stages of consideration of that earlier Bill a couple of weeks ago, we asked about the success criteria and how the legislation’s performance would be measured. That question clearly flummoxed the Minister responding to the debate, who simply told us we would have to wait and see. After that experience, it is hardly surprising that Opposition Members—as well as a significant number of Government Members—are very sceptical indeed about the claims being made for this Bill, which appears to be simply a collection of disparate items put together for political effect, but with very little empirical evidence as to their ability to achieve the real investment in infrastructure that is needed.
We have read a lot over the past few days about the need for more infrastructure investment. We have heard that from the Mayor of London: he specifically said that the Government are going slow on infrastructure investment. He has also called for a speeding up of the consideration of the need for more aviation runway capacity in the south-east. I agree with that. The hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Mr Ruffley) echoed that view in his contribution today, saying that our response to the need for investment in aviation infrastructure was inadequate and that addressing that need should be a priority. They and the rest of us will look in vain for anything in this Bill to help accelerate the glacial pace of the Davies commission on aviation capacity. That commission has clearly been set up by this Government for “long-grass purposes”—in order to kick the issue into touch until after the general election. The same Government have introduced this Bill, saying it is about speeding up infrastructure investment. There is a clear inherent conflict between the Government’s stated objective of stimulating infrastructure investment and what they are actually doing.
Clause 1 has received a lot of attention. It can be summarised as the “blame it all on planning” clause. Two and a half years ago the incoming Government said that the old system they inherited—the top-down, centralist system—was the problem and that they would tear it up and replace it with a new localist planning system. At the time a number of us advised them that introducing such radical change was not the best way to achieve improved confidence at a time when confidence was vital to stimulate the economy and that what they were doing risked having a catastrophic effect on planning consents. The current figures show the parlous situation in development. We have only to look at housing investment in recent years to see what a bad state we are in and how the changes that were made to the planning system a year ago have not improved things, but have, in many ways, made them worse.
Let us consider the housing supply figures. I was astonished to hear the Secretary of State say in his opening speech that the number of affordable homes being built was increasing, because the figures show exactly the opposite. The most recent National House-Building Council report states:
“The affordable housing sector continues to show a poorer performance than the private sector. Housing starts for the three months to the end of September 2012 from NHBC were 32.8% below the same period in 2011.”
When combined with the private sector, the reduction was 10.6% compared with last year. The combined housing starts are down by 10%, therefore, and the affordable housing starts are down by 32%, yet the Secretary of State claims things are getting better. They are not; they are getting very much worse, and this Government’s policies have been damaging.
It would be nice to hear the Government express a degree of remorse for their mistakes and a willingness to consider changes that would improve things, but I do not see very much evidence of that. Instead, it is being suggested that powers should be taken away from local authorities and given to the Planning Inspectorate in order to speed up both infrastructure and housing development.
When we probed the Secretary of State on the criteria that will be applied to defining which authorities may have their planning powers removed and their cases referred directly to the Planning Inspectorate, we were not given a very clear response. When the planning Minister, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), gave evidence to the Communities and Local Government Committee, he highlighted two criteria: the number of times the Planning Inspectorate had overturned an authority’s decision on appeal, and the speed with which authorities deal with planning applications. So, like my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State, who gave an excellent speech and a forensic demolition of the Bill, I looked at Planning magazine. It has produced a helpful table showing authorities that might fall into the category of being tardy in dealing with applications or having a disproportionate number of their cases overturned on appeal. Could I find Hackney listed—the one authority the Secretary of State identified? Yes, it was there, but only at the very bottom of one of the three lists—it was in only one of the three. It was the 21st—out of 25—lowest scoring English councils for determining all applications within 26 weeks. That is not exactly the kind of criterion that would lead one to assume that it deserves to be singled out for having powers stripped away from it. By contrast, Stratford-on-Avon, Torbay and Kensington and Chelsea all feature much higher up the lists, and all are in two out of three of the lists.
I am pleased that you are in the Chair, Mr Hoyle, rather than the Deputy Speaker who preceded you, because I see that the hapless Ribble Valley is the only authority in the country to appear in all three lists. It would therefore appear to be high in the pecking order of authorities likely to have their planning powers taken away from them, if the Minister’s criteria, as defined to the Select Committee, are applied in practice. I have to say that a lot of councillors in a lot of authorities all over the country will be extremely nervous as to how this power will be applied, given the lack of clarity and given what the evidence suggests about where weaknesses and failures have been.
Grahame M. Morris
I wonder whether my right hon. Friend will excuse my ignorance of geography and who has political control. Will he identify who has political control of the local authorities he cited?
Mr Raynsford
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. I think he will be able to guess that Stratford-on-Avon, Kensington and Chelsea, Torbay and Ribble Valley all have Conservative-controlled authorities. I was not making a political point; I was simply observing the bizarre nature of the criteria that the Government appear to be operating in determining which authorities will have their planning powers stripped away from them and their cases referred to the Planning Inspectorate.
On the renegotiation of section 106 agreements, we again see a bizarre set of proposals that do not appear to have a sensible rationale and could have very perverse consequences. My experience—I do talk to a lot of people involved in the development of housing schemes—is that most local authorities are now being perfectly practical and pragmatic about renegotiating with developers where they believe that the affordable housing content in a section 106 agreement is genuinely a block to successful development. What local authorities are not doing is rolling over when developers come back insisting on having the entire affordable housing content stripped away. What is so crass about the Government’s action is that their clause will provide exactly the incentive to developers to say to local authorities, “We are going to get powers to overrule you, so we expect you now to roll over and not to require the affordable housing content in this scheme any longer.”
Bill Esterson
My right hon. Friend is making an incredibly important point about the effect of the change on section 106. He has vast experience, so will he explain just what the impact of this change will be, given that there is already evidence, some of which I provided in my speech, of authorities having sensible negotiations? What does he think the difference will be? What damage will be done?
Mr Raynsford
I fear that the consequence will be to embolden developers who simply want to ditch section 106 obligations to try to bamboozle or bludgeon local authorities, which are not confident about what will happen, into agreeing far fewer section 106 obligations, or possibly none at all. That would be very unfortunate, at a time when we all recognise that the affordable housing output is woefully inadequate and we ought to be doing everything possible to encourage more affordable housing. I fear that the whole effect of this provision will not be what the Government say it will be and that it will be the opposite: it will discourage the provision of affordable housing, which is really needed.
Finally, I wish to discuss the postponement of the business rate revaluation. That is the classic case of a piece of short-term political opportunism that could have serious, adverse, long-term consequences. Revaluations should be conducted free of political interference. They should be conducted on a regular basis, which businesses should be able to forecast. Businesses should not be nervous that the revaluation times will be changed to suit the convenience of any particular Government. We have been using a five-yearly cycle for business rates. The Ministers on the Front Bench would do well to think about the contrast with the arrangements for council tax. As there has been that unwillingness of politicians to have a regular cycle of updates—that applies to all three parties, because the Liberal Democrats went along with this Government in postponing any revaluation—we have the absurdity of council tax valuations based on notional 1991 values. What is being done by the Government risks going down that slippery path, which could well lead to a postponement, further postponement and ultimately a complete lack of confidence among the business community that there will be a proper, regular, stable and non-political basis for revaluation. This is a very dangerous move indeed.
This unfortunate Bill contains a rag-bag of ill thought out measures which certainly will not address the critical problem. It does not deserve the support of the House.
James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)
It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford), who has long experience of these matters and much expertise, and with whom I often profoundly disagree. I rise to support the Second Reading of the Bill, whose measures need to be set in the context of the Government’s wider reforms of planning, local economic development and infrastructure. We must be cautious about overplaying the ambition of the Bill.
On the broader picture, we need urgently to rebalance the British economy, to stimulate house building and to build infrastructure, particularly in areas such as the west midlands and the black country, part of which I represent. As other hon. Members have pointed out, over the past two and half years this Government have made significant progress on implementing localism—through the Localism Act 2011, their reforms to the planning system, the implementation of neighbourhood planning, and the publication of the national planning policy framework, which has radically simplified the amount of planning guidance that now drives the planning system in the UK.
Local planning authorities need to be more efficient in the speed with which they process planning applications. We need authorities to be more efficient to give clarity both to developers and to communities about decisions being made about their areas. It is right, despite the overblown rhetoric of Labour Members—
Bill Esterson
The hon. Gentleman mentioned planning departments, but he must recognise that his Government have made record cuts to the funding for local government, and not least the planning departments, many of which now have a fraction of the staff they had only two years ago. That must be one of the main reasons why planning departments are struggling so much. This Bill will do nothing to solve the problem without a reversal of those cuts.
James Morris
I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s premise. Lots of other factors are leading to inefficiency in planning departments. It is not just about the number of people; it has more to do with inefficient processes and local bureaucracy than with the points that he is making.
It is right that the Government should seek to speed up the planning system, but as I mentioned to the new planning Minister in the recent Select Committee meeting, there are concerns about the criteria that will be used to determine whether a planning authority is failing to do its job. The Minister reassured me in his response that the effect of the changes would be imposed only on a limited number of local authorities.
It is true—the Government must take this on board—that we must be clear about the criteria and that they should be developed in close conjunction with the LGA and other interested parties. If we get the criteria right, other activities in local government, peer pressure and incentives for local planning authorities might result in improved performance across the board without our having to take the measures proposed in the Bill. I hope that the LGA, working with the Government, will be able to raise the performance of planning authorities without those measures being necessary. We need to be careful to avoid central prescription and to get the criteria right.
I do not think that anybody on the Government Benches is claiming that somehow creating the perfect planning system will mean that house building or new infrastructure will increase or that we will all move on into a wonderful world of economic growth. I do not think anybody is claiming that; it is being put up as a straw man by the Opposition. We all accept that planning is not necessarily a total obstacle to growth, and it is not the only reason we have stalled development.
As other hon. Members have pointed out, developers are sitting on banks of permissions that they have held for some time, and legitimate concerns about the commercial viability of those permissions are preventing them from taking the necessary action to move forward with projects that would benefit the community. It is therefore right for the Bill to seek to modify section 106 schemes and to give freedom for renegotiation when it is clear that such schemes are stalled because they are preventing developers from moving forward with viable commercial schemes. It is right, but we should not see that measure as a panacea or in isolation from the other policies the Government are pursuing, as we must, to stimulate house building and development, to provide guarantees or to explore other options. For example, the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) spoke about the need to consider other ways to stimulate and get other private capital into the housing market. There are other things we need to do, and the modification of section 106 agreements is not a panacea, but it is right that we consider commercial viability—it is an important issue that the Government need to address.
The Bill contains provisions on infrastructure, and I think we all accept that in this country we have been very bad historically at getting large infrastructure developed quickly. We urgently need to upgrade our energy and transport infrastructure to meet the challenges of a modern economy and a globalised world. The Bill contains some important simplification measures, on which there would probably be cross-party agreement, to remove overlapping consents, and we must do that to free up the planning system. The principle behind our approach to infrastructure development should be that we need a streamlined system so that we can develop the vital infrastructure we need within years, not decades. The measures that tidy up confused complementary consents will contribute to that.
The Bill introduces important simplification and deregulation of the planning system. Taken with other Government measures, it will make a significant contribution to the Government’s broader objectives, which we are pursuing through a number of Bills and other measures, of rebalancing the economy away from London and the south-east and promoting development in the regions—including the west midlands and the north-west, which have lagged behind for too many years. We must do all we can to free up the system so that we can upgrade our transport and energy infrastructure quickly and so that we have a streamlined system for dealing with major infrastructure projects that gives a clear line of sight for the future.
We must address the clogged-up nature of the planning system, and the Government have already done that through our reforms. We must ensure that if planning authorities are not performing properly, they can reach the right performance levels. We must also ensure that we get timely decisions. That, combined with other measures, will help to ensure that we build more homes, which we desperately need in this country. The Bill, along with other recent announcements and the Government’s general direction of travel, will make a significant contribution to achieving those objectives.
Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)
I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris) and I want to make a few points about clauses 5, 21 and 23. I am pleased that the planning Minister is back in his place, because I would be interested to hear how clause 21, in particular, will apply in certain local circumstances.
Although Opposition and Government Members are in favour of measures that will encourage growth and infrastructure, we have a saying about selling something that is inherently unfit for purpose. It goes something like this: a fishmonger would never be heard shouting, “Rotten fish for sale”. I do not know whether other hon. Members have that saying—I do not know whether it comes from Grimsby, or Hull—but after my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) had comprehensively demolished the Government’s position in his opening speech, I felt that the Bill had a distinctly fishy smell. The more I have heard from Members on both sides of the House, including Government Members, the more my suspicions have been confirmed.
As the economy is showing signs that it is out of the longest double-dip recession since the 1950s, Government Members are perhaps being a little complacent. There is little comfort in that for those I represent in Easington who have lost their jobs. The claimant count in Easington has gone up by 800 since the coalition took power. There will also be little comfort for those who have seen their public services cut. Durham county council, my local authority, has undergone spending cuts of nearly £200 million, equivalent to 40% of its 2010 budget. There will be little comfort for those families struggling to cope with tax rises and benefit cuts while top-rate income tax earners receive a tax break. Indeed, the increase in jobseeker’s allowance claimants is just the tip of the iceberg. Figures provided to me by Durham county council that come from a study by Sheffield Hallam university show that worklessness in Easington is up 3,292 since last year—a worklessness rate of nearly 20% of the working-age population.
No constituency in the country requires more stimulus for growth and infrastructure than mine. Some potential projects are in the pipeline—such as Dalton Park and the centre of creative excellence, which is a transformative project for a brighter future in Easington—but for those projects to progress we need Ministers to recognise that sector-specific support is required, and I want to return to that if I have a chance a little later.
The problem that we have in the north-east is a lack of investment. The Government have succeeded in stripping away demand and jobs from the local economy, with job losses in my constituency at Dewhurst, Caterpillar and JJB Sports, as well as the closure of Cumbrian Seafoods in recent months. Those job losses are considerably higher than those at Ford in Southampton that have attracted such national publicity.
The Government are failing to invest in Britain, and they are failing to invest in the north-east in particular. Analysis by the Institute for Public Policy Research North shows that almost half of major transport projects that involve public funds benefit only London and the south-east and account for 84% of planned spending, compared with 6% for the north and only 0.4% for the north-east. That is quite an incredible figure. The IPPR North analysis shows that transport spending in London is an astronomical £2,731 per head, compared with just £5 per head in the north-east, and people say that there is no such thing as a north-south divide.
What is the justification for such skewed infrastructure spending, which only reinforces and widens the north-south divide? The lack of spending is restricting growth in the north-east, and the Government’s policies of austerity have taken demand out of the local economy, so undermining jobs and growth, especially in my constituency.
In my view, the Government must go further and faster in delivering major infrastructure projects in the north-east and increase current funding. Obviously, building new and more affordable homes is part of that. Concerns have been expressed, which have been alluded to, by David Orr, the chief executive of the National Housing Federation, about the consequences of the abolition of section 106, which could lose the country 35,000 affordable homes a year. Members have said that it is a good thing to renegotiate section 106 agreements. That may well be so, but it is possible to do that now. Indeed, many local authorities are involved in renegotiating section 106 agreements to meet local needs.
I do not believe that the planning system is failing. Figures have been referred to, but I remind Members that 87% of all planning applications are approved and the vast majority of applications—90%—are decided within 26 weeks. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) said, it seems that Conservative councils are the most underperforming in determining planning applications in a timely fashion. The Government must be free to look into the failings of any authority, but they should not misconstrue the exception as the rule. Indeed, if time limits are part of the criteria applied to judge performance, we should consider that, with major planning applications, 63% of the slowest 10% of councils are Conservative and that with all planning applications 50% of the slowest 10% of councils are Conservative. There is not really a case to suggest that Labour is dragging its feet in respect of timely considerations.
One of the affordable housing issues that I wanted to raise has already been covered, so I shall leave that. Although I feel that house building can boost the economy, it already employs more than 1 million people and accounts for 3% of our gross domestic product. Indeed, money spent on housing stays in the UK: 90% of the building materials used in the construction of houses are made in the UK. Few other sectors can support the UK economy to the same extent. It is estimated that each new home built creates one and a half full-time jobs directly and at least twice that number in the supply chain, so raising house building to the level of official projections could create 195,000 jobs directly and 400,000 in the supply chain.
One of the issues that I want to raise relates to the large-scale private sector developments that are ready to proceed in my constituency. I refer to a new retail development in Peterlee and the second phase of retail and mixed development in Dalton Park, near Murton. The reason for the delay is not that the local authority has held them up, but that spurious challenges have been made by a company called Praxis Holdings, despite the fact that the developments would be a major boost to the construction industry and could deliver 1,000 much-needed jobs in east Durham.
Sadly, I did not see any action or intervention from the Government to deter unscrupulous companies from delaying those developments. I am sorry that the Minister is not paying attention. I wonder whether clause 21 would make any difference. As one of his colleagues—a previous Local Government Minister—the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) suggested, even if the Secretary of State were determining such applications, an objector would still have the right to use the judicial review process, which has held up one of the developments for more than a year.
A truly transformative project could revitalise east Durham: the centre of creative excellence. The scheme would involve a media park, including film, television, animation, music and digital media production, associated work space, leisure facilities, a multiplex cinema, a tourist hotel, educational facilities for digital media and executive and student housing. The planning permission has been extended because the project was delayed by the 2008 financial crisis, the loss of One North East, the abolition of Film UK and the loss of funding for the County Durham development company.
I hope that the Government will return confidence, demand and jobs to the east Durham economy, but we need a strong Government willing to seize the opportunity to provide sector-specific support for projects such as the Seaham centre of creative excellence, to realise private sector investment, jobs and training opportunities. Investment in my constituency, particularly in infrastructure, is necessary if we are to bring a new age of economic activity to former industrial areas. I hope that the Government will recognise that and, during the Bill’s subsequent stages, agree to appropriate amendments, including to clause 23 on employment rights, which is a retrograde measure.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris). One thing that he and I can agree on is the need to get our economy growing again. The recent growth statistics are, of course, encouraging, but there is plenty more to do. I welcome the Prime Minister’s direction to Cabinet Ministers, which he made in the early part of the parliamentary year, to prioritise growth. Our debate today focuses on the contribution to growth made by the Department for Communities and Local Government.
The Department made a great start with the national planning policy framework, bringing communities into the planning system through neighbourhood planning. I am delighted that in my constituency we have a frontrunner in the neighbourhood planning process. It is supported by a progressive local authority with a stronger bias towards growth, and by planners from Planning Aid. There are key ways we can get growth in our economy, and they include the development of housing and development within the built environment more generally.
I am conscious of the words of the previous Minister with responsibility for housing, who reminded us that for every 100,000 homes built, 1% is added to GDP. Supporting the private sector, in particular small businesses, is important. I am glad that since 2010, 1 million new private sector jobs have been created to rebalance the economy, but we need to do more to help small businesses. The Forum of Private Business points out that small businesses contribute 24.9% of the UK’s wealth—a quarter—and we must do all we can to encourage them to flourish.
I would like to speak on some of the proposals in the Bill, specifically those regarding section 106 agreements, speeding up the planning process and powers to the Secretary of State. I will then conclude with one or two remarks concerning omissions and missed opportunities. On section 106 agreements, it is unfortunate that the provision is necessary, but clearly agreements made five years ago at the height of a housing boom, at the height of the market, are often too onerous for a site to come forward for development. However, I have some concerns about the measures in the Bill.
Like hon. Members from all parts of the House, I support mixed communities. Section 106 agreements have enabled mixed communities to be built, and we are no longer developing large estates of one housing type. We now have mixed housing and that provides social interaction between residents, and communities work at their best when there is a mix of people. To listen to Opposition Members, however, it almost sounds as though they expect that every single section 106 agreement would need to be renegotiated. Of course, that is not the case at all. I draw the attention of hon. Members to a development that has just started in my constituency, the Eden Park housing development site, where 1,300 new homes are earmarked to be built. The infrastructure has just gone in and building has started. The site has a long-standing section 106 agreement to provide 40% affordable housing. That has not prevented the site from being developed, and nor should the requirement, or the opportunity, to renegotiate the section 106 agreement prevent future affordable housing development.
Will the Minister clarify when the power for local authorities to renegotiate will be introduced? Will there be a requirement on local authorities to renegotiate? As Members from all parts of the House have said, section 106 agreements are already regularly negotiated. They are a contract between the local planning authority and the developer. As with any form of contract, the terms can be varied by mutual agreement, but will there be any requirement for local planning authorities to renegotiate? What has stopped negotiation taking place up until now? Have some councils been unwilling to negotiate with developers, or have developers been put off approaching the local planning authority? I would like the Minister’s reassurance that, when a developer comes forward with a request to renegotiate a section 106 agreement, there will be an evidence base when making a determination. We heard about the issue of developers coming forward looking for a better deal. One concern I have is that that opportunity to come forward for a better deal may prevent some developers from going ahead with an existing section 106 agreement that is eminently deliverable.
Hon. Members have spoken about the Bill’s impact on speed. It is clearly important to speed up the system, but we must not forget that swifter planning is not necessarily the be-all and end-all. At times, we have to ask ourselves what is more important—good planning or fast planning. Speed is not everything and there are dangers that very quick decisions on planning may lead to bad development, and bad development will last for many generations.
It is the people with homes in areas where bad planning has taken place who have to live with the consequences. If we get development wrong, it helps nobody: it does not help the residents and it will not help the taxpayer, because years down the line poor development will need rebuilding. The Communities and Local Government Committee went to Manchester and saw the redevelopment of a site that itself was redeveloped in the 1970s, when tower blocks had replaced more conventional housing. It was not successful, however, and they were demolished and replaced with more conventional housing.
People’s attitudes towards development are influenced by the quality of previous developments. That is a further reason for getting the planning decisions right, rather than necessarily speedily. If we want people to respond positively to development, they need to be able to picture good development, rather than bad development. Too often, when development proposals come forward, people picture bad development, which leads to an instinctive reaction to oppose, rather than support.
Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)
I agree with my hon. Friend about the importance of good development. Does he also agree that local ownership of development is vital, and would he join me therefore in urging the Government to lay to rest the last ghostly vestiges of the previous Government’s terrible regional spatial strategies?
Mark Pawsey
Absolutely. My hon. Friend will have heard my remarks about localism and neighbourhood planning. By engaging people in the planning system and letting them have a say, we will get a much more positive attitude towards development.
Members across the House have drawn attention to the danger of the Secretary of State’s planning permission powers conflicting with the Government’s localism agenda. I hope again that he will not need to use these powers regularly. Businesses, developers and applicants know which local authorities are the poor performers. Many developers have some great schemes but choose not to bring them forward because they are concerned about a particular council’s approach. They would rather put in their applications where they are more likely to get a positive response from the local authority. I draw the House’s attention to my local authority, Rugby borough council, which is a progressive council with a strong approach to development.
On an idea that is not in the Bill, I ask the Minister to turn his attention to the thoughts of the Royal Town Planning Institute. Could designation be used positively? If we are to penalise badly performing local planning authorities by taking powers away from them and giving them to the Secretary of State, could the converse not apply, whereby authorities that perform consistently well, such as my authority in Rugby, have the incentive of additional powers being granted to them? My local authority could achieve even greater things with additional powers. Rugby council knows what it can do. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s views on that.
Clause 22 deals with business rates. From my experience of running a business, I know that business rates are the third biggest bill facing businesses. I heard with interest the Secretary of State’s remarks about the multiplier and how the take from business rates nationally will need to be the same, whether or not a revaluation takes place. I just wonder, however, whether we might be better off sticking with the five-yearly review. How will businesses in my constituency benefit from putting off the revaluation till later rather than sooner?
The Bill does not address one aspect of the development process where value could be added. It concerns the statutory consultees and their power within the planning process. In recent months, I have been struck by the power that these bodies have in the planning application process. The Government’s own statutory paper on consultees in July named 23 bodies, including British Waterways, the Forestry Commission and the Highways Agency, that are consultees to the planning system and the views of which have to be sought before applications can be granted. I referred to a great success story in my constituency—a site for 1,300 homes—but another site for 6,000 is currently being held up not because of issues of the affordable housing criteria but because of the delays in getting in all the responses from the statutory consultees. This is red tape that could be cut. I would very much like to hear the Minister’s views on limiting the time that consultees have to respond. If a statutory consultee does not get his views in within a certain time frame, perhaps those views should carry less or even no weight. This is an area in which I would like to see powers restricted.
The second rates issue that is not addressed by the Bill is empty property rates. My hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) reminded us of the reliefs, but I am concerned that the issue of empty property rates is leading to a shortage of accommodation for our businesses. I started a business 30 years ago in very low-cost accommodation, which was surplus to the requirements of a large employer in my constituency. I would not be able to do that today because that building would have been demolished in order to avoid paying business rates on the empty building. Later in the life of my business, when we were doing well enough to move to larger premises, we moved to an industrial unit that had been built speculatively by a developer. That would not have been built today either, because nobody is building speculative industrial units for fear of them lying empty and attracting business rates. A concession on the part of the Treasury—I realise that it is a Treasury matter—in respect of empty property business rates would go some way to providing an incentive.
I support the vast majority of measures in the Bill and I look forward to the Minister’s response to the points that I have raised.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
If I said that I enthusiastically support the Bill, I would not want Ministers to run away with the idea that I do not have a few reservations about it, particularly the balance between local and national decision making, but on the whole it is a move in the right direction. Priorities vary, depending on circumstances. We are currently in a period of austerity and economic downturn. At such a time, the emphasis must be on freeing up the system to allow growth and jobs to develop. In times of plenty, we may look more to quality-of-life issues—the environment and so on—and give greater weight to them. At present for most households, particularly those in my constituency which have suffered a number of setbacks in recent months, what provides quality of life is a job. Therefore, the emphasis must be on allowing expansion to take place as quickly as possible, and this is reflected in the Bill.
Obviously there is a balance to be struck. Every constituency has varying circumstances. The demands of the planning system in the south-east are very different from those in my area. The demand in my area is for affordable housing, by which I mean housing that people on the average wage in my constituency, about £20,000 a year, can readily get a mortgage for or rent. I do not care where those houses come from—I do not mind whether they are private development, or whether the council or housing associations build them, but we must free up the system that allows those to develop.
The battle between localism and the centre that I mentioned is interesting. I spent 26 years as a local councillor railing against too much centralisation and calling for the emphasis to be on the local level. I recognise that it is a difficult balance to achieve and I note the emphasis that Lord Heseltine put in his report last week on devolving power to encourage local incentives and initiatives. I certainly support that. When I was on the local authority serving in the cabinet, my responsibilities included planning policy. In that respect, I was rather similar to the Minister; I could set policy but had to rely on the planning committee to implement it, and its ideas on a host of issues were different from mine. The Minister can issue as much planning guidance as he likes, but he must then rely on local planning authorities to interpret it in a positive way and use it to encourage growth and development. I sympathise with him in that respect.
It is a constant battle. As ward councillors, we are constantly urged to resist development, because that is usually what our constituents want us to do, but having served as a cabinet member in the administration—it was a very good administration, a Liberal Democrat and Conservative coalition fizzing with good ideas, just like the present Government—I recognise that there are other objectives beyond those that we might pursue when representing our local constituents.
It is absolutely necessary that we speed up the planning process, which even now is painfully slow. I know that from experience, because when I was a councillor I was constantly urging planners to improve the way they progressed applications, but of course they were held back to a considerable extent by having to consult Government agencies, such as the Environment Agency and Natural England, and all the organisations that seemed unable to work at the same speed as those with commercial demands who were looking to invest in the area. In many respects, certainly with regard to the Environment Agency—I am speaking from local knowledge—that has improved somewhat, but it is still painfully slow. We cannot have a situation in which someone comes along with a brilliant idea and has capital available to invest but then the process is delayed for years on end. It is just not acceptable. We must speed up the process as much as possible.
Equally, we must balance speeding up the planning process with local consultation and the right of individual planning committees to make decisions. Humberston and New Waltham ward in my constituency, like many across the country, is at present dealing with applications for around 2,500 houses that are unsustainable with regard to infrastructure. It is good to see that the Bill links growth and infrastructure, because too often we allow the growth but the infrastructure and local services lag too far behind.
As an aside, Humberston and New Waltham ward is also grappling with a planning application for an onshore wind turbine development. It is actually in the neighbouring constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell), but it would overlook my constituency and the tourist trade in Cleethorpes is strongly opposed to it. I welcome the comments the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), made last week about onshore wind developments.
One development in my constituency highlights the problem of delays. Able UK is looking to develop an energy park in Killingholme on the Humber estuary that will develop offshore wind for the renewables sector, which is very welcome. Its planning application has been grinding through the tortuous processes for years. More than 5,000 jobs are at stake, jobs that are urgently needed. Anything that can be done to free up the planning process for such developments must be welcome. On that point, I will take this opportunity to ask Ministers to pass on to ministerial colleagues the message that the A160 upgrade is essential and part of what is needed to allow Able UK to develop the Killingholme site.
All in all, I very much welcome the Bill, although I add the caveat that there is a little too much drift towards centralisation, rather than localism. However, I will certainly be supporting it in the Lobby.
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers).
I welcome the direction of travel under this Bill. I support its objectives of boosting investment in infrastructure, cutting the red tape that delays and discourages business investment, and helping support local growth and local jobs. It is important that the red tape that has hampered the roll-out of superfast broadband is removed, that we kick-start building on school sites, and that we have a swifter planning system for local residents and local businesses.
I believe, however, that one aspect of the Bill needs further scrutiny and consideration, namely the proposal to postpone the business rates revaluation until 2017. I urge the Government to consider this proposal carefully in Committee and, if the evidence supports the case for amending it, I urge them to do so. I reached that conclusion wearing two hats: the first as an MP representing a constituency where I fear many businesses may be disadvantaged by the postponement of the review, and the second as a chartered surveyor. Having practised for 27 years, I would not say that I am an expert on business rates, which is a specialist field, but I have carried out business rates valuations and done appeals.
I am concerned for a variety of reasons. First, I question whether the proposal is actually based on up-to-date research. The Valuation Office Agency’s research shows that, if the review goes ahead, 800,000 premises will see a real-terms rise in rates, while only 300,000 will see their bills fall. However, I am mindful of the views of Gerald Eve, one of the leading private practice firms in the specialist field of rates, which disputes the VOA’s findings and has carried out its own research, which reaches a different conclusion. Other surveyors are also concerned that the reasons for the delay are based on draft and incomplete data.
Secondly, I question the merit of keeping a rating list based on the rental values that prevailed in April 2008, when the property market was at an artificial and unsustainable peak. There is a concern that postponing the review will lead to the rates of retailers in particular being based on incorrect and historical values for far longer than they should be. The postponement may cause short-term injustices and store up bigger problems for when the next review eventually takes place.
Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making an interesting point. Is it not also true that since 2008 there have been rapid changes in the retail market? For instance, Tesco has reduced the size of its stores, there are larger warehouses and there has been a change in the rateable value of buildings across the scale. That has nothing to do with the recession and is an argument for a change to the way in which we value business properties, which is surely something for another term and another Parliament.
Peter Aldous
My hon. Friend and fellow Suffolk MP makes an extremely useful point. I was not going to cover it tonight, but the whole business rates approach to how we value business properties needs review. It is a dynamic, ever-changing world and, with the rise of the internet, property is less important in business generally. We need a fundamental review.
Mr Robin Walker
I support my hon. Friend’s contention that we need a fundamental review of the business rates revaluation system. Does he agree that the long backlog of outstanding cases with the VOA and the long delays in answering a number of appeals is another reason to look at this whole area?
Peter Aldous
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, with which I agree entirely. I will come on to that issue later and believe that it is placing a major burden on businesses. We need action not at another time and another place, but now. If we delay until 2017, changes in values will be far greater and create bigger swings in liabilities, which will be far more difficult for businesses to cope with.
This leads me on to the fact that any property tax requires frequent and regular revaluations to ensure its acceptability and fairness. The five-yearly reviews that have been in place for more than 20 years are well understood and provide a degree of certainty. A break in that precedent creates uncertainty. In future, people and businesses will not know for sure when or whether a review will take place. The reason for having regular reviews of the rating list is that property values, in relative terms, change over time. Rents in some sectors and in some locations will rise, while those in others will fall. It is important that the rating system has an in-built review structure that reflects the dynamic and ever-changing nature of the property marketplace. In this way we can be sure that the tax burden is spread fairly so that those with the broadest shoulders pay the most and those in more challenging locations and properties pay less. Liz Peace, chief executive of the British Property Federation, sums up the position well:
“A revaluation should shift the burden from those who are suffering to those who are prospering.”
There is a worry that the proposed freeze means that those in more lucrative locations will benefit and those in hard-hit areas will suffer.
I am particularly concerned about the possible effect of the postponement on the retail sector and on town centres. The Government have done a lot of good work in highlighting the problems faced by the high street and, working with Mary Portas, they are putting in place measures to tackle these challenges. Lowestoft in my constituency is a Portas pilot town, and the town team are setting about their work with relish and enthusiasm. It is important that those of us in this place provide the framework through which such work in towns across the country can come to fruition. I fear that the proposed postponement might undo this good work. In Lowestoft, prime rents fell by 40% between 2008 and 2012. It is important that rates are realistic and up to date so as to attract investment back into the town centre.
The retail sector pays a significant proportion of all business rates—more than a quarter, at 28%. On average, 14.6% of retail units across the country are vacant. This is due to a variety of reasons, one of which is high rates. Mary Portas has said that high rates are a deterrent to investment in town centres. It needs to be remembered that the retail sector is the UK’s biggest private sector employer, providing crucial jobs to 1 million people in the 16-to-24 age group. There is great concern that another hike in rates will lead to fewer chances of jobs, result in less investment in the fabric of our town centres, and create a more troubled high street.
Finally, I turn to the backlog of rates appeals, which are placing a brake on private sector investment and are a significant strain on the finances of businesses. It is estimated that there are 241,710 appeals outstanding against the 2010 list, and this equates to £1.8 billion owed to business. The number of appeals being carried out at the end of the second year of the 2010 list is 74% higher compared with the same point in the 2005 list. Improved systems and processes must be put in place to clear the backlog and to ensure that the problem does not recur. An uncalled-for and significant burden is being placed on businesses in difficult times, and it must be removed with full haste. Businesses must not shoulder unnecessary burdens as a result of these bureaucratic hold-ups within public bodies.
I support the direction of travel of the Bill and I shall vote for it this evening. However, the proposal to postpone the rates review requires further scrutiny to ensure that it does not have unintended consequences for, and a negative impact on, many businesses across the country. The evidence on which the proposal has been made should be published and scrutinised as soon as possible, and it needs to be very carefully considered in Committee.
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous); like him, I welcome the overall thrust of the Bill.
Although the economy has been making significant progress in difficult conditions, we have heard little about the wider economic backdrop to the measures in the Bill, so I shall touch on that at the start of my remarks. We need to build on that incremental progress, and although it goes without saying that Members on this side of the House are not for a second complacent, we ought not to stifle or muffle the fact that we are back to growth, despite the debt hangover inherited from the previous Government. Jobs have been created, net, in each of the past six months, pushing unemployment below 8%. Inflation is half its high of last year, and we are net exporters of cars for the first time since 1976. Although the eurozone market remains stagnant, UK exports to China have doubled since 2010.
The previous Government’s irresponsible approach to spending and their blunt over-regulation got us into this mess, and as the current Government recognise, it will take the dynamism of the private sector to get us out. The Bill is based on that broad template, and to that extent I welcome it. We must not, however, lose sight for a second of the context and scale of the challenges that we face, and the Bill needs to be viewed in that broader light. Those challenges include what I shall refer to as a triangular crossfire of Government and household debt, both of which are around 80% of GDP, not to mention UK banking liability—the third prong in that crossfire—at more than 400% of GDP. This last issue is one of the major factors hurting the construction sector, which the Bill aims, in part, to try to revive.
Banking liabilities are one reason the coalition’s banking reforms are so vital: we must ensure that the taxpayer never again has to bail out the banks. It is also vital to stick to our plans for Government debt to be falling by the end of this Parliament, and if further measures are required, we must show the resolve to find savings in spending, not hike up taxes that stifle growth.
As this country pays down its debts, we must also repair the frayed fabric of our underlying economic competitiveness. That is where our long-term prosperity lies, and the Bill targets that key priority area. We also, of course, require short-term dynamism to get us out of the rut we are in. Under the previous Government, Britain fell from fourth to 13th in the World Economic Forum international competitiveness rankings. It is good to see it climb back to eighth place, but that is not enough. We must be back at the top if we are to deliver the economic cutting edge to thrive in an intensely competitive global century, create opportunities for our youngsters, and deliver the revenue to pay for our precious public services.
A lot has been made of the regulatory burden facing business in this country, and the Bill is in part a response to that problem, albeit—in fairness—just one element of it. A recent report by the World Bank and International Finance Corporation, “Doing Business 2013”, provides a broader context for the regulatory challenges facing small and medium-sized enterprises that do business in Britain. It compares 185 economies and ranks Britain seventh for ease of doing business.
On the face of it, the report contains some real positives. Believe it or not, Britain comes top for credit facilities—not to be confused with the actual availability of credit funds. It also scores highly for export regulation, easing international trade. On the other hand, it still takes 13 days to set up a business in Britain, which has not improved since 2009. That contrasts with countries such as New Zealand, Australia, Singapore and Canada, where a business can be set up in between one and five days. That is the global reality outside the Westminster village. The World Bank IFC survey also found that it had become harder to secure construction permits in this country—an issue the Bill is designed to address.
That is the broader context. The Bill is rightly not presented as a panacea or silver bullet for those broad and deep issues, but there is some good stuff in it. The drive to streamline counter-productive bureaucracy is clearly welcome—many hon. Members have spoken of that. I want an increase in affordable housing. The shortfall has created acute hardship for constituents throughout the country, but certainly in my part of the world, where house prices are very high. Notwithstanding that important priority, it must be right not to let unviable central targets stymie wider projects from proceeding if they have substantial economic merit.
We heard a lot of thunder and lightning from Opposition Members on the plans in the Bill to offer new employees the option of shares in their company in return for more flexible contracts, but the measure is an innovative attempt to grapple with the over-zealous employment regulation that was pushed through in recent years. That regulation has discouraged firms from hiring people who are, we should remember, left to languish among the ranks of the unemployed, especially the 20% youth unemployed, which was the level left by the previous Government despite 13 years of spending splurge.
We should remember that the plans build on important proposals in the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, which is in the other place and will return to the House shortly. They are designed to address the broader concerns of business red tape, including measures to filter spurious or vexatious employment tribunal claims, which I welcome.
As the World Bank IFC report testifies, far too much overweening regulation will still afflict small and medium-sized enterprises. Focusing further on that is likely to yield greater economic dividends for business and jobs growth than diluting key safeguards in the planning process—a concern that I hope parliamentary scrutiny will address. As hon. Members on both sides of the House have said, clauses 1 and 2 are essentially centralising measures that will allow developers, or give them scope, to sidestep local authorities that are deemed to be poor performers. We need to do everything possible to drive economic growth, but, given the wider context and the debt problems to which I have referred, I suspect the planning process is only a small part of the problem in the construction sector. The clauses pose a risk to local democracy. The Bill states that the criteria for designating councils as poor performers will be published by the Secretary of State. In the absence of those published criteria, what assurance is there that the legitimate views of communities—represented faithfully by their locally elected representatives—will not be trumped by developers in some form of collusion with Whitehall?
Clauses 12 and 13 seek to alter the delicate balance between community interests in registering village greens and the property rights of landowners. For all the furore and froth generated by the measures, it is a finely balanced area of policy on a niche matter. What evidence does the Minister have to hand on the scale of the vexatious applications to register land as village greens? What is the size of the problem that the Bill is designed to filter out? Has an economic value been placed on it? Has he considered alternative proposals? I note that the Open Spaces Society proposes changes to the guidelines rather than primary legislation. Those proposals would help to streamline the current procedure, scrutinise applications more strictly and encourage mediation between developers and applicants. What consideration has been given to those milder and more modest proposals?
More generally, I am concerned that the Government’s wider planning proposals to expedite home extensions and related applications risk creating tension among neighbours as well as eroding local democracy, again with only minor countervailing economic benefits. Perhaps the Minister can reassure me that the benefits will be larger than they appear to be in the Bill.
Other hon. Members have described in detail clause 22, which postpones the revaluation of business rates. I understand the rationale for the measure and I listened carefully to the Secretary of State, but Ministers will be aware that the British Chambers of Commerce has expressed concern that it will hurt rather than help the many businesses that pay rates on the values established at the peak of the market in 2008. When I talk to local businesses in Elmbridge, the point they make to me almost uniformly—in goose step, as it were—is that they pay more and more after the creeping increases in business rates over the years, but get less and less back, because of the central funding formula, which is set in Whitehall. I pose the question: if we really want to help the retail sector, why not look at making savings in spending to cut business rates? I have looked at how we might do that in a number of pamphlets I have written, because in truth that would be the shot in the arm for small businesses and the high street, promoting business expansion as well as jobs growth.
The Government are rightly in the business of introducing targeted measures to build on the positive signs we are starting to see in the economy. There are a range of welcome measures in the Bill, along with some creases that we will need to iron out. I hope the Minister will engage closely and seriously to ensure that we focus our efforts on the right targets as the Bill proceeds through the House.
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
May I start by congratulating the new Minister, the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon)? I believe this is the first time for 20 years that he has been back at the Dispatch Box, so we look forward to his contribution. Unfortunately I will not be able to compare it with his last contribution—I am afraid we were not allowed to watch television at school.
I pay warm tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn). He completely disembowelled the Government’s case for the Bill in forensic detail, which was very pleasing indeed to watch. He was not the only one who pulled the Bill apart; he was joined by the Liberal Democrat Members for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) and for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke). I look forward to them joining us later in the Lobby.
Today’s debate has been important. We meet only weeks since the Third Reading of the Government’s Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, which they heralded as their flagship for growth. Indeed, the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills said that the measures in that Bill would
“help make Britain one of the most enterprise-friendly countries in the world.”
It feels very much like Groundhog day: another week, another flagship Bill that the Government insist will drive the recovery and our economy. However, this Bill is a knee-jerk and shambolic reaction by the Government to their summer panic over the lack of growth and their response to the failure of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, with its rag-bag of measures labelled as “growth”—as my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) put it, the Secretary of State was trying to sell this Bill like a fishmonger shouting, “Please buy my rotten fish.” As with the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, this Bill shows again that the Government have all the wrong priorities. They are consistent, though—promoting measures with no evidence to underpin them, with no consultation responses to guide them and not much support from anyone to add force to them. I have been eagerly awaiting the Government’s evidence in this debate, but I have yet to hear it.
We may finally be returning to some economic growth from this Government, but as the Prime Minister himself said earlier this year:
“If you could legislate your way to growth, obviously we would. The truth is you can’t.”
He is right. Calling this a “growth” Bill does not make it so. There is nothing in the Bill to address the root causes of the Government’s economic failure, or indeed the housing crisis. Instead, there are a number of ways in which the Bill could damage the planning system, housing delivery and local communities, as my right hon. and hon. Friends have pointed out. Even the construction industry has said that there is no point in this Bill. It was revealed over the summer that 60% of construction industry leaders who were surveyed said that the main deterrent to investing in infrastructure was a
“lack of clarity from the government”.
This Bill will only compound that uncertainty, as the construction sector continues to shrink. That is a very worrying trend, which has sparked fears that the construction sector will lose much capacity in the longer term. However, I repeat: the Bill does nothing to address the root causes of the catastrophic downturn in construction. The key point is that builders are not building because banks are not lending and people are unable to borrow and buy. Mortgage lending fell again this month, with 6% fewer people securing mortgages than in the previous month and half as many as in what would be termed a normal year.
Whatever happened to the Government’s much vaunted localism agenda? Again, I refer the House to the super contributions by the hon. Members for Cheltenham and for Mid Dorset and North Poole, who have said that they are against the centralism agenda in this Bill. This is the Government who came to power on promises of returning power to local people. In fact, one pre-election policy green paper stated:
“Localism holds the key to economic, social and political success in the future,”
but in this Bill, for “localism” replace with “centralisation”.
The Bill’s focus on planning is misguided and the measures will not tackle the real barriers to growth. That assertion is backed by research—not that the Government ever use research or evidence—that shows two things. First, there is a building backlog of 400,000 new homes that have planning permission but have yet to be built by developers. Secondly, approval for residential and commercial applications is at a record 10-year high, with 87% of such applications being approved in 2011-12. The hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Mr Ruffley) mentioned commercial development earlier.
The Bill suggests that the only way to support recovery is to centralise the planning system. Clause 1 would enable developers to ask for their applications to be decided by the Secretary of State when a local authority has been designated as having been stripped of its planning status. This is where we come to the Secretary of State’s bombshell. He professed earlier that Hackney was the worst-performing authority in the country, but he could not say whether it would be designated for these purposes or what criteria would be used to determine whether it should lose its planning status.
According to Hackney’s figures for the past year, 42% of applications were determined within 13 weeks, with 80% of minor applications being dealt with in eight weeks. Of the 59 planning appeals, 17—or 31%—were allowed. Let us compare that with the figures from the Minister of State’s own local authority, Sevenoaks. There, 62% of applications were determined within 13 weeks, but less than 74% of minor applications—fewer than in Hackney—were determined in eight weeks, and 35% of planning appeals were allowed. Simply by comparing Hackney with the Minister’s own council shows us that it is above the average in this regard.
I therefore challenge the Secretary of State to tell the House whether the average is now to be determined as the worst. Will the 200 or so authorities that are below the average be designated as failing, and if so how will their planning powers be removed? I suggest that Members on the Government Benches look at the tables that have been produced and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) encouraged them to ask, the Secretary of State whether they will be worse off or better off than Hackney. If Hackney is indeed the worst, their own local authorities could be under the control of the Secretary of State very soon indeed.
There would also be no right of appeal if the Secretary of State were to take charge of such local authorities. I wonder whether he is familiar with the decision by the First Minister of Scotland to call in a planning decision for the first time in the Scottish Parliament’s history, following what was seen as the wrong judgment being made by the democratically elected planning committee in Aberdeen. This of course involved the Trump golf course development on the shore near Aberdeen, and it was an example of centralisation over proper local accountability. The hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole, the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) and my hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside (Mrs Glindon) have all said today that the Local Government Association believes the Bill to be a blow for local democracy.
We know that Ministers dropped Labour’s ambitious plans to establish universal broadband for all by the end of 2012. We now have chaos and incompetence at the heart of the Government over plans for this major piece of infrastructure that could drive growth in this country. The Bill’s measures on broadband will result in a free-for-all of building in areas of outstanding natural beauty. They will not drive the economic growth that we need. We support a more efficient planning regime, but the duty of the Secretary of State to “have regard” to natural parks is not what is holding back the roll-out of broadband in this country. We have seen no evidence to substantiate the claim that the “have regard” duty is an obstacle to broadband and mobile roll-out.
On the section 106 provisions, my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) was right to mention the survey carried out by the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central, which showed that five times as many social homes for rent had been built in Labour authorities than had been built in Conservative ones. It has been estimated that some 50% of affordable housing is delivered through section 106 agreements, which oblige developers to make a contribution to community benefits as a condition of receiving their planning approval. So why have the Government singled out affordable housing contributions as the most disposable of the many section 106 categories? Getting rid of these will simply mean fewer affordable homes at a time when more are needed. [Interruption.] I hear a sedentary intervention from the Treasury Bench, saying that this is not correct, but let us listen to David Orr—I know that some of my right hon. Friend and hon. Friends have already mentioned his quote—the chief executive of the National Housing Federation. He warned that the abolition of section 106 would
“wipe out at a stroke 35,000 affordable homes a year”.
I am more likely to believe the chief executive of the National Housing Federation than the Government, who have come forward with proposals on the basis of no evidence whatever.
It is also the case that a strong section 106 agreement helps to reduce land values, which is part of the problem in this country when it comes to development. There is absolutely no evidence to support the Prime Minister’s claim that there are a significant number of sites that have planning permission but are not going ahead because there are too many obligations to build council homes.
Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)
That was an incredible list of gloom-laden points, but what does the shadow Minister make of the Centre for Economics and Business Research when it points out that next year and the year after Britain will be notching up the highest level of growth in the European area?
Ian Murray
Given the current state of the economy, the hon. Gentleman should be a little more contrite when it comes to economic growth. I only hope that those remarks do not come back to haunt him when the effects of the Olympics are stripped out of growth in the next forecast. We all want to see growth in this country, but we need to wait and see what happens. As I was saying, the Prime Minister’s claim is not supported by the evidence in front of us.
Let me move on to what I think is the worst part of the Bill—shares for rights, or, more accurately, rights for peanuts. This part of the Bill introduces the new concept of an employee owner, but not one Government Member has raised this issue during the debate. I think that perhaps says it all and reflects the debate we had on Third Reading of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill. On the Opposition side, we are strongly in favour of employee ownership, but coupling it with slashing employment rights is contradictory and counter-productive.
Doing away with people’s rights at work is wrong in principle and will do nothing for economic growth. The Employee Ownership Association has pointed out that boosting employee ownership
“does not require the dilution of rights”.
The Chancellor heralded this as an attempt to create a flexible work force, which is ironic given that taking up the shares for rights scheme will mean giving up on flexibility in the sense of flexible working. We must emphasise time and time again that the UK already has the third most flexible employment regime in the OECD—even before the measures passed on Third Reading of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill last week. This has nothing to do with flexibility; it will simply allow employers to fire at will.
We oppose these measures, not just because they are bad for employees, but crucially because they are bad for business. As Justin King of Sainsbury’s has said, these proposals are likely further to damage the already fragile reputation of business. He said:
“What do you think the population at large will think of businesses that want to trade employment rights for money?”
Any employee who signs up to the scheme will effectively allow the employer to operate a compensated no-fault dismissal scheme of the type proposed by Adrian Beecroft which, apparently, is so fiercely resisted by the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills. Simon Caulkin, a writer on management and business, said:
“In effect, Osborne’s cobbled-together scheme is a back-door re-run of the agenda of Adrian Beecroft”.
Paul Callaghan, partner in the employment team at Taylor Wessing, went further when he said:
“This makes Adrian Beecroft’s fire at will proposals look moderate.”
There is absolutely no evidence to back up these proposals. Being offered as little as £2,000 in shares to give up entitlements to redundancy payments, training, unfair dismissal and some maternity provisions is bad enough, but how can the Government claim to be the most family-friendly ever, when the right to request flexible working hours, which might be helpful for child care and parental employment prospects, is also included in the Bill?
Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)
Surely the whole point of an employee share scheme is that it is voluntary and optional. Is it not rather patronising of the hon. Gentleman to suggest that those in employment are incapable of exercising such a choice?
Ian Murray
Let me make three points in answer to that question. First, this applies to new jobs. Secondly, there would be nothing to prevent an employer from sacking all the work force and then taking them on again with new contracts. Thirdly, how can the scheme be voluntary if the job is conditional on people signing up to one of those contracts?
Sarah Jackson, chief executive of Working Families, has said:
“Employers beware. Offering owner employee contracts—where employees effectively sell their employment rights for shares—is unlikely to deliver the highly motivated, engaged workforce you need.
Few men or women with family responsibilities would want such a contract”.
Mel Stride
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way again. If the scheme is not voluntary, can he explain exactly who will be forced to take part in it?
Ian Murray
I suspect that we shall see two developments. We shall probably see an advertisement for employee ownership contracts in the first instance, and we shall probably see unscrupulous employers offering contracts on an employee-ownership basis to people when they feel that it will not be in the best interests for those people to be on normal full-time contracts. [Interruption.] Ministers are shouting “You cannot answer the question” from a sedentary position. I should like the Minister of State to come to the Dispatch Box and give a cast-iron guarantee that not one employee in the country, either in or out of work, will be forced to accept one of these contracts. I can assure him that that will not be the case.
Ian Murray
I am running out of time, so I shall canter on, if I may.
There are so many unanswered questions that I should probably be here until midnight if I dealt with them in detail, but let me give a little of the flavour of what people have been saying to me. I hope that the Minister of State has had his pencil sharpened so that he can take all this down.
First, the value of shares that employees receive in return for relinquishing their rights is wholly inadequate. It may also be difficult in some instances for employees to value the shares accurately, or indeed to realise fair value in the event of sale. Those problems are all the more pronounced given the absence of provision for independent legal and financial advice for employees.
Secondly, the administrative costs of valuing and issuing or allotting small numbers of new shares to a great many employees may be prohibitively high for business. If there is no market, companies may have to purchase the shares back, which will impose a huge financial burden on them.
Thirdly, most of the businesses involved will not be listed. Who will value the shares, what voting rights will be attached to them, how can they be redeemed or transferred when they have no real market value, and who will deal with any disputes that arise?
Fourthly, at a time when an employee wishes to sell, on redundancy or otherwise, the company is likely to be performing poorly, which is why staff are being laid off. That means that the shares will be worth less, or indeed worthless. What happens if a business issues more shares to itself to dilute staff holdings prior to any redundancy? What about dilution in the event of further investment in the company?
Ian Murray
I will give way to the hon. Member for Warrington South (David Mowat), who was a member of the Committee considering the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill.
David Mowat
I was indeed.
Every year, thousands of people who work for firms of lawyers and accountants give away all their employment rights by joining the partnership, thus taking a stake in the business. Why are Opposition Front Benchers opposed to the extension of that principle to ordinary people in ordinary companies?
Ian Murray
I think that there is a slight difference between people who take on a partnership in an accountancy firm and people who embark on training.
Fifthly, what will happen to PAYE and national insurance contributions? At present, any shares “in kind” would be subject to the usual Inland Revenue rules.
Ian Murray
I am afraid that I do not have time. [Interruption.] It is the Government who schedule these debates, not me. The hon. Gentleman should have a chat with the Government Whips Office.
Could such shares also be used for tax avoidance purposes when executives receive the maximum allocation and take full advantage of the corporation tax regime?
Sixthly, will the contracts be voluntary? Could an employer make it a condition of employment that they are signed? Could an entire work force be moved on to them? Could a post be advertised as an “employee only” vacancy?
The list is endless. This is a ragtag of a Bill and a ragtag of a proposal. The Chancellor proclaimed in his conference speech that the proposal represented
“owners, workers and the taxman”
—where have we heard this phrase before?—
“all in it together”.
In reality, the measure is divisive, it risks creating a two-tier labour market, and it flies in the face of the “one nation” approach that Opposition Members wish to see. Making it easier to fire people will not help economic recovery.
There is nothing in the Bill to address the root causes of the Government’s economic failure or housing crisis. Instead the Bill could damage in a number of ways the planning system, housing delivery, communities and relationships in the workplace. It is also clear that, although the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills is resisting the Beecroft fire-at-will agenda, it is alive and being delivered by his Department minders, who were brought in at the reshuffle to sort the Secretary of State out.
Like the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, this Bill is an ill thought through, incoherent, “make it up as you go along” mess of measures cobbled together by an increasingly desperate, out of touch Prime Minister and Chancellor. I look forward to Members joining us in the Lobby later.
The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Michael Fallon)
I thank the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) for the welcome he gave me, if not for drawing attention to the difference in our ages. As a former President said, I was not going to make an issue of his youth and inexperience.
I also thank all those who have contributed to the debate, but before I reply to some of the main points, I remind the House of the purpose of the Bill, which is to support local growth and local jobs by tackling the barriers that hold back investment and growth, and that slow down sustainable long-term development. Through this Bill, six Government Departments come together to make the planning system quicker and more efficient, to accelerate investment in the modern infrastructure that our economy needs—including faster broadband and more energy generation—and to introduce a completely new type of employee ownership.
The Bill has the support of the business community. The British Chambers of Commerce said that it welcomed legislative measures to promote growth and infrastructure and the measures in the Bill to speed up and simplify the planning system. The Confederation of British Industry said:
“This new Bill should give confidence to business that the Government understands the need to fast track important infrastructure projects to boost growth. “
It welcomed the measures aimed at increasing transparency and accountability in the planning system.
I turn to some of the questions that have been put. The shadow Secretary of State asked me for an assurance that any amendment to clause 23 would be brought forward in this House and I am happy to give him that assurance. That is the aim of the timetable that we have set out in the consultation.
We had some notable contributions from Government Members, including from the former Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), and my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert)—it was good to hear from him. He and my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) raised specific questions about the effect of clause 7 on national parks. I am happy to write to both of them with specific reassurance on that point.
Michael Fallon
I will in a moment.
I welcome, too, the support that we have had from my hon. Friends the Members for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris), for Bury St Edmunds (Mr Ruffley), for Henley (John Howell), for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) and others. My hon. Friends the Members for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) and for Waveney (Peter Aldous) raised specific questions about business rates. What I can tell them is that the Valuation Office Agency will be publishing data shortly, which we will collect in the impact assessment, which will be available to the Committee scrutinising that particular provision.
I turn to the principal issues raised by Opposition Members about clause 1. First, they asked where the evidence was of delay. Let me answer that directly. Less than 60% of major planning applications are decided in 13 weeks. Secondly, if Coventry can increase the percentage of all its applications that are determined within 13 weeks from 54% to 98%, and if Surrey Heath can increase its percentage from 42% to 100%, then any council can. Let me be clear: efficient councils have nothing to fear from clause 1.
Only a small minority of councils need to raise their game. Let me reassure the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke): we are not, as she feared, speaking of a massive number of councils. It is a small minority who need to raise their game if we are to ensure their local areas do not lose out in the recovery that is now under way. The Labour party had exactly the same concerns. In its last year in office in 2009-10, it cut the planning delivery grant for 22 local authorities on the grounds of poor performance. It was concerned, just as we are concerned. Applicants do not have to go to the Planning Inspectorate. Clause 1 makes it very clear that they simply have that alternative.
Turning to clause 5, there are, of course, concerns about the amount of affordable housing, and especially about those schemes that are stalled in section 106 negotiations. I need to repeat the point made earlier by the Secretary of State: affordable housing that is stalled for a minimum period of five years is not affordable housing—it is non-existent housing. We already know there are 1,400 sites comprising some 75,000 homes waiting to be unlocked. We accept that some councils are already renegotiating. However, even on the Local Government Association’s figures, 60% of councils are not renegotiating. Some 20% of councils are unwilling to negotiate. If we do not act, each of their schemes must wait for a further five years before appealing to the Secretary of State. For anybody who genuinely wants to see more affordable housing, that is simply unacceptable. If some councils can renegotiate, then all councils can renegotiate, and all councils should renegotiate. The shadow Secretary of State cannot have it both ways. At one point he suggested the measure was unnecessary and would not have any effect. Then he complained that developers would wait for it to take full legislative effect.
Turning to clause 7, I was asked about the definition of electronic communications equipment. The Bill has to be technology-neutral, so this clause could apply to all electronic communications equipment. However, as we have said before, the intention of the Bill is to allow cheaper and quicker deployment of broadband street cabinets and overhead infrastructure, not mobile phone masts. Let me reassure those who have concerns about the possible impact of this provision on our national parks and other protected areas that, under proposals on which we will shortly be consulting, providers will still have to notify local authorities of their plans. They will be encouraged to engage with local authorities and communities as a matter of best practice, and they will have to sign up to a code of practice on the siting of this infrastructure, to ensure that that is handled sensitively.
Michael Fallon
I will give way in a moment.
The right hon. Members for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr Raynsford) and for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) asked about the definition of significant commercial development under clause 21. We will consult on that definition soon, and on whether a new national policy statement should be put in place.
I can understand Labour’s ambiguity on this topic. Since the last election a succession—an entire football team—of former Ministers have admitted that their approach was too top-down: the Leader of the Opposition; his brother; the shadow Chancellor; the shadow Energy Secretary; the shadow Work and Pensions Secretary; the shadow Health Secretary; the shadow Culture Secretary; the right hon. Members for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) and for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham); the hon. Members for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) and for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck); and, latterly, the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey). On his first appearance, he said that
“Labour was wrong…to downgrade the role of local government.”
One year on, at the Labour party conference last year, he said, after all, that he supported regional housing targets:
“you’ve got to have that strategic approach…in the regional spatial strategy framework.”
There we have it: they are against a top-down approach but they are back in favour of regional spatial strategies. Of course we will listen in Committee as we debate each—
Mr Speaker
Order. The Minister of State is not giving way. He gives every indication at this stage of wishing to plough on, and that is his entitlement.
Michael Fallon
Of course we will listen in Committee to the debate on each clause, but the Labour party is going to have to be a lot more persuasive than it has been this afternoon.
Tristram Hunt
Will the Minister return to the points raised by the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) that this wretched little Bill constitutes a total reversal of the localism strategy of the past two years and is a classic case of centralism based on a failed economic strategy?
Michael Fallon
I have already made it absolutely clear that as we have simplified the planning guidance, we are, of course, also responsible, as are local councils, for the efficient delivery of planning applications. I repeat that good, efficient councils have nothing to fear from the Bill.
Let us examine the previous Government’s record: in 13 years, they passed 15 planning Acts; six years after their main planning Act of 2004, fewer than 60 out of 335 planning authorities actually had the core strategies they were supposed to have; and after 13 years of top-down housing targets, they ended up with the lowest number of new homes built in any peacetime year since the 1920s. And who can forget the shambles of the eco-towns? Ten were promised, only three turned out to be viable without public subsidy, amazingly only one was assessed as environmentally friendly and, of course, none of the 10 was actually built. That is Labour in a nutshell: nought out of 10 for delivery. They give the builders of the Potemkin village a good name. So there we have the Labour record: planning authorities with no plans; development agreements commissioned but not actually signed; affordable housing commitments demanded but not actually built; eco-towns promised but none—not one—actually delivered. The Labour party is defending a record of failure and supporting a position of stagnation.
Bill Esterson
The Minister has mentioned the efficiency of councils twice now. Councils need certainty and so do businesses if we are to see growth and success in our economy. Will he define what he means by an efficient local council, using either a number of councils or a percentage?
Michael Fallon
The Secretary of State made it clear, and I repeat it, that we will consult on the definition of a poorly performing council. We will set out the criteria and I hope the hon. Gentleman will respond to that consultation.
Let me be very clear about the contrast that faces the House tonight. The Labour party is defending a record of failure and the status quo of stagnation, whereas this Government and this party want to see growth in all parts of our country. We are determined to open up opportunity for sustainable development, not just in the most efficient local authorities but in every single council area.
Joan Walley
Now that the Minister has mentioned sustainable development, would he care to give the House a definition of what he means by it?
Michael Fallon
The hon. Lady had a good go at trying to define sustainable development at some length earlier this afternoon. What we mean by sustainable development is development that is there for the long term, and she ought to support that in her authority and in others.
Let me be clear that the Bill promotes more efficient planning, encourages faster roll-out of broadband, will accelerate investment in electricity generation and in modern gas networks, and extends new opportunities for employee ownership. This is a Bill for growth and I commend it to the House.
Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Business without Debate
Growth and Infrastructure Bill (Money)
Growth and Infrastructure Bill (Ways and Means)
Committees
Mr Speaker
With the leave of the House, I propose to take motions 6 to 19 together.
Ordered,
Business, Innovation and Skills
That Margot James and Simon Kirby be discharged from the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee and Caroline Dinenage and Mr Robin Walker be added.
Defence
That John Glen be discharged from the Defence Committee and Mr Adam Holloway be added.
Education
That Damian Hinds be discharged from the Education Committee and Chris Skidmore be added.
Energy and Climate Change
That Laura Sandys be discharged from the Energy and Climate Change Committee and Mr Peter Lilley be added.
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
That Amber Rudd be discharged from the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee and Sheryll Murray be added.
Human Rights (Joint Committee)
That Mike Crockart be discharged from the Joint Committee on Human Rights and Simon Hughes be added.
International Development
That Mr Sam Gyimah and Richard Harrington be discharged from the International Development Committee and Fiona Bruce and Mark Pritchard be added.
Justice
That Ben Gummer and Elizabeth Truss be discharged from the Justice Committee and Rehman Chishti and Robert Neill be added.
Northern Ireland Affairs
That Kris Hopkins be discharged from the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee and Andrew Percy be added.
Procedure
That Karen Bradley be discharged from the Procedure Committee and Martin Vickers be added.
Scottish Affairs
That David Mowat be discharged from the Scottish Affairs Committee and Mike Crockart be added.
Transport
That Paul Maynard and Julian Sturdy be discharged from the Transport Committee and Karen Lumley and Karl MᶜCartney be added.
Treasury
That Mr Michael Fallon be discharged from the Treasury Committee and Mr Brooks Newmark be added.
Welsh Affairs
That Stuart Andrew be discharged from the Welsh Affairs Committee and Glyn Davies be added.—(Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.)
petition
Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)
It is a pleasure to present this petition on behalf of the pupils and staff of Our Lady of Hartley primary school, an excellent school in my constituency. The children there held a first-class debate on the subject and collected signatures at the school gates. The children have asked me to present this petition to the House.
The petition states:
The Petition of pupils and teachers at Our Lady of Hartley Primary School,
Declares that it is sensible to have all dogs micro-chipped as puppies; further that the Petitioners believe that this will reduce the amount of lost or abandoned dogs and will also help to ensure that the owners of dangerous dogs can be held to account as the Petitioners believe it is the owners, not the dogs, who are at fault; further that the Petitioners do not wish for micro-chipping to be made compulsory but wish it to be strongly encouraged and made accessible for all in terms of cost.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to consider measures to encourage dog owners to have their dogs micro-chipped and that the Government seek to reduce the cost of micro-chipping puppies.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P001127]
Nursery Milk Scheme
(12 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
I want to start by saying how important the nursery milk scheme is. All children under five years old in a day-care or early years setting for two or more hours a day are eligible to receive a free daily drink of milk. Milk is full of important nutrients for children. Their free third of a pint portion contains calcium for strong bones and teeth, protein for growth and development, vitamins such as B2, B6, B12 and folate, and the minerals iodine, phosphorus, potassium and zinc.
The Education Act 1944 provided free milk—a third of a pint a day—in schools to all children under the age of 18. I have some personal recollections from the 1950s of the milk in one-third pint bottles left in the sun all day and served in such a way that I am still not very good about drinking my milk, which may be why my bones are a bit fragile. In 1968 Harold Wilson’s Labour Government withdrew free milk from secondary schools, and of course it is well known that in 1971 Margaret Thatcher withdrew free school milk from children over seven.
I saw first-hand the benefits of free school milk for under-fives on my visit to Hayeswood first school in Colehill in my constituency on world school milk day. It was interesting to go to a school, because we have to appreciate that now that children are starting school when they are four, they are accessing the milk at school. I was impressed with the numbers and the uptake at that school, and also with the fact that, through the particular scheme that was operating, older children could have the milk purchased for them at £15 per term.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
World school milk day came to my area too. Castle Garden primary school participated and more than 100 young children were present. The important aspect of that visit was that young children who had not taken milk regularly said that they were encouraged by those who were there to participate in taking milk rather than fizzy drinks. Did the same thing happen in the school that the hon. Lady visited?
Annette Brooke
Absolutely. Indeed, I was talking to one of my local nurseries—a nursery that is registered for milk. The owner of the nursery had discussed with parents whether they wanted the milk or not. Parents had voiced concerns about participating because their children would not drink milk at home, but they said, “Well, we’ll give it a try,” and to their surprise, every child in the nursery drinks their milk in the group setting.
However, in the past few years the costs of the scheme have been rising. In 2007-08 it cost the Government £27 million, but by 2010-11 the amount had risen to £53 million. Increased costs could be due to greater uptake, growth in the number of under-fives in day care settings or increases in the price of milk. The Department of Health has predicted that costs could rise as high as £76 million by 2016 and so recently set up “Next Steps for Nursery Milk”, a consultation to review the current system and consult on how to make efficiencies.
A significant number of day-care providers are effectively paying over 90p a pint for school milk. I know that we must ensure that the scheme can operate as efficiently as possible while ensuring the greatest access for entitled children. There is clearly also a need to add as little as possible to the burden of bureaucracy on child-care providers and schools. I want to take this opportunity to say how pleased I am that the Department has stated its commitment to this universal benefit for under-fives and that it is fully committed to keeping it as such. The options offered in the consultation are: to leave the scheme as it is; to cap the price that can be claimed for milk; to issue e-voucher cards with economy incentives; or for day-care providers and schools to arrange the direct supply of milk themselves.
There are a number of important aspects to consider when thinking about changing the current scheme. First, it is important that as many eligible children as possible receive their allocation of milk. The Department’s own figures show that roughly 40% of the total number of under-fives currently receive milk at their day-care setting. Whatever system is put in place must be easy to use for day-care providers so that as many as possible take part in the scheme. Given the percentage of children who currently do not receive milk, I ask the Minister to look at how the Government can increase the number of children receiving the milk to which they are entitled. I appreciate that that might be counter to the idea of reducing the costs of the scheme, but I was personally rather disturbed that perhaps only 40% of eligible children access the milk.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
Is the hon. Lady aware that many children are lactose intolerant and that there have been links between the consumption of dairy products, particularly milk, and the development of childhood asthma—there is no firmly proven link, but it has been suggested that there is a connection? Are there alternative sources of calcium, such as soya milk, available to children who perhaps should not be drinking dairy milk?
Annette Brooke
I absolutely take on board the point that some children are allergic to cow’s milk. I am sure that is an issue the Minister could address when he sums up.
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
Although different schemes operate in Scotland, Wales and England, this is, unusually, a GB-wide consultation, and obviously I have an interest as a Member who represents a Scottish constituency. The Scottish Pre-school Play Association has written to all Scottish MPs and is very much in favour of what has been called option 2, which would allow access to local Scottish suppliers and milk producers. Is that the option the hon. Lady would favour of the ones set out in the consultation?
Annette Brooke
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I will not say which option I prefer, because I want to air all the issues, which I think are rather complex, and it is very important that they are all considered.
To return to my point about the variability in how children access free school milk, I have some figures from Bournemouth, Poole and Dorset, three local authorities, for the percentage of under-fives accessing Cool Milk, which is the agent that provides it, so it is possible that there are other ways of getting the milk. The figures are interesting: for Dorset it is 89.8%, for Bournemouth it is 25.5% and for Poole it is 46.3%. It would be worthwhile to get all the figures from the local authorities, rather than receive the answer, “This information is not collected centrally.” Some worthwhile statistical analysis could be carried out to make sure that our most disadvantaged children actually access the milk, because that is not automatically the case.
The School and Nursery Milk Alliance raises serious concerns about the knock-on effect that changes to the nursery milk scheme could have on the over-fives scheme. It is worried that a reduced take-up among under-fives will result in fewer over-fives moving on to school milk and that, if providers are no longer supplying nurseries in other settings, it will be harder for them to supply schools as part of the over-fives milk scheme.
Another point to consider is the administration process for child-care providers. At present, child-care providers or the agent they use, such as Cool Milk, which operates in my constituency, are reimbursed for the costs of the milk after they have purchased it. Whatever scheme is put in place must not put more of a burden on child-care providers, but be simple and easy to use so that nurseries and other settings are not put off taking part in the scheme.
We must consider how the milk will be delivered to the care providers. It is, of course, more expensive to deliver to nurseries in small and rural areas and to childminders working in difficult to access places.
Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. As has been said, the issue’s ramifications go much wider than England. On rurality, I represent Ceredigion and she also represents a rural constituency, and there are particular challenges when nurseries and child-care providers are based in a rural setting, where the operational costs are that much greater than in urban areas. The Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) asked my hon. Friend whether she would support option 2. If she went along with that and a cap system, I would hope that she would ask for guarantees that the operational costs could be factored in so that rural people were not put at a disadvantage.
Annette Brooke
It is important that we take on board the additional costs in rural areas, which would become highly relevant if a capping system were to be introduced. I agree with the points that have just been made.
In any new system, it is important that nurseries and child-care settings are still able to make a choice about where they procure the milk. It is important that a supplier can ensure a suitable delivery time so that the quality of the milk remains high. In many settings the location of the milk provider will be important, with nurseries choosing a local, trusted supplier.
It is also important, when considering how best to progress and how to ensure best value for money, that we consider the requirements of the child-care providers. The consultation document repeatedly refers to pints of milk, but it must be remembered that children receive a third of a pint a day. Many settings do not have facilities to wash drinking cups, so they require milk to be supplied in single-serve packaging, and many would not be able to serve children milk if it was not delivered in those sizes, which is another cost factor. It is also important to consider special types of milk, such as kosher milk, that might be needed for religious or cultural reasons or, indeed, as an alternative if children have an allergy. I was particularly impressed with the cartons that I saw on my school visit on world school milk day, because they were really attractive and it literally was cool to drink milk.
I have received representations from a number of different organisations from the child-care and dairy industries. Although they understand why the Department is conducting a review, many of them, such as the School and Nursery Milk Alliance, are concerned that, while the Government are committed to protecting the entitlement of children to milk in early-years settings, proposed changes to the scheme could reduce the actual number of children receiving the milk. It is important that we maximise the number of children taking up the offer.
I know that the organisations will have submitted detailed responses to the consultation, so I just want to touch briefly on the different options and some of their pros and cons. Under option 3—the e-voucher system—child-care providers would no longer have to pay for milk and then claim reimbursement. They would instead be credited with a prospective monthly payment equal to the number of pints required multiplied by a fixed reimbursement rate, which would be set at an average market price per pint. The National Day Nurseries Association has voiced concerns that this kind of scheme might place additional administrative responsibility on providers. I ask the Minister to consider that, particularly given the Government’s commitment to reducing the burden on early-years settings that is currently being consulted on by the Department for Education.
Having garnered opinions, it seems that option 4—direct supply—is least favoured by those in the industry. Anticipated problems that have been raised with me include the cost of the operation; the fact that a national tender may quickly become uneconomic because while the supply of larger settings may be relatively straightforward, cost is quickly added when significant numbers of smaller, local, rural deliveries are required; denial of choice; the impact on local suppliers and dairy farmers; and the impact on the quality of the milk—I have heard time and again about the importance of fresh rather than UHT milk being supplied.
Bodies such as Dairy UK, Dairy Crest and the National Day Nurseries Association favour option 2—capping the price paid for milk—but they are concerned that a cap at the levels suggested by the Department might mean that many settings are not able to afford to have milk delivered at that price and so will opt out of the scheme, meaning that fewer children receive their milk. Dairy UK has suggested a single price cap in the region of 65p to 69p per pint, which it hopes would allow for the delivery of one-third of a pint packages of milk to smaller, rural and remote settings.
I am very pleased that the Government are committed to keeping free milk for all children under five years old in a day-care or early-years setting for two or more hours a day. I understand the need for a review of the scheme to ensure value for money, and I look forward to reading the Government response to the consultation, which I am sure will have taken into account a number of the concerns that have been raised in the House today. I urge the Minister to use this review as an opportunity to widen participation in the scheme so that more eligible children receive the milk to which they are entitled. I strongly believe that everyone who is entitled to the milk and wants it should be able to have it, as that is beneficial to the child and ultimately to the nation, with perhaps fewer costs and burdens on the NHS. As a final request to the Minister, will he say whether any European Union money or subsidies would be available to support this excellent scheme?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) on securing this debate. During her years in the House she has not only shown a keen interest in the nursery milk scheme but has been a strong parliamentary ambassador for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and, since 2006, a champion of Save the Children. That is a long track record of supporting and standing up for issues that matter to children—in this case, the nursery milk scheme. She rightly outlined the tremendous health benefits not only of the nursery milk scheme but of a healthy diet in young children, and highlighted the benefits of drinking milk, given the proteins, minerals and vitamins that it contains. I want to confirm to the House again that the nursery milk scheme is here to stay.
Before I address the points that my hon. Friend raised, it is worth highlighting a few of the issues. While we fully endorse the provision of nursery milk, she is absolutely right to point out that the cost of the scheme has gone up considerably over the past few years. In an average supermarket, a pint of milk costs about 50p to 55p. According to the most recent figures of June 2011, within the scheme there are 23,000 claims—well over 50% of the total—where milk costs 70p to 79p per pint, and almost 9,000 claims where it costs over 90p per pint, which is almost double the cost in the supermarket.
Many hon. Members representing rural constituencies will be concerned that dairy farmers across the country are struggling, and that the increased cost of milk is not rewarding those farmers in the farm-gate price. We must reflect on the cost of the scheme. Since the scheme costs a lot of money, it would be nice if those companies that profit from it also recognised that some of that profit could be passed back to famers in the farm-gate price. The Government and the National Farmers Union do not see that happening as part of the scheme, and although the NFU and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs support the nursery milk scheme as a way of supporting dairy farmers, it is nevertheless disappointing that companies that supply nursery milk are not supporting our farmers in the way we would like.
As my hon. Friend rightly said, the nursery milk scheme is of long standing and has been running throughout Great Britain since the 1940s. The devolved Administrations in Scotland and Wales fund milk supplied through the scheme to children in their countries, and Northern Ireland has its own, similar scheme—I am pleased to see the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) in his seat as usual.
As we know, the scheme funds free milk for around 1.5 million children under five years of age at 55,000 child-care providers throughout Great Britain. Nursery milk is a universal benefit, meaning that child-care providers can claim the cost of milk provided to any child, regardless of the child’s home circumstances. The scheme is valued by parents and pre-school staff, and its health care benefits were thoroughly outlined earlier in the debate.
The Government recognise, however, that the nursery milk scheme is expensive, and the consultation was about improving its operation and ensuring that it remained fit for purpose. The scheme remains largely unchanged since it was first introduced as a wartime measure, and in recent years prices claimed for milk purchased under the scheme have risen significantly, owing largely to third-party agents who seek to make considerable profits by delivering milk to child-care providers. As I said earlier, unfortunately those profits are rarely paid back to farmers in the farm-gate price.
The prices claimed for milk supplied under the scheme have risen significantly, with some claims reaching almost £1 a pint. That has led to a corresponding increase in the overall cost of the scheme. In 2007 and 2008, the scheme cost £27 million, but by 2010-11 that had risen to £53 million—it almost doubled in only four years. If we do nothing, that trend looks likely to continue, with costs potentially rising to £76 million by 2016.
Under the current system, there is no limit on the price at which child-care providers may purchase milk, or even a requirement for each provider to review their milk expenses. In many cases, agents supplying milk handle the claims themselves, rendering child care providers unaware of the price paid. For those reasons, the total cost of the scheme has risen dramatically over the past few years, and although the amount of milk supplied has risen by 25% since 2009-10, the total cost of the scheme has risen by 45%.
Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)
Does the Department of Health have a grip on the procurement process involved in this scheme? When providing milk across the nation, surely we should be able to supply from local sources or distributors. The costs that the Minister mentions seem to have escalated greatly, but farm-gate prices have not changed much. It seems extraordinary that someone has not got a grip on procurement.
Dr Poulter
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and that is why the Government launched the consultation in the first place. The scheme was devised in the second world war, and its provisions mean that the Department of Health currently has no role in active procurement. The Government embarked on the consultation in view of the rising costs, and my hon. Friend will rightly feel concern for dairy farmers in her area of Somerset. Profits from this scheme are going to intermediate companies, and the cost has recently escalated out of control. My hon. Friend also highlights the fact that farm-gate prices have not improved as a result of those increased prices and profits for intermediate suppliers of milk.
It is worth pointing out that an important factor contributing significantly to the scheme’s accelerating costs seems be embedded in its design. No mechanism exists to incentivise child-care providers to economise and search for the highest attainable value for money in their local markets, to support their local farmers or to source their milk from a certain provider. Over the last three years, the average price paid for a pint of milk in a supermarket has been 50p, but the average charged by agents is 78p, which is well over 50% higher. That shows that the scheme is rapidly becoming unfit for purpose, which is exactly why the Department embarked on the consultation.
Annette Brooke
Until recently, at least one school was not registered in the scheme because it feared the bureaucracy would be too great. A balance must therefore be struck to ensure that schools and child-care providers participate in the scheme.
Dr Poulter
My hon. Friend makes a good point. As part of our consultation, we are looking at a number of options as to how we can maintain an effective scheme and ensure that the one we offer and deliver is better value for money.
It is worth looking at the three options in the consultation. The first option was to cap the price that can be claimed for milk. Under that option, an upper limit on the price that could be claimed for milk would be introduced and increased each year in line with inflation in the retail price of milk. In special circumstances, arrangements would be put in place to vary the cap for child-care providers that, perhaps because of geographical isolation and rurality, to which hon. Members have alluded, do not have access to milk priced at the normal market rate.
The second option was to issue e-voucher cards with or without devolved incentives for child-care providers to buy milk economically. Under that option, child-care providers would no longer have to pay for milk and then claim reimbursement from the nursery milk reimbursement unit. On joining the scheme, child-care providers would indicate how many children would normally be attending for two hours or more per day. They would then be credited with a prospective monthly payment equal to the number of pints required, multiplied by a fixed reimbursement rate, which would be set at an average market price per pint.
The final and third option was to contract a company or consortium of companies for the direct supply and delivery of milk to all child-care providers. Under that option, the Department of Health would take a much more active role in procurement. It would contract a company, or a consortium of companies, for the direct supply of milk to all child-care providers registered with the scheme at an agreed price per pint supplied. That is one way to avoid the bureaucratic burden to which my hon. Friend has referred.
Jim Shannon
The debate so far has been about the price of a pint of milk. My recollection, like that of the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), is of a third of a pint of milk. If we reduce the quantity of milk for a small child, would that not reduce the price? Is that too simplistic?
Dr Poulter
We will see what the consultation says. One option, which I have outlined, takes into account the bureaucratic burden of the cost on schools. We value the scheme and want to keep it—that is implicit—but at the same time, we recognise that going through a bureaucratic process to claim for milk could increase the cost to nurseries and other child care settings. The third option in the consultation is therefore for direct procurement from the Department of Health. That would help to reduce the bureaucracy in the scheme, although the hon. Gentleman will be aware that there is an allied, parallel scheme in Northern Ireland that operates in a similar way to the schemes in England, Scotland and Wales.
The National Farmers Union values the nursery milk scheme as a well established and highly regarded programme that plays an intrinsic role in society, supporting our dairy farmers as a key part of the supply chain. At the same time, the NFU believes that every attempt must be made to ensure a fair return to the whole dairy supply chain, including the primary dairy farmer. We must not lose sight of that. When the intermediaries are making huge profits, the farm-gate price—the price paid to farmers, who we value, particularly in rural communities—must be recognised in how the scheme operates. For the NFU and all those concerned about the impact of the proposed changes on the dairy market, let me explain that, according to Dairy UK estimates, milk supplied under the nursery milk scheme represents less than 1% of the total value of the UK dairy market; nevertheless, it is an important part of that market.
We are consulting on the scheme. The consultation closed at the end of last month, and we will be considering the representations made. To conclude, I repeat that the nursery milk scheme will continue as a universal benefit. It has huge health benefits for young children, and all eligible children in the care of child-care providers will continue to receive their free milk. We need to establish a system, however, that makes the nursery milk scheme fit for purpose and makes it adapt to recognise the important role that farmers play in the supply of milk—
Ministerial Corrections
(12 years, 1 month ago)
Ministerial CorrectionsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Atos Healthcare
(12 years, 1 month ago)
Ministerial CorrectionsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Tom Greatrex
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions with reference to the answer of 1 May 2012, to the hon. Member for Cardiff West, Official Report, column 1407W, on Atos, what the monetary value was of each contract between his Department and Atos in (a) 2008-09, (b) 2009-10 and (c) 2010-11.
[Official Report, 22 May 2012, Vol. 545, c. 643W.]
Letter of correction from Chris Grayling
An error has been identified in the written answer given to the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) on 22 May 2012.
The full answer given was as follows:
Chris Grayling
The spend values for the five DWP contracts with Atos are as follows:
Policy area | Spend in 2008-09 | Spend in 2009-10 | Spend in 2010-11 |
|---|---|---|---|
Medical Services | 111,800 | 99,100,000 | 112,800,000 |
Tell Us Once—Tell Us Once Release A | 2,568,409 | 2,214,608 | 2,471,873 |
enGage (Government Gateway) | 22,933,466 | 20,560,958 | 15,745,685 |
Occupational Health | 0 | 0 | 9,840,000 |
Community Action Programme | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Notes: 1. There are £0 spend values against the Community Action Programme contract because (a) it did not exist in until November 2011 and (b) the outcome based payment model used will only see costs becoming due in early 2012-13. 2. There are £0 spend values against the Occupational Health contract because it did not exist in the 2008-09 and 2009-10 financial years. |
The correct answer should have been:
Chris Grayling
The spend values for the five DWP contracts with Atos are as follows:
Policy area | Spend in 2008-09 | Spend in 2009-10 | Spend in 2010-11 |
|---|---|---|---|
Medical Services | 111,800 | 99,100,000 | 112,800,000 |
Occupational Health | 2,568,409 | 2,214,608 | 2,471,873 |
enGage (Government Gateway) | 22,933,466 | 20,560,958 | 15,745,685 |
Tell Us Once—Tell Us Once Release A | 0 | 0 | 9,840,000 |
Community Action Programme | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Notes: 1. There are £0 spend values against the Community Action Programme contract because (a) it did not exist in until November 2011 and (b) the outcome based payment model used will only see costs becoming due in early 2012-13. 2. There are £0 spend values against the Tell Us Once—Tell Us Once Release A contract because it did not exist in the 2008-09 and 2009-10 financial years. |
Middle East and North Africa
(12 years, 1 month ago)
Ministerial CorrectionsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)
2. What steps he is taking to promote political and economic freedom in the Middle East and North Africa; and if he will make a statement.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Alistair Burt)
In addition to diplomatic and political support given to countries in the region, following the dramatic events of the last 18 months, our Arab partnership programme, which is now worth £110 million, provides practical support with a range of projects, including election reform, media transparency and employment initiatives. We will operate across 15 countries in this coming year, with a budget of some £60 million?
[Official Report, 4 September 2012, Vol. 549, c. 139.]
Letter of correction from Alistair Burt:
An error has been identified in the answer given on 4 September 2012 to the hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant).
The correct answer should have been:
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Alistair Burt)
In addition to diplomatic and political support given to countries in the region, following the dramatic events of the last 18 months, our Arab partnership programme, which is now worth £110 million, provides practical support with a range of projects, including election reform, media transparency and employment initiatives. We will operate across 15 countries in this coming year, with over 60 projects.
Trade Promotion
(12 years, 1 month ago)
Ministerial CorrectionsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Margaret Curran
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how many events have been held at British embassies or consulates to promote Scottish businesses in the last three years; and which businesses were represented at such events.
[Official Report, 30 October 2012, Vol. 552, c. 176W.]
Letter of correction from Hugo Swire:
An error has been identified in the written answer given to the hon. Member for Glasgow East (Margaret Curran) on 30 October 2012.
The full answer given was as follows:
Mr Swire
Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) officials meet UK businesses seeking to export regularly. These interactions occur in a wide variety of circumstances, and it is therefore not possible to assess accurately the total number of meetings that have taken place over the past three years.
Our Charter for Business sets out how the FCO supports UK business overseas and how the FCO is working to help deliver success for the UK's economy. We are supporting and promoting businesses across the UK, and do not differentiate on where they are based. UKTI also has a vital role to play in supporting British business. UKTI helped 25,450 businesses in 2011-12, 90% of them SMEs. UKTI trade support generated over £30 billion of additional sales for its clients—this support helped firms create 36,400 new jobs and secure a further 68,500.
British companies can make full use of UKTI's trade services, including the resources provided by UKTI offices overseas. Additionally, where appropriate, the Scottish Government's trade and investment arm, Scottish Development International, is also available.
As examples, in 2011-12:
172 grants were provided to Scottish firms through support under UKTI's Tradeshow Access programme.
310 reports were commissioned on behalf of Scottish firms through overseas posts under UKTI's Overseas Market Introduction Services.
Three research projects were offered to Scottish firms under UKTI's Export Marketing Research scheme.
Four Scottish missions to India, Brazil, Qatar and China (a total of 39 companies) were supported under UKTI's Market Visit Support programme.
Our diplomatic, consular and UKTI network is one of the largest and most respected in the world, with around 270 diplomatic posts in 170 countries, employing 14,000 staff. This delivers real benefits to Scottish people and businesses at home and overseas.
The correct answer should have been:
Mr Swire
Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) officials meet UK businesses seeking to export regularly. These interactions occur in a wide variety of circumstances, and it is therefore not possible to assess accurately the total number of meetings that have taken place over the past three years.
Our Charter for Business sets out how the FCO supports UK business overseas and how the FCO is working to help deliver success for the UK's economy. We are supporting and promoting businesses across the UK, and do not differentiate on where they are based. UKTI also has a vital role to play in supporting British business. UKTI helped 25,450 businesses in 2011-12, 90% of them SMEs. UKTI trade support generated over £30 billion of additional sales for its clients—this support helped firms create 36,400 new jobs and secure a further 68,500.
British companies can make full use of UKTI's trade services, including the resources provided by UKTI offices overseas. Additionally, where appropriate, the Scottish Government's trade and investment arm, Scottish Development International, is also available.
As examples, in 2011-12:
172 grants were provided to Scottish firms through support under UKTI's Tradeshow Access programme.
310 reports were commissioned on behalf of Scottish firms through overseas posts under UKTI's Overseas Market Introduction Services.
Three research projects were offered to Scottish firms under UKTI's Export Marketing Research scheme.
Four Scottish missions to India, Brazil, Qatar and China (a total of 34 companies) were supported under UKTI's Market Visit Support programme.
Our diplomatic, consular and UKTI network is one of the largest and most respected in the world, with around 270 diplomatic posts in 170 countries, employing 14,000 staff. This delivers real benefits to Scottish people and businesses at home and overseas.
Written Ministerial Statements
(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Local Government Pension Scheme
(12 years, 1 month ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Brandon Lewis)
The Government commissioned Lord Hutton to chair the Independent Public Service Pensions Commission to review public service pensions and to make recommendations on how they can be made sustainable and affordable in the long-term, and fair to both public sector workers and the taxpayer. Lord Hutton’s final report was published on 10 March 2011. In that report he made clear that change is needed to
“make public service pension schemes simpler and more transparent, fairer to those on low and moderate earnings”.
The local government pension scheme currently costs the taxpayer £6 billion a year.
On 17 July, the former Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), made a statement to the House that the Local Government Association and local government trade unions had started informal consultations with their respective memberships on designs for a new local government pension scheme to be in place by 2014.
Those informal consultations are now concluded. I can report to the House that in a joint statement issued by the Local Government Association and local government trade unions on 30 August, 90% of employers; 90% of Unison members; 95% of GMB members and 84% of Unite members, were in favour of the proposed scheme design. A copy of the joint statement can be found at: www.lgps.org.uk. A copy of the statement has been placed in the Library of the House.
In a letter to the Local Government Association of 30 May, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst, agreed that a favourable outcome of the informal consultation would enable the Department to move directly to a statutory consultation exercise in the autumn to implement these proposals. I can now confirm that we will be consulting on draft regulations to implement the matters set out below at the earliest opportunity and will also be seeking an agreed position on other issues that the Local Government Association and the trade unions have proposed, such as scheme governance and cost control.
The intention remains to have the new scheme regulations in place to coincide with the next scheme valuation in 2013 to enable local fund actuaries to reflect elements of the new design in this process before the reformed scheme comes into operation in 2014 and to give software and payroll providers sufficient time to establish and test procedures for the scheme after April 2014.
The main parameters forming the basis of the forthcoming statutory consultation are set out below:
A start date of April 2014 with core elements of the new scheme regulations in place by March 2013.
A pension scheme design based on career average and actual pay.
An accrual rate of 1/49th of pensionable earnings each year.
Revaluation of active members’ benefits in line with a price index (currently consumer prices index).
A normal pension age equal to the state pension age, which applies both to active members and deferred members (new scheme service only). If a member’s state pension age rises, then normal pension age will do so too for all post-2014 service.
A low cost optional arrangement allowing 50% of main benefits to be accrued on a 50% contribution rate.
Pensions in payment to increase in line with a price index (currently consumer prices index).
Benefits to increase in any period of deferment in line with a price index (currently consumer prices index).
Average member contribution yield of 6.5%, with tiered contributions.
Optional lump sum commutation at a rate of £12 of lump sum for every £1 per annum of pension foregone in accordance with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) limits and regulations.
Early/late retirement factors from age 55 on an actuarially neutral basis
A vesting period of two years.
Spouse and partner pensions to continue to be based on an accrual rate of 1/160 and three times death in service benefit.
Ill-health retirement pensions to be based on the current ill-health retirement arrangements.
There will be transitional protection in respect of:
All accrued rights are protected and those past benefits will be linked to final salary when members leave the scheme.
Protection underpin for members aged 57 to 59.
Rule of 85 protection as in the current scheme.
The consequences of the new Fair Deal for the local government workforce will be considered by the Department for Communities and Local Government in view of the extant Best Value Authorities Staff Transfers (Pensions) Direction 2007 and admitted body status in the local government pension scheme.
The Government Actuary’s Department has confirmed that the scheme design set out above does not exceed the agreed cost ceiling of 19.5% of pensionable pay. A copy of the Government Actuary’s Department verification has been placed in the Library of the House.
The initial focus of the statutory consultation exercise will be on the Local Government Association and local government trade unions’ proposals for the design of the new scheme from April 2014. The Public Service Pensions Bill introduced on 13 September set out new arrangements for the future of public service pension schemes. This Bill provides a strengthened framework for administration, transparency, governance and cost control of the schemes, including the local government pension scheme. Although still matters under consideration, the provisions in the Bill do not rule out any of the Local Government Association and local government trade unions’ proposals on governance and cost control. I will continue to work closely with those bodies during the statutory consultation to consider these important matters further and in the light of issues raised during the consultation.
Civil Enforcement
(12 years, 1 month ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Jo Swinson)
The Government are today publishing a consultation on adding new remedies to the consumer law enforcement process.
The consultation sets out proposals to amend part 8 of the Enterprise Act 2002 so that public enforcers of consumer law (principally the Office of Fair Trading, Local Authority Trading Standards Service) can apply to a civil court for an enforcement order aimed at achieving one or more of the following three outcomes, in addition to stopping illegal behaviour.
Improved business compliance with the law;
Improved redress for consumers affected by the breach; and/or
More confident consumers who are empowered to exercise greater choice.
Businesses will also continue to be able to offer undertakings to enforcers as an alternative to court action.
Example actions could include introducing a complaints handling scheme, repaying overcharges made by consumers or working with third-party feedback sites. The most appropriate action would be determined on a case-by-case basis.
The consultation seeks views on these proposals, and also considers whether the powers in the Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Act 2008 could alternatively deliver the same outcomes.
The consultation will close on 31 December 2012.
Electronic copies of the consultation and the accompanying draft impact assessment have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
EU Transport Council
(12 years, 1 month ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Stephen Hammond)
I attended the first Transport Council of the Cypriot Presidency in Luxembourg on Monday 29 October.
The Council reached general approach on two proposals to amend EU legislation allowing the enforcement of certain provisions of the maritime labour convention within the EU. The maritime labour convention was agreed in the International Labour Organisation in 2006, and ensures certain standards of working conditions for seafarers. The proposals will provide for enforcement to take place as part of the port state control regime. The Council now awaits the European Parliament’s opinion before making further progress.
The Council reached general approach on a proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on common rules for the allocation of slots, repealing Council Directive 95/93/EC, by qualified majority voting. Although the majority of the text is acceptable the UK was unable to support the general approach on the day, largely because of uncertainty as to how a number of detailed points will be resolved. However, I was able to successfully preserve key elements of the text which safeguard the current secondary trading of slots in the UK and I was able to narrow down the scope for member states to restrict slot trading within their territory in certain circumstances.
The Council held a debate on a proposal for a directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on roadworthiness testing for motor vehicles and their trailers. I intervened to express the UK’s serious concerns about the proposal. I argued that it would impose substantial costs in the UK, with negligible road safety benefits. I highlighted that the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee have issued an opinion that the proposal was against the principles of subsidiarity. I also argued that the Commission’s impact assessment failed to provide convincing evidence of road safety benefits overall. The UK’s concerns were echoed by a number of other member states.
The Council reached a political agreement on a proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Council Regulation (EEC) No 3821/85 on recording equipment in road transport and amending Regulation (EC) No 561/2006 of the European Parliament and the Council. The political agreement is based on the general approach reached in June, and accepts some minor amendments proposed by the European Parliament. The proposal will now return to the European Parliament for a Second Reading.
The Council adopted a decision on provisional application of an agreement to enhance co-operation between the European Union and the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation (Eurocontrol).
House of Lords
Death of a Member: Lord Lofthouse of Pontefract
The Lord Speaker (Baroness D'Souza)
My Lords, I regret to inform the House of the death of the noble Lord, Lord Lofthouse of Pontefract, on 1 November. On behalf of the House, I extend our condolences to the noble Lord’s friends and family.
Police and Crime Commissioners
(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Roberts of Llandudno
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what guidance is being given to electors for the election of police and crime commissioners who have not received election communications from the candidates in their constituencies.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Taylor of Holbeach)
My Lords, information about every candidate is published online and can be delivered in written form to anyone who wants it. Details of our website and how to request paper copies are on every voter’s poll card. Furthermore, every household has received information about the elections from the Electoral Commission. Knowing my noble friend’s particular interest, the website and the booklets are bilingual in Wales, as are the ballot papers.
Lord Roberts of Llandudno
I appreciate part of the Minister’s Answer. However, would he not agree with me that universal suffrage is the cornerstone of democracy, where every candidate has equal access to every elector? In this election we have no free post for candidates so only the wealthy can hope to pay their own postage to reach the electors. Millions of people are not online. Does the Minister not agree that this election is totally undemocratic and the result could be open to legal question?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My noble friend’s supplementary question was in two parts. I endorse all that he had to say about democracy. However, on the second point, I would have to say to him that there is no such thing as a free mail shot. It would have cost more than £30 million to have provided free post for all candidates. As I said in my original Answer to him, individual candidates have equal access to the Home Office website. That address is available on every poll card. Anybody who does not have access to the internet can get hard copies delivered to them if they wish. It may interest noble Lords to know that the website has received more than 1 million hits since it went up and more than 100,000 hard copies have been posted.
Lord Cormack
My Lords, those figures are derisory compared with the size of the electorate. Is it too late to do something about this?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
Noble Lords will know that we are capable in this House of a certain amount of last-minute legislation but I think that it is too late for this election. My noble friend and I have homes in the same county. He will know that local television and newspapers are covering this election strongly. Here in the metropolis there are no elections and it may seem to those who are based here that there is not much going on. But I assure noble Lords that this election is a very live issue in the provinces.
Lord Morgan
My Lords, is not one group of electors particularly disadvantaged in this election? I refer to those who are Welsh speaking. What progress are the Government making in answer to the excellent points raised by my noble friend Lord Touhig?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
The website is bilingual in Wales. All the forms for the election are bilingual and the ballot papers are bilingual. I hope that that shows our proper respect for the Welsh language.
Lord Bradshaw
My Lords, is there a level below which the number of people voting would make the result invalid?
Lord Harris of Haringey
My Lords, this is a very brave experiment in democracy. When the Bill was going through this House, Ministers told us that we should not criticise the cost of these changes in governance because you could not put a price on democracy. Surely, the Minister has done just that. He said that the extra £30 million for ensuring that every elector knows who the candidates are and what they stand for simply cannot be afforded. Can he tell us how much the other changes to governance with regard to police forces have cost and why he thinks that the extra £30 million is not a proper investment in effective democracy?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I thank the noble Lord. Of course, £30 million is a significant sum. This election has given us an opportunity to show that it is possible to communicate with electors in different ways. I have given noble Lords the figures: 1 million hits on the website is not an insignificant number and 100,000 requests for printed forms is not a modest number. I believe that the Government have done the right thing in this way. I hope that all noble Lords will see this as an opportunity to bring democracy into police governance in a way that has not existed before and that they will support their favoured candidates for these elections.
Lord Crickhowell
My Lords, is my noble friend aware that I received a bilingual address from the Conservative candidate but not from the Labour candidate and I have cast my vote accordingly?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
That is very good news for the candidate in my noble friend’s constituency.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
My Lords, for a moment when the noble Lord referred to late legislation, I thought that the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill was being withdrawn to have new legislation on this but unfortunately he has not agreed with us on that point. Perhaps I may ask two questions. First, is he satisfied that the level of public awareness of and interest in these elections is adequate at this stage? Secondly, he will have seen the reports of shockingly low police morale. Does he think that this flagship policy on police from the Government has improved police morale, made it worse or made no difference?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My answer to the second part of that question is that I am certain that it will have done. It has focused public attention on the police as an institution in a way that has not existed before. It has made it quite clear that the services of those who work in the police service are valued. Indeed, people will be voting for the police and crime commissioner who will be responsible for the governance of police in local areas. I am sorry but I have forgotten the first part of the noble Baroness’s question. Perhaps she would not mind repeating it.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
I asked whether the Minister was satisfied with the level of public awareness of and interest in these elections.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I think that I have given that answer already. The poll conducted showed that 85% of the people who were eligible to vote in these elections were aware that they were taking place. I am satisfied. It is up to those of us engaged in democracy to get involved with making sure that these elections return good candidates to do the task that is set before them. It is an important job and it will make a lot of difference to policing in this country.
Claims Management Companies: Unwanted Text Messages
(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Kennedy of Southwark
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to ensure that people do not receive unwanted text messages from claims management companies.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
My Lords, the Government fully support the work of the Information Commissioner’s Office in enforcing the legislation that protects individuals from unsolicited text messages. The Ministry of Justice’s claims management regulation unit is actively working with the commissioner to investigate individual claims management companies receiving leads or claims as a result of unsolicited text messages, and is taking enforcement action as appropriate.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, the mis-selling of payment protection insurance was an absolute scandal, but the activities of some claims management companies are also a scandal, with unwanted text messages and phone calls. Does the Minister agree that there is a serious problem with this industry? If so, what are the Government going to do about it?
Lord McNally
The Government are making sure that there are joined-up investigations, co-operation between the various bodies responsible for various aspects of the industry and carried-through enforcement action. This is feeding through into weeding out the rogue traders and making sure that the consumer has sufficient information to be able to make rational decisions as to whether they use the services offered.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
My Lords, is the Minister aware that I have asked Questions several times of both this and the previous Government, not so much about texts but about unsolicited phone calls on exactly the same matter? I have been told that you can go on to a site and put yourself on a list, saying that you do not want to receive things. But, unfortunately, that does not really work. The latest statement that I had from the Government was that if things come through overseas channels or other satellite means, they cannot control it; they can control things only within certain parameters in this country. Is that still the case? I am getting about six phone calls a week and sometimes three or four a day, all offering me wonderful things.
Lord McNally
I have some sympathy for the point that the noble Baroness makes, because we at home are supposed to be on this blocking mechanism that you sign up for, but the calls still get through. I will investigate the point that she made about whether international calls get round the blocking. I know that Ofcom is very much aware of this problem. I know that it is no use me telling the noble Baroness that she can go on to this register and that Ofcom is on the job and so on, because from the noises around the Chamber and my own experience, I know that these nuisance calls are still getting through. I will contact Ofcom and write to the noble Baroness with the reply, which I shall put in the Library of the House.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, the Information Commissioner has received at least 10,000 complaints every year, but how many prosecutions have there been?
Lord McNally
If the noble Lord means complaints about the rogue calls, I do not know, because this Question is not about the rogue calls. In my letter, I will cover it. On the question of texts, the Information Commissioner has announced that he is preparing to levy some very heavy fines on people who abuse the system with texts. But I will make the question on unasked-for calls part of my inquiry and put the reply in the Library of the House.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, would the Minister add e-mails? I get an enormous number of e-mails every day, generally about PPI but about a whole lot of other things, too. They all seem to be done at about three in the morning. E-mails are just as serious; I spend such a lot of time just deleting all these e-mails on a daily basis. Would the Minister add e-mails to texts and phone calls? I also get the texts and the phone calls.
Lord McNally
I agree; I know what absolute anger this matter causes. It sometimes raises a groan when Ministers announce the following, but a cross-industry working group has been set up led by the Direct Marketing Association and including the MoJ’s claims management regulator, the ICO, Ofcom, the Telephone Preference Service, the OFT and the Advertising Standards Authority. They are looking across the piece at what is undoubtedly a nuisance.
Baroness Scott of Needham Market
My Lords, I am sure the House is reassured to know that it takes so many people not to be able to do anything about this problem. Does my noble friend agree with me that the real problem here is the routine selling on of our personal data—our mobile phone numbers and our e-mail addresses—and that we might avoid this problem if we dealt with that and had severe punishments for breach of data protection?
Lord McNally
I thank my noble friend for that question. She is right. However, from April 2013, claims management companies will be banned from receiving referral fees in personal injury cases and from offering financial rewards or similar benefits as an inducement to make a claim. We are trying to make sure that we do not block legitimate activity but that we comb out and stop those who are causing a nuisance and the rogue traders. I am afraid that a number of regulators need to come together in this area to get effective action.
Lord Skelmersdale
My Lords, the Minister’s offer to put the letter in the Library is, of course, of great interest to Members of this House. However, there is much wider interest in this matter. May I encourage him to consider putting the letter in Hansard so that it can then get on to the internet and be much more widely read?
Lord McNally
I am not sure how easy it is to put it into Hansard, but what I can put into Hansard is the general advice on this matter, which is that customers should never use these firms. It is simple to make claims yourself and there is a template and letter on the Which? website. However, these claims companies have at least enabled financially less confident consumers to seek redress. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, for his assiduity in pursuing these matters. I should also point out that the consortium of concerned bodies to which I referred has produced a very helpful pamphlet as a consumer guide entitled Nuisance Calls and Messages, which is supported by 11 bodies, which may be a clue as to why it is difficult to find a solution to this problem.
Universities: Overseas Students
(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Giddens
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the impact of current immigration policy on the attractiveness of United Kingdom universities to overseas students.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Taylor of Holbeach)
My Lords, as the noble Lord will know, the UK continues to make a great offer to international students. Those with an adequate command of the English language and enough money to support themselves can come with no limit on numbers. When they finish, they can stay if they are doing a graduate-level job, again with no limit on numbers. Universities UK has reported that the number of international students continues to rise and UCAS acceptances are up 4%.
Lord Giddens
I thank the Minister for that reply. The point is that government migration policy threatens to do huge reputational damage to British universities, institutions which bring in some £8 billion in earnings from overseas students. Why cannot the Government adopt the same scheme as our competitor countries, especially the United States and Australia, and list overseas students separately from migration statistics, since we know that almost all overseas students—about 97%—go back to their country of origin?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, I think it must be agreed throughout the House that the previous system was open to abuse, with too many students just coming here to work rather than to study. The Government have sought to protect our world-class universities while targeting the less compliant new colleges, driving some 500 of the latter off the sponsor register. We want to continue to attract the brightest and best international students who will drive growth in our economy. Most observers would agree that our reforms are no more than common sense. We are not adopting the Australian or American model. We believe that it is right to have these figures as part of general migration although the net migration figure is obviously less than the top line one.
Lord Bilimoria
Does the Minister agree with the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, that it makes sense to remove student figures from the overall immigration figures as countries like the United States, Canada and Australia do? The Government are creating a rod for their own back. Does the Minister also agree that the treatment of London Metropolitan University’s foreign students was appalling, unfair and unjust? Is that the way that we, a fair and just nation, behave? More importantly, does the Government agree that the signal that it sent out to foreign students around the world is, “Britain does not want us”?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
No student who was engaged in a course at London Metropolitan has been asked to leave at this stage. There was serious abuse of the process, despite the UKBA working alongside London Met. The UKBA felt that it could no longer rely on London Met to sponsor students and that is why the permit was withdrawn. As noble Lords will know, there is a judicial review going on and these arguments will, no doubt, be vented there. I am, however, confident that the UKBA made the right decision in this case.
Baroness Williams of Crosby
My Lords, perhaps I may tell the Minister that last night I got off a plane from Beijing, where I had been visiting two of the most outstanding and internationally minded universities in China—and that we are shooting ourselves in the foot. Not only are we helping to destroy our own best universities, we are cutting off the contacts we need for future relationships, for future foreign influence and, of course, for future exports. I would therefore beg the Government to reconsider their current position. It is vital that students are excluded from the immigration policy, as they are in Australia, Canada and the United States. We are an exporting and internationally minded nation which is cutting itself off from contact with some of the most outstanding future leaders of the very countries with which we need to work most closely. I ask the Government to reconsider the situation very seriously.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I thank my noble friend for raising this issue because, as she will know, the number of students from China is increasing. Indeed, the number of students from some parts of south-east Asia is increasing enormously: there is a 26% increase in students from Hong Kong and a 10% increase in students from Singapore. I do not believe that a policy which seeks to control this area of immigration in a proper and manageable fashion is in conflict with an education policy which is designed to give an opportunity for our excellent university education to be shared with students from around the world.
The Lord Bishop of Norwich
My Lords, at the University of East Anglia in Norwich we are seeing a very marked downturn in applications from postgraduate science students from India. This is consistent with evidence from 2010-11 that, when one lifts China out of the figures, there has been a rapid reversal in Britain’s relative attractiveness to overseas students. If the Government are not going to lift students out of the net migration figures, how do they propose to respond to these facts?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I am not sure that the right reverend Prelate is correct in his assumptions. I know that the numbers from the Indian subcontinent are indeed down, but graduate-level jobs are available, and students are able to go on to postgraduate studies. We welcome that. I am therefore not sure that the right reverend Prelate’s reading of this is correct.
Viscount Hanworth
My Lords, a recent survey of UK universities has shown that, excluding students from China and Hong Kong, whose numbers continue to increase, the numbers of non-EU students in UK universities decreased in 2011-12 compared with the previous year. Does the Minister have figures in his brief that would illustrate this and, if so, is he prepared to share them with this House? Could he also tell us whether the Government intend to take any measures that might reverse this trend?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
Perhaps I can help the noble Viscount with some figures. Up to the year ending December 2011, overall student immigration was 232,000—the second highest year on record. Of those, 180,000 were non-EU nationals, which is almost 60% of total non-EU inflows.
NHS: Liverpool Care Pathway Inquiry
(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Knight of Collingtree
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what procedure will be adopted in carrying out the proposed NHS inquiry into the Liverpool Care Pathway.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)
My Lords, there is no procedure, as there is no such inquiry. A number of organisations, led by the National End of Life Care Programme, Dying Matters and the Association for Palliative Medicine, are looking into complaints, patient experience and clinical opinion on the Liverpool Care Pathway. We do not make policy decisions based on anecdote. If the work in hand suggests cause for concern, we will respond on the basis of that evidence.
Baroness Knight of Collingtree
My Lords, is my noble friend aware that large numbers of people with personal experience of how the LCP is now operating complain that their relatives were denied hydration in hospital and died in acute pain and discomfort, with no knowledge whatever or agreement of having been put on this pathway? Is he aware that patients often survive if relatives step in in time and give their dear ones help and water? One rang me a few days ago and she is now going on a cruise. Will my noble friend assure us that there will be an inquiry, which has been promised and announced in the press, and that it will be truly independent and not carried out by those who have vested interests? Nothing else will do.
Earl Howe
My Lords, there is never any cause for complacency in a matter of this kind, and I can reassure my noble friend that the Government will keep this issue under review. At the same time, I hope she will allow me to respond in slightly more forthright terms than I normally do, because there has been an enormous amount of misreporting and misinformation around the Liverpool Care Pathway, which has been endorsed publicly in a consensus document by 22 of the leading professional organisations and patient organisations in this area, including Marie Curie. We cannot ignore that. As I mentioned in my Answer, some of those organisations are looking carefully at the reports to which my noble friend alluded. It is notable that not a single complaint has reached the regulators in this area, which I suggest indicates that there may be less substance to some of these stories than may first reach the eye. However, I emphasise that there is no complacency.
Lord Alton of Liverpool
My Lords, as the noble Earl comes to look at the consultation on the National Health Service constitution over the coming months, will he take the opportunity to look at the care pathway in Liverpool itself, where last week I was able to meet Professor John Ellershaw and those who devised the pathway? Given that 80,000 patients a year are treated on the pathway, does the Minister accept that it works very well for many of them; that while the philosophy is not the problem, the procedures used in some places have been; and that one of the principal concerns is dehydration? Does he agree that that is something to be looked at, as well as the level of training of those doctors who are responsible for the palliative care of people at the end of their lives?
Earl Howe
My Lords, I fully agree with the noble Lord. Training is integral to the care pathway, as is the need to consult the families of patients and, if possible, the patients themselves before a decision is taken to put them on the Liverpool Care Pathway. On the NHS constitution, I completely take the noble Lord’s point. The proposed change to the NHS constitution makes it absolutely clear that patients and their families and carers have the right to be fully involved in discussions and decisions about their care, including that at the end of life. We are clear that that should already be happening, but we understand from reports that that is not always the case. As regards end-of-life care, I think there is sometimes a taboo on discussing death and dying and press reports show how damaging that can be. I shall indeed take all the noble Lord’s points on board, particularly as regards nutrition and hydration.
Baroness Wall of New Barnet
My Lords, I am relieved by the Minister’s response to the noble Baroness, Lady Knight. He is absolutely right that the care people receive at the end of their lives is hugely important. National statistics show that 29% of eligible people are on the care pathway. In my own trust, Barnet and Chase Farm, 28% of people are currently on it. The involvement of carers in those discussions is huge and a whole protocol is attached. I, too, am extremely worried about the publicity, some of which I am sure is well meant, but it can be very damaging to a system that provides a great deal of care. My mother-in-law was on the Liverpool Care Pathway in Liverpool hospital and had a very good experience. Please can we ensure that in any discussions we look at the overall benefit to elderly people at the end of their lives?
Earl Howe
The noble Baroness is quite right. So often, good experiences are not reported. Predominantly we hear from patient organisations and the Marie Curie organisation that in the vast majority of instances where the Liverpool Care Pathway has been used, it has resulted in better care for the dying person. She is absolutely right. Nevertheless, where the pathway is not being properly followed, we have to take the matter seriously and ensure that there is proper training and communication with care staff.
Arrangement of Business
(12 years, 1 month ago)
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The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)
My Lords, last Wednesday, I made a short Business Statement to draw the attention of the House to a change in the Order Paper for that day to facilitate a period of reflection on the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill before the noble Lord, Lord Hart of Chilton, invited the House to consider an amendment which the Clerks had advised was inadmissible.
Forthcoming business had advertised that the Bill would next be considered today. Noble Lords will see from the Order Paper, and the revised edition of FB circulated last Thursday, that that is not now the case. Today’s business is debates, and not legislation. The reason for the change is the same as that which I gave the House last Wednesday.
Lord Strathclyde
All those involved need further time to reflect before the House is invited to take a decision either on the admissibility of the amendment or on its merits. It will not surprise the House that those involved include senior members of the Government and, until their discussions are concluded, the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill will not proceed further in Committee. I do not know whether the noble Baroness, the Leader of the Opposition, intends to speak, but if she does, perhaps she can answer this question.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I invite the noble Baroness to speak. If noble Lords opposite listen, they will understand precisely why I am posing it. On the last occasion that a Conservative Back-Bencher insisted on tabling an amendment against the advice of the Clerks, the then Leader of the House drew the matter to the attention of the House, as the Leader is required to do, and asked the House to endorse the opinion of the Clerks and, thereby, maintain our customs and procedures. The Leader of the Opposition unreservedly supported the Leader of the House, and the Clerks’ advice, and the Back-Bencher concerned did not move his amendment. The noble Lord was my noble friend Lord Trefgarne; the Leader of the House was the noble Baroness, Lady Jay of Paddington; and the Leader of the Opposition was me. Will today’s Leader of the Opposition tell us whether she will respect the role and advice of the Clerks, as her predecessors have always done?
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, I thank the Leader of the House for his Business Statement seeking to explain why the House is again not dealing with the business that it—and indeed the Leader of the House—was expecting to consider. Your Lordships’ House expected on Wednesday of last week to consider the second day in Committee of the Government’s Electoral Registration and Administration Bill. Instead, it was given an explanation by the Leader of why that would not be the case. During the course of his remarks in the Chamber, he said of the postponed business:
“I expect the business to be taken next Monday”.—[Official Report, 31/10/12; col. 622.]
That is today. However, as we know, today’s Order Paper yet again does not feature the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill. Instead, we have a further Business Statement from the noble Lord.
In the light of today’s wholly inadequate Statement from the Leader of the House, it is transparently clear where the disorder is on this matter. It is on the Conservative Benches opposite. Within the coalition, it is clear that the Liberal Democrats are standing by their declared position that they will oppose the Government’s proposed changes to Commons parliamentary constituency boundaries, and the boundary reviews that would put them into effect. We on these Benches oppose them also. So do noble Lords on all sides of the House.
The Leader of the House, in his Statement last week, attempted to paint a picture of the amendment to the ERA Bill that would retimetable the boundary reviews as stemming only from these Benches. This House knows that the amendment was signed by four Members of your Lordships’ House: my noble friend Lord Hart of Chilton, a senior lawyer and former adviser to two Lord Chancellors; the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, a former Permanent Secretary at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office; the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, a former chief executive of the Liberal Democrats; and the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, a former leader of Plaid Cymru. Each is from a different part of the House; all are Members of the House who are highly distinguished and highly respected; and all are putting forward the amendment on boundary reviews.
There are a number of important issues here. On the merits of the amendment, the Government would be better advised to put their effort and money into improving the electoral register, and into making sure that as many citizens as possible are able to—and do—take part in our country’s democracy rather than into gerrymandering the voting system. We know that there are a number of views on the issue of admissibility and relevance. I hope that as many noble Lords as possible have read the legal opinion that we on these Benches commissioned, and last week placed in the Library of the House, which makes it crystal clear that the amendment to the Bill is both highly relevant and admissible.
The Leader invited me to give my opinion and say what I would do. I stand by the amendment as tabled. While I entirely respect the Clerks of the House, who are excellent, this does not mean to say that their view cannot be questioned. In this instance, having read the advice in the letter from the Clerks, and the quotations from Erskine May, I believe that we are right to ask the four noble Lords in question to continue with the amendment.
What characterises these and other issues is simple: this House should discuss them. It should consider the amendment, and the issues raised by it—but it is not doing so. Instead, and for the second time—in a move that we believe to be unprecedented—the Government have pulled the Bill from the Order Paper. Why have they done so? We have heard no satisfactory explanation from the Leader of the House. I hear that the actual reason is that time could not be found for the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister to meet to consider the issues ahead of the Prime Minister’s visit to the Gulf today. Even if that is the case, it is not a sufficient explanation: not sufficient for the workings of government, and absolutely not sufficient for the relationship between the Executive and the legislature. Parliament is not the plaything of government: in particular, Parliament is not the plaything of a political party in trouble. By yet again pulling consideration of this Bill because of the amendment being proposed to it by distinguished Members from all sides of your Lordships’ House, the Conservative Party, for party-political reasons, seeks to subvert the constitutional role and practice of this House. The Conservative Party seeks to prevent a discussion that this House wants to have.
One of the roles of Parliament is to protect the public interest against, if necessary, an overweening Executive. In this case, the public interest is clear: it is not in the public interest for the system of parliamentary democracy in the country to be shrouded in a lack of clarity, which the Conservatives’ position on boundary changes has produced. MPs, candidates, political parties and, most importantly the public, need certainty in the electoral system.
There is a further issue. In casting around for matters to be put on the Order Paper today in place of the ERA Bill, the Government have alighted on three issues: the role of the Armed Forces, policies on planning, and the fate of the British ash tree. They are all extremely important issues, but in a part-time, voluntary House, where Members have to arrange their time, it is a discourtesy to your Lordships' House to bring in, without any material consultation, debates in this way on matters about which many Members of this House may be interested, just to fill a party-political gap.
In what it is doing in relation to this Bill, the Conservative Party is seeking to subvert democracy. It should simply stop trying to do so now. I invite the Leader of the House, in his response to the issues raised in the Chamber this afternoon, to stop treating your Lordships’ House in the way that it has done so far on this Bill and stop running scared of this House considering, debating and, if necessary, dividing on these issues. It must stop treating this House as if it were a plaything of the Executive, face up to its responsibility to Parliament and set a firm date very soon for the Committee stage of the Bill—a date that it will stick to and a date that will allow this House to get on with the business that it wants to consider.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, first, the Government have not pulled this from the Order Paper: it is important that the House should recognise that. Secondly, it was never on the Order Paper. If any noble Lord can demonstrate how it was on the Order Paper, I would like to see it. But it was not on the Order Paper and has not been pulled from the Order Paper. That is the first accusation that is wrong.
Secondly, the usual channels were told on Thursday evening, which is plenty of time to let noble Lords know. Thirdly, on Thursday afternoon, we had a debate in this House about the lack of topicality of debates. Well today we have enabled the House to have a most topical series of debates.
But let us deal with the substantive nature of this. The noble Baroness said that the Government are perverting democracy. Perverting democracy in the House of Lords? That is a strange one. Secondly, the noble Baroness said that the review was simply about boundaries. It is not. It is a review to reduce the size of the House of Commons to save a considerable amount of taxpayers’ money and rebalance the number of Members of Parliament throughout the United Kingdom.
I return to the central point of my speech. Today, the noble Baroness, the Leader of the Opposition, who held this post as Leader of the House only two and half years ago, said that she will now ignore the instructions and the advice of the parliamentary Clerks.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, I know many other noble Lords will wish to come in, but I would say three things. First, the debate was on the Forthcoming Business of this House and on the green sheet. Secondly, the House is an integral part of our democratic system. Thirdly, I did indeed very proudly hold the position of Leader of the House. But I believe that when I did so I acted in the interests of the whole House—the House as a whole.
Lord Laming
My Lords, I have no wish to comment on the amendment that has led us to be in this situation but I am sure that I am not alone in regretting the fact that we are. When the House finds itself in a dispute of this kind there is no doubt that it affects detrimentally the efficiency of the House. It is clear from last Wednesday’s discussion and from what we have already heard today that this matter will not be resolved on the Floor of the House. It will have to be resolved through discussions, and possibly through discussions some distance from the House.
I urge the House on all sides to allow these discussions to take place and let us get back to discussing this important Bill as quickly as possible and get on with the proper procedures in a self-regulated House. I hope that the Leader of the House will assure us that it will be possible for us to get ahead with these discussions as quickly as possible.
Lord Peston
My Lords, if a Back-Bencher may be allowed to speak, I say in terms to the noble Lord the Leader that what he said will not do in any circumstances whatever. We are in a great mess and the real point is how we get out of the mess with honour. I say “with honour” and noble Lords will have noticed that I used the word “we”, even though I personally have not been involved in any of this. However, we all have to regard ourselves as having that as our duty.
There is a very good way of getting out of this. I say to the noble Lord that he ought to appreciate that the amendment accepts the fundamental principles of the Bill the Government are placing before us. He does not seem to have noticed that, but it does; it merely postpones one aspect of what happens. We could get out of this with honour through the Government accepting the amendment. All they have to do is say yes—that is all they have to do—and that is their honour; and those moving the amendment will come away with a degree of honour in that they have got their way.
The matter should not involve us in fundamental discussions about the role of the clerks of Parliament and our attitude towards them or anything like that. It is important that we should get back to discussing the thing that we are good at, which is legislation, and a great deal of legislation is waiting to be discussed. If the Leader of the House persists in the technicalities of his answer, he will keep this mess going endlessly. He may feel that he would like to lose all his legislation but, as I favour quite a large chunk of it, I wish that would not happen.
May we ask the noble Lord to go away, think again —rather than him telling us to go away and think again—come back and say yes to the amendment? Indeed, he would also save the coalition, which he may like to consider. This is not a party-political matter—
Lord Peston
I am perfectly serious. This is not a party-political matter but is a matter of how your Lordships conduct their business. What has been going on for the past week does us no credit whatever. The noble Lord nods his head, but he is responsible for this. We are not responsible for it; we did not pull out of the legislation. Speaking as a Back-Bencher, I say that enough is enough. Whoever are the powers that be, they should go away and come back with an agreement.
Lord Grocott
My Lords, the Leader of the House will recall or, if he does not recall I am sure that someone in his office can find the previous instances, that time after time when he was the shadow Leader of the House he was in the habit, quite properly, of reminding my noble friends at the time—I can recall three or four of them—that their duty as Leader of the House was to the whole House, the convenience of the whole House and observing the normal practices of the House as well as, and I recognise this as much as anyone, his duties and loyalties to his own party.
The noble Lord is trying to describe today’s events almost as a routine day at the office. I remind him that on two successive legislative days the Government’s business for the day has been withdrawn at the last possible moment: Wednesday’s business on the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill was withdrawn on Tuesday night, and Monday’s business was withdrawn today—he quibbles about the word “withdrawn”— when it was quite clear that that business was going to go ahead today. That is not a routine day at the office. He is very fond of clerks’ advice, so to begin with I will ask him one question. Has he received any advice from the clerks as to the efficacy or advisability of a government flagship Bill which the House was preparing to consider being withdrawn on two successive days with virtually no notice?
The second point I want to make is to remind the noble Lord of what he said to this House last week. He withdrew the business on that day because,
“the House needed the opportunity to reflect on that advice”—
the advice from the clerks—
“before taking a decision on this matter”.
He went on to say:
“I would prefer an informed debate next week to an ill-informed, disorderly row today”.—[Official Report, 31/10/12; col. 619.]
I think that he could claim to have been speaking then for the House as a whole. Indeed, there were Members of the House who thought that that was not such a bad argument, but it cannot conceivably be used—as he has tried to do—as a justification for delaying consideration of the Bill again today. You do not need to be Sherlock Holmes to work this one out. It is quite clear that something happened between the Leader of the House making a solemn undertaking to the House at 3.15 pm on 31 October and then at 6 pm on 1 November, a day that is memorable not least because it is my birthday and All Saints’ Day, deciding that his advice to the House the previous day no longer obtained. The whole question of having enough time to consider and reflect over the weekend was not enough. I would simply ask him this question: what was it between 3.15 pm last Wednesday and 6 pm last Thursday that made him reverse by 180 degrees the advice he had given to the House?
Lord Howell of Guildford
My Lords, perhaps I may speak on behalf of some of the bewildered. My noble friend the Leader of the House is rightly reluctant, as I think all noble Lords should be, about simply overriding the learned views of our expert clerks. If an amendment is inadmissible, why is not possible for the four great gentlemen, the four noble Lords who drafted the amendment—on what is obviously a red-hot political issue, let us not pretend otherwise—to go away and draft an amendment that is admissible? Why are they so insistent on pushing through an amendment over the rulings of our learned clerks, whom we are accustomed to recognise for the validity of their judgments? Why is it suddenly the judgment that we should override them? I cannot see the necessity for that.
I think that the noble Baroness the Leader of the Opposition has made a wrong judgment call. She is anxious to pursue this issue, and why not? It might damage the Government—but to do so by overriding the clerks seems an absurd and clumsy way of proceeding. I suggest that she or her noble friends who have signed the amendment should go away and cook up a sensible amendment. They are learned and experienced noble Lords, so why on earth can they not cook up an amendment that is admissible?
Lord Elis-Thomas
My Lords, reference has been made to the signing of this amendment by my noble friend Lord Wigley. He consulted me before doing so because, in a party of two, consultation is essential. I rise to speak on this issue because for 12 years as the Presiding Officer in Cardiff I always took the advice of the clerks. It is not possible for a parliamentary assembly to function without taking seriously the advice of its clerks. However, we are in a different situation in this Chamber. We are a self-regulating House, which means that there is a democratic and moving relationship. The Speakership of this House—I defer to the Lord Speaker in this—is divided between the Leader of the House and the other parties in this House. The discussions that take place behind the Speaker’s Chair—as it would be in the other place—are essential to the progress of the business of the House.
We have to face two issues here. First, the Government have a right to take their business through, but the Opposition, along with other Members of the House, have a duty to oppose that business when they have the opportunity to do so. That is what is at loggerheads in this situation. I ask the Leader of the House to reconsider his tactic of continually withdrawing the opportunity for the rest of this House to vote on this matter, because that also is contrary to the principles of this House and of parliamentary democracy.
Lord Dixon-Smith
My Lords, perhaps a rather naive Back-Bencher on this side might intervene. We continue to discuss this matter in the context of a specific amendment. That, to me, is not the point at issue. The point at issue is that if we accept this amendment in its present form, against the advice of the clerks, we open the door for any Member of this House to do precisely the same thing again—and again. It is my private view that if we go down that road, those who have tabled this amendment and are insisting on it will live to regret the day, and the future administration of this House will be infinitely more difficult than it has been—or indeed is at this present moment.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
My Lords, last week the Leader of the House gave a reason to the House for the action that he took. Was the advice he received about the power of the Leader of the House to pull something from the Order Paper on behalf of the Government, or acting as leader of his party?
I find tragic the way in which the role and use of the usual channels have been diminished in your Lordships’ House over the past two years. I do not know whether all the parties in the coalition were made aware before a decision was taken about the procedure that the noble Lord has followed in changing the expected business or whether the other party in the coalition was informed after the decision had been taken.
I had a few years’ experience as a government Whip and I am aware of the way in which the usual channels used to work. I cannot recall any occasion when what was done by the Leader of the House was done by merely informing the usual channels rather than discussing it with them.
I have to tell the Leader of the House that there is a view outside your Lordships’ House that he may, as Leader, have convinced enough people to be able to carry the argument that time needed to be spent to reflect on the issue, but the action that he took on Thursday and the resulting effect today will be viewed by the cynical, within and without your Lordships’ House, as merely a response by the Conservative Party, as part of the coalition, facing a defeat. Many people will believe that. I listened so hard to the Leader of the House, waiting for a good reason for the business to be changed.
Secondly, in my view, to start putting matters on the Order Paper after the House has risen on a Thursday on issues about which Members across the House feel very strongly is discourteous. I did not think I would ever stand up in your Lordships’ House and feel the right to say that I believe the Leader of this House has behaved discourteously. However, on this occasion, I do.
Lord Crickhowell
My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Hart of Chilton, I am a member of the Constitution Committee and I have always held him in the highest respect—I do not think that we have ever disagreed about a matter of substance during our discussions in the committee. I had not intended to speak today; I had hoped that the matter would be resolved; but it is necessary to say that there is another reason why we should be very cautious about moving in this way—it does not arise from the procedures, though I think that they are important. In my view, the tabling of this particular amendment to this Bill in the way proposed flies in direct conflict to every single criterion and bit of advice that the Constitution Committee of this House has proffered. It is in contradiction to what we advised as being the proper process for constitutional change in a report that we produced in the previous Session. Indeed, in the report that we produced on the Bill that we are supposed to be debating, we congratulated the Government on having in an exceptional way followed the advice about the manner in which constitutional issues should be debated; that is, they should be debated with plenty of notice and the opportunity for wide consultation and consideration. To table at the last moment an amendment to another Bill that has been more widely considered in this House than almost any legislation in my time here and widely supported, without any opportunity for prior consideration—or, if it had been tabled on the day in question, without the importance of the matter being drawn the attention of the House—is an appalling way to conduct a significant constitutional matter.
In the normal course of events, if a piece of legislation comes forward which has constitutional implications, the Constitution Committee is given the opportunity to consider it, to take the advice of its extremely capable advisers and to produce a report to this House so that it is fully aware of what it is doing before it debates the matter. This has not been possible on this occasion; the Constitution Committee has not had the opportunity to consider and report; and so, quite apart from the importance of the procedural matters that the Leader of the House has drawn attention to, I believe that there are other, very important reasons why we should not go down this route. This is not the way to carry out constitutional change.
Lord Richard
My Lords, with respect, I think that it is this side’s turn. I listened to what the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, has just said, but I am bound to say that I totally disagreed with it. I disagreed with it almost absolutely. It is an extraordinary proposition that, if the Government bring in a Bill that allows the Opposition to table an amendment to it, somehow or other, it is unconstitutional for the Opposition then to table that amendment because the Constitution Committee has not been consulted. That is nonsense. If the Government have produced their Bill in the form that they have produced it, and if the amendment is in order, there is absolutely no reason why the Opposition should not table it, why the House should not debate it and why a vote should not take place.
We are making very heavy weather of this. The constitutional position is very clear: there is no Speaker in this House; there is nobody here who can determine whether the amendment is in order; and the clerks are there to give advice. Of course, there is an obligation to take the advice, but there is no obligation to follow it any more than there is an obligation on the Speaker of the House of Commons to follow the advice that he is given by the clerks of the House of Commons. If this House is self-governing, as it is supposed to be, the body that has to determine whether the amendment is in order is this House and nobody else, and certainly not the Constitution Committee.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I know that one or two Peers still wish to speak, but I wonder just how much will be gained by that. Perhaps I can give a brief response to some of the points that have been made. The noble Lord, Lord Laming, as Convener of the Cross Benches, said that we should invoke proper procedures in accordance with the rules of self-governance. I very much agree with that approach.
The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and others referred to the fact that I said last Wednesday that I expected that we would continue the business today. That was my expectation. The fact is that the discussions that I hoped would take place have not been completed. Therefore, rather than having a debate which may prove to be unnecessary, it is far better for those discussions to continue.
The usual channels were informed at the earliest possible opportunity, on Thursday evening. I have to say to the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington of Ribbleton, that 41 speakers have put their names down for today: not much notice, but enough for 41 speakers to put their names down.
To the noble Lord, Lord Peston, who said that we should just accept the amendment, and to the noble Lord, Lord Grocott—
Lord Peston
That was just one suggestion; what I was really suggesting to the noble Lord is that he goes away to sort this out. That is what their Lordships want. He does not have to accept my suggestion, although I think it is a rather good one. My main suggestion is: just go away and get this sorted.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, that is a much better line. That is the noble Lord, Lord Peston, that I recognise; not the one who spoke a few minutes ago.
Let me just explain for a few moments to those who have questioned the process, the procedure and, indeed, my personal motivation in all of this. We do not have many rules in this House, but we do have some. One of them is that when an amendment is deemed inadmissible by the clerks, I have an absolute duty as Leader of the House—the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, if she were Leader of the House, would do the same thing; the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, did it in the incident to which I referred a few months ago—to draw that to the attention of the House. The House, ultimately, as the noble Lord, Lord Richard, said, is the arbiter of this. We cannot find an occasion—
The Countess of Mar
My Lords, the noble Lord said that the House ultimately is the arbiter of this, but the reason that he gave for the delay was that the Prime Minister and the leader of the Liberal Democrat party, the Deputy Prime Minister, would have to be consulted. If it is a matter for the House, why do they have to be consulted?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, we are crossing two different things. One is my role as Leader and the other is when we take this. I thought it right, as did senior members of the Government, that there should be a period of discussion before bringing the business before the House. As I explain, they are two clearly different things: one is the role of the Leader of the House and the other is a decision for the Government. It must be right that the Government decide when to bring business forward; after all, that is the purpose of winning a general election.
The noble Baroness said: why cannot we have our say? She is entirely free and allowed to bring forward her own Private Member’s Bill at any stage and, if it is in order, it will be taken. My noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford asks an extremely sensible question: why cannot these brilliant individuals, such as the noble Lord, Lord Hart, with all his training and knowledge of this House, advised no doubt by outside counsel, not bring forward an admissible amendment? I do not know the answer to that. I urge the noble Lord to do so. Then we would not be having this debate.
I am grateful for the support of my noble friends Lord Dixon-Smith and Lord Crickhowell. There are matters of processing procedure that are not always straightforward in this House. I urge noble Lords who wish to discover more to go to the very excellent seminars that the Clerk of the Parliaments holds from time to time on these matters. They will discover that, as I said earlier, although we do not have very many rules, we do have some, and this is one of them. Finally, the noble Baroness, Lady Jay of Paddington, my predecessor, said:
“It is a consequence of our procedures that the House has collective responsibility for observing these procedures and that all Members of your Lordships’ House therefore need to co-operate to see that procedures are observed”.—[Official Report, 20/4/99; col. 1112.]
I could not have put it better myself.
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean
My Lords, before the noble Lord the Leader of the House sits down, would he be kind enough to acknowledge something that he has not acknowledged so far in discussing all this? It is not only my noble friend Lord Hart who is bringing forward the amendment. It is also brought forward by the former head of the Diplomatic Service from the Cross Benches, the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, by the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, and, perhaps most significantly, by the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, who is such an important figure in the Liberal Democrat party. I wonder whether the noble Lord would be kind enough to acknowledge that before he sits down.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, it is because of the eminence of the four individuals who have brought forward this amendment that I pray in aid my noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford. Why cannot they find a better way of doing it?
Lord Elystan-Morgan
May I make a point which has not, I believe, been touched upon up to now? There are procedural issues that are fascinating and of massive impact; there are also constitutional issues dealing with the possible merits of the amendment that are of massive impact. One point that I suggest should be considered by anybody who has the future of this House, and indeed the good of Parliament, in mind with regard to the two statutes we are concerned with—first, the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 and, secondly, the matter now before the House—has been very pertinently made in the most excellent opinion of Mr James Goudie, a Queen’s Counsel. It is that those two pieces of legislation, assuming that the ERA Bill goes through in its present form, are out of sync one with the other.
I can put it very simply in this way. In so far as the 2011 Act is concerned, the number of registered electors is the very touchstone of the approach of the Boundary Commission to the situation of a particular constituency. I do not think anybody would disagree with that. In relation to this proposed legislation, however, that situation is fluid not solid. It is fluid in this sense; at the moment, it is the householder who is legally responsible for registering persons living in his property. From the time that the ERA Bill becomes law, it will, of course, be a responsibility upon the individual elector. The effect will be that in the first instance there will be a fall in the number of registered electors in each constituency—I do not think that anybody can dispute this—because of the change in responsibility between the individual and the householder. Any calculation made by the Boundary Commissions will therefore be inaccurate. That is why the two pieces of legislation are out of sync one with the other. It was contemplated at one time that both should be looked upon as one whole. In a speech on 5 July 2010, the Prime Minister said that the effects of the proposals would be considered together. That is what I urge upon the Government in this context.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I mean no disrespect at all to the noble Lord, and no doubt what he has said will be debated when we get to the Bill, but I wonder if the time might have come for us to proceed with the business of the day.
Lord Barnett
Before the noble Lord the Leader of the House sits down, I have one brief point to make. I have some fellow feeling with him because I too was once accused of being discourteous to the House—as he will no doubt recall because he was the one who accused me of it, and then apologised privately and personally in a very kind letter. The important thing here is that, as has been made quite clear, it is for the House to decide, so let him put this business on the Order Paper and it can do so. Why has he not given us an adequate reason for removing the business? We know that some slight disagreement between his fellow coalition members might be a problem, but the House can decide—that is what we are here for. Why will he not bring it back?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, there is really not much more that I can add to what I have already said.
Partnerships (Prosecution) (Scotland) Bill [HL]
Crime and Courts Bill [HL]
(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Taylor of Holbeach
That the Crime and Courts Bill [HL] be recommitted to a Committee of the Whole House in respect of Schedules 16 and 17.
Statute Law (Repeals) Bill [HL]
(12 years, 1 month ago)
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The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
My Lords, I am pleased to bring forward this Bill, which continues to make further progress in the modernisation of the statute book by removing obsolete legislation from it. The Bill was prepared by the Law Commission and the Scottish Law Commission in fulfilment of their ongoing statutory responsibility to promote the repeal of obsolete and unnecessary laws.
Over the past 43 years the law commissions, which are independent statutory bodies set up under the Law Commissions Act 1965, have published 19 reports on statute law repeals, with draft Bills attached, that have been presented to Parliament. The 18 previous reports have resulted in the repeal of 2,300 whole Acts and the part repeal of thousands of others. The present Bill proposes the repeal of more than 800 whole Acts and the part repeal of 50 others. This makes it the largest statute law repeals Bill that the commission has ever produced.
The repeals are set out in Schedule 1 to the Bill. They are in 11 parts and cover a diverse range of subjects, from poor relief and lotteries to turnpikes and Indian railways. As always, the law commissions have uncovered areas of some historical interest and antiquity. For example, the earliest repeal is from around 1322—the exact year remains uncertain—and concerns the working of the old Exchequer Court. Other historical curiosities, no doubt important in their time, include an Act of 1696 passed to fund the rebuilding of St Paul’s cathedral after the Great Fire of 1666; an Act of 1800 to authorise the holding of a lottery for the £30,000 Pigot diamond; and 38 Acts passed to support various railway companies operating in British India and the wider East Indies. However, not all the repeals involve ancient law; the Bill includes the repeal of a number of unnecessary tax provisions, the most recent of which were enacted in only 2010.
Your Lordships will wish to know that there has been full consultation by the law commissions with interested bodies on all the proposed repeals, and there are no outstanding objections to any of them. I am sure that your Lordships will wish to join me in paying tribute to the two law commissions for their very thorough and painstaking efforts in this important work of modernising our statute book. I should also thank those who have been consulted by the commission for their contributions.
Finally, because some of the repeals relate to devolved matters in Scotland, a legislative consent Motion has been lodged in the Scottish Parliament in accordance with standard practice. If your Lordships are content with the Bill at Second Reading, it will be referred to the Joint Committee on Consolidation, a committee on which I had the honour to serve some 30 years ago. This will be considered by that committee in the usual way. I commend the Bill to the House.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I join the Minister in thanking and commending the Law Commission for the huge amount of work that has gone into bringing forward the Bill. As winter perceptibly draws upon us, the Minister appropriately comes to us in the guise of a sort of Autolycus manqué; in his case disposing rather than snapping up unconsidered legislative trifles accumulated over, as he said, many centuries.
I do not know whether the Minister has read the 365-page report of the Law Commission. I confess that I have not done so, but my eye caught some of the matters to which the noble Lord referred. In particular, I noticed that there were some Acts of Parliament affecting Newcastle, of which, of course, I am a resident and, still, a member of its council. It is striking how much detail has gone into the work of the commission, looking at some rather obscure provisions. For example, in Part 1 group 11 in the report, there is reference to two Acts of Parliament concerning Newcastle hospitals. The first is the Holy Jesus Hospital; the Newcastle-Upon-Tyne Act of 1947 dealt with that. These were hospitals built as alms houses in the 1680s. This one later became a museum and harboured something called the “town hutch”. The town hutch did not in fact contain rabbits; it contained the cash of the city council. The hutch is still preserved. Given the declining resources of the city council, they might well find it easier to accommodate them in the hutch in future, rather than the banks in which we are presently depositing our moneys.
Another Bill affected a different sort of organisation, the Mary Magdalene Hospital, a real feature of the city’s history. It is 900 years since a leper hospital was founded just outside the then city boundaries. Later it changed its character, and a new charter was granted in 1611, to provide housing for,
“three poor single or unmarried brethren”.
Brethren of whom it was not quite clear, but the trust still works. It still provides a very successful sheltered housing scheme, which is very popular and well managed, and resourced by the trust’s substantial landholdings in the city.
On another front, Part 5 of the report contains reference under the rather misleading heading of “Northumberland” to another Newcastle piece of legislation. The Explanatory Notes contained in the Law Commission’s report say:
“In 1688 a sizeable proportion of the population of Newcastle-upon-Tyne were poor artificers and labourers who found it extremely difficult and costly to recover small debts”.
I can assure your Lordships that, unfortunately, still a sizeable proportion of the population of Newcastle is poor. I do not know whether artificers are around, and do not know how many are labourers, but there is certainly a significant proportion of people who are poor and who find it difficult to cope with such legal matters as dealing with their debts. To resolve the situations 300 years go, a local court was created under the wonderful title of the Erecting Newcastle-upon-Tyne Court of Conscience Act 1688; that is a wonderful description. The court was to provide a local recourse because the cost of starting and conducting cases in London was too great. We therefore had effectively a small claims court where creditors could pursue debts of up to all of £2 locally.
The Minister has some responsibilities for courts now. We are seeing something of history repeating itself, given that we now have a single national county court with local branches. However, all proceedings have to be issued not in the locality but through a single court centre in Salford. Huge problems have been engendered by that process. I am not entirely sure that the Minister would countenance the creation of courts of conscience all over the country in order to promote the disposition of claims. But, as history seems to be repeating itself, it may be that some such recourse will have to be held.
These two examples of arcane and interesting legislation clearly have run past their sell-by date. We are certainly happy with the work of the Law Commission. We commend it for its work and commend the Government for bringing forward this Bill. I suppose that we can look forward to receiving another 365-page document in a few years’ time to dispose of many more pieces of legislation. Of course, I hope that much of the present Government’s legislation will be off the statute book before we get another Law Commission report and that a change of Government, as this side of the House certainly hopes, will happen soon.
Lord McNally
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, for that response and for his ingenuity in managing to get a political point into the reply. In some ways, I am much relieved that more noble Lords did not delve into the support papers—they are absolutely fascinating. I live in St Albans where the court house Act in 1829 enabled it to build a beautiful building in St Peter’s Street, although it is no longer used as a court house. It is interesting that an Act of Parliament was needed to build it.
Another thing which caught my eye was the reference to finance Bills. There is always the complaint that such Bills are too large and too complicated. The value of the Law Commission is given to us. I am a great fan of the Law Commission and its work. I am very pleased that this House, through its new, expedited procedures, brings more Law Commission work through Parliament. It set out on a massive task of looking at finance Bills between 1950 and 2010. Over 14 years, five major consolidations were produced, which must have been an amazing labour of love by the members of the Law Commission who combed their way through successive finance Bills, sifting out the unnecessary.
I also asked which is the oldest statute still active. It is the Statute of Marlborough 1267, which is an omnibus Bill covering distraint on goods without the permission of the courts, tort waste and the suing of outgoing tenants to maintain a property in good order. Dealing with these Bills—starting with Marlborough in 1267 and ending with the electoral boundaries Bill—underpins the sense of history and continuity in the work that we do every day in these two Chambers.
As I have said, with great confidence I will send it to the Consolidation Bills Joint Committee. As a junior member of that committee 30 years ago, I remember the thoroughness with which it does its job. I commend the Bill to the House.
Armed Forces
(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Astor of Hever
That this House takes note of the role of the armed forces and their contribution to the United Kingdom.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Astor of Hever)
My Lords, I begin by giving a warm welcome to my noble friend Lady Garden in her role on the Defence Front Bench. I am very much looking forward to working with her, just as I enjoyed a very good partnership with her predecessor, my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire.
The title for this debate is wide-ranging, and deliberately so. It will allow noble Lords and the noble and gallant Lord to speak on a wide range of subjects, from the welfare of our service personnel to their equipment; how our Armed Forces are structured and funded; and the operations that they are on now, and those that they will be prepared for in the future. I start by paying tribute to the men and women who now serve in Her Majesty’s Armed Forces. Their selfless commitment, dedication to service and professionalism is inspiring to us all. They do not choose where they are sent, but they are willing to risk life and limb, on our behalf. As a country, we owe them a great deal. In this period of remembrance, let us pay tribute to all those who have served in the past, particularly those who have paid the ultimate price to keep our nation free.
Next year will mark the centenary of the start of the Great War. The ranks of those who fought in the trenches have now passed away, but we remember them in the poppies we wear and in the way in which we honour those veterans of other battles of the 20th century who are still with us—and, in this century, all those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our Armed Forces exist to protect our country and provide the ultimate guarantee of its security and independence. Everything we do in defence is directed to that aim and, in the globalised world we inhabit, that means projecting power abroad to protect our national interests, demonstrating our determination and our values. In the uncertain and rapidly evolving security environment of today, we need to be prepared to meet a complex range of threats and challenges. We will always use our influence to reduce the risk of conflict, but we must be ready to fight and win on difficult and dangerous operations against determined opposition. We cannot do everything on our own, so we must work effectively with our allies and partners. That is what we are doing today in Afghanistan.
The mission in Afghanistan is the first priority for the Armed Forces and the Ministry of Defence. The reason we are in Afghanistan is to protect our national security and to ensure that Afghanistan does not again become a safe haven for international terrorism, as it was under the Taliban before 9/11. Our goal is not a perfect Afghanistan, but one able to maintain its own security and prevent the return of international terror groups. The plan is clear: training the Afghan forces to take on the burden of security so that we can bring our troops home while ensuring the gains that we have made. The reality on the ground is that Afghan forces are increasingly taking the lead. This is allowing us to gradually reduce our force levels; we will have reduced them by 500 to 9,000 by the end of the year, and we expect to make further, significant reductions by the end of next year, with all UK combat operations finishing by the end of 2014. We are firmly committed to the strategy and timescales agreed at Lisbon and to the principles of “in together, out together”.
As the NATO Secretary-General set out earlier this year, the decisions made at Lisbon,
“will remain the bedrock of our strategy”.
When the ISAF mission completes in 2014, it will be for the Afghans to manage their own security. This is how it should be. But the end of our combat mission does not signal the end of our support to Afghanistan and its people. NATO will establish a new non-combat mission in Afghanistan, in which Britain will play its part, on top of the bilateral relationship which we will maintain with the Afghan Government and armed forces. Although Afghanistan will continue to face many complex challenges, the agreements for financial and other practical support made in the summits at Chicago and Tokyo will help to underpin Afghanistan’s security and future.
As we move towards the end of our mission, we need to plan for the post-Afghanistan environment and the transformation of defence to meet the challenges of the future. Operations and standing tasks aside, the past two years since the publication of the SDSR have been dominated by the urgent need to implement its vision: to ensure that our forces are prepared for the very different challenges they will face in the future; to eliminate the black hole in the MoD budget; and to learn lessons from the failures of the past so we do not repeat them in the future. Not everyone will agree with every decision we have made, but at least we have not ducked them. None of the ministerial team at the MoD came into politics to cut the defence budget or to reduce the size of our forces.
I regret some of the decisions we have had to make, particularly the redundancies and the retirement of some of the platforms, but in May 2010 we were faced with one of the biggest deficits in the developed world. We had to make some tough choices: tough choices that were necessary to set a sustainable course for the transformation of our Armed Forces to ensure they are structured, supported and equipped effectively to protect our national security in the face of the threats they will encounter in the decades to come. They were necessary, too, to tackle a forward defence programme that had been allowed to grow way beyond the resources available.
Budgetary discipline has to continue to be the supporting foundation of the transformation to Future Force 2020 or the tough decisions we have had to make will come round again. The defence equipment programme needs to be balanced and sustainable if the Armed Forces are to have the confidence that the capabilities promised will actually be delivered on time and to requirement. Thanks to the hard work and tough decisions taken over the past two years, we in the Ministry of Defence now have a balanced budget with an affordable equipment programme, backed by the world’s fourth largest defence budget. This changes the dynamic. By maintaining discipline we can begin to release the contingencies that have been built into the budget to support further investments in capability, confident that there is a sustainable funding stream to deliver them. For instance, since the beginning of this financial year, the new discipline in our budgetary regime has allowed us to give the go-ahead for a series of equipment projects above the committed equipment programme. This includes 25 extra Foxhounds for Afghanistan, enhancements to Merlin helicopters and new targeting pods for fast jets.
Earlier this year we received the first Joint Strike Fighter. This state-of-the-art, fifth generation fast jet will be flying from the deck of the new aircraft carrier HMS “Queen Elizabeth” in just over five years’ time. New vehicles, new helicopters, new aircraft, new ISTAR, new ships, new submarines, new cyber capabilities—the advanced, adaptable and powerful forces of Future Force 2020 are being built piece by piece. It is smaller than before but able to reach across the world and operate across a spectrum from high-intensity combat to enduring stabilisation activity, deploy overseas and sustain a brigade-sized force indefinitely or a division-sized force in time of need. It is able to command in the coalition context and is more interoperable with our main allies. It is fully integrated between regular and reserves, with predictable obligations for the reservists that will require a real commitment to service, and with a more systematic use of contractors for support and logistics, allowing greater focus of military manpower on fighting tasks. This is the shape of the future force we are building.
I turn to the issues we will be facing over the coming year to help make this a reality. By the latest reckoning around a quarter of the commitments in the SDSR involving defence have now been completed. The rest of the headline targets are on track. Now the Army has set out its future structure in Army 2020 we can begin to deliver on another part of the jigsaw—Reserve Forces. We will be publishing our Green Paper in the coming days. At the heart of this will be renewing the proposition for both reservists and employers, ensuring that the contributions of those individuals who serve are recognised and properly supported and that the mutual benefit the reserve service provides to the state and to employers is grounded in a new, open and tailored relationship.
Despite the incredible contribution they make to operations, the reserves have too often in the past been the forgotten part of our Armed Forces: no longer. They will be larger, receive new equipment and be better integrated with their regular colleagues. I know that there are those who doubt we can achieve our ambition for the reserves but this betrays very short memories. The new levels we have set are well within historic norms. In 1990, the TA was 76,000-strong: the Army reserve we are proposing is modest in comparison. I accept that the new targets are ambitious in the current climate. We will need the support of employers, reservists, their families and society as a whole to make the changes we need in the right way. The Green Paper consultation will be all about establishing how best to do this.
The work we are doing on the reserve is part of the process of providing certainty for our people and transforming the structures that support them and their families. We will announce, by the end of the year, a rebasing plan so that families will know where their future homes will be. We will accelerate work on the new employment model to make service terms and conditions more flexible to better reflect the complexity of modern family life. We will do what we can to make a reality of the Armed Forces covenant because we want our service men and women to know that this Government and the British people recognise the debt of gratitude that we owe to them and to their families.
We will soon publish the first annual report on the Armed Forces covenant, setting out the progress we have been able to make since we enshrined the key principles in law last year. We will therefore, quite rightly, be held to account for what is done to make the covenant a reality. I am particularly pleased about how entrenched the covenant is becoming across all departments of Government. There has been a cultural change in Westminster, driven by the Prime Minister, with Ministers from other departments approaching the Ministry of Defence with ideas on how they can help. The Education Secretary has found money to increase the level of the service pupil premium and extending its reach. The Chancellor has proposed to hand £35 million of fines levied on the banks after the LIBOR scandal to service charities. There continues to be limited financial room for manoeuvre; we will have to prioritise strictly and only make promises we know we can fulfil.
However, these initiatives say that where the Government can act we will, not just in the MoD but as a whole. Underpinning all this work is the reform of the management of defence itself. Procurement has been dogged for years by weak relationships between parts of the department. We have lacked the right business skills and capabilities to manage capital and infrastructure projects that are among the largest in the public sector. We are, therefore, putting in place a new blueprint for the management of defence, as recommended by the report of the noble Lord, Lord Levene, on defence reform. We are creating a leaner, more strategic head office, empowering the service chiefs to run their individual services and their delegated service budgets. By pushing accountability down the chain of command, we are encouraging innovation and budgetary responsibility. This last message is underpinned by introducing a stronger financial and performance management regime across the whole department. The materiel strategy being put together by Bernard Grey and his team in Defence Equipment and Support is the next big piece of that puzzle. This will set out how we will sharpen the boundaries and align incentives internally to ensure consistent, focused decision-making. We are seeking to instil private sector skills and disciplines into our acquisition process, driving up productivity by bringing a private sector partner into the process.
Ultimately, it is the people of defence who deliver the battle-winning capabilities which protect and defend us. As we turn to face the Cenotaph this coming weekend and as we listen to the strains of “Oh God our Help in Ages Past”, as we remember those who have given their lives in the cause of freedom, let us together reaffirm our debt of gratitude to the men and women of our Armed Forces and show them how proud we are of their service.
I beg to move.
Lord Robertson of Port Ellen
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his remarks, and I associate myself and, I am sure, all Members of the House with the comments he laterally made about remembrance. I also welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, to the Front Bench. She has a long and illustrious history on these subjects, and I remember her and her husband, the late Lord Garden, being great supporters of British defence and the issues surrounding it.
As the Minister said, it is the time of remembrance. We wear poppies with pride and with meaning. We show respect for lives lost and for survivors whose lives have been shattered by wounds. We remember sacrifices made and service delivered, and it is right to pay tribute to the courage, professionalism, dedication and commitment of those who serve in our Armed Forces. Out of the present turmoil in the Government’s business programme, we are in many ways lucky to have this opportunity at this time for this debate.
It is right and proper, and worth remembering, that today we speak in our own language, enjoy a parliamentary system of government, have a free press and the rule of an independent legal system because—in many ways, only because—of what was done in our country’s name in past conflicts. I once walked through the park at the bottom of Park Lane, where a number of war memorials are all too unnoticed because they lie on a roundabout, and it is therefore dangerous to get to them. However, there is a huge monument to the Royal Artillery, on which it is stated:
“They died with the faith that the future of mankind would benefit from their sacrifice”.
Some 49,000 men of the Royal Artillery died in the First World War, and 30,000 died in World War II, some 79,000 men who gave their lives in both wars in order that we would benefit; and there is no doubt that we have benefitted.
However, tributes to those who wear the Queen’s uniform, the civilians who support and back them up, and the way that they go about their dangerous and difficult business, lack one thing that is critical to them—full-blooded support for the missions that they have been sent to carry out. Wars such as the conflict in Afghanistan are not won or successful through military means alone. They are won when the enemy knows that you will not give in, when the enemy knows that your cause is mightier than theirs, and when those who fanatically want to impose a brutal, illiberal, theocratic and undemocratic regime on a population simply will not be allowed to prevail. We will succeed in Afghanistan when our troops know that they fight for a noble cause and that the enemy, in contrast, fights to enslave its own people. Our troops have a right to know that the people of this country and those of the other 49 countries in the NATO-led ISAF mission are behind it and those who risk their lives and limbs every day to deliver it. However, that requires leadership in our nation. It requires that the political leadership of the United Kingdom—all of it—asserts day and daily why that mission in Afghanistan is about our security here at home, and that its success or failures matter to the safety of our citizens in this country.
The great United States journalist, Edward Murrow, after the Second World War said the following of Winston Churchill:
“He mobilised the English language and sent it into battle”.
Churchill knew instinctively the power of rhetoric in order to get the people of Britain behind the war effort, of the need to build confidence at times such as in 1940, after Dunkirk, when we were militarily powerless and when his Cabinet was enfeebled by division. He rallied the British people, galvanised the troops and, much more importantly, he convinced Hitler that we would never give up and that he would be defeated. He used, in public and in private sessions, the platform of the House of Commons to deliver the message to the people and to the enemy that we were, irrespective of the facts on the ground, invincible. It worked. We know that and we benefited from it. That is why today we speak in English and in freedom in this House.
What would Churchill have made of the fact that, with 9,000 British troops committed to fight in an ongoing war in Afghanistan, the last time that our Prime Minister made a speech about Afghanistan in the House of Commons was on 4 July last year? It is nearly a year and a half since the Prime Minister made a speech about Afghanistan. It is difficult for any of us to put thoughts into the minds of the great Churchill, but he might have said, as I say now, “We seem to have lost the will to win”. Where is the mighty and necessary psychological assault on the Taliban today? Where are the stirring speeches designed to intimidate the insurgents in support of our mission to normalise a country that was brutalised by the medieval criminals who filled the vacuum left in Afghanistan after the Soviet Union left in 1990? Where are the arguments which should be put to the British people, the arguments that I used to make regularly in NATO, as have my successors and Ministers at the Ministry of Defence, about having to go to Afghanistan or Afghanistan will come to us?
We have an exit strategy that appears to be all exit and no strategy. It signals to the Taliban to wait two more years and then we will all be gone. It signals to our troops that, although they see progress on the ground, as they risk their lives to consolidate it, they get little backup or encouragement from the political leadership of this country. We admire and rightly value their guts and their professionalism but we say to them, “Just hang on because in a couple of years’ time this mission”, which is rarely spoken of here, “will be over and you will be back home”, in some cases, as the Minister has admitted, to redundancy notices instead of the thanks of a grateful nation. It signals to the British people that their weariness at the deaths and injuries and the Treasury cost are justified as it appears that no case is being made for why we went, why we stay and why it matters to people on British streets.
I recently heard a very senior American officer with responsibility for that area say that the closer he got to Afghanistan the more he saw progress but the closer he got to Washington, Brussels or London the more pessimistic he was about it. The picture in Afghanistan shows signs of success, hard and expensively achieved as it has been. Last week, Secretary General Rasmussen laid out the progress made: 80% of insurgent attacks take place in areas where only 20% of the Afghan population now live; and in Kabul and its immediate surrounding areas the number of enemy-instigated attacks declined 17% in the first eight months of this year.
In the first six months of 2012, Afghan troops led 80% of all operations. They do 85% of their own training. Afghan troops and police, trained in their thousands, now take the lead for security in areas where 75% of the population live. Schools are open. Women are being educated again. Even in Helmand province, street markets are being reopened. Many of us had the opportunity to talk to soldiers during the Olympic Games, where again they performed with professionalism. They can see, and will talk about, the progress that is being made. They are proud of their success and we, too, should be proud of it.
We all know why we went into Afghanistan. The move was popular because it was universally seen as necessary to rid Afghanistan of the medieval regime of the Taliban that had incubated the criminal terrorists responsible for the attacks of 9/11 and for many others before that. It was also about making sure that Afghanistan would be sufficiently normalised and assisted so that it would never again host the kind of criminal terrorism that we saw in the early part of 2000. However, the job is not over. Leon Trotsky said, about another war at another time: “You may not be interested in this war, but this war is interested in you”. The job in Afghanistan is not yet over, and if we leave with it only half done, the carnage that may follow will not stop at the mountains of the Hindu Kush or at the national boundaries of central Asia; it will come to us. The lesson of history remains that we should finish the job properly or we will face bleak prospects as a result of failure.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill
My Lords, first it must be said from these Benches that our Armed Forces have contributed magnificently both at home and abroad to the well-being of this country—often in difficult and dangerous situations, and with our soldiers, sailors and air men and women under tremendous military and political pressure. These hard facts are brought home to Members of your Lordships’ House each time my noble friend the Minister rises and offers sincere condolences to the families and friends of those who have been killed or wounded on military operations. Both the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, referred to Remembrance Day, and the Minister referred to the First World War. I had not thought for some time, until he mentioned that war, about an uncle who died as a teenager in the Middlesex Regiment. We are not talking just about Afghanistan; men and women have been serving this country for many years.
There is strong support for our Armed Forces among the British public. Armed Forces personnel have contributed to the successful resolution of large-scale emergencies by supporting the civil authorities. Their achievements include the protection of life and the rescue of those in danger—for example, during the floods in the West Country, the foot and mouth disease outbreak of 2001, the national fire strike of 2002-03, the Cumbria floods of 2005 and 2009, the floods in Yorkshire and Gloucestershire in 2007, and the big freeze in 2010; we may have another one coming towards us now. They have also worked with the police in operations on British soil where the level of force they could bring to situations was necessary to defend our national security. The military was deployed in Northern Ireland in support of the civil powers until 2007, supporting the police and managing public order. As a result, military personnel were trained in public order tactics. The Armed Forces have contributed also to protecting people in more routine situations. They have long provided a large part of the search and rescue capability around our coast.
Members of the public have written in their thousands to thank the Armed Forces for their contribution to the London 2012 Olympic Games. During the Games, they played a key role in providing additional specialist support to the police and other civil and Olympic authorities, to ensure that the Games were safe and secure. Of course, support was also provided at the Paralympic Games. The support and appreciation shown by members of the public for the way in which the Armed Forces conducted their duties has been overwhelming and gratifying for service personnel, I am sure. For many people, it would have been the first actual contact with our Armed Forces. What a great achievement and public relations triumph it was. It goes on. Only last week we were informed that in the event of a strike by prison staff, who would step in but the Army to help maintain our prisons?
I now turn to the Armed Forces’ contribution to international stability. At the end of the Cold War, international peacekeeping for military forces took on a new significance as the end of superpower rivalry allowed suppressed regional tensions around the world to reappear. In the 1990s, conflict in the Balkans challenged European and NATO countries to find ways to restore stability, and similar challenges also arose in Africa.
In the new millennium, particularly after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, western nations and their allies found themselves in a range of operations, from Iraq and Afghanistan, which other noble Lords have spoken about in detail, to the counterpiracy operations in the Gulf of Aden and the Horn of Africa. The UK has adapted its use of the Armed Forces to meet these challenges, reflecting its responsibilities for global stability as a permanent member of the UN Security Council. The MoD, in concert with the FCO and DfID, contributes to ensuring the tenets of the Building Stability Overseas strategy by jointly working for peace and stability in post-conflict and transitional states. Many people are doing that at this very moment.
The MoD is working to improve its upstream conflict prevention skills by honing its intelligence capabilities and contributing to Partnership for Peace initiatives. In Libya, for instance, the MoD has identified areas for targeted assistance that will deliver strategic effect, which was requested by the Libyan authorities. Will my noble friend confirm that with any cuts or reorganisations proposed we will, as far as possible as a nation, continue our support for international stability?
The Armed Forces contribute to UK resilience through their protection and promotion of the UK’s national interests overseas, the provision at home of a number of guaranteed niche capabilities—such as search and rescue and explosive ordnance disposal—and a process of augmenting civil authorities and structures where civil capability or capacity is exceeded. When the military augments civil capability, it will be in response to specific requests for planned response or to a crisis.
The important point is that military operations overseas and augmentation of civil authorities at home are not guaranteed, as they are dependent on the capabilities and availability of troops to undertake such work. Those deciding the size and shape of the UK’s Armed Forces must take their vital operational roles into account when making decisions on the Armed Forces’ future strengths and capabilities. Overall, if the military is to be reduced in size and capability, the roles that it is expected to undertake must be similarly reviewed and adjusted so that they do not exceed the capabilities available to undertake them. But in making those decisions, which my noble friend referred to in passing, we must decide what the priorities are. When there are so many calls, one must decide on the priorities.
Other noble Lords have not yet spoken about what Britain wants from its military communications. What do we want in terms of our satellite technologies? Will we replace the current fleet of communications satellites? When I investigated it, I found that so much of what the Army, Navy and Air Force do is utterly dependent on the new communications technologies that have emerged and are emerging and may well need to be replaced. We know of the Army we have but we have to decide on the Army we need. We know of the weapons and equipment that we have—the Minister detailed these and the new weapons and equipment that are coming on line—but are these what we will need for conflicts which may or may not take place?
I was going to talk about the reserves and the territorials but there was a good debate last week which covered that issue in great detail. However, there were press reports today—in at least one newspaper—of the problems of people who wish to serve in the territorials and whether their employers will give them time off and so on. It is a real problem because many commercial firms do not want the upset of people leaving after being called—at times without warning—to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan or wherever it may be.
I refer finally to the Armed Forces Act and the Armed Forces covenant contained within it. I spoke in detail at various stages during the debate on that Bill and, given what we owe our members of the Armed Forces, we have to ensure that their housing is suitable and adequate for those returning to this country. The Minister referred to that in passing. There are problems with how the properties have been leased and maintained. We owe a tribute to those people and should provide them with proper housing. Indeed, we have a duty in terms of how we treat our veterans. I have spoken in the House on a number of occasions on the issue of their medals and whether we can allow members of the Armed Forces to accept medals from other nations, such as Commonwealth nations. I hope that we will discuss that issue as well. The Minister referred to the Armed Forces Act and the Armed Forces covenant and how they will be reviewed. In that review we have to consider the ways in which we are failing as well as the ways in which we are succeeding. We owe a duty to those who fight for us and stand for us in the Armed Forces.
Lord Craig of Radley
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Astor of Hever, for arranging this debate. He has been most assiduous in keeping your Lordships’ House aware of defence issues and this is yet another example of that. I also welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, to her new responsibilities. She has proved to be an excellent Front-Bench spokesman on other subjects and I am sure that that she will be equally good, or better even, on this subject, of which she has much background knowledge.
In this Remembrance Week, many families and friends of the fallen will be thinking of their loved ones—loved ones who served in the two world wars and in a variety of combat operations since 1945. Along with many others, I shall be honouring their memory next Sunday as I march past the Cenotaph with the Not Forgotten Association contingent, of which I am the senior president. While the majority who served in the two world wars or on national service were called up, causalities in more recent conflicts were volunteers. They joined the Armed Forces as a career choice, accepting that in the course of their service they could be exposed to real danger. Public support for Remembrance Sunday, as in your Lordships’ House, is thankfully large.
The recovery of the Falklands following Argentina’s invasion was ultimately a matter for combat operations and, importantly, enjoyed overwhelming national support. However, I fear that our more recent efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan have not enjoyed the same national understanding or backing. Many reasons are suggested for this. The rationale for committing so much treasure, for sacrificing so much in lost lives and limbs, and for continuing over so many years—double the years that it took us to win through in World War I and World War II—is complex, difficult to explain simply and difficult for the public to grasp. But unlike with the world wars or even the Falklands, it is not easy to engender a sense of real tactical successes or even ultimate victory. Media coverage is largely confined to reporting casualties in Afghanistan, and much more needs to be done about that. Minds are now focusing on getting out of Afghanistan, and hopefully enough will have been done by the coalition to enable Afghanistan to look after itself.
However, the so-called war against terror has yet to succeed. There are limits to the contribution that military forces can make in the fight against terrorism. The enemy is not like a state, which is a geographic entity. It can and does threaten from many widely dispersed areas and in numerous different forms. This presents Governments with far more difficult choices for the involvement of their forces in support of other diplomatic and political initiatives.
The current approach is based on two incompatible assumptions. On the one hand there is the size of the financial commitment to defence, not just for day-to-day functioning but also for the future size and shape involving programmes that take many years to realise. For shorthand, let me characterise this as a commitment of 2% of GDP. The other assumption, now shown to be incompatible with the first one, is that the Armed Forces are to be structured to meet a certain level of immediate and ongoing enduring commitments without an honest costing of what that might mean for defence funds.
Most telling now is the number of criticisms of the MoD and Government by coroners dealing with inquests about the lack of life-saving equipment or inappropriate kit for the tasks expected of the casualty. This serves to highlight the mismatch in the public’s mind—their perception of a mismatch between the 2% GDP and what capabilities can be procured and operated on an enduring basis with such funds. Ministers would do well, if the 2% of GDP is not to be increased, to realise the risks of relying on urgent operational requirements and backing from the contingency fund in future engagements. They must never lose sight of the fact that those who will fight for them are volunteers who are prepared to pay the ultimate sacrifice. So service men and women have a right to reasonable expectations that they will get not only political and moral support but the right equipment in the right place at the right time when they are ordered into conflict in a war of choice.
There are two other particular constraints that do not seem to figure as strongly as they should, and attract little or too little attention in the ability of our Armed Forces to take on new operational commitments. The first is that no matter how much current equipment—ships, aircraft or armour—has advanced in hitting power and accuracy, these improvements provide no recompense for meeting geographically widespread commitments.
Noble Lords will recall the endless arguments about frigate/destroyer numbers over the years. My first exposure to this was half a century ago when a force of at least 55 of these ships was deemed to be the absolute minimum. Without going through each of the soon-to-be-breached irreducible minimums in defence reviews in the intervening years, we now expect to stand up a mere 19 of such vessels. Of course, each of the 19 will be more powerful than any of their predecessors, but you cannot cut any of the 19 in two to spread the coverage on worldwide commitments. The Falklands guard ship, the Caribbean drug-busting task force, combating piracy in the Indian Ocean and safeguarding the deterrent are just a few examples of worldwide enduring commitments, as of course are training and ship repair schedules. These could leave too little available for mounting any wars of choice with a maritime contribution. Air power has the flexibility and reach to move rapidly afar, but it, too, can become overcommitted on enduring operations, as we have experienced in the combat air support of Afghanistan—and that was before the most recent cull of front-line fast-jet numbers.
Another factor that has a bearing on numbers is the risk of losses in combat. Since the Falklands, our forces have been fortunate to operate in benign or near-benign air environments. Consequently, losses to opponents have been non-existent or very small. It would be all too facile to assume that future operations would take place in a benign air environment, with no serious loss of ships or aircraft or other major equipment. Experience in the Falklands against an enemy of only limited air power capability cost us dearly, particularly in ships sunk or badly damaged.
Losses in a fight with a better equipped enemy than we have had to face in the past two decades could be infinitely more serious today. Indeed, the very limited cover we might be able to mount for a carrier task force, particularly as we now lack the protection of any maritime patrol capability, could restrict its use to operations facing benign threats and an opposition without any serious strike capability. The Exocet type of threat has not gone away.
A defence budget of only 2% of GDP, which will include the replacement boats for the nuclear deterrent—requiring 25% or more of the equipment budget during the peak stages of that programme—has to be the driver for calculating the variety and mix of short or enduring capabilities that the Armed Forces could mount. This must be constantly reviewed so that Ministers are able to reach judgments on the use of the Armed Forces in the expected threat environment. What this produces must be the yardstick used by Ministers before embarking on any future war of choice.
Surely it should be part of the military covenant that our young men and women are sent on combat operations only when adequately armed and equipped for the task. It should not be acceptable that they have only additional support from the contingency fund but do not have the strength and depth of equipment and back-up for losses in conflict. Such losses cannot be made good overnight, no matter how much money is thrown at them. Unless Ministers are guided in this way, there will be more avoidable casualties in the nation’s thoughts on future Remembrance Sundays.
Lord King of Bridgwater
My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, with whom I had the pleasure of working for a considerable period of time when he was Chief of the Defence Staff.
As the noble and gallant Lord was speaking about the present state of the equipment programme and the facilities and funds that are available to my noble friend the Minister—which he set out very clearly and fairly in his speech, for which I and the House thank him—I was thinking about the criticisms that were made in our time of what was called Options for Change, and the facilities and the range of manpower, equipment and, in the Navy, platforms that were then available, but what we had was positively lavish compared to the situation now, after Frontline First and the various other proposals that followed it.
We listened with great interest to the Minister’s speech. These are very challenging times for the Ministry of Defence. He has inherited an extremely difficult situation, with a huge deficit on the budget. We are told that that has now been met. I congratulate the Secretary of State, the Minister and his colleagues if that has really been achieved and we certainly wish that result well and hope that it will stand the test of time.
I rise to speak on this occasion which, as other noble Lords have said, comes so close to Remembrance Sunday. I noticed in my post today, and other noble Lords will no doubt have received it, the annual report of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which offers the clearest reminder of the sacrifice that so many have made for the security of our country over the years.
As we remember these tragedies of the past, it is always said—the Prime Minister said it in introducing the commemoration of 1914 which will come in 2014 and in which the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, and I will have some involvement—that we must learn the lessons of each war and hope that they will perhaps prevent future wars. It was said that the 1914-18 war would be “the war to end all wars”, but, some 20 years later, we found ourselves at war again. The phrases often used are “wars of necessity” or “wars of choice”. I do not think that anybody would challenge that 1939 was a war of necessity, a war for civilisation against Hitler and the Nazis, who threatened the stability of the whole world at that time. After that war, we saw Korea; we saw Malaya—I was myself involved in the Mau Mau incident in Kenya—but, after that, there was a period of relative calm. It was not a very happy time perhaps, with the Cold War and nuclear deterrence, but it was a time of relative peace, certainly compared to the situation in more recent years. The world was divided into spheres of influence, the Soviet bloc and the western powers, and a certain policing took place at that time.
As people looked then at the old war memorials, I remember them seeming less relevant. A lot of people wondered whether the modern generation would be prepared to go and fight for Queen and country, to endure the hardships and sufferings that in the First and Second World Wars had been so manifest and memorable. Subsequent events have given the clearest possible answer to that. There was the continuity of service and conduct of our Armed Forces over 30 years or more in Northern Ireland during that time of great difficulty in fighting terrorism in that Province and in this country. There was then the Falklands war, mentioned by the noble and gallant Lord, and the liberation of Kuwait. Those events showed that there was nothing wrong with the new generation of our young men serving in the Armed Forces and that they were every bit as capable as their forebears of showing fortitude, endurance and good humour—so manifestly displayed most recently, as many have said, at the Olympics, but obvious to anybody who meets them in the front line or in any other of the active service activities in which they are involved.
They are ready to serve and they do their duty, but, for us, there is another question: have we always done our duty? Have we always shown the fullest responsibility before we call on the willingness of the young people of this country to serve? I come back to my distinction between “wars of necessity” and “wars of choice”. I accept the necessity of our initial involvement in Afghanistan and the absolute commitment to deal with the challenge of al-Qaeda and bin Laden—I say with great respect to the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, that it was not the challenge of the Taliban at the time—and to make sure that Afghanistan did not become a training ground and a base for terrorist activity in other parts of the world.
I would have thought that that has been pretty magnificently achieved. I think that al-Qaeda would now find any attempt to relive its previous occupation of Afghanistan extremely difficult after all the suffering that it has brought on that country. I certainly think that it was essential to go in, in the first phase, to deal with that threat, but we have now been there for 11 years. We commemorate a Great War that lasted four years and a Second World War that lasted six, if one includes Japan, but we have had 11 years in Afghanistan.
I echo something that the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, said: there is a very heavy responsibility on the Government and on leaders in all parties—the bipartisan situation we inherited from the previous Government carried on by the present Government—to ensure that people understand why they are serving there and what is the objective. There are many people who have served here in your Lordships’ House. One cannot think of a nastier campaign to be involved in than when you face not the ordinary, what you might call conventional war but suicide bombers or IEDs; when you never know whether the next step you take down the track will be the end of you or the loss of two or more of your limbs; where you now have the ghastly prospect of the people you are trying to train, who are serving with you in uniform, killing you in turn.
That is a very demanding challenge. When we consider the people who have laid down their lives in the service of their country in Afghanistan, those who have suffered grievous injuries—there is a new phrase that I had not heard before called life-changing injuries—and, to come, post-traumatic stress of one form or another, there is no doubt that there will be big challenges to meet.
I believe that the objectives of Afghanistan have effectively been achieved. It is obviously important that the move which the Prime Minister has announced, which I strongly support—the gradual withdrawal from Afghanistan—is achieved with honour and great care. I fancy that it will not be achieved without great difficulty, not least with the question of withdrawing equipment from those territories, but that should be done.
The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, referred to the problems of equipment. If we have a duty, it is our duty to ensure that, if we ask our forces to embark on campaigns or undertakings of one sort or another that are deemed necessary by the Government and the nation, they are properly equipped, properly trained and have good leadership. In that, I make a plea to both previous Prime Ministers and the present one. It is not impressive if your Secretary of State for Defence changes every year. Our forces are entitled to see that that position is given seniority in the Cabinet and a measure of continuity. No business could run with the leader, the boss, changing every year.
I understand entirely why the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, was guilty of one departure ahead of time. We respect that it was important for the United Kingdom that he should go to be Secretary-General of NATO, but he will know that, more recently, we had five Secretaries of State for Defence in five years. For difficult reasons, as the House knows, we have already had one change under this Government. I hope that there will now be real determination to get some continuity so that people can know who their Secretary of State is and see the leadership that they expect.
On top of that, and this has already been mentioned, if we have a duty to those who serve, we have a duty to their families who encourage them to serve, and we have a duty to those who have served. The importance of the covenant, to which the Government have given suitable prominence, must be fully seen through. The challenge will be great. That covenant will apply not just to serving forces and the Regular Forces; the biggest challenge that the Government will face in maintaining the numbers that we need for our defence is how we are to get reservists of the right calibre and ability to serve. It is much more challenging than it used to be when the TA was a much more part-time activity. Asking people in the TA and others to go for six months —to be taken out of their businesses, as the noble Lord said, and to be willing to serve in that way—will be a major challenge but they must be made part of the military family in every possible way, so that every encouragement is given to that service.
We owe a great debt to those who have served and we shall recognise it this week, on Sunday, but our debt is not just to remember those who have fallen. It is to try to ensure that those who have served already have not died in vain and that the lessons are learnt for us in the future in the most serious way.
Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde
My Lords, it is indeed an honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord King, in this debate. Unsatisfactory though the circumstances have been that created the space for the debate, I must thank the noble Lord, Lord Astor, for securing this topic. I am sure that there must have been some competing issues but to have secured this very important topic for a debate, which is not timed, enables those who are able to do so to contribute and is very welcome. I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, to this debate too. I remember well that when the noble Baroness joined the House, defence was one of the issues that she first picked up. I look forward to working with her in the future and wish her much success.
We are in a week when the country and the nation come together to pay honour and respect and, somehow, to pay the due debt that we have to those who have fallen in the wars that our Armed Forces have taken part in. That is very much manifest in the poppy that we all, rightly, wear. It is a way of recognising the enormous price that so many of our citizens have paid. Within the various ceremonies taking place this year there are still many hundreds of war widows who, throughout the rest of their lives, have paid the price for their loved ones having fallen in defence of this country. They are joined now by young widows—widows of an age that we all hoped, as in the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord King, that we would not be faced with. However, we are because of the unsafe world that we live in. Perhaps I should declare an interest: I am vice-president of the War Widows Association and very proud of the work that the association has done. They have not forgotten the debt that their loved ones are owed by the nation over the years.
We are reminded regularly in this House of the price that our Armed Forces continue to pay in defence of the realm and in carrying out the responsibilities that we give them. At home in the south-west last Friday night, we had on television the service from a tiny church in a small village in Cornwall where people came together to pay respects to Corporal David O’Connor, a young man from 40 Commando who had had three tours of duty in Afghanistan. He was 27, having been killed at the peak of his young life. We were also reminded of the increasing contribution of women to our Armed Forces because when he met his death, alongside him was Corporal Channing Day of 3rd Medical Regiment. She was out there to help and support our service personnel. As we know, our medical people do not just serve those personnel; any civilians who need their help get it. She was aged 25. It is a hell of a price that those young people are paying, day in and day out, in the service of this country.
The nation respects our Armed Forces. That is brought home continually now, not just by the remembrance services that we have but in the other interaction that the Armed Forces have. It is good that they are able to return to their home towns as a regiment in their uniforms. I welcome that. It is good that they come into Parliament in their uniforms and are welcome and respected; we can pay our thanks to them. As the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, mentioned, we also turn to them for help when civil services fail, whether that is because of foot and mouth disease, a firefighters’ strike or indeed the Olympics. I am sure that I am not alone in saying that there was an almost tangible sigh of relief nationally when we were told that the Armed Forces were going to work on security. They were not the backstop; they were the security of first choice for many people in this country, and what a proud job they did for us.
They know when they sign up that they are not going to make a fortune; they know when they take that choice that the ultimate prize could be paid. They know the ultimate sacrifice that they are going to make, but in exchange for that they are given to understand that they have security, stability, welfare support and a cohesive force—whether their regiment, their ship or, in the RAF, their group—that works together. The Armed Forces do not work as individuals but as groups. That is a topic that I shall return to later on in my contribution.
The Armed Forces also expect that when they are on operations, their families will be treated properly. It is the issue of families that I would particularly like to cover today. They also expect that, if they pay the ultimate price, their employer—the nation—will do good by their dependants who are left behind.
The service covenant, which we have had a number of debates on in this House, is a good policy commitment and has good intentions, but we are very short of delivering. I welcome very much the words that I believe were sincerely given by the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Astor, today, about plans in the coming months. Our Armed Forces are pretty straightforward in their view, and I can hear them now saying in my ear, as they used to when I chaired the Armed Forces’ Pay Review Body, “We’ve heard it all before. Come on, start delivering in the areas where you haven’t delivered”. And there is quite a list of those areas.
I have spoken to some personnel in preparation for this debate. The big issue now for them, and this is referred to in this year’s Armed Forces’ Pay Review Body report, is the uncertainty and the insecurity that they feel about the future—where are they going to live and what is the housing going to be like? Nearly 40% of complaints to the forces’ family federations are about housing—the quality of it, the lack of choice and where people are going to be. This issue has been ongoing for a number of years and does not lie just with the present Government, but it will be exacerbated by the fact that we have personnel returning from Germany.
I gather that we now have a situation where, although people may be in one group in one of the three services, they are not all going to be able to live in the same area. I heard of one case of three commanding officers of the same group living in entirely different areas. In such cases you lack cohesion but, more importantly for the families, it is then very difficult to give welfare support when the serving personnel are off on operations. It is difficult, for instance, to bring military wives together to enjoy life and give each other moral support while their spouses are away serving their country. Probably for the first time, this year the Armed Forces’ Pay Review Body referred to low morale in some areas, which it is very concerned about. I hope that it will be following up on that in its report next year.
A two-year pay freeze does not help in any situation. When you are putting a lad or a girl on a plane to go and fight for their country in Afghanistan and possibly pay the ultimate price, as quite a number of them have done, it does not particularly help for them to be told, “By the way, we really recognise what you’re doing but you’re not going to get any pay increase for the next two years”. Our Armed Forces should be treated differently from the rest of us in this country. Why? Because we have the covenant which says that the country will look after them. They do not have the option of just walking away, as so many other people would if they found it difficult.
A small number of the redundancies which have already been referred to were very badly handled. The problem is that that poor handling radiates out through huge numbers in the Armed Forces. The 16-year rule on pensions is that if you have been there 16 years and leave, at a certain age you can then get some of your pension. To be made redundant a few weeks before 16 years and therefore not getting it is pretty cack-handed. I do not believe that it was done deliberately—well, I hope it was not—but we must be careful of it.
On housing, in the previous Budget £100 million was announced for the upgrading of housing: £100 million in, £140 million—I gather—taken out for the upgrading of housing for 2013-15. It does not make sense. They can see through this. None of it helps the cohesion that we are looking for. A family which has been overseas in the Armed Forces cannot get a credit rating when they come back. They cannot get a mortgage. They cannot go and buy a car on hire purchase like the rest of us. They cannot buy big items, because they do not have a credit rating. The banks should be called in to help in that situation. It is not that they have been off somewhere doing nothing at all. They have been working for their country, and we should address that.
Along with the changes in their pension scheme that I mentioned, all this creates uncertainty. I very much welcome what the Minister said in his opening speech, that we will have some policy announcements over the coming months. However, they must have timelines with them. It is not good enough just to say, “This is our policy”. The policies have to be delivered. They cannot give with one hand and take with the other. When the Minister replies, please can she respond to the points about morale, which is an issue?
The austerity measures in the country do not give the Government an opt-out on the responsibility that they carry for all of us to our Armed Forces. They are a special case. No Government can ask us in a debate here to take note of their contribution and then walk away from that responsibility. One or two quotes have been given around the period of remembrance we are in at the moment. One that always strikes home to me is, “Lest we forget”. We forget at our general peril if we do not face up to our responsibility to our Armed Forces and their families.
Baroness Wilcox
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Astor of Hever for bringing this debate to us today. I, too, add my welcome to my noble friend Lady Garden to the Front Bench; I have been working with her on the Front Bench in the past two years, but this is her coming home to a subject that she knows so well and a life that she has been part of for some years.
It is thanks to the contribution of the Armed Forces that I am able to stand here today and speak, a free-born English woman, a citizen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and, I am delighted to say, a member of the All-Party Defence Studies Group that is so ably chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde, where she managed to bring the leaders of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force to us so that we, in our ignorance, can learn and understand better what is needed. I fully echo her words today, certainly on those things which are needed for the families.
I come from the seafaring city of Plymouth in Devon. My family has fought, fished or traded for over 400 years. We face seaward, so it is with the Royal Navy that I am mainly familiar. I grew up during the Second World War in a frightening, fighting city of sailors, marines and commandoes; a city where the women ran everything ashore while their men were away at sea. This debate has provoked keen memories for me, including of standing as a little girl on the cliffs at Mount Batten, of the marine bands on Plymouth Hoe and of waiting to see our mighty ships, some of which were battered and scarred, arrive home. I watched with my mother in the crowded dockyards as thousands of men, some of whom were badly injured, came down the gang-planks with anxious eyes searching for loved ones. What homecomings those were. Union Street teamed with sailors on shore leave who were scooped up by Black Marias at midnight to be taken back to the safety of their ships.
I remember my grandmother’s sitting room. It was a very special room and we did not go in it very often. But when we did, that was where the pictures of the men of the family who had died in action were honoured. My grandmother talked with pride of the men our family had given while fighting for their country. As children, she told us the tales of their brave actions and showed us the maps. Geography meant something to us and we never forgot it.
Between 1939 and 1945, the enemy bombing raids searched out Plymouth docks and they devastated our city. Little of it was left, but our port was safe, the seas were ours and the war was won. The skies had become a battleground for new aircraft, and submarines, soon to be nuclear, gave us new access to our sea. It was our nation’s leaders, our Armed Forces, our use of strategy and, above all, our inventiveness and technology that brought us through. They were very different days from those of Drake and Nelson, and these are different days from Cunningham and Leach.
Britain is a maritime trading nation. I have spent 10 years on the board of the Port of London Authority and I know that more than 90% of our exports and imports come via the sea. In World War II, we would have starved if the Navy had not been able to protect at least some of our merchant fleet. Much of our prosperity depends on the free movement of goods and resources across the oceans. Deployed globally, the Royal Navy is constantly driving forward our interests worldwide. It has the capacity to inflict violence on the enemy through recently used effects, such as naval gunfire support. But, probably just as influential, and certainly more enduring, is the constant development of wider regional relationships in every port of call—from the Caribbean to the Far East and from South America to the Baltic Sea.
However, much of what the Royal Navy does goes unseen and unheard as it works thousands of miles from home in distant waters. This lack of day-to-day visibility has inexorably led to a certain amount of “sea blindness” within the general public as they become increasingly divorced from any association with our maritime activities. I thank the Minister very much for the new Armed Forces day, which I believe will start next year on 29 June. I will encourage every parent and grandparent to take their children along so that they can learn and understand what our forces are doing everywhere.
This naval blindness is unfortunate because not only is the naval contribution to our collective well-being a world-wide effort, there are increasing demands on our sailors much closer to home, whether it is the 11th-hour failure of private security companies for the Olympics or threats of strike action by fuel tanker drivers or prison officers. As we have already heard from my noble friend Lord Palmer and the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, the Armed Forces stand ready to step in and are becoming increasingly the nation’s insurance policy.
These emerging demands place even more strain on our sailors. While they are used to being away for long periods, they quite rightly expect a level of stability when they are back at home. Ships are generally deployed overseas for six months in every 18 months. However, preparations and training for the next operation start as soon as a unit returns.
As our country moves out of recession, our national prosperity and freedoms are increasingly vulnerable to events across the globe. The Royal Navy is uniquely able to respond in a variety of ways in line with the Government’s intent. With 40 Commando fighting in Afghanistan, as I speak, and many other naval personnel also on the front line, from airborne surveillance to bomb disposal, the contribution of the Royal Navy to United Kingdom interests is undeniable. To maintain this contribution, a wide range of capabilities will be required for the foreseeable future, from the soft effect of a warship visiting a far-flung port to develop partnerships to the higher-end war-fighting skills that are likely to be needed to ensure the freedom of movement for shipping should global events take a turn for the worse.
I welcome this debate as a means of highlighting the ongoing resolve of our Armed Forces to meet our existing and emerging commitments, at home and abroad, and to be prepared for whatever contingent activities may be required in areas such as the Arabian Gulf and the eastern Mediterranean. I am truly grateful for the freedom to speak here today, in this time of remembrance, to remember those men and women of our Armed Forces who died so that we may continue to live in safety in these green and pleasant lands, and I commend our Government for trying to do all that they can to shape and equip our Armed Forces for the future safety of us all.
Lord Davies of Stamford
I start by endorsing the tributes that have already been made in this House to our Armed Forces. I know, as everybody in this House knows and I hope the country knows, that those tributes are not ritualistic but deeply felt on both sides of the House.
I also thank the Minister for giving us this opportunity. He is extremely conscientious and serious in his duties to the House, and he has done very well by the House today in getting us this opportunity. I am not going to allow my great respect for the Minister to muzzle the things that I am about to say, but I want to say at the outset how much we appreciate that. I also welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, to her new role on the Front Bench. Those of us who knew him, and all of us today, will be very sad that her husband, who had one of the most brilliant and original military minds that I have ever encountered, cannot be with us this afternoon to see her there, sitting on the Front Bench with those new defence responsibilities.
I am going to be very frank, because the situation requires frankness. The state of our Armed Forces is very depressing and worrying. All the serving officers and men whom I have had the opportunity to speak to recently—it so happens that I have not had the opportunity to speak to any servicewomen recently—are all of one accord. They say that morale is worse than it has been for at least 20 years, since the excessive cuts undertaken by the previous Conservative Administration in the 1990s, to which the noble Lord, Lord King, has already referred. In parenthesis, I may say that I opposed those cuts at the time in a pamphlet called Facing the Future, which I published jointly with a number of then Conservative Back-Bench colleagues, including Andrew Robathan and Julian Brazier. My views on defence have not changed since they were expressed in that pamphlet.
I used to think that the Conservative Party among all British political parties was the one with the best understanding of the importance of defence and the greatest sympathy for the needs of our Armed Forces. That was certainly true when I joined the Tory Party in 1974 and remained indubitably true, in my view, for quite a number of years after that. But in the 1990s, I began to wonder whether that was still true, and I wondered even more when I read the Defence White Paper of the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, in 1998. It is very difficult indeed to imagine that anybody would come to the conclusion that it is true today.
As the Minister said, the Government have made some tough choices; the trouble is that in my view those choices were completely wrong. For example, the Government decided to continue to give India £300 million in aid a year, a country that is building aircraft carriers and buying aircraft to fly off those carriers, while deciding that we could not afford to have a carrier strike force at all for the next 10 years. I think that was profoundly wrong. It might have been tough but it was absolutely wrong and a betrayal of the national interest. The Government have produced a situation in which our Army is now being reduced by 20%. That means that we can now deploy on a sustainable basis only something of the order of a brigade—say, 2,000 men and women with full supporting arms, as opposed to the 10,000 we have deployed in Afghanistan for many years past. That is a good example of the negative gearing effect of cutting your defence forces. I fear that our defence forces have now been cut to a point where they would simply not be able to respond to a whole range of all too easily conceivable scenarios.
The other problem with doing this is that you send quite the wrong signal to those people around the world who might be tempted to breach the international peace or even have designs on our own territory. I do not suppose for a moment that the Argentinians are at this moment planning to attack the Falklands. Cristina Fernández or Cristina Kirchner—I do not know which she prefers to be called—has said that she wishes to resolve the matter peacefully, but aggressors always have a way of saying at the outset that they intend to resolve the problem peacefully. I equally have no doubt at all that the raising of this issue in Argentina, and the terms in which it has been raised over the past couple of years, has not been coincidental. It is not unlinked to the fact that it is now clear that for 10 years we will not have a carrier strike force which would be required if ever the Argentinians succeeded in taking over the Falklands again. We would now be incapable of retaking the Falkland Islands in the way we did in 1982. It is a very serious matter which the whole country needs to take very seriously. That is why I am not muzzling the words that I am using this afternoon, as I believe that they are entirely justified.
The question arises of what you do about a situation like that. It is very easy for me to say, “Vote Labour at the next election and get rid of this awful Government”. I have said that and will continue to say it. However, I recognise that in reality you cannot entirely go back. It would be absurd to make a promise that we could entirely reverse the cuts that have been introduced and go back to square one. You can never entirely go back in history; we all recognise that. We need to think very carefully about what we do to try to make sure that we have the means to continue to make a positive contribution to the world’s peace. As several speakers have mentioned —I would say almost a majority of those who have spoken on both sides of the House this afternoon—we have played a decisive part in that in these many operations and difficulties over the past 60 or 70 years since the Second World War.
As I contemplate this matter, I think increasingly that the solution must be to do something which I know is counterintuitive for some people and would not be welcome to many distinguished members of our Armed Forces, but they might prefer it to having no effective defence at all: that is, to take very seriously the prospect of a European common defence policy. If such a policy is ever to produce any real savings and address the financial issues, which, of course, are real issues, it would have to be based on defence specialisation. You would no longer have everybody, including ourselves, having MBTs, light tanks, reconnaissance vehicles and utility vehicles or large helicopters, medium helicopters, small helicopters and so forth. There would have to be a degree of defence specialisation. That means that you would have to be certain in advance that everybody who was required would be there on the day when you needed to deploy within one coherent command and control system, which, of course, requires common foreign policy. These things are difficult pills to swallow for a lot of people and impossible, I think, for the Conservative Party because it is incapable of taking rational, pragmatic decisions on this subject as it is so imprisoned by its own emotional and ideological opposition to anything European.
Lord Dobbs
Will the noble Lord speculate on whether this European defence force that he is so keen on could under any circumstances defend the Falklands if there were another crisis?
Lord Davies of Stamford
Yes, indeed. First, it would not be a common defence force in the sense that you would have people from different countries serving in the same unit. That would be absurd. However, a common defence policy would require a guarantee on the part of all the other members of the EU with regard to all our domestic territories, including overseas territories. That would apply to the French, the Dutch and others who have overseas territories. That would be an essential part of the deal. I have no doubt about that at all. The noble Lord realises that that raises all sorts of issues but all of us need to look at these matters with a greater degree of realism because the alternative is impotence. We will all be spending a lot. The total defence spending in the European Union is in the order of about €200 billion, which sounds a lot but is very small compared with the United States. It must be something like a quarter of the United States defence spending. I cannot get the arithmetic completely right while speaking on my feet but it is a large amount of money. A lot of it is being spent completely ineffectively for the simple reason of the negative gearing effect to which I have already referred. These matters need to be considered. I cannot go into the detail this afternoon but we need to go into the detail on these matters. We need to consider them. I realise that this is considered in some quarters a revolutionary and, indeed, very obnoxious suggestion, but I have put it to the House that the alternative will be impotence, and that cannot be the right solution for Europe as a whole and for the future of a civilised world.
I would like to say a word or two about defence procurement. I say frankly to the Minister that I was pretty astounded by one of the things he said. I am sure that he was loyally mouthing the current government propaganda on the subject; that is what you have to do sometimes when you are a Minister, as I know. He referred to new equipment. I think that he said there would be new submarines, new ISTAR and new helicopters. What did he mean by that? As regards new submarines, as far as I know the Government—thank God—are continuing with the Astute programmes and the Successor-class submarine programme but are delaying both. That is not exactly new equipment. I suppose that by new helicopters the Minister means Wildcat and Chinook. It so happens that I was responsible for promoting, pushing through, negotiating and concluding both those projects. They are not new in any way. Far from adding to them, the Government are actually reducing them. They cancelled 10 of the 22 Chinooks that I ordered, so it is pretty rich to describe that as new equipment and put it to the credit side of the Government. I suppose that by new ISTAR the Minister meant the Predator system, for example, which we bought more of, and Watchkeeper, which again goes back to Labour’s time in office. One needs to be cautious about listening to some of the extraordinary government propaganda that comes out on this subject. We need a reality check from time to time.
We particularly need a reality check as regards the great deficit that the previous Labour Government are supposed to have left behind—the so-called £37 billion or £38 billion black hole. My next comment has been said before but it needs to be said again, because we continue to hear this dreadful piece of black propaganda. There is no such thing as the figures I have mentioned. You get to figures of that kind only if you make two assumptions which you cannot possibly make in good faith. One is that everything on our prospective procurement list would be procured. That never happens. I cancelled several things myself. I cancelled the medium helicopter project in order to finance the Chinooks, as the noble Lord no doubt knows. I cancelled the MARS tanker programme. One is always cancelling things for good military reason and switching to higher priorities in defence procurement.
The second thing which one can accept in good faith even less is the assumption, which has to be made to get to the figure that I have mentioned, that there would have been no cash increase. In other words, there would have been an enormous real-terms reduction in our military budget and our procurement budget for 10 whole years. In fact, the previous Labour Government increased defence spending by 1.5% per annum in real terms after inflation. Although the coalition will hold defence spending within a cash ceiling for the first five years it has always said that in the second five years it would increase the cash spending, so even the coalition is not pursuing a policy which would have led to the £37 billion or £38 billion figure. Therefore, it is time that we ceased to hear about the £37 billion or £38 billion.
I want to say something positive and helpful. I mean that sincerely. I hope it will be in the interests of the country that I say it now. You can always improve the defence procurement process. I think that we did so in my time, working very closely with General Sir Kevin O’Donoghue. We reduced the bureaucracy substantially, particularly the assurance process, and developed new models of open-book co-operation with some of our major defence suppliers, but you can always go further. However, there is one big problem that I identified which I was not able to resolve: namely, that we do not do procurement spending and procurement evaluation on a present-value basis. Noble Lords who have experience in the private sector will know that, in all significant-sized companies, investment appraisal and procurement is done on a present-value basis. In other words, what counts is the present value of the future stream of expenditure or the future return from investment and you compare that present value with alternative approaches or solutions to the same problem. That is not done in defence spending. In defence spending certain amounts of money are allocated to certain years and you have a limit you can spend within a particular year, which means you completely lack flexibility.
I will give the House two examples of where, in my time, we lost hundreds of millions of pounds for no good reason but the existing Treasury rules. One was during the shipping crisis in 2008. I realised that we could probably buy the MARS tankers that we had in the programme for two or three years later very much more cheaply by simply purchasing tankers on the open market rather than building them at enormous expense, which had already been examined and provided for. We had £1.2 billion in the budget for six tankers. I spoke to several shipping brokers and discovered that we could actually buy, on the second-hand market, tankers of the right capacity—30,000 to 50,000 tonnes, capable of refuelling at 15 knots at sea and so forth—for $50 million apiece. If you then spent some money putting on a helicopter pad, one or two bells and whistles, some armaments and so forth, it could not cost you more than $75 million as opposed to the £200 million which we had in the budget for each one of those tankers. It was a no-brainer but I was not allowed to do it. I went to the Treasury and said that we could save public money but it said, “No, no, no, that’s the rules, we can’t do it. Sorry, but you have to wait two or three years”. I told it that in two or three years’ time the shipping market would have revived and we would not be able to get that sort of deal. “Sorry, too bad”, it said.
The same thing happened with the Astute class. I wanted to buy the components and a lot of the systems for Astute-class boats 4. 5, 6 and 7 together in bulk, getting a considerable discount. I was told, “You can’t do it because all these things are allocated to individual years”. I worked up, with the National Audit Office, a proposal for the Treasury to change this and we had meetings with the Chief Secretary, Liam Byrne. I explained all this to my successor, Mr Luff, who was sadly sacked—I do not know quite why—at the recent reshuffle, but nothing has happened about it so I put it on the table now. This is something that needs to be examined. It can be done and I could go into great detail if I had the time. This is an opportunity and prospect which we cannot afford to ignore in the context of any genuine attempt to save public money and provide a more efficient basis for defence procurement.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom
My Lords, I should start by saying that I work for an American defence company called Curtis Wright. The Wright in Curtis Wright was the Wright brothers. Curtis Wright supplied many fighter aircraft to the US Air Force during the last war. After the war somebody came along and said, “We think you should look very closely at the whole idea of jet propulsion for fighter aircraft”. Curtis Wright looked at it very carefully and said, “No, this is not the answer”. Your Lordships will not be surprised to know that Curtis Wright are not in the production of fighter aircraft any more, but they are involved in a number of other technical areas in defence supply. It is always a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, because—let us face it—he does not lack chutzpah when it comes to defending the actions of the previous Government.
I will deal, firstly, with the question of defence specialisation. This has a certain allure to it because what it means is that different countries in Europe would take over the sole supply of the capability of certain bits of defence. The very obvious answer to that would be that armour should be in the hands of the Germans. If the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, talks to his honourable friend in the other place, Gisela Stuart, who is German, she will tell him that the Germans have become completely pacifist. If we had this arrangement, and we decided we wanted to fight an armoured conflict somewhere, we could not do it because the Germans would not fight. There seem to be enormous problems. The noble Lord says that when this great unification of European forces was put together, they would have to sign up to looking after our colonies. The Spanish are extremely hostile to the idea of us defending the Falklands at all, and I am not sure that they are going to sign up to that in any way. There are enormous shortcomings.
I will move on to the great debate, which was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, about the size of the deficit inherited by this Government. Was it £37 billion or £38 billion of unfunded procurement over 10 years? Or was it a smaller figure? It must have been a pretty massive figure because otherwise we would not have had the devastating review of our whole procurement programme, cutting out ranges of procurement. The Harriers had to go, as did the maritime patrol aircraft and so forth. That would not have happened if there had not been a very serious problem which this Government had to address. I do not expect the Minister to answer this when she sums up, but perhaps she could write to me about it. Last Tuesday, my noble friend Lord Trefgarne gave lunch to Sir Clive Whitmore, who used to be the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Defence when I was there and in the time of my noble friend Lord King. Clive Whitmore, who understood politicians very clearly, was famous for saying all the time, “I have to remind you, Ministers, that I am the chief accounting officer of the Ministry of Defence, and if you want to spend money you have not got, I want a ministerial override”. As your Lordships know, a ministerial override is something that comes from the Permanent Secretary and has to be signed by a Minister. It basically says that “I, as a Permanent Secretary, advise against this particular procurement because the funds are not available and they have to be signed off by a Minister”.
The final signing off of the aircraft carriers was in 2009. The roof had fallen in on the whole economy, and we had complete disaster in every direction. It was obvious to a child of five that there was going to be no more money coming into the defence budget. At the same time, two aircraft carriers were ordered at a cost of around £5 billion. That was on top of a mass of other equipment which had been ordered but for which there were no funds whatever. What happened in the Ministry of Defence? Why were there no ministerial overrides? We look to our Civil Service to guarantee the continuity and solvency of departments of state. What went wrong that that did not kick in? What provision has now been made in the Ministry of Defence to ensure that this sort of thing does not happen in the future? Perhaps that could be put in a letter. We should be seriously concerned if we reach a position where things are being ordered in this way. This is always going to happen in political life as politicians believe they can buy people’s votes by putting out enormous orders and there could be no better way of buying votes than to have two aircraft carriers being built simultaneously in every shipyard in the country so the largesse could be spread as widely as possible. Why was there not a ministerial override saying, “The funds are not available for this, I therefore do not recommend it, and I am doing it only because I am ordered to by the Minister”?
Lord Davies of Stamford
Perhaps I can help the noble Lord and also defend civil servants whose reputations might otherwise be tarnished by what he has just said. We had the most conscientious and able Permanent Secretary and finance director in my time. There was no ministerial override because there did not need to be one as the carrier programme, like other parts of our programme, was funded and properly provided for within our defence budget.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom
That no doubt explains why the first thing this Government tried to do when they got in was to cancel the carrier programme, only to find that it could not be cancelled because BAS is very good at tying up such incredibly tight contracts that it would have cost more to cancel than to go ahead with it. I do not totally buy that: there is something seriously wrong here, and I do not think we would have the current difficulties if there had been a few more ministerial overrides in the past. Critics of my right honourable friend, Philip Hammond, the new Secretary of State, say that he is just a number cruncher who does not know anything about defence priorities. He understands very well the first defence priority, which is that you do not order kit if you do not have the money to pay for it. His second priority is balancing the budget, and he therefore takes total care that we are not going to run into any major crisis, such as the one we have experienced recently. His business experience will be valuable, and he is the ideal man to be holding the position of Secretary of State.
It is not just a shambles that we find in the administration of the Ministry of Defence. We used to be able to rely on men in uniform to do the right thing, but what have we seen? We have seen the humiliation of the retreat from Basra, which raises serious questions about the intelligence given to our military commanders before they went in. Was it a complete surprise that the Iranians decided to get involved in all the Shia militias there? The result was that we had to pull out. In terms of safe passage to get back to the airport, we had to do a deal whereby we would not go back in. The Americans were, to put it mildly, dismayed, and eventually the Iraqi Government took the view that such was the appalling shambles left behind in Basra that they had to go in with the Iraqi Army and US Marine Corps. Once they went back in, they certainly sorted out the problems there, and there has not been much of a problem there since.
Almost as a reaction to Basra, the British Army afterwards decided to deploy 3,500 men in Helmand province. What was the intelligence there? Did they not know that the Pashtuns in Helmand loathe all foreigners, and the foreigners they loathe more than any others are the British, because they still have not forgiven us for the wars we fought against them in the 19th century? The result was that we nearly lost that whole force of 3,500 men, but for the fantastic air power provided by NATO, which pulverised all the mud villages in front of it but would not have done an awful lot for hearts and minds in Afghanistan.
I am actually seriously worried about where the Ministry of Defence has gone in the past. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State has a serious problem of getting this thing back into some sort of order, both in terms of finances and, I hope, in getting involved in operational matters, because serious problems have been created for which we are paying a hefty price. I wish I could say that I looked to the future with confidence as regards the serious challenges facing my right honourable friend. He has an awful lot of work to do.
Viscount Bridgeman
My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend Lord Astor of Hever for initiating this debate. I am particularly grateful for his reminder that this debate is wide-ranging, because what I am about to say is not in the mainstream of what has been discussed—so far, certainly.
I am a member of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly. Three weeks ago, we undertook a fact-finding visit to Belfast in connection with the decade of commemoration of the centenary of seminal events that took place in Ireland between 1912 and 1922. In the course of this visit we in the group were impressed by the growing interest on both sides of the border in the contribution of the Irish regiments in the Great War. The history of the 36th Ulster Division is well known and commemorated by the Ulster Tower on the Somme battlefield. Of the two divisions raised in southern Ireland—the 10th and the 16th—much less is known. It became clear in the course of our inquiries that for many nationalist families until very recently the service of great-grandfathers and great-great-grandfathers in the British Army in the First World War has been treated as a guilty secret never to be discussed and to be airbrushed out of the family history.
My honourable friend Conor Burns, Member of Parliament for Bournemouth West, is a Roman Catholic who was born in Belfast and raised largely in Great Britain. He is a colleague on the British-Irish parliamentary group and kindly agreed that I could quote his family as an example of the ignorance in which younger generations were kept, until very recently, about the service in the British Army of their forbears—in his case, his grandmother’s family, several of whom served in the Army.
However, in the recent past, there has been a perceptible change of attitude. What has caused this? Certainly, the internet has played a part. Records in places such as the National Archives in Kew and Dublin have become more readily accessible, and with the various ancestry search programmes there has been increasing curiosity about family histories, including regarding some aspects previously regarded as taboo. There continues to be research particularly on the five Irish regiments that were disbanded in 1922. In some cases, this has extended to individual battalions. For example, the 6th Connaught Rangers, a Kitchener or New Army battalion, was raised in Catholic west Belfast, and its recruits would have been almost to a man Redmond nationalists. The battalion fought on the Somme with the 16th Irish Division. Its history is the subject of a meticulously researched and well produced book, which in its appendix lists the careers and ultimate destinations of every member of the battalion, many of them sadly killed in action. This is but one of a number of initiatives of this nature in Northern Ireland and the Republic.
This significant change of attitude to a subject treated hitherto as an embarrassment by many an Irish family is part of the transformation of British-Irish relations in recent years. Much credit for this must go to the leadership shown by two successive Presidents of the Republic, Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese, and continued by President O’Higgins. It of course culminated with the visit to the Republic by Her Majesty the Queen in 2010, the impact of which on the people of Ireland is even now not fully appreciated on this side of the Irish Sea. Tangible evidence of this new outlook is the increase in the number of visitors from the Irish Republic to the battlefields of France and Flanders, in many cases to visit the graves of forbears of whose military history they were previously unaware. The defining moment of the Irish contribution in the Great War came with the Battle of Messines in 1917, when for the first time the 36th Ulster Division and the 16th Irish Division fought alongside in an action that many military historians regard as the most significant tactical victory in the whole of the Great War.
In the time available, I have not been able to research the detailed statistics of those who served and were killed in the First World War, but about 149,000 volunteered from the whole of Ireland, and just under 30,000 were killed. It is difficult to break down the figures of the war dead from the various provinces, but when one considers that there were one Ulster division and two Irish divisions, it is clear that the suffering must have been fairly widespread throughout the whole of Ireland.
Lord Tyler
I am very moved by what my noble friend is saying. It so happens that just a few weeks ago I visited the Somme—as I mentioned to him the other day—and was struck by the fact that Irishmen from both sides of what is now the border were standing side by side, with great courage and tenacity, particularly in the July Somme attack, as well as later in the 1914-1918 war. I visited a number of cemeteries because my three uncles were killed during the war, and I was moved when I met young people from both sides of the current Irish border who came together in coachloads to see some of these cemeteries. I entirely endorse what my noble friend is saying, and I am very pleased to be in the House to hear him.
Viscount Bridgeman
I am extremely grateful to my noble friend Lord Tyler for that intervention.
I should also mention that a large number of Irishmen, particularly from the south-east seaboard counties of what is now the Republic, would have served in the Royal Navy. It is against the background of all this that I should say that there was no conscription in any part of the island in either of the two world wars.
This debate, initiated by my noble friend, is timely, coming as it does on the week before Remembrance Sunday. I suggest that it is appropriate, within this debate, to place on record the contribution and sacrifice of so many Irishmen in the Great War, which for far too long has remained largely overlooked. The noble Baroness, Lady Dean, mentioned the phrase, “Lest we forget”. It is particularly comforting that this increasingly embraces the families of many of our friends in the Republic of Ireland at this time.
Lord Bates
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow my noble friend Lord Bridgeman. While he was talking, I recalled my visit to some of the cemeteries and memorials when, last year and in the early part of this year, I undertook a most moving walk across Europe to promote the Olympic truce. In January, we arrived at the island of Ireland Peace Park, which is now a memorial on the western front which commemorates the fallen on both sides who came together there. It is now a centre for peace and it will be a focal point for centenary celebrations and commemorations of the First World War. It is a fitting tribute.
I am also privileged to take part in this debate in which immense expertise has been brought to bear. I thank my noble friend Lord Astor for introducing the debate and I welcome my noble friend Lady Garden of Frognal to her role. After the moving speech of my noble friend Lady Wilcox, I wonder whether it is traditional to welcome someone back to the Back Benches but, even if it is not in order, I do so because I thought hers was a particularly moving speech and one that I welcomed.
For me, this debate has hinged on two contributions, one from my noble friend Lord King of Bridgwater, and the other from the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen. Their contributions have been very significant, particularly the point about the reception that our Armed Forces receive when they return to the United Kingdom. I have had a couple of encounters recently. I was devastated to hear about how people are treated, when in uniform, on their return, having sacrificed so much and given such incredible service. There are two points to this. One is that we need to make a case for the mission, but more fundamentally we need to bear in mind that no member of the Armed Forces has ever gone to war of their own volition. They go to war and engage in conflict because Parliament and Her Majesty’s Government dispatch them to do so. They serve the Executive and they serve the legislature. That point needs to be made. They do not question it; they go out and serve.
That leads to another point, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord King, which is how the military service is doing all that it can and so it behoves us in Parliament to do all that we can to communicate that message and to scrutinise it. I would like to flag up one point before going back to the First World War reminiscences and some comments on the work of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. I do not wish to get into a debate about the rights and wrongs of conflict but I would like to make a more general point about the role of Parliament in making the decision to go to war. That point has been widely debated and there have been significant reports on it by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee in 2004; by a House of Lords committee which produced a report in 2006 called Waging War: Parliament’s Role and Responsibility; and most recently by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee of the House of Commons in its eighth report of Session 2010-12. They were all saying that there needed to be a systematic and constitutional way in which Parliament is consulted before forces in this country are deployed. That relates to the prerogative powers and it is a very good thing to do. When that report came out, my right honourable friend the Prime Minister, when leader of the Opposition in 2006, said that he felt that in order for there to be trust in MPs, MPs must be consulted before, not after, military forces are deployed overseas. That is a very important principle. I noticed that when the report from the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee was published, there was a debate and the Foreign Secretary said in the House of Commons on 21 March 2011:
“We will also enshrine in law for the future the necessity of consulting Parliament on military action”.—[Official Report, Commons, 21/3/11; col. 799.]
That was a strong, clear undertaking and it would be good to get an update from my noble friend on the Front Bench on how that discussion is progressing. Of course, we all appreciate that situations are fast moving and that these are immense issues with which Prime Ministers, Secretaries of State for Defence and Ministers of Defence have to wrestle. I do not envy them for a second but this place should put wisdom, expertise and learning at the disposal of people who make decisions on grave matters as to when to deploy our courageous forces overseas.
I return to the work of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which is my principle theme. This Sunday, I shall return to the Menin Gate, Ypres, where I shall take part in an act of remembrance. I am reminded of the work of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission which, I have to confess, I knew little about until the early part of this year. As I walked from Paris to Arras and on towards Ypres in Belgium, along the western front, and Passchendaele, I saw by the roadside meticulously kept cemeteries, with striking white Portland headstones, commemorating the fallen in the First World War. When I arrived in Ypres on foot in January, there was a very cold snap in continental Europe—it was about minus six and the wind was blowing madly. I met with Ian Hussein, who runs the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in northern France and Flanders. He looks after about 980 war cemeteries across France and Belgium. I also met John Sutherland from the British Legion and Benoit Mottrie, who is the chairman of the Last Post Association, who organised this remarkable event.
Every night, at 8 o’clock local time in Ypres, the Last Post is sounded under the Menin Gate. I was invited to go along and I wanted to go. I was slightly puzzled because it was blowing a gale and absolutely freezing, but none the less I showed support because they were delighted that a parliamentarian happened to be passing through town and could attend. I expected to see a few hardy souls but I saw a few hundred hardy souls. They have turned up every night from 11 November 1929 to sound the Last Post at the Menin Gate memorial in all weathers. The only exception was during the four years of the occupation of Ypres from 20 May 1940 to 6 September 1944, when the daily ceremony was continued in England at the Brookwood Military Cemetery in Surrey. I went to see that daily act of remembrance, and found it incredibly moving. Perhaps in her closing remarks the Minister might send a message to the citizens and organisers of the Last Post Association, the British Legion and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, who undertake to ensure that the sacrifice of 54,000 men around the Menin Gate is remembered.
The day after visiting the Menin Gate, Ian Hussein took me to visit some of the cemeteries, including Tyne Cot. It is one of the largest, where 11,894 soldiers are buried, most in unknown graves because people were trampled into the mud and drowned, such was the hell of the 1917 battle of Passchendaele at Ypres. I struggled to think of the right emotion when faced with this vast sacrifice. Should I feel immense national pride for the service and sacrifice of our courageous Armed Forces, including my great-grandfather and his two brothers? Was that the right emotion? Was it regret at the sacrifice? As I looked around, I came across a plaque recording the words of King George V when he opened the cemetery in 1922. He captured the correct emotions, and I will close my remarks with his words. The King said:
“We can truly say that the whole circuit of the Earth is girdled with the graves of our dead. In the course of my pilgrimage, I have many times asked myself whether there can be more potent advocates of peace upon Earth through the years to come, than the massed multitudes of silent witnesses to the desolation of war”.
Lord Judd
My Lords, it is always a real joy to follow the noble Lord. He brings a very interesting and important perspective to our deliberations. Like others, I warmly welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, to our debates. She has more than proved herself as a very effective member of the opposition Front Bench and now of the Government. There is also a personal reason for welcoming her, which I am sure she will not mind my mentioning. I was fortunate to get to know well, as a friend, her late husband. I had great affection and admiration for him. He brought tremendous professional experience, as well as a great deal of wisdom and perspective. It is good to see that tradition being followed, even if I might wish that it were being followed from another position.
The noble Lord, Lord Astor, started his characteristically businesslike speech with a very human dimension when he paid a warm tribute to those who had fallen or suffered grievous wounds, and to their families and the bereaved. He was echoed, in what I am sure those of us who heard her will believe was a particularly powerful and moving speech, by my noble friend Lady Dean—speaking again with all her experience of consistent work with the people of the services. It is right that this debate should have that context set out clearly at its beginning. This is indeed remembrance week. All those to whom I referred are the responsibility of every one of us, whether we are in the House of Lords or the House of Commons. We are all responsible, and we must never forget that.
We also have a responsibility to the countless civilians who die in conflict. It must never become acceptable to say—as one American general foolishly did—that we do not do body counts. Every innocent individual who died in conflict is a person who matters every bit as much as the members of our own society. Furthermore, we would be misguided not to realise that that kind of attitude plays inevitably into the hands of the agitator and the extremist. We have to demonstrate consistently our concern for humanity.
War must always be a last resort. We must not slide into a new philosophy in which war becomes an alternative management option. The slide could be accelerated by the development of remote, high-technology warfare techniques. It is easy to talk about collateral damage, but it means individual men, women and children and their relatives. We have to remember all the time that peace and stability cannot be imposed if they are to endure. They have to be built by the people of the regions. Our role is to support those people in finding the right solutions. There is a fatal flaw in the concept that somehow the world can be managed by the powerful. It cannot. The powerful are utterly dependent on solutions rooted in the people of the world who are building their own future.
In all this, hearts and minds—although it is an easy phrase to use—desperately matter. We must be vigilant about the dangers of counterproductivity. I will spell out one issue that increasingly preoccupies me. We talk about how we are defending the rule of law. That should be demonstrable all the time. What is the significance of that in the trend—I hope that I do not oversimplify—of rendition, of Guantanamo Bay, and now of drones? Are they not a means of circumnavigating the rule of law? Are they not a means in the end, if we are not careful, of not only accepting but utilising the technique of extrajudicial killing?
If we are about the rule of law, we are about the operation of systems that can be seen to be totally in line with that principle. Of course, the same can be said about torture and the mistreatment of prisoners. They are wrong and obscene—but also counterproductive because they play into the hands of the extremists who are orchestrating those on the other side. It is another easy thing to say in this House, but we have to be consistent, in the midst of all the acute human pressures on our service men and women, and on those in the security services, in demonstrating that they are upholding something different, and that we are about something different.
I hope that noble Lords will allow me to indulge in personal memories. One of the privileges of my political life—I really enjoyed the experience—was that in my first full ministerial post I was one of the last Ministers to be responsible on a dedicated basis for the Navy. We had service Ministers in those days. I am not sure what I was able to contribute, but I learnt one hell of a lot and I came to admire the services greatly.
In those days, a group that fascinated me was called “the future shape of the fleet group”. I am not sure whether it still exists in one form or another. I used to tease them in conversation and say, “You guys should go off to a country house somewhere with a blank sheet of paper. Forget about all the involvements in which we find ourselves, all the equipment and arrangements that we have inherited. Analyse what the real threats are and then say what we need in the United Kingdom to meet those threats and counter them”. Then, of course, as realists we come back to what we have inherited. We see how we can make the best and most constructive compromise between that and what we should ideally have, and we see how we can move forward in the most effective way. I am sure that that is as true as ever.
If we are making predictions about the future, two things are fairly obvious. First, that as we shall always operate within an international context we should constantly ask ourselves how far our personnel are being prepared for international operations in their training and education. How important a part does language play in training and education? The quintessence of the high-flying officers should be an ability to make a contribution at the centre and to be at a premium when they get back to their own service with that experience of the centre. Do we have that culture? I hope the Minister can reassure me. It is a struggle constantly to achieve it, but it is vital.
Secondly, we can predict that intelligence and security operations of a different kind will always be indispensable. We must always realise the importance of good intelligence and analysis in making the work of our services effective. Of course, those services themselves must all the time demonstrate in the way that they operate a commitment to something that is different from the evil forces that we are combating.
I finish with a couple of more immediate observations. One is that as a former Minister responsible for the Navy, I can see that in the future we will need flexibility and the ability to deploy rapidly. We will need independent, freestanding bases from which to conduct operations of that kind. Therefore, carriers are absolutely indispensable in the future. We can argue about how sophisticated they need to be and we can certainly all agree that they are useless unless we have the appropriate aircraft to operate from them. But the carriers are indispensable to our future if we are serious about international co-operation in security and the rest.
I hope that I can be forgiven for being a bit of a Greek chorus here. I have never been able to reconcile our analysis that they would be absolutely indispensable in 10 years’ time and our present security situation that meant for 10 years we did not have that capability. That is absolutely inexplicable. I do not hold the present Government solely responsible: it is a collective responsibility that we should face in that context.
I have never been a unilateralist: I have always been a multilateralist. In the imperfect world in which we live, I accept and endorse that there has had to be a nuclear deterrent. But I also recognise that one of the most important elements in a sound defence strategy is the cause of disarmament. The less armed the world is, the less likely severe conflict will be as long as one’s arms are concentrated on the real security task. We do not want lots of surplus arms circulating around the world and we do not want to encourage proliferation in any form of arms.
We need to remember that when the non-proliferation treaty was achieved, a solemn pledge was given by the existing nuclear powers that they would embark on a programme of consistent and demonstrable nuclear disarmament. As we move into the next generation of deterrent, how do we reconcile that commitment with what we are doing? If in an imperfect world we take the approach that we have to have a nuclear capability for the time being, why are we talking about perfecting and increasing our nuclear capability? There are all sorts of ways of maintaining a nuclear capability—God forbid that we should ever have to contemplate using it—that would not be as costly and extravagant as the one on which we are embarked.
I know that there will be honestly held different views and I can see my noble friend Lord Robertson, for whom I have unlimited regard, dissenting from my analysis very strongly. Of course he brings a great deal of personal experience in the very directions in which I have been arguing in my remarks tonight, so I take his objections seriously. But we must beware of drifting into an inevitability of a self-generating expense when there are so many other pressures on our defence system that desperately need proper financing. There is nothing worse than putting people in defence in situations in which they are not properly sustained and supported. That therefore means that we must look very sharply all the time at the disproportion and immense cost involved in this form of next-generation nuclear weapon.
Lord Burnett
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Judd. I believe that I was still serving when he was Navy Minister, and I assure him that he made a great contribution. He was an excellent Minister. However, I dissent from his views about the Trident replacement, which I hope will happen in the near future. Steps are being taken along those lines as we speak. I do not think that my comments are necessarily always welcomed by my own side.
I wish to pay tribute to Sir Nicholas Harvey who, unfortunately, in the recent reshuffle, has been moved from his role as Minister of State for the Armed Forces. He was an excellent Minister according to those who dealt with him in the Ministry of Defence. His move out of that department was and remains incomprehensible to me. We are, however, very fortunate to have my noble friend Lady Garden to take on the defence portfolio in this House. She is experienced, able and committed to defence, and I welcome her in this role. I join the Minister and other noble Lords in paying tribute to our Armed Forces. This is a particularly appropriate time of year to remember the sacrifices that our Armed Forces have made and continue to make for us.
In a typically powerful speech, the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, voiced the fears of many. We and our allies have taken terrible casualties in Afghanistan. The Afghans have endured years of tumult, misery and chaos, but thanks to the bravery, discipline and commitment of our forces, those of our allies and the Afghans, considerable progress is being made to bring peace and stability to that country. I hope that our Prime Minister will seek to persuade whoever wins the next presidential election in the United States to stay the course in Afghanistan for the benefit of this country, our allies and the Afghan people themselves. The prospect, for example, of Afghan women having to revert to a cruelly discriminatory regime should fill us all with horror.
I want to say a few words about manpower and equipment. The Minister in his opening remarks spoke about global power and said that we must be able to fight and win in different terrains and on different operations. Quite rightly, much of the burden of fulfilling these roles will fall on our expeditionary or amphibious forces. My question to my noble friend is this: will full Army support for 3 Commando Brigade, Royal Marines, be secured? I refer to our Royal Artillery, Royal Engineers and logistic support. My noble friend will be aware that there is no shortage of individuals who wish to be seconded to the Commando Brigade, which is good for Army recruiting. It is an interesting confidential statistic that the level of success of individuals who pass the commando course—and have, as it were, the Lympstone DNA—and then go on for Special Forces selection is surprising. It would be interesting if the Minister could find out what that statistic is.
On the matter of our expeditionary capability, did I hear the Minister tell us that the first aircraft carrier, “Queen Elizabeth”, will come into deployable service within the next five years? In this context, will the aircraft then be ready and deployable as well?
Like many, I am concerned at the level of cuts in the Army. I note that there will be a Green Paper on the reserves published later this week. There will have to be a major culture change in this country if this policy is to be successful. If an individual is to sign up for the reserves, that individual and his or her employer will, I hope, be entering into an irrevocable contract. There must be no resiling from the training and active service commitments, which are to be at the demand and absolute discretion of the Government of the day. We cannot have reservists marching out when they have made these commitments, and we cannot have employers discriminating against them, in any way, shape or form, if they take on the responsibility of joining our great reserve forces.
The Armed Forces have taken cuts over the past years, and the reasons for them have been explained. However, the first duty of every Government is to defend this country and its people wherever they happen to be. We owe it to our Armed Forces to ensure that they are properly manned and equipped and that they and their families are decently looked after and housed. I am pleased that we have a military covenant; it is now up to our Government to live up to it.
Lord Bilimoria
My Lords, on 22 October, in the third presidential debate, Mitt Romney said:
“Our Navy is old—excuse me, our Navy is smaller now than at any time since 1917 … That’s unacceptable to me. I want to make sure that we have the ships that are required by our Navy. Our Air Force is older and smaller than at any time since it was founded in”—
he got the date wrong—
“1947 … we’ve always had the strategy of saying we could fight in two conflicts at once. Now we’re changing to one conflict. Look, this, in my view, is the highest responsibility of the President of the United States, which is to maintain the safety of the American people. And I will not cut our military budget by a trillion dollars … That, in my view is making our future less certain and less secure”.
President Obama responded:
“I think Governor Romney maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works. You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military has changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers”—
we do not—
“where planes land on them. We have these ships that go under water, nuclear submarines”.
Long may they exist. We need them. He continued:
“And so the question is … what are our capabilities? And so when I sit down with the Secretary of the Navy and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, we determine how are we going to be best able to meet all of our defense needs in a way that also keeps faith with our troops, that also makes sure that our veterans have the kind of support that they need when they come home”.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, and the noble Lord, Lord Davies, have said, morale in our Armed Forces is very low. There is no running away from that. I have heard it first hand from all the services. I am glad the Government have made the military covenant a priority, but are we honouring it? With the cuts that we are making, are we diminishing esprit de corps? The services are called the “services” because they serve and continue to serve us.
Peace in our time is a utopian dream that has never existed and, sadly, probably never will. As we have heard, we have been in Afghanistan since 2001, which is now longer than the First and Second World Wars combined. In his brilliant speech, the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, spoke about the whole debate of why we are there. Why are we there? What is achieved? What will people say about us when we leave? Are we leaving too early? Did we get the job done? We are meant to be securing the UK that is why we went there in the first place. We were right to go there in the first place, but were we right to stay there all this time and are we right to leave when we are going to leave? Are they going to laugh and say, “Oh well, the Russians were here and they left and look what happened. Now they have come, they are going, look at what is going to happen”? It is tough.
What is the role of the Armed Forces? We are a wonderful, caring nation. I have been privileged to support and be involved with institutions such as the Army Benevolent Fund, a soldiers’ charity that does amazing work; I have been a commissioner of the Royal Hospital; we have got Help for Heroes, we have got the Gurkha Welfare Trust—we are fantastic. We have Remembrance Sunday coming up where we remember not only the fallen but those who have served and sacrificed and those who continue to serve and sacrifice today. I was president of the commemoration committee of the memorial gates at Constitution Hill, and I continue to serve on its committee, founded by the noble Baroness, Lady Flather. The gates commemorate the sacrifice and service of the 5 million volunteers from the Indian sub-continent, Africa and the Caribbean. Without those 5 million individuals, we would not be sitting here doing what we are doing today; we would not be a free world.
In my tiny community of Zoroastrian Parsees, which now numbers fewer than 70,000 in India, my late father, Lieutenant-General Bilimoria, was commissioned into the Indian Army. His father, my grandfather, Brigadier Bilimoria, was commissioned from Sandhurst. My father’s cousin, Lieutenant-General Jungoo Satarawalla, from my father’s regiment, the 5th Gurkha Rifles (Frontier Force), was awarded the Military Cross in the Second World War, as was India’s first Field Marshal, Sam Manekshaw, also a Zoroastrian. My maternal grandfather, J D Italia, served as a squadron leader in the Royal Indian Air Force during the Second World War. I could on with a long list of Zoroastrian Parsees from this tiny community who have served in the British Armed Forces.
As to the Gurkhas, what an amazing contribution they have made to Britain over centuries. My father’s battalion, 2nd Battalion 5th Gurkha Rifles (Frontier Force), was awarded three Victoria Crosses in the Second World War—and those three names are inscribed in the roof of the pavilion at the memorial gates on Constitution Hill. I am so happy that the previous Government eventually recognised the contribution of the Gurkhas, allowing Gurkhas who wished to settle in this country after they retired to do so.
We now have Future Force 2020 and we had the SDSR in 2010—but the SDSR was all about means and not about ends. We have heard passionately from the noble Lord, Lord Judd, that we do not have any aircraft carriers. We got rid of our Harriers for a song and we do not have our Nimrods. What happened straight after that? In autumn 2010, I spoke in the debate on the SDSR and said that we are short-sighted. We did not predict the Falklands. No one predicted 9/11. We do not know what is going to happen or what is around the corner. What happened around the corner? We had the Arab spring and Libya. What we needed was our aircraft carriers. We were sending Typhoons all the way from Coningsby in Lincolnshire. When are we going to learn that we need these aircraft carriers?
Now, two years later, what do we have? We have troop cuts. When my father commanded the central Indian Army, he had 350,000 troops under his command. When he commanded a corps before he became an army commander, his corps was comprised of over 100,000 troops. We announced the troop cuts, and what happened? There was a problem with G4S and the security of the Olympic Games. As we have heard in the debate, who stepped in? Our wonderful troops stepped in. When I went to the Olympics and saw our troops, I thanked every one of them personally because they saved the day. We are now to have a British Army of fewer than 80,000 troops.
This country is famous for its soft power. We are so lucky because we have the BBC, the Royal Family, our history, London, which is the greatest of the world’s great cities, our tourism and the Olympics. We publish the Economist and the FT; we have the City of London, and we have Oxford and Cambridge. I could go on. We are one of the top 10 economies in the world, but soft power is useless without hard power. In terms of population, we rank 22nd in the world, and yet however we are ranked as an economy or a defence power, we are in the top 10 in the world. We punch above our weight the whole time, and yet today we are devoting half the percentage of our GDP spending on defence than we did 30 years ago, in 1982—the time of the Falklands war. You could argue that there was the Cold War back then, but we are in a war that is far more uncertain. We do not know what is around the corner. We did not know how long we would spend in Afghanistan when we went there. No one, however much we debate Afghanistan, should ever say that even one of our troops has made that sacrifice in vain. The troops have been doing their duty. They have been attempting to help a nation and to help our security over here. We should always be grateful for that and inspired by what they have done for us.
I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, to the Front Bench, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Astor, who is a true champion of the armed services; I have seen that for myself. His heart is in the right place and we always appreciate what the noble Lord does.
Our Armed Forces are the best of the best in every way. Our regiments are the elite, and their history is phenomenal. I asked one of our legendary sergeant-majors at the Royal Hospital Chelsea what he felt about all these cuts. He was dismayed and said, “What people do not know is the term ‘espirit de corps’. Yes, we fight for our country, but we also fight for our regiment and for the comrade who is right next to us. We fight for each other”. When you amalgamate regiments, cut out battalions and then lump them all together, you are cutting away history and espirit de corps. Backing for the Armed Forces in this country is almost at an all-time high; it is fantastic. Yet in many ways I feel that the Government’s support for the forces is low. That is both frightening and disappointing when we look at the sacrifices that are made.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, said, it is not just the soldiers and service people who make a sacrifice, it is also their families. I remember as a 10 year-old that when my father went to fight for the liberation of Bangladesh, I would read the papers every single day, terrified that my father’s name would be in them. That is how I remember being a child in an army family; I know what it is like. I also know what my mother felt like. Do we really look after the families well? The noble Baroness spoke passionately and stressed that what leads to low morale and problems is the uncertainty. It was the word she used most often. What are the Government doing about it? Putting our hand on our heart, are we fulfilling our side of the military covenant?
In his excellent speech, the noble Lord, Lord King, said that nowadays we talk about wars of necessity and wars of choice. We had to go to war in the Falklands, and we had to go to war in Kuwait. We had to go to Afghanistan in 2001. With hindsight, Iraq in 2003 was a huge mistake, but let us think of the practicalities. The United States, our biggest ally, went to Iraq. We regret having gone, but did we have that much of a choice? The bottom line is that we have to be prepared for the unexpected. The noble Lord, Lord King, also talked about conventional wars and unconventional wars. When my father took over command of the central Indian Army just over 20 years ago, one of the first things he did was to go to Sri Lanka, where there were a lot of his troops, and in his view that was resulting in conflict. Within two weeks of returning from his visit, the Indian troops were withdrawn. It has taken more than two decades for the issue to be resolved by the Sri Lankans themselves.
In many cases, we do not know what is going to happen. We might intervene, but then we do not know how long it is going to last. The noble Lord, Lord King, also talked about defence being the number one priority, yet we have had five defence Secretaries in five years. I am sorry to say that under this Government, we have had two in just over two years. You cannot say that you are taking defence seriously if you do that. It is one of the most important jobs in government. Cutting is easy, but training up troops again is difficult. I have full respect for the Territorial Army, but should we rely on it? The Territorial Army should be there as a support, not as something to be relied on. We have to rely on our main Armed Forces for the security of this nation.
Let us take a look at international comparisons just within NATO. I am using the 2010 figures, from before the cuts. In 2010, France had 234,000 service people, while Germany had 246,000. We had 198,000, while the Italians had 193,000. Soon the Italians will have more service people than us. The Americans have 1.4 million service people, and we are never going to compete with them. I think that we are cutting too much and that is not right for the safety of this country.
I am going to conclude by quoting from a poem sent by my mother’s cousin in honour of my father. There is no name for the author, so I shall just quote an extract from it. It is called “The Final Inspection”:
“The soldier stood and faced God,
which must always come to pass.
He hoped his shoes were shining,
Just as brightly as his brass.
The soldier squared his shoulders and said,
I’ve had to work most Sundays,
and at times my talk was tough.
And sometimes I’ve been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
And I never passed a cry for help,
Though at times I shook with fear.
And sometimes, God, forgive me,
I’ve wept unmanly tears.
If you’ve a place for me here, Lord,
It needn’t be so grand.
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don’t, I’ll understand.
There was a silence all around the throne,
Where the saints had often trod.
As the soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
‘Step forward now, you soldier,
You’ve borne your burdens well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven’s streets,
You’ve done your time in Hell’.”
We can never thank our troops enough for their service and sacrifice or show them enough gratitude for what they do for us every day. All we can say is thank you, thank you, thank you.
Lord Dobbs
My Lords, I feel a bit like a tail-end Charlie in this debate. However, it is a pleasure to be able to participate because it is an important debate about an important subject in very difficult times. I am grateful to my noble friend for ensuring that this debate was possible and I add my welcome to my noble friend Lady Garden. She will continue not only to adorn but to invigorate our Front Bench.
There have been many hugely important contributions, some of which I have endorsed entirely, and some of which I have disagreed with. The remarks I want to pick up on most are those of the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, on the importance of the military covenant and how much more there is still to do. But I have to admit to a sense of compelling inadequacy because so many speakers are far better equipped to contribute today than I am. I have not served in the Armed Forces, but today I am wearing a Pathfinders tie in memory of my uncle, Pilot Officer Sandy Saunders, who did—and whose tie this was.
This Sunday, in my role as president of the Langford and Wylye branch of the Royal British Legion, I shall lay the wreath and pronounce the exhortation in memory of those who were left behind on the fields of war. In that exhortation, we promise that, “We will remember them”—and that is the theme I want to take for my brief remarks.
There is a simple headstone in the churchyard at Wylye dedicated to Ivy Pretoria May Hibberd. She was born at Hope Cottage next to the railway crossing just along from the station—in the days when we had one. Ivy was a volunteer in the Women’s Royal Air Force during World War I. She was one of so very few women in the WRAF at that time, and yet she became one of so very many: nearly 1 million British men and women gave their lives during that conflict and Ivy was one of them.
Ivy was not the first of her family to die in the Great War, but she was the last: aged 19, on 6 November 1918, less than a week before the 11th hour of that 11th day of that 11th month when the armistice was declared and the fighting stopped. She died in this country, not on the battlefront, but it does not matter where or how they died; what matters is that Ivy and all those others who were waved farewell by their families from their doorsteps never returned.
As my noble friend Lord King said in his very interesting remarks, it was supposed to be the war to end all wars, but of course it was not. This is still a dangerous world and we rely on our Armed Forces to keep us safe. Thank goodness, we no longer have to send an entire generation of our children to march, fly or sail off into the teeth of the storm, as Ivy and her comrades had to. As a father, I can find no words to express the depth of gratitude I feel for what they did and for what the members of our Armed Forces continue to do today.
However, in too many ways we have let them down. In the past 15 years all too often we have sent them off to fight with inadequate equipment, leaving behind families forced to live in inadequate housing. There has been inadequate planning, so we have been forced to make thousands of them redundant, even while some of them were serving on the front line. Now, as several noble Lords have mentioned, we offer them the absurdity of aircraft carriers without any aircraft.
It was inevitable that Chancellors of whatever party should look at the defence budget. It is a great pity, however, that this was not done at an earlier stage, years ago, when the damage that has been done by inevitable cuts could have been reduced. Far too many of our Armed Forces who return to this country end up with mental and social problems, sleeping rough on the streets or finding themselves in prison. Many others return gravely wounded, with life-changing injuries, and despite the efforts of the Royal British Legion, ABF The Soldiers’ Charity, Help for Heroes and many other charities there is still so much more that needs doing.
“We will remember them”—that was our promise. It has not helped that we have sent them off to fight wars that, in my view, we should not have fought: a war in Iraq that I always believed was unprincipled, politically ignoble and probably illegal; and a war in Afghanistan that I believe can never deliver the promises that politicians originally made. If we are to remember Ivy Hibberd, her brother and all the others, as we have promised, we must never forget the political lessons of recent years that have committed too many new names to our war memorials and threatened the well-being of so many other soldiers and their families.
As we mark and remember their service to us, let us not forget the enduring service that we owe to them. We owe them more than we have given and, in all too many cases, more than we can ever repay.
Viscount Slim
My Lords, I thank the Minister for allowing me to speak for a few moments in the gap.
I would like to cast a fly over the Minister. By cutting the numbers in the Army, which a number of noble Lords have discussed already, we are starting to get a problem of recruitment, selection and volunteering into the Special Forces. As the pool gets smaller and smaller, getting the right people in the right numbers is becoming—I will not say acute, but it is becoming tricky. There are whispers in the corridors that perhaps the standards are too high and perhaps you could lower them a bit, and that is very dangerous talk. If you dilute the product, you are not special. You become ordinary.
Something somewhere has to be done about this. We must not lower the standards of selection within the Special Forces. I say this very quietly but in public. I do not expect a reply. It is not something for public discussion. But I am forewarning the Minister that the standards and the success of the Special Forces, as we have long experienced, lie in the concentrated selection of the volunteer individual. That is what makes the exceptional operational efficiency of the Special Forces.
Lord Rosser
My Lords, I am sure that all your Lordships who have spoken are pleased, as the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, said, to have had the opportunity to discuss and comment on the role and contribution of our Armed Forces. However, I fear that today’s debate, in the name of the Minister—timely though it is, this close to Remembrance Sunday—has rather less to do with a collective government desire to discuss defence issues for a second sitting day running and rather more to do with a collective government desire not to discuss the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill, and any troublesome amendments, for even one day running.
I hope that there are not too many Members of your Lordships’ House who would have wished to speak in this debate but have been unable to do so because of the very short notice. Our Armed Forces deserve debates on their role and contribution that are properly and jointly agreed in advance, not least because our military personnel continue to be engaged in major operations on our behalf at a time when they are also facing considerable change.
Unfortunately, all too often in your Lordships’ House we have those sombre moments when we express our sincere condolences to the families and friends of serving members of our Armed Forces who have been killed in operations in the service of our country. We also remember the courage and fortitude of those who have been wounded, particularly those who have suffered what we describe as life-changing injuries. It is only appropriate and right that we should use this debate to pay tribute once again to our Armed Forces and the whole service community.
The main centre of combat operations for our Armed Forces is Afghanistan. My noble friend Lord Robertson of Port Ellen powerfully expressed his concerns on the present position. We should all be determined to ensure that when combat operations by our forces cease and the majority of our personnel return permanently to these shores, they will leave an Afghanistan that is able to function as an effective state, governed by elected representatives in the interests of the population as a whole, and at peace, with a respect for law and order. That would be an appropriate legacy for all our personnel who have been involved in operations in Afghanistan, not least for those who have lost their lives and suffered significant injuries.
Our Armed Forces face major change, and not only as a result of the reduction in their number. New threats are emerging. Weak and failing states outnumber strong states by two to one. Non-state actors are also on the rise. The United States of America is attaching greater emphasis in its approach to military and diplomatic policy to the Pacific region and the Middle and Far East and less to Europe. That has potential implications for our defence strategy. The nature of warfare is also changing, with nuclear proliferation, increased terrorism, more use of unarmed aircraft and the increasing sophistication of cyberattacks.
Maximising security and influence today demands coalition-building. We have argued for greater burden-sharing and deployability of assets within NATO, and exploration of how a “coalition of cuts” between European NATO nations can co-ordinate reductions in defence spending. The practice of allies fighting conflicts together but preparing for them individually is surely no longer the way to proceed.
The Government’s intention, as the size of our Regular Armed Forces contracts, is to increase the strength of our Reserve Forces to be able to meet laid down military objectives. We had a debate on our Reserve Forces last Thursday, and one on defence and Europe the week before. The Minister said that he would respond in writing to the many points raised in the debate last Thursday to which he was not able to reply at the time. Obviously, he has not yet had a chance to prepare and send that letter in time for this debate, which would have been ideal, but I suspect that this debate came almost as much of a surprise to the Minister as it did to probably everyone else.
However, on a crucial part of the Government’s strategy—namely, the increase in our Reserve Forces—we have read in one newspaper this morning, as the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, reminded us, that a problem with the recruitment of part-time soldiers, including a backlog of applicants, threatens to undermine plans to expand the Territorial Army.
I repeat that we support an enhanced role for the reserves, whose skills must be maximised and who can be an important link between military and civilian communities. We have to ensure that the system to encourage and enable service leavers and those made redundant to join our reserves is effective, that we support businesses in employing members of the Reserve Forces and that any unnecessary bureaucracy is removed.
With a Green Paper apparently just around the corner, the noble Baroness the Minister, whom we welcome to the Government Defence Front Bench, may not feel inclined in her reply to go further than did the Minister in last week’s debate, although I invite her to do so in the light of the newspaper report this morning.
Since meeting our military objectives in the future is reliant on an expansion of our Reserve Forces as the Regular Army is reduced in numbers, could the noble Baroness be precise about the timescale in which the reserves, with the increased level of commitment required of them compared to today, are being built up and Regular Army numbers drawn down in order to address concerns that there may be a period where the territorial contingency will be too small to cover the capability gap?
This is an important issue, since even the Secretary of State has admitted that these proposals constitute a risk against a background of falling morale, to which my noble friends Lady Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde and Lord Davies of Stamford referred. Recent figures show that the three-year trend of declining morale has continued, with only 18% of soldiers questioned reporting high morale across the Army and only 33% feeling valued. Even the Secretary of State has admitted that government actions have hit morale.
We are clear that there must be some reduction in the overall number of service personnel, but does the noble Baroness believe that those reductions are being appropriately borne? The percentage reduction in the number of senior officer posts in all three services has been considerably less than the percentage reduction in junior ranks. The Armed Forces must be reshaped to make them as effective as they can be in the light of future numbers and future planned objectives and assumptions. It is right to demand painful efficiencies of those at the bottom, but not while appearing to give greater protection to those at the top.
It is all of a pattern that started with the strategic defence and security review, which was rushed and rendered out of date by events in Libya—not even mentioned in the review—where British forces used some equipment that Ministers had planned to scrap. Ad hoc decision-making appears to be all too common. The fact that Ministers have further reduced Army manpower on top of the cuts outlined in the SDSR shows just how rushed and incomplete was that original document. Perhaps the noble Baroness could say whether the SDSR defence planning assumptions that applied to an Army of 95,000 can be guaranteed by a Regular Army of 82,000.
Until all these issues are addressed or clarified, it will be difficult to overlook the impression that this Government’s defence policy largely adds up to a deficit reduction proposal and policy statements and objectives that have not been thought through, either as far as their relevance and consequences are concerned or the logistics and practicality of their implementation.
Ministers regularly claim the financial situation as justification for the speed and depth of the cuts that they have made. We are continually told by Ministers of a financial “black hole” that was bequeathed, but the National Audit Office, the Defence Select Committee and the Public Accounts Committee have all described the figure as “unverifiable”, which says it all.
The Secretary of State has said that he has balanced the equipment budget, but we have seen no detailed figures to support this and how it has been achieved. When will the National Audit Office report on the core equipment programme in the light of the Government’s claim?
Defence reform is not simply about cutting Armed Forces personnel and prioritising the pursuit of savings above all else; it is about aligning present and future capabilities with present and future strategic threats within realistic budgets. We do not believe that that has been this Government’s approach in at least some areas, whatever their intention may have been.
However, in two areas, we are at one with the Government. We supported and welcomed the Royal British Legion’s campaign on the military covenant, albeit that it took a bit of a push to persuade the Government to enshrine it in legislation. It provides a clear duty for us all, as my noble friend Lady Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde reminded us, to ensure that members of our Armed Forces and their families are cared for and are not penalised or discriminated against as a result of their service in the forces, and as members of the military community, on behalf of our country. We have proposed greater resources to tackle veterans’ long-term mental health issues and believe that we need to rebalance the system of allowances in favour of the low paid and those on the front line.
The other area where we are at one with the Government is in our support and admiration for our Armed Forces and in our united backing for them in the military operations that they have undertaken, such as in Libya, and in their current operations in Afghanistan. We know that they are risking their lives to ensure the security of our nation and the protection of our people and our interests, and that, in doing so, they are seeking to give others the opportunity of enjoying the freedoms which we take for granted.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, it is a privilege to wind up this informed and insightful debate. I thank my noble friend and other noble Lords for their kind words of welcome and I thank them, too, for their tributes to my late husband, who was a military pilot, policymaker and strategic thinker. For the three years before his death, he made a great impact in a short time as the Liberal Democrat defence spokesman in your Lordships’ House. Would that he were still here. He was always the one who flew the aeroplanes, but for more than 40 years I had the good fortune to share his life and thinking, which has given me an understanding of the matters raised today.
The commitment, professionalism and courage of the Armed Forces were much in evidence during the Cold War. How much more these qualities have been tested during the operations of recent years. Defence of the realm remains the first duty of government and its importance has been reflected in the speeches today. I have listened with great interest to the contributions made and I welcome the expertise, insight and analysis from all sides of the House.
Before I address specific issues, let me repeat this Government’s priorities for defence. Our current number one priority is operations in Afghanistan. That is where the men and women of our Armed Forces are making the greatest sacrifices and that is where we must focus our main effort. Transition is under way. The plan, although difficult, is on schedule and combat operations will end in 2014.
We are also forging ahead on transformation in defence. Many difficult decisions have already been taken—difficult but necessary decisions. The defence budget has been balanced for the first time in a generation; a new fiscal discipline has been brought to bear; and the structure for our future Armed Forces has been laid out. Future Force 2020 will be leaner, more adaptable but still formidable. At its core will be the talented and dedicated people of our Armed Forces. Looking after them will be central to ensuring their effectiveness. The new employment model will make service terms and conditions more flexible, better reflecting the complexity of modern family life and helping to reduce the burdens on our service personnel and their families.
I turn now to specific points raised during the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Robertson, who brings great expertise to these debates, reminded us of the great losses in past conflicts and the power of Churchillian rhetoric. Perhaps we do not make orators like Churchill any more. He talked about success on the ground in Afghanistan, saying that we must not let the messages in this country detract from the real successes and advances in Afghanistan and that we must not leave with the work half done. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, also mentioned the lack of media coverage of what is actually being achieved in Afghanistan.
As the NATO Secretary-General said earlier this year, the decisions made at Lisbon will remain the bedrock of our strategy. This will involve UK and ISAF forces continuing to operate in a combat role, albeit a reducing one, in support of Afghan forces until the end of 2014. ISAF troop contributions will be made in a co-ordinated and cohesive manner and will be aligned with the Lisbon principle, but our firm commitment is to support the Afghan National Army officer academy and help the Afghan forces in their transition to a more peaceful existence.
My noble friend Lord Palmer asked a number of questions—I may not be able to answer all of them—about the covenant. Several other noble Lords rightly mentioned its importance, including the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, who brings great wisdom to these debates. It is essential that we ensure that our people serving in difficult places and times are properly looked after and valued when they are returned home. My noble friend also asked what our priorities for defence are. I emphasise that preventing conflict upstream is a central tenet of our approach to safeguarding national security. It is important to recognise that, alongside the capability and credibility of our Armed Forces, we seek to strengthen the UK’s diplomatic, economic and development assistance and technological and cultural influence, all of which contribute to a more peaceful and prosperous world.
My noble friend Lord Palmer and many others talked about the Reserve Forces. My noble friends Lord Palmer, Lord King and Lord Burnett and the noble Lords, Lord Bilimoria and Lord Rosser, all referred to the importance of the Reserve Forces. We know that, at this time, the importance of the reserves is becoming ever greater to the effectiveness of our Armed Forces. As part of the drive better to align the Territorial Army and the Regular Army, the recruitment system was updated in April to ensure that all soldiers, regular and reserve, are selected and trained to a consistently high standard. The new system is more rigorous and ensures that those who successfully complete the selection process are physically and mentally ready for the challenges of being an Army reservist. As with any new process, it will take time for a new system to be introduced, but the signs are that, broadly, it is working well. We are certainly working hard to ensure that reserves are well recruited and well trained for the tasks that they will be asked to perform.
On the matter of problems for employers, we are offering a number of financial rewards to ensure that they are not penalised when the reservist is mobilised on operations, along with guidance and support on how those funds can be accessed. Of course, the closer the civilian role to the military role, the greater the mutual benefits and value of service will be to the civilian employer.
The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, mentioned the equipment costs of 2% GDP for procurement and questioned whether we were relying on urgent operational requirements. He will be aware, as are many others, that we are having to balance the defence budget, and that distribution will be monitored carefully. He and my noble friend Lord King also queried whether people were being sent into combat without being adequately equipped and trained. Once again, we are setting great store on adequate equipment, training and good leadership, which is another vital element, before we send troops into zones of conflict.
My noble friend Lord King mentioned the importance of continuity in relation to the Secretary of State for Defence. We, too, welcome coherence and continuity within a department of this nature. He also mentioned post-traumatic stress treatment. In general, mental health in serving personnel is as good as and, in many areas, higher than in the civilian population, but that is not in any way to underestimate or minimise the real despair of post-traumatic stress. I pay tribute to the work of Combat Stress, which works so incredibly effectively with people who are the most troubled by traumatic stress.
I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, for all the work that she has done in support of the Armed Forces; her contribution has been invaluable. She mentioned in particular the war widows. I shall have the honour of representing the Government at the war widows’ commemoration on Saturday at the Cenotaph. Once again, this aspect of the Armed Forces is sometimes overlooked, yet we all know of the grief and the strength of women who have lost their partners and of families who have lost loved ones in conflict. She stressed a number of aspects of delivering the covenant; I do not have time to pick all of them up today, but I will of course write to her.
The noble Baroness and the noble Lords, Lord Bilimoria and Lord Rosser, also mentioned morale. In many parts of the services, morale is incredibly high, but of course we are aware of the uncertainties on which she laid great stress and how difficult it can be. I certainly remember that, when I was a military wife, one of the most difficult things to contend with was not knowing where you might be living, where you might be going and where your children would be going to school. Those problems of planning can undermine the effectiveness of our Armed Forces. That is something that we are looking at very closely under the military covenant: supporting families with operational welfare, extending priority for affordable housing and trying to ensure that an all-round package is there to support our military forces both when they are serving and when they transfer to civilian life.
My noble friend Lady Wilcox had vivid memories of Plymouth and stressed to us the importance of the Royal Navy for securing the seas, for protecting trade routes and, indeed, for building friendship in far-flung places. I link that to the mention made by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, of drug busting in the Caribbean and tackling piracy, notably in the seas off Somalia. That, too, is work that we should not overlook.
The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, mentioned the reserves and the European common defence policy. Of course there is a very strong case that we should work very closely with other European countries in collaborative projects to the benefit of us and our neighbours. Indeed, the alliances of which we are members play a key role in the effectiveness of our troops. The noble Lord criticised the coalition Government for reducing some defence orders. Despite what he said, the previous Government’s defence orders were not fully funded, alas. We have had to cancel some projects; the coalition is determined not to spend money that it simply does not have. I also assure the noble Lord that the Falklands are well defended and that we keep that constantly under review.
My noble friend Lord Hamilton of Epsom mentioned the aircraft carriers, which were also mentioned by my noble friends Lord Dobbs and Lord Burnett and by the noble Lord, Lord Judd. I assure noble Lords that, as a result of the decision to revert to short take-off and vertical landing, we now plan to start initial JSF flights from HMS “Queen Elizabeth” in 2018, once she has completed her sea trials, with expected operational capability in 2020. As my noble friend Lord Hamilton reminded us, the contract for the aircraft carriers was phased such that there was no way that we could retreat from it once we came into office.
The noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, reminded us of the British-Irish parliamentary group and the history of the Irish in times of war. A number of other noble Lords referred back to the sacrifices of British and Irish soldiers in the First World War. The Prime Minister spoke at the Imperial War Museum three weeks ago about preparations now under way to commemorate the centenary of the First World War. Discussions are under way with Commonwealth countries and European Governments and a cross-party advisory board has been established to oversee commemorations within the United Kingdom. I am told that there are also active discussions under way on an all-Ireland basis about the appropriate way to remember the impact of the First World War on Ireland as a whole. Once again, we should not forget the contribution and sacrifice made by Irish troops.
My noble friend Lord Bates, whose work I commend in support of the Olympic Truce, reminded us that the Armed Forces serve the will of Parliament and that Parliament should be aware of its responsibilities before they are deployed. I, too, remember visiting Commonwealth war graves and the very moving experience of seeing the rows upon rows marking where people, often very young, had fallen in the service of their country. He made mention of, and I would commend, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and the Royal British Legion for their commemorations, particularly of the last post sounding every evening at the Menin Gate, which is an extremely moving and effective reminder of the sacrifices that were made.
I commend, too, the noble Lord, Lord Judd, for his tireless work in support of peace and justice. He reminded us of the importance of upholding the highest standards in any deployment. I trust that I can reassure him of the importance that the Government, and indeed the Armed Forces, place on integrity as well as professionalism in all their actions. I also say that those returning from operations may well be reassigned to pass on their expertise at training establishments. We would have no wish to lose the expertise of those coming back from operations in enabling the next generation of our Armed Forces to act within conflict zones.
My noble friend Lord Burnett mentioned our joint right honourable friend Sir Nick Harvey. I, too, join in with the tributes to his work, particularly the work that he has done—and, I hope, may continue to do—in connection with Trident. My noble friend asked a number of specific questions. I will not go into all of them today but he asked specifically whether the Government will give support to 3 Commando Brigade. Future Army 2020 has withdrawn 24 Commando Engineer Regiment, which is currently based at Royal Marines barracks Chivenor. The Army will continue to provide the support required by 3 Commando Brigade from within its new structure. Time does not permit me to go into the detail of the other questions that he asked and I will reply later.
The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, reminded us movingly of the Zoroastrian Parsees serving in the Armed Forces and of the Gurkha record of courage, which of course includes Victoria Cross gallantry awards. Once again, the Gurkhas are a force that we do not forget readily in this country. My noble friend Lord Dobbs, too, mentioned the military covenant and the efforts that we must make to ensure that our military personnel are properly looked after. He gave us a graphic story in support of that. The noble Viscount, Lord Slim, mentioned the recruitment, selection and volunteering of the Special Forces. I note his concerns and assure him that we have no plans to reduce the standards of training for the Special Forces. They are often the jewels in the crown of those who serve us.
The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, reminded us of new threats and of the value of joint preparation with allies, which is increasingly important given the expense of and the demands on the deployment of our troops. He asked a number of other detailed questions. I shall need to come back to him in writing about the guarantees of the SDSR defence planning assumptions and the reductions being appropriately borne across the services. By and large, the reductions in the services are going to be proportionate across the ranks. However, I note his concern that senior officers seem to be managing rather better than the junior officers. I assure him that that is certainly not within the Government’s plans, which are to end up with proportionate and balanced forces that we are working.
In preparing for this debate, I read again a book that my husband wrote 20 years ago, entitled The Technology Trap. I will quote one passage from it:
“The key issue is, with limited resources, how can the technologies which offer the greatest promise for military use be exploited, and hence increase national security. This is a difficult problem, and any analysis must depend on assumptions about the nature of the future security concerns, the prospects of technological progress in particular areas, the character of international relations, national and global economic prospects, and a host of unquantifiable social and political factors”.
Twenty years on, this is no less true. Resources continue to be limited, the costs of major projects continue to rise, the international situation is no less unpredictable and, as we have heard in examples around the House today, natural disasters or national emergencies can also require the deployment of Armed Forces at little notice—be it flooding or the Olympics.
I am conscious that I have not addressed all the points raised in the debate and I shall undertake to write to noble Lords. I thank all those who have contributed to the debate today. As ever, when we are discussing our Armed Forces, the debate has drawn on personal experience and the understanding of many Members. One thing is clear: we all share a respect for the determination, professionalism and bravery of our Armed Forces. They perform their duty under difficult and dangerous circumstances with extraordinary selflessness. We owe an immense debt of gratitude for the sacrifices that they and their families make and, in this time of remembrance, we must never forget that they and their predecessors are, and have been, willing to make the greatest sacrifice of all so that we might deliberate and make considered decisions in a free and safe country. Your Lordships have expressed your admiration for those who are serving. For those who have died or been wounded in the service of the country, we must, and we will, remember them.
Planning
Baroness Hanham
That this House takes note of Her Majesty’s Government’s policies on planning.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Hanham)
My Lords, most decisions on planning are taken at a local level against a defined plan and in consultation with local people. Planning helps to protect the environment and ensure appropriate development, and helps with growth in the economy through business expansion. I wish to concentrate today on measures that the Government are taking to reform and speed up the planning system. We are undertaking these reforms because the planning system that we inherited as a Government was deficient in two key areas.
First, many local people did not feel involved with or sympathetic to the decisions that were being made. Policies such as imposed regional housing targets created antagonism. Local people saw only the disbenefits of growth, not the improvements it could bring. In the end, the real costs were borne by local communities, with fewer jobs, and fewer homes—an unsustainable future. Secondly, the system could be slow in reaching decisions. Not only did this create uncertainty, it did nothing to encourage the growth and housing provision that this country needs. Some change was required.
We took as our starting point Open Source Planning, a policy document that proposed a new approach to planning. This was adopted in the coalition agreement, with a promise to radically reform the planning system. We have already achieved much of this aim.
Last November’s Localism Act has reshaped the way in which planning is carried out. That was a major milestone towards achieving the commitment at the very heart of the coalition agreement. Its measures put power in the hands of local people and groups to engage in and shape their communities. Particularly in this respect, it introduced neighbourhood planning, which, backed by incentives such as a meaningful proportion of receipts from the community infrastructure levy being passed to neighbourhoods, will give local communities both the opportunity and the encouragement to think positively about future development.
We are keen for local people to take the opportunities to influence their local plan, as well as bringing forward a neighbourhood plan for their immediate area. It may be of interest to noble Lords that over 200 funded neighbourhood planning front-runners are now under way, and more than 100 non-front-runner neighbourhoods have begun the process. By mid-October, 52 neighbourhood planning areas had reached the first stage in the process of formally designating their neighbourhood planning areas, and another 100 had submitted applications for designation. We expect that up to three of these could reach independent examination stage this year. Thirty-five areas are aiming to go to referendum by 2013, and we expect around 80 to have plans in place by the end of next year.
Through a £3.1 million programme, four support organisations are providing advice and support to communities on neighbourhood planning. We are providing a £50 million programme to support local authorities in making neighbourhood planning a success, including funding new local authority burdens.
A further requirement will be for major developers in particular to undertake pre-application consultation with local residents and members of the neighbourhood forum. The new duty to co-operate ensures that councils have to collaborate when producing their local plans, so that issues such as the needs of strategic housing market areas that straddle local authority boundaries are addressed.
In March this year the National Planning Policy Framework streamlined over 1,000 pages of policy down to 50, reducing duplication, making it easier for ordinary people to understand the system and setting the strategic context to guide neighbourhood planning. The framework includes the presumption in favour of sustainable development, reinforces the role of local plans in meeting the needs of each area and ensures a positive approach to applications where up-to-date plans are not in place. The new, simplified framework was published in March and is already helping to deliver the homes and jobs that the country needs and an enhanced built, natural and historic environment. The emphasis on local plans in the framework, and the new incentive provided by the presumption to have an up-to-date plan in place, have resulted in intensified plan-making activity.
By May 2010, six years after Labour’s 2004 Planning Act, only 57 core strategies had been adopted out of 335 local planning authorities. By contrast, 65% of all local planning authorities now have at least a published plan, and 44% of all authorities have completed all the statutory stages and have agreed plans in place following community consultation. The framework also underlines the importance of town centres, while recognising that business in rural communities should be free to expand. However, it also guarantees robust protections for our natural and historic environment and protects the green belt. It also ultimately achieved the accolade of being praised by organisations across the planning spectrum, from the Campaign to Protect Rural England through to the CBI; and from the National Trust through to the British Property Federation. I readily acknowledge that many changes were made to it after close co-operation and consultation with those and other organisations.
In July we announced a package of measures to speed up and simplify the planning application process, many of which take forward the commitments in last year’s Plan for Growth. An effective planning system is a key part of the Government’s growth strategy. All too often we heard that the planning system is a brake rather than a motor for growth, but it should not be. Planning can help create the conditions for economic growth but only if it works in a cohesive way, recognising that opportunities in each area are different and that proposals are for local decision.
We are proud of the achievements to reform planning since 2010, but it was felt that more was needed to help trigger the provision of new housing and business development, to ensure that opportunities could be seized to encourage investment for the future. Therefore on 6 September we announced a major package on housing and growth. This included measures such as the Planning Inspectorate being given power to decide applications where local authorities consistently perform badly; the increased use of planning performance agreements for large schemes; planning inspectors being able to award costs at appeal—for example, where councils have refused schemes with little justification—the Planning Inspectorate prioritising those appeals that will help deliver growth; continuing the policy that enables planning authorities to allow unimplemented permissions to be extended easily; enabling developers with sites with unviable numbers of affordable homes the right to appeal against these obligations; a consultation on allowing developers to renegotiate non-viable Section 106 agreements; a review to rationalise local and national building standards; considering the use of call-in for major new settlements with larger than local impacts; encouraging councils to use flexibilities in the NPPF to tailor the extent of green-belt land to local circumstances, while continuing to preserve its protection; introducing permitted development rights to enable a change of use from commercial to residential; and consulting on a significant relaxation of planning controls over residential and commercial extensions, but for a limited period. Some, including this letter, will need consultations, and where that is the case we will be undertaking them shortly.
Some will require primary legislation, and these are included in the Growth and Infrastructure Bill that is receiving its Second Reading in another place today and will come to this House thereafter. However, I assure noble Lords that the measures in that Bill do not mean that we are throwing the planning system up in the air again and starting afresh; it is not a change of direction. These measures build on our existing reforms.
We have given councils and communities more power to plan and to identify, after widespread consultation and taking of views, what development their areas need and where it should go. With power, though, comes responsibility—the responsibility to get on and plan, to focus on the key decisions that affect the future of their areas and to deal in a positive and efficient way with individual planning proposals.
This is a long list of reforms but there is still more that we will do. Having streamlined the policy documents, we are doing the same with the 6,000 pages of guidance that has built up over the years. We have recently launched the review and my noble friend Lord Taylor of Goss Moor is leading a group of practitioners in identifying what can make this less complex.
It is not just a case of changing the rules, however; there needs to be good or better co-operation. We want developers to invest time in helping local authorities and planners understand the economic benefits of their proposed development and, most especially, to give local communities the opportunities to discuss and shape those plans in advance of the plans going forward. We are making clear to elected members and council officers the circumstances in which they can speak to developers without raising propriety issues. In turn we want the developers to seize every opportunity to make it easier for councils and local communities to understand their aspirations and be positive about economic development.
By developers and business working together with local authorities and local communities we firmly believe that we can deliver the sustainable development the country needs without treading on the toes of local communities and their absolute need to protect their environment into the future. Everyone involved in planning—whether a homeowner with a small-scale addition, a developer of small or larger projects or the planning authority itself—has to remember that the decisions that they make today will still be there scores of years later.
Lord Davies of Stamford
The noble Baroness did not mention at all by name the affordable housing obligation, and she only referred to it very obliquely, as if it did not really exist at all or had no significance. Is the report in the current issue of Private Eye—that the Prime Minister’s office in 10 Downing Street put out a statement that the affordable housing obligation could be abolished without the loss of any affordable houses, even though there is a ministerial Statement which states that the result of that abolition would be loss of 10,000 affordable homes a year—correct?
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I did not know whether the noble Lord was going to intervene in the gap; this is a debate, not Question Time. However, I am not aware of the Private Eye article. I have not seen it, nor have I been advised about it. I usually take Private Eye with a fair degree of scepticism. I beg to move.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, like the Minister and at least two other Members of your Lordships’ House present for this debate, I have been leader of a council —in fact, of course, my noble friend Lord McKenzie is also a former leader of a council.
Lord Beecham
Briefly but, I am sure, stunningly successfully. Of course, the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, served on a local authority as well, so there are many of us with some local authority experience. I was, for a couple of years after I was leader, chairman of the development committee. I declare an interest as a current member of Newcastle City Council and, once again, as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
Despite the moderate tones in which the Minister opened the debate, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Government are really viscerally opposed to planning. They are essentially an anti-planning Government in many ways, and that shows through their policies—not just strictly in the planning field. They have adopted wholesale the Treasury fantasy that the planning system is somehow responsible for low growth in our economy and for the lack of new housing. This is not an evidence-based approach; it is one that they partially successfully sold to the previous Government as well as the present one. However, the fact is—it is well known, although whether it has appeared in Private Eye I am not sure—that 400,000 outstanding planning permissions are available for residential housing to be built. Moreover, 87% of planning applications were approved in 2011; that is a significant statistic.
There is not, in general, a huge backlog in terms of the way in which planning applications are dealt with. The bigger problems actually come with the bigger schemes. We have now an almost interminable debate about a huge infrastructure project, on if and where to have additional airport facilities. This is taking years. It was to try to deal with these major problems that the previous Government introduced the Infrastructure Planning Commission which, of course, the present Government have abolished. However, if there were to be delays in the planning system it would partly be a function of the staffing which is having to be curtailed. Of course, the Government abolished the planning development grant, which encouraged and facilitated the adequate staffing of appropriate people in local authority planning departments.
Local government has a good record of promoting economic and housing development: witness the enormous regeneration of many of our provincial cities over the past couple of decades under, it must be said, Governments of both political colours. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, who certainly was instrumental in moving on this agenda during his time in office. It is interesting that the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, is not in his place tonight—indeed, one hesitates to say it, but he is rarely in his place, which is unfortunate because he has much to say and contribute, and was an outstandingly successful Secretary of State for the Environment in many respects. He does not cite the planning system as a major obstacle to growth in the interesting and idiosyncratic document which he has published with recommendations for a new approach to growth in the economy. He makes some recommendations about planning, but they are pretty modest in relation to the general thrust of his report.
One aspect of that report, of course, is the regional imbalance which is again becoming a current topic, and which the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, certainly addresses. It is interesting that, in some respects, he seems to seek to revert to previous practice. He refers to the abolition of regional development agencies; he does not call for their reintroduction, because it is quite clear that the Government have set their face against that—unfortunately, in the view of some of us. However, he talks about having local growth teams, which arguably could be said to replace the government offices which have, alas, also been abolished and which I and others have commented on in debates in this Chamber before. He calls also for, as he puts it, Ministers to be associated with local enterprise partnerships. Some of us are somewhat sceptical about local enterprise partnerships, certainly in terms of their accountability. However, he is almost turning back to the inner city partnership days when there was a Minister—the noble Lord was one of them—who was closely associated with a particular area. I do not know quite how many Ministers would be required to cover the 38 local enterprise partnerships but, whatever the mechanism, the intention is clear that you have to see the country as a whole and not simply leave it in an unstructured way, which has led to the imbalance that we are all familiar with.
Indeed, one aspect of this matter is that there is simply no planning framework for England. I have referred before in debates in your Lordships’ House to the report of the Town and Country Planning Association some years ago, which strongly suggested that we needed a national planning framework for England so that there could be a deliberate attempt to secure balance in development. I recall that when I pressed the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, during his second term as Secretary of State for the Environment, to support a particular development in Newcastle relating to a brewery site—since demolished and subsequently redeveloped—his officials said that it was of no concern to government as to where this investment should go. There was a rival contender for this investment in the Midlands, and the department was simply not concerned about where it should go. That seems to me an abdication of responsibility indicative of the failure to have a sensible national framework for these decisions to be made.
Coming to the current proposals, my noble friend Lord Davies has referred to one aspect which is a matter of concern—but only one of a number of issues which arise in terms of the Government’s apparent dilution of the current system. Affordable homes are no longer apparently to be required. There is to be a relaxation, perhaps, of Section 106 agreements and, of course, we have the wonderfully developed thought, translating Marie Antoinette into housing planning terms, that the answer is of course to “let them build extensions”. This seems to be the answer to both the housing problem and the plight of the construction industry. I suspect that that is a recipe for considerable difficulty between neighbours and around authorities as people fall out about unsightly or large extensions which would not otherwise get planning permission. I note that apparently it has been suggested that the Secretary of State is counselling people who still find difficulties in obtaining such permissions that they might sue their local authority for damages, which strikes me as a little excessive. There is also a suggestion from Mr Nick Boles, who is now a Minister in the department, that the three-year period for this absurd policy might well become indefinite.
Other matters also concern the Local Government Association and the Campaign to Protect Rural England, including the notion that applications might be made in certain circumstances direct to the Secretary of State rather than to the council. One might think that that is not the most localist approach to planning. Another matter of concern is a limitation of the power for local authorities to require information with planning applications. How they are supposed to deal properly with planning applications on sketchy information is not at all clear. Of particular concern to the CPRE is the fact that major business or commercial projects might be regarded as nationally significant infrastructure and therefore would be taken out of the local planning regime altogether. That also poses considerable threats—one thinks of large warehousing and other developments —which could significantly damage local authority areas.
There are many questions about other aspects of policy. What sort of housing are we to have in the Government’s view? Again, this is well known and I have referred to it in previous debates. In the past couple of decades—this occurred under the previous Government as well—houses and accommodation have been built with much smaller areas and lower space standards than most of the rest of Europe. Generally speaking, we have worse design features and less concentration on environmental aspects of housing. None of that apparently attracts the Government’s attention. It is carte blanche to build what you like where you like, which is not a satisfactory way of dealing with the substantial problems of local economy, housing need or the construction industry.
Although there are certain sensible ideas in the Government’s national policy framework—I know that my noble friend will address those later—the current atmosphere is one in which the Government are clearly potentially creating a situation in which we will see unsatisfactory development. We will not see the right number of houses built or the right kind of houses built that are desperately needed. I do not see the Government’s proposals at all achieving the aims which they profess they wish to see implemented. I regret that the role of local authorities in all this is clearly very much under threat. We are capable of producing a new partnership with the private sector and others with the right kind of development in the right place at the right time, given the power to do so.
Lord Davies of Stamford
I am grateful to my noble friend for his clear and convincing analysis of the situation. Does he agree that the abolition of the affordable housing obligation will lead to windfall profits for developers who will have signed the Section 106 agreement and costed in performing their affordable housing obligation, which they now will find retrospectively they do not need to perform? They will be able to write back that provision straight to their bottom line. Does my noble friend think that the public interest should in some way be allowed to share in these windfall gains?
Lord Beecham
I would rather that the windfall gains were not made at all. My noble friend, in his ingenious intervention, makes a perfectly valid point. This is almost the most lamentable feature of the Government’s current policy and I invite them to rethink it.
Lord Shipley
My Lords, I should first declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I am grateful to the Minister for the opportunity to have this debate, albeit at very short notice. The reason is that we shall not be discussing the Growth and Infrastructure Bill for several weeks and, given the importance of growth to the economy, this is a valuable opportunity to debate the background, particularly the proposals around planning, which exist in the context of the Localism Act.
The period after the Summer Recess, and through the party conference season, is often one for announcements. There is a tendency for ideas to be floated and an equal tendency for some of them to start to sink when the detail is examined. So it was with announcements on planning made on 6 and 7 September, many of which were welcome and were described by the Minister, but some of which most certainly require further thought and revision.
I agree entirely that the Government’s overriding objective should be growth and to get Britain building again. That is right. Growth drives jobs and it drives higher tax income to spend on public services. Therefore, we should welcome the £300 million to provide 15,000 affordable homes across the country and the extension to the refurbishment programme to bring an extra 5,000 empty homes back into use, together with the £280 million for FirstBuy, the shared equity scheme, to give a further 16,500 first-time buyers the chance to own their own home. We should welcome the £10 billion of loan guarantees to housing associations, property management companies and developers to enable them to secure lower borrowing costs, which should lead to thousands of extra rental homes being built. All this creates jobs and helps to deal with the shortage of affordable homes.
There are many positive aspects in the Growth and Infrastructure Bill, such as bringing the town and village green legislation into line with the planning system, some positive proposals around the importance of broadband to growth and the short-term postponement of business rates revaluation. However, we need to be clear what the problems are that we are trying to solve in the planning system and to secure broad agreement to these. The main barrier to growth seems to me to be access to finance, not the rate of determinations and approvals. For example, we debated at length in the Local Government Finance Bill the need to extend tax increment financing. We know that the lack of investment finance in construction and mortgages is the major cause of the low number of housing starts. The Local Government Finance Bill contains a clear incentive to local councils to drive growth, in which they themselves will share. It is in everyone’s interests for development to succeed.
We should note that there are existing permissions for 400,000 new homes yet to be built by developers and that planning approvals for residential and commercial applications ran at 87% in 2011-12. Indeed, approvals for major office, general industry and retail distribution were more than 90%. It is no surprise that the British Property Federation has commented that the reforms proposed to the planning system would increase uncertainty rather than reduce it, because it does not ring true that the main problem that we need to solve is a failure of local councils to manage the planning process speedily or well enough.
The Bill seems too centralist in its thinking at the very same time that the Localism Act is coming into effect, encouraging local decision-making and neighbourhood planning. I am very pleased that the Minister has been able to announce this evening that 200 neighbourhood plans are in the process of being developed. However, the Bill would give much greater power to the Planning Inspectorate than seems justified and it is unclear why this is thought to be necessary when it is likely to increase conflict with local authorities. An unintended consequence could well be to increase the time taken to determine applications. I think that the involvement of the Planning Inspectorate would be of positive benefit with very large schemes that cross several council boundaries. Under the Growth and Infrastructure Bill, the Secretary of State would be able to direct that some major infrastructure developments, such as energy, transport and waste projects, would require consent under the major infrastructure planning regime. I understand and support that, but clarity is still needed on what would fall within the national framework and what the role of local planning committees would be. I hope that the Minister may be able to give some greater clarity today, because the power of the Secretary of State should not be used to remove from local decision-making, for example, retail and business applications. Such a proposal would in any event be contrary to the aims and ambitions of the Localism Act.
I would like now to address the issue of the so-called poor performers, who could lose the right to determine applications. It is true that some planning departments are less good than they should be. It is also true that some planning committees can make poor decisions. But the majority are good and deliver to time. The DCLG has stated that large-scale commercial projects would be fast-tracked for determination within 12 months, but we should note that councils currently approve over 90% within 52 weeks. Planning magazine for 19 October 2012 listed the slowest decision-makers for all applications in 2011-12, and even the slowest got nine out of 10 applications determined within 26 weeks. I do not feel that the accusation of slowness is proven here. On major applications, the slowest decision-makers are spread across the country, with the lowest being Torbay at 31% within 26 weeks and the London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea with 33% within 26 weeks, with the 25th slowest being New Forest, determining 58% within 26 weeks.
The Minister will be reassured that I do not think that statistics such as these should be taken at face value. I would prefer to know more about why the figures are as they are, because they might reflect complex Section 106 negotiations; there may be Highways Agency delays, of which there are far too many; and they might relate to any one of a number of government agencies that are not subject to the same standards of response times as local government. I am at present unconvinced that action is required by the Secretary of State as long as advice and mentoring are available to authorities deemed to be slow.
However, there is another test that we should pay more attention to, which is that of planning authorities with the highest proportion of defeats on appeal. There is some evidence that too many councils lose too many appeals, which suggests that an improvement may be justified. Of course, it could be that some planning appeals are incorrectly judged. Whatever the case, the first step should always be to enable a poorly performing council to improve, with special measures being introduced only when there is a very serious failure in the quality and speed of decisions. We have just passed the Local Government Finance Bill. That encourages growth, because local authorities can share in it. Councils have a clear reason to drive growth, so I remain puzzled as to why so much emphasis is placed on giving the impression that councils are doing a poor job when the evidence does not really justify that.
On Section 106 agreements, I understand the problems faced by developers financing affordable housing, but I would not wish to see enforced renegotiation meaning that benefits from Section 106 agreements are lost for ever. We support the Government’s objective to get the construction industry moving, but there is a significant body of evidence to show that councils are responding to local conditions and trying to find local solutions. Enabling the Secretary of State to give the Planning Inspectorate power to override Section 106 agreements in terms of the number of affordable units and to decide the number of affordable homes in schemes seems to me to be over the top. Central government’s role must be to make sure that there is a demand for housing by addressing the financing for social housing and access to mortgage finance for private buyers.
There has been a cross-party LGA response asking the Government to rethink their proposals to force renegotiation of Section 106 agreements with developers that provide an element of affordable housing. Councils can do this anyway and many are. Councils can in any case be purchasers of last resort to rent out the homes that they buy. If these proposals go ahead, there is a possibility that developers could try to delay building to pursue renegotiation. Section 106 in any case can relate to community facilities such as schools, street lights and access roads and there are clear dangers in taking power over such matters from local planning committees. Anyway, who will be the judge of viability of a scheme containing affordable homes? Is there evidence that central government knows better than local government? I do not think that the case is proven. There is now evidence to suggest that, when voluntary renegotiation has happened, on average councils are accepting a level of affordable housing around one-third lower than stated in their local plan. If plans in relation to Section 106 renegotiations are continued, a system of independent verification of claims of unviability should be established, possibly through the Homes and Communities Agency.
I also suggest that the HCA scoring system for the allocation of the additional funds announced—the £300 million cash and £10 billion loan guarantees that I referred to earlier—should reflect the willingness of a local council to renegotiate a Section 106 agreement in its area. I also support consideration being given to HCA funds being used to make viable an otherwise unviable site so that the full measures in a Section 106 agreement can be maintained. I recognise that guidance will be given once the Bill is agreed about how viability of Section 106 agreements should be assessed. I hope that the Minister will agree that there is a danger that a national assessment undertaken outside the area might not reflect local circumstances and, secondly, that while the affordable housing element is the one emphasised so far, new schools, roads and community facilities can be just as important.
I refer now to the amendments proposed to the Communications Act on 7 September, when it was announced that broadband street cabinets could be installed in any location other than a site of special scientific interest without the need for prior approval and without any conditions. These are large junction boxes, so surely there has to be some local and neighbourhood consultation in the spirit of localism. I understand that this change may have to include—and I seek the Minister’s clarification of this—that all telecommunications equipment and infrastructure could be part of this. I hope that the Minister will agree that this should not give rise to the uncontrolled installation of mobile phone masts and related equipment in unsuitable locations, particularly areas of natural beauty.
Finally, there are proposals on extensions and permitted development rights. On these, it is not clear what problem the Government are trying to solve. It would not increase the number of extensions by very much, but it would increase the number of disputes between neighbours. Once built, such extensions would stand for many years. In any case, Article 4 directions could be used in such cases, so I question why this proposal has been made and why there have been suggestions that it could last longer than the three years initially proposed.
I conclude by saying that these issues need full debate, involving all parties. We need clear statements and agreements as to what the problems are that we have to solve. With agreement to those, solutions can be found, so I hope that the Minister will agree that we need further discussion and that we can build on that further discussion to devise the right way to proceed.
Lord Best
I declare interests as president of the Local Government Association and chair of the Hanover Housing Association, which puts in for planning consent on lots of sites, as well as vice-president of the Town and Country Planning Association. I find myself in agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, on a number of points that he has made, as well as with the noble Lord, Lord Beecham. I shall try not to repeat too many of their points but to underline them.
I shall start with a positive. I am grateful to the Minister, who I know has been part of the process. The good news in forthcoming legislation is that the town and village greens legislation is to be amended. This will be more than helpful in getting rid of the mischievous objectors who have used this legislation in the past, while still protecting genuine green spaces, which is very important. I put down amendments to this effect in the Localism Bill and was assured that forthcoming legislation would address these matters, and so it has, so many thanks to Ministers for that.
In relation to the ways in which planning may encourage or inhibit growth, it is true that the Local Government Association does not believe that planning is the real barrier to growth. As we have heard, there are 400,000 homes with planning consent sitting there. Local authorities are proud of their record in approving 87% of all applications for planning consent in 2011-12. It does not sound as if local authorities are putting up unreasonable barriers to housing activity. Indeed, this leaves us with the suspicion that at least some housebuilders are hoarding land with planning consent. Their shareholders like to see land with planning consent on the balance sheets. It is rather like gold bars; you do not always have to develop the sites in order to give yourself the advantage of those planning consents. It is not helpful if developers are holding out for easier terms than were earlier negotiated with the Section 106 agreements that we have been hearing about. I think that 75,000 homes are supposedly held up because the Section 106 agreements now look too onerous. The hope on the part of many developers is that, having got their planning consent, they will be able to negotiate down the affordable elements within those sites and therefore obviously increase the profit margins for those developments.
At the moment, housebuilders are not doing so badly. Profits are up again, and the housebuilding industry has moved away from the rather shaky times immediately after 2008. It would be unwise for local authorities, and unwise for central government to encourage local authorities, to be too generous in now renegotiating terms that have already been agreed under those Section 106 deals. In any case, it must be essential for those negotiations to happen at the most local level. These are very site-specific discussions regarding what is viable and what is not viable. Local negotiation is required here and not central government intervention. I hope the Minister can reassure us that the powers that the forthcoming legislation may introduce are there as reserve powers to be used only in exceptional circumstances and that one will see local authorities left to get on with the job of granting planning consent without having to think about the Planning Inspectorate marching in and without having to renegotiate Section 106 agreements where that really is not necessary in financial terms.
Wearing my housing association hat, I know that the processes can be very frustrating. Delays are a reality in a number of places. I think that local authorities do not wish it to be that way, but we sometimes wait inordinately long to get the consents that we need, even if in 87% of cases the answer is going to be yes. In the mean time, it is tedious and costly to have to wait. In the past, I have been told that I must expect delays because the council has staff shortages, maternity leave is a problem and the cycle of council meetings means that nothing can be done for a few more weeks yet. All those delays are frustrating, but they may be a necessary part of ensuring that local opinion is taken with development and is not left on the outside.
Hanover Housing Association has a development where I am told that, having put in for planning consent in February, it is likely to get a definitive outcome in January. This is after a year of prior negotiation on this cohousing scheme for senior citizens who have clubbed together and will be living in the homes. It is very tough to be in the middle of this and to keep telling these elderly people that unfortunately it will take a bit longer and a bit longer. However, I understand the political pressures faced by local authorities. It seems that the culture in this country is always on the side of those who want to say no, not on the side of those who want to get on with the job. Real leadership is required by local authorities, and that is not always easy. My advice to local authorities, for what it is worth, is that one needs leadership at the council level. One cannot expect the local councillor, put on the spot by his or her local electorate, to side with good council policy and be pro-development when that is suicidal in terms of their electoral future. So one has to expect leadership at the council level, with positive planning at the council level, and not at the level of the individual ward councillor.
With that backdrop of local opposition, how can one achieve more growth? The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, points out that a lot of the problems in getting more homes built and development of all kinds undertaken are financial and not concerned with planning, but there are some planning elements here. Starting at the top, one needs a robust planning Minister. I note that the Minister in the other place, Nick Boles, is not afraid to speak his mind and is taking a robust attitude towards those who obstruct the need for development. I believe that central government is seized of the need for more homes. This is not just talk. There is a genuine desire to try to address the acute housing shortages and to get economic growth going on the back of that. That is a good start. Central government has given local authorities the new homes bonus not just to give them extra funding when they say yes and schemes for new homes go ahead, but to bolster leadership at the local level by enabling councillors to tell local communities that if they are positive about new development extra resources will come into their area and there will be local benefits. I see that the CPRE is suggesting that the new homes bonus might be increased if the homes are built on brownfield, not greenfield, sites. As long as the new homes bonus is not used in places where new homes are not needed, it can be an incentive to get councils on side, and for councils to get local people on side as regards the requirement for more growth.
Neighbourhood plans involve people intimately in drawing up their local plans. The Minister has told us that 200 are now in advanced stages of negotiation. I am keeping an eye on one particular neighbourhood forum and its work and seeing how this is working through. It is a way in which lots of local meetings can bring people together instead of the usual total opposition to any development anywhere around here. Being part of building up a community-based neighbourhood plan can get people onside, and it is a useful way forward. At the time of the Localism Bill, I wanted an amendment to say that if a local plan has been devised, has been through the proper processes and has been properly inspected and if all three of the county council, the district council and the parish council—where there are three—agree that this neighbourhood plan is fine and give it a tick in the box, there should be no need for a local referendum involving all kinds of local people who have played no part in the discussions to date, who come out of the woodwork and say “no”, who get up a petition in the local shop, who are opposed to anything happening anywhere near them, who have had their chance to be involved in the consultation exercise and have rejected that chance, but who turn up at the last minute. We have not yet had any referendums, but I fear they will undermine the very good way of approaching the creation of a neighbourhood plan that people feel better about than they usually do.
There are many financial ways in which growth and the housebuilding that could flow from it could be generated. I will list the ones that appeal to me in particular. Those housing revenue account freedoms for local authorities could be extended so that local authorities that have retained council stock could be allowed to use their capital assets to borrow against that stock, just as housing associations are allowed to do. As long as that borrowing is prudential, and there is no reason at all to believe local authorities would go wild if they had that opportunity, it would be safe and sensible and they could be part of the much needed development of land, including land that they own themselves. The housing associations can borrow. My own has a big headroom, and we could borrow lots more money but we can only borrow what we can repay. There is a continuing need for some grant. Grants have been cut back, but if we had more, we would take up the opportunities we have to borrow more, and the Government get terrific gearing out of that. Most of the money is private money, but it needs some public money to make that happen.
I would like to put on the table one last financial way in which growth in housebuilding can be encouraged. I would recommend that, as well as the FirstBuy and NewBuy initiatives which help first-time buyers into a new flat by helping with their deposits and guaranteeing their mortgages, we should also have a scheme that enables first-time buyers to buy the homes that older people are leaving so that they can move into brand new, specialist, retirement housing. That gives you two bangs for your buck. The elderly person gets a much more manageable home which is cheap to heat and maintain as well as all the things that older people need, such as accessibility and companionship, and the young family can buy into a family home with, probably, three bedrooms and a garden which is just what they want and just what housebuilders are seldom building these days. You would get two for one if we could encourage a move of that kind.
It is good news that the Government want more action, are serious about the acute shortages of new homes and want to get Britain building, but the most important measures for central government will not be in diminishing the role of local government on the planning side. I hope the Minister and her departmental colleagues will be open to other positive ideas as well.
Lord Jenkin of Roding
My Lords, I have a meeting tomorrow with some people who are seeking to extend the life of a ragstone quarry in Kent, ragstone being a stone which is widely used in repairing and building public buildings. There has been substantial opposition to that but I learnt today, from the local Member of Parliament, that the largest element of opposition has come from people who have absolutely no connection whatever with the land in question. Indeed, they have come from areas considerably apart. That rang a bell with me. When the M11 motorway was built through my constituency and we had to face protestors who declared themselves the “Free Country of Wanstonia”, it turned out that all but about 5% were from outside the borough. The point just made by the noble Lord, Lord Best, about the need to make sure that you have local support and not pay too much attention to others would be a very big and valuable step towards getting away from development always being opposed.
I am very glad that my noble friend, when introducing the debate, referred to the National Planning Policy Framework. It has been an almost unqualified success. Some of the people who were initially extremely hostile to the first draft are those who now sing its praises most loudly. Some of them must feel slightly ashamed that they went over the top when the first draft was issued. My noble friend is absolutely right; this has been a great advance.
I am very aware that the Second Reading of the Growth and Infrastructure Bill has been taking place in another place today. I expect that it will not reach this House for some while. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, will forgive me: it is not really appropriate to go into too much detail about that Bill this evening, but I should make one or two points. The House knows that on the recent Localism Act and Local Government Finance Bill I found myself, with others, repeatedly championing the cause of localism and arguing that central government must be prepared, having given local authorities a general power of competence, to allow them to get on with it and make up their own minds. The Localism Act gave that power not only to local authorities but, as we have heard, local neighbourhoods. They have much more autonomy in how their local plans are drawn up and, when my noble friend opened the debate, I was encouraged by the figures she gave on the number of neighbourhood plans. Of course, we did not get all that we wanted. There were other measures that one would have wished for, but the general thrust was very much in the right direction. All the amendments passed in this House were accepted by the other place, as were, only a few days ago, the amendments to the Local Government Finance Bill, including the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis. It is a pity that she is not in her place.
However, on first reading, the Growth and Infrastructure Bill appears to go in the opposite direction. My noble friend said that it did not represent a change of policy. A good deal of persuasion is to be done if local authorities are to be convinced of that. The Local Government Association has given us some early indication of its views, and has stated:
“The Bill in its current form represents a blow to local democracy, as well as being at odds with the Government's localism programme”.
That may be a misreading of the Bill, but the fact of the matter is that that is widely believed, and we will have to look at the Bill carefully when it comes to this House.
A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Beecham, Lord Shipley and Lord Best, said that it is not the planning system which is holding up development, but it is primarily a matter of builders and developers, and particularly house buyers, having access to finance. However, the Government seem determined to believe that it is the fault of the planning system. If there really is a dispute about that, is there not a case for some serious inquiry looking at this matter? We may well look at this during consideration of the Bill, but it is not satisfactory when the great mass of local authorities say, “Look, we really are doing our best”—the figures have been quoted—only to be told by the Government that it is all their fault. This tendency to reassert some form of centralism is rather unfortunate. Although this is not the occasion for debating the interesting report prepared by my noble friend Lord Heseltine, he again has said that the thrust to localism is exactly the right way to proceed. Local authorities becoming more responsible for growth in their area and having more say is very much part of my noble friend’s recommendations.
My next point relates to the duty under the Localism Act of local authorities to collaborate with each other, which my noble friend mentioned. Noble Lords who took part in consideration of that legislation will remember that there was a good deal of scepticism about that. However, the experience of even the most recent period since then is showing that those fears were misplaced. There are now many examples of collective cross-boundary plan making. Indeed, the Planning Advisory Service, funded jointly by the Local Government Association and my noble friend’s department, is supporting this work and is a powerful voice for sharing experience of cross-boundary planning. I have been furnished with a list of very good examples of where that is happening. I shall not weary the House by reading it all but I take one example at random. The North Northamptonshire Joint Core Strategy is a statutory joint committee covering Corby, Kettering, Wellingborough and East Northamptonshire and involving Northamptonshire County Council. This is the first core strategy to be adopted in the East Midlands and currently it is under review, but the joint committee has been supported by a joint planning unit. That is a perfectly good example of collaboration and there are a number of others.
I spent a good deal of last weekend reading the report of the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, in between reading a report about how this building is falling down, which perhaps is even more alarming. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, made the point that not only do we need collaboration between local authorities themselves but that there is a demand for collaboration between local authorities and local enterprise partnerships. Accounts reaching me suggest that most of these are getting under way extremely well. It is very important, particularly with the emphasis on seeking to build policies of growth, that the LEPs and the local authorities get on well.
Finally, I have a couple of detailed points for my noble friend that are of particular concern to London. I declare my interest as a joint president of London Councils and, along with almost everybody else here, I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. The first point is permitted development rights for converting commercial property to residential property and the second one is the question of the localisation of the fixing of the level of planning fees. I shall say a word about both.
The Government are proposing to allow developers to convert commercial buildings to housing without the need for planning consent. That may be acceptable in many parts of the country but the idea is deeply opposed by London Councils and, in particular, by the City of London. In London generally the arguments seem to me to be pretty strong. London houses significant low-value but important design and creative industries which add a lot to the country’s GDP but whose ability to continue to function would be hampered seriously if developers simply bought them out and changed the use to housing. In parts of east London that is an important sector of an increasingly thriving part of the country. That automatic right to convert would be pretty unsatisfactory.
The City has even more specific anxieties. Over the years, the City authorities have handled the residential estates, which are a very small part of the whole, extremely skilfully. They have sought to confine that to quite specific areas on the periphery of the City while they remain determined to encourage commercial development to provide for the financial services industry’s crucial contribution to the nation’s GDP. Recently, I had an opportunity to raise this with the new Planning Minister, my honourable friend Nick Boles, and he confirmed that the City officials are in close touch with my noble friend’s department and I am expecting proposals to come forward for there to be exemptions from this automatic right to convert from commercial to redevelopment. I hope that my noble friend may be able to give me an update on this. Will the exemptions go wider than the City and include the London boroughs? To my mind, they have made a strong case.
Finally, I turn to planning fees. New draft regulations are coming before the House tomorrow. They are primarily a consolidation measure that was asked for by our committee. Sadly I cannot be at the debate because I have other commitments in the House. However, I will talk about not what is in the statutory instrument but what is not. Is there not a case for letting local authorities establish planning fees rather than for operating, as we have in the past, a “one size fits all” policy? The figure for planning applications in London is much higher. Inevitably, costs are higher, and some local authorities are making a significant loss, which has to be paid for either by council tax payers or by the taxpayer. It is thoroughly undesirable that that should happen.
Local authorities have been told that many developers would welcome a higher charge if it meant a prompter service, perhaps with more staff handling planning applications more quickly. Would that not be a better policy? I wonder whether my noble friend will reassure me that although that suggestion has been set aside the moment, for reasons that were spelled out in the Explanatory Memorandum to the regulations, the decentralised option will continue to be studied. Of course I understand that it is more complicated than just putting up fees to compensate for inflation. However, it would be appropriate.
I hope that local authorities will be given the chance to make a significant contribution to the growth agenda of the country. At the moment they are being held back by a number of measures—not necessarily planning measures—that reflect an increasing tendency to centralise. No doubt we shall have further opportunities to discuss this when the growth Bill comes before the House in two or three months’ time.
Lord Judd
My Lords, we all want a strong economy; that is obvious. In so far as planning is essential to getting that right, we want a planning system that facilitates rather than delays. But why do we want a strong economy? Is a strong economy an end in itself? Or do we want a strong economy so that we can have a decent, civilised Britain, in which we are able to value and enjoy our heritage, our environment and the aesthetic dimensions that make life worth living? Do we want a Britain in which there is room to regenerate our spiritual and physical batteries? Do we want to preserve and protect the challenges of wild spaces and the glory of the countryside?
There is a tremendous amount of technical and wealth-generating preoccupation—understandably—in what is being discussed about planning. I sometimes feel that we are neglecting the soul of Britain, and what will make Britain a country worth having. I want a planning system that values that soul every bit as highly and is determined to ensure that it will be not only preserved but regenerated for our young and their future. Perhaps we should look at the nightmare of the last industrial revolution. With hindsight, we can see that it could all have been done without scarring the countryside and without ruining lives to the extent that they were ruined. Surely we have learnt from that and are determined for the future of our economy that the same mistakes will not be made again.
I have always learnt from life, and I had an experience a few years ago. I may have it shared it with the House before, in which case, I apologise. It made a profound impression on me. I was at that time national president of the YMCA, which had a training centre on the edge of Lake Windermere. I was talking to one of our workers there, a very fine woman with a great sense of vision and commitment. She told me a story which has always stayed with me. She said that not long before my visit a youngster aged about seven or eight had been there and had come back very invigorated from a day out. She said, “What did you do today?”. With a sense of awe and excitement, this youngster said, “I saw far”. A few days later, she saw the youngster coming back again looking even more enthusiastic. She said, “And what did you do today?”. The youngster said, “I saw very far”.
That story certainly brought home to me that still, for countless youngsters in our society, life is stunted because they do not have the opportunity to experience the imagination, challenge and regeneration of open spaces, the countryside and all the glories there. I would like an absolutely firm undertaking from the Minister tonight that she and her colleagues will set to it to ensure that these considerations are given the same priority with all that is being done in planning as any other considerations.
To give specific indications of where that would apply, we are going into a new generation, and we are preoccupied with future energy—how we will make it possible and enable it to happen. This is not just a matter of new plant; it is a matter of the infrastructure—the pylons and wires that will criss-cross the countryside. There is also the matter—and I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Best, referred to it so firmly with all his experience—of the need for affordable housing, which is something that we all recognise. Surely, it is important to ensure that where affordable housing is provided it is done without actually scarring the landscape and doing damage to the total creative experience across the land. Therefore, brownfield development is obviously crucial in this context.
All that I am saying suggests, as in so many other walks of life, frankly, that it is all too sensitive and complex to be left to the vagaries of the market. We need more than that. Nimbyism plays too strong a part in how things are in the free market interplay. The articulate and already strong can look after their interests by saying, “Not here thank you”, and the less articulate get landed with everything. We have to keep this in mind and make sure that we have a just and even-handed approach that looks to the interests of society as a whole.
What all this demands is a master plan for what will be right in the interests of Britain. Take, for example, the generation of alternative energy. We may have targets. We may have aggregates that we are certain that we want to achieve, but exactly how will they be achieved? That is not something to be left to the haphazard interplay of unco-ordinated local planning authorities. It requires a national plan. That is why it is so important to take this interplay between the different approaches as seriously as I suggest.
Only last week I had an assurance from a colleague of the Minister—from that Bench—that, as far as the national parks were concerned, the Government were determined that in all aspects of development, progress and future work the interests, well-being, traditions and role of the national parks and society would remain inviolate and that this would be respected by all departments of government. I got that specific assurance. It is there in Hansard to read. I hope it has been internalised within the many different departments of government and local government involved. It is crucial. Of course, the same goes for areas of outstanding natural beauty.
However, this affects not only the national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty—and, of course, I have been very much involved in the life of national parks—but the countryside as a whole. That is why in post-Second World War Britain, when we were talking about the rebuilding and regenerating of Britain, the green belts were seen as an essential part because the spiritual, imaginative and creative side of life was seen as important as the material-side priorities that were operating. I am afraid that that side of the argument, as I have been suggesting, has been neglected of late, and we need to make sure that it is reprioritised. I hope the Minister will be able to reassure me on this.
I should like to take up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, for whom I have a great and enduring respect. It is not the planning systems that matter but the priorities of the people who are driving things and taking them forward. We will not get this right until there is a culture which says that it is not only about numbers and the materialism of our society. We do not want to be judged as a nation that became wealthier than ever and increased its GNP by this or that amount as though it were an end in itself. This is about building a society worth having, and national planning should be there to support, encourage and ensure that.
Lord True
My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of the Leader’s Committee of London Councils and as leader of a local authority, which is a planning authority and which, working with neighbourhoods and villages, will fight to remain a local planning authority using all necessary means, including resort to the law on some matters if we must. I hope that we shall not have to.
I also declare an interest as one who believes that if you want to see the reasons for locally led planning you should compare the green 20th-century suburbs and back gardens of British towns and cities and their proud preservation by local communities—I heard what the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said—to the sprawl of high-rise, abusive building that girdles the city of Rome, for example, not to mention the third world. That is a success for planning.
I, too, am grateful to the Government for enabling a short-notice debate on a very short-notice policy. I am particularly grateful to my noble friend Lady Hanham for the typically wise and emollient way in which she introduced it, reflecting, quite rightly, a number of positive steps taken by this Government since 2010. One always knows with her—unlike certain colleagues, perhaps—that she knows something about planning and understands the good reasons for it. She does not see local councils, as some Treasury officials seem to, as institutionalised conspiracies against the people by bureaucrats, so-called jobsworths and enemies of growth.
Most local authorities are fighting day in and day out to support business and growth. In fact, unlike the expanding phalanxes of unelected inspectors which are implied in some of the Government’s new measures, local councils are directly responsible to local communities for the policies they make and the decisions they take. People, as my noble friend rightly said in her introduction, want local involvement and not remote decision-making.
That is why I am puzzled, as was my noble friend Lord Jenkin, that despite the fine words, it looks as though the Government have changed their mind on localism. If so, the policy change has been hasty, the analytical basis obscure and, although it is not his fault that he finds himself where he is, the new Minister’s views have sometimes appeared predetermined. Predetermination does not make for good planning decisions, and the patent lack of evidence or prior consultation behind some of these ideas will inevitably raise the spectre of judicial review.
We are told that some of the changes proposed are temporary, but some who are involved have made no secret of the fact that they hope they will be permanent. I have to say that I find that dismaying. I will not follow others in addressing the details of the growth Bill. I have not read today’s debate in the other place and many other noble Lords have already commented on it. Like others, I support the provisions on the misuse of village green powers, but also like others, I am far more cautious about the policy on affordable housing and negotiation on Section 106. This is already possible and many local authorities are doing it; some developers engage and some do not. I am not sure that we should reward speculators who are unwilling to play by the rules that other developers accept. I also share the concern about the switching of commercial property to residential with no requirement to provide parking or amenity space, or make any contribution to essential infrastructure such as access roads and schools. In some areas, the loss of commercial space will be keenly felt as the economy revives.
It may surprise few noble Lords that I want to concentrate on gardens. I have the honour to represent a suburban ward in a suburban borough, and like suburbs up and down our land, it is the character of its housing and its green spaces and gardens that make it what it is. People look to those they elect to preserve that character, and why should they not? They also detest the idea of selfish and uncontrolled garden grabbing. It is a practice which both my party’s manifesto and the coalition agreement pledged to curtail. Let me remind noble Lords and Ministers—I know that my noble friend will listen carefully, but some in other departments might care to note this—that the Conservative manifesto in 2010 said:
“To give communities greater control over planning, we will abolish the power of planning inspectors to rewrite local plans … allow neighbourhoods to stop the practice of ‘garden grabbing’”.
The 2010 coalition agreement states:
“We will return decision-making powers on housing and planning to local councils, including giving councils new powers to stop ‘garden grabbing’”.
That seems pretty clear to me, so on the basis of what evidence or consultation are the Government now abandoning that promise and opening the door to the very practice they promised to check? I confess that I could not wear my election promises quite so lightly. In effect, the Government now seem to be saying that they want to permit more garden grabbing by doubling the size of permitted development and allowing what, if they come to be built, may risk becoming known as “Boles blocks”.
As the LGA statistics have exposed, this policy is not rooted in the facts. As others have said, contrary to what you hear and read, it is already perfectly possible to apply for an extension that goes beyond the current permitted limits. Thousands of families do so, and of the hundreds of thousands of planning decisions that are taken, most are approved—many, of course, with modifications in the course of the planning process. In my own small authority in 2011-12 we had more than 4,000 planning applications, 1,730 of which were for household extensions—not all in gardens, of course. Of these, 80% were passed and more than 80% of applications were dealt with in fewer than eight weeks. Just 346 applications were refused. Of these, 79 chose to appeal to the Planning Inspectorate, and of those, only 34 were allowed—not all rear extensions.
The LGA’s emerging evidence shows a similar picture across the country. So, if coolly analysed, where is the problem? Where is the injustice to the aspirant families, many of whom, frankly, are rather more deterred from getting a larger house by penal rates of stamp duty? The truth is that those who play by the rules have a very good chance of getting most or all of what they want. Where is the blight on growth? Many firms doing extensions in London already have waiting lists. It is quite absurd to say that breaking election promises and relaxing controls on garden-grabbing will revive the economy, although it may do some good for remittances to Krakow and Belgrade.
I recognise that there are examples of poor planning and poor planning departments, and there is sometimes impatience with the time that negotiations can take. We all need to work to improve that. The local authorities also face some of these delays. Like my noble friend Lord Shipley, I think that bad cases do not make good laws—or in fact justify the abandonment of such clear election promises as those I have reminded the House of.
It may be that some of the officials who devised this policy do not understand the character of the suburbs of Britain. Perhaps some others find suburban values a little old-fashioned. Yet, as one my residents recently wrote to me:
“The squashed suburbs are governed by rules precisely because people live cheek by jowl and like to be informed and have a say when something which might impact on them or their neighbours is proposed. It doesn’t mean they demand a veto, just a sensible process in which their voice is heard”.
Was that not precisely the point?
The planning process exists to ensure fairness between neighbours and to accommodate differences, which are often sharpest in the case of extensions, while protecting the overall character of the place. Incidentally, I agree with what my noble friend Lord Shipley said about broadband boxes: the argument is not quite as simple as has been presented. A garden-grabbing free-for-all in some areas will just set neighbour against neighbour, as others have said.
The Government are fond of saying that they want to help those who play by the rules; that they act for the hardworking majority. I agree with that; it is why I am a Conservative. But this policy seems to promote the precise opposite. It is a policy for those who happen to be rich enough to be able to throw up a quick, expensive extension during a policy window in a recession. It is a policy that helps the minority who do not want to play by rules, those whose extensions have been refused because they are so overbearing or so out of character and who can now come forward again, or those who do not want to be bothered with respecting their community’s views at all. It is a policy not for the many but for the few.
I fear that some of the palliative ideas suggested are ineffective. Light is rarely a single determinant feature in planning decisions and it is very open to appeal and challenge. Extending conservation areas is a lengthy process and has other consequences for people’s ability to improve their homes; in fact, it is an increase in regulation of a different kind. Article 4 directions are even more cumbersome, need government approval, are subject to compensation, and would lead to loss of planning fees—more than £250,000 in the case of our authority alone. Intensifying building control to prevent abuse by cowboy constructors would impose potentially heavy new burdens on local authorities in employing new staff—just when we are all, quite reasonably, being urged to cut our costs.
The Government have a wide enough range of ideas for change and improvement in planning without the need to break their election promises on this specific one. Unlike a tax break, it will leave a legacy in breeze blocks that cannot be reversed. For every fairweather friend they might make by an extension so incongruous or overbearing it would never have been allowed under existing rules, the Government will lose two, three, four, five, six—how many?—friends. It is not even clever politics.
I have been from the outset, and will remain, a vocal critic of this unnecessary idea if it is carried forward. I dislike intensely being publicly at odds with my party—it goes against every instinct that I have. Indeed, it was the first time in my political life that I found that all I had said was soon endorsed by a vote of the Liberal Democrat conference. That had me worried for a moment, but I am very grateful to my Liberal Democrat friends for it. I also note of course the Local Government Association’s clear and resonant views on this subject. Few issues have more united local government and all parties in local government, and I have had a most enormous postbag of support.
I welcome tremendously what my noble friend, who is so respected in this House and by me, appeared to say about potential consultation on this specific aspect. I hope that she will take that back and urge colleagues to reflect further and change their minds. Of course, I do not ask her to answer on that when she replies, but I do ask without prejudice to any reconsideration how and when this idea might be brought before Parliament for determination if the Government go ahead.
I remain wholly opposed to this proposed extension of garden-grabbing, and I would beg on behalf of those many people who have written to me in support that the eventual answer to that question would be never, so that this idea, however well intentioned, might quietly be laid to rest.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, it has been very interesting listening to the excellent speeches from all sides of the House tonight criticising or worrying about the Government’s policies on planning or various bits of them. I have been reflecting on the lack of business confidence, which may stem from projects taking too long to get permission or uncertainty about what will happen. I do not see that as improving in spite of some good changes in the planning system in the past few years.
I shall speak mainly about big projects such as rail, road and strategic freight interchanges, but my comments probably apply to other developments as well—I declare an interest as chairman of Rail Freight Group. On nationally significant infrastructure projects, the Planning Act 2008 and later revisions by the Government have improved things, but there remain major delays and uncertainty which are making it very risky for the many larger developments to proceed—the ones that the Government appear to want to encourage. We could say, “Well, if these are government-funded, it probably doesn’t matter very much; if the Government want to do it, they will find the money and it’ll take time”, but a large number of such projects are now being financed in the private sector. That, of course, is much better because it does not go on the government balance sheet, but the message that I get from developers is that they need confidence that their investment will be realisable at a reasonable cost and in a reasonable time, provided that they stick to the rules, the planning laws and the guidelines. I suppose that most of them fall into what one might call the “difficult” category, be they road, rail or interchanges, and getting planning permission for such sites has always been notoriously difficult. I shall come on to railways later, but, for the interchange sector, it is difficult finding sites; they have to be road and rail-connected; they may be in the green belt; and the scale of them tends to lead to local opposition. If there is a need to invest in local road and rail networks as a planning condition, a site may become unaffordable.
In terms of our logistics sector, the retail sector is moving into these properties and developments significantly. Tesco, Sainsbury and Marks & Spencer are taking lots of areas in those sites. The one at Daventry is probably in the forefront of that change. Luckily, the local authority is very enthusiastic because it started with a small one that was rail-connected about 12 or 15 years ago. The second one was entirely taken by Tesco and has been built and opened and there is a third, even larger one under development. They are clearly popular with retailers, whom we must try to help.
The Government need to recognise the successes in the Planning Act. Sites over 60 hectares are included as nationally significant infrastructure projects. The National Planning Policy Framework 2012, issued this summer, supports sustainable development. The Department for Transport and DCLG jointly issued a strategic rail freight interchanges policy statement last November, which can be cited by developers in planning applications. However, there are still policy framework documents missing. Robbie Owen, who is the secretary of the National Infrastructure Planning Organisation, has written a letter in the Times today saying that when you have all these documents in place, you can build airports very quickly. I will not get on to airports tonight, but with the right documents there and the national planning policy framework in place, he says that wherever it is going to be, you could do it very quickly.
Compare that with the policy on national networks, which relates to rail, road and strategic interchange, which has a bad history. It was first promised to be published in draft form in autumn 2009, then in autumn 2010, then in December 2011 or January 2012. That is three years with still no date for publication, even in draft. Can the Minister give a date, a year, a 10-year span or something for publication? It is very difficult when developers cannot have any comfort that their application complies with a document that does not exist. As I said before, many of these projects are privately financed, so it puts those projects at risk. I wonder—perhaps the Minister could comment—whether, as the national policy statement for national networks remains delayed, the policy statement could be upgraded to NPS status. That is a suggestion.
Secondly, after all those processes have been followed and only a ministerial decision is left, as several other noble Lords have said, it takes a very long time. The noble Lord, Lord Best, cited a year for a housing project—I can cite several years for bigger projects—when Ministers seemed to sit on them. In some cases, a clear political bias is finding its way into something which I think should be a straight decision based on the merits of the case. Again, if a developer is spending tens or, sometimes, hundreds of millions of pounds on getting a project approved, that timescale can wreck the project and make him withdraw.
That element of cost is confirmed by the report by Infrastructure UK, 18 months or two years ago now, which compared the cost of building and engineering projects in the UK with those in Germany. It found that the costs here were 40% higher but that the actual costs of construction were much the same. The conclusion is that the extra cost is entirely on getting there, which, in the round, probably mostly comprises planning applications. I hope that the Minister will look urgently at speeding up appeals, including options for mandated timescales, such as in the Planning Act, for ministerial decisions. I hope that the Town and Country Planning Act will also have some revisions put in. It would be nice to see some flexibility in the 60-hectare limit under that planning Act. With experience in seeking permissions through that route, I wonder whether there is merit in allowing some flexibility in that figure. It might help the developers to choose, if not the easiest, the quickest and probably the cheapest way of getting development while still providing appropriate scrutiny.
My next issue is with the Transport and Works Act. There is a terrible story about the railway line between Oxford and Bicester, which is probably 15 miles or so. It was single tracked by Dr Beeching and Chiltern Railways put in an application to redouble it. I think there was general support from everybody; I went and gave evidence in favour of it, which I suppose is unsurprising. It very nearly got approval under the Transport and Works Act. Then, suddenly, it was decided that there had to be a second public inquiry because of bats. The Minister may laugh but I am afraid it is true.
The problem was that in the 40 years since this tunnel in Oxford had been single-tracked, the bats had got used to perching in the bits that were not too close to the trains. The people that looked after these bats decided that if two tracks were reinstated, the trains would be closer to the bats and it would affect their habitation. In the end, after a second public inquiry—and God knows how much it cost—Chiltern Railways came up with a scheme so that when a train was half a mile from the tunnel, it triggered a light. That lit up the tunnel inside, then the bats flew away and were therefore safe from the train. When the train got out of the tunnel, the lights went out and the bats were able to fly back. Is it a sensible use of government money to go through all this absolute rubbish? I am very fond of bats but somebody has been very cautious and that has probably delayed the project for a year and added goodness knows how much to the cost, which will probably end up in the fares box eventually. We have to be a bit more practical about these things.
There is a lot to talk about and there will be more to talk about when we see the new Bill. I hope that Ministers can take particular care when looking at the delays to and extra costs of projects if the private sector is investing some or all of the money—be they rail, road interchanges or major schemes such as that—because we need to build confidence to resolve cases speedily, by ministerial decision or otherwise.
We really do not want to be in a situation such as energy is in. As I think my noble friend Lord Judd alluded to, a lack of policy in energy is stopping many projects that some people want and probably allowing some to go ahead that others do not want. There is a big article in the Times today about a biomass plant in Yorkshire. A power station is to be converted from coal to 100% biomass, which sounds awfully good. There will be lots and lots of new jobs and biomass coming from wherever, and it will all be wonderful. A little note at the bottom says that it will not go ahead unless the Government come up with a final policy on the buy-in level of that energy. That applies equally to other private sector projects; they need confidence. I hope that the Minister will be able to give me some assurance about some of these projects and ideas for small improvements to the planning Acts. I look forward to her response in due course.
Lord Flight
My Lords, I have some comments to make that perhaps are to some extent conflicting. I am a huge supporter of our heritage, and I agree with much that has been said on that front this evening. In the course of my lifetime the green belt has preserved London from becoming a sprawling mess like Paris and other cities, so you have to tick that box. I can see that you have to have a planning process.
Then, though, I look at the issue from the other end of the telescope, and I say, “This country badly needs a lot of infrastructure investment pretty quickly in terms of at least economic common sense, and while the economy is flat it is a sensible time for that to occur”. The infrastructure plan contains about £200 billion of basically, transport and other related areas and another £200 billion for energy. I asked the Chief Secretary how much he expected to be spent in any of the next five years, but he could not give me an answer. His answer was, “Well, we just don’t know how long it will take to go through not just the planning processes but, in particular, the environmental aspects of many of these things”. I cannot help but say in that context that we need that investment as soon as possible, both because we will need the energy and because it will be an opportunity to help to kick-start the economy.
I also observe that it is my children’s generation that is paying for this. Housing is hugely expensive in this country, in essence because supply is limited. That is particularly relevant in Birmingham South, obviously, though not so acutely relevant in other parts of the economy.
I agree with a lot of what the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, has just said. It is certainly the case that the reason why a lot of infrastructure investments are so much more expensive in this country is the add-on costs; it is not because the construction costs are hugely more.
I also observe that the great buildings of this country were all built before planning existed. I cannot say that planners had a pretty good track record in the 1960s and 1970s, when they positively encouraged a load of rubbish buildings, most of which are mercifully now rotting because they are flat-roofed and built of concrete, and if they have not already been demolished, they soon will be. I then swing back and say, “I see what has been done in the past 10 or 20 years with a lot of city centres; in terms of much more attractive buildings, there has been a significant renaissance”. So both sides have it.
I see that the Government are trying to set a sensible middle course, both to help the economy and, in particular, to encourage localism. I am a great supporter of localism, and in a sense I say, “Get it right or wrong but basically it’s likely to be a better decision if it’s made locally than by a civil servant in Whitehall”.
I want to comment on the experiences of two of my children, who are at the stage of settling down. One has settled down rather late, at nearly 40, and the other is a lot younger. One is in Islington and one is in Kensington and Chelsea, and both have scraped together every penny to buy what were built as artisan cottages, pretty small but perfectly nice. The case of Islington in particular makes me seethe with anger. There is this appalling bossy-boots planning officer going around saying, “Don’t bother to apply for this or that; I’m only going to approve this or that”, and stupidity in terms of the requirements for the interior of the building. I can see the logic of keeping the exterior entirely sympathetic, but when it comes to the interior—“No, you can’t open this wall up”; “When you’re replastering, you can use only original lath and plaster”; and, “No, you can’t raise the height of the roof so it won’t show from the front but it’ll give you a bit more space at the back”. There is a stupid little box room on the roof that is useless for anything but has been deemed to have been a maid’s room and therefore to be historically important. There are hundreds of thousands of these sorts of houses all over the place; there is nothing architecturally unique about them. It is hugely intrusive for—to speak candidly—planning officer bullies to go around frightening young people in particular about why they cannot do with the inside of their houses what they would like to. This has gone far too far, and I can scarcely contain my fury at what these young people have to put up with. They have to spend a fortune on planning, let alone on what the houses cost in the first place. Conservation areas, again, are a great idea. You do not want to spoil areas. In essence, you want more Grosvenor Estates, and you want what happened to Bloomsbury. That is a point readily taken. The requirements being practised in terms of the insides of buildings are wildly beyond the pale and excessively intrusive.
This is a useful debate. To sum it up, you need to look at different times from both ends of the telescope in terms of the good and the bad. We certainly have done better with our heritage than have Rome, Paris and America. However, do not forget the price and do not be too heavy in imposing on people’s ability to at least do what they want with the insides of their houses.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, despite the short and unexpected notice for this debate, it has turned out to be comprehensive and fully informed on a subject of considerable importance. We have had some high-quality input from a range of noble Lords, some expressing their concerns with the direction of government policy. We have heard, particularly from the noble Lord, Lord Best, some expansive thoughts on housing finance and how the Government might get further leverage from the system that we have. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, touched on the issue of decentralisation of planning fees; he is right that that is something that we are considering tomorrow with the SI. From reading the Hansard of the other place, the Minister did not take it off the agenda for some future progress. That is probably encouraging.
My noble friend Lord Berkeley brought to bear his expertise on nationally significant infrastructure projects, explaining the gaps that are still in the system if confidence is to be built with investors. I was rather sorry that he chose to talk about bats rather than airports, because I have some knowledge of the latter and none of the former.
It was not many months ago that we were debating the Government’s new approach to planning, encompassing the National Planning Policy Framework, neighbourhood planning and the duty to co-operate in replacing the regional spatial strategies. Noble Lords will recall that the draft NPPF drew fire from all sides, causing chaos and initial inertia in the planning system. However, to their credit, the Government did listen to the powerful cases made and the resultant NPPF is certainly a considerable improvement on the original. The noble Baroness said that it had garnered accolades from across the spectrum of organisations. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, called it an unqualified success. I am bound to say that it does not address all our concerns, despite that. We support the strengthening of the definition of “sustainable development” in the NPPF along with the five principles of sustainable development, although there is still some lack of clarity over how local authorities will have to apply this. It is not strong enough on prioritising brownfield development, a point stressed by my noble friend Lord Judd. There are no effective strategic planning mechanisms, no vision for England bringing together housing, economic development and infrastructure; my noble friend Lord Beecham made this point. It potentially downgrades the importance of affordable housing.
We strongly agree with the plan-led approach being at the heart of the system, but consider the 12-month transitional period to be too short, especially given the struggles of cash-strapped local authorities. As supporters of neighbourhood planning, we were concerned that the lack of resourcing presented risks that this will become the domain of the better off. However, I am bound to say that I am encouraged by the numbers that the Minister gave us.
However, the NPPF captures what we would support as the essence of a fair planning framework: contributing to building a strong economy while supporting strong communities and contributing to protecting and enhancing our environment. These mutually dependent roles are underpinned by local engagement and with the local plan as the means for local people to empower and shape their surroundings. My noble friend Lord Judd expressed that in much more powerful terms than I can manage. The noble Lord, Lord Flight, recognised that in the way he called it looking through two ends of the telescope.
However, there is a fundamental concern about whether the reduction of the NPPF to just 50 pages will bring greater clarity to the system overall. We fear not, especially when there has been some lack of clarity around ministerial announcements that planning policy guidance notes and planning policy statements are to be abolished; then they are not; and then they are to be reviewed. Perhaps the Minister can tell us when the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, is expected to complete his review. The concern of many is that the brevity of the NPPF, coupled with the vagueness of language, will increase uncertainty, leading to more appeals and, as some have argued, a lawyers’ paradise.
The Government have set great store in the demise of regional spatial strategies, arguing that the top-down approach negated local commitment and engagement. This was to be achieved eventually by a two-stage approach, as a result of a late amendment to the Localism Act. In a Written Statement, slipped out on 25 July just before the Summer Recess, we learnt that the Government were going to have to undertake further consultation on updated environmental reports, starting with a report relating to the east of England. Will the Minister let us know the position on all the environmental reports and the status of each of the regional spatial strategies? Do we have any evidence as yet as to how extensively the duty to co-operate is working in practice? The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, was certainly enthusiastic about the progress that he had heard.
The ink is barely dry on the Localism Act and the Government are back beating the drum of,
“unnecessary bureaucracy in the planning system”,
hindering sustainable growth. As we have heard, their new approach is reflected in part in the Growth and Infrastructure Bill, which had its Second Reading in another place today. We consider it to be a knee-jerk response to the Government’s panic over lack of growth and that it fails to address the root cause of the Government’s economic failure or the housing crisis.
When the then Planning Minister, Greg Clark, commended the finalised NPPF, he said that it would support growth and allow “communities back into planning”. Seven months on we have this new Bill, which, as the CPRE states,
“marks a dramatic shift away from the Government’s commitment to localism”.
It would give unprecedented powers to the Secretary of State to strip any authority which is deemed to be failing of its planning powers so that developers could have their applications decided by the Secretary of State without ever being reviewed by the local authority. Seemingly—perhaps the Minister will confirm this—failure will be based on the number of decisions overturned on appeal and the length of time taken to decide applications. Would this have regard to circumstances where a planning performance agreement is entered into which would extend the time norms to ensure, to the benefit of the developer and the planning authority, that a proper assessment can be made of the case? Despite all the rhetoric about localism, this Government are proving to be a centralising Administration at heart—no one more so than the Secretary of State at CLG. I think that we heard concerns expressed to this effect by the noble Lord, Lord True.
This attack on local planning authorities seems particularly unreasonable given the dramatic cuts that they have endured to their budgets, which were made worse by the pressures from the inadequately funded local council tax schemes and which we have debated extensively recently. But the assertion that it is the planning system which is the root cause of poor growth and the housing crisis does not bear examination. Is it not the case, as the LGA has stated—the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and my noble friend Lord Beecham reiterated the statistics—that there is a building backlog of 400,000 new homes for which planning permission is extant but building has not yet commenced? Builders are not building because people are not buying and banks are not lending.
The noble Lord, Lord Best, referred to the possibility of hoarding sites by developers. Last year, councils approved 87% of all planning applications with over 90% of these being determined within 26 weeks. What additional resources are to be made available to the Planning Inspectorate to carry out these duties? It has the responsibility of the abolished Infrastructure Planning Commission and the examination of draft CIL charging schedules, as well as the examination of local plans. We can add the designation of failing local authorities to its workload and the determination of applications going to the Secretary of State.
The Bill will also enable developers to appeal against affordable housing requirements of Section 106 agreements, notwithstanding that local authorities can already amend these by agreement. It is illustrative of government thinking that it is only the affordable housing contributions of such agreements which can be appealed in this way. We strongly oppose this measure, which will lead to fewer affordable homes when we need more. The Government’s promise to deliver homes for first-time buyers and young families looks shallow indeed when they have cut the budget for affordable housing, increased the threshold for rented affordable housing up to 80% of market rents and are now decreasing the obligation on developers to build such housing. Can the Minister give us an estimate of not only how many sites are currently stalled due to commercial viability but specifically the number that are stalled due to affordable housing requirements?
Yet a further centralising change in planning policy relates to the proposed extension to the major infrastructure planning regime to include business and commercial projects. It would appear such projects would not necessarily have to be of proven national significance, nor be of a nature covered in a national policy statement, but perhaps the Minister will put us right on this. The process would certainly bypass the local community and the local planning authority. What is the possible justification for this? The Planning Officers Society has commented that,
“there is no evidence that going down the major infrastructure route would be any quicker than applying to the local authority, given that over 90% of applications are being determined within target”.
Can the Minister provide such evidence?
During the passage of the Localism Bill, we considered the operation of the town and village green provisions and the extent to which they were being used to thwart development. Although there may have been a number of cases in which legislation could have been wrongly used to prevent unwarranted development, we would question whether this warrants a heavy-handed change in the law such as that provided in the infrastructure Bill. I note that the noble Lord, Lord Best, believed that that was the right way in which to proceed. There are, of course, other changes in the pipeline outside of the infrastructure Bill. We have had the announcement of the three-year extension of permitted development rights following a consultation. However, the consultation has not yet appeared, and there seems to be a little local difficulty within the coalition. Given the comments of the noble Lord, Lord True, this evening, I suspect that the little local difficulty extends beyond the coalition. Will the proposal ever see the light of day?
The Government have not announced any proposals to change the law in relation to protection of the green belt, although they are encouraging local councils to use existing laws to review and tailor the extent of green-belt land in their local areas. The reward for doing so appears to be some prioritising of local plan submissions. Can the Minister give us any feedback on the extent to which councils are actually doing so?
In planning, as in so many other areas of government policy, confusion and contradiction abound. The policy is thrashing around to try to find a solution to growth without focusing on the real causes of weak growth. Along the way, it is undermining a planning system which emerged from a robust process, including a parliamentary one, for which a consensus was broadly intact.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, as I expected, this has been an interesting and challenging debate at short notice, and I am very grateful to everybody who has been able to take part. We have covered a fair amount of ground today on all planning aspects.
I would like to start with the extremely thoughtful speech from the noble Lord, Lord Judd, on the conflict, if there is one, between country openness and the town. I reassure the noble Lord that we are as interested and concerned about open spaces and those parts of the countryside where planning permission should not be granted as those places where it should be granted. The NPPF contains policies on agriculture, farms, open spaces, areas of outstanding natural beauty, the green belt and national parks. It is all there and the expectation is that those policies will continue. I recognise exactly what the noble Lord is saying. We cannot grant planning consent all over the place. We must have areas where people are free to learn about agriculture, if nothing else, and to grow our food. After all, that is what we will need in the future. The noble Lord made a very adroit speech.
This is as good a moment as any to pick up on the fact that the noble Lord mentioned the green belt. As I have tried to say, policies on the green belt are in place. We have made it abundantly clear that councils are in control of the green belt and always have been. It is up to them to determine the boundaries of it. That has not changed. However, the expectation is that the amount of green belt will not change. The previous Government said that they had increased the green belt although there was a fair amount of eating into it from time to time. However, now and in the past other areas of green belt have been established. We have to ensure that there is green belt round the major city areas so that there is space between cities to provide the openness that we have described. The green belt is still a major policy of the Government.
I always expect the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, to be challenging, but there we are. This Government are not viscerally opposed to planning, nor are we opposed to affordable housing. A number of noble Lords have tried to indicate that we are against affordable housing. That is manifestly not the situation. We have made it clear from the outset that we recognise the need for affordable housing. The policies we have put forward are all about trying to ensure that more affordable housing is available. We will continue to put forward such policies. It is absolutely right that we need growth as much as anything else to ensure that people have houses in which to live and in the right areas.
The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, who I see is back in his place, referred to an article in Private Eye. I do not know what that article was about and, frankly, I do not care very much. At present, there are more than 1,400 stalled sites with 75,000 units of affordable housing across the country. We have talked about renegotiating Section 106 and making sure that land, which the noble Lord, Lord Best, referred to as land retained in land banks, is freed up. We cannot go on having great chunks of land on which housing could be built being retained. I see that the noble Lord, Lord Davies, wishes to intervene but I hope that he will let me finish as I have a very short time in which to speak. I accept that not all the housing which is approved is affordable housing. A great deal of housing is for shared ownership or ordinary private housing. However, there are 1,400 stalled sites and 75,000 units of affordable housing across the country. We need to unlock that as soon as we can.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
Could the Minister confirm that the 1,400 sites are all stalled for economic reasons because of affordable housing? Or is it for other reasons as well?
Baroness Hanham
There are 1,400 sites with 75,000 units on them. It does not necessarily say that they are stalled for any reason. They need to be unlocked to get that housing out but there may be other things that are also tied up with it as well. However, that is the number of units that we know could be built.
To move as quickly as I can through this, there have been a number of comments about the extension of permitted development rights for homeowners. Rather than go into a whole diatribe about that, I can confirm that a formal consultation on it is about to come out. I know that there is a variety of views on this and we will receive those views under the consultation. The purpose is to enable people who want to extend a little bit and just want to make residential improvements. We know that there are almost 200,000 applications for residential improvements for things such as conservatories or small extensions which actually do not upset anybody very much. As one would expect, they would be expected to discuss the applications with their neighbours. As always, there are protected areas. Those protected areas are within the general permitted development order and include conservation areas, national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty and sites of special scientific interest.
I will come back to the noble Lord, Lord True, in a minute; he was asking about exceptions to this. I know that I have the answer to that within my hundreds of notes here and perhaps I can dig it out before we get to the end.
The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, raised a number of questions. He made the point that the proposals would result in poorer design and use-of-space standards for buildings. The National Planning Policy Framework makes it clear that good design is absolutely essential and that is part and parcel of any discussion that people will be having on planning approvals.
The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, along with a number of other noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, made the point that the Local Government Association has, perfectly reasonably, pointed out that a lot of authorities are working extremely well and efficiently. Sometimes when they are not getting planning approvals in a certain length of time there is a perfectly good reason for it. Our proposals to extend some of the areas under the growth Bill will affect only those authorities where it is perceived that they really are not trying. No one would deny that there are certain councils which are very slow, not because they are negotiating or for other reasons. They are just very slow. We hope that the proposals in the growth Bill will encourage them to quicken up and provide a bit of an edge to move forward.
The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, was very kind to start with about the Bill though it veered off a little bit. I am beginning to know the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, very well: he fights a sturdy battle. He also made the perfectly reasonable point that the lack of housing development was not entirely due to lack of permissions. A lot of it is due to the economy and the fact that money is not available and not being lent in the same way. However, it is important that those permissions are there because there will come a time when it will be necessary to move them on. While it is an issue, it is not the total issue.
As regards Section 106, the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, also talked about overriding original agreements. As he and others rightly said, councils are free to reconsider the Section 106 agreements on a voluntary basis at any time. As with all things, we would rather that councils did this and did not have to be encouraged to do so. However, we found that 80% of councils would be willing to negotiate, but we want to ensure that this good practice is as widely spread as possible. Again, there is no undermining of what local authorities can do, but there is an expectation that the best should be followed by the least good, and that the least good should be encouraged by legislation to get on with it—if I can put it that way.
The noble Lord also commented on the process whereby some applications should be sent directly to the Planning Inspectorate. Once again, we are back to the limited number of authorities that do not act within a reasonable time, are slow with planning decisions and turn down some applications for no good reason. These delays are bad for communities and the economy. This measure will deal with the places where planning is not effective and local councils do not deal swiftly and effectively with applications. The powers are a last resort. We hope that they will not have to be used and that we can get enough encouragement through what I was going to say was the threat of legislation—although it will be there—to enable councils to get on and deal swiftly with planning applications.
As regards the points made by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, on town and village greens, I agree that we made a promise some time ago that we would put such provisions into legislation. There has been misuse of the main proposition regarding town and village greens, and bits of land were suddenly becoming part of mischievous objections—as I think they were called—to applications regarding town and village greens. Again, that issue will be dealt with, and it is important that we should do so.
The noble Lord, Lord Best, said correctly that, as with all planning for economic growth and development, leadership is required from local authorities. I know that many take that position and lead in the right way. However, some need a little encouragement to do so.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, for his kind support on most things to do with planning, but I have answered his points about getting on with it. However, the important matter he mentioned, as did the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, was the collaboration with local enterprise partnerships. The provisions on collaboration in the Localism Bill were pretty wide. They concerned next door councils being consulted on any applications that were cross-border, but of course there was the expectation that the public services will respond quickly to any of the requests put to them.
Local enterprise partnerships are the new scene. They are finding their way gradually and becoming quite a force in the way in which the land is dealt with. I totally agree that they need to be kept fully involved in what is going on and encouraged to take the necessary stance to ensure that the planning in their area is as well co-ordinated as it can be.
The noble Lord, Lord True, asked me why we have dropped the commitment to guard against garden grabbing. I am interpreting this as a sort of roundabout way of saying that he was objecting to extensions. The noble Lord knows, as I do, that we have already ruled out in the previous policy change the ability of local councils to class gardens as brownfield sites. They are not; they are now considered to be greenfield sites and therefore they are subject to planning permission and people cannot just build a mega building in their back gardens. I want to make it clear that garden grabbing is not allowed now and I am not sure whether I accept his point about extensions being garden grabbing although I think it is a neat way of raising the problem.
The noble Lords, Lord True, Lord Best and Lord Jenkin, were all concerned about the change of use between commercial and residential property without the need for planning permission. They specifically asked whether there were going to be exemptions to that. We have made it clear that there are areas where that form of development would be inappropriate and that local councils will be able to opt out. The national policy strongly supports business needs, and local councils should meet the need for offices and other business uses in full. They are not compromised by limited site availability but if there are proposals to change from commercial to residential then, as the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, said, that will affect such places as the City of London. I can give more information on how that can be done and how they can opt out in due course.
I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for smiling a little about the bats. I was not taking that for granted at all and I know that there are serious points to be made about natural habitat. I think his main point was the delay to major infrastructures. I can confirm that the national infrastructure planning system is starting to work and the national network, NPS, which he raised, is in the process of developing a high-level transport strategy. It may not quite be the firm answer that he wanted but it is as near as I am able to get.
The noble Lord, Lord Flight, referred to overzealous heritage controls. There are some areas with grade I listed buildings and others where local authorities will have to hang on to what goes on inside properties but that is not so for all properties. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, spoke about the green belt and I hope I have dealt with that.
We shall reflect on what has been said and if any questions have not been answered I will do so in writing to all Members. If I do not write it is because I do not think that the questions are there. If the questions are there I shall make sure that there is a response. I wish to thank everyone for taking part in the debate which I have found extremely useful.
Trees: British Ash Tree
(12 years, 1 month ago)
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The Earl of Selborne
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to protect the future of the British ash tree.
The Earl of Selborne
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who put their names down to speak in this debate, which comes at a slightly later hour than perhaps we expected. I declare an interest as chairman of a farming company that has woodlands and a fruit nursery.
The word “crisis” is often overused in the context of environmental concerns, but the sudden realisation that the British ash could go the way of the elm in the 1970s is without doubt the recognition of a crisis. I will start by setting out the facts as I understand them. I am sure that if I get them wrong, the many experts who are due to speak will be able to put me right. Ash dieback disease is caused by a fungus called Chalara fraxinea. The disease was probably introduced to northern Europe on nursery stocks from Asia. Over the past decade it has had a devastating effect on the ash trees of northern Europe. It was first confirmed in Britain in March 2012, on young ash trees in a nursery in Buckinghamshire. Subsequently, other sites of infection were discovered, linked to imported nursery stock from Europe.
Last month, ash dieback was identified in older, native trees in woodlands in East Anglia. I will bring noble Lords right up to date by saying that today the Forestry Commission and Defra reported that after a weekend of intense activity by volunteers and experts, Chalara had been identified in 82 locations, including 14 nurseries, 36 planting sites and 32 forests and woodlands, including some in Kent and Essex. Last Friday, the count was 52 rather than 82, so the expectation must be that as surveillance and monitoring extend, many more sites will be identified.
While cases of infection in nurseries are clearly caused by importing infected stock, cases in mature trees in woodlands in the east and south-east of England are thought to have been caused by spores that were blown from the continent, or which possibly were brought in by migrating birds. In August, the United Kingdom plant health authorities undertook a pest risk analysis on ash dieback, which concluded that once trees are infected, they cannot be cured. However, the analysis also stated that not all trees die of the infection; a number are likely to have genetic resistance. Swedish research suggests that this number might be significant.
The pest risk analysis formed the basis of a fast-track consultation that ended on 26 October. On 29 October the Government introduced a ban on ash imports and the movement of trees. At the same time, Defra’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor Ian Boyd, was asked to convene a tree health and plant biosecurity expert taskforce. A number of companies have proposed treatment solutions for Chalara, which Defra has promised its scientists will rapidly evaluate. So much for history; I recognise that this is almost a running commentary on a fast-moving epidemic.
The public reaction has been one of disbelief that once again we have been caught by surprise by yet another threat to a native tree species from invasive pests and diseases. After the disastrous outbreak of Dutch elm disease in the 1970s, when we lost more than 30 million elms to a new and more virulent fungus spread by beetles, we were challenged by a plethora of tree pests and diseases, including acute oak decline, which is of great concern, particularly in the east of England; plane wilt; chestnut blight; and bleeding canker of horse chestnut, to name just four from a much longer list. Time and again we seem to act too late. For all those diseases, as for ash dieback, we put in place policies once we had found that the diseases were already with us. What we need are measures aimed at keeping out these serious pests and pathogens and such measures need putting in place years ahead of the anticipated arrival of the disease.
We knew years ago that ash dieback was a threat. We discussed four years ago with the European Commission's standing committee for plant health whether an import ban might be appropriate, but it seems that we were not able to produce the scientific evidence to justify a ban then. Instead of a ban on imports, which we now have, we carried out a small-scale survey. By the time Defra launched its Tree Health and Plant Biosecurity Action Plan in October 2011, ash dieback seems to have been relegated to a low priority. Indeed, there were plenty of problems in this country on the tree health front to deal with. This allocation plan allocated £7 million over three years to tackle tree diseases. That is not just on research, but on all other measures that might together address these issues.
Ahead of that biosecurity action plan, the Forestry Commission produced in May 2011 a revised table of top pests and pathogens that threaten tree health in Great Britain—a list of about 16 species. This listed the prioritisation criteria for potential impact for each disease: its risk or probability of entry and its expected economic, social or environmental damage. Those were the right questions to ask. The problem is that having asked the right questions no one seems to have answered the questions correctly or alerted the Secretary of State that ash dieback, although not yet thought to be in this country, like many of these other diseases, was an imminent threat, that its economic, social and environmental damage could be enormous and that we should act immediately to ban imports of ash plants. Defra got permission for the ban in October. Why on earth could the scientific evidence for justifying the ban not have been produced three or four years ago when the Horticultural Trades Association and others were asking for a ban on ash imports?
We do have a taskforce convened by Professor Ian Boyd charged with reviewing our approach to plant health. Rather than dwell on our failures in protecting plant health let me list what this taskforce now needs to recommend. Landowners and the public need to be assured that whenever a suspected incidence of an infection of whatever disease is reported, a rapid identification service will be provided. Detection and identification methods using molecular approaches such as the portable DNA tests have undergone rapid development and tight targets for response rates must be set. We need greatly to increase the surveillance, monitoring and inspection of nurseries and plantations.
The Forestry Commission has lost a significant proportion of its staff in the field. Its regional staff used to be able to spend much more time in the woodlands and forests, and they knew their forests. Likewise, its research capacity has declined. Research on pests and pathogens of trees is woefully underfunded, whether in universities or research institutes, and bears no correlation with the cost to the economy of woodland pests and diseases or to their impact on society. An assessment must be made of eradication and containment methods for ash dieback and indeed for other diseases, reviewing the role of a quarantine system for plants and plant passports for species for which the import ban does not apply. We need to develop biological control approaches such as looking for natural enemies to these new pathogens.
Trees are a long-term crop and amenity. Our approach to this sudden threat must be long term. We need to recognise that within our ash population there will possibly be some strains of ash with resistance to dieback. We need to protect this diversity. I hope that the Minister will assure the House that tree health will in future be given the priority it deserves and that if the taskforce comes up both with short-term and long-term recommendations that command the confidence of experts, the forestry sector and the public, the Government will without reservation commit to implementing those measures.
Baroness Northover
My Lords, I remind noble Lords that, unlike previous debates this evening, this is a strictly time-limited debate and that, therefore, when the clock reaches six minutes, noble Lords have had their full time.
Lord Clark of Windermere
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Earl on securing this timely debate. The whole House is indebted to him. I also thank him for the erudite way in which he set the scene for the debate. When I was listening to his conclusions I found myself, not for the first time, in almost complete agreement with everything that he was saying.
In a sense, he was reminding us that we can do whatever we think we can as human beings, but if nature decides to set its mind on a particular course it is quite difficult for us to shift it from that course. However, there are things we can do and things we should have done in this case.
I empathised with the noble Earl when he said that he could not quite understand why there had been such a delay in tackling this scourge. I find it unexplainable. Even from last March, I cannot fully understand why there have been so many delays. The Government have procrastinated in this respect but I do not want to delay the House on that at this stage. There are a number of questions which I hope the Minister will be able to assist us with today to help us to try to understand what went wrong and how we can put it right.
The noble Earl and government Ministers have said that there is a ban on the import of ash trees and ash saplings into Britain. I ask in all innocence whether this is actually the case. In an article in the Guardian on Saturday a horticultural trade individual was reported as saying that there was not a complete ban, only that trees were not allowed to be imported into this country from areas where the disease exists. Can it be absolutely clarified that no ash trees are coming into this country and that the report in the Guardian is incorrect? We need to nail that, if it is not true, right at the beginning.
There is also a report today that the grower, Simon Ellis of Crowders in Lincolnshire, is threatening to sue the Government. He claims that even after the disease was discovered in his nurseries, he was not allowed to destroy the plants and that the disease spread even further in this period. Is that also the case?
Another point I would like to clarify is the position about the burning of ash. One way to mitigate the cost, if it is possible, is to burn ash. As noble Lords know, ash is a fine wood for burning and is in great demand. There may be problems with burning ash that has been affected, but what about the burning of ash that has not been affected? Will the market be allowed to carry on?
On a more strategic front, this episode and this disease has brought to our attention the inadequacies of the European Union rules on animal and plant health. This again is a point raised by the noble Earl. I hope the Government will enter into negotiations with the European Union to make it quite clear that member nations must be allowed to close their borders if they feel that animal or plant health is being affected.
I also associate myself with what the noble Earl said about the strain and the stress being put on members of the Forestry Commission, and Forest Research in particular. Forest Research has the reputation of being at the forefront of all research dealing with plant pathogens and tree health. It has suffered very badly from swingeing cuts, and this cannot have helped us in our efforts to try to contain not only this disease but a host of other diseases affecting a whole range of our trees in Britain.
Clearly this is a natural phenomenon but the Government can—and must—take some action to mitigate its full effect if that can actually be achieved.
Baroness Parminter
I add my thanks to the noble Earl for initiating this extremely important debate.
I was walking yesterday in woodland in Surrey, where the trees were just about holding on to their autumn glory. It was a delight that others far more eloquent than I have sought to articulate. It was Kipling who wrote:
“Of all the trees that grow so fair,
Old England to adorn,
Greater are none beneath the Sun,
Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn”.
Yesterday’s walk was rather more poignant than usual, given the threat to the 80 million ash trees—one-third of all the trees that make up our woods and hedges—from the virulent fungal disease that is sweeping across Europe and is now here in Britain.
On these Benches, we welcome the Government’s pledge to do all they can to contain this devastating disease. As we have heard, last week they announced the import ban on ash saplings and restrictions on movements, and on Saturday we had the emergency meeting of the COBRA committee.
However, at the moment there seem to be far more questions than answers, although it is probably true to say that that is also the case in other countries such as Denmark, where 90% of ash trees have been affected. No doubt, tonight others will focus on whether enough was done soon enough and indeed what was known when and by whom. I will focus on the need for a pragmatic response to this disease right now.
First, I will focus on the international trade in trees and the urgent need to step up biosecurity measures. It takes the outbreak of a disease, such as foot and mouth in 2001, to put a spotlight on the trade in the products we consume. Over recent years we have watched designer gardening programmes on TV and lusted over exotic and large trees, which just slot into our gardens fully grown, without a thought for where they are grown or how they get here. We do not ask whether a “British” tree is actually grown here, when in fact many are grown on from saplings in Holland, where they can grow trees more cheaply, or question the “I want it now” consumerism that is satisfied with fully grown trees shipped here from China with 1,000 litres of soil around them—a modern-day black Pandora’s box.
We need some firm outcomes from the summit on the tree trade that the Government have announced for later this week: tighter biosecurity measures as well as ways to harness the power of consumers. Other sectors have used labelling or charter marks to change supplier behaviour, driven by consumer demand, such as the RSPCA’s Freedom Food or Fairtrade products, and we need some sort of charter mark to build public confidence in the provenance of tree products, as well as helping them to be part of the solution to the growing problem of diseases affecting our trees.
Secondly, there is a need for far greater co-operation with our European partners. I know that this idea may not find favour in some quarters of this House, but more than 30 alien insects and mites, fungi, bacteria, viruses, diseases, pathogens and invasive plants are expected to reach Europe in the next few years. That tidal wave means that we have to work together to create a strategic response.
As Martin Ward, chief plant health officer at Defra’s Food and Environment Research Agency, said last week,
“We need a much better early warning system to know what is coming in to Europe … It will call for more surveys, contingency planning and better regulation of the movement of plants within the EU”.
He went on to say,
“Unless we have better biosecurity in the EU and Europe it will be very difficult to stop them coming in ... and it is very terrifying what is out there”.
Thirdly, there is a need for a rapid response to help with disease identification, as the noble Earl said. I understand that the Suffolk Wildlife Trust believes that ash trees in some of its reserves are affected, mainly in the western part of Suffolk. It has sent in samples, but there is an up-to-four-week delay in identification. Defra has some PCR machines, which provide rapid, on-site diagnostics. Does the Ministry have plans to roll out more of those machines, given the delays in diagnosing the disease at the moment?
Fourthly, there is the need for clear communication to woodland owners and managers and the public about how to respond to the disease. In recent years, ash has become a popular choice for small woodland owners. It is fast growing, strong, flexible, good for burning and, I understand, makes rather fashionable furniture. Organisations such as the charity the Small Woods Association are asking for best practice instructions about the disposal of bought-in nursery and diseased stock and are asking practical questions, such as: Does cutting, burning or deep burial provide any control benefits? If the leaves are burnt, does that put small spores out into the atmosphere?
Communication must be a top priority. Of course we need more forest research, including at a European scale, but the Forestry Commission needs to be resourced to act as a first port of call to the public and those seeking advice. It would be fair to say that, having looked at the Forestry Commission website on a regular basis over the past week, it could definitely be more user-friendly in that regard. There is a strong case for investment in the Forestry Commission to become a more public-facing agency with a public call centre capacity to respond to the increasing public interest and reporting of tree diseases.
We know that more diseases, such as ash dieback, will come to Britain in the coming years as a result of a combination of climate change, international trade and other factors. Some may die out, but others may spread rapidly, like Dutch elm disease or more recent diseases such as the widespread acute oak decline, so there is much at stake. If ash dieback takes hold, that loss of ash alongside oak in our woodlands and forests will be devastating. More than that, our trees are the stitching which holds together the patchwork quilt of beauty that is our English countryside. If that stitching unravels, the loss to us all will be immeasurable.
Lord Best
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Earl for initiating this debate. I declare my interest as a trustee of the Tree Council, a body that emerged from the disaster of Dutch elm disease, which destroyed between 25 million and 30 million elms. In 1973, National Tree Planting Year was launched—“Plant a Tree in 73”—with cross-party support in an effort to engage the public and repopulate the land with trees. On 1 January 1974, the Tree Council was formed to continue the encouragement of planting, care and conservation of trees and to act as a critical friend and adviser to Governments.
In 1979, After the Elm was published in collaboration with the Tree Council in an effort to identify and benefit from the lessons of Dutch elm disease. Its conclusions included that controls had worked most effectively when organisations worked together strategically on a regional basis rather than being locally organised; that the amount of funding dedicated to the fight had been inadequate; and that lay members of the public were crucial in the work to identify the spread of the disease.
In 1987, the great storm wiped out millions more trees, literally overnight. Just as the Tree Council was spawned from the Dutch elm disease response, the Tree Council’s volunteer tree warden scheme came into being as a direct result of that, a different sort of tragedy. Today, we have about 8,000 tree wardens, unsung heroes, across the UK, a wonderful example of the big society at work. The volunteer tree wardens work in their communities to educate, engage and enthuse people about trees, as well as taking practical steps to improve local environments. I pay tribute to them and to our director-general, Pauline Buchanan Black, and her team who support them. On 28 November, we will be celebrating this year’s National Tree Week and the contribution of tree wardens here, in your Lordships’ House, with the Minister from the other place, David Heath MP.
At this time of a new disaster for trees in this country, the Tree Council is ready and willing to help. We have been briefing all the networks of tree wardens on what to look out for and how to report it. They have been sending in vitally important reports to the Forestry Commission on suspected outbreaks of ash dieback. Too many plant diseases and pests have been introduced into or taken hold in this country over the past 10 years: sudden oak death, acute oak decline, oak processionary moth, Asian longhorn beetle, leaf miner and bleeding canker. Estimates suggest that there are at least 80 million ash trees across the UK. If the disease follows the same progress as in Denmark, we stand to lose around 90% of our ash trees over the next nine years. That is 72 million trees: a disaster on a scale up to three times worse than Dutch elm disease.
The important issue now is not to apportion blame but to take effective action to minimise the impact not just of this disease but of each of the threats to tree health that have found their way to these shores in the past decade. The Tree Council, its member organisations and thousands of volunteers will all play their part. However, it will also be important to revisit the lessons learnt from this and earlier experiences and to find ways of ensuring that they are retained in the collective memory and mainstreamed into action plans that will continue to be followed and updated regularly to protect our tree stock in the future. Trained volunteers will be critical to the success of any plan. The Tree Council’s tree wardens are already on the case but need to be integrated within long-term strategies. The scale of this threat must not be underestimated by the Government. Once again, we face landscape changes on an almost unimaginable scale. This is a time not for blame but, as in 1973, for collaboration and action. We must all do our utmost to prevent any similar disaster in the future.
Lord Framlingham
My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Earl on securing this timely debate. Nothing could be more timely. This is a very sad debate; the ash tree is dear to us all. It plays a major part in our landscape, both rural and urban. “Ash Grove” is a beautiful melody. Ash timber made our hockey sticks and, for those who remember them, the framework of Morris Minor estates. As has already been mentioned, it makes the most wonderful firewood in the world. I come to this debate from both an emotional and a professional standpoint: emotional since I am very fond of all trees, particularly ash, and professional because many years ago I ran my own forestry company and later, while a Member of Parliament, I was for a while the president of the Arboricultural Association.
Since “Plant a tree in ’73”, we have as a nation, happily, become obsessed with tree planting. Milton Keynes new town was called the city of the trees and our burgeoning roadside verges, roundabouts and housing schemes are testament to this, not to mention our very ambitious new forests. Demand has hugely outstripped supply; hence the mass importation of trees by landscapers and garden centres. The position is further confused by two factors. First, to protect themselves against last-minute cancellations on a large scale that would leave them with unwanted trees on their hands, many UK nurserymen have used foreign suppliers as a kind of bank to draw on rather than growing the trees themselves. Secondly, UK seed has been grown abroad and then reimported as plants in order to try to preserve the UK provenance. In any event, we have seen importation of trees on a massive scale, with 5.5 million ash trees alone in the past few years and millions and millions of trees of other species. This should have indicated quite clearly to those people responsible the need for constant vigilance, the strictest possible controls and, if necessary, immediate and direct action.
One of our greatest blessings is that we are an island nation. Surrounded by sea, we have been able to control our plant and animal health in a way that other European countries cannot. It appears that we are squandering that precious advantage. This disease was known about in Europe. Either lack of communications or bungling bureaucracy, or both, have in this case had catastrophic consequences. This disease may—I stress may—have been blown into our country. What we know for certain is that it was brought in by lorry when it could have been kept out, and that is unforgivable.
Dutch elm disease came from Canada. We have a disease in oaks that is thought to have come from Italy. There is a disease of plane trees which is currently a serious problem in France, where they are having to fell large numbers. Unless we are to suffer from these kinds of disease in the future, a whole new look at the way in which trees are imported into this country must be instigated and perhaps more consideration given to the increased use of home-grown stock.
To make vigilance really effective, communications with everyone in the industry are essential. The Forestry Commission should have its finger on the pulse—and, as has been said, be properly financed—while the Forest Research centre and Alice Holt do invaluable work. On the ground in this case, though, it was the Horticultural Trades Association that really knew what was going on as far back as 2009. It knew because its members told it. They should have been listened to, and must be in future. In the same way, the Arboricultural Association membership includes tree surgeons operating throughout the whole of the United Kingdom. They are the first to see problems, particularly in established trees. Both those groups must be listened to. It was foresters and tree surgeons who first spotted Dutch elm disease in this country and in that case, too, the Government were too slow to act.
In trying to see the way ahead, it is both too late and too early—too late to prevent the entry of the disease but too early to fully understand the ramifications of its arrival. A ban has been imposed to stop any more diseased ash entering the country, and steps are being taken urgently to establish how far the disease has spread. It ought to be possible to collect and destroy all diseased nursery stock that has not yet been planted out. For the time being, established and mature trees can only be monitored and their survival patterns studied, removing them completely when dead. This raises the question of disease transmission by timber logs, as has been mentioned, although I understand that this is unlikely.
Hygiene precautions, where practicable, may help with controlling leaf spread and so on. That is difficult to enforce, though, and I suspect it would have only a limited effect. Injecting trees is not a practical solution, given the scale of the problem—even if the method were available, which it is not. The cordon sanitaire system would be equally useless, given the distance that spores can blow, and would only be a waste of time, money and healthy trees.
All these negatives just go to show how crucial it is not to let diseases like this into the country in the first place. However, all is not lost; beware the prophets of doom; hope springs eternal. This is not Dutch elm disease, which was very different in its method of spread and always fatal. Even in Denmark, not all the ash trees are dying. Ash trees are ubiquitous in this country; they seed like weeds, grow through cracks in the pavement, establish themselves quickly and, as any gardener will tell you, are tenacious. I believe and sincerely hope that they will prove resistant to this new fungus in sufficient numbers to ensure their place in our towns and countryside in the years ahead. We must do all that we can to help them and to take steps urgently to ensure that this kind of disastrous European invasion never happens again.
Lord King of Bridgwater
My Lords, an unexpected change in the business of the House has meant that in the quiet of the evening in your Lordships’ House we have had a debate of quite exceptional quality and of importance to our country. I congratulate most warmly my noble friend Lord Selborne on his excellent introduction to this debate. With regard to both the noble Lord, Lord Best, with his particular involvement in the Tree Council, and my noble friend Lord Framlingham with his expertise, the House has already produced a debate of exceptional quality and importance. If I exclude the noble Lord, Lord Clark, it is simply because, as chairman of the Forestry Commission, I was disappointed that he decided to refer exclusively to the present year when, among everybody looking at this, there is real concern in the country as to what has been going on for some years about identifying it. Nobody in this country can pretend that we are not aware of the problem of imported disease of one sort or another. We have lived through Dutch elm disease; we live with sudden oak death and the problems of the larch, the beech and the horse chestnut. We are familiar with these problems. There is real anger in this country that there has not been an earlier identification of this problem. I looked at this. If trees were dying in Poland in 1992; if the pathogen, the asexual fungus as it is referred to, was identified in 2006; if the sexual stage of the fungus was identified in 2010; and if the Horticultural Trade Association warned Hilary Benn of the scale of this problem in 2009, what has actually been going on?
Perhaps I should have done so at the start but, in the face of much greater knowledge that has already been expressed, I declare my interest. My family own some woods in which ash is the predominant species; the natural regeneration in those woods is ash. We view the present situation with enormous alarm. We got a letter from the Forestry Commission, sent out late in October to all wood owners, saying that it will treat the fungus as,
“‘quarantine’ plant pathogen, which means that we can take legally enforceable action to contain or eradicate the fungus when it is found. This is being done by using Statutory Plant Health Notices which we serve on site owners. The Notice requires the owner of the land to remove and destroy affected plants by burning or deep burial on site”.
Does that apply to all ash? Does that apply simply to seedlings? Does it apply to young saplings? What does it apply to? There is this sort of confusion and difficulty at the moment.
I say to my noble friend, in congratulating him upon his appointment to his new position, that he has arrived at an interesting and challenging time; “May you live in interesting times”, as one might say. I say to him that I do not blame the Government for the origins of this. I do not blame them for the failure to identify it much earlier, but they do now have a major challenge on their hands. The noble Lord, Lord Best, made that very clear. He said that there were 72 million ash trees in this country; that will be two or three times the scale of Dutch elm disease. This is an issue now of enormous concern in the countryside. I am absolutely convinced that it was right to debate it tonight. I understand entirely why my noble friend may not be able to answer all the questions that have been asked tonight, but I hope that he at least draws from this debate the sense of the enormous concern in the countryside and throughout the country. We see the Forestry Commission saying that people should wash their boots and watch where they go. Are we going to ban all access to woods? Are we going to ban bridle paths, footpaths and ruts, as they are called? What are we going to do?
Obviously, we will have on Wednesday a better picture of the scale of the spread of this fungus and the difficulties that it may pose. However, I do not think that anybody should underrate the challenge that the Government now face, and the importance of taking early action to address it.
Lord Judd
My Lords, I join those who have already congratulated the noble Earl on having introduced this debate. He did so with the clarity and incisiveness that I so came to admire when I had the privilege of serving under him in a Select Committee. I do not believe that I am alone in saying that, as I became aware of this disease and its implications, I had a real sense of foreboding and a great sense of sadness.
I came to this debate thinking of the words of a folksong:
“Down yonder green valley where streamlets meander
When twilight is fading, I pensively rove
Or at the bright noontide in solitude wander
Amid the dark shades of the lonely ash grove”.
Having lamented the passing of his loved one, he concludes:
“She sleeps ‘neath the green turf down by the ash grove”.
This is central to our tradition and culture. What is happening really is a tragedy.
As has been stressed, we also have to recognise that this is not about the ash alone: we already have what is attacking the oaks. We already know—the noble Earl and others have underlined it—that we have to look carefully at the implications of what this disease may have as it transmutes and transfers to trees of other species.
At short notice, the Country Land & Business Association produced an interesting brief for this debate. The CLA underlines:
“Information about Chalara was slow to get out to the wider landowning sector which means that we are now trying to identify infected trees when in many cases the leaves have already fallen, making it much more difficult. The CLA has called on all its members to check their ash trees for signs of the disease and to inform the Forestry Commission if they are at all concerned about the health of their ash trees”.
It continues:
“If there is a realistic chance that we can contain and then eradicate the disease then it may be worth applying some quite draconian control measures”.
My only argument with the CLA in that paragraph is: why “quite draconian”? Draconian measures will be needed. The CLA briefing continues:
“We must not unnecessarily waste a valuable ‘renewable’ resource by just burying or burning it in a field. If it can be used even if only as firewood then we must allow it to go into the firewood supply chain”.
I would slightly question that. In a grave situation of this kind, we must not start moderating. We have to do the really drastic things that have to be done.
The CLA points out that at present:
“The UK’s trees are under threat from some 15 tree diseases including Acute Oak Decline and Oak Processionary Moth and we must tackle Chalara as part of a much wider strategic plan to save our woodlands … Chalara … represents a real and immediate threat to our woodlands and landscape but we must take a pragmatic and proportionate response”.
Again, I would slightly argue with the CLA. “Pragmatic and proportionate” sounds like prevarication or possible prevarication.
We really have to get on with the job. This is an emergency. We have to pull out all the stops. There is clearly a key role for the Forestry Commission in this matter. It is no time to be cutting back the human resources of the Forestry Commission when challenges of this order are becoming clear. We need to mobilise statutory and voluntary organisations and professional and volunteer personnel alike. We have to make certain that advice is given to everyone who could be involved, not least ordinary people in ordinary, simple homes who may have an ash tree in their garden. All of them have a part to play.
We cannot hold back. We must get on with the job. I hope that we will learn from this. We were discussing this in the previous debate. We very quickly must start to give the same kind of priorities to the preservation of our environment and our inheritance as we give to all the pressures for getting on with planning, streamlining planning and the rest. A lot is at stake in our society at the moment. We are neglecting the qualitative dimensions at our cost and at a perilous cost to our children and future generations.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Earl on securing this debate. He and other noble Lords who have spoken have brought a lot of expertise to bear on this issue, so I shall just stick to a couple of points. First, this is not just a European issue; it is a global issue. I can go back as far as June 1987 to the New York Times headline that says “Unstoppable disease killing New York ash trees”. It goes on to say:
“Scientists first noticed it in the 1930s and believe that ‘ash dieback’ has progressively spread throughout the northeastern states and parts of eastern Canada”.
So it has gradually been circling the globe. Of course, we do not know exactly when it got to Europe, but we know that it is spreading here. We are not sure how it is borne, whether as noble Lords have said it is blown or carried by birds or imported in saplings. The fact is that the global movement of people and animals, as my noble friend Lady Parminter graphically put it, has created something that is really out of control. That does not mean to say that we should not try to do something about it—but in the long term we need to look to the seed banks. The noble Earl mentioned that in his introduction. I would like to agree with him very strongly on that, because there will no doubt be ash trees that are resistant and there will no doubt be the opportunity to breed from them. That is the long-term programme that we need to pursue, not just for ash trees but for oak trees and pine trees and all our woodland. We need to collect the seed from those resistant trees and breed trees for the future.
With other noble Lords, I join in looking forward to a revival of the Forestry Commission’s research programme, which was rather cut back over recent years. This should be a major part of what we do, together with the seed banks at Kew and the Natural History Museum, with all the expertise that sits in those two places. If there is one thing that we know, it is that native trees over centuries and millennia built up resistance to local pests, diseases and fungal infections. With the global movement, completely different ones, to which they have no natural resistance, have entered the country. That is what we need to deal with. In the long term, it can be dealt with only by developing these resistant strains. So while I welcome the suggestions that other noble Lords have made about controlling the disease if we can in the short term, we must look to the long term.
Lord Marlesford
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, has spoken much good sense. I declare an interest, in that I am a Suffolk farmer. I had the e-mail from the CLA on Friday and we spent the weekend having a look at our ash trees. Today at about 12 o’clock, I sent an e-mail to the Forestry Commission to say that we had found fairly extensive cases of what looks extremely like the ash disease. What is interesting is that there were unhealthy trees in hedges and woods that were next to other ash trees that were completely healthy. That suggests that there is selective immunity. I would be delighted if any scientists from the Forestry Commission want to come and look at us, but I think that in much of Suffolk there is probably a good deal of this ash disease.
I slightly wonder whether it is a new disease. The Forestry Commission produced a very good video, which I watched this morning. Others may have seen it too. One characteristic is that inside the ash there is black wood. Ever since I was a child ash trees have sometimes suffered from having black wood inside. In fact, the story goes that if you want to use white ash to make furniture, you should take ash which grows near water as ash which has its feet in water is more likely to be cleaner than other ash.
We have already heard from other noble Lords that a lot of these diseases have been around for a very long time. We know about the other diseases that have been referred to. There is a lesson for the Government here as regards the structure of government and their priorities.
I have one or two other interests to declare. I am the president of the Suffolk Preservation Society. I was a member of the Countryside Commission for 12 years, a member of the Rural Development Commission for eight years and I was chairman of CPRE for five years. I feel very strongly that there is a real place for quangos. A quango is a body of professional people who have outside people monitoring and focusing their efforts. The function of a quango is to advise government on what to do. It is not a pressure group. CPRE is an unashamed pressure group. The Countryside Commission was not a pressure group. I think it was a mistake to amalgamate all these quangos. It has been done over a period of years. The Countryside Commission, the Rural Development Commission, the NCC and English Nature are now all called Natural England. One of the reasons it was a mistake is that the governing body is comprised of part-time people and the responsibilities are too wide for them to cover them all. That means that the staff do not focus and the right advice is not given to government and therefore government does not take action at the right time. There might well be a case for reinventing or recreating one or two of these bodies which were so crucial to maintaining the countryside that we all love.
I wish to make two other points. Dutch elm disease was spread by a beetle but there is some immunity. On the whole elm trees grow to about 17 feet and then they seem to die back. However, they are still perfectly good hedge trees. I do not think that a policy of rooting out diseased ash trees is likely to work or necessarily be the right thing to do. If ash trees are cut down they make very good firewood and I do not agree that they should not be burnt in people’s fireplaces but in a field.
The other thing that worries me is that I have heard Ministers quoted as saying that people should disinfect their boots. That is nonsense. We have never had more deer in our countryside than we have now. We have badgers, birds and the pheasant, introduced originally by the Romans as your Lordships know. We have many things that can move the disease, including feet. We should remember an important fact that is pretty damned obvious but seems to have been forgotten when people talk about cutting off bits of the countryside, which is that one of the primary functions of the countryside is to produce food. Can we imagine it being possible to close down parts of the countryside? At the moment we are short of food and food production is a primary function of the countryside, so we should not take foolish, apparently populist, action. We should think carefully and hope that the body to which my noble friend Lord Selborne referred—I am delighted that it has been set up—receives some good sensible advice from farmers, countrymen and people who know about the countryside. I am optimistic. I think that our countryside will survive. We have a multiplicity of different trees. Nature has an amazing way of coping. Sad though it was to lose so many elm trees, I do not believe that our English countryside is any less beautiful than it was 40 years ago.
Lord Knight of Weymouth
My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, is to be congratulated on securing and introducing this important debate so effectively. As others have said, it has been a high-quality debate, even at this late hour. In among the shambles of the Government’s handling of business in this House, it is most welcome that we have time to debate the future of such an important feature of the British landscape.
As others have said, this is a subject that the public care deeply about. We saw that over the forest privatisation proposals and I have seen it in the last 24 hours on this issue. Yesterday morning I tweeted:
“I am speaking in tomorrow’s Lords debate on the future of the British ash tree. What questions do you want me to ask the minister?”.
I have been inundated with responses—the biggest reaction to a single tweet that I have ever had. Having discovered something close to crowd-sourced opposition and direct democracy even in the House of Lords, I will try to base my contribution on what the public have said to me in the last 24 hours.
Several wanted me to focus on action now and into the future. I will try to do this, but I would like first to put on record my understanding of the chronology of the disease in this country. In 2009, as has been said, the Horticultural Trades Association warned that we should have a ban. The Forestry Commission and Defra scientists reflected the latest international scientific opinion of the time that the disease was actually a mutant of a pathogen already endemic in Britain. However, in 2010 the science changed. Chalara fraxinea was identified then as a new pathogen, named Hymenoscyphus pseudoalbidus and, as late as autumn 2011, the Forestry Commission confirmed that Britain was clear of the pathogen. It was then discovered in imported saplings in February this year.
Many correspondents to me want to know why the Government did not ban imports at that point. Why did we have to wait until infection reached trees in the wild? Given that this disease has had such a catastrophic effect on ash trees in continental Europe, should we not have been more sensitive to the threat? Given that, as Defra’s chief plant health officer, Martin Ward, said today:
“Aerial spread does not happen until the summer”,
would it not have been wise to impose the ban at the start of the summer? As Tony Juniper asked me:
“Why were we importing ash trees when there are hundreds of millions in the UK already? Which other native trees are at similar risk?”.
The subject of other species takes us on to the capacity of the Forestry Commission to deal with this threat. The commission’s February 2011 staff consultation document on redundancy, following its 25% cut in funding, said, under high-level risks on page 24:
“There is no capacity to deal with costs of disease or other calamity. (e.g. Phytophthora is currently an unfunded pressure for 2011/12.) Mitigation: ensure full awareness of this loss of capacity”.
Forest Research, which is part of the Forestry Commission, is losing 60 out of a total of 222 staff over the CSR period: a cut of 28%. Thirty-eight of these staff have already gone. I would be interested to know how the Minister squares this with what his ministerial colleague, David Heath, said in the other place: that there had been no cut-back in resources applied to plant health and tree health in this country. The seriousness of this is reinforced in an interesting blog by Gabriel Hemery:
“During 2012 alone tree scientists at Forest Research have had to face an Asian longhorn beetle outbreak, sweet chestnut blight, and ash dieback. This is in addition to oak processionary moth, Phytophthora ramorum in Larch, and acute oak decline that were already big-enough problems to tackle”.
We have also, over the weekend, read of raised concerns that Scots pine is under threat from similar pathogens. Can the Minister give reassurance that not only is there sufficient protection for the scientific resource needed to work on Chalara fraxinea but that it will not be at the expense of our resilience to other disease outbreaks that could potentially arise? I suggest to him that if this is serious enough to convene COBRA last Friday—and it is—then it has the attention of the whole of Government. Now is the very best time to demand more resource from the Treasury to fund the research and monitoring that this crisis needs.
Most other questions relate to the science. Lithuania, where 99% of ash were lost to the disease, has had success in developing resistant strains of ash. Does the import ban apply to resistant strains of the species? Is the further destruction of ash trees in this country going to be sensitive enough, as others have said, to retain those trees displaying a resistance, given that there is considerable diversity in our ash stock? Are the Government instigating an intensive breeding programme of pathogen-resistant trees? Is there a role for genetic modification? What does the science tell us about the spread of the disease? If felled trees are burned, how do we prevent spores spreading through smoke plumes? If the disease has been carried across the North Sea on the wind or by birds, as the Government claim, will washing our boots—or, for that matter, our children—have any effect? If walkers’ biosecurity is a serious risk, will there be provision for the public to disinfect their footwear, as with the foot and mouth outbreak? Finally, would it be sensible, as the noble Lord, Lord King, mentioned, for forests with high numbers of ash trees to be closed to public access?
This is fast developing into a catastrophe for our natural environment. The ash tree is an iconic part of the British landscape and we should all be doing what we can to monitor the disease and follow scientific advice on how best to combat it. At a time when so many of our tree species are under threat, when we increase risk by importing so much horticulture, now is the time to value plant science, invest in urgent research, work with European partners and value expertise. I look forward to the Minister’s reassurance.
Lord King of Bridgwater
The noble Lord talked exclusively about the present year and the past year. Has he nothing to say about how it could be that a disease that is well established and was recognised in the continent of Europe some 15 years ago could not be identified, and why the precautionary principle that one would think would be important in these issues and the need to take action were not recognised? Will the noble Lord comment on that, because he is otherwise in danger of making what could have been a valuable contribution appear to be too much party-political?
Lord Knight of Weymouth
I am delighted to contribute, although I ran out of time some time ago and it is always amusing to be accused of being party-political by the noble Lord. However, I refer him to an article in the New Scientist, dated 31 October, by Andy Coghlan, in which he talks through the science. It is clear that the science changed in 2010. It is also clear that Ministers were not consulted by officials in 2009. That is something we can discuss at a later date. I am looking forward to the Minister’s reassurances.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord De Mauley)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Selborne and all noble Lords for their extremely helpful contributions in this debate.
The ash is one of our most recognisable trees and we have about 80 million of them in our country. This debate focuses on the dangers to them posed by Chalara fraxinea, but of course it goes much wider. I must declare an interest as a grower of trees, including ash. The Government are taking the threat posed to the British ash tree extremely seriously. Let me start by setting out very clearly the current situation, our scientific understanding and the action we are taking. Ash dieback is a disease caused by a fungal pathogen that has devastated ash across northern Europe. With ash trees representing 5 per cent of Britain’s woodland cover, the potential impact of this disease on our landscape is significant.
I am going to try to avoid being party political, but before 2010, the scientific evidence in Europe indicated that the organism responsible for ash dieback disease was one that was already widespread and native in Great Britain. This precluded the use of import restrictions as a means of control. In 2010, new scientific evidence was published which correctly identified the pathogen that caused the disease. Between 2009 and 2012 the Forestry Commission inspected 15,000 individual ash trees across the country located in more than 8,000 groups. Of these, 103 trees were discovered to be in ill health. None of these was identified as caused by Chalara.
In February 2012, a routine nursery inspection discovered Chalara, and this finding was confirmed on 7 March. Immediately, the UK plant health authorities deployed additional resources to carry out trace-forward inspections of material known to have been supplied from the infected nurseries. Over the summer, 1,000 at-risk sites were identified and 100,000 saplings were destroyed. In parallel, the authorities developed a pest risk analysis, required, as noble Lords know, as the basis for intervention. Once completed, this analysis was fast-tracked into a shortened consultation to discover the extent of Chalara in Great Britain. During this time, the industry instituted a voluntary moratorium on imports of ash planting material, and I offer it my strong thanks.
On Friday 26 October, this consultation closed. From the early afternoon of Monday 29 October, the movement of ash from anywhere that is not a certified pest-free area—right now, nowhere has that label—became a criminal offence in time for the start of the main UK planting season at the end of November. During the consultation period, Chalara was confirmed in the wider environment in East Anglia. These trees had no apparent connection to nurseries and suggested the presence of Chalara in Great Britain for quite some time. It is possible that this infection was caused by spores blown by the wind from continental Europe, but further investigation is ongoing.
I turn now to the current situation. As my noble friend Lord Selborne said, this morning’s situation report confirmed Chalara in 14 nursery sites, 36 sites where ash has recently been planted and 32 sites in the wider environment. Over the weekend, we have confirmed that, in addition to the cases in the wider environment in East Anglia, there are also cases in Essex and Kent.
Our scientific understanding suggests that Chalara is not currently spreading. The period of spore release is normally the summer. In the winter, the main method of spreading the disease would be movements of ash material. This, as I have said, is now banned. As ash leaves fall to the ground, there exists a risk, although it is rated as low, of the spread of the disease through the long-distance movement of leaf litter on, for example, boots and tyres. In answer to my noble friend Lord King, we have no intention of unwarranted closure of woodlands to those who wish to enjoy them, but we ask woodland visitors to ensure that they take appropriate precautions when leaving woodland.
Our understanding of Chalara continues to develop. Last Thursday, Defra Chief Scientific Adviser Professor Ian Boyd convened a group of international experts to understand better the epidemiology of Chalara fraxinea. We are dealing with considerable biological uncertainty but we are determined to make the best use of the science available to tackle this pathogen.
Lord King of Bridgwater
I will perfectly understand if the Minister cannot answer this question now, or he may like to put a letter in the Library. He made an interesting point about why this was not identified earlier. In a sense, it was. Something that had killed 90% of the ash trees in Poland was thought to be a pathogen that was already widespread and established in this country. But we did not lose that number of trees at that time. How was it that something that killed all those trees in Poland could be thought to be widely established even if it did not kill any trees in this country?
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, I am not sure that I shall be able to answer my noble friend’s question entirely. I said that before 2010, the scientific evidence indicated that the organism responsible for Ash dieback disease was one that was already widespread and native in this country. But new scientific evidence was published in 2010 which correctly identified that that was not the pathogen and that a different pathogen caused the disease. I hope that that is helpful.
Professor Boyd concluded that: spores are mainly dispersed by wind during the summer; transportation of leaf litter should be avoided; Chalara will infect any form of ash, so exotic species in which Chalara is not pathogenic could act as vectors; latency from infection to overt disease is a matter of months; wood products would not spread the disease if they were treated appropriately using simple methods; trees probably need quite high doses of spores to be infected and may only become infected under specific conditions that are currently not understood; data from Norway suggest a spread rate of the infection front of 30 kilometres per year; once infected, ash trees cannot be treated; Chalara itself tends to kill only young trees; older trees are weakened and die from other causes and this can take years; there appears to be innate genetic resistance in some trees; and it appears that trees within forests tend to die most quickly because of secondary infection from, for example, honeydew fungus.
We are guided by the science. Our first priority is to establish the distribution of Chalara in Great Britain. This will inform our plan for tackling the pathogen. In this surveillance, we are determined to strike the right balance in the necessary trade-off between speed and thoroughness. There are two main surveillance operations under way. First, the Forestry Commission, whose staff have been working weekday and weekend, is undertaking a survey throughout Great Britain that will cover more than 2,000 10 kilometre by 10 kilometre squares in which sample trees will be examined. These survey areas are dispersed across the entire country, with an initial focus on East Anglia and the south-east, which are the areas at greatest risk of wind-borne infection from mainland Europe. To date, the Forestry Commission has inspected more than 1,000 of these squares, and we expect the survey to be substantially complete by the end of the week.
Secondly, the Food and Environment Research Agency is working hard to inspect sites that have been traced as receiving saplings from nurseries that have handled suspect consignments. In addition, we have asked a number of organisations, including the Country Land & Business Association, the Royal Forestry Society and the Royal Scottish Forestry Society, for their members’ help with surveillance over the next few days. I am enormously grateful for the positive way in which they have responded. This rapid surveillance will give us an indication of the extent of Chalara in Great Britain, equipping us to tackle the pathogen. On Wednesday, the Secretary of State and I will welcome industry representatives and stakeholders to a specially convened ash dieback summit. Ensuring that we are working with the science and with stakeholders is crucial to the effective management of the disease.
Noble Lords asked a number of questions. I will do my best to address them. The noble Lords, Lord Clark and Lord Judd, asked whether we could still burn ash firewood. We can. There is a very low risk of spreading the disease by moving firewood, but it will not be possible to move logs from affected areas in the United Kingdom where a notice has been served. One noble Lord asked whether burning trees would risk dissipating spores in the smoke. The indications are that that is very unlikely.
The noble Lord, Lord Clark, asked what the ban meant. All imports of ash-planting material are banned, as no pest-free areas exist in other countries. Movements of ash within the United Kingdom are banned pending full surveillance activity that will determine the pest-free zones.
Several noble Lords asked about Forestry Commission funding. While the Forestry Commission’s overall budget has decreased since 2010, it is not true to say that funding for plant health has decreased. The Forestry Commission’s budget for plant health research, which was £1.4 million in 2010-11, will be £2.1 million for 2014-15. Fera is responsible for plant health across the board. Its budget for plant health research was £667,000 in 2010-11 and will be £1.45 million in 2013-14. Defra has also allocated £1.3 million for each year of the current spending review period under the tree health action plan, and £800,000 for tree health research under the Living with Environmental Change programme for each year of the current spending review period. This funding will go one year beyond the current spending review period and will total £8 million over four years.
My noble friend Lady Parminter asked about the time taken for testing. In the lab, culturing an organism takes up to three weeks. Fera has adopted and developed a molecular method that reduces test time to less than four hours under ideal testing conditions. Following parallel trials of cultural and molecular tests, we are confident that the molecular procedure is robust, so it is currently our chosen diagnostic lab method.
My noble friend Lord King asked to what types of trees the Forestry Commission orders applied. Eradication action is required when the disease is found in nurseries or sites of recently planted ash. Containment notices are in place for those sites where the disease has been found in the wider environment pending the outcome of surveillance that is currently in progress.
The Government are taking further action in the full knowledge that Chalara will not, as some noble Lords mentioned, be the last pest to threaten our shores. Taking my noble friend Lord Selborne’s point, the Secretary of State has asked Professor Ian Boyd to convene a tree health and plant biosecurity expert task force to review our strategic approach to plant health as a whole, while at the European level, our negotiators are working to improve the pace of decision-making, the targeting of risk and the level of international co-operation within the EU plant health regime.
Furthermore, we are quickly bringing forward actions in our October 2011 tree health and plant biosecurity action plan—part of which, in answer to my noble friend Lady Parminter, importantly involves public engagement—to address the serious pests and pathogens not currently present in the UK.
I thank all noble Lords for their comments and suggestions, all of which I will take back. Chalara fraxinea is a serious threat to our ash population. We will continue to strive to understand and control it. We are also learning important lessons, which will help us combat future tree diseases.