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Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)
1. What progress he has made on implementing the recommendations of Cities Fit for Cycling.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Norman Baker)
The coalition Government is working hard to promote cycling and make it even safer. Yesterday I announced a further £20 million of funding for cycling projects. This is on top of the £30 million of funding announced earlier this year to tackle dangerous junctions. We have also made it simpler for councils to put in place 20 mph zones and limits and install Trixi mirrors to improve the visibility of cyclists at junctions, by reducing bureaucracy.
Jonathan Ashworth
I am grateful to the Minister for that detailed reply. I recently met representatives of the Leicester cycling campaign, who made it clear that they felt that, if I may say so, the Government need to put more emphasis on and more support into cycling. Given that, will the Government commit to implement all the proposals of the Cities Fit for Cycling campaign and invest in dedicated separate cycling infrastructure?
Norman Baker
That, if I may say so, is a churlish interpretation of what the Government has done, which is to put enormous effort into improving cycling and progressing all the recommendations of The Times Cities Fit for Cycling campaign, which I very much welcome. It is perhaps worth noting that there was a huge backlog of important cycling interventions that we inherited when we took office and we are progressing well to deal with those.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister may know of the all-party group that I started in the early 1980s called PACTS—the parliamentary advisory council for transport safety—which organised the seatbelt legislation. We had the annual Westminster lecture, the 23rd, last night at which Jeanne Breen vigorously said that we are not going to get cycling deaths down and there will be a rising level of road accidents because this Government have given up targets.
Norman Baker
I do not think that is entirely fair. We have seen great action on road safety from the Secretary of State and from the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond), who has just launched a campaign on cycle safety. Targets are an easy substitute for action. What we saw under the previous Government was legislation which caused delays, and targets which were a substitute for action. We like to get things done, not to set arbitrary targets.
Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)
2. What steps he is taking to reduce congestion on Highways Agency roads.
Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)
4. What steps he is taking to reduce congestion on Highways Agency roads.
Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)
11. What steps he is taking to reduce congestion on Highways Agency roads.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Stephen Hammond)
This Government are committed to accelerating the delivery of roads infrastructure. Spending on the major roads programme to October 2012 was just over £1.9 billion. A £217 million programme of pinch point schemes is being progressed, as is a £3.5 billion programme of 20 major road schemes.
Jackie Doyle-Price
As my hon. Friend knows, the Dartford crossing causes motorists in my constituency a lot of grief, and although it is part of the national road infrastructure the congestion impact is very much local. Will he give me an undertaking that he will do everything he can to tackle the congestion at the Dartford crossing and at junction 31 with the A13 and the M25 so that the jobs and economic growth that can be generated in south Essex will materialise?
Stephen Hammond
I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. As she knows, we are already progressing free flow through the Dartford tunnel. We are in discussions with the Highways Agency about the junction that she refers to.
Oliver Colvile
I thank my hon. Friend for his recent announcement about the investment of £1.8 million in the Manadon roundabout, which is on the border of my Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport constituency. Following last week’s flooding in the south-west, train passengers’ journeys to and from London have been very disrupted. Can my hon. Friend make an economic assessment of the impact of that on the Plymouth economy?
Stephen Hammond
Along with many other members of the Government, I offer my deepest sympathy to those who have been affected by the recent flooding. I recognise that it has been extremely disruptive, both for residents and for businesses, but it is too early to undertake an economic assessment. The Government’s main priority at present is restoring services to all those affected by flooding.
Mr Marcus Jones
I thank my hon. Friend for meeting me to discuss the Woodford lane A5 junction, the scene of many serious accidents which not only add to congestion on the A5 but have resulted in many serious injuries and the loss of a young life in the past year. Does he agree that we need to look seriously at trying to find a solution to make this treacherous junction safer?
Stephen Hammond
I certainly agree with my hon. Friend. He will know that as a result of that meeting I have asked the Highways Agency to conduct a review of the junction’s safety record over the past few years and keep an eye on it over the next six months, and I have agreed to meet him to discuss the matter in the second half of next year.
Mr Brian H. Donohoe (Central Ayrshire) (Lab)
One way in which congestion could be greatly reduced would be by having a dedicated police service for the highways? Does the Minister agree?
Stephen Hammond
The hon. Gentleman will know that there is already a police service that tackles that—the traffic police—and there are also Highways Agency officers who help with accidents.
Jim McGovern (Dundee West) (Lab)
3. What steps his Department is taking to improve transport links between England and Scotland.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr Simon Burns)
On rail, we are providing for improved links between Scotland and England through the High Speed 2 project, and the inter-city express programme will allow us to provide better services along the east coast main line. On roads, we announced on 23 May that the A1 north of Newcastle to the Scottish border has now been classified as a route of strategic national importance.
Jim McGovern
I am sure that the Minister will agree that better rail links between Scotland and England are vital to the Scottish economy and, indeed, that of the UK. What immediate steps has he taken to improve links between, for example, Aberdeen and Dundee on the east coast and London?
Mr Burns
I assure the hon. Gentleman that one of this Government’s priorities is to improve rail links throughout England, Wales and Scotland through electrification. On his specific question about improving services in Scotland, that is a matter for Arriva and the Scottish Government—[Interruption.] Sorry, not Arriva. It is a matter for the provider of train services in Scotland and the Scottish Government. We will work with them, as we have done in the past and will continue to do, to ensure that the improvements that Scotland needs are made.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
The Government committed themselves to the inter-city express programme train contract in July. Will the Minister explain how that will improve services between Scotland and England, particularly journey times?
Mr Burns
It will make a significant improvement because it means enhanced rolling stock along the whole east coast main line from London to Edinburgh, which I believe will make journey times from Edinburgh to England about 15 minutes quicker overall. However, we should also take into account the improved quality of the service and the improvements to the track on the east coast main line.
Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)
The resolution of the west coast main line franchise issues will be important in enabling improvements to services in those areas. When did the Minister decide to postpone the publication of the Laidlaw report on the franchise fiasco?
Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)
The existing plans for high-speed rail will reduce journey times from Glasgow and Edinburgh to London by almost an hour, but the ultimate aim must be high-speed rail all the way to Glasgow and Edinburgh. What discussions has my right hon. Friend had with the Scottish Government on extending the lines north from Leeds and Manchester all the way to Glasgow and Edinburgh?
Mr Burns
As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced in early October, we will be looking at the feasibility of extending HS2 to Scotland via Leeds and Manchester, and we will certainly be holding discussions with the Scottish Government in due course to move forward analysis on the proposal.
Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)
5. For what reasons summer 2015 has been set as the time by which the independent commission on aviation chaired by Sir Howard Davies must publish its final report.
The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Patrick McLoughlin)
It is vital that the commission has sufficient time to carry out a thorough investigation of the options and build a consensus on its long-term recommendations. The timetable has been set to allow that to take place.
Zac Goldsmith
This looks very much like an attempt to kick the issue into the long grass until after the election. My message to the Secretary of State is that uncertainty for three years, and probably another three years for planning, is not only bad politics but bad for the economy. I urge him please to ensure that next year’s interim report provides real clarity on the Government’s preferred solution so that communities, businesses and, of course, voters can plan accordingly.
Mr McLoughlin
I am not going to predict at this stage what will be in the interim report of a commission that has only just been set up. They will not be the Government’s recommendations; they will be those of the commission. I hope that the commission has been drawn widely enough to attract cross-party support.
Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)
After half a century of inquiries and investigations into runway capacity in the south-east of England, there are almost no new facts to be learned. Is this not just a fig leaf before the Government do a U-turn and provide a third runway at Heathrow?
Mr McLoughlin
I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman thinks that is the case, but it is not. In fact, we are trying to build a consensus across the parties on large infrastructure projects such as this, and to a degree that consensus has been achieved. The HS2 route that we have adopted is the route that the previous Government published.
Sir Alan Haselhurst (Saffron Walden) (Con)
In the meantime, noting the results announced by the owners of Gatwick airport yesterday, does my right hon. Friend believe that competition is an important element in trying to ease the capacity problems in the London airport system?
Mr McLoughlin
The truth of the matter is that a number of airports are now owned by different companies as a result of the changes that have been made, and they are coming forward with their own proposals, which will add to the approach taken by the Davies commission. It will certainly not be short of representations of various sorts, including, I imagine, from my right hon. Friend.
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)
The Prime Minister came back from his summer holiday saying that he was
“more determined than ever to cut through the dither that holds this country back.”
Having dithered for a year before finally accepting our suggestion of an independent commission on aviation, the Government have now cynically set a time scale that pushes decisions beyond the next election. Will the Secretary of State finally listen to all those, including the CBI and the British Chambers of Commerce, who want the national interest to be put before party management, accelerate the time scale, and ask Sir Howard Davies to produce his final report by the end of next year?
Mr McLoughlin
In all honesty, the Labour party has also changed its position on what should happen at Heathrow. I would have hoped that the composition of the commission attracted widespread support. Indeed, one of its members is an adviser to the Leader of the Opposition on infrastructure projects. It is right that we get the right answer and build consensus on what we are trying to do.
Maria Eagle
Business will be bitterly disappointed by that answer. It is no wonder the Mayor of London has described his own Government’s approach to aviation as
“a policy of utter inertia”,
“glacial” and a “fudgerama”. HS2, Thameslink, franchising, investment promised in the autumn statement a year ago: all are running late. The Secretary of State is now presiding over the department for dither and delay. When is he going to get a grip?
Mr McLoughlin
The hon. Lady was smiling at the end of her question, and that betrays the fact that it was a very good line written for her but not quite believed by her when she delivered it. We are doing a huge amount in delivering for UK infrastructure. I look forward to seeing the recommendations that she wants to put to the Davies commission, which will tell us what Labour wants to do.
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
6. What improvements to transport infrastructure he has planned that will affect Lincolnshire.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Norman Baker)
This Government is investing in transport infrastructure that will bring real benefits to Lincolnshire. We are bringing forward improvements to the A160/A180 by 18 months, which together with our funding for the A18/A180 will improve access to the port of Immingham. We are also providing some £50 million to support the Lincoln eastern bypass scheme. The line upgrade between Peterborough to Doncaster via Spalding and Lincoln will improve rail capacity in the area.
Mr Leigh
May I take my hon. Friend on a journey from the hills of Sussex to the broad plains of Lincolnshire along the old Roman way, the A15? If he goes along that route, he will find it narrow, congested and dangerous. Will he persuade his colleagues to reject the hideous wind farms that are going to disfigure it, and instead make it a dual carriageway, a noble highway taking people safely and speedily from Lincoln to Scunthorpe—the Via Norman Baker?
Norman Baker
I am always interested in winding journeys from Sussex to elsewhere in the country, so I look forward to being in Lincolnshire again. Wind farms are not a matter for the Department for Transport, as my hon. Friend knows, but I am sure that his comments have been noted, as you would put it, Mr Speaker.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
I welcome the Minister’s announcement about the A160 and the Immingham bypass. However, many people travelling through Lincolnshire, when they reach the end of the A15, which my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) wants to be dualled, will be heading for the county’s premier resort of Cleethorpes, and in order to do so they will travel along the A180, with its original concrete surface. Will Ministers do all they can to ensure that that road is improved in the near future?
Norman Baker
I agree it is important to have quieter surfaces where it is sensible to introduce them. The Highways Agency has a policy of replacing concrete surfaces with quieter surfaces, as and when infrastructure needs to be replaced. I encourage local councils to follow a similar policy.
Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)
7. What progress he has made on awarding the DVLA counter services contract; and if he will make a statement.
The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Patrick McLoughlin)
On 13 November, I announced that the preferred bidder for the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency’s counter services contract was Post Office Ltd. We expect the contract to be awarded before Christmas and it will be operational from April 2013. The contract will achieve savings of between £13 million and £15 million each year. The initial contract will run for seven years.
Nigel Adams
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for that reply. Does he agree that this decision will provide a great boost for many village post offices, such as those in Hambleton, Monk Fryston and Cawood in my constituency, and will help to preserve their long-term viability?
Mr McLoughlin
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who was one of the leading campaigners trying to ensure that the contract was awarded to the Post Office. I am pleased that it managed to win the contract. It won it in an open competition, which shows that it is able to win contracts from the Government to provide services. The decision is vital for places, including those in my constituency, that rely to a huge extent on their rural post offices.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
My right hon. Friend may recall that for a very brief time I was the shadow Department of Trade and Industry spokesman on post offices. The key thing has always been the need for footfall, because without it, as my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams) said, there is no viability. What increase in footfall does my right hon. Friend estimate will result from this innovative move?
Mr McLoughlin
I do remember my hon. Friend’s time as our party’s spokesman on post offices. Indeed, I was the Minister with responsibility for the Post Office at one point in history, so I well appreciate how important post offices are to our rural communities. It is important that they win business, but they have to compete for that business. They have done so very successfully in this case.
Graeme Morrice (Livingston) (Lab)
8. If he will make it his policy to reinstate national targets to reduce deaths and serious injuries on the roads.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
13. If he will make it his policy to reinstate national targets to reduce deaths and serious injuries on the roads.
The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Patrick McLoughlin)
The Government have no plans to reinstate national targets. The strategic framework for road safety sets out measures that we intend to take to continue to reduce casualties. Those include making forecasts of the casualty numbers that we might expect to see through to 2030 if our measures, and the actions of local authorities, are successful.
Graeme Morrice
With the numbers killed and seriously injured on Britain’s roads increasing for the first time in 17 years, will the Secretary of State think again about the decision to axe national targets on reducing deaths and serious injuries, which helped to focus efforts across Government, local government and the agencies?
Mr McLoughlin
I will never take safety lightly; it must always be uppermost in the mind of the Secretary of State for Transport. The United Kingdom has a very good record. In 1979, the number of people killed on the roads was 6,352. In 2011, the number was 1,901. That is still far too many, but the country has been heading in the right direction.
Kate Green
Campaigners will meet in my constituency this weekend to discuss how we can improve local road safety. There is growing support for 20 mph speed limits in residential areas. Why does the Department advise that safety has to be balanced against economic considerations and traffic flow, when there is no evidence of longer journey times in 20 mph areas?
Mr McLoughlin
I am always willing to look at the hon. Lady’s representations. It is important that we take a range of measures to improve safety. We have taken a range of measures, as have the companies that produce cars. There is no doubt that cars are much more responsive in their braking power than they were 30 years ago. We have made movements in the right direction. In some areas, 20 mph speed limits are right.
Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)
At a time of budget constraints, agencies understandably concentrate scarce resources on the performance targets against which they are measured. That is clearly having an impact on road safety budgets. I urge the Secretary of State to reconsider this decision because quite apart from the personal tragedy that is involved in all fatalities, it is a false economy, because every fatality costs a lot of money.
Mr McLoughlin
Indeed. The hon. Gentleman is right: a fatality not only causes huge damage and a dramatic situation for the family involved in that tragedy, but there is also cost to the health service and other services. There has been no diminution in the desire of the Department for Transport to improve road safety, and there will not be while I am Secretary of State.
Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)
The Secretary of State may be aware that road traffic deaths in the east midlands are double those in the north east per capita. As I learned from the Transport Committee inquiry into road safety, national targets allow underperforming local authorities to shelter behind the excellent performance of other local authorities, Blackpool included. Does the Secretary of State agree that national targets actually lead to more traffic deaths in some parts of the country because we are not targeting underperformance?
Mr McLoughlin
I am grateful to my hon. Friend; he makes an interesting point. Whenever serious or fatal accidents take place I want a proper investigation to be conducted, the results of which can be carried across to provide experience to other local authorities throughout the United Kingdom.
Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
The Secretary of State’s decision will be bitterly regretted by campaign groups across the country. Targets introduced by the Thatcher Administration 30 years ago had cross-party support and have successfully brought down casualty rates across the country. His use of the word “forecasts” indicates that he is trying to claw something back from his predecessor’s bad decision to abolish targets. Will the Secretary of State think again? Targets are not the whole solution but a component; they are part of the way to reduce serious injuries and deaths on British roads.
Mr McLoughlin
I know the hon. Gentleman takes this issue incredibly seriously, and although he talks about deaths I think we should look at the seriously injured as well. In the year ending June 2012, there were 1,790 deaths on British roads—a 6% drop on the year before.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
The Secretary of State is well aware that those most at risk on our roads are young drivers. I was pleased to see his recent positive comments about placing restrictions on young drivers—for example, on the number of passengers they may carry or the times of day they may drive. Will he indicate to the House how those proposals might be taken forward?
Mr McLoughlin
A number of representations on young drivers have been made to the Department for Transport and, as I said in that interview, they are all worth considering and investigating properly to see whether we can reduce the terrible toll that is sometimes caused by young drivers. However, that is not so of all young drivers. We read about the horrendous cases, but not about the many cases where young drivers behave and act responsibly on the road, as do other road users.
Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)
9. What progress he has made on dualling the A1 north of Newcastle; and if he will make a statement.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Stephen Hammond)
The Department has no current plans to dual the A1 north of Newcastle. In recognition of its importance for freight and other strategic traffic, the A1 north of Newcastle was designated as a route of strategic national importance in May 2010.
Stephen Hammond
As was made clear at the time, reclassification does not guarantee any extra funding, and any proposed upgrade would need to be subject to the usual decision-making process.
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
10. What recent assessment he has made of road capacity in north-west England.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr Simon Burns)
The Department has not undertaken any recent assessment of road capacity in north-west England. Since 2010, however, the Highways Agency has completed two annual assessments of the operation of all its strategic routes in the north of England in terms of delay, journey reliability, capacity, accidents and some environmental measures. The next assessment is due in spring next year.
Jonathan Reynolds
The Minister’s colleagues are aware that the roads in the Longdendale area of my constituency suffer from severe congestion—one Minister courteously took the time to visit, and the Secretary of State represents a seat not too far away. Since that last ministerial visit, the hon. Member for High Peak (Andrew Bingham) and I have worked with local authorities in Tameside, High Peak, Derbyshire and Barnsley to try to work out a solution that will cover the whole corridor between Greater Manchester and south Yorkshire. There has been a lot of interest in the study and we have published an interim report. Will the Minister grant us a meeting to take that work further?
Mr Burns
As the hon. Gentleman rightly recognises, the scheme in the national programme was withdrawn in 2009 by the Labour Government. A considerable amount of work has been done since at a local level. Because I have considerable sympathy for areas where there is significant road congestion, and although there must now be a local approach to finding a solution, I or one of my ministerial colleagues would be more than happy to meet the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Andrew Bingham) if they would like to discuss the matter further.
Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)
Not only do the residents of Tintwistle in my constituency feel the ground shaking beneath their feet as wagons thunder by inches from their front doors, but the economic growth of the whole of Glossopdale is, in my view, being hampered by traffic congestion. Given that economic growth is a vital part of the future of the country, does the Minister agree that problems such as the Mottram, Tintwistle and Longdendale bypass assume even greater importance for local communities in towns such as Glossop?
Mr Burns
My hon. Friend raises a valid point, as did the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) in his question. The fact is that the scheme came out of the national programme in 2009. Therefore, the approach must be to find a viable local alternative to reduce congestion for the hon. Gentleman’s and my hon. Friend’s constituents, and to help to increase economic growth. I am sure my hon. Friend, the hon. Gentleman and local communities and stakeholders will contribute to that. However, as I said in answer to the hon. Gentleman, if he and my hon. Friend would like to come and see me or one or my ministerial colleagues to discuss the matter further, we will be more than happy to meet them.
Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)
The motorway network forms the backbone of the north-west’s road network. Has the Minister considered improvements to the M6 and M56 in Cheshire to improve capacity on them?
Mr Burns
As my hon. Friend will appreciate, that is the responsibility of the Highways Agency. However, I can give him an assurance from the national Government that we are determined to investigate all parts of the road network and rail network to identify pinch points, and problems that stifle economic development and create congestion, to ensure that Britain moves faster, swifter and more effectively.
Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)
14. What recent progress his Department has made on mitigating the effect on rail passengers of rail fare increases.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Norman Baker)
We announced in October that the Government will again cap the increase in regulated fares at RPI plus 1% for rail fares and Transport for London in January 2013 and 2014. This will benefit over quarter of a million annual season ticket holders. Many more holders of weekly and monthly season tickets will also see lower fares and some commuters will be over £200 better off over the two years.
Dr Offord
People in my constituency are concerned about the cost of rail fares, but those who use Thameslink are also concerned about its speedy progression. What reassurance can the Minister give them that the tendering process for the project was conducted in the right and proper manner, and that the project remains on schedule?
Norman Baker
Detailed evidence regarding the tendering process for the Thameslink rolling stock was given by the Transport Committee in September 2011. That confirmed that the requirements of EU procurement law had been met. The rolling stock procurement process is working towards commercial close in December and financial close early in the new year. Good progress has been made already on the infrastructure programme. Blackfriars and Farringdon stations are both operational, and enabling work at London Bridge is ongoing.
Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)
15. What progress his Department is making on rail electrification.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr Simon Burns)
This Government have funded Network Rail to electrify almost 850 route miles, compared with about 10 route miles delivered by the previous Government in 13 years. The programme is on schedule. Passengers between Manchester and Scotland will be the first to benefit from electric trains by the end of 2013 and passengers on other routes will benefit soon after.
Claire Perry
I thank the Minister for that encouraging reply. He recently wisely decided to review a further 80 miles of electrification west of Newbury down to Westbury, which would bring enormous timetable and speed benefits to my constituents, as well as to neighbouring constituencies. Can he confirm that freight will be included in that review and indicate when it will be complete?
Mr Burns
Mr Speaker, as you can imagine I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for that kind and generous question. May I reassure her that we place great importance on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the rail network? I can confirm that freight is included in the review that I have asked for on the Newbury to Westbury line. I do not want to hang around on this matter, because it will get bogged down in bureaucracy. [Interruption.] I hope that officials and Network Rail will report to me by February 2013, despite the sedentary comments from the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle).
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
A few months ago, the Government made the welcome announcement of the intention to electrify the midland main line to Sheffield, which the Secretary of State knows very well, by 2019. There is now a concern that the timetable may be slipping, and that only part of the route may be done by 2019. May we have an unambiguous statement from the Minister that the intention still is to electrify the whole of the line to Sheffield by 2019?
Mr Burns
May I try to reassure the hon. Gentleman and say that the intention certainly is to meet it by 2019? We have no information or knowledge to suggest that there is any problem. However, to provide further reassurance, if he were to make available to me any fears or evidence that suggests there might be slippage—even if it is erroneous information—I, as a matter of urgency, will look into it. I would not like a story to be established as fact that there is a delay, because we certainly do not believe that there is.
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Patrick McLoughlin)
I thank all the people who are working to get our roads and railways back up and running following widespread flooding. It has caused significant damage to our infrastructure, but I know that every effort is being made to return the service and reopen all routes as soon as possible. I will be seeing those efforts myself near Bristol later today. I can also update the House on our preparations for winter. We now have almost 2 million tonnes of salt, nearly double the amount two years ago, on stand-by to keep our motorways and main roads ice-free. We have also invested heavily in equipment to help clear the railway tracks of snow, and to stop rail and points freezing. I hope to be able to publish the Sam Laidlaw report into the inter-city west coast franchising competition and update the House next week.
Neil Parish
I thank the Secretary of State for all the work he has done with flooding, especially in my constituency through Tiverton into Exeter. The M5 also flooded, which shows that it is necessary to have a second arterial route dualled. The A30 needs to be dualled from Honiton upwards, because the Stonehenge end has always been the problem. We should work northwards from my constituency—there is no bias there whatever, Secretary of State—and have a second route.
Mr McLoughlin
My hon. Friend is a great campaigner for his area. In my job as Secretary of State for Transport, I am learning a lot more about roads I have never travelled on. I will certainly look at his request—[Interruption.] I am sorry, Mr Speaker, I was misled by my opposite number. I was trying to listen to the hon. Lady as well as answer my hon. Friend. I assure him that I will certainly look into his representations.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
With regard to bus cuts, the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) suggested to this House that
“there have not been the cuts that the Opposition are so keen to talk up.”——[Official Report, 19 April 2012; Vol. 543, c. 485.]
However, in July, Passenger Focus found that
“the majority of passenger impacts were below the water line,”—
and we now know that supported bus miles fell by 9.3% last year. Will the Minister therefore finally accept that the reduction in central Government funding has resulted in substantial cuts to socially valuable bus services?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Norman Baker)
No. The hon. Lady quoted a particular figure for mileage, but not the figure for mileage elsewhere in the country, which has been pretty stable, or the numbers of passenger journeys undertaken in non-metropolitan areas, which have held up well. Overall, there has been a marginal increase in the number of passenger journeys, according to the last figures.
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
T3. Junction 15 of the M4, in my constituency, is of vital regional and local importance to the economy, but is experiencing increased congestion. Will my right hon. Friend, or one of his ministerial colleagues, meet me and local representatives to discuss how we can alleviate this growing problem?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Stephen Hammond)
My hon. Friend is right to highlight the congestion on this junction, and I would be delighted to meet him and a delegation of his constituents to discuss it.
Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)
T2. I was interested to hear the Minister’s reply to Government Members about projects in the south, but I hope that he is aware of the huge disparity in public transport infrastructure investment: £5 per head in the north-east compared with £2,700 in London. Will he confirm, therefore, how many carriages will be built under the intercity express programme contract and how many carriages my constituents on the east coast main line can expect to see operating?
Norman Baker
It is not fair to talk about the disparity as the hon. Gentleman describes it. He might be relying on the Institute for Public Policy Research North report, but that report is incomplete—for example, it did not take into account the December 2011 local majors announcement. Of the local major schemes announced in the 2011 autumn statement, 62% by value were in the north and midlands and 35% were in the north alone, while 40% of projects in the 2010 spending review were in the north alone. It is a misrepresentation, therefore, to describe the investment as he has done. On the railway matters, I will ensure that he receives a written reply.
Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)
T4. If you will indulge me for one moment, Mr Speaker, I would like to say what an honour it is to ask a Transport question after serving with honour in the Department for two years. With that in mind, will the Minister tell the House what his Department is doing to ensure that all train stations, such as Garforth station in my constituency, have good disabled access?
Norman Baker
As my hon. Friend knows, we are committed to improving access to the rail network. The Access for All programme will deliver accessible routes to more than 150 stations by 2015 and more minor access improvements to more than 1,000 stations, and we recently announced a further £100 million to extend the programme until 2019. I have looked at his station, and the footfall is equivalent to more than 500,000 people. I am not making any promises, but that certainly puts it in contention for the next round of Access for All funding.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
T6. Despite the challenge of our famous hills, Sheffield has embraced cycling, and many of my constituents have backed The Times’ Cities Fit for Cycling manifesto. Will the Government commit to implementing the manifesto in full, as Labour has, and does the Minister recognise that only investment in a dedicated cycling infrastructure will encourage road safety and a switch to bikes?
Norman Baker
The amount of money the Government has invested in cycling—through the local sustainable transport fund and the £20 million I announced only yesterday to the House—dwarfs what the last Government invested over 13 years. We are making good progress on all the points identified by The Times’ campaign, which we very much welcome, and on catching up with the legacy that I am afraid we inherited from the last Government.
Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)
T5. A letter from the Transport Minister to the Welsh Select Committee highlighted the fact that the Welsh Assembly Government have made no case for investment in the north Wales main line. As a result, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales has set up a taskforce to make the business case for that investment. Will the Minister assure me that the Department for Transport will work closely with that working group in order to make the case for that crucial transport link in north Wales?
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr Simon Burns)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question, because, as he will probably be aware, the Welsh Government were particularly anxious for electrification of the valley railways and the extension of electrification from Cardiff to Swansea, which is now happening. They will be looking at and pressing the case for electrification in the next tranche from 2019 to 2024 for north Wales. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales strongly supports that, and we will work with the Wales Office and Welsh Government to put together a proper case for consideration.
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
I wrote to one of the previous Ministers about enforcement of advanced stop lines, but did not get a very positive response. Will the Government now look at ensuring that advanced stop lines at traffic lights are complied with much more effectively?
Norman Baker
We are always open to suggestions to improve road safety and traffic management. We are undertaking a review of traffic signs, which has been completed, and a further review of traffic management processes. If the hon. Gentleman gives me specific details of his concern, I will ensure that it is fed into the process and given proper consideration.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
The Government recently awarded the core Crossrail signalling contract to the proven talent of Chippenham’s Invensys Rail, working in partnership with Siemens. What provisions in that contract will secure a British-based work force for the project, in light of today’s announcement of the intended sale of Invensys Rail to Siemens?
Mr McLoughlin
I need proper notice of that question, but I will certainly write to my hon. Friend with the answer.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
Toll increases on the Severn bridge were announced last week. Businesses and commuters in my constituency feel that they are paying the highest tolls in the UK. What they would like to hear from the Government is that they will do what they can to help now, and that when the concession ends the tolls will be substantially reduced for local people, not considered a useful revenue stream for the Government. Will the Minister make that commitment?
Stephen Hammond
I thank the hon. Lady for her question. As she and other members of the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs heard, the tolling arrangements will continue beyond the concession because of the debts that are still repayable to the UK Government. We are in discussions and have had letters from the Welsh Government about arrangements post 2018, and I will look at them most seriously.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
In 2007 funds were awarded under capital expenditure grants—the Bellwin formula—to Hull and Gloucestershire. Will similar moneys be awarded to repair bridges and roads that were severely damaged in the September floods in north Yorkshire?
Mr McLoughlin
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs made a statement dealing with the Bellwin formula and some of the flooding. I will look at the suggestion my hon. Friend has made.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State revisit the issue of electrifying the Barking to Gospel Oak section of the North London line? Electrification would make freight transport much more efficient and cheaper and enable much greater integrated working of the whole London overground system with the same trains, rather than having to switch to diesel on one section. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. The hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr Donohoe) should not be chuntering from a sedentary position about who came into the Chamber when. I know perfectly well what I am doing. The hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) has been here for some time. He has been legitimately called and that is all there is to it. It is very straightforward. The hon. Member for Central Ayrshire should keep schtum; he might learn something.
Mr McLoughlin
I hear the representations that the hon. Gentleman has made about the line. Strong cases have been made. The line did not make the cut for electrification last time. We have announced huge electrification across the network, and I will certainly look at the case he has made.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
1. What the recycling rate has been for recyclable materials on the Commons part of the estate in each of the last five years.
John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)
The percentage figures for the amount of general waste recycled or recovered by weight from the parliamentary estate in the last five financial years are as follows: 2007-08, 44%; 2008-09, 47%; 2009-10, 50%; 2010-11, 52%; and 2011-12, 53%. These figures are for the parliamentary estate as a whole, as we are not able to break down the figures by House or building. The percentages exclude batteries that are recycled but for which no weight figures are currently provided and builders’ waste. The figures include food waste, a proportion of which is being sent to an anaerobic digestion facility.
Mr Hollobone
It certainly seems encouraging that the recycling rate is going in the right direction. Is my hon. Friend satisfied with the progress being made? Perhaps lessons should be learned from some of the local authorities that have far higher recycling rates than we currently do in this House.
John Thurso
I do not believe that we should ever be content with where we have got to on recycling. The Commission and the Management Board are doing everything in their power to increase the recycling rate. As new recycling waste streams are developed, the House works closely with its waste contractor to maximise the opportunities to increase the rate, and the House will certainly be happy to look at any other authority that is an exemplar to see what it can learn.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
Will the Member representing the House of Commons Commission also look into the question of the non-recyclable items that are produced and used by the House, such as plastic wrappings and envelopes, with a view to ensuring that paper, which can be recycled more easily and cheaply, is used wherever possible?
John Thurso
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that helpful suggestion, and we will certainly do that. I can tell him that a new collection process for office waste has recently been agreed, which will allow recyclables such as cans, plastic, paper and cardboard to be collected in one bin, with the segregation of materials taking place in a municipal recycling facility once the waste has left the estate. Clearly, development of that stream would lead us to the objective that he is seeking.
Karen Lumley (Redditch) (Con)
2. What plans the Commission has to make it easier for hon. Members to procure administrative equipment centrally for the purpose of creating economies of scale.
John Thurso
The Commission appreciates the economies of scale that are achievable through central purchasing. In order to make such benefits available to individual Members, the House service and PICT have competitively tendered contracts for administrative equipment and consumables. PICT holds a number of contracts for ICT equipment and services, and it has recently let a contract with QC Supplies for printer cartridges and toner. The contract offers substantial discounts on original cartridges and on remanufactured cartridges with a full guarantee. Parliament has also recently let a contract with Banner Business Services for stationery and other office supplies. I have asked the managers responsible for those contracts to contact the hon. Lady to ensure that she is fully aware of what is available.
Karen Lumley
Does my hon. Friend agree that many Members are unaware of the opportunities to secure supplies centrally? What can the Commission do to increase awareness in that regard?
John Thurso
I have asked the House service and PICT to take further steps to provide Members and their staff with information on the contracts for toner and stationery. It is proposed to include articles on what is available and how to use the contracts in future issues of Commons Monthly and The Commons View. I suggest that all Members might like to take up readership of those two excellent publications. In the next few months, we will invite suppliers to mount exhibitions in the atrium of Portcullis House. The offers are also mentioned in the documentation from the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, and e-mails have been sent out. We will continue to do everything possible to popularise them.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
3. When he expects to establish a House business committee.
The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Andrew Lansley)
I continue to consider this matter and I look forward to further constructive discussions on the issue with the Procedure Committee and others.
Fiona Mactaggart
I am concerned about the timetable. Yesterday, the Prime Minister expressed regret, in an answer to the hon. Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Mr Vara), that he did not have control of the House of Commons agenda, but actually he does have control of most of the House agenda. A decision of the House was made in 2010 and the proposal was in the coalition agreement. When are we actually going to see the House business committee?
Mr Lansley
As I said, it is my responsibility as Leader of the House to ensure that we make progress in enabling the House to conduct its business effectively and efficiently. It is incumbent on me to ensure that any development in this area takes into account the progress that we have already made since May 2010. For example, just last week the Procedure Committee published its review of the operation of the Backbench Business Committee. That gives us important information about that progress, which has been very positive. It also enables us to consider the question of a House business committee constructively.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
The Leader of the House could make a real name for himself. I would like to see him as the chairman of this new parliamentary timetabling committee, but should he not be elected by the whole House rather than being appointed by the Executive? I am sure that he would get a lot of support from Members on both sides of the House.
Mr Lansley
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his solicitude for my future. When I was talking about constructive discussions, I was including the discussions that I have had with him, and with many others across the House, to ensure that we add value to the way in which the House manages its business. That is what I am looking to do.
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
We know that there is no greater champion of the House business committee than the Government Chief Whip, who said two years ago that
“we must not lose sight of the progress that we want to see made in the third year of this Parliament on a House business committee”.—[Official Report, 15 June 2010; Vol. 511, c. 782.]
Given that we are halfway through that third year, when will the Leader of the House sit down with me to discuss how he intends to turn the Chief Whip’s vision into reality?
Mr Lansley
I share with the shadow Leader of the House admiration for what the former Leader of the House, now the Patronage Secretary, has achieved. In the context of the establishment of the Backbench Business Committee and the clear progress consequent upon it, I want to make sure that we follow up constructively on the progress already made.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Following on from that, will the Leader of the House confirm that whenever the House business committee is established, there will still be a valuable role for the Backbench Business Committee to play and that that role will continue?
Mr Lansley
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who illustrates precisely the point that I hope I was making, which is that we want to build on the progress that has been made and that we want to do it in a constructive way. The progress made regarding the Backbench Business Committee, as illustrated in the Procedure Committee’s report last week, provides a very good basis on which to continue those discussions.
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
4. What recent discussions the Commission has had with the Lords House Committee on greater sharing of service provision.
John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)
The Commission has had no recent discussions with the Lords House Committee on greater sharing of service provision, but the House administration remains very open to opportunities for areas where joint working with the House of Lords will provide benefits, while bearing it in mind that, on occasion, the priorities of the two Houses will diverge.
Thomas Docherty
I am grateful for that answer. We Scots know that Aberdonians have a particular reputation for knowing the value of tuppence. Given that Lord Sewel is now the Chairman of the Lords House Committee, does the hon. Gentleman think that there is a real opportunity in 2013 to make significant progress with the Commons Administration Committee’s recommendations on how to cut costs, cut bureaucracy and save the taxpayer money?
John Thurso
I believe there are significant opportunities. I had the opportunity to work with the noble Lord Sewel on the Scotland Bill in the other place, and I had a felicitous meeting with him at Aberdeen airport two weeks ago when we discussed this very subject. I look forward to making progress in the future.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
5. What progress has been made on work to update networking infrastructure on the estate to ensure that hon. Members’ offices can receive live local and regional television and radio programming and use internet radio devices in their offices.
John Thurso
Access to internet television and radio services in Members’ offices may be limited by the capacity of the parliamentary network. Planning for a major upgrade has started, but this is likely to be a long-term project. The annunciator system provides alternative access to television and radio services in Members’ offices. Following recent testing, it is hoped shortly to make proposals to enhance this service, including the provision of up to 100 additional channels. Wi-fi is already in place in 95 locations across the estate, including the Chamber, Committee Rooms and public spaces. It should be available in Members’ offices by March 2013.
Diana Johnson
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that answer. Although I welcome having channels such as al-Jazeera to keep up to date with international affairs and having access to Sky Sports in my office, I would certainly like to have access to my local BBC regional news, BBC Humberside. I am sure the hon. Gentleman agrees that keeping up to date with what is happening in a Member’s local area is just as important, if not more so, than having access to al-Jazeera and other channels.
John Thurso
I could not agree more with the hon. Lady. I miss BBC Radio Highland and Moray Firth Radio when I am down here in the south, and would greatly value the opportunity to receive them. There are significant technological difficulties, one of which relates to how the parliamentary estate is configured. I can assure her, however, that her point was well made and well taken. We will continue to see what can be done.
Sir Alan Haselhurst (Saffron Walden) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important to move as fast as we possibly can with full digitalisation, which not only provides the benefits that have been described but enables information about facilities in this House to be better known to all our colleagues?
John Thurso
I could not agree more with my right hon. Friend, whose Administration Committee is doing a great deal of work in this area. One opportunity will come when, in the next two or three years, we move towards the whole concept of cloud computing. That will offer a whole range of possibilities that currently are not technologically possible. We need to keep our eye on this ball and move it forward.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
6. What steps he is taking to ensure that written questions for named-day answer receive a substantive answer on the day named.
The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Andrew Lansley)
My office collates information on departmental performance in relation to ordinary and named-day parliamentary questions, which is then submitted sessionally to the Procedure Committee. I intend to continue to work with the Committee and with Departments both to report on and to improve performance.
Jessica Morden
My named-day question to the Home Office about the cost of the police commissioner in Wales after the mess-up over the ballot papers appeared not on the day named but more than 20 days late, conveniently after the election was over. I should not have been surprised, however, as the Home Office replies to only 37% of named-day questions on time. What more can be done to make Departments respect this process?
Mr Lansley
The hon. Lady will be aware that the Procedure Committee is following the matter up and that I am in contact with Departments about it, and she will be encouraged to know that the Home Office has improved its performance recently. I think that what we need to do is lead by example. In the last Session, the largest number of named-day questions—2,260—were submitted to the Department of Health, which achieved a 99.6% positive response rate.
Mr Speaker
Mr Robertson, perhaps? I can take a horse to water, but I cannot force him to drink.
John Robertson (Glasgow North West) (Lab)
8. I assume that you are calling me to ask a supplementary and not a main question, Mr. Speaker. My hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) mentioned the Home Office. I pointed out recently that questions from my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State had still not been answered by the Secretary of State. Will the Leader of the House look into the matter? It appears to be something of a problem in the Home Office. How can the Opposition be expected to work properly if they cannot hold the Government to account? It is very difficult for us to do that if the Government do not give us answers.
Mr Lansley
I entirely understand the hon. Gentleman’s point. As I said to the hon. Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden), it is perfectly possible for Departments to achieve a positive response rate of virtually 100%, but not all Departments do so. The Procedure Committee is following that up, and I shall be working with Departments to try to improve their performance. I might point out that in the last Session a 100% positive response rate was achieved by the Office of the Leader of the House, and, as I said earlier, the Department of Health achieved a 99.6% rate.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
7. What recent discussions he has had with the Minister for Europe on future scrutiny of European affairs in the House.
The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Tom Brake)
The Minister for Europe is engaged in discussions with the relevant Committees in both Houses on arrangements for parliamentary scrutiny of European issues. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has had discussions with the Minister on the subject in recent weeks.
Miss McIntosh
I am grateful for that reply, and also for the work of the previous Leader of the House, who is present.
Would there be any merit in allowing Select Committees such as the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee to scrutinise some of the more technical statutory instruments implementing environmental or agricultural regulations from Brussels?
Tom Brake
I agree that Select Committees could play an important role in scrutinising many more of the matters that come out of Europe. I am pleased that the Minister for Europe has been consulting widely, and I am sure that he will present some very sensible proposals for the enhancement of our European scrutiny.
Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes) (Lab)
9. Whether the introduction of a statutory register of lobbyists will require any changes to the Standing Orders of the House.
The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Tom Brake)
That will depend on proposals that will be published and scrutinised by the House in due course.
Lindsay Roy
Will the Deputy Leader of the House explain why progress in establishing a statutory register seems to have been so slow?
Tom Brake
As the hon. Gentleman will know, this is a complex issue on which the Government have been consulting. We are committed to building a system that provides transparency without hindering legitimate lobbying by those with an interest in Government policy. We will publish revised proposals later in the Session.
Petition
(11 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
Returning to normality, in my constituency there is a proposal for a retail leisure park that will create 2,000 jobs. There is massive support for it among my constituents, with many hundreds of signatures.
The lead signatory is a Mr Jack Spriggs and the petition reads:
The Humble Petition of residents of Rushden and Higham Ferrers, Northamptonshire and the surrounding areas,
Sheweth,
That the planning application for the Rushden Lakes retail leisure park has the support of East Northamptonshire District Council, the Borough Council of Wellingborough, Rushden Town Council, Higham Ferrers Town Council and the overwhelming majority of local residents, will provide 2,000 new jobs, a high quality leisure park and retail outlets such as Marks and Spencer.
Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your Honourable House urges the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to as speedily as possible approve the scheme.
And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray, &c.
[P001140]
Business of the House
(11 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House give us the business for next week?
The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Andrew Lansley)
The business for next week is as follows:
Monday 3 December—General debate on the Leveson inquiry.
Tuesday 4 December—Remaining stages of the Public Service Pensions Bill, followed by motion relating to the appointment of Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority board members.
Wednesday 5 December—The Chancellor of the Exchequer will present his autumn statement, followed by consideration of an allocation of time motion, followed by all stages of the Police (Complaints and Conduct) Bill.
Thursday 6 December—A debate on a motion relating to the 40th anniversary of the expulsion of Ugandan Asians, followed by general debate on defence personnel.
The subjects for these debates have been nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.
The provisional business for the week commencing 10 December will include:
Monday 10 December—Consideration of Lords amendments to the Financial Services Bill.
Tuesday 11 December—General debate on public expenditure.
Wednesday 12 December—Opposition day (12th allotted day, first part). There will be a debate on an Opposition motion, subject to be announced, followed by business to be nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.
Thursday 13 December—Motions relating to standards and privileges, followed by business to be nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.
Ms Eagle
I thank the Leader of the House for announcing the business for next week.
The flooding across England and Wales this week has caused widespread chaos and, sadly, a number of deaths. I would like to add my tribute on the work of the emergency services and all those involved in providing assistance to those affected.
The increasing frequency of serious weather affecting the UK underlines the importance of robust flood defences, yet spending on flood defences has been cut by a quarter, delaying much-needed schemes. Even the Government’s own advisory Committee on Climate Change warned in July that Ministers are not doing enough, and now hundreds of thousands of people risk being unable to obtain insurance because the Government have not reached an agreement with the industry. We welcome the statement earlier in the week from the Environment Secretary, but will the Leader of the House find time for an urgent debate on measures to protect people across the UK from flooding, especially in light of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee report published today?
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for arranging a statement by the Foreign Secretary on Palestinian statehood —something I asked for last week. At business questions last week I also raised the matter of the Liberal Democrat party member who masqueraded as an independent in the police and crime commissioner elections. I asked for an urgent statement, but unfortunately the Leader of the House has not been able to find time for one. I wonder whether he will reconsider, however, because I have managed to get hold of a letter put out by the Liberal Democrat candidate standing in today’s Middlesbrough by-election. In it he says,
“things seem to be getting worse, not better.”
I have read the letter very carefully, but, by some strange omission, nowhere does it mention that the Liberal Democrats have been in government for the last two and a half years, so will the Leader of the House now find time for a statement on cynical electoral subterfuge?
We are all looking forward to the publication of the Leveson report later today. During business questions on 28 June, I asked:
“Will the Leader of the House arrange in future business for Liberal Democrat and Conservative Ministers to share the speaking time to give both parties ample opportunity to differentiate themselves?”—[Official Report, 28 June 2012; Vol. 547, c. 448.]
I must confess that I meant that suggestion to be parody, but yesterday the Deputy Prime Minister made a request to have a separate statement from the Prime Minister on the Leveson report and I see today that that has been granted. What on earth is happening to collective responsibility? I notice that the play “Yes, Prime Minister” is leaving the Trafalgar theatre to go on a UK tour, but with this Government in office there will at least still be one farce running in Whitehall.
The Government have been struggling to get their legislation through the House of Lords. This Government’s peers easily outnumber Opposition peers, yet for the entire duration of the Labour Government our peers never made up more than 29% of the total. May I say to the Leader of the House that the problem the Government have is not with the quantity of their peers, it is with the quality of their legislation?
There have been reports in the media that the Prime Minister is planning to create 100 additional peers, despite the fact that the House of Lords is already the second biggest legislature in the world—after the equally democratic Chinese National People’s Congress. Filling the House of Lords might be the only successful job creation scheme this Government have come up with, but will the Leader of the House find time for an urgent statement on the seemingly inexorable expansion of the second Chamber?
Word reaches me that this week’s Cabinet meeting was even more fractious than usual. Apparently, the Chancellor blamed the Culture Secretary for failing to deliver on the Government’s promise to roll out superfast broadband and the Culture Secretary blamed her predecessor, with her aides saying that she had done more in two months than the current Health Secretary had managed in two years. Astonishingly, the welfare Minister, Lord Freud, blamed the Chancellor for the abject failure of the Work programme and the Prime Minister blamed the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government for the failure of enterprise zones. While Cabinet members bicker, we have a broadband network that is not connected, a job scheme that is not working and enterprise zones where there is no enterprise, while the only growth strategy they have is for the House of Lords.
The Prime Minister called himself the “heir to Blair”, but is he not just the natural successor to Jim Hacker?
Mr Lansley
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her remarks about the Foreign Secretary’s statement on Palestine. I join her in paying tribute to the emergency services and the work of Environment Agency staff in supporting communities that have been so heavily damaged by flooding. I have personal knowledge of the area around Exeter and of St Asaph in north Wales; these are dreadful events for people to have to live through.
It is terrifically important that we protect people wherever we can. That is why the Government are allocating £2.17 billion over four years. The hon. Lady will have heard the Prime Minister say yesterday, in response to questions, that we hope to leverage additional support for flood defences. She will also know from what the Prime Minister said yesterday that we continue to be in discussions with the Association of British Insurers about securing protection for householders through insurance as well. I will, of course, continue to keep closely in touch with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs about how the House can be kept informed on these matters.
I am trying to think of anything else that the hon. Lady asked for that could be considered business of the House, but there was not much. She commented on press reports about what happened at Cabinet, but today of all days she might recognise that we should not believe everything we read in the newspapers.
The hon. Lady mentioned the Prime Minister being an “heir to Blair”, and she talked about the appointment of peers in another place, but my recollection is that Tony Blair made 374 peers. By that standard, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has been notably reticent.
We in the House, including Opposition Members who have been in government, know that “Yes Minister”, when it was broadcast by the BBC and even today, is, in fact, a documentary programme and not a work of fiction. I am somewhat unusual in this place in having been not only my own version of Jim Hacker, but Bernard in a former life. The one thing I am not expecting to be is a Sir Humphrey at any stage. If at any point we can illustrate “Yes Minister”, I am sure we will set out to do so.
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for talking about growth and welfare. Yesterday we had a debate about those issues. I looked at reports of past business questions for a request for an Opposition day debate on employment. Yesterday, the Opposition did talk about jobs but not about how to create them. They did not have a policy for that—it was a policy-free zone from the Labour party yesterday. What a missed opportunity. The Labour party had an opportunity to use its time to celebrate the 70-year anniversary of the Beveridge report. We could have celebrated the sense of how work is a route out of poverty and want, and how social solidarity through welfare provision is properly a way in which we can build a stronger society, as the Government are setting out to do. We could also have celebrated the contribution made by a Liberal as part of a coalition Government under a Conservative Prime Minister for the long-term benefit of this country.
Mr Lee Scott (Ilford North) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend agree to a debate on people who have emigrated outside the European Union yet still claim benefits such as winter fuel payments and child benefit?
Mr Lansley
I pay tribute to the great deal of work my hon. Friend has done on this issue. As we head towards winter, it is terrifically important that we look after communities. That is one reason why I was so pleased in the past week to see the announcement of some 149 successful projects that are being supported by the Department of Health’s warm homes healthy people fund this winter, following the successful work last winter. This is in partnership with local authorities, Age UK and other charities, and I know that my hon. Friend and others across the House have been active proponents of that kind of community-based support for people at risk.
Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)
In her excellent report last week, the Children’s Commissioner identified missing episodes, visits to sexual health clinics and use of mental health services as strong indicators that a child may be being sexually abused. However, current Department of Health guidelines on sharing such health data with other agencies are creating a postcode lottery because of different interpretations at both the local and national level about what data can be shared. The situation is very concerning because some children are not being identified as being at risk, and are therefore continuing to be abused. Will the Leader of the House make time available for a debate on the Children’s Commissioner’s excellent report and the data-sharing issues it raises?
Mr Lansley
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that. I read the report, as I know many hon. Members will have done. They will have been alarmed by some of the things that the deputy Children’s Commissioner had to say and will feel it is very important that we follow up on it. The House recently had an opportunity to debate child sexual exploitation, but that is not to say that there is not a case for further such opportunities. The subject she discusses is an area where the further progress we are making on the role of local safeguarding children boards in local authorities should enable us to have, among other things, better sharing of information to protect children.
Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)
In the case of the Bedford free school, the Planning Inspectorate recommended a full award of costs against Bedford borough council because of its
“unreasonable behaviour resulting in unnecessary expense”.
May we have a debate about how councils in charge of education departments can use taxpayers’ money for school books, computers, gym equipment and improved facilities, rather than wasting it on trying to stop excellent, committed teachers from doing their job?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend makes an important point very well. I know that people in Bedford feel strongly about the benefits that the Bedford free school can bring in extending choice to parents and in promoting improvements in educational standards. If he catches your eye, Mr Speaker, he may have an opportunity to raise this issue in Education questions on Monday.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
The Leader of the House will not need me to tell him that all of us are very concerned about vulnerable young people in this country. The protection of childhood is something that most of us hold dear, as do the children’s charities. May we have a debate about what we would lose if childhood was shrunk by giving children—16-year-olds—the vote? I am not against that or for it; what I want is a serious discussion in this House before we take away protections from children up to 18 and push adulthood down to 16.
Mr Lansley
The hon. Gentleman may be aware that this issue is being considered by the Backbench Business Committee, on the basis of representations made to it by a number of hon. Members. Clearly I am happy for the Committee to consider whether time should be made available for such a debate.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
May we have a debate on the success of our free schools policy? In my constituency, the I-Foundation has opened the first state-sponsored Hindu primary school and a secondary school. They are both so over-subscribed that capacity is having to be doubled in just two years. The I-Foundation is now launching a campaign to have five further Hindu free schools across the country, with a further five to follow. This demonstrates parental choice, both for a religious type of education and for the type of education that new organisations are providing.
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend sets out a good argument both for free schools and for our taking the opportunity to celebrate the successes coming from them. That is happening around the country and often in this place we do not take enough opportunities to recognise what the successes in policies mean in practice for the populations we serve. It is not easy, as time is short in this House, but we will continue to look for where such opportunities might arise.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
May we have a statement as soon as possible on progress on the implementation of Sir John Holmes’s report on the governance principles for the award of military medals in this country, and particularly on the issue of those who served in the Arctic convoys, on which we continue to receive many representations, and the need to recognise those heroes properly through the award of a medal?
Mr Lansley
The right hon. Gentleman will have noted when I announced the forthcoming business that the Backbench Business Committee has allocated time next Thursday for a debate on defence personnel. I completely understand that the breadth of issues that will need to be encompassed in that debate is very wide, but he might recognise that there is an opportunity there, not least to recognise past service.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
Later today we will have what I think is a unique event. The Deputy Prime Minister, whose main responsibility is to support the Prime Minister, will make a statement opposing the Prime Minister. Will the Leader of the House make an urgent statement so that the Deputy Prime Minister knows from which Dispatch Box he is to speak?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend will recognise, I know, that Ministers make statements to this House on Government policy. As “Erskine May” makes clear, the reason they make statements is to explain to the House how they propose to pursue public business. As for this afternoon’s statements, it is perfectly reasonable to give an immediate response to an inquiry as wide-ranging as the Leveson inquiry in order to convey as fully as possible to the House a sense of how the coalition Government—a unique event for us—are pursuing the process of considering and responding to the report. The House will be better informed by two statements than it would have been by one alone and both are ministerial statements on Government policy.
Mr Frank Roy (Motherwell and Wishaw) (Lab)
Yesterday, Lloyds Banking Group announced the closure of the call centre in Motherwell that employs 200 people. That call centre has now been moved to Glasgow city centre and, as everyone knows, it will not be convenient for many of those workers to move across west central Scotland. Will the Leader of the House give time for a statement to discuss how the banking groups treat not only their customers but their employees?
Mr Lansley
I completely sympathise with the hon. Gentleman on behalf of his constituents about the consequences of commercial decisions made by companies. He will know, not least from the points made by a number of Members during business questions, that the relationship between banking groups and their communities, as well as the service they offer to local communities, are issues of importance to Members that continue to arise. It is not just a matter for the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards. Perhaps he and others might like to consider whether there is a case for a debate in Back-Bench time to raise those issues on behalf of their constituents.
Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove) (LD)
I welcome what the Leader of the House said about the 70th anniversary of the Beveridge report and I also welcome the coalition’s commitment to fairness and to ensuring that work always pays. With that in mind, may I ask for a debate on the performance of the retail banks that are failing to support small businesses in my constituency, which are eager to invest in jobs but are denied working capital?
Mr Lansley
There is a synchronicity between the previous question and this one as regards the relationship between banks and our local communities. I sometimes share with my hon. Friend a sense of frustration about the extent to which the conventional banking system now supports small and medium-sized businesses. That is why our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, together with the Treasury, is so actively pursuing those issues, not least through the recent announcement of the operational start of the new business banking support and the support that that gives to new challenger banks to supply new innovative routes of lending to small businesses.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
May we have a debate on the apparent abuse of the electrical equipment recycling market? Four multinationals—Sylvania, GE, Osman and Philips—appear to be seeking to subvert the effect of the forthcoming recast waste electrical and electronic equipment directive by operating a cartel in relation to the recycling of waste electrical equipment, which is putting the viability of independent recycling companies and local jobs, including in my constituency, at risk.
Mr Lansley
I am interested in what the hon. Lady says, but I am sure she will understand that I am not in a position to comment on it without any direct knowledge of those issues. From her description, she should bear in mind not only the question of whether that is a suitable topic for debate in the House, but the fact that, as I know from having served on the Standing Committees of the Competition Bill and the Enterprise Bill in previous Parliaments, legislation is in place that allows her and others who have evidence to go to the Office of Fair Trading for investigation of those practices.
Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport secured appropriate terms for all mobile operators in the forthcoming auction, and significant investment has been made in fixed-line broadband throughout the whole of the UK. May we have a debate on the progress of broadband roll-out to learn about the best practice in some of the areas that have operated faster than others and to ensure that the scale and terms of those contracts are suitable to deliver competition?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend is right. He refers to the digital switchover, which was a major programme delivered on time and under budget with few complaints about it—a very good example of collaboration. We will now have the benefit of the spectrum auction that is coming up. Through that and other routes, the broadband roll-out across the country can be a major contributor to growth. I hope it will be achieved rapidly and on time, and in a way that is stimulated by competition.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
Jo Darling is a full-time carer in my constituency, while also studying for a PhD. However, she is unable to access carer’s allowance because she is a full-time student, and she is unable to work because of her caring responsibilities. She has only a £6,000 a year scholarship to live off and is deeply worried that she will have to give up her studies because she is struggling to get by. May we have a statement on what steps the Government will take to provide proper support to wonderful carers such as Jo, who are both full-time students and full-time carers?
Mr Lansley
If the hon. Lady wishes me to do so, I will be glad to ask my hon. Friends at the Department for Work and Pensions to comment on the specifics of the individual case. Carer’s allowance is intended to be an allowance in relation to the loss of potential for earnings. If somebody is in full-time education, by definition one cannot justify carer’s allowance to that extent. On support for carers generally, the House has just agreed the establishment of a Joint Committee to consider the draft Care and Support Bill, which includes the most important legislative measures ever presented to give a basis of support for carers.
Mr Speaker
The hon. Member for Reading East (Mr Wilson) has wandered almost like a nomad, albeit all at one end of the Chamber, across three Benches, but I hope he is now comfortably perched and ready to give the House the benefit of his thoughts.
Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)
I thank you for that kind introduction, Mr Speaker. Following the publication of yesterday’s Ofsted report on the performance of local education authorities, may we have a debate in Government time about why some LEAs, such as Reading, are so much worse at providing, for example, primary school education than either surrounding authorities or demographically comparable local education authorities?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend is right. We might examine that. He might like to raise the matter at Education questions on Monday, but in any case it is an illustration of the benefits that come from the transparency of the publication of data. In a number of fields, including education, that enables us and the public to examine unwarranted variation between different parts of the country, and to try to drive out poor performance and drive up good performance.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
May I raise again the issue of a signal-controlled crossing on Darlaston road in my constituency? A four-year-old child was knocked over and suffered serious head injuries, and a woman suffered a fractured pelvis—all this on the crossing. Three hundred local people have signed a petition, yet the council refuses to upgrade the crossing to a signal-controlled crossing. I have written to everybody—the Department for Transport, the council—and still they refuse. Can the Leader of the House use his good offices to point me in the right direction, perhaps with an urgent debate, or tell me where to go next before there is a death on the crossing?
Mr Lansley
I am sorry to hear that about the hon. Lady’s constituents, with whom I am sure we all sympathise. I will of course take the opportunity to talk with colleagues, not least in the Department for Transport, because I know from experience in my constituency that the lead for that comes best through the Department to Network Rail. I will be happy to correspond with the Department on that.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
May I ask my right hon. Friend again for a debate on the conduct of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and its handling of allegations of child abuse in north Wales? A report issued last weekend by the bureau’s trustees sought to whitewash their responsibility for the widely discredited “Newsnight” report on the matter. The licence fee payer now faces a bill of £185,000 in damages, but many would argue that the main responsibility lies with the shoddy journalism of the bureau’s chief reporter, Angus Stickler. I believe that the bureau bears equal responsibility; surely it should share the BBC’s costs.
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend will not expect me to comment on the allocation of those costs. Technically, these are matters not for the Government but for the BBC and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. He will share my desire for the BBC to make rapid progress with the Pollard review and publish it in full so that the public can see what was done in relation to the “Newsnight” report.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Continuing the “Yes Minister” theme, more than a month ago I personally delivered 300 letters from constituents about flooding insurance to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. I raised the issue with the Leader of the House a few weeks ago, because I had received no acknowledgement or response. Yesterday, I had a telephone call from the Secretary of State’s private office to tell me that they could not find the 300 letters. Will the Leader of the House advise me on what I should do next?
Mr Lansley
I will be happy to continue to talk with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. The hon. Lady will be aware from my right hon. Friend’s recent statement, and indeed from Prime Minister’s questions, that we have been in active negotiations with the Association of British Insurers and are determined to bring the matter to a successful conclusion.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
May we please have a debate on the operation of free markets so that I and others who oppose the Government’s plans to introduce minimum pricing for alcohol and regard it as yet another unnecessary extension of the nanny state can put our views on the record?
Mr Lansley
I have never found my hon. Friend backwards in coming forward to make his views known, and I am sure that opportunities for him to do so will present themselves. With regard to the minimum unit price for alcohol, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary published on behalf of the Government a consultative document yesterday. The Government are clear that a minimum unit price will contribute to tackling the deep-seated issues related to binge drinking and alcohol abuse. A report published by the chief medical officer only the week before last shows that this country has such a high relative level of death from liver disease, and the level is rising while in other countries it is falling. That tells us that we have to do something.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
When will we have a debate or a statement on the ombudsman’s report on the use of bailiffs by the courts and local authorities?
Mr Lansley
I have no knowledge of an immediate opportunity for such a debate, but I will of course look at whether there is any opportunity for an oral or written statement in due course.
Lorely Burt (Solihull) (LD)
Experiencing the death of a loved one is sadly inevitable for us all, but dealing with the funeral costs can come as a very unwelcome shock for many. The social fund payment has substantially devalued over the years and many families find themselves deep in debt despite being eligible for a payment. May we have a debate on how we can help families provide a dignified funeral for a loved one without adding further financial stress at a difficult time?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend makes an important point that she may wish to raise on Monday week in Department for Work and Pensions questions. I know from my former ministerial responsibilities that we are continuing to consider how the cost of death certification, which is a significant part of the overall costs, is to be met in future, in order if possible not to add to the burdens that people face when they are bereaved. In addition, I will ask my hon. Friends in the Department to correspond with her about how they are considering those issues.
Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the Leader of the House find time for a debate on the role of employment agencies in local labour markets? That is of huge concern in Corby and east Northamptonshire, where too many people find that they are on zero-hours contracts with no guarantees of work, even though they may have travelled some distance or at some cost to get to their place of work, and are often on low wages. There is also a big concern about employment agencies often recruiting from overseas rather than making sure that local people can get into work.
Mr Lansley
It is a pleasure to welcome the hon. Gentleman to business questions. I noted that he had a very successful maiden speech in last week’s debate on manufacturing industry—an important debate in which we welcomed him to our deliberations.
On the hon. Gentleman’s question, he might like to consider raising that issue at Work and Pensions questions. The agency workers directive will have some effect, and I will be happy to find out a little more about its impact on his local labour market and to correspond with him.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
The West Yorkshire fire and rescue integrated management action plan proposes the closure of Marsden fire station. In recent years there have been widespread fires up on Marsden moors and a major fire at a chemical factory just up the valley in Linthwaite. Does my right hon. Friend agree that West Yorkshire fire authority and the management plan need to take into account all these local factors when making these tough decisions?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend makes an important point. It is the responsibility of fire and rescue authorities to make such decisions. As he knows, they are required to have in place fire and rescue service integrated risk management plans to identify local needs and to tackle existing and potential risks to communities. That should create a more transparent approach to how they use their resources to evaluate and respond to risk, and it is the context in which my hon. Friend can hold them to account in doing so.
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)
I am pleased that the Leader of the House has found time to reschedule the debate on the expulsion of Ugandan Asians, which many of my constituents will follow with great interest.
Will the Leader of the House find time for a debate on investment in the east midlands regional economy? Recent figures show that we are apparently bottom of the list for regional growth fund allocations, while other figures show that we not doing as well as we perhaps should as regards other types of Government investment. I am sure that Members on both sides of the House would appreciate the opportunity to lobby Ministers in such a debate.
Mr Lansley
Although I announce the business, I cannot entirely take credit—
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
It was my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel).
Mr Lansley
I am coming to that. The Backbench Business Committee should take credit for allocating time initially and finding additional time next week for the debate on the anniversary of the expulsion of Ugandan Asians, and I am glad about that.
A number of Members in different regions have sought Adjournment debates to discuss their regional economies. The House will welcome that, as will the Government, because such debates provide an opportunity for us to demonstrate how the regional growth fund and our industrial strategy are leading to increases in employment across the country and a rebalancing of our economy, as was discussed in last week’s debate on manufacturing.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
The extraordinary levels of rainfall over the past week have caused the banks of the River Avon to burst. Local residents, National Farmers Union members and farmers in Britford have been warning that that would be likely as a result of stopping weed cutting in the river. Will the Leader of the House make time for a debate on how local expertise can be listened to in order to avoid changes in regulations that allow these risks to become much higher, as we have seen this week?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend makes an important point on behalf of his constituents. What happened will have been very concerning for them. It is important that the Environment Agency and local authorities take a proactive approach. After the flooding in my constituency in October 2001, the local authorities and parishes, the Environment Agency, I as the Member of Parliament and others met to establish a programme to deal with precisely the risks that he mentions. I would have far preferred it if we had done that proactively, rather than waiting until the flooding had demonstrated where the risks were greatest.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
When the Government opted into the EU directive on human trafficking they claimed that the role of an independent rapporteur could be fulfilled by the interdepartmental ministerial group. Some of us queried that. The group produced its first report on 18 October. As yet, there is no sign of this House having an opportunity to debate it. Will the Leader of the House ensure that Parliament has an opportunity to debate the report on human trafficking?
Mr Lansley
I will, of course, look at whether there is an opportunity for such a debate. The hon. Lady may also wish to discuss the possibility with the Backbench Business Committee. I will gladly consider with my colleagues whether we can create such an opportunity.
Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)
Pendle’s young entrepreneur of the year, 26-year-old Simon Mellin, has established a bistro and farm shop with his younger brother. Roaming Roosters opened just a few months ago, but is already employing 30 members of staff. With the help of Pendle borough council and Nelson and Colne college, Roaming Roosters ran the “Can you hack it?” programme, which saw 10 young people compete for two butchery apprenticeships in the firm. Simon is now helping the other eight youngsters to find work with local businesses. May we have a debate about apprenticeships so that all MPs across the House can cite innovative examples from their constituencies and discuss the Government’s progress in this area?
Mr Lansley
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Today, not least, it is good to have a different reference to hacking—in this case in relation to butchery. That example shows how apprenticeships are being made available in small and medium-sized businesses, and is a signal of how we can create jobs in the future. In the past, jobs have come overwhelmingly from small and medium-sized businesses and from growing businesses. If apprentices are able to find such places, they will be able to secure the jobs of the future. That is why it is encouraging that 950,000 apprenticeships have started in the past two years with 100,000 employers in 160,000 locations. I hope that what my hon. Friend describes is just one of many such schemes that we will be able to support.
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
Yesterday afternoon, during the emergency business statement, the Leader of the House stated, in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle), that the Prime Minister would be speaking for the Government, not just the Conservative part of the Government. What on earth has changed? Who will be speaking for the Government this afternoon?
Mr Lansley
I thought that I had made that clear in response to an earlier question. Both the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister will be making statements this afternoon on behalf of the Government—they are ministerial statements.
Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)
As my right hon. Friend may know, at least 12 male Members of Parliament and a number of the House’s staff are taking part in “Movember” to raise awareness and money for prostate cancer charities. I am doing so on behalf of the Chestnut Appeal in Devon and Cornwall. May we have a debate to discuss the importance of tackling prostate cancer?
Mr Lansley
We are now right at the end of “Movember”, so this is an opportunity to thank my hon. Friend, other colleagues and members of the House service who have given such a splendid tonsorial display in support of research into better treatments for prostate cancer, testicular cancer and so on. Members from across the House will know of friends or loved ones who have suffered from prostate cancer. There are real opportunities, both through earlier diagnosis and in the development of further treatments. Treatments such as brachytherapy and robotic surgery have improved significantly the chances of those who suffer from prostate cancer, and there is more that we can achieve.
Mr Speaker
The Leader of the House would probably like to lead an Adjournment debate on that matter. He would do so with great force and eloquence, and possibly at some length.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) for drawing attention to our letters to the Environment Secretary about flooding. Since there is cross-departmental responsibility for flood issues, will the Leader of the House call for an early debate, potentially with three Ministers to respond? There is the matter outstanding from the 2007 floods of sustainable drainage systems, recovery under the Bellwin formula and whether capital expenditure will be extended to roads and bridges, as well as reservoir safety guidance. In a week in which north Yorkshire suffered its second worst flooding since 2007, will the Leader of the House commit to a debate to which three Secretaries of State could respond: from DEFRA—
Mr Speaker
Order. This is too long. I am sorry but the hon. Lady is giving a dissertation. I am sure it is very interesting, but it is not a question.
Mr Lansley
None the less, Mr Speaker, I am grateful to my hon. Friend whose expertise and responsibilities on this issue are important. I cannot commit to a debate in the way she proposes. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs made a statement and, as I have said, I will continue to discuss with him about how and when he can update the House most appropriately. He will address on behalf of the Government all issues related to flooding, including those raised by other hon. Friends.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government has announced local authority access to the Bellwin scheme that will deliver reimbursement above the threshold for up to 85% of their costs.
Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)
Construction work recently started on a project to lengthen the runway at Birmingham airport, and a project facilitated by the regional growth fund will open the west midlands to emerging markets and create many new jobs in our region. May we have a debate on the role of Birmingham airport and its place in the west midlands regional economy, and on how we expect the regional growth fund to expand that economy?
Mr Lansley
Yes—I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and as we discuss airport capacity we can continue to debate and reflect on how to improve and use the capacity available in regional airports. From my experience in a previous life as deputy director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, I know there are many unrealised opportunities for regional airports to be hubs for economic growth.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
The UK internet economy is forecast to grow to 12% of our GDP by 2016. North Yorkshire is well placed to capitalise on that growth through its leadership of the broadband roll-out and its Superfast North Yorkshire project. May we have a debate on the digital economy and what progress we can make on that, as it is critical to future economic growth?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend is right, and across the country the Government are actively pursuing access to fast broadband so that every part of the country can have the economic stimulus that it provides, the social interconnections it sometimes enables, and better delivery of public services. I hope we will have a competition, because different places across the country are proceeding at different paces—from my experience, I am sure that north Yorkshire will be among those at the forefront of such a competition.
Mr Speaker
The hon. Gentleman has asked his question. We are grateful to him and I should not have forgotten quite so quickly. I am sure that it was otherwise extremely memorable; it was entirely my fault.
Mr Speaker
I am sorry to disappoint the Liberal Democrat Members. I note their enthusiasm and eagerness but unfortunately neither hon. Gentleman was in the Chamber at the start of the session so neither of them can speak.
Mr Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman should resume his seat. He was not here and that is the end of the matter.
We come now to the statement on energy. [Interruption.] [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] We are grateful to the Secretary of State for Energy who has arrived in the nick of time. I am sure he would have been very happy for the statement to be delivered by the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), but it will be delivered by the Secretary of State.
Energy Policy
(11 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Mr Edward Davey)
Mr Speaker, I am grateful to you and the House for your patience.
I am pleased, ahead of the Energy Bill’s introduction later today, to publish the annual energy statement. It shows that this Government are making good progress towards our vision of a thriving low-carbon economy with secure energy supplies, and sets out an energy policy that is good for growth and for consumers. Alongside the annual energy statement, I am publishing our energy security strategy, the statutory security of supply report, a consultation on electricity demand reduction, and more detail on electricity market reform. I am today laying copies of all those documents before the House.
Britain’s energy sector is embarking on a period of exceptional renewal and expansion. The scale of the investment required is huge, representing close to half the UK’s total infrastructure investment pipeline. The electricity sector alone needs investment of around £110 billion in the next decade—that is equivalent to building Crossrail seven times over—but the vast majority of it will not be taxpayers’ money, with Government subsidies targeted at levering in private sector investment in low-carbon energy, so our plans are consistent with our overriding goal of deficit reduction.
The energy sector can play a major role in stimulating economic growth, creating jobs and positioning British companies for success in export markets. One third of the UK’s economic growth in the last financial year is likely to have come from green business, and the UK’s low-carbon sector now takes a £122 billion share of a global market worth £3.3 trillion. Many projects are shovel-ready, and they are spread relatively evenly through every nation and region of the UK, so the stimulus to the economy and to supply chains, and the job creation, can come at the right time, which is now, and in the right place, which is nationwide.
Those short-term benefits of our transition to a low-carbon future are followed by still greater ones in the longer term. First, of course, our transition will help us to meet our carbon budgets on the path to our 2050 emissions target, so that Britain will continue to play a leading role in tackling climate change. Secondly, it will diversify our energy mix, improving our energy security, and insulating households and business consumers from high and volatile fossil fuel prices on global markets. Thirdly, it will keep British companies at the forefront of the fast-growing global green sector.
However, investment on the scale needed will not happen under the current framework. Industry and investors have told the Government very clearly that we must play our part, by creating a regulatory framework against which they can invest, and by giving clarity on the level of incentives available. We cannot afford to miss this opportunity. We need those shovel-ready projects to get under way now, and the energy security challenge we face is real, with fossil fuel imports set to increase, electricity demand to rise, and around a fifth of our existing power plant to close by 2020.
We therefore propose nothing less than the biggest transformation of Britain’s electricity market since privatisation. That follows agreement across the coalition, not only on electricity market reform and the Energy Bill, but on a real-terms tripling of the budget for support for low-carbon generation.
We need to improve revenue certainty for investors in low-carbon generation, including renewables, nuclear power, and carbon capture and storage, so we will take powers in the Energy Bill to introduce feed-in tariffs with contracts for difference. That mechanism will give investors precisely the confidence they seek. We have also responded to Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change concerns and will create a single counter-party for the contracts for difference.
We will also introduce a capacity market to ensure that there is sufficient gas generation to provide the back-up and flexibility we will need. Gas remains a vital part of our energy mix, and we will support the exploitation of unconventional gas resources where it is economic and can be carried out with full protection of the environment. Our gas generation strategy will be published alongside the autumn statement of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor.
We will legislate to allow the Government in the next Parliament to set a 2030 decarbonisation target for the power sector, and in the shorter term we will introduce an emissions performance standard. That will ensure that new coal plant can be built only with carbon capture and storage technology. All those mechanisms will be supported by a robust, transparent institutional framework. The reforms will maintain Britain’s energy security while providing a huge opportunity for jobs and growth. Competition for long-term contracts will drive innovation, raise productivity and give UK industries a strong platform from which to compete internationally.
Consumer bills are one of my greatest concerns. They have been driven up remorselessly by wholesale fossil fuel prices: global gas prices were 50% higher in the five years to 2011 than in the previous five years, and they have continued to rise in the past year. High energy bills can put huge pressure on households and businesses, so let me be very clear, especially given recent misleading reports in the media: Government policy is designed specifically to reduce consumer bills. Of course, we cannot control global commodity markets. However, we can and will put consumers in control by driving a wedge between wholesale energy prices and consumer bills. That is why we propose to legislate in the Energy Bill to ensure that consumers are placed on the cheapest tariff that meets their preferences.
We can and will diversify our energy supplies: our policies stand to reduce the UK’s sensitivity to fossil fuel price spikes by approximately 30% by 2020, and by around 60% by 2050. We can and will push energy companies to make switching easier and quicker—households can already save up to £200 per year simply by switching provider. We can and will pursue savings wherever we can find them in the energy system—for example, up to £3.5 billion from offshore transmission co-ordination. We can and will continue to place energy efficiency front and centre. More than 2 million insulation measures were installed in the year to June 2012. The savings are considerable: the 500,000 households who insulated their cavity walls in 2011 are each saving approximately £135 per year. Last month, we put in place the framework for the green deal, which allows households and businesses to install energy efficiency measures without any upfront cost, and to pay for them through the savings on their energy bill.
If we look ahead to energy bills in 2020, we see that energy efficiency savings are set to outweigh—more than outweigh—the cost of supporting low-carbon electricity generation. The net effect of Government policies on energy bills is downwards, not upwards. Of course, vulnerable households need our help now, and they are getting it. More than 1 million low-income pensioners will get £130 off their fuel bills this winter, and all pensioner households will get a winter fuel payment of £200, or £300 for those over 80 years old. Energy suppliers provided approximately £250 million of support under the warm home discount scheme in 2011-12, assisting about 2 million low-income and vulnerable households. The new energy company obligation will channel £540 million-worth of green deal investment per year, reaching approximately 270,000 vulnerable and low-income households and those living in harder-to-treat properties by 2015. To help people better manage their own energy use, we will be rolling out smart meters across Great Britain: 53 million new meters will be installed by 2019, delivering an estimated £7.2 billion in net benefits to the economy.
The heated debate on energy policy can sometimes obscure what is in many ways a great success story for our country. The UK already leads the world in offshore wind, and we are on track to meet our renewables targets. Energy investment in Britain is running at a 20-year high, according to Energy UK. We have the world’s first renewable heat incentive. This year’s offshore oil and gas licensing round received the highest number of applications since licensing began in 1964. Our carbon capture and storage offer, including the £1 billion commercialisation competition, is one of the world’s most comprehensive.
We continue to make progress in international talks on climate change. I will shortly be attending the C0P 18 talks in Doha, working towards the genuinely global deal to which Durban opened the door, to be agreed by 2015 and to come into force from 2020. We are now preparing a once in a generation transformation of the energy landscape to bring on massive private-sector investment, which will boost the economy, create jobs, and power Britain towards a prosperous low-carbon future.
The Government’s energy policy is good for the British economy, good for consumers and good for the planet, and I commend the statement to the House.
Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for early notice of his statement. I was going to say that I felt deprived at not getting two statements—one from the Secretary of State and one from the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes)—because that seems to be the usual manner of doing things this afternoon, but I think we were lucky just to get one. The Secretary of State can catch his breath now.
I have always made it clear that where we can work with the Government in the national interest, we will do so. In that vein, the Secretary of State will know that we have supported the Government’s efforts to attract investment in new nuclear, and we welcome Hitachi’s decision to buy the Horizon nuclear project. We also welcome the progress made in Durban last year and wish our negotiators in Doha well. It is with genuine regret, however, that over the past year we have seen the Government lurch from one crisis to another on many aspects of energy policy, from the disastrous handling of the cuts to the feed-in tariff for solar power, to the recent outburst on wind power from the Minister of State, the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings, and, I am afraid, the Prime Minister’s broken promises on energy bills. The Department has done more than its fair share to get the word “omnishambles” in the “Oxford English Dictionary”.
Today, alongside the statement, the Secretary of State is also publishing the Government’s long-awaited Energy Bill. His Department’s press notice helpfully reminds us that the Bill has faced repeated delays, which I believe has undermined confidence and left much investment in limbo. We will of course look carefully at the Bill and the other proposals the Government have published today on demand reduction, energy security and energy-intensive industries, and I look forward to debating them more fully with the Secretary of State in due course.
I want to pick up on two aspects of the Secretary of State’s announcement and ask him some specific questions: first, on the state of competition in the energy market and, secondly, on the Government’s failure to set a clear target to decarbonise the power sector. This time last year, when the Secretary of State’s predecessor delivered the annual energy statement, he said that people’s bills would be lower during this Parliament. Families and businesses up and down the country that have seen their bills rise by more than £250 know that that is just not true. In response, the Government launched their “click, switch and insulate to save” campaign, but the number of people switching suppliers fell to record lows.
The Secretary of State talked about energy efficiency, but next year this Administration will become the first since the 1970s not to have a Government-funded energy efficiency scheme. The Prime Minister told the House that he would force the energy companies by law to put everyone on the lowest tariff, but it turned out that all the Government are really doing is limiting the number of tariffs those companies can offer. The simple truth is that even the lowest tariff in an uncompetitive market will not be a good deal.
The Secretary of State says that the burden of investment will not fall on taxpayers, but it will fall on bill payers, and, at a time when we are asking them to pay for as much as £200 billion of investment in our energy infrastructure, it is more important than ever that we have an energy market that delivers fair prices and works in the public interest. For too long, the big energy companies have been able to get away with what they want at the expense of everyone else. Those big companies dominate 98% of the market and, decades after privatisation, still have a virtual monopoly in their former electricity regions. They tell us that electricity and gas prices in the UK are among the lowest in Europe, but when tax is taken out of the equation, they are among the highest. Most damning of all, whenever these companies announce their price hikes, they tell us they are only passing on their costs, so why is it that when those costs come down, consumers rarely see the savings?
Whether or not the allegations of price fixing in the gas market turn out to be true, they clearly show that the market is not transparent enough. Let me, then, ask the Secretary of State three very straightforward questions: first, does he believe that there is effective competition in either the wholesale or the retail energy market? Secondly, whether consumers get a fair deal will largely depend on the strike price the Government set for contracts for difference and the reference price in the market at the time, but if the market is structured in such a way that no one knows what the true cost of energy actually is, how will the Government even be able to set a robust strike price? Thirdly, given that the proposals were originally called “electricity market reform”, why does the new Bill fail to make proposals on how energy is bought and sold in order to make it more open, more transparent and more competitive?
This morning, I looked through the “Electricity market reform: policy overview” document. In paragraph 101, there is an indication that the Government are perhaps beginning to recognise that greater competition is necessary, in its reference to
“Powers for the Secretary of State to make changes to electricity generation and supply licences conditions”.
That is quite interesting. Does it indicate that the Secretary of State is moving closer to some of the more radical suggestions for reforming the market which Labour has been putting forward for the past two years and which were referred to in our 2010 manifesto?
The Secretary of State said that investment was running at a 20-year high, but independent figures produced by Bloomberg New Energy Finance show that since this Government came to power, investment in renewable energy has fallen by more than half. He also said that the UK led the world in offshore wind, but figures out just today from Ernst and Young on renewable energy attractiveness show that, for the first time ever, the UK has been knocked off the top spot for offshore wind attractiveness and is now behind Germany. The reason that has happened is the uncertainty the Government have created. That is why firms have put investment on hold or scrapped it altogether.
In June, Vestas abandoned its plans to create a new manufacturing plant in Kent, which would have created 2,000 jobs. What did the local Member of Parliament, the hon. Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys), who is now Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the right hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), say at the time? She said that Vestas’ decision
“suggests a lack of confidence within the industry over the government’s commitment to the green economy and crucially, offshore wind. The market needs certainty from government if it is to deliver the thousands of jobs and billions of pounds of investment that could secure our economic recovery.”
Whether onshore or offshore, the business of firms such as Vestas is wind. What they wanted more than anything else in the Bill was a clear commitment to decarbonise the power sector by 2030. Just this morning, its chief executive told The Guardian:
“The failure to establish a firm 2030 power sector carbon cap prolongs uncertainty.”
In his words,
“This is a significant missed opportunity,”
and he is not alone in thinking that.
It is not just businesses in the renewables sector but those elsewhere that are concerned about the Government’s lack of vision. I make no bones about it: we support a clear decarbonisation target in the Bill—and from what I read in this morning’s papers, so do many hon. Members on the Government Benches, including the Chair of the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change. When the time comes, we will work with colleagues across the House to put a decarbonisation target in the Bill.
Mr Davey
I am grateful for the right hon. Lady’s initial remarks. I am delighted that she wants to work with the Government to attract investment and that she wishes us well in the Doha talks next week. I hope we can reach a cross-party consensus on some of these important measures to tackle climate change, which is incredibly important. Both coalition parties gave that support to the last Government, for their Climate Change Act 2008, and I hope we can continue that consensus.
The right hon. Lady said that the Bill had been delayed. Ever since I have been Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, I have said it would be published in November and it has been. We are on time and on track. She asked a number of questions, but gave no recognition to the fact that two parties that have had their disagreements have come together with an energy policy. She also failed to mention how that has been received by industry and the investor community. The director general of the CBI, John Cridland, gave a ringing endorsement to the policies that we have announced, after the discussions I had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. That political certainty, backed with the policy certainty of today’s announcement, will bring the billions of pounds of investment into the UK that our economy and our energy infrastructure needs.
The right hon. Lady asked me about competition. One almost thinks that she is suffering from amnesia, because it was the previous Government who failed to tackle competition. We are determined to tackle it, but we will not be using ideas from the Labour party’s manifesto, because we have our own ideas on how to ensure competition in the retail sector, with our arguments about switching, and in the wholesale sector, with our arguments about greater liquidity and transparency in that market. Of course we have competitive markets, but they could be more competitive. We are determined to drive them further and faster, and our policies will do far more than the ones she is offering the country.
The right hon. Lady questioned our new policies on tariffs, which will simplify them in a way that I believe will drive competition. Time and again, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) asked the previous Government to simplify tariffs, to drive competition in the consumer’s interest, and what did they do? Absolutely nothing. We will take no lessons from her on that matter.
The right hon. Lady asked about strike prices. She does not seem to understand how they will be set, so let me explain, although we will no doubt do this on Second Reading of the Bill. They will be set administratively until 2017; then they will be set through auctions. Auctions are the way to get the real transparency and competition that the previous Government failed to deliver.
The right hon. Lady asked about the decarbonisation target. That has been a matter of some debate within the Government, and there will no doubt be a debate on it between Members on both sides during the passage of the Bill. I looked at the 2010 manifestos of all the parties—the Green party, the Labour party, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives—to see what promises they had made on a decarbonisation target for the power sector. None of us had made any. There were no such promises in the coalition agreement either, but since becoming Secretary of State, I have gone into the discussions determined to make that argument. I have done so, and we will table amendments to the Bill to give the Secretary of State power to set a decarbonisation target. I am proud of that.
The right hon. Lady said that without a decarbonisation target, we would see no investment in the supply chain. I simply refer her to Arriva’s announcement last week on a turbine factory. The weeks and months ahead will show whether we will see that supply chain investment. I believe that we will, because this coalition Government have put the right policies in place.
Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)
Lord Stern, whose discredited report still forms the rationale for the Government’s energy policy, calculated in 2006 the amount by which the price of hydrocarbons needed to be increased in order to decarbonise the economy. Since then, the price of hydrocarbons has risen faster and further than either Lord Stern or the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change thought sufficient, so why does my right hon. Friend propose to pile Pelion upon Ossa by burdening British industry and households with these tripled taxes?
Mr Davey
My right hon. Friend has been consistent: he voted against the Climate Change Act 2008 and he clearly does not like our low-carbon policies today. The fact that fossil fuel prices have gone up is yet another argument for our policies. We need to insulate our economy, our consumers and our businesses from those high prices. This country has to import far more fossil fuels than we used to because North sea resources are going down, and that is leaving our economy exposed. We need to tackle that issue for reasons of energy security and to ensure that we have competitive prices.
Dame Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
The Secretary of State is obviously very pleased with himself about the tariffs, but will he acknowledge that he has failed to deliver what the Prime Minister promised, which was to put everybody on the lowest tariff? Given that he has not done that, will he consider making a concession to over-75-year-olds, who could save £200 a year by being on the lowest tariff? The 3,500 pensioners in my constituency would greatly appreciate that.
Mr Davey
First, we want to give the benefits of switching to everybody, not just to pensioners. Hard-working families are struggling, and we want to ensure that they get the benefits as well. As for the Prime Minister’s commitment to get people on to the cheapest tariffs, we are delivering that. Ofgem’s retail market review of the four core tariffs will ensure that people who are on stranded or dead tariffs will automatically be switched to the lowest tariff, given their preferences. I would have thought that the Opposition wanted to ensure that people are on the lowest tariff, because it will bring them big savings and ensure that their preferences —whether on payment or other things—are recognised. That is the best of both worlds.
Sir Robert Smith (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (LD)
The Secretary of State mentioned the important role that he sees gas still playing in the transition to the low-carbon economy. Will he give me an assurance that the record licensing round that he has just announced is an indication of the Government’s continued commitment to maximising the remaining potential of our North sea assets?
Mr Davey
Yes, I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. Sometimes the debate is characterised as a choice between gas and renewables, but we need both. That is particularly important as coal-fired power stations go off line. The gas power stations that replace them will help to cut our carbon emissions. It is absolutely right for our country’s energy security and prosperity that we maximise the potential of the North sea and, indeed, the other offshore fields, particularly those west of Shetland, and we will do that.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)
Can the Secretary of State explain why the Government have decided not to fund the Hatfield project in South Yorkshire, which was the top priority for the European Commission, and to cast it aside by failing to include it on the list of future carbon capture and storage projects?
Mr Davey
Right hon. and hon. Members will know there has been a competition to secure the support that the Government offer for carbon capture and storage. We had eight applications, and we had some rigorous criteria which differed from those of the European Union—ours were more suitable for this country and our energy needs—and which were applied rigorously, robustly and fairly. We have now moved on to the second round. Of course, there will always be some losers—not all eight applicants can win—but we are applying the criteria fairly and robustly.
Charles Hendry (Wealden) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on both his statement and the Bill, and I urge him to do all he can to take energy policy out of politics, because investors need to know that there is cross-party support and support across Government for the measures he is introducing for the longer term. In that respect, given the absence of a decarbonisation target in the Bill, how does he intend to reassure investors who need to make investment decisions during this Parliament that there will be a long-term market for the products we want them to build here?
Mr Davey
I start by paying tribute to my hon. Friend: I believe Members of all parties know what a critical role he played in shaping the Energy Bill that is published today. Along with my right hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne), he worked across the parties to bring these proposals forward, and he deserves a huge amount of credit today. I am determined, having made this agreement in the coalition, that we send out a signal—not just to the UK or Europe, but to the whole world—that the UK is open for energy investment. We have built a consensus in the UK Government, and in view of the remarks of the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), I believe we may well secure cross-party consensus, which would be valuable to this country and its people. My hon. Friend asked how we will continue the consensus. Let us see how we make progress during proceedings on the Bill, in Committee and so forth. I know that my hon. Friend will play his role in making that happen.
Mr Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)
We, too, welcome the publication of the Energy Bill, much of which we can probably support. If gas is to continue to be an important part of the energy mix, however, it is essential that carbon capture and storage is brought forward quickly. There has been some speculation in the specialist press that the UK Government have missed the European Union’s target for submitting details to ensure funding. Can the Secretary of State assure us that this is not the case, and that CCS will be brought forward quickly?
Mr Davey
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his support, as having cross-party consensus is so important, in Scotland and in the rest of the United Kingdom. As he knows, I think Scotland is stronger in the United Kingdom and that the United Kingdom is stronger with Scotland in it, not least on energy policy. On CCS, we are pursuing our policies as quickly as we can, but we need to make sure that we get value for money for the taxpayer. We were fortunate to have eight applications; we have now whittled that down to four, and we are proceeding apace to choose between those remaining four. It is true that we did not get in the first round of the New Entrants Reserve 300 funding from the EU, but we are wholly able to get into the second round and get the same amount of money. I have spoken to the European Commissioner about that. I see no problem in ensuring that we use the money put aside to get the best value for money for the best CCS projects.
Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)
The Government have talked a lot about green energy generation, but I would like to ask the Secretary of State about green energy transmission. A number of countries in Europe are now removing the scars from their countryside of pylons and overhead lines, and there is a wonderful opportunity for us to leave a great environmental legacy to future generations—not least in my North Somerset constituency, where this is a problem. What does the Bill say about green transmission? If it says nothing, I can tell the Secretary of State that a number of Members on both sides of the House will be more than happy to amend it.
Mr Davey
I am grateful for my right hon. Friend’s question. I know that he and my hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Tessa Munt) have been campaigning in Somerset on the new transmission lines proposed by National Grid. He will know that there is a settled approach whereby National Grid consults widely and tries to take concerns into account. This is not a new issue arising from green energy; it has been an issue for many decades. The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings, is working hard and I am sure that he would be more than happy to have a meeting with my right hon. Friend.
John Robertson (Glasgow North West) (Lab)
May I give the Secretary of State some advice? He would gain a lot more cross-party support if stopped this petty point-scoring.
The right hon. Gentleman did not mention poor and vulnerable customers in his statement. They are the customers who do not talk to the energy companies and who need people to go and see them. What will he do to ensure that representatives of the energy companies go and find those vulnerable people so that they can help them?
Mr Davey
The hon. Gentleman always gives me a courteous and charming welcome when I appear before the Select Committee of which he is a distinguished member. However, I did refer to vulnerable customers in my statement. They are absolutely at the heart of our policy and at the heart of my concerns as I develop that policy. I have made it clear to the energy companies that I expect them to work hard, as the Government are working hard, to ensure that we reach out to people in fuel poverty.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
I congratulate the Government and indeed Ofgem on having accepted the key recommendation of the billing stakeholder group, which the Government asked me to chair, that energy companies should make clear in their bills how much their customers would save in pounds and pence if they were on their supplier’s cheapest standard direct debit tariff. That recommendation is open for consultation, and the energy companies do not like it. May I encourage the Secretary of State to do what he can to ensure that they do not push back on it?
Mr Davey
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work he has done. He is absolutely right: we must stand up against people who prevent us from pursuing the consumer interest. It was ignored for far too long, but we are not going to ignore it. One of our reasons for arranging the consultation was that, although Ofgem could proceed with its own work and change licence conditions relating to bills and what is on them, we wanted to provide a statutory underpinning—a back-stop—to ensure that the process took place as quickly and smoothly as possible. I think that that is sending a very strong signal.
Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State share my regret that, despite the 18-month gestation of the Energy Bill, a consultation paper on the possibility of its including provisions on energy efficiency and demand-side management was not published until today? Will he undertake to rectify that omission by ensuring that the consultation proceeds as speedily as possible, and that amendments are tabled as early as possible, so that the House can debate the matter during the Bill’s passage rather than its being tacked on at the end when the debate is over?
Mr Davey
I am very proud that we have arranged a consultation on electricity demand reduction. Other Governments have continually ducked the issue, but our Government will not, because this could make a major difference to the way in which our energy policy works. There could be great savings for the economy, for businesses and for consumers if we get it right. I urge the hon. Gentleman to engage in the consultation. We do not have a firm proposal, but we have a set of options on which people can comment, and if legislation is required as a result, we will legislate.
Sir Nick Harvey (North Devon) (LD)
I commend my right hon. Friend for his statement and for the work he is doing to tackle climate change, but may I urge him to review the encouragement that his Department is giving to the industrial-scale burning of wood to generate energy? Will he make time to read a recent report by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace entitled “Dirtier than coal? Why Government plans to subsidise burning trees are bad news for the planet”? Will he also note the way in which the Scottish Government are using the planning and subsidy regimes to protect the environment, protect existing users of wood, and ensure that help is directed at small community-scale biomass rather than industrial-scale plants?
Mr Davey
I shall be happy to read that report, but I have considered the issue and I have to say that I think that the conversion of coal-fired power stations to biomass will have a beneficial effect on the UK’s carbon emissions. As my hon. Friend will know, a consultation is taking place on sustainability criteria relating to biomass energy. I believe that it will close on 30 November, and obviously we will respond to it.
Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)
As a consistent pro-nuclear, pro-renewables and pro-energy efficiency Member, I welcome the announcement as an important step forward—although I have to say that the decarbonisation issue will be seen for what it is: a political fudge. Does the Secretary of State intend to table amendments to the Bill soon, so that Members have a chance to see them before Second Reading and we can have a proper debate, rather than have them hidden away in Committee where only a small group will debate them? Also, has the Secretary of State had time to respond to the Energy and Climate Change Committee’s recommendations?
Mr Davey
The hon. Gentleman is a very well informed and very talented Member, and I congratulate him on having managed to ask three questions. We will introduce amendments on both the tariff proposals and the decarbonisation powers, but we will do so in Committee, not before Second Reading. The whole House will be able to see them at Report stage, however. We want and value parliamentary scrutiny. I have lost track of the hon. Gentleman’s other two questions—he was a little greedy—but I am sure we will get back to him on them.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State explain again how the UK will be able to meet its commitment to cut CO2 emissions by 80% by 2050 if we are not ready to commit to decarbonising electricity by 2030?
Mr Davey
We are on track and we will hold to our commitments in the Climate Change Act. I refer my hon. Friend to my recent comments on the decarbonisation target being set at the same time as the fifth carbon budget. The fifth carbon budget covers the period from 2028 to 2033, and it therefore covers 2030, the year of the decarbonisation target in the power sector. The two approaches will therefore be brought together.
Ann McKechin (Glasgow North) (Lab)
Can the Secretary of State confirm that people who are on prepayment meters or who cannot access online services will be able to enjoy the cheapest tariff their supplier offers?
Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)
The Secretary of State’s statement is positive news for the nuclear new build programme. When will he start considering the sites for stations that will open beyond 2025, and will the Government consider sites that are not currently on the approved site list?
Mr Davey
As my hon. Friend knows, there are eight sites in the national plan, which is quite a lot to be getting on with, but any developers of a new nuclear proposition are free to propose sites not currently listed. I know that my hon. Friend has vigorously campaigned for Dungeness to be added to the list. I think there is a letter in the post to him about that, and I will be very happy to talk to him in detail about it.
Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)
Despite the Secretary of State’s responses to two questions about customers, the fact of the matter is that when he referred to regulatory matters in his statement, he mentioned only industry and investors. Who will represent consumers worried about fuel poverty growing and instances of hypothermia increasing, especially as Ofgem seems to be both tepid and toothless?
Mr Davey
First, I worry about consumers; I made them one of my top priorities on day one in office. Ofgem has a duty to consumers, and it is working on their behalf. The Labour party wants to get rid of Ofgem, even though it is currently doing a very good job with its retail market review. The last Government were asked to simplify tariffs in order to help consumers; they failed to do so, but Ofgem has brought forward proposals on that.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
The investment and competition that the energy sector needs will be dependent upon attracting independent generators. Will any of the Secretary of State’s proposals help to ensure that new independent generators can enter our electricity market?
Mr Davey
My hon. Friend makes a good point, and when he reads the Bill in detail he will see that we are addressing this matter. We believe there must be greater liquidity in the wholesale markets, and the independent generators also want that. As my hon. Friend knows, last May we issued a call for evidence on independent generators’ concerns in respect of accessing purchase power agreements, which are crucial to them. We have set out our response and what we intend to do in the Bill and its associated documents published today.
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
On 17 October, the Prime Minister promised that he would ensure that energy companies put consumers on the lowest tariff by law. We know that that was a sleight of hand; the Secretary of State has just said that metered customers would not be on the lowest tariff, only the lowest in their band. Will the Secretary of State be clear today that he is limiting the tariffs to only four per company and that there is no guarantee that they will be the lowest? The lowest tariffs will now be higher than they were before.
Mr Davey
If the hon. Lady has read Ofgem’s proposals, she will have seen that it proposes four core tariffs. People can then express preferences in respect of both their payment method and whether they want dual discounts. Our consultation paper’s proposals are very similar to Ofgem’s.
Mr Davey
They are not identical; the right hon. Lady probably needs to read them in a little more detail. However, we believe that Ofgem’s are very good proposals. They were based on two years of study and will see that people, once they have expressed their preferences on how they wish to pay and so on, will be on the lowest tariff. The last Government failed to deliver on that.
Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)
This week Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said three interesting things about the development of unconventional oil and gas. He called it
“the biggest change in the energy world since World War II”,
and went on:
“This is bigger even than the development of nuclear energy…This has implications for the whole world.”
Does my right hon. Friend agree?
Mr Davey
I do think that shale gas has implications for the whole world, although sometimes some commentators get rather expansive and over-enthusiastic. Shale gas is important. I want it developed in the United Kingdom, but we have to make sure that that is done safely and in a way that protects our environment. I believe that that can be done.
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
I very much welcome what the Secretary of State said about trying to put British companies at the forefront of the green energy revolution. However, last week Tata Steel announced 600 job losses in Wales and the future of the British steel industry is very dependent on UK demand. What can the Secretary of State do to encourage the development of renewables such as offshore wind turbines, which use thousands of tonnes of steel per turbine? What can he do to promote the use of UK steel in those endeavours?
Mr Davey
Our legislative, financial and levy control framework has been warmly welcomed by the offshore wind industry as the biggest boost it has ever seen. I hope that that will reassure the hon. Lady.
The hon. Lady mentioned Tata Steel, which, obviously, is an energy-intensive user. Energy-intensive industries have often been concerned about energy prices and the impact of moving to low-carbon energy. In his autumn statement last year, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor put forward proposals for supporting them and those have been taken forward. The hon. Lady will see in today’s announcement that we are helping energy-intensive industries with respect to contracts for difference in the electricity market reform regime. I think that will be widely welcomed.
Lorely Burt (Solihull) (LD)
I welcome today’s statement and the Energy Bill. I hope that my right hon. Friend will confirm that we are now on track with our aspiration to be the greenest Government ever.
Specifically, what effect will his announcement have on projects such as Eggborough power station—a coal-fired station on the starting blocks and ready to convert to biomass and eventually carbon capture? It is waiting to go ahead.
Mr Davey
My hon. Friend is absolutely right: we are on track to be the greenest Government ever. Yesterday, I was at the launch of the green investment bank, which is just one example, in Edinburgh.
My hon. Friend will be pleased to know that the Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), is meeting Eggborough representatives today. I cannot comment ahead of that meeting, but I believe that Eggborough and other power plants will like our proposals.
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State mentioned the Doha negotiations. What are the Government’s specific objectives —I do not mean just getting agreement—for those negotiations? Which members of the ministerial team will represent the UK there?
Mr Davey
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s question. I will be attending the Doha negotiations, along with the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker). On our objectives, we have been arguing for a balanced package. In the pre-COP discussions in Seoul, we argued that the European Union and other members of the Kyoto protocol need to commit to a second period and that we need the long-term co-operative action negotiations to come to an end, and in return we need a work plan to take us from now until 2015 so that we can implement the international, legally binding treaty promised at Durban. In addition, we want ambitious proposals to come from other countries on climate change finance and we would like to see more mitigation measures.
Just before this statement, I was at Clarence house with His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales attending a meeting on forests. We have made an announcement today of the use of UK climate change finance money to support new forest projects, which I believe will help the climate change talks and show that this Government have an ambitious agenda.
Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)
Some great companies in Pendle are working in the energy sector: Graham Engineering works in the nuclear supply chain; and Kirk Environmental is internationally renowned and is the only UK company specialising in the manufacture of large anaerobic digestive tanks and double membrane biogas holders. Will the Secretary of State commit to working closely with Ministers in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, who are delivering things such as the advanced manufacturing supply chain initiative, to ensure that British companies, such as those based in my constituency, can deliver the low-carbon economy and the energy security he seeks to achieve?
Mr Davey
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; the potential for growth and jobs resulting from our energy policies is huge. He will be pleased to learn that I have been working with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills on exactly these issues. We will be producing strategies on the supply chains in nuclear and offshore wind, and we have been working together to maximise the potential for British jobs from this investment and these energy infrastructure plans.
Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes) (Lab)
What level of continuing subsidy does the Secretary of State envisage for wind turbine generation? Does he consider that to be a cost-effective investment?
Mr Davey
Our investments and our policies for offshore wind have been widely welcomed, and we are seeing the industry really get going. We have the largest amount of offshore wind capacity already installed and we have some of the greatest potential in the world. It is important that we get costs down. We are working with the offshore wind developers and the forum that has been established to get cost reductions, and they produced a report just a few months ago showing how we could get cost reductions across the piece, which will make a huge difference to competitiveness.
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
I welcome the Bill, which at last gives us the possibility of unleashing nuclear power at scale in the UK. The Secretary of State will have seen the recent EU figures showing that every EU industrial country except France has higher carbon emissions per head than the UK. Yet Germany, which has 20% more carbon emissions per head than the UK, has recently embarked on a project to build 20 unabated coal power stations. How does he reconcile Germany’s position with ours?
Mr Davey
I work closely with my German counterparts, particularly Peter Altmaier, and I know that they are having a big debate in Germany called the “Energiewende” looking at how they will deal with the implications of reducing their nuclear industry. I am sure that my hon. Friend would understand that, given our close partnership with Germany, I would not wish to tread on Herr Altmaier’s toes, but this country is investing in nuclear. We are putting forward a regime that we think is attractive, and Hitachi’s £700 million investment in the Horizon project shows that international companies and international capital believe we have got it right.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Last but not least, I call Martin Horwood.
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)
Does the Secretary of State agree that, in time, feed-in tariffs with contracts for difference will provide a means of supporting a diverse emerging and fast-changing renewables industry that is good for the environment and fairer to households than the outgoing renewables obligation system? Will he reconsider extending that subsidy to a mature and inflexible nuclear industry dominated by a single French nationalised company that is trying to seal the deal in secret before we have even passed the legislation?
Mr Davey
First, on my hon. Friend’s last point, I have made it clear that we will be very transparent about negotiations with EDF or any other company. Of course, he would not expect me to comment on negotiations daily but he would expect me to bring to the House the results of them so that I can be held to account in the proper way.
On my hon. Friend’s first point, he is absolutely right. One of the huge advantages of feed-in tariffs with contracts for difference compared with the renewable obligations certificate system is that the deal is much better for consumers. The policies we are putting in place and electricity market reform will mean that consumer and business bills will be far lower than they otherwise would have been. That is one of the main reasons we are doing this.
Points of Order
(11 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. There has been some concern about today’s Westminster Hall Select Committee on Welsh Affairs debate on inward investment in Wales. It did not appear on the Order Paper at any point this week until today and notification only came in the business statement on 8 November. Furthermore, there is concern that that important debate will clash with the Prime Minister making a statement on the Leveson report. Will you look into what went wrong concerning the debate, which is obviously important for the people of Wales?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
The hon. Lady is absolutely right. It was an administrative error, which has been corrected, and we will certainly try to ensure that it does not happen again. The two debates would have taken place whether it was on the Order Paper or not, but the point is absolutely correct. It was an error—it was a mistake—and we must ensure that it does not happen again.
Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. In a written ministerial statement on 9 November, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs stated that he had asked Professor Ian Boyd, DEFRA’s chief scientific adviser,
“to convene an expert taskforce on tree health and plant biosecurity.”
The Secretary of State said that he looked
“forward to seeing his interim proposals at the end of November”—[Official Report, 9 November 2012; Vol. 552, c. 50WS.]
He also said that he would update the House on receipt of them. Tomorrow is the last sitting day in November. It took Ministers five months from the point at which the presence of ash dieback in the country was identified to doing something about it and further delays cannot be tolerated. Have you received any indication from the Secretary of State that he intends to make a statement to the House today or tomorrow?
Mr Deputy Speaker
I have had no such indication and although the point is now on the record, it is not a point for the Chair, as the hon. Gentleman is aware.
Bill Presented
Energy Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Secretary Davey, supported by the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Secretary Hague, Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Secretary Hammond, Secretary Vince Cable, Mr Secretary Pickles, Mr Secretary Paterson, Mr Oliver Letwin, Gregory Barker and Mr John Hayes, presented a Bill to make provision for or in connection with reforming the electricity market for purposes of encouraging low carbon electricity generation or ensuring security of supply; for the establishment and functions of the Office for Nuclear Regulation; about the government pipe-line and storage system and rights exercisable in relation to it; about the designation of a strategy and policy statement; for the making of orders requiring regulated persons to provide redress to consumers of gas or electricity; about offshore transmission of electricity during a commissioning period; for imposing further fees in respect of nuclear decommissioning costs; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 100) with explanatory notes (Bill 100-EN).
Backbench Business
(11 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Scotland and the Union
(11 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
14:30 - The House divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 321 - Question accordingly negatived.
14:46 - The House divided: - Ayes: 334 / Noes: 5 - Question accordingly agreed to.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I inform the House that I have selected amendment (a) in the name of Angus Robertson.
Mrs Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House believes that Scotland has always made, and continues to make, a significant contribution to the UK over the 305 years of the Union; notes the strong and enduring bonds that exist between Scotland and the other nations of the UK; further notes its shared history and the contribution that the Scottish people have made to public life in the UK in politics, academia, trade unions and the armed forces; notes the contribution that Scotland’s businesses make to the UK economy and their particular expertise in cutting edge industries such as life sciences and engineering; further notes that a referendum on separating Scotland from the rest of the UK will be held before the end of 2014; and believes that Scotland is better off as part of the UK and the rest of the UK is better off together with Scotland.
It is customary to begin debates that are granted by the Backbench Business Committee by saying how pleased we are to have a debate on a particular subject. I say that genuinely, not merely as a convention. Tomorrow is St Andrew’s day and Scots around the world are celebrating their pride in their nation and their culture. It is important when we are considering the future of Scotland and our United Kingdom that the debate takes place in this United Kingdom Parliament. We appreciate that the debate will take place in many forums around the United Kingdom and around the world over the next two years and particularly, of course, in Scotland and in the Scottish Parliament, but in addition to those debates we must have the opportunity to discuss these extremely important matters here in the United Kingdom Parliament.
There are many more Scots outside Scotland than within Scotland. Most of us now accept that only the people who are currently living in Scotland, be they Scottish or merely resident in Scotland with a right to vote, will take part in the referendum. Indeed, several of my constituents in Epping Forest have written to me or come to see me to ask why they, as Scots, will not get a vote in the referendum about the future of their country. I have told them not to worry, because as long as they keep on voting Conservative in Epping Forest there will be a Scottish voice here in the United Kingdom Parliament.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate, which is extremely important for the future of the United Kingdom. Does she not agree that there is also an argument in favour of allowing the people of England to have their say on the Scottish devolution question and on independence? If Scotland became an independent nation, that would have a real effect on the people of Wiltshire as well as the people of Scotland.
Mrs Laing
My hon. Friend is, of course, absolutely correct. I have a great deal of sympathy for his point, but I accept that agreement has been entered into that the terms of the referendum have been broadly decided, although they have yet to be finally decided in the Scottish Parliament. I accept that the Scottish Parliament will decide on the franchise for the referendum and that, in doing so, it is unlikely to decide that people throughout the entire United Kingdom should have a vote in the referendum, but although those people will not have a vote in the referendum, they must have a voice in the debate. That will be provided in this Parliament and throughout all parts of the United Kingdom.
Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)
I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Is she aware of whether there might be any restrictions on which people living in Scotland will be entitled to vote in the referendum, such as on English people, EU citizens or people from further afield?
Mrs Laing
It is likely that the franchise will be the same as the franchise for the last Scottish parliamentary elections. I accept that and I do not think we should spend too much time arguing about the franchise as the line must be drawn somewhere. I trust the Scottish Parliament to draw the line in a reasonable way that is in accord with general electoral practice.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. She mentions the Scottish Parliament—does she agree with me that a strong Scottish Parliament in the United Kingdom gives us the best of both worlds?
Mrs Laing
Yes, it does. I entirely accept that—[Interruption.] Before the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) reminds me that I have not always accepted that, let me say that I accept it now—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) says that is progress, and I am proud of the progress I have made in that respect.
Yesterday, the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland led the annual St Andrew’s day service in the crypt of the Palace of Westminster. He asked why the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland comes to London in this week every year and he answered that question by saying that at least 300,000 Scots live in London. London is probably the largest parish covered by the Church of Scotland anywhere. That emphasises the point: there are Scots in London, in England and all over the world who care about the future of their country—our country. The Moderator of the General Assembly comes to London because this is the capital city of the United Kingdom—the capital city of all our nations brought together.
Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)
My hon. Friend makes an important key point about the United Kingdom and its identity. On the numerous visits that I made to Iraq and Afghanistan, our armed forces did not ask one another whether they came from Cardiff, Belfast, Edinburgh or London. They fought for a country and a people that they love, united not just by instruments of parliamentary procedure, but by a country, intermarried and interlinked through many generations. We are a people united not by parliamentary instrument or law, but by tradition and convention, and much more by our human activities.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. A lot of Members wish to speak. We need shorter interventions. I remind Members that those who intervene who were on the speaking list will be dropped down if they continue to intervene.
Mrs Laing
My right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) makes an extremely important point, which is at the very centre of this debate. He mentions Afghanistan and Iraq, where he has seen recently and personally the contribution made by brave servicemen and women from every part of this United Kingdom and our allies in other parts of the world—from every part of the United Kingdom, and they do not ask each other, “Which is your country?”
It is our country for which we fight, not only in Afghanistan and Iraq, but going back in our history, through the second world war, through the first world war, which in two years’ time, just at the time of the referendum, we will remember. That war started 100 years before the referendum is due to take place. Brave Scots joined brave Englishmen, Welshmen, Irishmen—
Mr Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)
I am listening to what the hon. Lady is saying and she seems to have fossilised history. Yes, of course we have fought together in the past. We have fought the Germans in the past, but we co-operate with them on other things now. History does not stand still, and Scottish independence is an evolution of history.
Mrs Laing
No one is suggesting that history stands still. I am referring to history as history. What happened 100 years ago we will commemorate as having happened 100 years ago, but we will not forget it. Those who forget history suffer for having done so. The point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset is that right now, at this very minute, brave servicemen and women from Scotland, England and other parts of the United Kingdom are fighting together to guarantee the freedom of our country, our whole country. That is not history. That is current. It is right now.
Last week or the week before last, as the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) will remember, we had a debate in Committee Room 14 organised by the Law Society of Scotland, a fine bunch of people. Before I took all those interventions, I was speaking about Scots outside Scotland. The Law Society of Scotland has an enormous number of members, of which I happen to be one, in London. Committee Room 14 was packed. We had a really good and lively debate but, despite his excellent speech, not one person in that Room voted to support the hon. Gentleman— not one, and I promise I had not invited them all personally.
Continuing on the same theme, last night I attended another packed meeting held here in London, in Chelsea, by Friends of the Union. It was a great surprise to me to bump into the chairman of the Essex Conservatives, a very nice gentleman whom I see frequently in my constituency. I said something along the lines, “I didn’t know you cared, Adrian.” He explained to me in no uncertain terms that he and many of the other people who were there at that event for Friends of the Union had come of their own accord because they are fed up hearing that people in England and the rest of the United Kingdom do not care about Scotland. That is simply not true and it will be proved not to be true as this debate takes hold throughout the whole country. He said to me, and other people came and joined in the conversation, “We are here because we care about the United Kingdom and we care about Scotland as part of the United Kingdom.” They value the United Kingdom. They know that we are better together.
As we consider the motion and the amendment, and as we seriously begin the debate in the country, let us at least try to get the language right. This debate is not about nationalism. Scotland is a nation. We are proud of our nation. I discovered earlier that it happens that tomorrow is the 140th anniversary of the first football international between Scotland and England.
Mrs Laing
It was held in Glasgow and I am pleased to say it was a no-score draw. But the point about it is that one can have an international only if one has a nation. We all go to Murrayfield, Twickenham and the Millennium stadium and cheer on our national football, rugby and other teams, because each of the component parts of the United Kingdom is a nation. So let us stop arguing about whether Scotland is a nation. That is not a question. Scotland is a nation, as is England, Wales, Northern Ireland and so on.
The debate is not about independence. That is another misnomer. Scotland is independent and is in charge of her own destiny. Scotland has and always has had her own institutions—the law, the education system, the Church. I speak as living proof as a graduate of Edinburgh university, a member of the Law Society of Scotland and a member of the Church of Scotland, but more important than that to me, I am a member of the Epping Forest Scottish Association. As the Member of Parliament for Epping Forest in the proud county of Essex, I have no conflict between my nationality as Scottish and British, and my constituents have no problem about having somebody represent their constituency who happens to have been born in another part of the United Kingdom. This is a time when people around the world are breaking down barriers and coming together. It is wrong to construct barriers that we do not need.
Mr Weir
The hon. Lady is making an impassioned speech but her point about people who were born in other parts of the United Kingdom is irrelevant. There are people representing all parties in the Scottish Parliament who were born in other parts of the United Kingdom and other places. The debate is about the right of the people living in Scotland to determine their future. It is not about whether people from other parts of the United Kingdom can or cannot be Scots if they are currently living in Scotland. There is no argument about that.
Mrs Laing
The hon. Gentleman is totally wrong. This is not about an argument or a debate about the right of people living in Scotland to determine their future. We all agree that people in Scotland have the right to determine their future. I have just said that and I have said it many times in the House and in other places. Everyone accepts that. Scotland is a nation. Scotland is independent. Scotland holds Scotland’s future in its own hands.
This debate is not about nationalism or independence; it is about separation. That is the word that should be used in debates in this Parliament, in the Scottish Parliament and in every forum across the country and further afield in the debate that will rage between now and the referendum in two years’ time. This is about separation, not pride in our country or whether Scotland can survive on her own. Of course Scotland can survive on her own; she is a strong and capable country full of brilliant and talented people. This debate is about drawing artificial lines that we do not need. As the motion states—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I point out gently to the hon. Lady that she has now been speaking for 17 minutes. She must be getting close to the end of her speech, because I know that she is desperate to hear the other arguments.
Mrs Laing
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am afraid that I have taken many interventions, this being a debate, but I will conclude shortly.
I will leave it to others to talk about why separation would be bad for industry, financial institutions, the currency, the armed forces, family and culture. I will turn to the motion and the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson).
I would be minded to accept the amendment were it not for the first few words, which propose leaving out the last three lines of the motion, which state that this House
“notes that a referendum on separating Scotland from the rest of the UK will be held before the end of 2014; and believes that Scotland is better off as part of the UK and the rest of the UK is better off together with Scotland.”
I believe that the vast majority of Members will support our motion today. The amendment would leave out those lines and add
“recognises that special relationships also endure with Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa and other members of the Commonwealth as well as the Republic of Ireland and the United States; and believes that this will also be the case with Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom after the 2014 independence referendum.”
I entirely agree, because after the referendum nothing will change. The people of Scotland are sensible, forward-looking people and they will vote to stay better together within the United Kingdom.
Most states in the landmass of Europe and other parts of the world have to draw boundaries somewhere, but we do not have to do so because we have a natural boundary: our shores. This is but a small island, full of people in every part whose individual lives, past, present and future, are bound up with each other. Each part has its own identity, but this House will agree this afternoon that we are stronger and better to go forward together as one United Kingdom.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I am introducing a 10-minute time limit on speeches.
Graeme Morrice (Livingston) (Lab)
I am pleased to be a co-sponsor of the debate, alongside the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing), whom I am delighted to follow. In a way, as a Scot who represents an English constituency, she epitomises what the motion is about: the rich blend of the best of all four corners of our land that has made the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland the success story it so evidently is. There is no doubt that the United Kingdom is greater than the sum of its constituent parts. Although I might disagree with her politics, I have no doubt that we, as Scots, share a love of our country and want to see what is right and proper for its people and for future generations. It is also fitting that we are holding this debate on the eve of St Andrew’s day, the national occasion when we Scots come together to celebrate our patron saint and demonstrate our pride in all things Scottish.
As the motion states, Scotland has made a significant contribution to the United Kingdom over the 305 years of the Union, and it continues to do so. Indeed, our shared history goes back even further to the union of the Crowns in 1603, when a Scot, James VI, sat on the English throne as James I. He was the first of six monarchs in the Stuart line who ruled both England and Scotland, as well as Ireland, until the Glorious Revolution, and then again to 1714. In fact, it was Queen Anne, the last of the Stuart line, who became the first monarch of the political union of Britain.
With the Acts of Union in 1707, Scotland quickly took advantage of the abolition of trade tariffs with England and trade blossomed. The 18th century also saw the Scottish enlightenment, a period characterised by momentous intellectual and scientific accomplishments, so much so that Voltaire said:
“We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation.”
With the advent of the Union, Scots took up positions of power in politics, the civil service, the Army and Navy, trade, economics, colonial enterprises and other areas across the emerging British empire. The historian Neil Davidson has observed:
“Far from being ‘peripheral’ to the British economy, Scotland...lay at its core.”
Indeed, throughout the industrial revolution Scotland more than punched above its weight and became known across the world for its excellence in engineering, as typified by Clyde-built ships.
Through advancements in medicine and its inventive spirit, distinct banking system and contribution to art, literature and culture, Scotland has always added greatly beyond its shores. Even in times of adversity, the people of Scotland have not been wanting. During the first world war, despite Scotland having a population of only 4.8 million, over half a million Scots went to the front. My purpose in touching, albeit briefly, on 300 years of Scottish history is to point out that many of our achievements and benefits were because of our place within the UK, not in spite of it.
Scotland is linked intrinsically to the rest of the United Kingdom socially, politically and economically. The single market within the UK affords significant economic, trade and employment opportunities to people on both sides of the border. Our membership of the European Union, through the United Kingdom, provides a vast marketplace for Scottish exporters. Together we have a place at the top table of the European Council of Ministers and we are one of the G8 forum of the world’s largest economies and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, all of which allows us to wield unprecedented influence on the European and global stages. As a member of NATO, we have collectively benefited since the war from international security and defence co-operation on a grand scale.
When it comes to the economy, Scotland has a very important relationship with the rest of the UK. Scotland benefits from access to a market comprising tens of millions of people within a single jurisdiction. Scots are employed by firms based in the rest of the UK, and people in the rest of the UK benefit from employment opportunities with Scottish-based companies. Indeed, in 2010 Scotland’s exports to the rest of the UK were worth double its exports to the rest of the world— £44 billion and £22 billion respectively—and manufacturing exports were estimated at £13 billion.
Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)
I welcome my hon. Friend’s point about manufacturing industry. Does he agree that the sizeable increase in manufacturing, which is taking place as we speak, has arisen mainly as a result of the Scottish contribution?
Graeme Morrice
I certainly concur with my right hon. Friend on that point.
In addition to the shared opportunities, the pooling of resources across the UK allows risk as well as reward to be spread, as seen most notably in the bail-out of the Scottish-based banks during the financial crisis, when the UK, led by a Scot, injected £37 billion of capital into the banks—an amount in excess of the total budget of the Scottish Government.
The legal framework for business is more or less uniform across the entirety of the UK. That means that there is a similar taxation, regulatory and employment law regime throughout the UK. On the benefit of a single market both to Scotland and to the rest of the UK, the director general of the CBI has stated that the
“raft of common laws and regulations...make operating across the different constituent parts of the union more efficient.”
The National Institute of Economic and Social Research has noted that the Scottish economy is
“more integrated with the rest of the UK than Europe or the rest of the world.”
With regard to jobs, people on both sides of the border benefit from employment opportunities engendered by Scotland being part of the Union. The UK Government are a major employer in Scotland, with more than 30,000 civil servants bringing almost £700 million annually to Scotland in salaries alone. Thousands of jobs also rely on the defence sector in Scotland, with 40,000 people employed in more than 800 companies. Companies from the rest of the UK contribute about one fifth of private sector economic activity in Scotland.
On energy, North sea oil is an important contributor to the UK economy, accounting for thousands of jobs in the north-east of Scotland, and a valuable source of revenue for the UK Treasury. However, the supply is declining and unstable. Recent reports show that North sea oil production fell by 30% in 2011 compared with the previous year. For the past 18 years, the level of public spending in Scotland has dwarfed the total revenue from North sea oil; in 2009-10, the difference was £18 billion. In fact, welfare spending in Scotland in 2010 was three times higher than North sea oil revenue. Of course, oil and gas remain an important part of the Scottish and UK economies and will do so in the years to come, but to bet Scotland’s economic future on this sector, as the Scottish National party does, is naive at best and foolhardy at worst. Moreover, Scotland being outwith the UK would create uncertainty for the future of Scotland’s renewables industry, and potentially lead to higher fuel bills and a £2 billion burden on Scottish businesses, due to Scotland receiving a disproportionate share of the available subsidy compared with the rest of the UK. These figures highlight the many benefits of Scotland being part of the UK economy in that we are able to work together in partnership to share the risks and rewards involved in harnessing our energy resources.
Scotland being part of the UK also allows us to pool our resources and distribute them on the basis of social need across the welfare state. If it were outwith the UK, that would place a major question mark over its ability to continue to fund benefits at current levels and to meet state and public sector pension commitments. It is simply an illusion for the SNP to promise Scandinavian levels of welfare spending while supporting Irish levels of taxation.
There are many other positives on which I could elaborate, such as the flexibility across borders which has over the years benefited people on both sides and led to high levels of migration in both directions; indeed, I personally have been a beneficiary of that. Our common currency is one of the oldest monetary unions in the world. A practical and more recent example is the benefit derived by Scottish athletes from UK sports funding, facilities and coaching in the run-up to the Olympics and Paralympics. It is interesting to note that all but three of the Scots who won medals at the Olympics had team-mates from the rest of the UK.
Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes) (Lab)
Is my hon. Friend aware that three Scots Olympians have been nominated for the BBC sports personality of the year award?
Graeme Morrice
Indeed I am. All three—Sir Chris Hoy, Andy Murray and Katherine Grainger—train and reside in England and clearly benefit from Scotland being part of the United Kingdom. Of course, we pay tribute to those athletes as part of Team GB and wish them every success in the BBC sports personality of the year award. [Interruption.] Indeed, they cannot all win, but we would like to see them do so.
There is much more I could say about the benefits to Scotland and the rest of the UK of Scotland remaining a strong partner within the Union. I am sure that other Members will fill any gaps in my speech and expand on some of the points I have made. I conclude by mentioning one of Scotland’s and the UK’s most notable achievements in its 300-year history—devolution. Devolution has been a great success and has provided new vigour to the United Kingdom. Whether in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, devolution is working but also developing, as it will continue to do in future. As we are all well aware, support for devolution and attachment to the UK in Scotland is stronger than support for independence. Scots share the same social attitudes and values as people in the rest of the UK. They are just as alert to the risks and uncertainties of separation and have a real comprehension of the benefits and advantages of remaining part of the UK. Therefore, all things considered, there is no doubt that we are all better off together.
Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to have the opportunity to contribute to this timely and important debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) on securing it. I am proud to be a co-signatory to the motion.
The hon. Member for Livingston (Graeme Morrice) set out very well many of the practical benefits that Scotland and, indeed, the rest of the United Kingdom gain from the Union, be it in defence, finance and economic matters, or our influence on the world stage. We could, and should, have a full debate on each of those points, and I am sure that in the course of the next year or two, leading up to the referendum, they will all be fully explored. To summarise the benefits—I think that the hon. Gentleman used this phrase—the strength of the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. We are stronger together.
Scotland could go it alone as a separate country. I am not one of those who believes that it would be an impoverished basket case of a country that could not survive on its own. Of course it could, but at what cost? Together, we are stronger, more influential, safer and more prosperous. It would be much riskier for everyone if Scotland went it alone.
Mr MacNeil
Does the hon. Gentleman have a list of nations of about 4 million to 5 million people that might be better off joining the UK because they would be safer, more prosperous and more influential? Is he considering Denmark, Sweden or Finland? What is at the forefront of his mind?
Iain Stewart
I am puzzled. Is the hon. Gentleman asking for other countries to come and join us in the United Kingdom? That is a very interesting notion.
A few years ago, the global banking crisis sent economic shockwaves around the world. The SNP used to make a claim for the arc of prosperity that would link a separate Scotland with Ireland and Iceland, but that arc has rusted somewhat in the light of events. A separate Scotland could have weathered that storm, but the resilience that we had as a country was much stronger because we were the United Kingdom and not split up into atomised parts.
Mr MacNeil
I am sure the hon. Gentleman does not want to cast aspersions on Iceland and will therefore know its unemployment rate and GDP per capita as against those of the United Kingdom.
Iain Stewart
I cannot give those figures off the top of my head. If the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that Iceland was any better placed to weather the storm than the United Kingdom, that is a slightly revisionist view of history.
Another issue is Scotland’s role in the European Union if it becomes a separate country. There was an interesting debate on that in Westminster Hall last week. In the interests of brevity, I will not rehearse all the arguments. I believe strongly that if Scotland went its own way and wanted to be part of the EU, it would happen on the EU’s terms. Scotland would be sucked into full currency, fiscal and political union, which would not be to its benefit.
Iain Stewart
I will not give way again.
The EU issue makes a mockery of the SNP’s independence policy. It is perfectly logical to argue that if Scotland does not like one economic union and wants to be the master of its own destiny, it should go its own way, but to argue that it should then join an ever-deepening union is utterly illogical.
The fact that we are having a referendum at all is risky as it may be a distraction from what we should be concentrating on. I do not doubt for a minute that it is perfectly within Scotland’s right to have the debate and to have the matter resolved. As a democrat, I fully accept that the Scottish National party won a majority in the last Scottish Parliament elections and that a referendum was part of its manifesto. It is therefore perfectly legitimate to have the debate. But at what cost? The constitutional uncertainty in Canada in the 1980s and 1990s had a severe impact on the economic prosperity of Quebec. The EU admitted that in a report.
Iain Stewart
If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I have a number of points that I want to make and I have already been generous in giving way to him.
A report by economists at the appropriately named Scotiabank in Canada said of the 1995 referendum:
“The palpable fear in the markets was keyed off deep intertwined concerns about the country’s fiscal, economic and political circumstances.”
The very fact that we are having this debate is therefore risky as it may distract us. However, I accept that it is legitimate that we are having it.
My main point relates not to the economic or defence arguments or to Scotland’s influence on the global stage, but is a personal and emotional appeal. My nationality is British. I do not want to be rendered stateless or to be forced to choose between the place of my birth and the place I now call home. The country that would be left would be the rest of the United Kingdom and its flag would be, as the noble Lord Forsyth described it, “an anaemic red asterisk” once the blue of the saltire was taken out.
As far as I can tell, my blood is 100% Scottish. My father has traced the generations of the family back to the 1700s. Unless there is something we do not know about, my family came from a small area in Lanarkshire and Ayrshire. I spent my childhood in Scotland. My primary and secondary education was in Scotland, but my higher education was in England. Three quarters of my working life has been spent in England. Through marriage and my family, I have many relatives who are part Scottish and part English. I have stood for public office five times: twice in Scotland and three times in England. My Scottish ventures were somewhat less successful than my English ones. I stood for South Lanarkshire council and for Glasgow Rutherglen. Let us just say that I saved my deposit on both occasions.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest said forcefully, of course Scotland and England have distinct cultures that are expressed through the arts and on the sporting field, but both can be vibrant within the Union. Patriotism does not require nationalism to flourish. Beyond a patriotic pride, the United Kingdom has something that is much stronger. Team GB at the Olympic games exemplified it, the monarchy exemplifies it, and even James Bond exemplifies it. We have an identity that has been forged through more than 300 years of the world’s most successful and enduring Union. We do not need to change. The hon. Member for Angus (Mr Weir) said that that is history. It is history, but it is also the present and I believe that it is the future. For goodness’ sake, let us not throw away what we have achieved and what makes us strong, prosperous and successful in an ever-changing world that is becoming more dangerous and uncertain. We have something that is strong and that works; let us keep it.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
I beg to move an amendment, leave out from ‘engineering’ to end and add
‘and recognises that special relationships also endure with Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa and other members of the Commonwealth as well as the Republic of Ireland and the United States; and believes that this will also be the case with Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom after the 2014 independence referendum.’.
I reassure the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) that he can call himself Scottish, British or even Milton Keynesian—it is really up to him. This debate is all about identity and what we want to call ourselves.
I thank the many hon. Members who have passed on their regards and concerns for my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie). I reassure the House that he is back home and making a full recovery. I fully expect him to be back in his place very soon, talking about the Laffer curve and endogenous growth theory as only he can.
Another person who is missing is the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown). We were all expecting his presence today and to hear his words of wisdom on Scotland and the Union, but he is not here. He is a bit like Brigadoon: one gets a glimpse of him only once a year.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) on the motion. It is a good motion. I take exception only with the last two lines of it, as she knows. There is so much more that she could have added, such as the contribution that Scots have made to the Union and the United Kingdom. She missed out the enlightenment, for goodness’ sake, which is an important way in which the Scots contributed to the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom and the Union have also given much to Scotland. The Scots have helped to build and have shared the great institutions of the UK and the Union. We have fantastic cultural relationships and we have had great times. All of that is part of a social union and that will go nowhere. We will continue to be British after the independence referendum and when we secure our independence.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (David Mundell)
I am surprised to hear what the hon. Gentleman is saying, because he previously told this House that
“as Scotland moves forward to become a normal independent nation, all vestiges of Britishness will go.”
He went on to say:
“I have never felt British in my life. I do not even know what Britishness is.”—[Official Report, 12 November 2008; Vol. 482, c. 306-307WH.]
Pete Wishart
I expected that response. In fact, it said on Twitter that that intervention would be made.
I say to the Minister that, as we examine our relationship with the rest of the United Kingdom, we discover some of these fantastic ties. I accept that there will be vestiges of Britishness. That is a personal interest of mine. We are British. I live in Perth in the north of the island called Great Britain. It is called that because it is the largest of the British isles. I am British as much as somebody from Stockholm or Copenhagen is Scandinavian. That is the reality of geography and it cannot be denied. Hon. Members may want to take forward their obsession with separation by building a channel between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom. That is the only way they could stop us being British.
I accept that being British is about more than just geography. Of course there is something cultural about Britishness. However, Britishness is an invention. It was a necessary social construct to unite all the nations of the United Kingdom. That is why it is so hard to define and describe. We have heard some great and excruciating attempts to define Britishness. Who could forget the attempt of the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, when he talked about
“British jobs for British workers”?
I remember the attempt by Michael Portillo, when he described Britishness as anti-fanaticism. However, Britishness is more than that. It is the combination of the 300 years that we have shared and endured across these islands. It is about everything from the industrial revolution to how we stood together in the wars; the Queen has been mentioned, and, of course, there are great pop and rock bands.
I was particularly disappointed with the views of the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling) who tried to scaremonger on the issue of culture. He said that British music would be no longer “our” music but “their” music—whoever “they” are. I played in a band for 15 years. I replaced an English keyboard player and the lead singer of my band is Canadian. To suggest that something as free-spirited as music can be confined to borders or frontiers is absurd and ridiculous. The right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West should be ashamed of trying to scaremonger about culture.
One good definition of Britishness—as has been mentioned fleetingly—was the opening ceremony of the Olympic games, which got close to describing and defining Britishness. Danny Boyle did a fantastic job with his cultural tour de force. The big irony, however, is that part of that fantastic presentation placed a strong emphasis on the country’s social ethos, and particularly on the NHS, which the Westminster Tories are currently disestablishing through privatisation. Already, part of that glimpse of Britishness disappears with that very statement.
Pete Wishart
I will not give way to the hon. Lady, because I do not have much time.
That Britishness has no place in discussions on independence simply because it cannot be un-invented. We cannot un-invent all our ties, heritage and culture; we will always have a shared history and joint heritage, and there will always be cultural relationships and collaboration.
Independence will bring a new, improved relationship between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom, because we will come to it from a position of equality and mutual respect. Most people in Scotland now describe themselves as Scottish—some, of course, describe themselves as and feel profoundly British, but most surveys of social attitude suggest that most Scots now present themselves as Scottish.
As we have gone forward with our own national Parliament and strengthened our institutions, Scottish people are feeling more secure in their identity and more culturally relaxed about who they are. That is why we are able to adopt different identities and why we can easily accept the idea of being Scottish—we could be Pakistani Scottish, Indian Scottish, Polish Scottish, but we are all Scottish and that is how people now describe themselves. With independence, we could express our unique Scottishness in world institutions. We could bring Scottish values to international affairs and institutions, and that would only be good for people in Scotland.
Mr MacNeil
Does my hon. Friend agree that sharing a Prime Minister is not what makes hon. Members in the Chamber today British?
Pete Wishart
My hon. Friend is right. Britishness is about identity and geography. Our gripe is not with cultural Britishness or the social union—
Pete Wishart
I do not have time. As the hon. Lady will know, I have used my two minutes’ injury time.
Our gripe is with political arrangements within the United Kingdom. We want to recalibrate political relationships within the UK; we want powers to grow our economy and make our own international contribution. We want to complete the powers of our Parliament and take responsibility for our affairs. We have no issue with our British past, heritage and culture, and they will be defining features of how we go forward as Scottish people.
I find talk of separation and the idea that people will become “foreigners” dispiriting and depressing. Some of the language used has become quite chilling and I am getting a bit concerned. When people are described as foreigners I feel a little uncomfortable. I know that people have to build up the idea of Scotland as an unviable nation, and suggest that it is a risk and that there is scary stuff out there if it becomes independent, but can we please be careful with some of the language used when people build up that theme of separation? Negativity is a big and necessary part of the case and construct used by those who oppose independence.
We have heard about the past and the things that unite us, and about our great relationships and institutions and the contribution that Scotland has made to the United Kingdom, but what about the future. What does Scotland get if it says no in a referendum on independence? Can we have a guarantee that if it remains in the Union, Scotland will be part of the EU in 10 years’ time? We have heard lots of talk about rolling back the achievements of the devolution era, but can we be certain that the gains of devolution will be secure if Scotland says no? Will the Scottish Parliament get more powers and—most importantly—if Scotland says no to independence, will the Scottish people be more prosperous? People have had 300 years to think about these issues, but nobody will give us answers. Those against independence have to come up with a case for Scotland to remain in the Union, but we have not heard it yet. Some of today’s contributions have been a little more positive, but we must hear a lot more about what people want to achieve.
Those of us in favour of Scottish independence will, of course, be positive and put the case for it. I love my country and I want it to be all that it can. I want it to walk tall and for Scotland to have the national self-respect and dignity to make its own place in the world, take its own decisions, and ensure that the Scottish people are responsible for their own failures. We are a dynamic, inventive and resourceful people. Of course we will make a success of independence, and I am glad we no longer hear comments of “Too wee, too poor, too stupid.” Of course Scotland will be a success when it gets its independence; of course we will be great.
I am depressed about the fact that Scotland is tethered to a failing UK state which is almost relaxed about its own failure. Scotland deserves better. I do not want the welfare reforms or years and years of austerity. I do not want illegal wars or nuclear weapons just outside. I want my country to make its own decisions about its future. An independent Scotland will be better because those who care most about it will make the decisions, not the Westminster Tories. The Scottish people will run Scotland and be responsible for their own decisions. It will be better because we care more about our nation than the Westminster Tories. That is why we run our devolved institutions better—we care about them and ensure we look after them.
After Scotland becomes independent, we will continue to have fantastic cultural relationships and ties with the rest of the United Kingdom. That is important to us and has shaped who we are as the Scottish people. We have heard about the 305 years in which we have served together, the wonderful institutions we have built up, and our great ties and associations. Those things will go absolutely nowhere. The social union is important to us as independent Scottish people and we will enjoy and build on it. It will be better because we will come together in a sense of equality and mutual respect. We will build new British arrangements and relationships and they will be better because Scotland will be an independent nation. The political union has failed Scotland. We no longer want to be tethered to a failing UK state. We can be better. We can walk tall in the world and make decisions on our own. Scotland as an independent nation will be welcomed as a full, peace-loving nation in the world community. I look forward to that day. The social union lives on; the political union is dying and it will be finished off in 2014.
Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)
I am almost tempted to wish that there was no time limit, because the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) was making the case stronger than anyone on either side of the House could have done. He clearly forgot his “Yes Scotland” positivity pills this morning, as it took nine minutes before we heard any positive case for Scotland’s becoming an independent country.
We need to change the language of this debate, and I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) and my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Graeme Morrice) who have pushed this debate and provided us with an opportunity to do so today. We need a positive, engaging debate about what is in the best interests of Scotland and the UK’s future, not the language of whether Scotland is too small or too wee to be a successful country—incidentally, only SNP Members say that; no Labour Members have ever used such language. The question that I would throw back to the nationalists is this. I believe that the people of Scotland are creative, talented and innovative enough to be successful in the United Kingdom—why don’t they?
The referendum is not about whether Scotland can or cannot manage on its own. Of course Scotland could be a successful, independent country, and it insults the intelligence of the Scottish people to suggest that it could not. The choice is not about whether Scotland can be successful but about whether it would be a fairer and more prosperous country with more opportunities if it works in partnership with England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Labour Members believe that it will be, and we will be making that positive case in the referendum.
I am not modest about Scotland’s ambitions. I genuinely believe that Scotland stands taller and shouts louder when it works in partnership with other areas of the UK, representing ourselves on the global stage. Yes, the Union has a proud history—300 years of shared history, security and prosperity. It has enjoyed success, as hon. Members have heard many times before. A Scot created the Bank of England, a Welshman our NHS and an Englishman our welfare state—but this is not about history; it is about Scotland’s future.
Scotland deserves an open, engaging debate, not only on its constitutional settlement, but, more importantly, on what kind of Scotland we want to live in and want our children to live in. What will Scotland look like in 20 years’ time? Will it be able to compete with other parts of the UK and in the world?
Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)
I am sure the hon. Gentleman is aware that inequality in Scotland increased over the term of the previous Labour Government. Does he believe Scotland will fulfil its potential as an equal and fair society as part of the Union?
Anas Sarwar
It is untrue to say that health inequalities widened under the Labour Government, but it is factually correct to say that inequalities are increasing in Scotland under the watch of Alex Salmond, Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Government. Health inequalities are increasing and educational opportunities are decreasing. People from working class backgrounds in Scotland are less likely to go to college or university than people from working class backgrounds in England and Wales. That is happening on the watch of the Scottish National party, not of the Tories or Labour, so will the hon. Lady please not lecture Labour Members on our record? She should focus more on her party’s record in government.
What Scotland do we want to create for future generations? We want it to be a successful country in which to bring up our children, but what role do we want Scotland to play in the world? I want Scotland not to isolate itself, but to engage with its partners in the UK to take on the big challenges of global poverty, to fight climate change, and to fight for justice and fairness in the world. What differentiates Labour Members and SNP Members? Labour Members did not come into politics because we wanted to fight poverty only in our constituencies or our country. We want to fight poverty and create opportunity not only in Glasgow and Edinburgh, but in Manchester, Birmingham and around the world. I do not believe we will do that by creating a border between Scotland and England. There is a vote on a UN resolution today on enhanced status for the Palestinian people, which will hopefully work towards a positive resolution by which we have an independent Palestinian state living side by side with Israel. I came into politics to fight for an independent Palestinian state and for self-determination for the people of Kashmir, not to break up my own country. I want to fight injustice in other parts of the world.
One big point is that we can make the positive case for Scotland economically, emotionally, socially and politically. The most successful aid agency in the world is headquartered in Scotland. It employs hundreds of people, has a budget of £7 billion, helps to save hundreds of thousands of lives every year, and lifts hundreds of thousands of people out of poverty every year, which demonstrates the collective strength of Scotland working in partnership. We are a key member of the UN Security Council not for power or prestige, but to fight tyranny and oppression around the world. I want Scotland to have its full voice in that process. We are a leading economy and country in the G8. A Scottish leader as Prime Minister worked with the G8 to stop a global recession becoming a global depression. Those are positive arguments for Scotland remaining part of the UK, not the negative arguments we get from the SNP.
On the quality of the debate, we will have heated debates and the usual Scottish politics spats between Labour and the SNP and others between now and the referendum—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire wants to make an intervention, I am more than happy to take it. We are divided politically, but we do not want our country to be divided in the process. Whatever happens in the referendum and whatever decision Scotland makes, we must ensure that we come together in the best interests of Scotland and ensure that we fight and create a fairer, more equal country.
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
I apologise for not being in the Chamber at the start of the debate; I was in a Bill Committee.
My hon. Friend mentions the quality of the debate. Will that not be enhanced if the First Minister is straight with the Scottish people and if his arguments stay on the same track? The arc of prosperity used to mean Ireland and Iceland, but now it has moved on to the Scandinavian countries. Until we have a consistent and honest debate, we will not have a fair playing field.
Anas Sarwar
I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend. When the Minister systematically destroyed the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire on Britishness, he reminded me that, throughout the SNP’s existence, it has claimed it wants independence because England has never treated Scotland fairly, and because Scotland has never had a fair deal within the UK, but SNP Members imagine that everyone will treat Scotland fairly and work together to create a better country when it separates from the UK. That just does not stack up.
SNP Members make assertions on NATO and EU membership. The hon. Gentleman said today that the biggest threat to Scotland remaining part of the EU was from the UK, but he cannot guarantee that Scotland will remain a member of the EU if it chooses independence. We need facts rather than assertion. SNP Members say that Scotland will keep the pound and automatically have a seat on the Monetary Policy Committee; that the BBC will break up and Scotland will have better quality programmes; and that our credit rating and Royal Mail services will remain the same. They are assertions—not one of them is based on fact. The people of Scotland deserve better. Throughout the SNP’s existence, the answer to any question has always been “independence”, but now that the question is independence, it does not have the answers for the people of Scotland.
Scotland deserves a transparent and open debate. It deserves to know what Scotland will look like if it chooses independence. It deserves better than a First Minister and a Scottish Government simply asserting that independence will be whatever people want it to be. That is not good enough. The SNP cannot say to one audience that Scotland will have the Monaco taxes, but then say to another audience that we will have Scandinavian public services. It cannot say that Scotland will have none of the horrible welfare changes and reforms, but that it will have similar corporation taxes to Ireland. That does not add up and is not credible, and disrespects the people of Scotland.
Mr Weir
The hon. Gentleman is making his points as he always does, but does he not accept that it is up to the people of Scotland whom they vote into power after independence, and that it is up to them to decide how the shape of the new Scotland develops? Surely he accepts that the people will decide that in the first election after we win independence in 2014.
Anas Sarwar
The people of Scotland have an opportunity, through strengthened devolution, to have more of a say in decisions on their lives made in the Scottish Parliament and in local government, which has taken a hammering under the current Scottish Government. They can recognise that although there is nowhere better than Scotland, there is somewhere bigger, and that is working in partnership with the UK and global agencies to take on the challenges.
Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)
Would my hon. Friend have more confidence in his statement if the SNP declared here and now that it will dissolve itself the day after a referendum if there is a yes vote?
Anas Sarwar
SNP Members are probably more concerned about what happens the day after Scotland votes resoundingly no and rejects their vision of independence. The SNP is two different factions glued together on one track. When they divide, it will be interesting to see how they cope.
We are having a heated debate today and we will have a heated debate in the next two years.
Anas Sarwar
I feel very sorry for the hon. Gentleman, because we heard in the Europe debate last week the pre-published “speech they feared”. I promise him that the people of Scotland and the Labour party do not fear the SNP or Alex Salmond. We do not fear an open and honest debate on the future of Scotland, or fear challenges to our record. We do not fear debating the future of our country. The SNP should come forward with that open and transparent debate. Let us, for Scotland, keep ourselves in the Union.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
I welcome the opportunity to take part in the debate and I congratulate the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) and the co-sponsors on securing it. I will be pleased to go through the Lobby in support of the motion with parties from all parts of the House. We need to send a strong message that, in all parts of the United Kingdom, we believe that we are better together, and that this is not just a question of us believing that Scotland is better in the United Kingdom, but that people in other parts of the United Kingdom want Scotland to be part of the United Kingdom. I take part in the debate in that spirit, conscious that ultimately it is for the people of Scotland to decide how they vote in the referendum.
Hon. Members will know that the ties between people in Northern Ireland and in Scotland are very close. There is strong and growing interest in and support for Ulster Scots culture and heritage in the Province. Many people in Northern Ireland can trace their lineage and family history to Scottish antecedents—indeed, I would say that my name is more common in Scotland than it is in Northern Ireland. When I see those coaches coming over on the ferry with the Dodds name on it, I often say to my party colleagues that I wish we could hire some of them at election time and have them traverse north Belfast, but I have not been able to persuade them to do so.
Of course, I stand here as a member of a party that has “Unionist” as part of its title. Our party was formed at a critical time in the history of Northern Ireland, when the Union was clearly under threat. The years that followed were difficult: tragically, there was much violence and bloodshed; many people were injured, lives were lost and many still live with physical and mental scars. Thankfully, that period of violence is largely behind us, and although there are still some who would try to drag us backwards, they are small in number and it is clear that those who tried to destroy the Union by terrorism did not succeed.
Northern Ireland, and the United Kingdom as a whole, is a much better and different place today. Gone is the uncertainty about our future and our place in the UK. Indeed, right hon. and hon. Members will know, or be interested to learn if they are not aware of it, that support for the Union is at an all-time high, and is actually growing. A recent survey showed that a majority of people who traditionally would have described themselves as nationalist would, if there was a vote today, vote to remain part of the United Kingdom. There are many reasons why there is growing support for the Union, not least the fact that the violence has diminished and that under the current devolution settlement people feel that everybody has a say. To a large extent, people are in control of many areas of policy. They see parties and politicians who, while they have their differences—strong differences, which are sometimes illustrated in debates in this House—are working together for the betterment of all the people of Northern Ireland on the economic and social issues of the day. It is therefore important that we continue to strengthen, maintain and improve devolution where we can in Northern Ireland and elsewhere in the United Kingdom. It is dynamic and evolving, and we need to move it forward in that way.
Gregg McClymont (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (Lab)
I wonder what role the economic storm that hit Ireland at the end of the last decade and the recognition of the benefits of being part of a larger union have played in increasing support for the Union.
Mr Dodds
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point and I was just going to come on to that. While there is the case for devolution and people having a role in deciding issues in Northern Ireland, there is no doubt that the people who would at one time have looked to the Celtic tiger and envied what was happening in the south have had a rude awakening about economic realities and the situation in the United Kingdom and other countries in the EU. It is clear that the massive economic boom in the Republic was built on a number of factors, not least a property boom that crashed dramatically. I have heard it said many times by people who traditionally look to the Irish Republic as their future, “Where would we be today if we’d been part of the eurozone? Where would we be today if we had been part of a country like the Irish Republic, instead of having our fortunes tied in with a bigger country like the United Kingdom?” That has been an important factor.
Who would have believed 20 years ago that we would be talking about the danger to the Union coming from Scotland, rather than from Northern Ireland? I heard the leader of Sinn Fein say that he was going to campaign for a referendum in Northern Ireland. There is absolutely no support for that. Of course, we do not fear a referendum in Northern Ireland. We know that people would vote overwhelmingly to retain Northern Ireland’s membership of the United Kingdom. We are not opposed to it for any reason of concern about the outcome; however, under the provisions of the legislation, once Northern Ireland has a referendum, it has to happen every seven years, and we believe that that would be extremely destabilising and unnecessary. When I hear Gerry Adams talk about the need for a referendum, it is a long way from his cry that there would be a united Ireland by 2016.
Thankfully, the debate on the future of Scotland in the Union has never been tainted or stained in any way by violence and terrorism. The debate is being conducted in a peaceful and democratic way, and it will be decided through the ballot box. As I said, we respect the right of the Scottish people to decide their future. Of course, it is right and appropriate that people from other parts of the United Kingdom should have their say as well. We believe that we are better off together. That is an excellent campaign description—it is positive and people are responding to it. It is not being stated in an arrogant or aggressive way. Instead, people are saying, “We want you in Scotland to remain part of the United Kingdom.”
Mr MacNeil
The right hon. Gentleman mentions the Better Together campaign and I think I heard that the Irish Republic’s Agriculture Minister was at his recent party conference. Does he extend the Better Together ethos to the Republic’s Agriculture Minister, and would he like to be in one state with him?
Mr Dodds
I think the hon. Gentleman knows me and my party well enough by now to know the answer to the question of whether we think we would be better off in the Irish Republic. We had a very successful party conference this year. The shadow Secretary of State spoke at our conference dinner, and the Secretary of State spoke to conference on the Saturday. I was delighted to hear her declare in unequivocal terms that she would never be neutral on the Union. Of course, we also had the representative from the Irish Republic. We welcome visitors from other states, and we have visitors from outside the United Kingdom—of course we do. The reason the Agriculture Minister was there, appropriately, is that the Irish Republic is to take over the presidency of the EU, and the reform of the common agricultural policy is extremely important for Northern Ireland farmers. It is important to hear from that Minister and to lobby him directly, particularly at this time, on those important issues. The response to that in Northern Ireland was positive.
We will continue to build good relations with our friends in the Irish Republic, but we make it very clear to them that we do not wish to join it. We can have good neighbourly relations and, increasingly I think, those in the Irish Republic recognise that they have enough problems of their own without taking on any more in Northern Ireland. They are content to stick with the status quo, and they have declared clearly that until people in Northern Ireland vote otherwise, they will respect totally the principle of consent.
Time is going on and others have articulated the why Scotland would be worse off if it left the Union. I agree with what has been said. Not only would Scotland be worse off, but the United Kingdom as a whole would suffer from Scotland’s absence. A fragmented United Kingdom would not be as strong as we are together. Without Scotland, we would be a smaller nation in every sense, not just in population, economy and geography, and that is something that we do not wish to see.
Mr Dodds
No, I will not give way any more. I have given way twice already and time is limited. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will make his own speech.
This is a question not just of economics, but of our standing in the world. Our nation would be diminished if Scotland left, and with that would come a loss of influence and power. There are deep and lasting social and historical bonds that bind us all together in the constituent nations of the United Kingdom. The military links and the history of the regiments of the British Army have already been explored. It is the British Army—it is not made up of the nations of the United Kingdom. The UK did not evolve spontaneously; it came about as a result of our shared experiences and history, and of our bonds of language, culture and so on. Furthermore, of course, the union of the monarchy has been around for longer even than the political Union.
Those are the bonds that have brought and tied us together as four countries, and they have grown, deepened and developed over time, with enormous consequences for ourselves and the rest of the world. Each of our countries—Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England —and their people have all played their part in the development and prosperity of the UK, and those bonds continue. The contribution of the Scottish people and Scottish business remains vital, and the Union remains of benefit to both Scotland and the UK as a whole.
I hope that the debate on the referendum will be conducted in a constructive spirit. I am glad that there will not be the negativity—the descent into violence and so on—seen so often in Northern Ireland. I believe strongly, however, that it is important that other members of the United Kingdom and people from all parts of the United Kingdom—whether London and the south-east, Northern Ireland, Wales, or the north of England—say, with respect, while acknowledging that it is a decision for the Scottish people, “We want you to be part of the UK. We value your membership, and we feel we would be poorer without you in the United Kingdom.”
Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)
On one point, I think all sides of the House can agree: that in the debate so far, we have made it clear that it is right that the people of Scotland determine their own destiny. Later, if I have time, I will refer to the position on 16 to 18-year-olds, but first I will make a few personal comments.
My own political motivation has been the need for action where and for whom it is most needed, whether in my constituency or in one of the poorest countries in the world. Representing my constituency is my No. 1 priority, as it is for other right hon. and hon. Members, but throughout my time in the House I have worked alongside organisations committed to helping people with disabilities and assisting people from the most impoverished countries in the world—nothing inward-looking, nothing introspective. I managed to get two Acts of Parliament on the statute book covering both the subjects I have mentioned, and I believe that both Acts were to the advantage of the whole of the UK.
Those twin factors are at the heart of my activity, and will continue to be so. In other words, lines on maps do not excite me at all. I do not judge people or their plight by where they live. Many people have no choice in where or how they are born and are not tempted by the ideological Disneyland of the Scottish National party. I abhor the jingoistic mentality that peddles the myth of a Scottish solution for this, or an English solution for that. Time and again in the House, we have seen that the best solutions are those that are in the interest of the whole of the UK.
I do not accept the politics of parochial arrogance, but I worry that Scotland is moving towards that, with the police becoming one authority, likewise the fire services, and the statement from a member of the Scottish Government this week about reducing the already rather small number of Scottish local authorities. I much prefer to take a more international perspective on these matters, and I am much more inclined to the view expressed by former President Bill Clinton:
“The world has become completely interdependent, but we can’t make up our minds what that interdependence is going to look like. Interdependence simply means you can’t get a divorce”.
Time does not allow me to develop the theme, but I think it is fundamentally true.
In 2010, the British people spoke and, like it or not, we have in place a coalition Government. Upon their election, the coalition Government narrative was that the economic mess was all Labour’s fault. It has to be said that that line was successful for a short period, but with the passage of time and increased borrowing, to an extent we have hardly ever known, no one now believes it to be true. Economies throughout Europe are on their knees, and our constituents can see on their television screens public demonstrations in countries where Governments are implementing severe austerity measures. The question is not how many countries are struggling financially; it might be easier to name countries that are not.
Why then am I against Scotland seeking a divorce from the United Kingdom? I am against it mainly for economic reasons, but there are other reasons that, if time allows, I will explain. One third of newly created manufacturing jobs in the UK have been created in Scotland recently. UK firms employ one in five Scottish workers. Scottish exports to countries outside the UK had a value of £22 billion. Scottish exports to England, Wales and Northern Ireland totalled £44.9 billion. The Scottish banking sector was saved by the UK and the decisions of the former Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling).
Leaving one economic union of 63 million to join one of 330 million and expecting an equivalent say in monetary policy is an absurd notion, while a race to the bottom with Ireland when it comes to corporation tax rates does not fill me with optimism—quite the reverse. Likewise, relying on oil when we have experienced 12 consecutive years of decline in the amount of gas and oil extracted from the North sea is not wise. It is a dwindling resource, not a foundation for the future.
Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend is making an exceptional and passionate case for economic co-operation within the United Kingdom. Does he share my concern that, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility, by 2040 we will see an elevenfold decline in oil and gas revenues? Does that not demonstrate why, if we are to diversify the economy, we should do it from a position of strength within the UK?
Mr Clarke
That is an excellent point, and I am delighted that my hon. Friend makes it.
Last weekend, I was in a town centre of my constituency talking to my constituents and listening to their views, mainly on independence. I am bound to say that my experience was clear and unequivocal: there is no appetite in Scotland for a referendum, and people are curious to know why, if we insist on having one, we have to wait until 2014. They are worried about issues of concern to this House: unemployment, food prices, energy prices, petrol prices and much more. People are struggling to cope financially, and for many a referendum is a complete and utter waste of time and money, but that is the reality we face, so let us have the debate. Economies all over the globe are struggling with the worldwide downturn, so let us not pretend it is happening only in the UK. Of course some people want independence, and they are entitled to that view—I respect it, but disagree profoundly with them. When I visit schools in my constituency, I find that some pupils want independence, but the vast majority do not want to separate Scotland from the United Kingdom.
Mr Frank Roy (Motherwell and Wishaw) (Lab)
When my right hon. Friend was out on the streets of Coatbridge on Saturday, how many people came up to him and said, “I would like an independent Scotland to join Schengen and to have the euro as my currency”?
Mr Clarke
My hon. Friend makes a good point. I cannot remember anyone saying that. I remember what I would describe as a great surge among my constituents against independence and them telling me to get down here and fight what they are opposed to: separatism.
Still talking about young people, I recently visited Cardinal Newman school in Bellshill—an important part of Scotland, represented by my hon. Friend and I —and spoke to a modern studies class. At the end, I asked about a subject that we did not touch on in our earlier discussion. I asked, “How many people here would reduce the voting age to 16 for the referendum?” Eight voted for, 22 voted against. I hope that the independent Electoral Commission will decide such matters, not those who have abused powers whenever they have had the opportunity.
Jim McGovern (Dundee West) (Lab)
I recently visited a secondary school in my constituency. Quite a few pupils in the fourth and fifth years said it seemed crazy to them that in November they could not buy a packet of sparklers, but that they might be allowed to vote on the future of the country.
Mr Clarke
That is an interesting point and I am glad my hon. Friend has made it.
I am no different from the constituents I have described. In the last Parliament—my hon. Friends will not be surprised that I am raising this issue—I worked with my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), now the shadow Chancellor. Our joint activity produced £340 million to help children with disabilities throughout the United Kingdom. Scotland’s share was £34 million, but none of the money was ever seen by children with disabilities. Sadly, children with disabilities did not receive one penny of the cash. It became known as the missing millions. Obfuscation was the response from the First Minster to questions posed by Wendy Alexander and Johann Lamont. The First Minster was given every opportunity to come clean on what had happened to the money. I wrote to him and asked for a meeting. He replied that he was too busy and his diary too full, but he passed my office on at least six occasions on his way to and from a neighbouring by-election, and I passed him on the stairs when he was down here voting against the Labour Government.
That was a shocking and disgraceful decision by a Scottish Government led by Mr Salmond. Indeed, that high-handed imperious attitude cast a doubt in my mind about whether the First Minister could ever be trusted as the leader of a country. In the last few years the SNP has attempted to define Scottish patriotism to the outside world—a patriotism that in their hands is simple to the point of being simple minded, self-loving to the point of being self-deceiving, and nostalgic to the point of being destructively naive. I have greater faith that the people of Scotland have a great sense of what is right and what is wrong, and will vote accordingly when the time comes.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. In order to try to accommodate everyone who wants to take part in this debate, I am changing the time limit to seven minutes. Depending on how long each speaker takes, it might be necessary to revise it again downwards before the end of the debate.
Mr Frank Doran (Aberdeen North) (Lab)
Our debates on Scottish issues are often tribal, so I was not surprised by the comments of the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) or the degree of fundamentalism he showed in his speech, although I was surprised at his arrogance and his assumption that after an independence referendum the Scottish people would enter some sort of nirvana. That is not quite consistent with our history at any time I can recall.
The way the hon. Gentleman approached the whole issue underlines one of the major problems with this debate: the lack of fact. If we look ahead at what sort of country an independent Scotland might be—and we need to, because that is one of the things that anyone taking the referendum seriously would want to know—we can see what the various sides of the argument are presenting us with. What the Scottish Government are presenting us with at the moment is: “We’ll keep the monarch”, “We’ll keep the pound sterling”—perhaps—“and the Bank of England as our central bank”, and “We’ll remain part of the EU,” although that is still an open question. I was quite taken by what Mr Barroso—in effect, the chief executive of the European Union, who should know a thing or two about these things—said about an independent Scotland having to reapply. Mr Salmond leapt to his feet and said, “No we won’t. I know better.” That is basically the way all this has proceeded.
We are not being presented with facts; as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Anas Sarwar) said, they are assertions. I would be a wee bit kinder than that: they might be aspirations, but they are more likely the product of politicians who want to remove difficult issues from the agenda before the referendum. We would see a very different Scotland afterwards if it were outside the EU, forced to create its own central bank and introduce a new currency. I mention the currency because the only other similar experience that I am aware of is when the Czech Republic and Slovakia split. I think it was the Czech Prime Minister who said that they had agreed to keep the same currency, but within a matter of weeks that decision was changed and a new currency had to be created. I cannot see a Scotland in the same situation being any different, even if I believed that that was the intention. However, what we know so far—about the monarch, the pound sterling, the Bank of England as the reserve bank and being part of the EU—does not sound very much like independence to me.
Mr Doran
The hon. Gentleman has intervened many times and thereby had more than 10 minutes already. I would rather make my own contribution to the debate.
It is important that we have facts. One area where that is most important is the economy of an independent Scotland. It is quite clear from all their forecasts that the current Scottish Government would rely heavily on North sea oil revenues. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain) has already made the point from the Front Bench, but I want to give a bit more detail, because it is extremely important that accurate facts are readily available. The first point to consider about the oil and gas industry is just how volatile these commodities are. Prices can rise or fall very quickly. I am old enough to remember in the 1980s when the oil price went from $32 a barrel to $8 a barrel virtually overnight. We lost more than 50,000 jobs in the north-east of Scotland when that happened. An independent country would have found it difficult to survive that event. Unless we are talking about a prosperous middle eastern country with no resources other than oil, it is very dangerous to rely on oil and gas for the economy.
We have to look at the research. The most accurate and trusted UK commentator on the oil and gas industry is Professor Alec Kemp of Aberdeen university. For decades, he and his colleague Linda Stephen have studied the UK oil and gas industry, and their regular reports are respected and accepted throughout the industry. The most recent report looks at the prospects for activity on the UK continental shelf following the recent oil tax changes. The report is very detailed and considers the prospects for oil and gas production in the next 30 years in the UK sector. In the last two years production has declined, partly because of the tax changes in the 2010 Budget, but also as a result of the large increase in unplanned shutdowns. That has had an almost immediate effect on the amount of revenue coming into the Exchequer. Also, the North sea infrastructure is very old, and there has been a large number of unplanned shutdowns.
The report details scenarios in which the oil price is $70 a barrel, and the gas price 40p a therm. The potential number of fields in production in 2042— 30 years from now—will fall from 300 to about 60. In that same scenario, oil and gas equivalent production would fall from today’s level of about 1.8 million to 584,000 barrels a day. That is at a price of $70 dollars a barrel and 40p a therm. At a price of $90 dollars and 55p, production would fall from 1.8 million barrels of oil equivalent a day to 520,000. Most of the money and energy would go into decommissioning the North sea platforms that were being rendered redundant, and I do not think it appropriate for a new country to build its economy around the destruction of its most productive industry. We need to see many more such facts on the table before anyone can make a serious decision about what is best for our country.
John Robertson (Glasgow North West) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran). The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) talked about how, come independence, the Scots would be able to walk tall. I have been to Perth, and I have not noticed anyone walking with their head bowed of late. I know plenty of Scots who walk tall. Scotland walks tall; it is only little-minded people who do not.
“Scotland and the Union” is the title of our debate today. There would be no Union without Scotland. Scotland and England came together to form the Union under the two Crowns more than 300 years ago, and we have moved on since then. Who would have thought that, 300 years on, we would be having a debate and a referendum on how we might split ourselves up after all this time? The Scots have defended the Union with their lives and with their labour for centuries. We have led battles on the battlefield, and we have led in science and technology. The Scots not only pull their weight; they over-pull their weight. As a nation, we walk tall and we hold our heads high. Scots are known throughout the world for that. There are probably more Scots outside Scotland than in it, and as we get further away from home, we often get more nationalistic, with a small n.
I have great concerns about the way in which Scotland is being governed at the moment. It has a majority Government, but there is no scrutiny of any of the Bills that the Government pass or of any of the work they do. They have a committee system that is very similar to our own Select Committee system. In our system, when a Member joins a Select Committee, they do so not as a member of a party. Their job is to scrutinise the Government or the people who are running the industry of our country. We do not do that with any party bias. In Scotland, however, there is no scrutiny. The Committees are being run with a party bias. Whatever happens, the Scottish National party is right and everyone else is wrong. Any amendments that are tabled to a Bill are automatically shouted down.
The bullying by the Scottish Government that seems to be going on is an absolute disgrace. People are being threatened, and companies are told that if they do not do as they are told, they will not get contracts. That is no way to run a country. It is certainly no way to run an independent country. I have great fears about that, and we should look seriously at how the scrutiny of Government Bills is carried out in Scotland.
It will be no surprise to anyone that I also want to mention shipbuilding. Shipbuilding on the Clyde has sustained Scotland for centuries. When the tobacco trade first started up, the development of shipbuilding on the Clyde created employment and made Glasgow the second biggest city in the empire. That would never have happened if we had not been part of the British empire and of Great Britain. We led then, and I believe that, in many ways, we lead now. The Type 45 destroyer is the best ship of its kind anywhere in the world. It is envied by the Americans, by the Russians and by anyone who has any idea of what a destroyer should look like. It is a cut above everything else.
We would not have those ships without the decision by the British Government to build them. If the last Labour Government had not secured the procurement of those ships, the Clyde would now be closed. I have absolutely no doubt that, under independence, the Clyde would close almost the next day, and that 3,500 jobs would be lost—
John Robertson
Not this side of hell freezing over!
The Scottish Government want to sell thousands of jobs, and there would be no more ships on the Clyde. I am a Glaswegian. I am Scottish, but I am probably a Glaswegian before anything else. I am also British and proud of it. I want people to vote in the referendum. I want us to get through it so that Scotland can get back to where it should be. When we have voted down the proposal for independence, we need to give serious consideration to how the governing is being done in the Scottish Parliament. I believe that the threatening and bullying, and the lack of scrutiny of Bills, needs to be looked at seriously. Those are the most important things.
In the short time I have left, I also want to mention the cost of separation. There would be a cost not only to Scotland but to the United Kingdom. I have tabled a parliamentary question to various Departments to ask how much it would cost simply to re-badge everything from the day of independence. How many millions of pounds would it cost not only the people of Scotland but the people of England, Wales and Northern Ireland? How much would every single taxpayer have to pay? And there would be further costs when jobs were lost as the companies that are threatening to move out did so. Just this week, BAE Systems was threatening to do that. Scotland is better together with the United Kingdom, and I have no doubt that we will remain one of the leading countries of the world.
Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes) (Lab)
It is a great privilege to contribute to the debate after so many fine contributions from right hon. and hon. Members. I echo the sentiments of those on both sides of the House who have said that they are intensely proud to be Scottish or to have Scottish ancestry, but also to be British and to be citizens of the United Kingdom. I, too, fervently hold those joint allegiances. I would also say to the Scottish National party that it does not have a monopoly on care, passion and wisdom when it comes to the future of Scotland, and I do not believe its assertions about the land of milk and honey that it plans to create.
Lindsay Roy
No, I am sorry; I want to make progress.
Like most in this Chamber, I am ambitious for Scotland and for the United Kingdom. I agree that, with a strong Scottish Parliament within the UK, we have the best of both worlds. I have always believed that there is a better choice for the future than divorce, secession and separation. I want to illustrate that through an aspect of Scottish life that is dear to our hearts—namely, sporting activity.
As an avid football fan, I have supported the Scottish team for many years, although I do not go back 140 years to the 0-0 draw. I would like to remind the House, however, of the 3-2 victory at Wembley in 1967. Just after England’s famous victory in the World cup, we beat them and, as a result, claimed our share of the Jules Rimet trophy. I have also suffered the trials and tribulations of a 5-1 defeat at Wembley, and vividly remember on the way back home the sign on the back of the bus on the M6 saying, “You couldnae make it 6”!
In football and rugby, we have a strong tradition of Scottish teams representing us on the world stage. Times are tough, and I dearly wish that our football and rugby performances were better at the present time, but we support our teams passionately through thick and thin. However, is it not ironic that many of the players exhibiting such passion for their national team, who live outwith Scotland but give their all for their chosen country, will not be able to vote in the forthcoming referendum. They are good enough to play for their chosen country, but are not allowed to vote on Scotland’s future. That applies to many people who support Scotland vigorously, too.
While in some sports we have full decision-making powers to select our own national teams on the world scene in football and rugby, in others we have Scottish representatives who make selections for UK teams. Nowhere was that more visible than the recent UK-held Olympics, and indeed the Paralympics, where we pooled our human resources and facilities to produce the best UK performance ever, with 55 out of 542 participants from Scotland taking part in 21 out of the 26 Olympic sports.
Did we not do well together and did not the Scots make an outstanding contribution to that success? There were individual golds for Sir Chris Hoy and Andy Murray, and an individual silver to Michael Jamieson— three individual highlights in a glittering array of success stories. Overall, team UK collectively won 65 individual awards at gold, silver and bronze. The sum total of medals for Scotland, however, was not three, but 14, as Scots teamed up with colleagues across the UK to achieve outstanding results, taking on the best that the world could offer—and winning!
What more apposite illustration could we have to sum up Better Together? Without the combined resources across the UK, 11 Scots would not have won these coveted Olympic medals. Scots were integral parts of team UK, and there was a collective passion and team spirit to work together, sharing training and coaching as well as facilities to produce the best Olympic results ever.
Some of our SNP colleagues have jumped on the bandwagon of UK success. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), where I was brought up, proudly stated:
“Britishness is one of our many identities and one that will be forever cherished in an independent Scotland.”
Yet the same hon. Gentleman has been recorded as saying:
“I do not even know what Britishness is”.—[Official Report, 12 November 2008; Vol. 482, c. 307WH.]
Well, we do, and the Scots know of the many benefits that accrue from being British. This has been well illustrated so far in this debate across all aspects of British life. I am confident that on referendum day, the Scots will continue to see that things are best when we pull together and work with our neighbours, so we can spread the risks and share the rewards. I believe that Scots will see, as in our sports development, that we can still have the best of both worlds—teams representing Scotland, but participation in UK teams, too.
Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is not acceptable that our heroes from Scotland and Team GB, who had to train throughout the UK because we did not have the facilities and support ready in Scotland, not only cannot live in Scotland, but will not have a vote in this important referendum in 2014?
Lindsay Roy
I agree wholeheartedly, as that was exactly the point I made earlier.
To conclude, we remain stronger and better together, sometimes as rivals but always, I trust, in the spirit of partnership and fair play.
Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)
I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) and my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Graeme Morrice) on managing to secure the debate.
The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) often paints a bleak picture of my homeland in this place. It took him nine minutes to get to that point today, but I simply do not recognise what he is talking about when he speaks of a downtrodden nation seeking freedom. As a shadow Defence Minister, let me concentrate on defence and the defence of the nation as a whole.
We are right in saying that Scots are rightly proud of our brave servicemen and women and the work they do across the world to keep us all safe. The British armed forces are the best and bravest in the world, and Scotland and the Scottish people are an integral part of that.
The decision facing all Scots in the 2014 referendum is, in fact, a stark one: to continue to be part of the British Army, the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force and benefit from that safety and security, or to leave these services and go out on our own. After all we have been through together as a nation, why would we now want to go our separate ways and break away from the British armed forces?
As well as the pride we feel in our armed forces and services, there are huge economic and employment benefits that Scotland’s leaving the UK would put at significant risk. There are 18,000 people employed in Scotland as either service personnel or Ministry of Defence civilian staff, with thousands more employed in the private sector as contractors and partners throughout Scotland.
Mr Brown
I am not giving way.
Scotland’s largest work place is Her Majesty’s naval base on the Clyde, employing 6,500 people, and there is a work force 4,500 strong at the shipyards in Glasgow and Rosyth. Our shipbuilding industry and the jobs Scots have had in these yards for generations rely on the MOD for work. Scotland has a world-class defence industry and it is best protected by Scotland remaining in the UK. A separate Scotland would not be able to take advantage of UK contracts. About 40% of those UK defence contracts are non-competitively tendered within the UK; this means that they could not be extended to an independent Scotland. There would be no incentive for the remaining parts of the UK to outsource defence contracts to Scotland. For example, the Type 26 global combat ship is due to go into construction the year after the referendum, and the MOD has made it absolutely clear—a Defence Minister has said it twice here—that this contract will be open only to UK-based companies. We benefit from an MOD budget of £35 billion a year—the fourth largest in the world. The SNP has stated that an independent Scottish Government would commit to an annual defence budget of around £2.5 billion. This means that if a separate Scotland became part of NATO, it would have one of the lowest defence spends of any NATO country, at exactly the same time as our country would face massive transitional and new set-up costs.
Professor Malcolm Chalmers, research director of the Royal United Services Institute, has said that the size of the Scottish defence procurement budget would be “pretty limited”, and he warns that much of Scotland’s defence industry would migrate southwards.
The defence of our nation is of paramount importance, and it is hard to comprehend why the SNP, a political party predicated on separating Scotland from the UK, cannot answer some of the most basic questions about what defence policy in an independent Scotland would look like. [Interruption.] If there had been enough time and we did not have two votes ahead of us, perhaps SNP Members could have assisted us today by painting a picture of what the military might of a separate Scotland would look like. For the Army, how many regulars would there be, and how many reservists? Keeping in mind the fact that Scotland is surrounded by water on three sides, are we correct in assuming that Scotland would have a navy, and what would its strength be? Could we afford an air force? Would our military be in place to defend our borders, or would we be an expeditionary force?
Mr Brown
I am not giving way, because I am coming to my conclusion before we hear the winding-up speeches.
There is a positive case for Scotland to remain part of the United Kingdom. No one doubts that our country is capable of being independent, but why should we want to lose all those advantages? At a time of immense and fast-evolving challenges throughout the world, with a plethora of security threats on the horizon, why on earth should we want to devote time and money to dividing our resources north and south of the border? We should be working together, throughout Britain, to remain vigilant against the constant threat of terrorism, combat the growing risk of cyber-crime, and prepare for the long-term security risks posed by climate change. Focusing on the defence of our nation, rather than plunging our country into uncertainty by splitting from the rest of the UK, is in Scotland’s national interest.
Like so many other issues, defence highlights the strength of a Britain that works in co-operation. We are stronger, safer, and better together.
Margaret Curran (Glasgow East) (Lab)
Let me begin by paying tribute to the members of the Backbench Business Committee, and thanking them for enabling us to debate this important matter. We have had an excellent debate. I particularly appreciated the speech of the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing), which demonstrated the warmth that Scots encounter throughout the rest of the United Kingdom, and the powerful speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Graeme Morrice), who advanced clear economic arguments to demonstrate why Scotland works well when partnered with other nations in the UK.
On the eve of St Andrew’s day, it is important for us to bear in mind that the UK Parliament is Scotland’s Parliament too. We have an opportunity to recognise the best that we have in Scotland and celebrate it, to pay tribute to our public sector service workers, and to appreciate the industry and effort that make Scotland so great in the cities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen and, of course, many other places.
We should also be pleased that Scotland is performing so significantly in the arts, in which I have a particular interest. As Vicky Featherstone leaves the great National Theatre of Scotland that she did so much to establish and goes to the Royal Court theatre, we mourn her loss and remember the contribution that she has made, but we are very proud that she is doing so well in England.
What has been said today has clearly demonstrated the national pride that so many of us have in the great country of Scotland, but it also makes an important point that I hope will be remembered as we continue the debate on the referendum, namely that pride and patriotism in Scotland do not belong to a single political party. The national flag and our other symbols belong to us all. They do not belong to one person, or to one party. I hope that just because some of us disagree with the idea of separation, we will not be attacked for being anti-Scottish, and that such remarks are a thing of the past.
Madam Deputy Presiding Officer—sorry, wrong Parliament! Many apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am about to pay tribute to the work of the Scottish Parliament, which may be why I made that mistake.
Let me begin by paying tribute to the late Member of Parliament for Glasgow, Anniesland, Donald Dewar, the first of Scotland’s First Ministers, who, in his inaugural address to the Parliament, spoke of
“a new voice in the land”,
the voice of a democratic Parliament. Many of us were honoured to serve in that Parliament, which has proved to be very effective and strongly supported by the Scottish people.
However, my argument, and the argument of the Labour party, has been and always will be that we are a party of devolution and believe in the great strength of devolution, but we are not a party of separation. We did not undertake our long, hard fight for devolution because we were obsessed with one constitutional arrangement over another; it was born out of a desire to see our system of government work in a way that would enhance the lives of people in the communities that we served. We saw the areas of life in which a Scottish Parliament could achieve more, but we also understood that, in the tradition of trade unionists and social reformers, the needs of the people could sometimes be met by our working together. A strong Scotland benefits the whole United Kingdom: that is the central theme of today’s debate. We can achieve more together than we can apart.
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
The benefits of our remaining together are also demonstrated in the field of research in some of the world-class universities in Scotland. My own constituency contains universities that receive massive amounts of UK funding. That would clearly not be possible if we were separated. The academic sector provides another example of how well we can work together, and how much we would lose through separation.
Margaret Curran
I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. I shall say more about that subject later. I think that many of the institutions that we share would lose a great deal if they were broken up, and academics are now beginning to flag up that concern themselves.
The motion that we are discussing draws attention to the great contribution that Scotland has made to the development of the Union. We can be both proudly Scottish and British. As many Members have pointed out, that was demonstrated during the Olympic and Paralympic games in the summer. We saw clear evidence of a modern, multicultural Britain that forward-looking Scottish people can be part of and proud of. As a small island made up of distinctive nations, we can and should work together to ensure that opportunity is given to everyone.
The institutions we have built up throughout the UK bear testimony to the work that we have undertaken in these islands together. As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Anas Sarwar), the NHS was established by a Welshman, to the benefit of the whole UK. The welfare state was devised and implemented by an Englishman, to the benefit of the whole UK. The Labour party itself was established by a Scotsman working in an English, and then a Welsh, constituency, again—in my view—to the benefit of the whole UK.
There is another form of union that operates throughout Britain and has grown out of shared British experience: the trade union movement of the United Kingdom, which symbolises the act of working together to improve and enhance the rights of working people. On the eve of St Andrew’s day, we should acknowledge all the work of the trade unions in Scotland—along with their friends in Wales and England—to improve the conditions of working people throughout our countries. I would not want to put that at risk as we move towards separation.
Together, we created throughout Britain the institutions that were needed to meet the challenges of the time, from the trade unions to the welfare state to the Scottish Parliament and, indeed, the Welsh and Irish national Assemblies. Now we must again look to the challenges of the modern time, and look at the paths that lie before us. Do we continue with devolution, as a strong Scotland in partnership with the United Kingdom, or do we opt for separation—for pulling away from our allies? The threats posed by the latter option have been described in detail during the debate.
The debate about the future of Scotland is now well under way. If the past few months are anything to go by, it will certainly be a lively debate: the Scottish people will expect nothing less. As things stand, however, we face a raft of unanswered questions about the prospect of separation. I am told that Dundee university called its academic study of independence “Five Million Questions”. Let me focus on just one or two of those questions.
Before a decision is made on the future of Scotland, the Scots making that decision require more detail in the debate. What will separation mean for Scottish mortgages or Scottish interest rates? What will happen to our pensions, and what about our family tax credits? How can we avoid a race to the bottom when it comes to levels of tax, wages and financial support? Those are the real questions that will determine the outcome of the referendum, and which really concern citizens, families, trade unions and businesses. However, I have to say that the SNP has so far failed to confront and failed to answer them.
Scotland has a better future. We are only beginning to see the promise of devolution which Labour Members put into practice, and which we want to see continue and flourish in Scotland. Scotland can be a strong partner, working within a strong United Kingdom. That is the case that we will continue to argue—and make no mistake: if Scots vote for separation, it will be the end of devolution. We will make the case for Britain with passion and energy.
This debate has highlighted the great strength of Scotland and the great strength of the Union, and what has been achieved by that. We have heard the history of how we have shared the risks and rewards, the resources and the opportunities. We must continue to do so in the future. This is not just about the successes of the past; it is about our prospects for the future. A time of increasing interdependence in the world is not a time for narrow nationalism, but a time for us to work better together for a stronger Scotland and a stronger Union.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (David Mundell)
May I begin by passing my best wishes and those of the Secretary of State to the hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie)? We wish him a speedy recovery. That is the only matter on which there is likely to be agreement with the SNP this afternoon.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) on securing the debate. She is a proud Scot, as is my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart). I entirely repudiate the sentiment implicit in the comments of the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), that somehow only supporters of the nationalist cause can care about Scotland, be proud of Scotland, or make the case for Scotland. That is absolutely not the case.
Pete Wishart
I never made any such claim; everybody here is a proud Scot, and I said no such thing. The SNP has managed to get just one 10-minute speech in a three-hour debate. We have heard one side of the case—[Interruption.] We should have more time. [Interruption.] Even now I am being shouted down. Surely in this debate the SNP should have got more time than we have been allowed today.
David Mundell
I am not an expert on procedure, but I understand this debate is being curtailed because the SNP is going to force two Divisions. That is simply a stunt, and those of us who are involved in Scottish politics are very familiar with the SNP preferring to pull stunts than talk about the issues of the day.
I particularly want to thank the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds) for his excellent speech. It is heartening to hear Members from other parts of the United Kingdom state how much importance they place on Scotland remaining in the UK. As he said, the whole of the United Kingdom would be the poorer if Scotland left.
In 2014, people in Scotland will face their most important political decision in 300 years. A vote for independence in the referendum of that year is not just for Christmas 2014; it is for life. As the motion states:
“Scotland has always made, and continues to make, a significant contribution to the UK over the 305 years of the Union”.
The Government believe that Scotland is stronger within the United Kingdom, which Scotland helped to shape, as the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (John Robertson) said, but we also recognise that the biggest constitutional question of all needs to be settled once and for all. That is why Scotland’s two Governments worked together constructively to reach an agreement on the referendum process. Regardless of the result, that constructive relationship will of course continue as we move forward. That does not mean that in the unlikely event of a yes vote, the remaining UK would facilitate Scotland’s every wish, any more than an independent Scotland would unquestioningly facilitate the wishes of the remaining UK. Inevitably—although some have sought to deny it today—there would be two separate countries and therefore two sets of interests, sometimes mutual, sometimes at odds, as is currently the case with our closest international allies and as will always be the case between separate, sovereign states.
The SNP likes to talk about partnership and about neighbours working together. These days, it even likes to talk about us all being British, even though the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire told us previously he did not know what Britishness was and had never felt British in his life. You couldn’t make it up, but the SNP does. As the hon. Member for Glasgow North West highlighted, the SNP amendment even pretends that it can wrench Scotland out of the UK and nothing will have changed. Do not be fooled: working together is what the United Kingdom is all about, but the SNP wants to break it up. Partnership is what the United Kingdom is all about, but the SNP wants to rip it up. If Scotland votes for independence in 2014, it will leave the United Kingdom—leave all that we have achieved together over the past 300 years and all that we will continue to achieve by remaining together.
Gregg McClymont
The credibility of the First Minister has been a central issue in this debate. What does the Minister make of Justice Leveson’s finding on the First Minister’s attempt to lobby on behalf of Sky and the possibility that that might have rendered the Government’s decision on the Sky issue unlawful?
David Mundell
I do not find that surprising. On several recent occasions the First Minister has been brought before the Scottish Parliament to explain things he has said that have been found to be untrue.
By putting together the various aspects of the debate—the economics, the international influence question, the fact that we Scots helped to make this United Kingdom —we get a compelling case for Scotland remaining in the UK, and many Members have made that case today. The UK Government are looking forward to making the positive case for Scotland within the United Kingdom. Today we have shown why twice as many Scots want to remain in the UK than support independence. They are people who know the difference between patriotism and nationalism; people who know, as the hon. Member for Glasgow East (Margaret Curran) said, that the saltire is a symbol of our nation, not of nationalism; people who know that being Scottish and British is not a contradiction but is the best of both worlds, whereas the SNP wants to take our Britishness away from us; people who know that Scotland helps put the “Great” into Great Britain and make our Kingdom united—
David Mundell
People such as the hon. Gentleman, who I am sure will contribute positively to the debate.
Mark Lazarowicz
Yesterday I had the privilege to attend the launch of the green investment bank in Edinburgh. It is supported by all parties, including the SNP, and it is a wonderful example of the UK working together. It is the UK green investment bank, and it is hard to see how it could have been headquartered in Edinburgh if Edinburgh had been in a separate state.
David Mundell
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point about the positive benefits that flow to Scotland from remaining part of the UK, and about the positive benefits the UK gets from Scotland’s expertise in financial services, which was one of the key reasons that led to the green investment bank being headquartered in Edinburgh.
This has been a heated debate, as such debates always are, for the topic is very important to the people of Scotland and the people of the rest of the United Kingdom. I believe that people, including me, who know in their bones that we are better together will deliver the result Scotland and the United Kingdom want in the referendum in 2014. We do not fear the debate to come; we welcome it—and we would have liked this afternoon’s debate to have been a little longer, rather than its being curtailed by having two meaningless votes.
Mrs Laing
I thank the Minister and the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Glasgow East (Margaret Curran), for their excellent summing up of this good and lively debate. As the argument is advanced in the country as a whole over the next two years, it will be won in the hearts as well as the heads of the people—not only the people who will have the privilege of a vote, but everyone else, who will take part in the debate and have their voices heard throughout the whole of our United Kingdom.
Mrs Laing
The hon. Gentleman did not take a single intervention from anyone and I have one minute to speak. He has said more than enough. He said that the word “separation” is chilling to him; it is chilling to me, too, and to everyone who believes that we are better together as a United Kingdom.
As far as heads are concerned, we have heard some good facts and figures this afternoon, and I hope that they will be repeated over and again so that people with a vote in the referendum understand the reality of what separation would mean for Scotland and the whole United Kingdom. As far as hearts are concerned, I turn, as ever, to Robert Burns, who wrote in the most powerful verse of his excellent poem “The Dumfries Volunteers”:
“O, let us not, like snarling tykes,
In wrangling be divided,
Till, slap! come in a unco loun,
And wi’ a rung decide it!
Be Britain still to Britain true,
Amang oursels united!
For never but by British hands
Maun British wrangs be righted!”
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Leveson Inquiry
(11 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on today’s report from Lord Justice Leveson. As we consider the report, we should consider the victims. We should remember how the parents of Milly Dowler, at their most vulnerable moment, had their daughter’s phone hacked and were followed and photographed, how Christopher Jefferies’ reputation was destroyed by false accusations, how the mother of Madeleine McCann, Kate, had her private diary printed without her permission and how she and her husband were falsely accused of keeping their daughter’s body in their freezer. These victims, and many other innocent people who have never sought the limelight, have suffered in a way that we can barely begin to imagine.
That is why last summer I asked Lord Justice Leveson to lead an independent inquiry. It had the power to see any document and summon any witness to be examined under oath by a barrister in public. It has been, as Lord Justice Leveson says,
“the most public and the most concentrated look at the press that this country has seen.”
I would like to thank Lord Justice Leveson and his entire team for the work they have undertaken.
Lord Justice Leveson makes findings and recommendations in three areas: on the relationship between the press and the police; on the relationship between the press and politicians; and on the relationship between the press and the public. Let me take each in turn.
First, on the press and the police, Lord Justice Leveson makes it clear that he does not find a basis for challenging the integrity of the police, but he does raise a number of areas that he felt were a cause for public concern, such as tip-offs, off-the-record briefings and, more broadly, “excessive proximity” between the press and the police. He makes a number of recommendations, including: national guidance on appropriate gifts and hospitality; record-keeping of contact between very senior police officers and journalists; and a 12-month “cooling-off” period for senior police officers being employed by the press. These recommendations are designed to break the perception of an excessively cosy relationship between the press and the police, and we support them.
When I set up the inquiry, I also said that there would be a second part to investigate wrongdoing in the press and the police, including the conduct of the first police investigation. That second stage cannot go ahead until the current criminal proceedings have concluded, but we remain committed to the inquiry as it was first established.
Next, on the relationship between politicians and the media, as Lord Justice Leveson has found,
“over the last 30-35 years and probably much longer, the political parties of UK national Government and of UK official Opposition, have had or developed too close a relationship with the press in a way which has not been in the public interest.”
I made that point last summer when I set up the inquiry, and at the same time I set in train reforms to improve transparency. We are the first Government ever to publish details of meetings between senior politicians and proprietors, editors or senior executives, as Lord Justice Leveson recommends in his report. He also recommends disclosing further information on the overall level of interaction between politicians and the press. That would apply to all parties, and on the Government’s behalf I can say that we accept the recommendation.
During the course of the inquiry a number of serious allegations were made. I want to deal with them directly. First, it was alleged that my party struck a deal with News International. That allegation was repeated again and again on the Floor of this House and at the inquiry itself. Lord Justice Leveson looked at this in detail and rejected the allegation emphatically. Let me read his conclusion:
“The evidence does not, of course, establish anything resembling a ‘deal’ whereby News International’s support was traded for the expectation of policy favours.”
Those who repeatedly made these allegations, including Members of this House and the former Prime Minister, should now acknowledge that they were wrong.
Secondly, it was alleged that I gave my right hon. Friend, the then Culture Secretary, now the Health Secretary, the responsibility of handling the BSkyB bid in order to fix the outcome. Lord Justice Leveson states clearly that
“the evidence does not begin to support a conclusion that the choice of Mr Hunt was the product of improper media pressure...still less an attempt to guarantee a particular outcome to the process”—
another allegation repeatedly made, and again shown to be wrong.
Thirdly, there was the criticism that the then Culture Secretary had rigged the handling of the BSkyB bid. Again, today’s report rejects that as well. My right hon. Friend, it says,
“put in place robust systems to ensure that the remaining stages of the bid would be handled with fairness, impartiality and transparency”.
Indeed, Lord Justice Leveson goes further, concluding that my right hon. Friend’s
“extensive reliance on external advice...was a wise and effective means of helping him to keep to the statutory test”.
He concludes that
“there is no credible evidence of actual bias”.
Of course, as my right hon. Friend has said, there are lessons to learn about how quasi-judicial decisions are made, and we must learn those lessons. But let me say this: my right hon. Friend, now the Health Secretary, has endured a stream of allegations with great dignity. This report confirms something that we on this side of the House knew all along—we were right to stand by him. Let me also say this: Lord Justice Leveson finds in respect of my right hon. Friend the Business Secretary that he
“acted with scrupulous care and impartiality”.
Next, and most important of all, let me turn to what Lord Justice Leveson says about the relationship between the press and the public. As he says very clearly, even after 16 months of this inquiry, he remains
“firmly of the belief that the British press—all of it—serves the country very well for the vast majority of the time.”
But on the culture, practices and ethics of some in the press, his words are very stark. He finds that
“there have been too many times when, chasing the story, parts of the press have acted as if its own code, which it wrote, simply did not exist.”
He cites
“press behaviour that, at times, can only be described as outrageous.”
He catalogues a number of examples of such behaviour, going wider than phone hacking. He refers to
“a recklessness in prioritising sensational stories, almost irrespective of the harm that the stories may cause and the rights of those who would be affected”.
He finds that
“when the story is just too big and the public appetite too great, there has been significant and reckless disregard for accuracy.”
And he reports
“a cultural tendency within parts of the press vigorously to resist or dismiss complainants almost as a matter of course.”
In a free society, the press are subject to criminal law, civil law and requirements for data protection, but there should be a proper regulatory system as well to ensure that standards are upheld, complaints are heard, and there is proper redress for those who have been wronged. That is what the current system should have delivered. It has not. As Lord Justice Leveson says, the Press Complaints Commission is
“neither a regulator, nor fit for purpose to fulfil that responsibility.”
That is why changes are urgently needed. We welcome the fact that the press industry itself has put forward its own proposals for a new system of regulation, but we agree with Lord Justice Leveson that these proposals do not yet go far enough.
In volume IV of the report, Lord Justice Leveson sets out proposals for independent self-regulation organised by the media. He details the key “requirements” that an independent self-regulatory body should meet, including independence of appointments and funding, a standards code, an arbitration service, and a speedy complaint-handling mechanism. Crucially, it must have the power to demand up-front, prominent apologies and impose up to million-pound fines. These are the Leveson principles. They are the central recommendations of the report. If they can be put in place, we truly will have a regulatory system that delivers public confidence, justice for the victims, and a step change in the way the press is regulated in our country. I accept these principles, and I hope that the whole House will come in behind them. The onus should now be on the press to implement them—and implement them radically.
In support of this, Lord Justice Leveson makes some important proposals. First, he proposes some changes to the Data Protection Act that would reduce the special treatment that journalists are afforded when dealing with personal data. We must consider this very carefully, particularly the impact that it could have on investigative journalism. Although I have been able to make only preliminary investigations about that proposal since reading the report, I am instinctively concerned about it.
Secondly, Lord Leveson proposes changes to establish a system of incentives for each newspaper to take part in the system of independent regulation. I agree that there should be incentives and believe that those he sets out, such as the award of costs and exemplary damages in litigation, could be effective. He goes on to propose legislation that would help to deliver those incentives and, crucially, that would provide
“an independent process to recognise the new self-regulatory body”.
That would, he says,
“reassure the public that the basic requirements of independence and effectiveness were met and continue to be met.”
I have some serious concerns and misgivings on that recommendation. They break down into issues of principle, practicality and necessity.
The issue of principle is that, for the first time, we would have crossed the Rubicon of writing elements of press regulation into the law of the land. We should be wary of any legislation that has the potential to infringe free speech and a free press. In this House, which has been a bulwark of democracy for centuries, we should think very, very carefully before crossing that line.
On the grounds of practicality, no matter how simple the intention of the new law, the legislation required to underpin the regulatory body would be more complicated. Paragraphs 71 and 72 of the executive summary begin to set out what would be needed in the legislation, which would, for example, validate the standards code and recognise the powers of the new body. Page 1772 in volume IV of the full report says that the new law
“must identify those legitimate requirements and provide a mechanism to recognise and certify that a new body meets them.”
The danger is that that would create a vehicle for politicians, whether today or some time in the future, to impose regulation and obligations on the press—something that Lord Justice Leveson himself wishes to avoid.
Thirdly, on the grounds of necessity, I am not convinced at this stage that statute is necessary to achieve Lord Justice Leveson’s objectives. I believe that there may be alternative options for putting in place incentives, providing reassurance to the public and ensuring that the Leveson principles of regulation are put in place. Those options should be explored.
These questions, including those about data protection, are fundamental questions that we must resolve. I have therefore invited the Deputy Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition to join me in cross-party talks, starting immediately after this statement. But let me be clear: a regulatory system that complies with the Leveson principles should be put in place rapidly. I favour giving the press a limited period of time in which to do that. They do not need to wait for all the other elements of Lord Justice Leveson’s report to be implemented. While no one wants to see full statutory regulation, let me stress that the status quo is not an option. Be in no doubt: we should be determined to see Lord Justice Leveson’s principles implemented.
There is much that we in this country can be proud of: the oldest democracy in the world; freedom of speech; a free press; frank and healthy public debate. But this report lays bare that the system of press regulation that we have is badly broken and has let down victims badly. Our responsibility is to fix it. The task for us now is to build a new system of press regulation that supports our great traditions of investigative journalism and free speech, that protects the rights of the vulnerable and the innocent, and that commands the confidence of the whole country. I commend this statement to the House.
Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)
May I start by thanking the Prime Minister for his statement? May I say straight away that in the days and weeks ahead I will seek to convince him and this House of Commons that we should put our faith in the recommendations of Lord Justice Leveson that were delivered to us today? I am sorry that the Prime Minister is not yet there, but I hope to convince him over the days ahead that that is where we should go. We should put our trust in Lord Justice Leveson’s recommendations.
Let me begin by paying tribute to and thanking Lord Justice Leveson and his team for the painstaking, impartial and comprehensive way in which they conducted the inquiry. I thank Lord Justice Leveson for the clarity with which he has explained his report today.
Most of all, I want to join the Prime Minister in paying tribute to the innocent victims who gave evidence to the inquiry: people who did not seek to be in the public eye, who suffered deep loss and grief, and who then faced further trauma at the hands of the press. It is easy to forget, but without the revelations last July about what happened to Bob and Sally Dowler, and to their daughter, and their courage in speaking out, we would not be here today. Gerry and Kate McCann suffered so much and showed much courage. Kate McCann, whose daughter remains missing, saw her private diary published by the News of the World for the sake of a story. Those people gave evidence to the inquiry to serve the wider public interest, and I am sure the whole House pays tribute to their courage. They must be at the forefront of our minds today.
Much has been written about the reasons for this inquiry. A free press is essential to a functioning democracy, and the press must be able to hold the powerful—especially us politicians—to account without fear or favour. That is part of the character of our country. At the same time, however, I do not want to live in a country where innocent families such as the McCanns and the Dowlers can see their lives torn apart simply for the sake of profit, and where powerful interests in the press know they will not be held to account. This is about the character of our country.
It turns out that there never was just one “rogue reporter”. Lord Justice Leveson concludes that a whole range of practices, from phone hacking to covert surveillance, harassment and other wrongful behaviour were widespread and in breach of the code by which the press was supposed to abide. I recognise the many decent people who work for our country’s newspapers, and not every newspaper did wrong. However, Lord Justice Leveson concludes that
“it is argued that these are aberrations and do not reflect on the culture, practices or ethics of the press as a whole. I wholly reject this analysis.”
That will not come as a surprise to many people, including Members of this House. Lord Justice Leveson also concludes that there has been by politicians
“a persistent failure to respond...to public concern about the culture, practices and ethics of the press”.
We must all take responsibility for that, and the publication of this report marks the moment we must put that right by upholding the freedom of the press and guaranteeing protection and redress for the citizen. As the Prime Minister himself rightly said at the Leveson inquiry:
“If the families like the Dowlers feel this has really changed the way they would have been treated, we would have done our job properly.”
I agree.
Let us be clear about Lord Justice Leveson’s proposals, why they differ from the present system, and why I believe they should be accepted in their entirety. He proposes:
“A genuinely independent regulator, with effective powers to protect and provide redress for the victims of abuse.”
He also gives responsibility for establishing that system to the press, as now. That is why statute is important.
Lord Justice Leveson provides a crucial new guarantee that we have never had before. He recommends that the media regulator, Ofcom, ensure that any system that is established passes the test we would all want applied—that it is truly independent and provides effective protection for people such as the McCanns and the Dowlers. To make that guarantee real, he recommends that both Ofcom’s role and the criteria of independence and effectiveness be set out in statute—a law of this Parliament. That is why we can get to truly independent regulation of the press, guaranteed by law.
I believe that Lord Justice Leveson’s proposals are measured, reasonable and proportionate, and Labour Members unequivocally endorse the principles set out and his central recommendations. We support the view that Ofcom is the right body for the task of recognition of the new regulator, and the proposal that the House should lay the role of Ofcom down in statute. We endorse the proposal that the criteria any new regulatory body must meet should be set out in statute. Without that, there cannot be the change we need. Lord Justice Leveson is 100% clear on that in his report.
Lord Justice Leveson has, I believe, made every effort to meet the concerns of the industry. Some people will say that this report does not go far enough or that the reforms will not work because the press will not co-operate. I believe that the press has a major responsibility to come forward and show it will co-operate with this system—a comprehensive reform of the kind proposed by Lord Justice Leveson.
Lord Justice Leveson also says that if we cannot achieve a comprehensive system involving all major newspapers, we should go to the necessary alternative: direct statutory regulation. I believe that Lord Justice Leveson has genuinely listened to what the press has said, and acted with the utmost responsibility. Editors and proprietors should now do the same. I believe that Lord Justice Leveson has genuinely listened to what the press has said and acted with the utmost responsibility. Editors and proprietors should now do the same.
Let me also say—the Prime Minister did not touch on this—that Lord Justice Leveson also reaches important conclusions on the need to prevent too much influence in the media from ending up in one pair of hands. He proposes that there should be continuous scrutiny of the degree of media plurality and a lower cap than that currently provided by competition law. When the Prime Minister gets up to reply, will he take that forward?
As the Prime Minister said, Lord Justice Leveson makes specific suggestions on greater transparency on meetings and contacts between politicians and the press. He says that that should be considered as an immediate need. I agree, and endorse the proposals, as the Prime Minister did.
I welcome the Prime Minister’s offer of immediate cross-party talks on the implementation of the recommendations, and I am grateful for the conversations we have already had, but the talks must be about implementing the recommendations, not whether we implement them. In the talks, I want to agree a swift timetable for the implementation of the proposals. I want us to agree to legislate in the next Session of Parliament, starting in May 2013, and to have a new system up and running by the end of this Parliament—meaning 2015 at the latest. By the end of January next year, we should have an opportunity—the Opposition will make this happen if necessary—for the House to endorse and proceed with the Leveson proposals.
We should and we can move forward together—wholeheartedly, now. We have 70 years and seven reports that have gone nowhere. Now is the time to act. Let me remind the House what David Waddington, then Home Secretary, said 20 years ago:
“This is positively the last chance for the industry to establish an effective non-statutory system of regulation”.—[Official Report, 21 June 1990; Vol. 174, c. 1126.]
The case is compelling and the evidence is overwhelming. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make change that the public can trust. There can be no more last-chance saloons.
In acting, let us remember the words of Bob and Sally Dowler at Leveson:
“there is nothing that can rectify the damage that has been done to our family. All that we can hope for is a positive outcome from this Inquiry so that other families are not affected in the way we have been”.
On behalf of every decent British citizen who wants protection for people such as the Dowlers and a truly free press—a press that can expose abuse of power without abusing its own—we must act.
The Prime Minister
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his response. He is absolutely right to thank Leveson for the work he has done and the report he has produced. The right hon. Gentleman is also right to talk about the innocent victims and the enormous courage they have shown by appearing in front of the inquiry and telling their stories. He was also right to mention Leveson’s finding that all politicians, going back over decades, must take responsibility for a relationship between politicians and the press that got too close.
Let me make a couple of points on some of the things the right hon. Gentleman said. I note he said he strongly supports Ofcom carrying out the test of whether the regulatory system is compliant. That is something we need to look at in the cross-party discussions, because, however we go about this, it is important that we demonstrate the real independence of this regulatory system. Of course, the chair of Ofcom is appointed by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. We have to think about that, but we also have to consider that Ofcom is already a very powerful regulatory body. We should be trying to reduce concentrations of power rather than increase them. That is something we might want to discuss.
One issue the right hon. Gentleman did not address—I hope we can address it in the cross-party conversations—is data protection law changes. We should not respond too rapidly to something as complex as that. We do not want to put in place something that wrecks proper investigative journalism in our country.
On statutory regulation, I would make the point to the right hon. Gentleman that Leveson rightly rejects statutory regulation and says that we must move from the status quo and implement the principles of the report. I agree—that is absolutely vital. We do not want to be left in the position of having only statutory regulation as the alternative to the proposals he sets out. I completely agree with the right hon. Gentleman that the talks should be business-like and that we should get on with them, but where I disagree with him is that we do not have to wait until those discussions are had to implement the report. The report needs to be implemented by the press taking the steps set out in the report to put in place the independent regulation that Leveson speaks about. They could start that right now.
Mr Speaker
Order. There is much interest, which I am keen to accommodate. I exhort colleagues please to help me to help them by asking short questions without preamble. I know the Prime Minister will oblige, as ever, with pithy replies.
Sir Peter Tapsell (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)
Did Lord Justice Leveson make any comments on the proprietorship of newspapers? Surely, one factor in the depression of press standards is that some owners of national newspapers have been bad men and sometimes foreigners with an ingrained hostility towards Britain, and their editors know that they can keep their jobs only by achieving the required levels of readership and advertising revenue by populist sensationalism, however immoral. Should ownership of British newspapers be confined to British nationals who are judged to be fit and proper for that role, as with television?
The Prime Minister
The report goes into enormous detail about the history and ownership of the press. Part of one of the volumes goes into immense detail, which my right hon. Friend can study, and perhaps that is the best answer to him. This point was raised by the Leader of the Opposition. Lord Justice Leveson does address concerns about plurality and media ownership and does say we need to make sure there is more plurality than would otherwise be guaranteed simply by competition policy. That is important, because we want to have not just a vigorous press, but a press that is in different—in wide—ownership as well.
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
Does the Prime Minister not, however, appreciate that the argument made by Lord Leveson is not, as he says, for statutory regulation, which is not there, but to enforce and give backing to the proposals of the press? The fundamental flaw with the proposals of the press, as Lord Leveson clearly sets out, is not their intention, which I acknowledge is now an honourable one, but that it is impossible to deliver the independence proposed by the press themselves and the enforcement—for example, not least on penalties on legal costs—without some overarching form of statutory backing? It is not regulation—it is statutory backing. I plead with the Prime Minister to recognise the force of the argument, not that I am making, but that Lord Leveson makes.
The Prime Minister
The right hon. Gentleman is entirely right that Lord Justice Leveson is not recommending statutory regulation of the press. He wants to take steps so that we avoid statutory regulation of the press—I fully respect that. But in answer to his point, the system Lord Justice Leveson recommends is not a compulsory system. It does not guarantee that everyone takes part; it is still a voluntary system. Where we are in complete agreement is that Lord Justice Leveson does not want statutory regulation—neither do I. Lord Justice Leveson wants strong, independent regulation—that is what I want. He sets out the principles of strong, independent regulation—that is what we have got to put in place, and that is what the press should start to put in place straight away.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)
The central requirement is a press complaints procedure that will not only be fully independent, but will restore public confidence. I ask the Prime Minister to look very objectively at whether an Act of Parliament would indeed enhance that credibility. I refer him in particular to paragraph 72 of the executive summary of the report, where Lord Leveson states that an Act of Parliament would
“reassure the public that the basic requirements of independence and effectiveness were met and continued to be met”.
I believe that that is a very powerful argument, and I ask my right hon. Friend to consider it with all force.
The Prime Minister
My right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right—paragraphs 70, 71 and 72 are the absolutely key paragraphs of the report. But let me explain why I have misgivings about leaping straight to that conclusion. Once we start writing a piece of legislation that backs up an independent regulator, we have to write into that legislation what is its composition, what are its powers, what is its make-up, and we find pretty soon—I would worry—that we have a piece of law that really is a piece of press regulatory law. Now, that is an enormous step for us in this House of Commons to take, and we have to think about it very carefully before we leap into this new approach.
Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
Does the Prime Minister not accept that, if he wants people to accept the report’s recommendations and conclusions generally, particularly the ones he likes, he cannot pick and choose, but should accept all the recommendations?
The Prime Minister
This is where I part company with the right hon. Gentleman: it is the job of the House of Commons to consider a report and what is right for this country to introduce. I highlighted the changes to the Data Protection Act because I was advised that they could have a serious effect on investigative journalism. It would be quite wrong, if we received a report of this magnitude and said in five minutes flat, “We’re going to implement every last piece of it”, without considering the consequences. A responsible Government will think about the consequences. I am absolutely clear, however, that the clear principles of Leveson-style regulation—on what the independent press regulator needs—are right.
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
Is the Prime Minister as clear as I am, reading paragraphs 70 to 76, that Lord Justice Leveson makes two things absolutely central—that there should not be legislation to establish a body to regulate the press, but that
“it is essential that there should be legislation to underpin the independent self-regulatory system”?
The word “essential” is a clear word. Does he accept it?
The Prime Minister
This is absolutely the key argument that has to be had in our cross-party discussions. Lord Leveson is saying that the statutory underpinning is necessary properly to give effect to this independent body. Of course, he intends it to be a very neat, very small piece of statute, but paragraph 71, for instance, states that the law would not
“give any rights to these entities…except insofar as it would require the recognised self-regulatory body to have the power to direct the placement and prominence or corrections and apologies.”
Once we try—and we have tried it—writing a law that provides for statutory underpinning that describes what the regulatory authority does, what powers it has and how it is made up, we soon find we have quite a big piece of law. That is the concern. We need to think very carefully before crossing that Rubicon.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
How, without the statutory underpinning that Lord Leveson says is essential, does the Prime Minister think a new body could prevent a newspaper group simply from walking away or ignoring the new body’s findings?
The Prime Minister
Lord Leveson does not himself have an answer to the question of what happens if a newspaper walks away. His system is a voluntary system, so the same question applies to his system too.
Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is now almost universal agreement that we must have a strong new regulator, that it must be seen to be independent and that it must be established as quickly as possible? I strongly welcome his statement, however, that the question of whether the regulator should have statutory underpinning is something that Parliament needs to consider carefully, perhaps through a regular assessment of its effectiveness by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, and that we should proceed to legislate only if it becomes absolutely clear that it will not function properly without it.
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes an important point. He has probably spent more time looking at this issue than almost any other Member of the House of Commons. As he said, what matters is the enormous consensus about what independent regulation should consist of, including the powers that are necessary. We all know we need million-pound fines, proper investigations, editors held to account and prominent apologies. That is what victims deserve and what we must put in place, but he is right that we need to think carefully before we pass legislation in the House.
Dame Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
In his responses so far, the Prime Minister is splitting the House. This is not what the public expect of us. It would be a dereliction of our duty as politicians if we did not establish the legal framework recommended by Lord Leveson, and I ask him to reconsider his position.
The Prime Minister
I think it would be a dereliction of our duty in the House of Commons, which has stood up for freedom and a free press, year after year, century after century, to cross the Rubicon by legislating on the press without thinking about it carefully first. That is why it is right to have cross-party talks, why it is right to have a debate in the House and why it is right to listen to people such as the Chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
May I for one welcome wholeheartedly the Prime Minister’s caution about using statute in this matter? I remind him that it was not a policeman, a regulator or even a judge who highlighted the hacking scandal; it was a member of our free press. As such, one of our highest priorities is to ensure that whatever we do preserves the independence and freedom of our press from Government intervention, because that is the best bastion of our freedoms.
The Prime Minister
My right hon. Friend makes an important point. We have to get this right. It is very important that the regulation is put in place rapidly. That above all is the pressure that needs to be put on the media, but it is an important step we should consider before moving to statutory regulation.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
We cannot forget the victims in all this: the Dowler family, the McCann family, Christopher Jefferies and the other innocent victims who have suffered terribly. We absolutely support the absolute freedom of the press—there can be no statutory regulation of the press—but there needs to be proper redress for those who are wronged. The Prime Minister says he wants to think again about Leveson’s recommendations on statutory legislation. He talks about alternative options. Can he give us a flavour of what those options might be? There is a feeling among some that this may be more to do with party management than really dealing with the problems.
The Prime Minister
There is a variety of opinions right across the House. We have to be frank about this. I think it is important to consider the very big step of effectively passing statute on the press in this country. There are many independent non-statutory bodies in this country of very long standing. The real test is not whether this body is backed by statute or not; the real test is: can it fine newspapers? Can it call editors to account? Can it get front-page apologies? That is what people want to know and that is what we need to deliver.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
Does the Prime Minister accept that what we need is a rational and balanced approach to this, not an hysterical one? We are not being asked by Leveson to cross a Rubicon—barely even a brook. Perhaps the Prime Minister ought to consider the fact that the Irish system—Leveson proposes something similar—is already signed up to by The Times, the Daily Mail and The Sun.
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes an important point. I have got the Irish Defamation Act of 2009 in front of me. It runs to many, many pages, setting out many, many powers of the Irish Press Council. It is worth Members of the House studying the Irish situation and asking whether we want to have legislation of that extent on our statute book—which of course could then be amended at any moment, by any politician at any future point. That is an important consideration.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Interests—but that is rather the point: we all share an interest in this. Lord Leveson reserves his strongest condemnation for the political class in this country, because he believes that over years—because we have been too compromised, too craven or too cowardly—we have refused to act. We now have an independent figure telling us what to do. Surely if we do not do what he says, which is to provide a change in the law, there will be more Millie Dowlers, and that will be our fault.
The Prime Minister
I would also argue that one of the other problems with the political class is never saying sorry when they get it wrong. On 13 November 2012, the hon. Gentleman spoke about the
“deal…secured between the Conservative party and News International”.—[Official Report, 13 November 2012; Vol. 32, c. 553WH.]
We have heard not a word of regret from him. What matters most about this is putting in place a regulatory system that can make the victims proud. That is what is necessary. The fines, the apologies, the proper investigations—that needs to be done and it can be done right away.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement today. There is a lot in the Leveson report that is to be welcomed. I share my right hon. Friend’s caution, but does not another important part of the evidence presented by Lord Leveson show that some of the smears against my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Mr Hunt) were absolutely outrageous, including the Leader of the Opposition saying that he was a back channel for Murdoch?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Time after time we were told that my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Mr Hunt) was backing the bid, not adjudicating on the bid. All sorts of allegations and smears were made. It is important that colleagues can read the report and see that he took the right decisions in the right way.
Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
I declare an interest as someone who was a Fleet street staff journalist for 10 years. As such, I am instinctively opposed to statutory regulation of the press. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that if that Rubicon, as he says, is not to be crossed, it will be up to the press to accept the recommendations of Leveson, to do that in full, to do that fast and to do that with all the proprietors involved? What happens next will of course be a matter for this House and the political parties, but above all it is a matter for the press.
The Prime Minister
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The pressure should be on the press to take the steps that everybody now knows are necessary and that are set out in huge detail in the report. That is the best way to avoid the statutory regulation that Leveson does not want to see, that no one in this House should want to see, and that would make our country less free. He speaks very clearly about that issue.
Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)
After two and a half years of working closely with the former Culture Secretary, I know him to be a man of the highest integrity. Does the Prime Minister think that the Labour party should apologise in this House for making disgraceful and unfounded accusations which the Leveson report shows to be absolutely false?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes an important point. We had to listen to allegation after allegation, conspiracy after conspiracy, smear after smear. Each one is put to bed comprehensively by the report.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I welcome the report and I accept all its conclusions. May I also welcome the Prime Minister’s commitment to part 2 of the inquiry? I accept that we have to wait for the outcome of the criminal investigations, but the operations being conducted by the Metropolitan police, including Operation Weeting, could take up to three years to conclude. Will he give a commitment today to give them whatever resources they need to conclude the matter once and for all?
The Prime Minister
The right hon. Gentleman is entirely right. One of the things that the victims have been most concerned about is that part 2 of the investigation should go ahead—because of the concerns about that first police investigation and about improper relationships between journalists and police officers. It is right that it should go ahead, and that is fully our intention.
Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)
The two scandals that gave rise to this inquiry were phone hacking and bribing the police, both of which are against the criminal law. Now, some 90 arrests have been made. Strangely, however, Lord Leveson concludes:
“More rigorous application of the criminal law…does not and will not provide the solution.”
Instead he goes off on building proposals for what would ultimately be statutorily underpinned regulation, which is largely irrelevant to what has happened. I congratulate my right hon. Friend on not going down that route, as that would not solve the problems that gave rise to the inquiry.
The Prime Minister
I am grateful for my right hon. Friend’s support. I would, however, make the point that, while the press must always act within the law—it is subject to the criminal law, the civil law and the laws on data protection, and that is vitally important—there is also a role for strong, independent regulation. Those victims should not have had to wait for action through civil litigation, and they should not have had to wait until the criminal actions were taken. A proper regulatory system could have protected more of those people and prevented many more of them from becoming victims in the first place.
Angus Robertson (Moray) (SNP)
The Prime Minister will be aware that many of the aspects of any future press regulation, and related features such as criminal prosecution, defamation and policing, are devolved matters in Scotland. Will he take this opportunity to welcome the proposal by the First Minister that, in addition to a full debate on this question in the Scottish Parliament, there should be cross-party discussions and an independent implementation group, chaired by a Court of Session judge, which should consider how best to implement Lord Leveson’s proposals in the context of Scots law and the devolved responsibilities of the Scottish Parliament?
The Prime Minister
I will look carefully at what the First Minister says and at the proposals that he is making in this area. I also recommend that the hon. Gentleman have a look at what the report says about the First Minister.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that we cannot simply farm out these important decisions, along with a blank cheque, to someone who is wholly unelected and unaccountable? Does he further agree that having the Government say to the press, “These are the specific steps that we need you to take; otherwise, we will either legislate or regulate” is a pretty rum form of self-regulation?
The Prime Minister
I agree with some of what my hon. Friend says, but it is important that we lay down very clearly what is expected of the press in terms of the independent regulatory system that needs to be put in place. What we cannot have is a continuation of the status quo; we need a proper investigative arm of a regulatory body, which needs to be able to levy fines, to insist on apologies and to be far more independent than it has been up to now. Frankly, on behalf of the victims and the public, this House is perfectly entitled to ask for those things. We should do, and if they were not put in place, we would have to take further action. That is the key to the Leveson approach, and it is one that I want to follow.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
I wonder whether we could achieve consensus on one of the recommendations in the report, where Leveson recommends the consideration by proprietors of the introduction of a conscience clause to protect journalists who refuse in any way to go against the code of practice. Will the Prime Minister join me in urging proprietors to meet the National Union of Journalists and whoever else to start working on introducing a conscience clause in contracts?
The Prime Minister
I am very happy to agree to that. There are many sensible recommendations that can be put into place, I would hope, as quickly as possible—some of the recommendations about the police and the Association of Chief Police Officers, and many of the recommendations about politicians and our relationship with the press. Those do not have to wait for anything, and as I have said, the press do not have to wait for any further discussions; they can start putting this regulation in place straight away.
Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)
One of Lord Leveson’s recommendations is that we should legislate to introduce
“a legal duty on the government to protect the freedom of the press”.
Does my right hon. Friend agree that such a Bill would be utterly alien to our traditions in this country? Will he join me in encouraging Lords Hunt and Black to look at the Leveson recommendations, to see if there are things within them that they could add to their recommendations, and to get on with the job so that we can restore robust confidence in a free press that is the cornerstone of a free society?
The Prime Minister
Frankly, I think we have to be tougher on Hunt and Black than that. We need to say very clearly that what has been proposed so far is progress on the Press Complaints Commission, but that it is not good enough. We need more changes; the public want more changes; the victims want more changes. It is not yet the sort of independent regulation that we can say is right or of which we can be proud. Leveson points out the weaknesses in the system, and we need to plug those gaps. The press needs to plug those gaps, and as I say, there is nothing to stop it getting on with that straight away.
Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)
Does the Prime Minister believe that the press should be able to appoint or veto the appointment of the chairman of the press regulator? Many of his colleagues and a handful of colleagues in my party signed up to that model, with closed minds, even before Leveson reported.
The Prime Minister
One of the points that Leveson makes about the Hunt-Black model is that it needs to be more independent. The Press Complaints Commission was ineffective not only in not being able to investigate or in not having clear enough powers; it was not independent enough. This form of regulation needs to be independent regulation, as set out by Leveson.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
The Prime Minister began his statement by praising the courage of the victims of press intrusion. Does he also respect the wishes of those victims about the outcome of this inquiry?
The Prime Minister
Yes, of course. What is absolutely vital is that we put in place a regulatory system that they can see has got real teeth. They want to know that it is independent; they want to know that it can achieve big fines; they want to know that it can call editors to account. We could, of course, completely obsess about the issue of statutory underpinning. That is one issue; there are many other issues about what makes for good, strong, robust and independent regulation. That is what we should focus on.
Mr John Denham (Southampton, Itchen) (Lab)
The Prime Minister has asked the House to reject Leveson’s central and essential recommendation of legislation on the grounds, he says, that it would be too difficult to do well. Would it not have shown more respect for the work of Lord Leveson and for the victims for the Prime Minister to have sat down on a cross-party basis to examine how the recommendations in paragraph 70 could be implemented, instead of rejecting them within 24 hours of receiving the report?
The Prime Minister
I have great respect for the right hon. Gentleman, but I do not think that that is right at all. The central recommendation of Lord Leveson is to put in place the principles of independent regulation so as to avoid statutory regulation. Frankly, I do not think I would be doing my duty if I came to the House and said that every single aspect is absolutely fine without any changes. I am proud of the fact that we have managed to last for hundreds of years in this country without statutory regulation or mention of the press. If we can continue with that, we should. That seems the minimum that this House of Commons should consider in defending the freedom of our country.
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
The Prime Minister rightly started with the victims, many of whom were victims of the News of the World. We should bear it in mind that the News of the World no longer exists, and that not all newspapers are like the News of the World. I am thinking of, for example, my local paper, the Worcester News, and the Malvern Gazette.
What paragraph 135 of the executive summary effectively says is that, in the constituency of Witney, were the Prime Minister’s agent to have a personal dinner with someone who happened to work for the local paper, it would have to be recorded. What does the Prime Minister think of that particular recommendation?
The Prime Minister
Let me begin by responding to what my hon. Friend said first. In paragraph 19 of the summary, Lord Leveson makes a special point about Britain’s regional newspapers. He says that
“their contribution to local life is truly without parallel.”
He praises their role, and says how little they have been involved in the sort of damaging culture and practices to which the rest of the report refers.
As for my hon. Friend’s second point, we must look very carefully at the recommendations for increased transparency. I think, frankly, that transparency is important. The public want to know what is the relationship between politicians on the one hand and the press on the other. If they can see how often you are meeting and whom you meet, they can see whether you have a balanced, proper, sensible relationship with the press or not. We have put transparency in place. I hear murmurings from Labour Members, but in 13 years they did not do a single thing about it.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
Lord Justice Leveson is very clear about the importance of maintaining a plural media. Specifically, in paragraph 140 of the summary, he says:
“There is no current option for the Government or regulators to step in to protect plurality if it is threatened by organic change in the market.”
What plans has the Prime Minister to protect media plurality?
The Prime Minister
That is an excellent point, which was brought out in the debates when my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Mr Hunt) was Culture Secretary. We need to look at this very carefully, because there is a gap in the law: Ofcom can only consider problems of plurality at the time of a merger or takeover. I think that the recommendations make a lot of sense, and that we should study them carefully.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
The Prime Minister must be congratulated on his courage in not doing the popular thing, and standing up for the freedom of the press. Will he respond to one specific small point? He referred to how close the Government, and politicians, have got to the press. Will he give an assurance now that, from tomorrow, the Government will not leak statements to the press in advance?
The Prime Minister
I think that in the last week we have seen two notable successes in that regard. In two cases, there has not been a bat’s squeak outside the House of Commons. I refer to the announcement of the new Governor of the Bank of England, Mr Mark Carney, and to the report that was published today. There has been not a leak, not a sentence, not a word. How different things were in the past.
Mr Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)
Lord Leveson states that the selection of the key appointment panel which selects the chair and members of the crucial governing board should itself be independent of both the Government and the industry. Who would the Prime Minister expect to draw up a list of nominations, and who would make the final choice?
The Prime Minister
That is a very important question. In his report, Lord Justice Leveson gives a number of alternatives. He clearly prefers his model, but I think that the independence of those either judging an independent regulatory system or appointing people to it is absolutely vital. That is why I am concerned about the role that he puts forward for Ofcom. As I said earlier, the chair of Ofcom is appointed by the Secretary of State, and in my view that makes the two of them too close. In everything that we do, whether via legislation or by means of other backstops, we need to ensure that the people involved in this and the people judging this are properly independent.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
Before coming to this place, I spent 12 years working in regulatory compliance for BT. I remember the shockwave that went through the organisation when Ofcom told BT that it regarded it as a non-compliant company. After that, a culture of compliance swept through the organisation. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the press should regard this as their moment to ensure that a culture of compliance is brought into our press?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. That, I hope, started as the Leveson inquiry got under way. Some of the things that were revealed during the inquiry about practices and culture in parts of the press were deeply disturbing. I think that quite a lot has already been done to address those, and to clean up the press’s act, but clearly more needs to be done. As I have said, the Hunt-Black regulatory alternative is not sufficient; more needs to be done to ensure that this culture change is driven through the press itself.
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
Lord Justice Leveson suggests that this new body should have strong powers to investigate a suspected breach of the code. Many of our country’s best investigative journalists are freelancers, however, so will the Prime Minister carefully consider the potential impact of such investigations on individuals who do a great deal to shine a light on areas that others do not want illuminated, and will he ensure that this issue is discussed in cross-party talks?
The Prime Minister
The hon. Lady makes an important point, and I am sure it will be covered in cross-party negotiations. I will just make the point again about the concerns expressed to me about the potential reforms to the Data Protection Act. If we were to try to treat journalists exactly the same as everybody else for the purposes of data protection, I think newspapers, programmes such as “Panorama” and others would make very strong representations about what that could mean for investigative journalism. That shows why we must think carefully about some of these recommendations; otherwise we could get something badly wrong.
Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)
The Prime Minister extended the inquiry’s terms of reference in response to the Home Affairs Committee’s concern that the Crown Prosecution Service had got the law wrong on phone hacking. Does the Prime Minister recognise that there are lessons for the CPS even in part 1 of the report, since while it exonerates the Director of Public Prosecutions, it criticises David Perry QC for failing to reacquaint himself with the relevant facts in law before advising him?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes an important point. From what I have seen in the report, Lord Justice Leveson is relatively complimentary about the work of the CPS and the decisions it took, but some of its workings do bear careful study.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
The Prime Minister is on record as saying he would implement Leveson as long as it was not “bonkers”. It now appears that he regards Leveson’s recommendation of statutory underpinning as bonkers. Can the Prime Minister therefore explain why Lord Leveson said that was essential?
The Prime Minister
What I have said is that the principles set out by Leveson of what independent regulation needs to include and what it needs to look like are absolutely right and should be put in place, but, frankly, we do not do our duty in this House if we do not examine these proposals properly and ask the relevant questions, and instead just wave through a change that will make a very big difference to our country. If we were to do that, we would not be operating properly.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
One issue that arose is that data protection law is simply not taken seriously enough, because the sanctions are too light. The report recommends that sections 77 and 78 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 should be commenced. That has been recommended by the Justice Committee, the Home Affairs Committee and now Justice Leveson. Will the Prime Minister agree to do that promptly?
The Prime Minister
I think we need to look at this very carefully. Lord Justice Leveson is incredibly tough about what he sees as the failures to act on the Information Commissioner’s report. We need to look very carefully at that, as well as at my hon. Friend’s point.
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
Many of my constituents had grave concerns about the BSkyB takeover and the fact that it nearly happened. It did not happen, but not because of anything in our law or practices that would have stopped it. Will the Prime Minister undertake to act on that promptly?
The Prime Minister
On the issue of whether politicians should be taken out of media merger decisions, Lord Justice Leveson finds that that should not happen. He says this is an issue about which someone has to be the decision-maker, and he believes that a politician acting correctly in a quasi-judicial capacity is the right person. The findings about how my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Mr Hunt), the then Culture Secretary, acted bear good reading.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
The report’s executive summary makes it clear that
“successive Labour administrations, in power for 13 years…made no more progress than their predecessors in addressing problems in the culture, practices and ethics of the press”.
Does my right hon. Friend agree? Also, given all the noise the hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson) has produced on this topic, does my right hon. Friend share my surprise that he is not present in the Chamber?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes an important point. We have made more progress on addressing these issues in the last two and a half years than was made during the previous 13.
Simon Danczuk (Rochdale) (Lab)
Does the Prime Minister really, genuinely believe that the victims will be satisfied with his statement today?
The Prime Minister
What I would say to all the victims is that the true test of this is whether, in four or six months’ time, we have in place proper independent regulation that we can be proud of in this country. That, in the end, is the test and that is what they want to know about. Will there be fines? Will there be proper apologies? Will there be proper investigations? That is what defines independent regulation and that is what we need.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
The Prime Minister’s instinct against statutory regulation is absolutely right, but does he also accept that a key part of the problem is that many people in this country feel that they cannot gain access to justice because of a legal system that is too complex and too costly? What can the Government do to put that right?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is right. Access to justice is one of the issues that needs to be addressed. At the same time, as I have said before, it should not be that the only way to get redress from the press is to sue them or find a policeman because a law has been broken. There should be a proper, independent regulatory system where complaints can be investigated. With the Press Complaints Commission, people had a sense that even if they got their complaint investigated, nothing would actually happen. That is what needs to change because in my view just relying on the civil and criminal law is not enough.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
Lord Leveson says that he regrets that former Deputy Commissioner John Yates did not reflect on his close friendship with the deputy editor of the News of the World before he decided in 2009-10 not to reopen the hacking inquiries. Is not the great shock of this report the revelations of the very close relationships between press, police and politicians? What is the right hon. Gentleman going to do, personally and as a Prime Minister, to ensure that the corrosive effects of cronyism are reduced?
The Prime Minister
On the relationship between the press and politicians, this Government have taken unprecedented action to publicise and make transparent all the meetings between politicians and editors, and politicians and proprietors. All that is now declared on a quarterly basis and that is how it should be. That did not happen in the past. The report recommends that that should also apply between senior officers and members of the press and that, to try to end excessively close relationships, there should be a cooling-off period before police officers go and work for newspapers. Lord Leveson does address those issues. We have not waited for the report; we have gone on and put those things in place.
Angie Bray (Ealing Central and Acton) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that we may be missing something rather important this afternoon? More and more people are getting their news from digital media, which remains way outside any kind of regulation. It in many ways is going to be a longer-term threat to the health of our newspaper industry.
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes a good point. The issue is brought out in the early parts of this large, four-volume report, about the nature of change in the media industry. That does mean that we need to have a system of regulation for newspapers that is sensible and proportionate and recognises the change that is taking place.
Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)
The main concentration of power is, of course, in media and press ownership, which is made up of so few people. Does the Prime Minister agree with the 75% of people in opinion polls who want that concentration to be broken up? Does he believe that legislation is required to do that? Will he use the communications Bill, for example, to deal with some of the new media that have been referred to?
The Prime Minister
What matters is that we have the proper application of competition policy, that Ofcom is able to look at plurality and that we make decisions on that basis.
Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)
This afternoon, Lord Justice Leveson has called time at the last-chance saloon. I welcome his commitment to a free press and a regulator independent of both press and politicians. However, does the Prime Minister accept that for that to work effectively, a careful balance needs to be struck between incentives and disincentives so that all the press sign up?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend’s words are extremely wise. What Lord Justice Leveson has effectively said is, “Here is an opportunity to put in place independent regulation.” He says in the report that if that is not done, regrettably, full-on statutory regulation will have to be introduced because we cannot maintain the status quo. I think that that is the right approach. The only difference that I am putting forward is that, as well as putting in place these principles, we need to look very carefully at one or two of the recommendations that he makes about how that should be done.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
May I take the Prime Minister back to the multiplicity of media ownership and the extreme concentration in the hands of a very small number of companies of not only the print media, but the control of the distribution system of the print media, which often means that small-circulation papers cannot get to a wider public because of the stranglehold of the distribution system? That fetters the ability of all of us to access a wide variety of the press.
The Prime Minister
As I said, the press, like every other industry, should be fully subject to competition policy and fully competitive. I part company with the hon. Gentleman on one issue—because of the growth of the digital media, the costs of distributing opinion, fact and newspapers online have come radically down.
Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)
Does the Prime Minister agree that statutory underpinning in the wrong hands, possibly in the future, could lead to statutory regulation by the back door?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is right to raise this issue. The point I am making is that putting in place underpinning may well turn out to be not as simple as having a one or two-clause Bill. We would have to start defining what the body is, what the body does, what powers it has and what the extent of it is, rather as there is in the Irish system. Once we have done that, we would be in danger of finding that we have put in place a statutory Act on the press that is then very, very easy to amend. My point is that this House of Commons should pause, stop and think before taking a step of that magnitude.
Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
I would have some sympathy with the point the Prime Minister makes about the Data Protection Act if that was all Leveson said about that Act. However, he goes on to talk about creating a commission which would have a broader base, including people from the media. Does that not counterbalance some of the Prime Minister’s legitimate concerns about the Data Protection Act recommendations? Perhaps there is an argument for doing the same thing with Ofcom, too.
The Prime Minister
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s points. My reading of this is that what is being recommended is to stop some of the exemptions from data protection that journalists currently have but to put in place a public interest defence at the end. I am advised that that could have a very bad effect on investigative journalism. Again, I think that, instead of just waving through what could be a very profound change, it is worth stopping, talking and having cross-party discussions about this. That is why I do not think anyone, by rights, really can stand up today and say, “I accept the Leveson inquiry in full.” They would not be doing their duty as legislators and as politicians if they did not actually have a look at what this means.
John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)
Does the Prime Minister think that the Leader of the Opposition, in his enthusiasm for putting the Government in a strong position in respect of the regulator, forgot to call for the renaming of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport as the ministry of truth?
The Prime Minister
Well, we certainly have got a long way to the truth about the DCMS in this report, and I hope that colleagues will look at that very closely.
Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)
The Prime Minister will recall that my constituents the Watson family gave evidence to the inquiry that they have had their lives devastated for the past 21 years by grossly inaccurate reporting of the murder of their daughter Diane, reports that led to their son taking his own life. Do not they and the other victims deserve us, as parliamentarians, to put in place a powerful independent regulator whose role and functions are underpinned by statute?
The Prime Minister
I think that they, as all victims do, deserve a really tough, independent regulatory system that can really hold the press to account, that can fine those editors, that can call them to account, that can insist on proper apologies and that can take up complainants’ cases and deal with them properly. That is the absolute key. Of course there is a debate to be had about statutory underpinning, yes or no. But the real debate is: is this regulatory body going to be powerful enough to get to the truth and do what needs to be done?
George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)
The Defamation Bill is currently going through Parliament with the support of all parties and even of the press. Does the Prime Minister agree that this is a good example of successful statute being introduced by this House—perhaps the idea is not quite as revolutionary as he said? Does he think it is wrong for newspapers to support statutes which are in their interests but oppose statutes which might protect civil society? Just as he has an open mind to a regulatory model without statute, does he agree that editors should keep an open mind to using some statute?
The Prime Minister
I hope everyone will have an open mind as they read this report and the conclusions about some of the terrible things that have happened in the press, but above all what I want editors to do is engage properly with what Leveson has said needs to happen to the regulatory system. As I say, there is no need to wait for long conversations about that. He sets out what is wrong with Hunt-Black and what needs to be put in place. That work should start straight away.
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
The Opposition have called for genuine cross-party discussions. I note that the Secretary of State for Education does not appear to be in his seat, so will the Prime Minister confirm that there will be no smearing of Lord Leveson while those talks are taking place?
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. Particular attention should be paid to paragraphs 74 and 75 of the document, in which Lord Justice Leveson does not come to a specific conclusion about what to do if particular newspapers do not choose to sign up to any system of regulation. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is for this place to debate not only the principle of underpinning, which I support, but, for example, whether Ofcom is the most appropriate regulator or whether there should be a separate regulator for the print media?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes an important point, which is referred to in paragraph 75 of the summary document, but he needs then to go away and look at the bit of the very long report to which it refers. In paragraph 75, Lord Justice Leveson states:
“For the sake of completeness I have…set out in the Report the options that…would be open to the Government to pursue… in that regrettable event”—
that is, if the press do not agree to the principles of self-regulation. That would include pretty full-on statutory regulation, which is something we all want to avoid and Lord Leveson wants to avoid. Separately, my hon. Friend’s point about Ofcom is well made and I hope that the Leader of the Opposition will think carefully about that specific issue, because it requires further thought.
Gregg McClymont (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (Lab)
The Prime Minister alluded to what Lord Justice Leveson says about Alex Salmond’s attempt at intervention on behalf of Rupert Murdoch. Is he aware of Leveson’s conclusion that Mr Salmond
“stood ready to lobby first Dr Cable and later Mr Hunt”,
and that
“Acceding to Mr Salmond’s argument would have rendered the decision unlawful”?
The Prime Minister
I am afraid that in the time available I have not been able to get to that point—I think it is page 1312—but from memory, I would say that the issue with respect to the First Minister is that he was apparently having a conversation about the bid at the same time as asking for support at the election. The Scottish National party might want to reflect on that.
James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)
A free press is fundamental to a free society, but that freedom is dependent on a responsible press. Does the Prime Minister agree that self-regulation of the press has not had an auspicious history and that whatever conclusions are reached on independent regulation it should enshrine a new culture of responsibility in the British media?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is entirely right. What needs to take place is not just a change in regulation but a change in culture within the press. The whole Leveson report has rightly engendered a big debate in the press about the culture, the practices and what needs to change. That needs to happen, but we must also put in place the regulatory system.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Speaker. May I thank the Prime Minister for standing up for our ancient liberties and refer him to the rather ominous phrase on page 1781 of the report, which states:
“In order to give effect to those incentives I have recommended legislation”?
It is very hard to see how giving incentives by legislation is not licensing. Does the Prime Minister agree with me that it is better ultimately to have an irresponsible but free press than to have a responsible but state-controlled press?
The Prime Minister
First, may I commend my hon. Friend for his extraordinary powers of speed-reading in getting to page 1781 quite so quickly? He might also want to look at page 1780, which sets out the first part of the statutory underpinning recommended by Lord Justice Leveson, which is a guarantee of media freedom. It is an attractive idea to write a guarantee of media freedom into the law, but even that needs to be qualified. It is worth while looking at subsection 3 of the suggested example, which states:
“Interference with the activities of the media shall be lawful only insofar as it is for a legitimate purpose”.
We might start writing into the law qualifications and issues that people in this House might want to consider carefully.
Mr Speaker
I thank the Prime Minister and all colleagues for their succinctness, which meant that all 52 Back Benchers who wished to contribute in the 50 minutes of exclusively Back-Bench time were able to do so.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Under Standing Order No. 9 I would like to move a motion. The Prime Minister has given the Government statement. We are in a unique situation where it is proposed that there should be two Government statements. A similar occasion occurred in 1932, which was followed four days later by a vote of confidence in the Government.
Motion made, That this House do now adjourn.— (Mr Bone.)
Mr Speaker
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. His historical recollection of the events of 1932 is indeed faultless, but I know he will be interested in my reply to his point of order. He seeks to move the Adjournment of the House. He will be well aware, I feel certain, that under Standing Order No. 35 I have the power to put the Question immediately, to allow the motion to be debated, or not to accept the motion. I do not accept the motion and we will therefore proceed with the statement.
Leveson Inquiry
(11 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Nick Clegg)
I am grateful for the opportunity to make a further statement to the House. I know it is unusual, but this is an unusual debate.
The terms of reference for Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry were agreed on a cross-party basis and, as the House has heard, we intend to proceed on a cross-party basis, so it is right that Parliament is clear on the initial views of the whole coalition. I agree with much of what has already been said by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition concerning the principles of the Leveson report. That bodes well for the cross-party talks that are taking place for the first time later this afternoon, which in my view must establish an early and clear timetable for the decisions that we must take so that the momentum for action is not lost.
I thank Lord Justice Leveson for his extremely thorough report. There are two big liberal principles at play in this debate: on the one hand, the belief that a raucous and vigorous press is the lifeblood of a healthy democracy, and on the other, the belief that the vulnerable, the innocent and the weak should be protected from powerful vested interests. A free press does not mean a press that is free to bully innocent people or free to abuse grieving families.
What I want now is for us to strike a better balance between these two liberal principles so that our media can scrutinise the powers that be, but cannot destroy innocent lives; so that the journalists up in the Press Gallery can hold us, the politicians, to account, but we can look up to the individuals and families in the Public Gallery knowing that they have the right protections in place.
I have always said that I would support Lord Justice Leveson’s reforms, providing they are proportionate and workable. I will come on to why I believe that is the case as far as the report’s core proposal is concerned—namely, a tougher system of self-regulation, supported by new independent checks recognised in law. But I do not want to disguise the fact that I have some specific concerns about some specific recommendations—for example, on some of his ideas concerning data protection rules, and on the suggestion that it should be Ofcom which independently verifies the new press watchdog.
Ofcom has a key role in regulating the content of broadcast media. I am yet to be convinced that it is best placed to take on this new, light-touch function with the print media too. Lord Justice Leveson said in his report that this function could be fulfilled by a different body. However, on the basic model of a new self-regulatory body, established with a change to the law, in principle I believe this can be done in a proportionate and workable way. I understand the entirely legitimate reasons why some Members of the House are wary of using legislation. I myself have thought long and hard about this.
I am a liberal. I do not make laws for the sake of it, and certainly not when it comes to the press. Indeed, when I gave my own evidence to the inquiry, I made the point that if we could create a rigorous, independent system of regulation which covers all the major players without any changes to the law, of course we should consider that. But no one has yet come up with a way of doing that.
Lord Justice Leveson has considered these issues at length. He has found that changing the law is the only way to guarantee a system of self-regulation that seeks to cover all of the press. He explains why his proposed system of sticks and carrots has to be recognised in statute in order to be properly implemented by the courts. What is more, changing the law is the only way to give us all the assurance that the new regulator is not just independent for a few months or years, but is independent for good. Someone will need to check periodically that the independence of the regulator has not been weakened over time, and the report explains why that needs to be set out in law. As Lord Justice Leveson himself states,
“this is not, and cannot be characterised as, statutory regulation of the press”.
It is a voluntary system, based on incentives, with a guarantee of proper standards. It is not illiberal state regulation.
It is worth dwelling on that point for a moment, because although there has rightly been a lot of discussion about the risks of legislating, some key arguments have been missing from the debate so far. First, the press does not operate in some kind of lawless vacuum; it has to abide by the law. In many instances it is already protected by the law, and I agree with the report that we should go further in enshrining the freedom of the press in statute.
Secondly, it has been suggested that using law will blur the line between politicians and the media, but we must not ignore the extent to which that line has already been blurred under the current system of self-regulation. It is the status quo which has allowed such cosy relationships between political and media elites to arise in the first place. Let us not forget that of the five Press Complaints Commission chairs, three were serving parliamentarians who took a party whip. Far from allowing greater overlap, the laws that have been proposed give us a chance to create a hard wall between politics and the press.
Thirdly, as the report notes, there is already an example of statutory underpinning in the Irish Press Council, which has been accepted by a number of UK newspapers. The Daily Mail, the Daily Mirror, the Daily Star, The Sun, The Sunday Times, The Mail on Sunday and the Sunday Mirror are all members—they all publish Irish editions. I have not yet heard those papers complain of a deeply illiberal press environment across the Irish sea.
Of course, neither I nor anyone can be certain of exactly how the proposals will look until we have worked them up in detail. The two tests I have set—that any reforms must be workable and proportionate—will need to be met in practice as much as in principle. If they are not, I will be the first to sound the alarm. In that event, we would then need to consider how to make progress, because the absolute worst outcome in all this would be for nothing to happen at all.
We must not now prevaricate. I, like many people, am impatient for reform. Put bluntly, nothing I have seen so far in this debate suggests to me that we will find a better solution than the one that has been proposed; nor do I draw any hope from the repeated failure of pure self-regulation that we have seen over the past 60 years. We need to get on with this without delay. We owe it to the victims of these scandals, who have already waited too long for us to do the right thing—too long for an independent press watchdog in which they can put their trust. I am determined that we should not make them wait any more. I commend this statement to the House.
Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)
I thank the Deputy Prime Minister for his excellent statement. This is an unprecedented procedure, but it was important for him to make it as leader of his party. As he has said, our democracy needs, indeed depends upon, the existence of a free press, but a strong press must be a clean press. The wrongdoing brought shame on a press that has a great tradition and is admired around the world. That wrongdoing by the press brought misery to families who were already suffering. We heard the brave and harrowing evidence of the Dowlers and the McCanns. We often talk of walking a mile in someone’s shoes; none of us would want to walk even one step in theirs.
The Leveson proposals are to stop that happening again. Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree that they will strengthen the press by ensuring that it has the legitimacy—the moral authority—to hold power to account, and that by providing for a proper complaints system, they will protect individuals from abuse and unwarranted intrusion? We believe that the system Leveson proposes is independent both of politicians and of the press. We also believe that that can be achieved only by legislation on the basis Leveson proposes. Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree?
Will the Deputy Prime Minister commit to the timetable that the Leader of the Opposition has set out: that by the end of January next year, this House should have the opportunity to debate and vote on taking the Leveson proposals forward? Will he commit his party to vote to support Leveson’s core proposals? Does he agree that we should expect the legislation to have completed its passage through both Houses by the end of the next parliamentary Session, which starts in May next year? We are about to go into all-party talks. Will he assure the House that he will not kick this into the long grass? Will he assure us that he will not allow the press to have yet another lock-in at the last-chance saloon?
I agree with what the Deputy Prime Minister said, but does he agree that what the Prime Minister said amounts to nothing more than a craven acceptance of the status quo? If the Prime Minister does not think again, he will have surrendered to powerful press interests and betrayed the victims.
The Deputy Prime Minister
It is obvious, of course, that the Prime Minister and I come at this from different angles, but the right hon. and learned Lady should not overlook the perfectly legitimate misgivings—I happen not to share them, but they are none the less misgivings—that the Prime Minister has expressed about legislation in such a sensitive area.
I have no problem with a speedy timetable, which is obviously one of the main things that we need to concentrate on this afternoon in the cross-party talks. I strongly agree with the right hon. and learned Lady that the long grass is the last place this problem should end up. We have got to act now in one way or another. Lord Justice Leveson has put forward his proposals, and I am convinced that he has made a case for legislation. I have not seen—no one has—what that legislation would actually look like. It is important that we see his proposals translated into draft legislative form so that we can all examine that and make the rapid progress that I think everybody, whatever their different views on specific aspects of this report, believes is now necessary.
Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)
I declare an interest as a member of the media law Bar.
Will the Deputy Prime Minister—it is always a joy to hear him—set out very briefly the differences in principle between the view that he takes and that of the Prime Minister?
The Deputy Prime Minister
The difference is that I believe that the case for legislation has been made, but of course I acknowledge that we now need to show how it could be delivered in practice in a proportionate and workable way. The Prime Minister—I hesitate to recap what he said while he is sitting next to me—has thoughtfully expressed his serious misgivings about taking the step of legislation, but has not entirely excluded that possibility in the absence of other viable alternatives. I think that, in a nutshell, is the difference between our two approaches.
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
Echoing an important point made by the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), does the Deputy Prime Minister accept that the Prime Minister was incorrect when he talked about crossing the Rubicon in writing elements of press regulation into the law of the land, because the press themselves explicitly asked that there be direct reference to the press complaints code in what became section 12 of the Human Rights Act 1998? The press has already sought a statutory underpinning of what it does. All that Leveson is proposing is to give greater strength to the process that they began in 1998.
The Deputy Prime Minister
What I think we can all agree on—Lord Justice Leveson places great emphasis on this in his report—is that none of this would have arisen if the press had abided by its own code. What surprised all witnesses to the Leveson inquiry—it certainly surprised me, because I was not familiar with the details of the code—was that on reading the code, one thought, “This is excellent—brilliant!” We just need to ensure that it is enforced.
That is where the debate now comes: it is about the means. Everybody agrees that the end must be the application of the principles set out by Lord Justice Leveson. Everybody agrees that the code itself was well drafted and that, if it had been enforced in full, the problems would not have arisen in the first place. The debate, which is clearly already raging this afternoon, is about how we can make absolutely sure that that is done in a way that is independently monitored and that endures. My view is that Lord Justice Leveson has made the case for why that can be done only through legislation, although I stress that how that legislation is crafted is a separate matter, to which the House will need to address itself.
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)
Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree that one of the greatest expressions of liberty in the world is the first amendment to the American constitution—a measure in statute if ever there was one? That has proved to be compatible with legal restrictions on copyright and obscenity which, as in this country, provide a statutory framework for the press already. Should that not reassure traditional champions of liberty, even the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), that it is possible to have a legal framework that guarantees both the freedom of the press and the rights of individuals?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I accept that there is a big philosophical difference between liberals, who, as I have sought to explain, try to balance freedom with the hurt endured by people who are abused by the powerful, and libertarianism, which believes that freedom should be completely untrammelled and unconstrained. The latter is not a philosophy that I believe in—it is a one-eyed approach to freedom. The press has always operated within the ambit and the context of the law. It is creating a straw man to imply that law is always inimical to the exercise of freedom in the press. That is a slightly absurd position, because the press has been constrained and indeed protected in many respects by the law for generations.
Jim Dowd (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
The detail of the new regulatory body is critical, but does the Deputy Prime Minister accept that it is only within the legal underpinning that the public support that is so crucial to any new regulator is carried?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I have expressed my own views about the assertions that Lord Justice Leveson makes about that. As I said, this is a debate about means, not ends. Let us dwell for a minute on the fact that this afternoon everybody appears to have agreed that what we need is tough, independent regulation of the press, where people are properly protected when things go wrong. The debate is about whether legislation is the indispensible means to deliver that.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister on anticipating what was in the Leveson report and on anticipating that he would have a disagreement with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister.
How does my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister think statutory underpinning by Ofcom would have prevented what happened in the past?
I commend to my right hon. Friend a book called “The Laughter of Triumph” by Ben Wilson, which is about William Hone, the man who got criminal libel laughed out of practical use. We ought to have a sense of proportion.
We must also protect the rights of newspapers such as the ones that campaigned for Stephen Lawrence and that almost certainly broke rules. If there had been statutory underpinning then, what would have happened?
The Deputy Prime Minister
Lord Justice Leveson advocates legislation for three reasons. First, he does not think that the system of incentives—the carrots and sticks that he is offering the press so that they all join in the new system—would work without law. Secondly, he thinks that that is the only way in which we can establish a credible process of “verifying”, as he puts it, the independence of the new self-regulatory system. Thirdly, and crucially, he thinks that there should be additional protections in law to enshrine the freedom of the press. I ask the hon. Gentleman, in return, to accept that it is perfectly rational to suggest that these things can be held in balance and that it is not a zero-sum game between freedom on the one hand and regulation that protects the vulnerable on the other.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree that it would be a betrayal of the victims if we allowed the Leveson report to be kicked into the long grass, which is exactly what has happened to every previous report into press standards? If he cannot persuade the Prime Minister, will he and his party work with us and the significant number of Conservatives who support the Leveson report to implement its proposals as quickly as possible?
The Deputy Prime Minister
The Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and I will start talking this afternoon, in a positive spirit, to try to find a cross-party approach. I think the British people would lose patience with this place if we turned an important issue, which is being treated with the seriousness it deserves this afternoon, into a political football. I want to avoid that and find a solution together that not only answers the demands of the victims, but provides a solution for the country. After two and a half years in coalition, I am used to starting from different positions and finding a solution that suits the whole country in the end.
Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)
Does the Deputy Prime Minister speak for the Government, and what are the implications of his statement today for the doctrine of Cabinet collective responsibility?
The Deputy Prime Minister
In a coalition Government there can be no collective position that is not agreed collectively by all parts of that Government. I know people in Westminster get terribly hot under the collar about some of these doctrines, but people out there in the country find it perfectly normal that in a Government with two parties, there are issues on which those parties, because they are two parties, might not have the same view. We have to be relaxed and grown up about explaining that to the House and to the public and then, as has been set out, seek to resolve those issues in the national interest.
Dame Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
The Deputy Prime Minister has spoken about 60 years of failure of self-regulation. That is precisely why the public, and particularly the victims, will not be able to accept the Prime Minister’s position today. As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition might not be able to persuade the Prime Minister, may I wish the Deputy Prime Minister every success in trying to bring the right hon. Gentleman round to his point of view?
The Deputy Prime Minister
That is a daily undertaking on many issues. I win some and I lose some.
I say again that we will not get what we all want out of cross-party talks unless we first agree that we all want the code by which the press was supposed to abide to be properly respected, and we want the principles set out by Lord Justice Leveson to be respected. If we keep that in mind and ensure those objectives are delivered, we will do a big and good thing for the country and future generations.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
We have just heard about the 60 years of failure of self-regulation, and newspapers have been given five previous chances. Under Labour and Conservative Governments, the problem has not been solved: there has been too cosy a relationship between politicians and the press, and abuse of victims. What does my right hon. Friend think is different about this Government, who set up the Leveson inquiry and will now make some progress?
The Deputy Prime Minister
My hon. Friend wants me to say, “Other than the fact that the Liberal Democrats are in it?” I think it was right that we in the Government collectively decided to take the unprecedented step of asking Lord Justice Leveson, with help from the panel members, to look at the issue in the round. He has very wide terms of reference and has not yet completed his work in full. The sheer breadth of what he has been asked to do is revealed in the sheer volume of what he has produced.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
As the Deputy Prime Minister knows, when the Prime Minister set up this inquiry it was in two parts. He did not mention part 2 in his statement, but may I assume that the Prime Minister fully supports part 2 of the report, which deals with the relationship between the police and the investigations they have conducted? Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree that it is vital that we give the police in London all the resources they need, so that Operations Weeting, Tuleta and Elveden can be completed as soon as possible? At the moment, it looks like a timetable of three years.
The Deputy Prime Minister
On the first point, the Prime Minister did refer to part 2 of the report and reiterated that the Government’s attitude to part 2 and to the inquiry as a whole has not changed from the day it was established. He also explained that part 2 is affected by criminal investigations being conducted right now. We will of course endeavour wherever we can to ensure resources are provided so that criminal investigations being conducted by the Metropolitan police are completed as quickly as possible.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
The first duty of the Deputy Prime Minister is to support the Prime Minister. We have today seen something that has never happened before in parliamentary history. The doctrine of collective responsibility has been swished away by the Deputy Prime Minister. How can he spend 25 minutes at the Dispatch Box criticising my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and remain in the Government? Is he considering resigning?
The Deputy Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman and I have had this exchange countless times. He still struggles to get coalition. His party did not win the election, and my party did not win the election, so we have a Government of two parties that must compromise. That is different from previous one-party Governments. It might lead to anomalies, glitches and innovations in this venerable place that he finds unwelcome, but that is the reality of coalition government. I suspect it will be repeated quite a lot in future.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
What actions will the Deputy Prime Minister and his Government take if newspapers do not establish the new system?
The Deputy Prime Minister
It is incredibly important that the newspaper industry heeds what hon. Members have said and what the Prime Minister has said forcefully—that the ball is now in its court to make the first move of showing that it can propose a self-regulatory institution, which would be independently verified in one way or another as soon as possible. It would be an extraordinary failure if the press did not take up that opportunity and respond to Lord Justice Leveson’s invitation for its own good. Everybody who cares about our great British press knows that the public need to be reassured that it will abide by higher standards in future.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
Given that we can choose one of two extremes—one is a dangerously politicised regulation of the press, and the other is allowing editors to continue to regulate themselves through a lock-in at the last-chance saloon—is not the best thing to do to accept the advice of an independent commission that sat for so long, heard so much evidence and produced such a lengthy report, so that we do not kick the matter into the long grass, and so that we give the victims of the worst examples of journalism the justice they deserve?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I agree with my hon. Friend’s basic premise that, if the central insights of Lord Leveson are good ones, we should implement them. However, I disagree with hon. Members who have implied that the report should be adopted in its entirety, with every t crossed and every i dotted. There is a lot of dense and complex stuff in the report. There is an extensive chapter on data protection. I am no data protection expert, but Parliament will want to scrutinise the implications of that chapter properly. We should adopt Leveson’s central insights and what he is seeking to deliver, but I do not believe we should therefore suspend all critical faculties on some of the detail, which must be got right.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
It is clear that Leveson does not propose in any way any kind of statutory regulation of the press, and no one in the House wants to see that in any shape or form. Is it not very important, as the debate progresses in the coming days and weeks, that nobody either outside or inside the House, by open assertion or implication, tries to frame the debate in those terms? This is about getting proper redress for those who have been abused; it is not about statutory regulation of the press or crossing any Rubicon.
The Deputy Prime Minister
Lord Justice Leveson was very clear and unambiguous this afternoon and in his report that he is not advocating statutory regulation, from which hon. Members on both sides of the House would recoil. What he is trying to do is ingenious, but it is materially different from statutory regulation, because it is based on voluntary participation—yes, it is driven by incentives, but it is none the less voluntary—from all parts of the press. That is why the detail and the design of the incentives he is offering to the press are incredibly important.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
The Deputy Prime Minister’s suggestion is neither liberal nor democratic. Accordingly, does he understand that many victims feel aggrieved because they are unable to seek justice through the legal system, which is often considered too complex and costly? What will he do within the coalition Government to try to put that right?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I do not accept the underlying premise that all this can be settled by courts and the criminal justice system. Kate and Gerry McCann had their privacy abused and were subject to the most shocking and vile accusations, which they could not have possibly remedied through the law. The hon. Gentleman should read Gerry McCann’s evidence if he really thinks it is undemocratic or illiberal to suggest that maybe we should set up a system that can help people such as them. Gerry McCann went to the Press Complaints Commission and was basically told, “Sorry, there is nothing we can do.” Surely, one would have to have a heart of stone not to accept that there is something seriously, seriously wrong when there is nothing that helps Kate and Gerry McCann. I strongly refute the hon. Gentleman’s idea that it is illiberal and undemocratic to help them.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
Given what the Deputy Prime Minister has said and what the Leader of the Opposition said earlier, the Prime Minister now seems to have become a marginal figure on this issue. Therefore, will the Deputy Prime Minister work with the Leader of the Opposition, the First Minister of Scotland and the Taoiseach na hEireann, Enda Kenny, to find, where possible, common ground in this free movement area of the UK and Ireland in press regulation?
The Deputy Prime Minister
The Prime Minister has initiated the cross-party talks. They will happen shortly and I hope that, with good will, we can make progress. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the Irish model. There are similarities between the Irish model and what Lord Justice Leveson is suggesting. They are not identical by any stretch of the imagination. In many ways, the Irish model is a much more direct form of the statutory establishment of a regulator than the indirect verification of a self-established regulator set up by the press. There is an important qualitative difference between the two, although, as I said earlier, it is remarkable that a number of British newspapers operate, as far as I can make out, relatively comfortably under the more exacting—dare it say slightly more illiberal?—system that exists across the Irish sea.
John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)
Why do we need legislation, ministerial involvement through Ofcom and implicit licensing for news printed on dead trees, but not for news displayed on computer screens?
The Deputy Prime Minister
Lord Justice Leveson said this afternoon that he thinks there is something qualitatively different about the impact of news printed in our newspapers than there is in the great ecosystem of digital news and news on the internet. He is not making any claims that one form of regulatory remedy is applicable to other media; he is explicitly dealing with abuses in the newspaper industry. To say that because it does not apply to others we should therefore do nothing is a curious way of making the best the enemy of the good.
Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)
I welcome the Deputy Prime Minister’s stance and I accept that he has given it a lot of thought, but will he tell the House how he proposes to give effect to his views when the Prime Minister is fundamentally opposed to bringing forward any legislation to underpin a new, truly independent system of regulation? Will he urge the Prime Minister, for instance, to allow a Bill to be introduced so that the House can have a free, democratic vote on it?
The Deputy Prime Minister
To be fair, the Prime Minister expressed misgivings about taking a significant step. Of course, these are the kinds of things that we will talk about in the cross-party discussions, but if we all immediately start digging trenches and digging our heels in the worst of all outcomes will happen, which is that nothing will happen at all. I will work very hard to prevent that.
Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)
During the Prime Minister’s statement, I suggested that Lord Justice Leveson had called time at the last-chance saloon. Does my right hon. Friend agree that without implementing the central planks of the Leveson report, we risk any changes brought forward being seen as yet another last chance from an industry that has failed miserably to regulate itself effectively?
The Deputy Prime Minister
My eye was caught by a quote from John Major, who said in his evidence to Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry:
“I think on this occasion it’s the politicians who are in the last-chance saloon.”
This is a test not just for the press, but this place. It is a test for us all to try to find a cross-party approach. That is best done on a cross-party basis, rather than becoming the subject of party political point scoring. On the central assertion, I think that Lord Justice Leveson’s report makes the case well for why legislation is necessary to administer his system, although as I keep stressing I do not know exactly what the legislation would look like. It is very important to get the details, as well as the principle, right.
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
I commend the Deputy Prime Minister for his measured and thoughtful statement and how he has dealt with questions this afternoon. Given the two statements, will he clarify whether he intends to adopt the same principle on this issue as on the boundary proposals—that when he disagrees with his Conservative colleagues, Liberal Democrat Ministers will, on a point of principle, go through the Lobby with us when they agree with us?
The Deputy Prime Minister
To be fair, this is not driven by being in agreement with the Opposition.
I am not going to repeat what I have said in the House about boundaries, but I accept, of course, that in coalition government there will be cases—this is one instance—where it is perfectly fair, normal and transparent to the public and the House to say, in a level-headed way, “Look, these are the differences of view.” Coalition does not mean homogenised government where the differences that naturally exist between parties are somehow eliminated.
Mr Speaker
Order. I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman was present in the Chamber at the start of this statement. If he was, of course we will hear from him. If not, the nation will have to wait for another occasion.
Zac Goldsmith
For the record, I was here for both statements—but I moved around.
Zac Goldsmith
Given that my party appears to be split on this issue—judging by recent letters submitted to Lord Justice Leveson—given that the coalition is clearly split on it and given that the House is split, too, does the Deputy Prime Minister share my hope that the various measures we will be discussing over the coming weeks will be put to the House, preferably in a free vote?
The Deputy Prime Minister
In the first instance, before we get to that, we should seek a cross-party approach. It is nothing for the House to be ashamed of that there are strongly held views in all parties on something of principled importance. I just hope that we do not allow those differences of view to become an alibi for inaction.
Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) will remember acutely having his ear bent by me and others over the creation of the Data Protection Act 1998 and the checks and balances within it. That happened at the time we brought together the European directive and the original Act. I would like to ask the Deputy Prime Minister precisely the same question I asked the Prime Minister. Paragraph 57 of the summary recommendations is for the creation of an information commission that would include members of the media. Does that not provide a vehicle to remove his concerns about some of Leveson’s comments on data protection?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I think the hon. Gentleman’s idea is, in effect, to turn the Information Commissioner into an information commission. I am no great expert, but that does not seem, in and of itself, to be the worrisome part of the proposals. As he will know better than I do, it is worth bearing it in mind that further and new European data protection legislation is in the pipeline on a separate timetable. That is one example of something we need to examine, but it would put the cart before the horse were we to pass all these data protection provisions, and then have to reinvent it all in the light of a new EU data protection directive. That is exactly the kind of level of detail I hope we can get into very rapidly.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
By the way, I support the idea of separate statements— I would have liked to make some myself in the past.
I think I know the answer, but, because it will strengthen the message, will the Deputy Prime Minister confirm the call that the Prime Minister has now backed for proprietors to meet the National Union of Journalists and others to start work immediately on the introduction of a conscience clause into journalists’ contracts?
The Deputy Prime Minister
Yes, that is one important part of a long list of issues that proprietors and editors now need to address. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the NUJ. I think I am right in saying that the NUJ has come out unambiguously in favour of a model of statutory underpinning. It is important to remember, therefore, that there are working journalists, who care as much as anybody in the House about the freedom of the press, who none the less recognise that this might be the right way to proceed.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. We have enjoyed an innovation. I was going to ask whether the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes) had asked whether he could make a statement after the energy statement earlier today.
I was going to go on to say, perhaps not as light-heartedly—which means seriously—whether the Procedure Committee should be consulted on whether Ministers wanting to make a second statement should require the leave of the House or whether that should be left to you, Mr Speaker.
Mr Speaker
I say two things to the hon. Gentleman. In respect of his first point, if I did not know him so well, I would think that he was being mischievous, but because I know him so well, I do not think anything of the kind. Secondly, the Procedure Committee can take up any matter at any time of its own volition. It requires no permission from anybody else to do so. I feel sure that the Chair of the Committee, the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), will shortly have heard what the hon. Gentleman has had to say.
I thank the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and all colleagues for their co-operation today. We now move to the next item of business.
Delegated Legislation
Ordered,
That the motion in the name of Mr Andrew Lansley relating to the House of Commons Members’ Fund shall be treated as if it related to an instrument subject to the provisions of Standing Order No. 118 (Delegated Legislation Committees) in respect of which notice of a motion has been given that the instrument be approved.—(Anne Milton.)
Rushden Lakes Retail Leisure Park
(11 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
Returning to normality, in my constituency there is a proposal for a retail leisure park that will create 2,000 jobs. There is massive support for it among my constituents, with many hundreds of signatures.
The lead signatory is a Mr Jack Spriggs and the petition reads:
The Humble Petition of residents of Rushden and Higham Ferrers, Northamptonshire and the surrounding areas,
Sheweth,
That the planning application for the Rushden Lakes retail leisure park has the support of East Northamptonshire District Council, the Borough Council of Wellingborough, Rushden Town Council, Higham Ferrers Town Council and the overwhelming majority of local residents, will provide 2,000 new jobs, a high quality leisure park and retail outlets such as Marks and Spencer.
Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your Honourable House urges the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to as speedily as possible approve the scheme.
And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray, &c.
[P001140]
Central Bedfordshire College
(11 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
Central Bedfordshire college is a vital institution in the constituency I am proud to represent. It has a presence in all three of the towns in my constituency—Dunstable, Leighton Buzzard and Houghton Regis. I am a strong supporter of the vital work of colleges, as they provide the skills that people need to make Britain a high value-added economy. It has an excellent new principal in Ali Hadawi, who was recently appointed a Commander of the British Empire and who turned his last college into a beacon college. I have every confidence he will do the same for Central Bedfordshire college.
The college was founded in 1961 as Dunstable college, originally with a focus on the printing trade, and most of the buildings are the original 50-year-old buildings. C and F blocks, for example, were built in 1959 and 1960. The remaining buildings were built in 1968, with the newest built in 1973, so my hon. Friend the Minister can see that they are now quite dated.
Central Bedfordshire college was one of 70 colleges that lost out under the old Learning and Skills Council’s Building Colleges for the Future capital programme. The college initially put in a £5 million proposal, but was told that that was not big enough and that it should go back and produce something grander—with an atrium, I believe. The college was encouraged to work up a more expensive proposal. It then put in a £40 million proposal, but unfortunately no one at the Learning and Skills Council was totting up the total cost of all the bids and the capital programme collapsed. Central Bedfordshire college was one of 70 colleges not to receive any capital grant. Those 70 colleges then went through a bidding process for the remaining amount of money available, and 13 were successful. I believe that, for some reason, all of them were in Labour constituencies, including a late application from Hartlepool college. This took place under the previous Government.
There were then 57 colleges left with—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I am terribly sorry about that. It is a technicality, and it is perhaps something that the Procedure Committee could look into, at its own initiative.
Andrew Selous
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.
As I was saying, there were then 57 colleges left, of which 45 were given financial assistance to prop up their balance sheets. That left 12 colleges out of the original 70 without any assistance for capital funding under the old Learning and Skills Council regime. I believe that Central Bedfordshire college is one of the very few colleges not to have received any capital funding under the three enhanced renewal grant capital funding rounds that the new Government have introduced.
I would like to know how many colleges benefiting from the Learning and Skills Council capital grant, which was allocated under the previous Government, have received further capital funding under the enhanced renewal grant funding process. I would also be interested to know how many colleges had their ERG applications approved when they were not able to meet the match funding requirement. Central Bedfordshire college was able to meet that requirement in each of the three ERG application rounds that it put in for.
To recap, Central Bedfordshire college has put in three ERG bids. The first was in July 2010, when it requested a £1 million contribution from the Skills Funding Agency to match a £3 million contribution from the college itself. That bid was unsuccessful. The second bid, in November 2011, involved the college requesting a £2 million contribution from the SFA to match a £4 million contribution from the college. Most recently, in September 2012, the college requested £3 million from the SFA to match a £6 million contribution from the college.
The college had been led to believe that its bid would be prioritised, as it had not received even a pound in capital funding from those earlier rounds. It has had no written feedback on the bid process, although it has been told that it can attend a surgery at the SFA regional office. There is some puzzlement among the people running the college as to how all this is worked out. If the process is not helping the neediest colleges, perhaps it needs to be looked at again.
I want to go into more detail about the feedback that has been received from the SFA on why the third bid was unsuccessful. Will the Minister tell me whether the due diligence exercise that is going to take place in relation to the colleges whose bids were successful could be applied to Central Bedfordshire college, to see whether it could be awarded a few more points? I understand that the bid failed by just one point, and if we could look again to see whether any additional points could be awarded, there might be a happier outcome. I understand that the college’s education case scored the highest number of points in the whole of the eastern region, and the third highest in the whole country. I am sure the Minister would agree that the education bid is at the heart of what further education colleges should be about. I wonder whether that part of the bid should have slightly more weighting than some of the more technical considerations relating to the building proposals.
As I have said, this is the third enhanced renewal grant that the college has not been successful in securing. It has been acknowledged by officials in the Skills Funding Agency that the college is one of the neediest, if not the neediest, college in the country. In May this year, I was present when the outgoing SFA chief executive, Geoff Russell, visited Central Bedfordshire college, and he commented that the college did not need just an ERG; he would have liked to have seen a complete rebuild. Speaking as the local MP, I believe that the learners in Central Bedfordshire college deserve just as much support for creating a conducive learning environment as other students in other colleges throughout the country.
If the process is not helping the neediest colleges, we should have a look at how that process runs. I shall discuss four specific technical areas where we think the bid has lost out. The SFA commented that the refurbishment element had not been properly environmentally assessed. The primary objective of the college’s bid was to construct a new centre for hair, beauty, holistic therapies and hospitality and catering, with a focus on green technology in the curriculum and skills development. In order to achieve the new build in the optimum campus location, the college had to relocate other curriculum elements, with a small amount of associated refurbishment. The college understands that it was marked down because that latter refurbishment element did not have a full environmental assessment—unlike the main new build. That refurbishment element represented only 3.3% of the total project budget. It is simply an enabling element for the project itself, and the overall project has been environmentally assessed. The college feels unhappy about that aspect of its bid’s assessment.
The second aspect of the bid was the savings in estate costs over a 20-year period. The college was advised that other bids demonstrated larger savings over the project life of 20 years. The college, however, has come in the top quarter for national estates cost efficiency, as demonstrated by the SFA’s own data collection, which I understand is known as “e-Mandate”. That makes it hard for the college to demonstrate a huge decrease in building costs related to the bid, because it starts from such an efficient base. As a result, its savings are likely to be at a lower margin. That efficiency has been achieved by the college being very prudent and managing its projects from within its own estates department, for example. Again, the college feels that this rather crude assessment fails to take into account the efficiency point that it has already reached, even for a 50-year-old building, so it believes that it has been unfairly penalised for doing the right thing, as it were.
The third technical aspect on which the bid was marked down related to the costs of the proposed project build against the SFA’s own cost plan. The feedback stated that the bid was 10% adrift from the SFA’s cost plan norms. In simple terms, the bid comprised the following three parts. First, there is the demolition of the old F block, dating back to 1959, as I told the Minister at the start of my speech. That F block was going to be replaced with a new build centre of excellence for green catering and for hair, beauty and holistic therapies. That did fall within the SFA’s cost norms. Secondly, there is the partial demolition of the B block and the construction of a new media studies centre, together with associated works, which also fell within the SFA cost norms.
It was the third aspect that I think caused the college problems: the creation of a new surface-level car park and access road from the public highway. The project costs are required to conform to the appropriate SFA cost model for the type of college establishment. The first two elements of the bid, the demolition of the F block and the partial demolition of the B block, accorded with the SFA’s criteria. It was the third element, the car park, that did not accord with its indicative costs and is being regarded as abnormal.
The college has commented that it is required to dispose of a portion of its estate in order to release capital to contribute to the cost of the project. It has also said that the land to be disposed of currently houses a significant proportion of its car-parking provision, and that because it is not practicable for it to operate effectively without replacing that lost parking provision, it must be replaced elsewhere on the campus. The replacement of the car park and the provision of a new access road are a fundamental component of any redevelopment scheme that relies on capital release from the sale of land to the rear of the college to enable the college to make its substantial contribution to the overall project costs.
It was recognised at an early stage in the preparation of the stage C cost plan that the creation of the new car park would show the project costs at an unacceptable level of variance to the cost model, and for that reason two cost model comparisons were prepared and included. The first compared project costs associated with the B and F block works and their associated external works, and the second compared all project costs, including the creation of a new car park and access road.
The fourth element was health and safety, on which the bid was marked down. The college has said to me that the reason a significant improvement was not shown was that it had already taken care of that aspect of the bid. It had worked very hard, with its own money, to deal with all the health and safety issues that might have arisen, and not a great deal of further progress could have been made.
I hope that I have helped the Minister by giving him some feedback from the college. I hope that I have managed to explain why it feels aggrieved. In particular, I hope that I have managed to explain why the car park is necessary to the release of that significant extra contribution. The Minister has heard something of a litany of complaints, but I want to end on a positive note by telling him about the excellent things that the college is doing, notwithstanding the difficulties which I have outlined and which I hope he will be able to address when he responds.
Central Bedfordshire college is the proud sponsor of the new Central Bedfordshire university technical college, which is one of only two UTCs in the country that opened in September this year. It will have 600 students, and I am immensely proud that the only UTC in the east of England is in my constituency. It is a fantastic innovation, and it is exactly what the country needs to drive it towards a prosperous future.
Under construction in another location is the Incuba centre, a £5 million facility to help new businesses to develop Dunstable with a focus on the green economy. That is very welcome. It will help to re-energise the industrial base in Dunstable and Houghton Regis, and also the wider economy. Central Bedfordshire college is at the heart of that.
More recently, the college bought a former Volkswagen garage in the Luton road in Dunstable which it is turning into the most fantastic motor vehicle training facility. A real, live, state-of-the-art garage facility, in a building where a commercial garage was operating only a few months ago, will enable my constituents and people from the wider area to train to become motor mechanics in excellent conditions.
I know that the Minister is particularly interested in the college’s work with local employers. Again, it is doing all the things that he is asking colleges to do. It has, for instance, worked very closely with the Morrisons supermarket. I was proud to attend an event hosted jointly by the college and Morrisons. The college had provided up to 100 local unemployed people with a specific training course over the summer. If they completed it, they would be guaranteed a job interview at the new Morrisons branch that was opening in Houghton Regis. That initiative has been hugely successful. It has been excellent for the local unemployed people and excellent for the supermarket, which has really appreciated it. The college has done a fantastic thing.
The college is also working with other employers, including BAE Systems and Liebherr, engaging with them to develop an employer-tailored curriculum. It is working with Center Parcs, too, another new major provider of employment in central Bedfordshire, and with the developer of the new housing development north of Houghton Regis, which will require lots of construction skills.
It is a bugbear of mine that when there are major construction projects, the jobs often do not go to local people. It upsets me when people come in from miles around to take the jobs. Unemployed construction workers come to see me at my surgery. I am determined, as is Central Bedfordshire college, that many of the jobs created in the building of thousands of new houses to the north of Houghton Regis to help pay for the Dunstable northern bypass will be taken by local people. That is very important. CBC is at the forefront of providing the skills for the construction companies contracted to carry out that work.
The college also works with London Luton airport in delivering cabin crew and baggage-handling skills. It is working with Luton Town football club and the Bedfordshire football association to deliver coaching and football qualifications. It is also working with our local train company, First Capital Connect.
I hope the Minister will therefore see that the college has heard the Government’s message and is mustard-keen to provide the skills our local economy needs to help UK plc compete in the global race in which we are engaged. We just need a little bit of help with the capital funding. I think we have had a bit of a rough deal for a while now, but I know the Minister is a fair man, and I know he will look seriously into these issues. I look forward to hearing what he has to say.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Skills (Matthew Hancock)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) on securing this debate, which is so important for Central Bedfordshire college—for everybody who works at it and, most importantly, everybody who studies at it. I know that he raised this issue with my predecessor, and he has also raised it with me a number of times. He is a powerful advocate of the need for improvements.
I also congratulate the college on its success in opening the new university technical college. UTCs are a crucial part of ensuring we have the skills we need in the years and decades ahead. I also commend the college on the work it is doing with local businesses to provide the skills employers need, and to ensure we make good any skills shortages. Colleges across the country are increasingly working with local employers and businesses to ensure we provide the skills they need. The driving mission behind the work we are doing and behind my job is to ensure that local people have the skills they need for the jobs that are available, such as in the construction industry, as my hon. Friend mentioned.
For decades, colleges were starved of the funding for capital renewal that both schools and universities enjoyed. I know that from personal experience because I studied at a further education college—West Cheshire college—in the mid-1990s. Therefore, when the Learning and Skills Council offered significant capital grants, the colleges jumped at the opportunity. My hon. Friend set out the history of what happened. Bids were encouraged, and were encouraged to grow, and then promises were made without the funding to match them. Hugely expensive projects with poor cost control delivered very poor value for money in some of the projects that were completed. They ran out of money, and building projects were stopped, sometimes after huge expense on plans and with diggers in the ground. In that context, and in the context of the wider catastrophe that was the public finances, we are now trying to rebuild. I say that to give the background before getting on to the specifics of the case.
We have been working hard to ensure that lessons are learned from that period. One of those lessons, inevitably, is that we should have a firm and unbending eye on value for money, the physical infrastructure needs of colleges and the benefits to students that capital spending can bring. The approach is coupled with the urgency for affordability. That is the background to how the criteria for making decisions are structured.
We consult the sector on the criteria for deciding allocations. We then provide colleges with advice on the criteria, assess and moderate—and fund when an application is successful. We are happy to work with the college to develop a fundable case. I will certainly look at my hon. Friend’s point about due diligence and moderation executed on successful projects to see whether those can be applied in this case.
Since May 2010, total Government investment across the country in new colleges amounts to more than £330 million. That has enabled more than £1 billion-worth of projects. Across the whole programme, £2 of private cash have been put in for every £1 of Government cash. My hon. Friend said that that was the case with Central Bedfordshire college’s bids, too.
Let me go through some of the specifics of what has happened in the three rounds of renewal grant that have been set out so far. The first is that we have had 117 bids for college funding, which would have cost in excess of £200 million if all had been approved. I entirely understand my hon. Friend’s argument about the quality of the buildings at the college—60% of its buildings are in poor or inoperable condition. I am sad to report to him that, of the 240 general further education colleges across the country, 59 are in a worse state on this measure than Central Bedfordshire college. Although the college has a high level of need, such need, unfortunately, is replicated in some colleges across the country.
The first criterion relates to the condition of the existing estate; Central Bedfordshire college has a case, but there are other colleges with a worse rating. The second criterion is value for money, and my hon. Friend reported the concerns raised about that issue. I entirely understand his point that, having done work to ensure good value for money in respect of running costs, the college feels penalised. He will understand that value for money has to be a critical part of our assessment. I give my hon. Friend this commitment: we will work with the college to see what can be done to improve the value for money in the bid. The third criterion is the benefits that would flow from the work as planned. In that area, as he stated, Central Bedfordshire college did relatively well.
On my hon. Friend’s specific questions, 10 colleges got funds without match funding, but they offered much stronger value for money and benefits in the rest of their bids. Of course, the amount of match funding is a critical part of the question, but it is not the only element of value for money. Only one college in the third round of the enhanced renewal grant had received serious amounts of money since 2001. A very strong emphasis was placed in these bids on those colleges that have received less than £5 million since 2001, and in the third round only one college, Barnsley college, had received more than that since then. By contrast, Central Bedfordshire college had received £450,000 since 2010, including £225,000 in the first round, £100,000 in the second round and £120,000 to help work up the bid for the third round. We are going to have to work with the college in future to see what further we can do to try to get it over the line.
My hon. Friend asked about written feedback, which will, of course, be provided. Earlier this month, the college, including the principal, met civil servants for oral feedback, but we will also provide written feedback.
On my hon. Friend’s point about rebuild, I am tempted not to recommend that we again go down the route of suggesting yet more expensive propositions for the college, but we should keep all options on the table. On the point about the education case being the best in the east of England, I am glad to say that these things are no longer done on a regional basis and are instead done on a national basis. The college scored well in that area.
As my hon. Friend said, the college scored 21 out of a possible 39 points in the process and was just one point short of the score deemed necessary to secure funding. There is broad agreement that the process was carried out on a fair, open and competitive basis; the process was agreed in consultation with the sector. Even so, an appeals process is available for colleges that feel they have been hard done by. I entirely understand his disappointment and I commend the pressure he is applying.
Andrew Selous
The Minister may not be able to do this now, but will he respond, perhaps in writing later, on the issue of the car park? It seems that the bid was marked down severely on that basis, and I want to check that he has understood the point I was making about the car park being essential for the release of a significant sum of the college’s own money in order to match-fund.
Matthew Hancock
I understand the point about the car park, and I will look into it and get back to my hon. Friend on the specifics. I am sorry to say that I cannot give him a clear and specific answer today, but of course I will be happy to work with him to see what we can do in the months ahead. As and when details of any future capital funding are made available, we will work with the college. I understand, not least as a result of his lobbying, the important role the college plays in the community, what it is doing to support young people and the needs that it has. We will look carefully at, and work with him on, future propositions. I hope he will accept that and that we can move forward.
Question put and agreed to.
Petition
The Queen's Cypher
Westminster Hall
(11 years, 5 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Inward Investment (Wales)
(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
I am absolutely delighted to have the opportunity, which comes around once every couple of years, to speak as Chair of the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs about an issue that we think is particularly important. Today, that subject is inward investment in Wales and the Welsh economy.
The timing of this debate is a little unfortunate. As hon. Members will know, the Leveson report is being released at this very moment, so I apologise to Lord Leveson if we keep him off tomorrow’s front pages. I accept that some Members will have even more interest in Leveson than in the Welsh Affairs Committee, so I will try to keep my speech as brief as possible to be fair to those who also find that issue of interest.
When we published our report on inward investment in Wales in February, I think that I can fairly say that it was well received and comprehensive. We took evidence from a range of witnesses in business, as well as economists and politicians. We met Ministers from the UK Government and shadow Ministers from the Welsh Assembly Government. We would, of course, have liked to meet Ministers from the Welsh Assembly Government, but the Minister with responsibility for this area did not see fit to appear before the Committee, which was a shame. As well as being a little discourteous to the Committee—I can take the insult—that risks sending out the negative message that the Welsh Assembly Government and the UK Government are not working well together, which we do not want to happen.
We recognise that there is a problem with inward investment in Wales. Looking back, we can say that the ’80s and early ’90s were something of a boom era. Despite the fact that Wales has less than 5% of the UK’s population, we were getting about 15% of inward investment projects. By the late 1990s, however, things had started to decline. Between 1998 and 2008, some 171 foreign-owned companies closed their sites in Wales, with the loss of 31,000 jobs, and now things are getting worse. A parliamentary written answer from this Monday shows that the number of inward investment projects in Wales has declined from 68 in 2009-10 to just 26 in 2011-12, despite the fact that the UK as a whole remains the No. 1 destination for foreign direct investment in Europe.
There has been a shift in FDI away from Wales and towards London and the south-east of England, and the Committee wanted to know what we could do to improve the situation. We were, of course, clear that the traditional routes for attracting investment—low labour costs, grants and help with infrastructure—can no longer be relied on. We certainly do not want to compete on labour costs with countries such as China or India. It is important that we can offer a good standard of infrastructure so that we make Wales as appealing as we can for companies that might want to come here.
Lord Green of Hurstpierpoint, the Minister for Trade and Investment, told us that countries and overseas companies weigh up certain factors systematically, as if building up a grid, before deciding where to invest. Our report focused on three of those areas, the first of which was education, which obviously is devolved to Wales. It would merit its own inquiry, if we could find a way to conduct one without causing offence to the Welsh Assembly.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
The Government’s response to recommendation after recommendation in the Committee’s report is:
“This is a matter for the Welsh Government, who may wish to respond.”
Does not the hon. Gentleman think that his report has been weakened by the Committee’s trespassing beyond its own responsibilities? The Welsh Assembly Government are likely to respond negatively. The report would have been far better and more incisive if it had concentrated on matters that are the responsibility of this Parliament.
David T. C. Davies
The Welsh Affairs Committee is perfectly entitled to have an interest in anything affecting Wales. Although some in the Welsh Assembly might take the view that they are not willing to talk to the UK Government about things that they consider to be their own prerogative, it is noticeable that our Committee has considered such issues as defence, which the Ministry of Defence could say was its responsibility. We have also considered broadband, which is cross-cutting and affected by both UK Government and Welsh Assembly Government policy. We consider anything. I am proud to be Welsh and proud to be British, as hon. Members can see from my cufflinks. I make no apology for the fact that the Welsh Affairs Committee would be perfectly happy to consider anything affecting Wales.
Paul Flynn
Throughout the long history of Denbighshire county council, its longest ever meeting, which went on beyond midnight, was to decide the council’s policy on the war in Vietnam. That might have seemed to be a sensible thing to do, but I do not think that it had a great effect on world opinion or the conduct of the United States at that time. Does the hon. Gentleman think that his Committee is likely to end up in a position where it takes up any subject, whether or not it has any influence on or knowledge of it?
David T. C. Davies
First, although I was a mere boy at the time, I seem to remember that the hon. Gentleman was either a member of, or involved in, Newport council at the time when I lived there, and that he used to help with discussions of whether Wales should be a nuclear-free zone, so perhaps he has experience of long discussions about things over which he is likely to have little influence. Secondly, inward investment is clearly a cross-cutting issue that is affected by both Welsh Assembly and UK Government policy. I do not want this sitting to go on for as long as that meeting of Denbighshire county council—it is not a record that I am hoping to beat—so I would like to continue my speech.
David T. C. Davies
Which I shall do after I have given way to the hon. Gentleman for the third time.
Paul Flynn
The hon. Gentleman is being very generous. The nuclear-free Wales policy was a remarkable united expression by every county council in Wales—there were eight in 1981. “Nuclear-free” was about nuclear power, not nuclear weapons. Every county council passed an identical resolution saying that it did not want nuclear power stations in Wales but, sadly, the then Government defied that call.
David T. C. Davies
How times have changed, as Labour councils now seem to be very supportive of nuclear weapons and nuclear power stations. In 1981, there were no Conservative-led councils, but today there is one in my constituency, so things change for the better.
Returning to education, however, things are not changing for the better. Hon. Members will be aware of the recent OECD programme for international student assessment—PISA—report on education across numerous developed countries. Wales was not only below average for the developed world in subjects such as maths and science, but below average for the whole United Kingdom. The Committee hopes that the Welsh Assembly Government will address that situation. Speaking personally—to take off my Chair’s hat for a moment—I do not think that it will be addressed by setting up a completely separate examination system in Wales, which the Assembly is considering.
We considered the role of further and higher education, and universities are becoming increasingly prominent in investor decisions. We believe that although a lot of good work is going on between universities and industry, a great deal more can be done.
There are numerous studies about the economic benefits of good and efficient transport links. We should be concerned about the current quality of transport links in mid and north Wales, and about connectivity with the rest of Wales. We are exploring those issues in more detail in a current inquiry and our report will be published shortly.
Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the Welsh Assembly Government failed to make any representations for investment in the north Wales coast main line, which is the key rail infrastructure in north Wales?
David T. C. Davies
I am extremely concerned about that, but I welcome the announcement by the Secretary of State for Wales that a business case will be developed for the north Wales main line from Holyhead to Crewe. If the Minister has any more to say about that, we would welcome it.
I am sure that every member of every political party represented in Wales will be delighted by the coalition Government’s decision to extend electrification of the Great Western main line to Swansea and the valleys, and I am sure that the biggest supporter will be the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies). There is much good news there.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
I warmly welcome the decision to extend electrification from Cardiff to Swansea, which we recommended in our report. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that what we need in Swansea, as in Cardiff, is super-connectivity, because we want a level playing field in south Wales, which has one economy? Will he, like me, press the Government to ensure that we are up and running in the Swansea city region, as well as in Cardiff, to achieve economic growth?
David T. C. Davies
The Swansea bay region would be an excellent place to invest. The Government are doing a huge amount to support better infrastructure, including IT infrastructure, across the whole of Wales. Although I look forward to developments that will increase broadband speeds in cities such as Swansea, Cardiff and Newport, we have more to do to ensure that people in rural areas such as Monmouthshire are able to get some sort of broadband.
Geraint Davies
It is important that we have Swansea city hub super-connectivity before broadband in rural Monmouthshire.
David T. C. Davies
I note what the hon. Gentleman says from a sedentary position, but let me turn to the Severn bridge, because that affects all of us in south Wales. Our report shows that little can be done until the original amount that was agreed with Severn River Crossing is paid off, which is expected to happen in 2018. Until then, there will always be inflation-busting increases in charges on the Severn bridge because that is set according to a formula at a certain time of year. There is absolutely nothing that can be done about that because it is a matter of commercial law.
David T. C. Davies
I will, but may I finish my point first, because I think that the hon. Gentleman will be likely to agree with me?
After 2018, all bets are off, and several things could happen when the money is paid off. The Government will no longer have to pay VAT so, at a stroke, 20% could be taken off the charges. They could decide to get rid of tolls and fund the maintenance themselves, although that is unlikely, because I have been given an inkling of the cost of maintaining two large bridges over an estuary—it is phenomenal. I do not have the figures to hand, but we worked out that we would need to charge at least one third of the current toll simply to cover maintenance costs, and the Government might want to take a little more just in case it is necessary to build a third bridge in the future. However, there is no doubt that there could be a huge cut in the tolls after 2018, when Severn River Crossing’s charges have been met.
At the same time, the Welsh Assembly Government are loudly demanding control over both bridges, although one is entirely in England, which seems to have escaped their attention. However, they are being rather silent about what they would do to the tolls if they were put in charge. We need some transparency. There was a lot of anger in my constituency, and probably throughout south Wales, when the latest toll increases were announced, and I believe that some of that anger could be assuaged if we had more transparency about what will happen.
I was disappointed when we were informed by one of the Minister’s colleagues in government that there was unlikely to be any decrease in charges whatsoever because of extra costs—the Committee was told that they were several hundred million pounds, but I believe that they are now around £112 million—that the Government want to recoup. I do not know what those costs are, and the first I heard of them was when the evidence was given to the Committee. We were told nothing about that when the inquiry took place, so we would like to know what those costs are and what will happen when they have been paid off. We cannot find ourselves in the 2020s with the Severn bridge being used as a cash cow to milk the public in Wales and south-west England of money that the Government should not be taking through a toll, so a little transparency would be welcome.
Geraint Davies
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Government should commission a report from the Treasury to determine whether, if it paid all the tolls that will be due before 2018, all that money would be recovered from higher income tax receipts and lower benefit costs arising from the generation of extra jobs?
David T. C. Davies
The hon. Gentleman puts me on the spot. I would certainly support a report from the Government giving more transparency over what will happen. His question seems to be fair and relevant, so perhaps that could be dealt with.
I have entertained hon. Members for a little too long, so let me refer, finally, to how Wales is marketed. Currently, that is done by IBW. I shall have to tell hon. Members that that is International Business Wales, because no one, except a few people in the Welsh Assembly, really knows what “IBW” is. Previously, Wales was marketed extremely successfully by the WDA, and I do not need to tell anyone that that stood for the Welsh Development Agency. The time has come for us to reconsider the way in which Wales is marketed. We have plenty of evidence, some of which is anecdotal, that IBW has not been doing a very good job. It is time for the Welsh Assembly to set up a dedicated promotional body to sell Wales to the rest of the world.
We have a good story to tell, and we still have a highly-skilled, capable and loyal work force. There is a great argument for persuading companies from across the world to come to Wales, and I look forward to working with members of the Committee, and Ministers from the UK Government and the Welsh Assembly Government, to try to ensure that that happens.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to welcome this report, which I was pressing for. Wales sits within the UK economy and the global marketplace, and we all need to pull together in both the Welsh and the UK Governments to provide the best opportunities for Wales in a changing environment and to give Wales the tools to do the job. I will cover the basic ground of the report and what we should be doing in Wales, including in the councils, focusing primarily, as has been said, on the UK Government’s responsibilities to present Wales as an accessible, adaptable and attractive location for inward investment in a global marketplace.
Obviously, we cannot compete on labour costs as we did in the past with China but we have electronic global market reach and clearly competitiveness is about added value and skills. Emerging markets in China, India and south America should be seen as major opportunities for emerging consumer markets of high value products, whether arts or science-led, for the Welsh economy. We should refocus our efforts in that way.
Following the global financial tsunami in 2008, Wales is particularly vulnerable, because the proportion of people in the public sector is greater, and as the Government begin to reduce the investment in public sector jobs and wages, consumer demand is disproportionately hit. We know that the root of very low or static growth in the UK is the collapse of consumer demand, which was still going up in 2010, albeit with a deficit, but the announcement of 500,000 job cuts deflated that and we are now bouncing along. The issue is to keep money going into local economies, and to target investment in the most productive area.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the big headwind in household expenditure has more to do with the huge personal debt bubble and asset bubble built up under the last Labour Government—£1.4 trillion, and 100% of GDP? That is an incredible record and far higher than any other state in the developed world. Is that not why consumer spending is collapsing?
Geraint Davies
I was not expecting to hear cries for austerity from Plaid Cymru, but there you go. They come from all sorts of directions.
Very briefly, you will know, Mr Bone, that between 1997 and 2008 Britain enjoyed a period of more rapid growth than had been seen since the war with paid back debt, massive growth in employment, and reductions in welfare costs. After the financial tsunami of 2008, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) and Barack Obama got the fiscal stimulus going so that we did not go into a global depression, which the hon. Gentleman seems to be calling for. In 2010, we then had a deficit, which the coalition Government inherited. Two thirds of that was due to the bankers and one third was due to excess investment above earnings to pump-prime the economy and keep it growing. The current Government then decided to focus more on cuts than growth to get the deficit down, ending up with virtually zero growth, and the deficit has been growing ever since. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman wants to cross the Floor to the Conservative side, but when history is written, it will be seen as a painful place to be.
David T. C. Davies
On a point of information, the debt had already gone from £350 billion to £650 billion before the real financial crisis started to strike in 2008.
Geraint Davies
As the hon. Gentleman knows, the real rise in debt started in 2008 after the financial tsunami, and the previous Labour Government had paid back enormous amounts of debt, partly through the sale of—[Interruption.] I think I had better redirect my argument. We can rehearse those arguments again, but people realise that what I say is, in essence, a factual record of what happened.
Geraint Davies
It is the case that debt is now going up. I give way first to the hon. Member for Monmouth, as he has only a small point to make.
David T. C. Davies
May I direct the hon. Gentleman, and anyone else who is interested, to, dare I say it, my website? On the front page, there is a history of the debt and what actually happened, with every figure checked by the House of Commons Library. He will find that what I have put there is rather different from what he is suggesting.
Geraint Davies
I have seen the European version of his website—it is called “Mon mouth”. Moving swiftly forward, I give way to the hon. Member for Aberconwy.
Guto Bebb
On the specific point about the lack of consumer demand in the economy, we had a consumer-driven economy under the previous Labour Government—a consumer debt-driven economy, based on personal debt and Government debt. Households are now retrenching, which is one reason why there is a lack of consumer demand in the economy, but we need to rebalance the economy and not depend on further credit card-fuelled economic growth, as the previous Labour Government did.
Geraint Davies
We do not want a debt-driven, borrowing-driven economy—obviously not. We need people to be given the opportunities to get jobs, create wealth and pay some of that back in tax. Post-1997, we had the transfer of a situation where the previous Conservative Government—history is repeating itself, of course—saw ever fewer people in jobs, paying less tax, and they were forced to cut services and increase debt and borrowing. That changed with Labour getting Britain back to work. Later, post-2008, it was a special situation, with too much borrowing and on the back of that, sub-prime debt. I agree that the sustainable future is about working and paying our way, but it is not about cutting to such an extent that we deflate the private sector so that it cannot invest in new jobs. We need the economy going along, with investment in consumer markets and productive areas. Although there is some level of agreement, we differ slightly on our interpretation of the past.
Moving back to the future, what should the UK and Welsh Governments do to give Wales the best opportunity for economic growth? An area that we touched on in the report was UK Trade and Investment’s role, and I very much agree with the report’s recommendations. UKTI has 83 offices around the world, and they are opportunities to market Wales for inward investment and trade. The coalition Government, in their wisdom, decided to close down all the regional development agencies, so when we went to see UKTI in Berlin, Dusseldorf and so on, we asked what happens now when a German company comes along and says to UKTI, “We want to build a factory, a distillery, or whatever. Where should we go?” That used to be put on a computer platform that was drawn down by the RDAs, which would compete for that investment. As RDAs were abolished, that no longer happens, and clearly, there is an opening for Wales to move in to. Wales has great, ongoing opportunities to use UKTI to maximise the open goals that have been created by the Government taking the players off the pitch.
Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. As he will recall, when we travelled to Brussels as part of the Committee’s investigation—I thoroughly enjoyed working with him on the report—we were shocked when we heard from both UKTI in Brussels and from representatives of the Welsh Government there that they did not see their job as being to work with UKTI and to market Welsh opportunities. Indeed, UKTI said, despite what he has just said about RDAs, that it was getting attention more regularly from some English regions than they were from organisations promoting Wales. I am sure that he would agree that that situation ought to change.
Geraint Davies
I am grateful for that intervention. When we saw the Welsh Government office in Brussels, it made its top three priorities clear. The first, as it is in Brussels, was policy in the EU, and in particular where it impacts on Wales—the common agricultural policy, and the rest of it. The second was grants and funding opportunities. Convergence funding has provided billions of pounds of investment in Wales, and that must be a key priority. We have seen it throughout Wales: recently, at Swansea university, £60 million from the European Investment Bank was invested in the second campus, and the £20 million in convergence funding for that is vital. Its third priority was the profile of Wales—to brand Wales. Those are key issues.
As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, we asked whether a fourth priority should be inward investment and trade. I agree that it should, and the response we received was that the office would be happy to work with UKTI. My understanding is that we are moving down that track. The report is helpful in encouraging co-operation with UKTI, which has 83 offices, while Wales has much fewer. However, where Wales does have them, it should work in co-operation.
On the Welsh brand, I understand that the Welsh Government are now looking at a new marketing strategy, which again, I very much welcome. There are big opportunities to push forward the Welsh identity, and I think that castles should be considered. If Members will indulge me for a moment, having a background in multinational companies and global brands, the castles around Wales symbolise romance, history, culture, strengths and endurance, which are all qualities of Wales. It is all part of inward investment and tourism. The dragon tends to be slightly overwhelmed by the Chinese dragon, but there is hope yet. [Interruption.] Okay, let’s keep the dragon—sorry about that.
Moving forward, it is not only about castles; it is about having a unique, clear identity for Wales in the global marketplace. The report referred to the success of the Welsh Development Agency. Some feel that if that brand still existed, it might be able to be re-harnessed in some respect. The report also suggests that we work in co-operation with private sector practitioners on the ground. The report’s basis was to get entrepreneurs, inward investors, multinationals, academics and an array of people in the economic community to give their view on what we should do, and we should be open-minded about taking advice as the global environment changes.
The report is obviously a place in time, and a similar report will be needed downstream, because clearly, things are changing, and the role of the public and private sectors is important in providing the instruments for success in future. Few people know, when they look at some of the great global successes, such as the Apple iPhone, that some of the technology—the touch-screen and voice sensitivities—was delivered by the public sector, by a scientific foundation in the United States. Apple then took that and made it a global brand. Some people seem to think, “Oh well, it’s the private sector. They know what they are doing,” but fundamental science and innovation is vital for commercial success. The issue is to have that link between the academic, and research and development, going through to commercial success.
I mention that because it is mentioned in our report and it is alive and well in our great city of Swansea—in Swansea university, in the first instance. People there are changing the rules. Within Swansea university, instead of having a silo situation, with the engineering department here, medicine there and so on, they mix it up so that the engineers are in with the medics. In terms of life sciences, development of nanoproducts and so on, they are working with inward investors in producing global brands. They have the support of Rolls-Royce, BP and others in relation to the development of a second campus worth £200 million. As I mentioned, the investment in that from Europe has been critical. Those coalition Members—in particular, the Tories, of course—who say yah-boo to the Europeans need to realise that a joined-up approach whereby we are working together to have a strong Europe and a strong Wales within Britain within Europe is vital for the future. We cannot retrench to become fish and chip shop Britain, as many on the Conservative Benches would like to see us.
Mr Peter Bone (in the Chair)
Order. Chuntering should not occur at all and should definitely not be heard from those sitting behind the Minister.
Geraint Davies
That is kind of you, Mr Bone; thank you.
I want to mention the issue of city regions. In terms of working together in a critical mass in a global marketplace, one benefit of trying to bring together the four local authorities of Swansea, Neath Port Talbot, Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire, plus the universities and industry, to argue the commercial case as well as the social case for electrification of the railway to Swansea was that there was a refocusing on the common interests of that area.
I am very pleased that the Welsh Government have taken the initiative in doing a consultation on city region status and have given the go-ahead for the Swansea Bay city region to move forward. Swansea has always been seen to be, to a certain extent at least, in the shadow of Cardiff, so it is interesting to note that Cardiff itself contains about 300,000 people, but the continuous urban footprint of Neath Port Talbot and Swansea, going to Llanelli, is one of about 400,000 people —the biggest urban footprint in Wales. We can work together within that and within Carmarthenshire, haloing out to Pembrokeshire and, indeed, Ceredigion—there is not really anywhere to go beyond that. The hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) is very welcome in the Swansea Bay region. I am talking about working together to have a diverse skills base. Working with the universities and the local authorities to get coherence, focus and value for money is very important.
I have already welcomed the rail electrification. It was regrettable that we had to work so hard to get the Government to agree to an extension from Cardiff to Swansea, but that was very good news. As I have said, the next thing that we want is to be able to say that we have super-connectivity.
Of course, the Swansea Bay brand has been created partly through football. The Minister will know that Swansea won 3-1 against West Brom last night. That sort of news is transmitted to 600 million people in 200 countries. That is important because the name Swansea is then known. Increasingly, people are hearing of Swansea who may not even have heard of Cardiff. That is amazing.
Jonathan Edwards
I just want to add to the excellent point being made by the hon. Gentleman. As colleagues know, I have just returned from my honeymoon in Cape Verde, and I actually watched the Swansea game against Liverpool live on TV in my hotel room.
Geraint Davies
I bet the hon. Gentleman’s wife was happy about that, with him shouting for a goal, but there we are. I wish him a long and happy marriage while watching Swansea. I thank him for that intervention, which was very welcome.
On a serious note, the Swansea brand is of course a global brand, so there is an opportunity to attach various values to it, including the fact that it is a nice family and business environment by the sea. With internet connectivity, why would people want to be in the expensive congestion of London, for instance, when they could be overlooking Swansea bay? The fact that there are sporting successes, good schools, a good health service and so on is critical to that.
I mention that point partly to move on to the regional pay issue. The Government have been considering the case for regional pay, and I will say two things about that. First, reducing the pay of people in the public services in Wales by some 20%, which is the implicit agenda, would remove even greater amounts of economic power from the consumer markets in Swansea and, again, push down the private sector; but as important or possibly more important, GPs and other public servants would think that they would be better off getting a job in Bristol, where their pay would be higher, and suddenly we would be denuded of some of the best GPs and other public servants. That would have implications for inward investors, who are being taken, for instance, from London.
Let us consider how inward investment works. UKTI promotes the UK. Someone says, “Okay, I’ll go to the UK. That sounds great in terms of stability, environment, access to Europe and everything else, but where shall I go in the UK”—that is the next decision—“and how do we have added value there?” Of course, in Wales, we have environmental opportunities. We want to increase accessibility, skills and research and development. However, if the families going there suddenly do not have the right GP or education services because of wage deflation in Wales, that will be very bad for inward investment.
Guto Bebb
I share many of the hon. Gentleman’s concerns in relation to regional pay. Certainly, in an area such as north Wales, part of which I represent, it is a real concern—Chester is within 45 minutes of my constituency. Was there anything specific, therefore, about people working in the Courts Service that meant that the Labour Government were quite happy to see those working in Mold paid less than those working in Chester, even though there are only 10 miles between them?
Geraint Davies
That is a very well rehearsed intervention—“How can you have this, that and the other?” Obviously, there is a case for London weighting, for example. There are some cases at the margin for differentials, but in the main what we do not want is suddenly to have a free market approach to regional pay, as the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues seem to want to promote. That would undermine inward investment in areas such as his own, because people would not be paid the right rate for the job.
In a global environment, regional pay becomes even less relevant. I hope that over time the average pay in Swansea will escalate quite phenomenally because of the emergence of the second campus at the university and of satellite industries—SMEs and global companies locating beside that centre of excellence and moving forward from that. I am talking about international links from Swansea university and, indeed, the other university in Swansea, Swansea Metropolitan university, which delivers the highest proportion of SMEs that last for three years or more in Wales. It is building up digital clusters in interactive technology, animation and modern manufacturing design. If we can move to a level at which the community of people around that intellectual base evolves, so that people can get a number of jobs in the same place, the average pay may go up. What does that mean for regional pay in the public sector? We might stop that through the moves that have been set out.
We have already mentioned bridge tolls. My view in a nutshell is that the Severn bridge toll is a tax stranglehold on the south Wales economy. We should eliminate the toll sooner rather than later. The reason why I want the Government to evaluate immediately whether, if they paid that toll themselves, they would get the money back in jobs, in income tax from new jobs and in benefit cuts from people going off the dole is that the toll is undermining inward investment in south Wales.
The Welsh Government recently produced a report that said that £107 million was being lost from the Welsh economy because of the tolls. I suggest that that is an underestimate. Let me give a simple example. A small builder from Newport, who wants to retile roofs and do extensions, would not go across to Bristol to look for that work now because of the toll, but if there was no toll, he or she would do so. I therefore believe that we should look at that again.
As we see other city regions, such as Manchester, emerging, it would be unbelievable for the person or the group that is leading Manchester city region to suggest a toll on the M5 to build some infrastructure. That would be unheard of. Similarly, we must look carefully at the economic impact of removing tolls. The removal of the Forth bridge toll, which was only £1, increased traffic by 13%. The Select Committee report is about what the UK and Welsh Governments can do to stimulate inward investment and growth. Getting rid of the tolls is clearly an option.
The Silk report talked about borrowing powers and so on, but frankly, the first issue to get right is ensuring that Wales has its fair share of the UK cake—though I do understand that it is a squeezed cake. We have had something like 2.5% of the transport investment in recent years, but proportionally we should get about 5%. There is a plan to spend £32 billion on High Speed 2 to connect north and south England. Our fair share would be £1.9 billion, and unless we also have a spur off the line, inward investment that would otherwise go to Wales will end up in the north of England.
Is the Silk report just a way of saying, “Actually, we’re not going to give you any more money. We don’t want to know the arguments about a fair share and Barnett and all that. If you want more money, raise it yourself from a lower tax base.”? Wales’s gross value added is about 70% of the UK average however, so it is less capable of doing that. We do not need new tax raising powers and a lot of uncertainty about the future for inward investors; we need a fair share of British investment in our services, capital investment in our transport infrastructure and to deflate the costs of entering south Wales by bridge.
I shall move swiftly on, because I know others want to speak. The tax regime leads to a tax on inward investment. One small example, which leads to a significant example, is that in recent days Tata Group has announced 900 job losses in Britain, 600 of which are in Port Talbot in the Swansea bay city region. The job losses are largely due to a fall in demand in Tata’s core markets in Europe, which accounts for two-thirds of its sales. I have had discussions with Tata, and part of its decision is about a level playing field on tax. In Britain, Tata pays 50% more tax than it would in its European operations, due to the additional carbon pricing that the coalition Government have introduced.
I worked for five years in the Environment Agency Wales on flood risk management and adapting Wales to climate change—incidentally, the Government have cut investment in those areas, despite the flooding. Although I am a great supporter of investment in green technology and a sustainable future, we need a level playing field. We cannot have a situation in which steel production moves from south Wales to South America, for example, and we end up with dirtier steel production, because taxes are too high here. We all share the same environment. The European tax regime, which has carbon taxing built in to it, is the right way forward. Adding a huge amount to UK prices, which drives down jobs and clean production in Britain, is not the way forward.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Stephen Crabb)
The hon. Gentleman is wrong to suggest that there is any link between Tata’s sad announcement of job losses in Wales last week and its concerns about energy prices. Companies that are intensive energy users, such as Tata, face a real issue. The Government are looking at it, and we have made £250 million available to help intensive energy users. Tata’s announcement last week had everything to do with changes in international steel markets globally and nothing to do with what he is saying about the challenge of green energy.
Geraint Davies
I do not accept that at all. Certainly, the main driver of the Tata job reductions was, as I mentioned, the reduction in demand, particularly in the European market. Someone running a business clearly looks for ways to reduce costs. There are two drivers for a business—the revenue that it gets and the costs that it pays. Revenues are going down because demand is down due to the global environment, but if expenditure is going up due to excessive costs, that will also form part of the choice over how many job cuts are made. In the business mix, energy prices have an impact, and if they did not, Tata would not be talking to me about them. It is clearly also talking about the wider marketplace and the structure of the market.
I should say that a great deal of great work is going on in Tata. With Swansea university, it is developing multi-layered steel—six layers of different steel—that produces its own electricity and heat when clad on a building. It reduces carbon footprints and may become a global game changer. In addition, Tata are investing £185 million in a second blast furnace—increasing capacity production from 4 million tonnes to 4.7 million tonnes a year—alongside the Margam pit, which has particularly good coal for the production of coke for steel production. There is a strong future for Tata, but we have to get the right balance to protect our environment, while protecting competitiveness for the steel industry in Britain, and south Wales in particular.
We have had long discussions about to what extent we should cut expenditure, as opposed to grow revenue, to get the British economy back on track. The Minister will know that the International Monetary Fund suggested that for every 1% cut in expenditure, growth would go down by 0.5%. More recently, it suggested that for every 1% cut, growth goes down by 1.7%, so expenditure cuts do not seem to be as good an idea as they used to. Our focus should be on revenue. A business person who runs a small business in Uplands, in Swansea, came to me recently and said, “I have a business, and if it makes a loss, the last thing that I am going to do is sack all my workers and sell my tools. I have to tighten my costs and focus on selling more.” That is what the Select Committee report should be about—increasing the productive capacity and commercial success of Wales in the global marketplace.
Other changes are being made that impact on consumer demand and the opportunities for people to get jobs, help themselves and help their local economy. I should say in passing, as I did in the main Chamber yesterday, that some changes to the welfare system that are designed to reduce the costs of the welfare state are likely to do the opposite, by preventing people from accessing work. I am thinking particularly of under 25-year-olds having their housing benefit cut, because 45% of such people have children. I know of a woman who has been made redundant and a man who worked for nine years—from the age of 15—but was made redundant six months ago; they have two children and could face homelessness. If they are homeless and of no fixed abode, they will not be able to apply for jobs. That does not make sense.
Under the other housing benefit change—the empty bedroom tax—a couple with two children and, therefore, three bedrooms will be suddenly charged £7.50 a week for each empty room if one child goes to university and the other has a job or goes to live with their boyfriend or girlfriend. They might say to their son or daughter, “It’s going to cost me this money, so you don’t really want to go to college, do you?” That is wrong; some people simply will not be able to pay.
People have come to me with disposable incomes of about £20 a week, after utility bills and so on. I am particularly thinking of a man with medical problems, who told me, “I use my spare room for painting. If I have to pay the £7.50 for it, I will end up with £12.50. A council tax benefit cut of 20%, will mean another £5. I will be down to £8 a week for my food, clothing and leisure.” That does not make any economic or social sense. That person will end up homeless.
I have been a local authority leader, and local authorities historically built two and three-bedroom houses for families. There is a shortage of one-bedroom properties. Everyone is supposed to go into such properties, but there are not enough, so they have to pay to go to the private sector, which costs more. It does not add up on a simple balance sheet, and it does not add up in terms of access to jobs and providing an environment for people to work in, and we want people to work. If people are not available to work for inward investors, because we have under-occupation and empty houses on the one hand and homelessness on the other due to the housing benefit changes, the system will not make sense.
We have also seen cuts to the working families tax credit. If a small company in Wales can afford to pay someone £12,000, or whatever, and that person can only afford to work for £15,000, it makes sense for the Government to provide the £3,000 difference, because we get someone a job in a growing business. People who work part-time will lose nearly £4,000, with the move from 18 to 16 hours. People will not have jobs and we will not have growing businesses, so there will be problems. We therefore need to think about the architecture of the welfare state in relation to boosting jobs and job access.
On banks and finance, there is a problem in Wales. I do not know whether the Chair of the Welsh Affairs Committee will agree, but we have discussed the possibility of doing a report on access to finance for small business. Since I last spoke to him about that, more and more businesses, some of them quite big, have told me that they have the bookings and can do the work, but they need the money and the banks are letting them down. Of course, that is not an issue only for Wales, but the proportion of small businesses is higher there than in England.
Wales has great opportunities for tourism. If we get the branding right, it is a great place to visit, particularly for environmental health or historical trips. Many mature people, particularly from north America, do not want to get skin cancer from lying on beaches, but speak English and want fine food, so there are lots of opportunities to build up the Welsh brand and encourage inward investment.
That naturally leads me to the Dylan Thomas centenary in 2014. He was from Swansea, of course, and there is now a great opportunity to market the Dylan Thomas festival, which runs from 27 October, his birthday, to 9 November, which was the day of his death. Not enough is known about that festival—it is not like the Hay and Edinburgh festivals—but there is an opportunity next year to gear that up for the following year and to internationalise it. The Swansea bay beer festival might be moved into that week; of course, Dylan Thomas had a few drinks and enjoyed himself, as well as writing fine literature and poetry. We should celebrate that, and during that week we want Swansea to be the place to be. We need to learn from the Hay festival and others, and I am already involved in trying to make international links, perhaps without getting people from Bollywood to go. We want that to be the place to be, as a great celebration for the whole of Wales, as well as for the Swansea bay city region.
In conclusion—[Hon. Members: “Shame!”] I know, but it had to happen. A bright future is possible if emerging markets work together. We can use our insights, as team UK and team Wales, to build a more exciting, productive, richer and fairer future for Wales. The UK Government need to think again about several issues, and I have already mentioned enabling people to work, providing easy access to markets, inward investment and encouraging success. It is important that the Welsh Government work in partnership on that and take forward their own successful initiatives, so that there is mutual learning and respect in the interests of having a strong economy for all our people.
Mr Peter Bone (in the Chair)
Before I call the next speaker, hon. Members might find it useful to know that I anticipate two Divisions in the House at 2.30 pm. If that happens, I will suspend the sitting until 10 minutes after the start of the second Division.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)
It is a pleasure, Mr Bone, to serve under the chairmanship of the star strike bowler of the parliamentary cricket team. I had not intended to speak, so I will keep my speech brief. I will be probably more disjointed than I usually am in my parliamentary contributions.
The report is hugely important—I congratulate the Chair of the Welsh Affairs Committee—and has been well-received, especially by the Welsh media, who gave it significant coverage. As we know, economic growth is driven by four interconnected factors, the first of which is household expenditure, which accounts for 62% of GDP growth in the UK. That is perhaps testament to overdependence on that specific component during the Labour years. The second factor is Government expenditure. We are witnessing more than £80 billion of cuts during the current comprehensive spending review, which is a major head wind for the course of the British state. The third and fourth factors are exports and business investment, in which foreign direct investment—FDI—plays a huge part. The report was very timely.
At one time, Wales was a world leader, or definitely a leader within the UK, in generating FDI. Behind my family home in Capel Hendre is an enormous industrial estate, with companies from Korea, Japan, the US and, indeed, all over the world, which is testament to its success. There have been concerns that we are over-reliant on foreign direct investment and not sufficiently promoting indigenous businesses, but there is now growing agreement that the pendulum has swung too far the other way. Unfortunately, Wales is now among the worse-performing constituent parts of the UK in terms of FDI.
We are living in an age of reductions in Government expenditure and of contraction in household expenditure. Recently, the consumer confidence index was at minus 30 —the lowest it has ever been—showing the huge economic head winds that are being faced. The hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) wanted to appoint me as an exponent of austerity, but I assure him that I do not support the experiment of cutting Government expenditure. That policy was set by the Chancellor, so concentrating on the promotion of FDI in Wales is key to our economic well-being, and it is the one element that can help to stimulate the other two components—business investment and exports.
I want to highlight some of the report’s important recommendations. First, we need to work closely with UK Trade and Investment to help promote Wales as a destination for FDI, and I agree with comments made by Members from all parts of the Chamber. I welcome the announcement, following our report, that UKTI has based an official in Wales. We were the only component part of the United Kingdom not to have such a representative, so I am glad that that has been rectified.
I want the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to instruct UKTI to pursue a similar path to Germany Trade and Invest, which has a remit to set specific targets for directing investment to the poorest parts of the state. That policy does not exist in the UK, but it would help to drive FDI into those areas, such as Wales, that are underperforming. Indeed, we could learn a lot from the example of German economic policy, which has enabled Germany to address huge wealth inequalities following reunification. It is incredible that, following 50 or 60 years of communism, its wealth levels are far more equal than the UK’s, but I shall not go down that road.
The signature recommendation in the report and the one most trailed in the press was the need to reuse the Welsh Development Agency brand. As a Plaid Cymru politician, I should take some credit for the original creation of the WDA, because it was the Plaid Cymru economic commission in the 1960s and 1970s—under Dafydd Wigley, Phil Williams and Eurfyl ap Gwilym—that first had the idea of the dedicated economic investment arm that later morphed into the WDA. I am not talking about reconstituting the WDA as it was when it was swallowed by the Welsh Government, but about reusing the brand. It is a global brand that, to this day, everybody recognises. The reality is that the successor bodies set up by the Welsh Government have nothing near the recognition of the WDA, so I want them urgently to reuse the brand.
Paul Flynn
I admire the skill of the Select Committee in choosing a day for this debate when there is no other subject to distract the media. One abiding impression of the report is that it is part of the begging bowl psychology in which we have one dominant partner in a relationship with another subservient partner, and we know which one is which. As it has come from the party, would not a more accurate title for this report have been, “One Hundred Shades of Blue”?
Jonathan Edwards
As always, the hon. Gentleman makes a fantastic contribution.
When I close my remarks, I should like to talk about recent announcements in relation to the Silk report and borrowing powers, but before I get to that point, let me just say that another important element of this report was the need to use convergence funding appropriately. Wales is a net recipient of EU funds, and I am wary of some of the discussions under way at the moment about real-term cuts in British contributions to the EU pot and in the EU expenditure pot, because that will have a direct impact on cohesion funding for some of the poorest communities in our country.
Finally, one of the key elements of the report relates to transport. Wales is at the heart of one of the major trading routes within the European Union. We export more to the Republic of Ireland than we do to all the BRIC countries put together, so Wales is not some sort of marginal geographical location; we are at the centre of one of those trading routes.
Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship in this rather intimate and select gathering, Mr Rosindell. There are important issues to be raised, but I will resist the temptation to talk about future inquiries and previous inquiries. I do not seek to emulate the lengthy contribution that we heard earlier in any way.
I am pleased that the Select Committee undertook its inquiry, and I congratulate its Chair, my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), on the way in which he introduced this topic, as well as, of course, his chairing of our Select Committee. He has a knack for choosing the issues of the moment.
Inward investment is critical because the circumstances in which Wales finds itself are different from those of the glory days of inward investment that we saw in the 1980s and early 1990s. On the global stage, the background of the Select Committee’s inquiry is that, since the 1980s, world trade in goods and services has increased more than sevenfold, while the emerging economies have seen their share of trade quadruple and there has been a fourfold increase in the effective supply of global labour. That is a continuing trend for China and India, which are expected to add more than 30 million workers to the world’s labour pool by 2030.
As the Committee’s inquiry identified, Wales can no longer assume that overseas companies will be tempted to invest by the traditional inducements of grants and low labour costs. We have to adapt continually to challenging and consistently changing domestic and global conditions to attract new inward investment, which means working smarter and more flexibly to find more innovative ways to encourage inward investment into our country.
I will focus specifically on two issues that we investigated in the inquiry: the importance of higher education; and infrastructure. First, let me address the importance of the knowledge economy. As emerging economies move up the value chain to compete with Western companies in the manufacture of high-tech products and attracting research and development investment, the OECD has stated:
“If developed countries are to remain competitive in the global economy, they will have to rely more on knowledge, technology and intangible assets.”
In practice, that means that today’s students and graduates will have to provide cutting-edge research—not just research for research’s sake, but research that has a commercial edge—that will ensure our nation’s prosperity.
Our inquiry shows that there needs to be far greater partnership working between the higher and further education sectors, and industry, as well as closer engagement with business. In that spirit, I welcome one of the things that the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) said in his long speech: the developments in Swansea bay and Swansea university’s second campus. The university’s vice chancellor has met many Members of Parliament to celebrate the work he hopes to achieve at the second campus. I hesitate to say this, but in the new budget agreement between the Labour party and Plaid Cymru in the Assembly, there was a commitment of some £10 million for a science park. That will largely be in Bangor, but I hope there will be significant rub-off on Aberystwyth university, too, because that is also important.
At Aberystwyth university in my constituency, there has been meaningful partnership for a long time with the commercial sector and developing economies in other parts of the world. For a medium-sized university, it punches well above its weight. There is investment in research that seeks solutions to many global issues, and over the next five years, the university’s world-leading research will address the major challenges faced across the world. I have repeatedly talked about the Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences over the past seven years, for which I make no apology, because excellent, world-leading research is being undertaken in fights against famine, climate change, loss of biodiversity and disease. Collaboration between researchers in Aberystwyth, Africa and India is already leading to breakthroughs in the fight against famine with the development of climate-resistant crops. Such excellent research, which is often talked about, is happening, so the challenge is to market it overseas more effectively and rigorously.
Recently, to commercialise its intellectual property, Aberystwyth university has been developing cutting-edge smartphone technology—that is not unique to Swansea; it is happening in mid-Wales, too—and it is leading the way in developing mobile apps. In recognition of the university’s innovative approach to exploiting its intellectual property and expertise through smartphone platforms, it was awarded funding for those developments by the UK Intellectual Property Office.
The good work that is happening across higher education not only benefits my local economy in Ceredigion and those places where partnerships have been formed, but encourages students to identify and develop commercial ideas, which is a key role. In other words, that is exactly the sort of creative entrepreneurial activity that needs to be encouraged and supported in the HE sector.
Our report highlighted research funding. We also noted that in a report on inward investment during the previous Parliament, but Wales has not been successful at securing its fair share of research funding, which remains a problem, so that battle needs to be waged.
One idea we heard in evidence was for business angels to come in and help to develop products more quickly and get them to market. That is the sort of idea that could be picked up by a local firm, academics or students, and spun out into a company. For a company to develop in those early stages, it needs the right facilities, and that might be a role for the emerging science park that the Administration in Cardiff are pursuing.
We are some way off facilitating such ideas at any great size. We need more joined-up thinking from the Welsh Assembly Government to offer support to such facilitators of enterprise. Support needs to be tailored to skills and the innovation that is happening at any one time, rather than divided into prescriptive sectoral targets, as the Assembly Government have done. There was a debate about whether those sectoral targets are right and what additional targets should be added. For example, the absence of tourism is a key issue affecting my area, and it was subsequently added. That was welcome, but it took some time for the Assembly Government to reach that conclusion.
We have heard about reinforcing the Welsh brand, and it makes sense that Welsh Government overseas offices should be co-located with UK Trade and Investment offices so that the Welsh Government can efficiently utilise the strength and capabilities of UKTI. Wales does not have sufficient resources to work alone in attracting inward investment to Wales, and we must make every penny count. I concur with the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards), whom I welcome back from Cape Verde, on the welcome addition of a UKTI official in Wales. The partnership between those two groups, which was not always evident in the discussions and inquiries we had, both in Germany and here, needs to mean something practical if things are to be achieved.
Finally, on connectivity, we asked UKTI about its checklist of motivators to attract people to invest in Wales. The hon. Member for Swansea West was constant in pushing for the recognition of the quality of life in Wales, and we can all empathise with the life experience of living in Wales. The list of motivators also included the transport network and broadband. I welcome the announcement on electrification for south Wales, and I applaud what the Wales Office and my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) have been doing to highlight electrification for north Wales. I am not yet going to launch a campaign for electrification for mid-Wales, but I will reiterate—despite the lack of an audience, because of events elsewhere in the Palace—the case for an hourly service on the Cambrian line between Aberystwyth and Shrewsbury. The hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), who is no longer in the Chamber, might not appreciate that, and this is technically a devolved matter, but it impinges on my area’s capacity to develop economically.
Aberystwyth might well be perceived by many to be at the end of the line—and not only in the physical sense—but we have the highest proportion of small businesses per head anywhere in the United Kingdom. Aberystwyth is also a strategically important university town with a large skills base in a county whose huge tourist opportunities have been recognised by the Wales Tourism Alliance. That is one reason why we will be looking to mid-Wales, rather than taking up the captivating invitation to join the city region in Swansea bay—it is pushing it a bit for us in Aberystwyth to join the hon. Member for Swansea West down there. Aberystwyth is a strategic town of significance—that is our focus, and it has been recognised by the National Assembly—and we want that recognised in our transport infrastructure as well.
In his evidence to us, Professor Stuart Cole said this is not about the headcount on the train between Aberystwyth and London, but much more about interconnectivity. There are few peripheral areas of the United Kingdom where people cannot get a direct service to London. As a student, 27 years ago, I could get the seven o’clock inter-city train from Aberystwyth to London, and freight came into Aberystwyth as well, but that has long since gone and we do not even have an hourly service. Having such a service is important, because it could re-energise parts of mid-Wales, from Welshpool, through Newtown, Machynlleth and Caersws, and along the infamous route to Aberystwyth.
Geraint Davies
Having been on holiday every year of my life to Aberystwyth, I would concur that there is a great opportunity for cultural, environmental and all sorts of other tourism.
Mr Williams
I am grateful for that endorsement. Of course, there are Dylan Thomas connections, as well, if we go a bit further down the coast to New Quay—Cei Newydd—in my constituency. I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention.
I was disappointed when the Select Committee went by train to Aberystwyth a couple of weeks ago. I was grateful that the Chair encouraged the Committee to go, but when the Welsh Government Transport Minister, Carl Sargeant, came to see us, he confirmed that we would not see the hourly service until 2015, despite the fact that we had been promised it for 2014, and despite the fact that all the infrastructure has been done.
On broadband, I very much welcome the £425 million agreement between the Welsh Government and BT to deliver next-generation broadband to 96% of Welsh homes and businesses by 2015. I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth mentioned that rurality is important. This is not just about the M4 corridor or the A55. There is a bigger picture, which some of us will not stop talking about. There is real potential across Wales to attract businesses, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating. We need hard, imaginative, bold targets, but we also need to see the reality.
Finally, the inquiry clearly identified that the Welsh Government need a dedicated trade promotion agency. The evidence shows that, since 2004, investment opportunities have been missed because of this omission, and Wales branding has taken a knock since the days of the Welsh Development Agency and the loss of the Wales Tourist Board. Branding Wales is hugely important; it is tough out there, but we have a strong product that makes Wales stand out from the crowd. I am thinking particularly of culture, outdoor pursuits, tourism, the creative industries, and the potential jobs and wealth created by holding events such as the Ryder cup. There are huge opportunities for us and, in that context, the Select Committee report was highly valuable. In particular, the sections on infrastructure and higher education resonate strongly in terms of the future development of my area.
Andrew Rosindell (in the Chair)
I invite Jonathan Edwards to resume his speech, which was interrupted by the Division.
Jonathan Edwards
Diolch yn fawr, Mr Rosindell. First, may I apologise to Members for rudely interrupting proceedings to perform my telling duties in the series of close votes we have just had in the main Chamber?
Before the Divisions, I was remarking on the importance of transport links, which is clearly emphasised in the report. Wales is located at the centre of one of the most important trading routes in the European Union, so it is vital, with the ongoing negotiations among our partners at a European level, that there is at least a southern link running through south Wales and linking the Republic of Ireland with Britain and Europe. Personally, I would also like to see a northern link going through north Wales, which would then fund the improvement of transport infrastructure there. I welcome the fact that the Government are actively looking at that, and I am glad to put that on the record.
I want to touch briefly on the bilateral negotiations on funding for the Welsh Government and on the recent Silk commission, which reported as I left on my honeymoon. Both those things impact directly on the Committee’s report. First, on the bilateral negotiations, I was disappointed that there was no reform of the block grant; there was not even a Barnett floor, let alone reform of the housing revenue account subsidy scheme. On the borrowing powers that were announced, the reality is that we could not buy a packet of crisps using the current powers. The Welsh Government Finance Minister has been completely outfoxed, yet again, by the Treasury.
The conclusions of the bilateral negotiations might, however, come into play if the recommendations of the Silk commission are implemented, so their full implementation could be of value. To access the borrowing powers announced in the bilateral agreement, we need fiscal levers to raise revenue, so the more tax-sharing arrangements there are between the Welsh Government and the UK Government, the better. That is why it is imperative that we do not stick just to the minor taxes preferred by the Welsh Government—stamp duty, the aggregates levy and the long-haul airport tax—but devolve sharing arrangements for income tax, which would enable the Welsh Government to have far greater leverage in terms of their borrowing powers. Given that their capital budgets are being cut by 42%, they need those borrowing powers, not only so that they can level out peaks and troughs using fiscal levers, but so that they have power to invest. The current position of the First Minister is therefore completely bizarre, and it is a huge let-down to the people of Wales.
Fiscal powers are important with regard to political accountability, which is something that finds favour with Conservative Members, but the main reason we should have fiscal powers is that they would incentivise the Welsh Government to turn the Welsh economy around. At the moment, given that they get a block grant, there is no incentive for them to develop it. If they were responsible for raising their own revenue, there would be an incentive to generate wealth to invest in public services.
Geraint Davies
Is the hon. Gentleman’s position that Wales should have devolved power over income tax, and that a proportion of that could be used as a revenue stream to pay back borrowing, but that Wales should not use tolls to pay back borrowing which, as I said, is a tax on inward investment and trade?
Jonathan Edwards
The hon. Gentleman has a long-standing position on this. He has explained my position on the importance of the devolution of income tax quite adequately. The reality is that if we devolved an income tax-sharing arrangement, we would, even if we did not change the level, have huge leverage to borrow far more. Personally, I would like the Welsh Government to have responsibility for setting tax bands, but the reality is that we are nowhere near getting into that debate.
On the tolls, I would like the Welsh Government to have responsibility for the Severn bridges, because they are the major access route to the south Wales economy. There would be a leverage potential on the revenue, but that is not my primary reason for supporting this. I would like the Welsh Government to have responsibility for the tolls and to set them at a rate that would enable them, on top of maintaining the bridges, to have money to reinvest in wider Welsh infrastructure, but that rate would be far lower than at present.
I look forward to next week’s autumn statement, and plenty of progress on the bilateral negotiations and the Silk commission.
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), the Chair of the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs, on securing this important debate, and on the work that he and the Committee have carried out on the inquiry into inward investment in Wales.
I agree with the Committee Chairman’s grave disappointment that the debate clashes with the statement on Leveson, and I hope that the topics that we are discussing will be revisited, as they are important. The hon. Gentleman reiterated eloquently the arguments that he has made in the past, together with my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) and others, about the Severn bridge and the importance of Government transparency in that respect. There was a little bit of the knockabout partisan stuff that I do not much like; but there were social democratic tinges to the speech too—and I dare the hon. Gentleman to put that on his website. The point that it would not be desirable to compete with China on labour costs was a good start, as was the fact that he mentioned the importance of education and Government-funded infrastructure and transport. He is developing a bit more of a social democratic tinge, and that is to be welcomed.
My hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) made an eloquent and wide-ranging speech about, among other things, the importance of electronic global market reach; economic growth under the previous Labour Government of the United Kingdom; the pitfalls of regional pay and the tragic situation of Tata steel, with the related unemployment. He also spoke eloquently about the Welsh brand and tourism, and the importance of the Dylan Thomas festival, which I too welcome.
The hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) spoke about emerging economies and made an important point about links with universities, and working in partnership with them. I also want to add a plug for Glyndwr university, and its links to Airbus. He also spoke about the importance of tourism, and we would all welcome the fact that that is now a priority sector for the Welsh Government, and for all of us. He discussed the fact that it is important for Wales to work alongside UKTI, and the importance of infrastructure and rural broadband.
The hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) was, again, a bit partisan, but I suppose that is his job, really. It was nice to see him back all suntanned from his honeymoon, and I do not want to be too partisan on this occasion. I am sure it is good to see him back with us. However, I want to make one small partisan point. The hon. Gentleman spoke of the importance of promoting Wales and of openness about how that is done, and mentioned foreign direct investment and changed attitudes to it. The tiny point I want to make is that I seem to remember the main opposition to that in the 1980s—it might have been in the ’70s too, but I am too young to remember—tended to come from the Welsh nationalists. As for the discussions on funding arrangements, Silk and the like, I am sure that we shall have that debate. I hope that it will be on the Floor of the House, where it deserves to be.
I shall try to be relatively brief, because I know that there are one or two other matters that hon. Members would like to participate in today. As the Government response to the inquiry says, the Committee’s report is comprehensive and wide-ranging. I will not respond to every one of the recommendations, but I hope to touch on the key themes. I want first to talk briefly about why inward investment is so crucial to the Welsh economy.
At the moment, at the aggregated UK level, it is difficult to see where a potential source of significant future economic growth lies, given the austerity agenda being pursued by the UK Government. Despite an Olympic-driven injection of 1% growth in the last quarter, yesterday’s—albeit slight—downward revision of previous quarters’ figures is a reminder that the Government’s economic policies have massively under-achieved. Two years ago, the Chancellor forecast growth of 4.6% but, in reality, in that time, the UK economy has grown by 0.5%. None of us can rejoice at that. Tellingly, the economy is the same size now as it was a year ago and it remains more than 3% below its pre-global financial crisis peak. The reason is clear to the Opposition: it is that Government spending is being cut too far and too fast, and household spending is being squeezed by the increased cost of living, thanks largely to the Government’s decision to increase VAT, as well as the impact of high inflation and rising energy bills.
With consumption—which accounts for around two thirds of the quarterly GDP figures—being held back, we need significant levels of investment if there is to be growth in the economy. However, the Office for Budget Responsibility has slashed its forecasts for growth in business investment over the past two years. They are down this year to a predicted 0.7%, which is a huge drop from the 8.6% predicted two years ago. We all hope that when the Chancellor gives his autumn statement next week he will give a far brighter forecast for growth in business investment for the years to come, because, with more than 700 international companies having located in Wales over the past forty years, the securing of inward investment is vital for Wales’s prosperity. I believe that the Welsh Government are acutely aware of that. In 2011-12, foreign direct investment into Wales created and safeguarded 3,706 jobs, which represents an increase of almost 5% on the previous year. For Ministers in the Welsh Government, who have had real-terms cuts to their capital budget of more than 40% imposed on them, but who are none the less tasked with offsetting the economic damage, the promotion of inward investment to Wales provides a vital economic lever.
The Committee’s report rightly acknowledges that it is down to both Governments to work together to boost inward investment, but it is also right to say that the Welsh Government’s role is pivotal. Hon. Members will know that only this week the Welsh Government presented their budget for 2013-14—a budget for jobs and growth, which reflects an unwavering commitment to attracting investment to Wales as a means of boosting the Welsh economy.
The Committee focused its investigation on three key areas that are central to inward investment, and in those vital areas highlighted by the inquiry the Welsh Government have already put in place policies that will boost inward investment. I am sure that hon. Members will welcome the fact that Ministers in Cardiff Bay have also found additional funding in those areas, as revealed in this week’s budget announcement. The areas in question, recognised by both the Welsh Government and the Committee’s inquiry, are infrastructure, promoting Wales abroad, and education and research and development.
The ambitious Wales infrastructure plan will invest about £15 billion over the next decade in capital priorities. It sets out a sectoral and targeted approach to infrastructure investment that will help to create a Wales with modern transport, IT and energy networks. It outlines for the first time in Wales a list of existing schemes that are being delivered now and schemes that are in the pipeline to be delivered but have not yet started. That approach will enable the private sector to ensure that it is well placed and adequately skilled and resourced to support the infrastructure delivery that Wales needs over the next decade. The plan also features opportunities to lever in additional funds to finance infrastructure delivery, and in this week’s final budget announcement the Finance Minister Jane Hutt revealed additional capital investment of nearly £50 million to support the plan further. The plan exemplifies the Welsh Government’s vision for attracting sustainable economic growth in Wales and should be welcomed by Members on both sides.
Of course, another massive boost to Wales’ infrastructure—and, we all hope, also to long-term levels of inward investment in Wales—is the confirmation we had in July that rail electrification to Swansea and the south Wales valleys is to go ahead. Agreement for this £350 million direct investment is a good example of the two Governments working together in the best interests of Wales. In the context of austerity measures at UK level, it is a remarkable achievement.
Jonathan Edwards
The hon. Lady mentioned that it was important to increase investment in infrastructure and we agree with that. The UK Government have announced an infrastructure investment plan of £30 billion, comprising £5 billion from public funds and £25 billion to be financed—different from funding—from the private sector. The Welsh Government get a Barnett consequential on the £5 billion, but not on the £25 billion. Can the hon. Lady explain what mechanisms the Welsh Government have put in place to access that £25 billion of potential investment finance?
Susan Elan Jones
I will be honest with the hon. Gentleman. I am not able to give him the total details and I am not prepared to flaff and speak generally, but we will provide him with an answer.
This budget will bolster Wales’s economic competitiveness, generate jobs, increase mobility and, in the context of today’s debate, strengthen Wales’s bid for future inward investment.
Another way that the Welsh Government are going about improving transport infrastructure is by continuing to forge a close relationship with Cardiff airport. Ministers are determined to work towards modernising the airport and increasing its connectivity.
The second of our Committee’s central issues is Wales’s international standing and efforts by the Welsh Government to promote Wales abroad. Since the Committee’s inquiries, there have been significant developments on this front, which I am sure that hon. Members from all parties will welcome. In July, for example, the Welsh Government officially opened their new London headquarters, based on Victoria street, focusing specifically on promoting Wales to the world, attracting greater inward investment and boosting international trade. I welcome the fact that the office will be home to permanent staff with inward investment a large part of their remit. As our First Minister, Carwyn Jones, said when unveiling the new office,
“it will create an important base for the Welsh Government, and businesses from Wales, to influence decision-makers in the foremost financial and commercial centre in the world.”
Since then, the First Minister has also revealed plans to co-locate Welsh Government staff with UKTI, to forge an even closer relationship with staff there, which is most important, and to maximise their vital contacts and resources. At the same time, the Welsh Government have placed important emphasis on trade delegations, including recently welcoming a delegation from India, led by the country’s high commission, as well as two delegations from China in September. Just two weeks ago, the Welsh Government supported their largest ever delegation to an international trade event.
David T. C. Davies
Although I welcome the efforts to promote Wales through trade missions, does the hon. Lady agree that it would be helpful if the Welsh Assembly Government were willing to work with the UK Government and arrange joint trade missions with Ministers in the Wales Office?
Susan Elan Jones
I am sure that the Welsh Government and the Wales Office are able to discuss such initiatives. I welcome any trade missions. After graduating, I worked in Japan on a Japanese Government international programme, so I know first hand the importance of having such links and personnel, which were rather sadly downgraded by some people, in terms of international offices, and other such links. I am sure that collaborative working will be part of the Welsh Government’s and, I hope, the Wales Office’s thinking on this.
Some 70 representatives from the life sciences sector in Wales flew to Dusseldorf to take part in Medica, the world’s largest event for the medical sector, which featured more than 4,300 exhibitors. That is an excellent example of exactly the type of trade events that can create lasting relationships that can have long-term impacts on levels of inward investment.
A combination of a strong relationship with UKTI, a base for business in London and prioritising trade delegations shows that the Welsh Government get the importance of promoting Wales abroad. The same can be said for the importance of education and research and development, which are vital in their own right of course, but crucial too for the economic benefits that they can bring.
I hope that the Committee welcomes the many targeted investments that the Welsh Government have announced, particularly on the sciences, which the hon. Member for Ceredigion mentioned. Those investments include a £25 million investment in a dedicated life sciences fund, specifically designed to leverage a further £100 million in private capital for the life sciences in Wales. Science was explicitly mentioned in the report as being key to attracting inward investment. I hope that Committee members welcome this initiative.
I welcome the announcement from Education Minister, Leighton Andrews, that the Welsh Government have launched a £50 million campaign to attract the world’s greatest scientific minds to Wales. This ambitious scheme will enhance R and D in Welsh universities and market Wales’s research capability to the world’s leading scientists. In the budget announcement earlier this week, Finance Minister, Jane Hutt, also revealed support for the creation of a science and research facility led by Bangor university, to work in collaboration with Aberystwyth university. I trust that those examples of the Welsh Government’s finding innovative ways of encouraging inward investment will receive the Committee’s endorsement.
On the three areas that the Committee feels are central to increasing inward investment, the Welsh Government have put forward imaginative, innovative and—dare I say it?—patriotic policies and introduced a model that is flexible and responsive to our Welsh nation’s needs. They are actively pursuing a creative approach to encouraging inward investment, in the same way that they are pursuing an active industrial policy through enterprise zones, city regions and targeted funds for business, and pursuing an active approach to tackling long-term unemployment through Jobs Growth Wales.
On unemployment, I congratulate the Committee’s decision to launch an inquiry into the dismal failings of the Government’s Work programme and I look forward to seeing whether the Committee agrees with me that the Government should look to Jobs Growth Wales as an example, if they wish to make the work programme more effective.
The Welsh Government are doing all they can with the economic levers at their disposal and are being creative with plans to secure more inward investment. I hope that hon. Members from all parties endorse the many policies that I have mentioned this afternoon. Hon. Members will also be encouraged by how well Ministers in Cardiff bay and UK Ministers have worked together in Wales’s best interests, for example, on rail electrification.
To return to my introductory remarks, the best way that the UK Government can help Wales, not just on inward investment but on economic growth, is for the Prime Minister and the Chancellor to change course from their current austerity agenda and, like the Welsh Labour Government, introduce an active, engaged plan for jobs and growth to get our economy moving once again.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Stephen Crabb)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell, and a privilege to round off this important debate on inward investment into Wales.
I pay tribute to the Chairman of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), not just for his eloquence in setting out the terms of the debate, but for the way that he chairs the Committee. As the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) said, he ensures that the Committee focuses on the important issues facing our constituencies and businesses in Wales, making the Committee’s work relevant at this time.
All hon. Members recognise that inward investment remains a significant driver of economic growth in Wales. As the Committee’s excellent report stresses, we must do all we can to enhance the contribution that inward investment can make to the economy in Wales. I think that the Labour Member, the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), who is no longer in his seat, was being deliberately provocative when he suggested that the Committee’s report was trespassing into areas where it should not go. Inward investment into Wales is exactly the kind of area that the Committee should be considering. It should be looking at how the UK Government and the Welsh Government collaborate. The hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) mentioned the rail electrification project, which required collaborative working between the two Governments. If we are going to achieve anything significant in Wales to achieve the step-change in economic growth that we all aspire to, the two Governments will need to work together over a wide range of areas, and inward investment is one such area. I am delighted that the report makes specific recommendations not only to Ministers at the UK Government level but to Welsh Ministers in Cardiff.
Several Members this afternoon have mentioned Wales’s impressive track record in securing inward investment. The Committee’s report rightly highlights the central role that the Welsh Development Agency played in winning new investment and jobs. During the late 1980s and early ’90s, Wales was regularly gaining around 15% of the inward investment and associated jobs coming to the UK each year. The WDA had an incredibly strong brand and, when I have the opportunity to travel overseas, I continue to meet business people abroad who still think the WDA exists. Such was the strength of the WDA brand globally, its disappearance was a loss, but we all need to look forward to new models of working.
Several hon. Members talked about the glory days—or the boom years—of inward investment in Wales, but we are in danger of sounding as if we are talking about the Welsh rugby team. They are great to talk about, but we cannot go back to those days. The entire global environment in which inward investment occurs has changed, which was recognised very much in the Committee’s report. Over the past decade, the inward investment figures for Wales have been declining. The growth in the knowledge economy and increased competition from developing economies around the world have changed the nature of inward investment in Wales. The Committee makes it clear that we are in a new environment for inward investment.
While we recognise that new environment, we must also remember that Wales still hosts major global companies that year on year continue to make significant and substantial capital investment in Wales. Companies such as RWE, Airbus, Ford and Valero show that Wales remains a good place in which to invest and make that capital expenditure. Members in all parts of the House will join me in welcoming last month’s announcement that Hitachi had bought Horizon Nuclear Power, which represents a £20 billion investment throughout the UK, potentially creating up to 6,000 construction jobs and 1,000 permanent positions in north Wales alone.
The UK economy is ever more dependent on external economic conditions, and we operate in an increasingly globalised economy. The effect of new entrants to the EU from eastern Europe, major developing economies such as China, Brazil and India, and many other countries means that Wales cannot compete on low labour costs, which were an important component in attracting the high levels of inward investment of previous decades. The growth of those developing economies, however, cannot be seen only as a threat to Wales, but as offering real opportunities that Welsh businesses must take advantage of. It is worth putting on record that Wales now exports more goods to countries outside the EU than it does to those inside the EU, and that diverging trend is continuing. Over the past year, Welsh exports to EU countries fell by 7.4%, compared with an increase of 6.8% to countries outside Europe.
Wales needs to be more global facing. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister highlighted in his recent Guildhall speech, Britain is in a “global race”. Winning in that global race means that we need to show that the UK is open for global business. The United Nations world investment report shows that the UK remains No. 1 in Europe for foreign direct investment, and the Financial Times fDi Intelligence report for 2012 ranks the UK as the primary FDI location in Europe. Britain remains a great place for international companies to invest in, and our challenge in Wales is to ensure that Wales captures its fair share of that inward investment coming to the UK.
The global economic environment is difficult, but the Government have done a huge amount to ensure that the UK remains the top location for inward investment. Our plan for growth sets out a programme of reforms across the whole economy to meet the UK Government’s four headline ambitions: to create the most competitive tax system in the G20; to make the UK the best place to start, finance and grow a new business; to encourage more investment and exports; and, finally, as the Select Committee report picks up on powerfully, to create an educated work force that is the most flexible in Europe.
Geraint Davies
Does the Minister agree that the UK, and UKTI in particular, are in a position to do a lot of the heavy lifting, in terms of promoting the UK as a place to invest, for some of the reasons he is outlining? The opportunity for Wales is to focus and build on that benefit and to get people to go to Wales within the UK, as opposed to Wales doing the whole thing over again, given that it has fewer resources overall.
Stephen Crabb
I agree with the hon. Gentleman. UKTI is the agency that is best placed, given its network of relationships around the world, personnel, expertise and acquired knowledge. The challenge is for Welsh Government initiatives to dovetail with what UKTI is doing to ensure that we leverage the maximum opportunity from the available resource.
Jonathan Edwards
The UK Government, to be fair, have the laudable aim of rebalancing the economy geographically and sectorally. I know of one of their initiatives—the national insurance holidays for new employees—but what other measures are the UK Government intending to introduce to rebalance the UK economy geographically? The reality is that the UK—the British state—is the most unequal state in the whole of the European Union.
Stephen Crabb
With the significant action of the UK Government to rebalance the economy geographically, we recognise the specific needs of peripheral areas, of which Wales is one. We recognise the extra assistance that Wales needs, which is exactly what is driving the additional investment that the UK Government are giving to the Welsh Government for broadband roll-out, for example, or the rail electrification projects that we talked about. Those are big capital investments, over and above funding through the Barnett formula, about which the hon. Gentleman likes to speak a lot. That demonstrates the UK Government’s real commitment for Wales to receive a greater-than-proportionate share of capital investment, which reflects the fact that we want to see the economy geographically rebalanced. Our ambition is for Wales to share the benefits of all the UK-side measures we are taking, while also showing that Wales is a great place to invest.
The Committee’s excellent report and today’s debate highlight the importance of attracting inward investment with regard to transport infrastructure, skills and promoting Wales abroad as a brand. The Government are delivering for Wales in all those areas. On transport infrastructure, we have discussed the electrification project on the Great Western main line, but it does not stop there. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) asked about the potential electrification of the north Wales line, which we are actively looking at. We want the business community in north Wales to help to work up the economic case for electrification, and hon. Members should be aware that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales hosted an important strategic meeting of business bodies, local government and public agencies in north Wales last Friday. They got their heads around the table to think seriously about how we go about building up the economic case that will hopefully convince the Treasury that north Wales electrification is the right next project for railway infrastructure in Wales.
Further investment in Wales will not come from the Government alone. We need to find ways to accelerate major infrastructure investment further, and I hope to see Welsh projects bidding for and benefiting from the £50 billion UK guarantees scheme that we introduced.
In the important area of skills, it is vital that we do all that we can to enhance the skills of the work force in Wales. Wales has a lot to offer, but further up-skilling of the work force will not only attract more inward investment, but support indigenous business. It is excellent that the big companies in Wales such as Airbus continue to run their effective apprenticeship programmes, and the UK Government certainly put a lot of emphasis on increasing the number of apprenticeships. Welsh Government Ministers are also looking at the importance of apprenticeships in Wales.
Higher education institutions in Wales have a world-class track record, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion touched on in his important contribution, and the reputation of the Welsh HE sector is recognised around the world. Members might be aware that, in Wales, there is a higher proportion of foreign students among the total number of students than in Scotland or in England. Our higher education institutions are also working with several of our major inward investors. I very much welcome the news that Swansea university will team up with BP and Tata Steel to create an energy safety research institute, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies). Tata Steel is also working in partnership with a number of other Welsh universities to develop a project supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Technology Strategy Board.
Geraint Davies
On the Minister’s slightly earlier point about foreign connections and foreign students, does he agree that most foreign students from places such as India and China have links? Their parents have businesses and so on, so there are opportunities for both inward investment and tourism. When his colleagues in government consider visas for tourists and so on, will he urge them to have due cognisance of prospective inward investors and links to valuable commercial networks in emerging markets?
Stephen Crabb
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. We as a Government were elected with a mandate to bring down immigration into this country, but we recognise the importance of foreign students to the UK. We do not want anything to diminish that, but they must be bona fide students at bona fide institutions studying for real degrees.
When I have had the opportunity to travel overseas—I was in Africa this year—I have been impressed by the people I have met who have master’s degrees or PhDs from Welsh universities, some of whom have been Ministers in foreign Governments. The Finance Minister of Sierra Leone, whom I had the privilege of meeting this summer, has a degree from a Welsh university. There are Ministers in Rwanda who studied at Welsh universities. We have a great track record, and that means that we have a network of relationships around the world with people in significant positions. If we leverage those relationships correctly, that should help to create export opportunities for Welsh companies.
It is vital that Welsh universities forge partnerships with the private sector. Only last week, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales and my fellow Wales Office Minister, Baroness Randerson, met Welsh higher education institutions. We put private sector partnerships and promoting Welsh higher education institutions abroad at the top of their agenda.
On promoting Wales abroad, I believe that this Government’s investment will ensure that Wales can continue to offer inward investors a world-class package based on high-quality infrastructure, a skilled work force and HE institutions with the knowledge to convert innovation into commercialised solutions. Through the global brand of UKTI, that package is being marketed around the world. One key theme running through the Committee’s report is the need for the Welsh Government to develop the brand of Wales. I believe that that can be achieved by working with the UKTI, and I am pleased to report progress.
UKTI is supporting the Welsh Government’s efforts by sharing access to its overseas network and national inward investment services. I am delighted that UKTI’s relationship with the Welsh Government has been strengthened through a joint memorandum of understanding that clearly sets out the responsibilities of the Welsh Government and UKTI on co-operative working and information sharing. Several hon. Members mentioned that one member of UKTI personnel is embedded with the Welsh Government, but actually two key UKTI officials have been seconded to work with the Welsh Government to ensure that the Welsh offer is as strong as possible and that the Welsh Government sector teams are linked into the UKTI sector teams. Through the work of Lord Green and UKTI’s chief executive, Nick Baird, the Government strongly support that key working relationship with the Welsh Government. The ability to draw on UKTI’s global reach is critical in promoting the Wales brand.
The work of the Wales Office is also vital. Since June 2010, we have met and made representations to delegations from Taiwan, China, Turkey, Japan and Russia. During this summer’s Olympic games, we held a reception complementing the work of the British Business Embassy and highlighting the benefits of investing in Wales. Afterwards, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales met the chief executive and chief operating officers of the UK India Business Council to promote Wales as a location for inward investment from one of the world’s fastest growing economies. Earlier this year, the previous Secretary of State also visited south-east Asia to promote trade, tourism and governmental links, as well as opening the new UKTI office in Cambodia and signing a $10 million contract between the Thai Treasury and the Royal Mint.
Several hon. Members talked about the decline in the number of inward investment projects in Wales in recent years. Last year was particularly disappointing, as I think we all recognise. Early reports from UKTI suggest that 2012-13 will be a better year for inward investment in Wales. This year’s figures are much improved from the same time last year: 27 foreign investment projects have been recorded to date, including a £36 million investment by the American-owned automotive company Meritor, as well as the £7 million investment by a Turkish manufacturing company in Cardiff. However, there is obviously still much more to do. Closer working between the UK Government, UKTI and the Welsh Government is essential so that best practice is shared and to ensure that Wales is effectively marketed as an ideal location for inward investment. The Wales Office ministerial team is committed to achieving that.
Our debate included a wide-ranging contribution from the hon. Member for Swansea West, who made numerous good points. He also discussed public sector job cuts in Wales, and I would like to come back to him on one point. Private sector job growth in Wales during the past two and a half years far outstrips the decline in the number of public sector jobs, as an estimated 60,000 new private sector jobs have been created in Wales since this Government was formed. We should back the private sector in Wales and have more faith in it. Yes, times of austerity and difficult decisions about public finances make this a more challenging environment in which to achieve economic growth, but we should have faith that Welsh companies can go out there, grow their businesses and jobs in Wales, and take our economy forward.
Geraint Davies
The Minister is probably aware that Hewlett-Packard is the biggest computer company in the world and that its two hubs are in Swansea and Bristol. HP is currently bidding for a contract with the Department for Transport relating to contracted-out financial work and back-room work. HP supports a major skilled computing cluster in south Wales. Will he bear that in mind, and perhaps talk with the Department for Transport about its valuation of whether to bring in a German company or use one that provides an enormous skills base in south Wales? It is a factor that should be borne in mind. I appreciate that the Department must make rational decisions about cost-effectiveness, but strategic considerations should also be taken into account. I feel that the public sector and the Government should do everything that they can to encourage local indigenous private sector job growth.
Stephen Crabb
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his remarks. I will follow that up outside this debate.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion spoke powerfully about the role of the knowledge economy, mentioning the important work being done at Aberystwyth university and the potential of that university and all the Welsh HE sector to attract inward investment. I encourage him to speak to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman), who has been appointed by the Prime Minister as this Government’s life sciences representative and who is developing an exciting strategy that he wants to be UK-wide for developing the life sciences sector in this country and bringing in new investment through that route.
The hon. Member for Clwyd South was the first Member to mention Cardiff airport. Wales deserves and needs a growing, thriving, attractive airport to welcome inward investors. I think that we all share the concern of the First Minister and his team that Cardiff airport is underperforming. I leave the hon. Lady in no doubt about the priority that the Wales Office places on the issue. We will be holding discussions with Ministers at the Department for Transport and in Cardiff.
I thank Members for their contributions. There are reasons for us all to be positive about inward investment in Wales. It is vital that we continue to attract new investment to drive economic growth. The challenge that we face is to continue to develop Wales’s fantastic offer and to take every opportunity to promote it in the ever-increasing global market. We talked a lot about the role played by UKTI and Welsh and UK Ministers, but we can all play a role. Lord Green, the Minister responsible for inward investment and exports overseas, says that he wants to hear from individual Members of Parliament from all parties about companies in their constituencies that should be linking up with our trade missions.
There is a role for us all in speaking to firms in our constituencies that are looking for export opportunities overseas. There might be initiatives and projects that could host greater inward investment. There is a challenge for all Members of Parliament to fit in with the programme that is being developed UK-wide and at Welsh Government level. I hope that we can all play our part in attracting new inward investment to Wales and driving forward economic growth.
David T. C. Davies
I will be brief. I thank all hon. Members who have taken part in our debate and prioritised Wales over the other matter that is going on down the road to do with Lord Justice Leveson.
I thank the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) for his wide-ranging contribution. I look forward to discussing my figures on debt deficit that I obtained from the Library and to working out why it believes that the previous Government spent £250 billion and added that to the national debt before the financial crisis struck, when he said something different. That will be interesting.
I thank the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) for sharing the details of his honeymoon with us and for lifting my heart. He told us that the Assembly’s Treasury Minister had been outfoxed by the UK Government and that the borrowing powers were so small that they would have barely enough for a packet of crisps. I have been extremely worried about that, but I find myself strangely reassured by his comments.
The hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) was kind enough to thank me for choosing relevant inquiries on the Welsh Affairs Committee, but unfortunately my timing was not so good. He did us all a favour by suggesting the inquiry into connectivity, particularly how it affects his constituency in west Wales. He then built on that by suggesting that we all went to Aberystwyth by train and arranging for the train company to institute long delays so that he did not arrive until several hours after he was meant to as a result of the train service that his constituents receive, thereby making the point very well that things need to improve.
The hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) was an extremely hard-working and diligent member of the Committee, and she has now been promoted. It is wonderful that so many members of the Welsh Affairs Committee are promoted to the Front Bench. I await my call and look forward to that happening more widely. In fact, I do not want a job at the moment, because the Minister is doing extremely well and working very hard. I know because I have seen him on constituency visits. I congratulate him and the other Minister. I look forward to working with them, as does all the Committee, and look forward to hearing them give evidence to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Written Ministerial Statements
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Global Deforestation
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The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Mr Edward Davey)
Ahead of the important international negotiations in Doha, I wanted to update the House on the plans I have been developing with the Secretary of State for International Development, the right hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening), and the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the right hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), on international forests and climate change. So today I am outlining new action to tackle deforestation as part of the UK’s international climate change commitments.
I am setting out plans for working with the private sector and rain forest countries so that the timber and foodstuffs we buy do not cause deforestation. Under the international climate fund, up to £300 million is available for these activities. We are committed to ensuring all our spend achieves value for money and so will be testing the appropriate allocation further in the design process.
UK programmes under the international climate fund are expected to support sustainable growth in forest countries, and boost the incomes of thousands of poor people who depend on the forests for their livelihoods. Through these programmes, the UK is playing its part to help save tens of millions of hectares from being deforested, and help to conserve biodiversity.
Tackling deforestation is a central part of how we address climate change, while reducing poverty and protecting biodiversity. Up to 17% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from deforestation, and around 13 million hectares of forest are lost every year. An estimated 1.2 billion poor people depend on forests for their livelihoods, and forests hold up to 80% of global terrestrial species.
Our support over the years for countries’ efforts to control illegal logging, and to encourage trade in legally harvested timber has already showed great success. Collective efforts to control illegal logging over the past 10 years have helped to protect an estimated 17 million hectares of forest, an area equivalent to England and Wales in size. These efforts have also saved developing countries an estimated $6.5 billion in potential tax revenues, so the benefits of taking action are clear.
But with growing demand for agricultural products, the timber market is no longer the biggest driver of deforestation. Around 60% of deforestation is now thought to be driven by agricultural products, such as production of soy, beef, palm oil and cocoa. So now we need to see the same shift in supply of certified sustainable products as we saw for timber.
UK funds could support sustainable intensification of agriculture, land swaps to move production onto degraded land, community forestry and other investments which make forests more valuable and so increase the incentives to keep them standing.
Also today, I am pleased that we are joined by other donor countries in setting out priorities on forests for the UN climate conference in Doha and beyond, including on ensuring our respective efforts are co-ordinated and coherent.
Ambitious commitments and actions by forest nations are critical. In that context, I am announcing today that £15 million of the UK’s international climate fund will go towards developing silvo-pastoral systems for climate change mitigation and poverty alleviation in Colombia. This involves supporting smallholder farmers to plant trees on cattle grazing land, to increase biodiversity, improve the livelihood of farmers, reduce carbon emissions, and protect local forests.
Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Anna Soubry)
The Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council will meet on 6 and 7 December. The Health and Consumer Affairs part of the Council will be taken on 7 December.
The presidency is expected to seek a general approach on a proposal for a regulation amending Directives 1999/4/EC, 2000/36/EC, 2001/111/EC, 2001/113/EC and 2001/114/EC (the “breakfast directives”) as regards the powers to be conferred on the Commission. There will also be a progress report on a proposal for a decision on serious cross-border threats to health.
The presidency is expected to propose the adoption of Council conclusions on organ donation and transplantation and health ageing across the lifecycle.
Under any other business, the presidency will provide information on a proposal for a regulation on establishing a health for growth programme; and on a proposal for a directive amending Directive 89/105/EEC relating to the transparency of measures regulating the pricing of medicinal products. Information will also come from the presidency on a proposal for a regulation on food intended for infants and young children and on food for special medical purposes; on the working party on public health at senior level; and on conferences organised by the presidency.
In addition, information will be provided from the Commission on proposals for two new regulations on medical devices and in vitro diagnostic devices as well as progress on implementation of the joint action plan on medical devices following the PIP crisis; on member states’ implementation of the EU framework on salt reduction; and on transposition of the cross-border healthcare directive.
The presidency and the Commission will jointly provide information on the fifth session of the conference of the parties to the world health organisation (WHO) framework convention on tobacco control.
The Italian delegation will provide information on working towards a common EU strategy on asbestos health threats. Finally, the Irish delegation will also give information on the work programme for their forthcoming presidency, which will run from January until June 2013.
G6 Ministerial Meeting
(11 years, 5 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
The informal G6 group of Ministers of the Interior from the UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Poland held its most recent meeting in London on 20 and 21 November 2012. The French Interior Minister was unable to attend.
I chaired the meeting which was divided into three working sessions over one day, with a dinner the previous evening. The participating states were represented by: Anna-Maria Cancellieri (Italy), Jacek Cichocki (Poland), Hans-Peter Friedrich (Germany) and Jorge Fernández Díaz (Spain). The French Interior Minister, Manuel Valls, was represented by his diplomatic advisor, Emmanuel Barbe. The EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, Cecilia Malmstrom attended for the whole meeting, and the US Attorney-General, Eric Holder and the Secretary for Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, attended as guests for the first session.
The first working session was on radicalisation and north Africa and the Sahel. I outlined how the UK approach has developed over the years and how we work with vulnerable people and other sectors such as universities and prisons. I raised concerns regarding developments around terrorist groups in north Africa and the Sahel and noted that opportunities for individuals to undertake terrorist training were increasing. I urged participants to agree to open a dialogue on how extremism is developing in some countries and how it is being driven by events in north Africa.
The second session focused on free movement of persons. I recognised that this issue is a key principle of the EU but sought views on how it operated in practice. I emphasised that fraud and abuse of free movement undermined the principle and must be tackled, and that the interpretation of the courts must not make it harder to do this. I also raised the question of whether the courts had extended the scope of free movement beyond the original intentions of the member states and whether it still benefited those EU citizens for whom it was originally intended. At the end of this session the German Interior Minister presented on smart borders.
The third session addressed the issue of how to improve the exchange of criminal records of child sex offenders. The director of Europol (Rob Wainwright) joined us for this session. I outlined that, while co-operation between law enforcement agencies was generally very good, such co-operation generally happened once a crime had been committed and I asked what more could be done to prevent serious crimes from happening. I acknowledged the different approaches that take place in member states and suggested that more work is needed to establish the best means of protecting children from these offenders.
The next meeting of the G6 is expected to be held in Italy in February.
National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review
(11 years, 5 months ago)
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The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)
On behalf of the Deputy Prime Minister and other members of the National Security Council, I am pleased to present the second annual report of progress in implementing the national security strategy and strategic defence and security review. Copies are today being placed in the Library of the House.
Over the last year, the United Kingdom has played a central role in global affairs, defending our national security interests.
As we set out in the 2010 national security strategy and strategic defence and security review, our national security depends on our economic security and vice versa. In that context, the economic crisis in the Eurozone, the wider global economic slowdown and the parlous state of the UK’s finances in 2010 have had significant implications. The Government have responded by redirecting our overseas effort further to support trade and investment, especially with the most rapidly growing economies of the world, and by taking action to help British business compete and thrive in the global race. British exports to China, Russia and Brazil are already increasing rapidly. And we will continue to take steps to secure greater access for British companies in other emerging markets.
The combined effects of the economic situation, a decade of financial mismanagement and a 12-year gap since the last strategic defence review meant that this Government had to make extremely tough choices on defence. Investment was re-directed towards the capabilities we will need for the future and not those designed for the past. And critically, we had to ensure that future defence plans were affordable so that the MOD could break free from the vicious circle of planning to buy more equipment than it could afford, necessitating delays to programmes to make them affordable, which in turn increased costs and left our armed forces ill-equipped to face the demands of modern conflict.
The benefits of those tough but necessary decisions are now clear. We have committed to buying new Chinook helicopters, additional strategic airlift aircraft, and new and upgraded armoured vehicles for the army. The aircraft carrier programme is now progressing well, with the first aircraft due to fly from HMS Queen Elizabeth in 2018. We have invested £700 million in design work on the new Trident submarines, to prepare for the main gate decision in 2016, and £1 billion in a new facility to build reactor cores for our future submarine fleet. And we have now taken the first steps to resuscitate our reserve forces after a decade of neglect and underfunding, so that in future they can play a central role at home and overseas in protecting our national security interests.
Domestically, the Olympic and Paralympic games passed without significant security incidents, reflecting the careful preparation and professionalism shown by all involved. Our success underlines the need to stay ahead of the significant threats facing the UK from terrorism, organised crime and hostile action by other states. In line with our broader, risk-based approach to national security, we will continue to prioritise responding to these malicious threats, and to ensure a secure and resilient UK.
Afghanistan remains the UK’s largest overseas military commitment. The threat to global security from the al-Qaeda presence in the region has been significantly reduced. And as a result of the daily heroism of our remarkable armed forces, and those of our allies, we remain on track to complete security transition to the Afghan security forces as planned, which will enable our troops to end their combat mission by the end of 2014. We are committed to ensuring that Afghanistan cannot again be used as a haven for terrorists to attack the UK. We continue to work hard with the Governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan in an effort to find a long-term political settlement to the conflict.
People across the middle east and north Africa have been calling for greater freedom and democracy and greater economic opportunity. We have responded to those aspirations in order to help them achieve a better future by working with the countries in the region to put in place the building blocks of modern democracies: a fair and transparent criminal justice system, democratic accountability, the rule of law, open media and freedom of speech. More open, accountable and representative states in the middle east and north Africa will build more durable stability and security, both for the region and the UK.
The 2012 London conference provided the stimulus for political change in Somalia, triggering a renewed international effort to defeat extremism and to build and sustain Somali-led political and governance structures after decades of conflict. In Libya, Yemen, Egypt and Tunisia we have worked closely with our international partners to support the process of transition from oppressive dictatorship towards democracy and freedom. And in Syria, we are working to help the Syrian people to bring an end to the violence, to make progress on genuine political transition and to end the appalling humanitarian suffering.
Instability and conflict in developing countries directly threaten our national security. They also fatally undermine development and poverty reduction; no fragile or conflict-affected country has met a single millennium development goal. Preventing and resolving conflict are central to this Government’s approach to development. We have intensified our work on conflict prevention through the cross-Government building stability overseas strategy—tackling the causes of conflict at an early stage and preventing crises from escalating. Our leadership in standing by our aid commitments has allowed us to increase our untied, poverty-focused support to countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia which are critical to national security. A £20 million early action facility will enable us to respond more quickly to new causes of instability. The Government remain committed to spend 30% of UK official development assistance in fragile and conflict-affected states by 2014-15, and to work towards an ambitious international arms trade treaty. And we will look to ensure that the vital importance of conflict prevention and personal security for the world’s poorest people is properly covered in the post-2015 international development framework.
Review Body on Senior Salaries (New Appointments)
(11 years, 5 months ago)
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The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)
I have appointed the following people as members of the Review Body on Senior Salaries (SSRB):
Margaret Edwards
Professor Dame Hazel Genn
They have taken up their appointments on 1 September and 1 November 2012 respectively, initially for three-year terms. They have joined the other members of the SSRB who are:
Bill Cockburn, CBE TD - Chairman
Professor Richard Disney
Martin Fish
Professor David Metcalf CBE
Professor Alasdair Smith
Bruce Warman
Remploy
(11 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Esther McVey)
The Remploy annual report and financial statements 2012 will be published today. I will place copies of the report and financial statements in the House Libraries later today; they will also be available in the Vote Office and the Printed Paper Office. Electronic copies will be available from the DWP website and Remploy’s website.
I have written to the chairman of Remploy formally approving the agreed 2012-13 performance and resources agreement between the Department and the Company, as follows:
Target Description | Target |
|---|---|
To live within the Company's financial means in the 2012-13 financial year and achieve an operational funding result of: | £97.9m |
Factory Businesses to achieve an operating result (loss) of: | £40.2m |
Employment Service business to achieve an operating result of: | £28.2m |
Total disabled job outcomes: | 17,000 |
- of which Work Choice job outcomes: | 7,500 |
- of which Work Choice Retention outcomes: | 1,000 |
- of which other disabled job outcomes: | 8,500 |
House of Lords
(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Health: HIV
(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Collins of Highbury
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they intend to endorse the standards of care for people living with HIV published by the British HIV Association on 29 November.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)
My Lords, the Department of Health commends the British HIV Association for these important standards, which we welcome. The NHS provides excellent care for people living with HIV. These standards are important in setting out best practice to support continuing high-quality HIV care services for all HIV patients. They will provide a valuable resource and inform the commissioning of comprehensive HIV care services.
Lord Collins of Highbury
I thank the Minister for that response. One recommendation made by BHIVA related to self-management. As with many other long-term conditions, this approach can help people with HIV to gain confidence, skills and knowledge to manage their own health, with resulting improvements in the quality of life and independence. In the light of changes in the commissioning process, who will now have responsibility for funding the excellent self-management services currently provided by organisations such as the Terrence Higgins Trust and Positive East?
Earl Howe
My Lords, the noble Lord is quite correct. Self-management is one of the BHIVA standards. I agree that self-management and supporting patients to manage their own care, both for HIV and, for that matter, any other long-term condition, are very important for promoting the best treatment outcomes for individuals. A variety of approaches will be needed to support individuals to self-manage their HIV. There are already some innovative programmes, such as the online resource, My HIV, for people living with HIV, delivered by the Terrence Higgins Trust. The key to this is for commissioners of services to work together in future to ensure that self-care is part of the HIV care pathway, and GPs will have a role to play in that.
Lord Fowler
My Lords, I declare an interest as patron of the British HIV Association. Is it not the case that we now have 100,000 people living with HIV in this country but that a quarter of them are undiagnosed, so obviously risk spreading the infection further? Does that not mean that we must persuade even more people to come forward for testing? In that respect, will the Government now commit themselves to bringing forward proposals to allow home testing?
Earl Howe
My noble friend is quite right. As he will know, this is National HIV Testing Week. We support the Terrence Higgins Trust and its partners in this important new initiative. The NHS medical director has written to all medical directors about the week and the importance of healthcare professionals being alert to the need to offer HIV testing. As regards self-testing, we agree that the current regulations are not sustainable, which is why we are reviewing our policy on banning the sale of home HIV testing kits. We support repeal but we are required to do a short consultation setting out our reasons. We plan to do that early next year.
Baroness Masham of Ilton
My Lords, is the Minister aware that we have some of the best services in the world for HIV/AIDS? Can he give an assurance that, with the changes in the National Health Service now, there will not be a dilution of these services?
Earl Howe
My Lords, yes. We believe that the complex needs of people with HIV will be best served by the work being done by the HIV national clinical reference group of the NHS Commissioning Board. The board will commission these services in the future, and that will drive greater consistency and quality throughout the system.
Baroness Trumpington
Our turn. I am not sure whether I am in order but I should like to congratulate, through this House, the Minister on his award yesterday as Minister of the Year in the Lords.
Lord Hughes of Woodside
My Lords, I am grateful that I gave way. In view of the reports of an alarming increase in the incidence of HIV, is not the old adage that prevention is better than cure even more important? Is this significant rise in HIV incidence caused by less use of condoms, or what?
Earl Howe
In fact, the numbers are more or less stable if one compares this year to last. However, the noble Lord is right: we cannot drop our guard in this area. There is a pressing need to reduce undiagnosed HIV. It is estimated that about 23,000 people are undiagnosed and 47% of those newly diagnosed with HIV are diagnosed late—that was the figure for last year. That is why the prevention campaign through local authorities will be so critical in this area.
Lord Maclennan of Rogart
My Lords, in view of the extensiveness and particularity of this important report, will the Government contemplate producing a response which deals with the matters particularly focused on? Will they seek to ensure that, due to the increase in non-AIDS comorbidity and the complexity of HIV drug interactions, clear protocols are established between primary and secondary care as there is some patient disquiet, particularly about primary care?
Earl Howe
My Lords, my noble friend is absolutely right that this is a complex condition. As regards a response to the BHIVA report, we are planning to publish an integrated sexual health strategy which will embrace all aspects of sexual health, including HIV. The vast majority of HIV in the UK is sexually transmitted. HIV and sexual health services are closely linked, as he will know, and we believe that it is in that strategy that the appropriate guidelines should be set out.
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall
My Lords, will the noble Earl bear in mind that the stigma around people with HIV is still an extraordinarily important issue? Will he encourage healthcare providers to ensure that as much as possible is done to reduce this disincentive to people to come forward for testing?
Earl Howe
The noble Baroness is of course right to say that stigma is an issue, and it is doubtless why many people do not come forward for testing. Through the National HIV Testing Week we are encouraging doctors in all parts of England to consider this matter and to see what role they can play in terms of having the right conversations with patients who are in the most at-risk groups.
Social Care: Apprenticeships
(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Wheeler
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress they are making on establishing social care apprenticeships; and how voluntary registration of social care workers will assist apprentices and staff to provide the quality of care required in domiciliary and community settings.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)
My Lords, apprenticeships and voluntary registration for social care workers are part of the vision set out in the care and support White Paper and will contribute to improving quality of care. The latest figures report that more than 60,000 apprenticeships have started in 2011-12. A system of assured voluntary registers will help to support the delivery of quality care by enabling individuals to demonstrate that they meet set standards of education, training and competence.
Baroness Wheeler
I thank the Minister for his response and welcome the progress being made. As he knows, apprentices will join the current social care workforce of 1.6 million, more than two-thirds of whom now work in the voluntary, independent and private sectors or are employed directly by service users in their homes. Given the Government’s desire to have only a voluntary register for social care staff, can the Minister explain to the House how consistent quality and dignified care are to be delivered across this fragmented employer base?
Earl Howe
My Lords, I agree that quality in the apprenticeship programme is essential and the Government are committed to the pursuit of quality. The noble Baroness will know that from April next year the role of NICE is to be expanded to embrace social care, and no doubt it will focus on quality standards in that area. The care and support White Paper acknowledges the need to ensure that there are enough skilled people to deliver high-quality care in the future. We believe that expanding apprenticeships in social care will involve a continual driving up of the apprenticeship offer. To ensure high quality, all apprenticeships need to entail a rigorous period of learning and the practice of new skills under approved training providers. That involves a minimum of 12 months for a 16 to 18 year-old; it also applies to adult apprenticeships.
Lord Martin of Springburn
My Lords, will these apprenticeships be available to young boys and girls who perhaps do not have academic qualifications when they leave school?
Earl Howe
Yes, my Lords. Health and social care is the second largest area of apprenticeships in the country. We think that they provide a route for the young people the noble Lord has described to acquire skills and add to the capacity and capability of the social care workforce. They also provide a rung on the ladder to more senior positions in young people’s career progression.
Baroness Williams of Crosby
My noble friend will know that, apart from those who are apprentices, a great many people are currently serving in the area of social care for whom in-service training would be extremely useful. I am talking about older people. Can he tell us whether, in the training discussions held in the NHS and in social care, any plans are being made to try to provide at least some in-service training for people already working in the field?
Earl Howe
My Lords, a great deal of work is going on, not least in the field of leadership. As I have mentioned, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, soon to be the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, will be issuing quality standards in this area. Skills for Care is also working to refine and improve the standards that social workers need to adhere to—and, of course, social workers as opposed to social care apprentices are statutorily regulated.
Lord Laming
My Lords, the noble Earl and the House will have been shocked by a number of recent reports about the exploitation of the vulnerability of people who are receiving social care, either in institutions or in their own homes. Can the noble Earl assure the House that the Government will do everything they can to ensure clear managerial accountability for the quality of care that is delivered, and will ask the inspectorates to make sure that they will do what they can to assess the quality in the different parts of social care services?
Earl Howe
The noble Lord makes some centrally important points. The CQC, which is the regulator of national minimum standards in this area, is very clear that the need to safeguard the vulnerable is one of the most important tasks that it has to assure itself about when inspecting providers. The role that employers play is key here and he is right to point out that it is the responsibility of management to ensure not only that those working for them have the right skills but that there is also the right supervision, for apprentices in particular.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
My Lords, can the Minister assure the House that a voluntary scheme will not allow those very people who have a culture of not caring or of neglect—we know that happens from time to time in this sector—not to take up the option of voluntary registration? Surely it is most important in this field that we protect people from the very people who may well not take voluntary action.
Earl Howe
My Lords, accreditation by the Professional Standards Authority will help to foster high standards, because it will allow practitioners and people who use services to distinguish more easily between registers that meet nationally accredited standards and those that do not, and therefore between those social care workers who are accredited to a high standard and those who are not. In addition, we have commissioned Skills for Health and Skills for Care to develop a code of conduct and recommended induction and minimum training standards for healthcare support workers, as she will know. The key here is to progress to a system that encourages employers to employ those with the right qualifications and for users to be able to see that the employees in an organisation are accredited.
Energy: Nuclear Power
(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what contribution they propose nuclear generation should make to a balanced energy policy.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Baroness Verma)
My Lords, the long-term vision for electricity market reform is of a market where low-carbon generators compete fairly under a robust carbon price. New nuclear should be able to contribute as much as possible to the need for new capacity within that framework. Last month, the Government welcomed Hitachi’s purchase of Horizon Nuclear Power for £700 million in a deal that will help to meet energy security and decarbonisation objectives, and bring massive economic benefit. This demonstrates confidence in our new nuclear policy.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
First, I thank the Government for publishing their Energy Bill to coincide with my Question. Does the Minister agree with me that, with the imminent rundown in our current generation and the inability of renewables to provide base-load generation, new nuclear is absolutely vital? Although some companies have announced their intention to go ahead with new nuclear, there have not been any go-aheads yet. Will the Government, as soon as possible, announce an agreement on pricing so that new nuclear can start as quickly as possible?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, the noble Lord of course knows that we are very keen to ensure that we have a diverse energy mix, and part of that will be new nuclear. He also knows that some processes take a little longer than others. However, new nuclear will help to diversify our electricity supply. Each nuclear power plant will be able to give reliable base-load electricity to around 6 million homes per year. We look forward to working alongside all our energy providers, including nuclear.
Lord Jenkin of Roding
My Lords, the question of new nuclear is slightly overshadowed because, in America, the extremely low price of unconventional gas is causing some anxiety to the nuclear industry. Will my noble friend accept that the Government’s policy of contracts for difference being introduced in the Energy Bill— the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, has drawn my attention to the fact that the Bill is being published today; I have not seen it—is hugely important to the reassurance of the nuclear industry that it will be able to operate successfully and at a profit? Can my noble friend say when the actual strike prices will be announced, because that is the key?
Baroness Verma
My noble friend is of course right that there needs to be certainty. However, he will know that these things take a lot of negotiating and a lot of detail needs to be worked out. When I am able to offer my noble friend a definitive answer, I shall bring it to the House.
Lord West of Spithead
My Lords, how much have we drawn on the British experience and expertise built up in the naval nuclear programme during the past 50 years in trying to move forward this important ability to generate power from nuclear energy? I am very happy to take an answer from both parts of the coalition on this one.
Baroness Verma
As the noble Lord will know from his own previous role in government, we draw on expertise from all sides.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer
My Lords, is not one of the difficulties faced in establishing any new nuclear build, as the Defra report published last January highlighted, the fact that all eight proposed sites have a low-to-high risk of flooding, most of them ending up with a high risk of flooding within the proposed life of the new nuclear plants? Has the cost of added sea defences where sites can be defended—of course, they cannot be defended where there is coastal erosion—been added into the equation?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, my noble friend raises a very important point given the circumstances of recent days. However, she will know that no planning permission for any site is given unless there is a proper investigation of environmental impact on nuclear plants.
Viscount Hanworth
My Lords, is it not clear to the Government that their pursuit of a free-market ideology has led to the collapse of their plans for Britain’s nuclear energy? Is it not time to establish a national agency that could commission the building of our nuclear power stations and that would be empowered if necessary to borrow funds on the open market to finance such vital infrastructure? Can the Minister give an opinion on this?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, the noble Viscount will be pleased to hear that at least this Government have taken new nuclear very seriously, as they have other energy sources. I remind him that his Government were in power for 13 years and failed to address any of these problems.
Lord Ryder of Wensum
My Lords, the Government have been in office for two and a half years. Why cannot my noble friend the Minister answer the question posed to her by my noble friend Lord Jenkin after two and a half years?
Baroness Verma
I go back to what I said to my noble friend Lord Jenkin: these things take time and are under negotiation. I am sure that my noble friend will appreciate that the outcome needs to satisfy many parties.
Lord Avebury
My Lords, when do the Government expect to receive the report of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority on the future management or reuse of the 100 tonnes of plutonium that are now held at Sellafield at an estimated cost up to 2030 of £16.9 billion? What consideration are the Government giving to the offer by GE Hitachi to build two PRISM reactors that would reuse this material and be provided at no cost to the Government? That would generate 630 megawatts of electricity that would cost the taxpayer nothing.
Baroness Verma
I know that my noble friend is very involved with this issue. While we have a preferred option, we are always open to other forms of disposal. We will keep the noble Lord informed of what we are doing, if he is interested to know.
Flooding: Insurance
(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Greaves
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to make sure that house insurance is available for residents in areas that are liable to flooding.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord De Mauley)
My Lords, the future of flood insurance is a priority for the Government. We remain committed to discussions with the insurance industry and others about what replaces the statement of principles. We want a solution that ensures affordable insurance bills for those at flood risk but does not place unsustainable costs on wider policyholders and the taxpayer. Our primary focus is flood-risk management, on which we are spending more than £2.17 billion over four years.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, there are now at least 200,000 households in high-risk flood areas whose properties are virtually uninsurable against flood. The discussions with the insurance industry have been taking place for years. There are now only seven months before the existing statement of principles runs out, and that itself is less useful by the week. Do the Government support the practical proposal from the Association of British Insurers, on behalf of the insurance industry, for a non-profit-making flood insurance fund to provide insurance against flooding for properties in high-risk areas basically funded by cross-subsidies from the rest of us who are fortunate enough not to live in high-risk flood areas? If so, why are the negotiations on this matter being blocked by high-ranking Ministers in the coalition Government from another party?
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, this is a serious matter. We have been working very hard with the industry on this extremely complex issue. We need a lasting solution that ensures affordable insurance bills for those at flood risk but does not place unsustainable costs on wider policyholders and the taxpayer. The ball is now in the industry’s court. The ABI understands the Government’s position. It is up to the ABI to come back to us with a practical and sustainable option that provides insurance for those that need it without increasing bills for all or placing unacceptable burdens on the taxpayer.
Lord Knight of Weymouth
My Lords, first, I offer sympathy to those who have lost loved ones and suffered the trauma of flooding in the past week. This is the third time since July that this matter has been raised at Question Time. The Minister consistently tells us that the Government are in intense and constructive negotiations with the insurance industry. Today, he tells us that it is a priority. Yet today I received an e-mail from the Association of British Insurers saying that negotiations are currently at an impasse. The Minister now says that it is up to the Association of British Insurers to come up with a better deal and yet he has been asked a perfectly good question by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, on whether he agrees with the proposal that it has put forward. When will Defra sort this out and give comfort to the 200,000 people who are really struggling to get flood insurance?
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, I absolutely agree with the noble Lord on his first point. We really feel strongly for those affected by this. The emergency services, local authorities and the Environment Agency have been working extremely hard for them and I pay tribute to that. In answer to the noble Lord’s question, the statement of principles that his party put in place takes no account of the affordability of insurance, so I will not take any criticism from the other side.
Baroness Browning
My Lords, I declare an interest, having been flooded in 1997 and 2008. In his discussions with the insurance industry, does my noble friend ever mention not just that those of us who are in that position are very nervous about what will happen to our insurance next year but the fact that our houses are unsellable? There are elderly people who need to go into residential care, but they cannot sell their home. Others, like me, retire and want to move nearer to their families. Those properties are blighted. In a very small lane in rural Devon that has a lot of old thatched houses and cottages, some of which are listed, if they are not insured, eventually they will just be allowed to deteriorate and fall down.
Lord De Mauley
My noble friend is of course right that there are concerns about the continued availability of insurance to householders—mortgage holders and those looking to sell their houses. We are working with those involved better to understand what the impact on the mortgage market might be. I am certainly encouraged that the Council of Mortgage Lenders is quoted as saying that the focus needs to be on finding a solution on flood insurance, rather than worrying householders unnecessarily about how lenders might choose to react. That has a knock-on effect on the selling market to which my noble friend refers. I also point out that in July, we published a guide to obtain flood insurance in high-risk areas in collaboration with the National Flood Forum and industry representatives, which I think is helpful.
Lord Curry of Kirkharle
I, too, encourage the Minister to bring those discussions to a conclusion as soon as possible. I declare an interest: I was chair of a mutual insurance company until the end of last year. I have a further concern. Those companies which have a strong CSR policy could be commercially disadvantaged in the marketplace compared with those who take a purely commercial approach. It is also deeply regrettable that planning permission is still being granted in areas that the Environment Agency has identified as potentially subject to flooding, which is simply aggravating the problem in the long term.
Lord De Mauley
The noble Lord makes a couple of good points. In answer to his last one, development in areas of flood risk is permitted only exceptionally, where there are wider sustainability considerations, and must in all cases be safe, must not increase flood risk elsewhere; and, where possible, overall flood risk should be reduced.
Business of the House
(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Strathclyde
That the debate on the Motion in the name of Baroness Pitkeathley set down for today shall be limited to three hours and that in the name of Lord Harrison to two hours.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
My Lords, the Leader of the House has moved that the debate on the Motion in the name of my noble friend Lord Harrison should last for two hours. On the Order Paper, after that, there are, astonishingly, to be two Statements by two separate Ministers on the same subject. This entirely unprecedented action, which is also happening in the House of Commons, has, I understand, had to have the approval of the Speaker of the House of Commons, because it is unique. It has never happened before and the Speaker had to agree to it. You, Lord Speaker, do not have the power in this self-regulating House to agree to such an arrangement, an entirely unprecedented arrangement. The only power lies with us in the House to agree to that. I do not remember, recall or recognise that we have agreed to that. Does the Leader of the House intend to seek the approval of the House for such an unusual and unprecedented arrangement?
Lord Cormack
My Lords, when he replies to that, can my noble friend the Leader of the House tell us whether the Statements are going to be antiphonal or sequential, and whether the Ministers will be questioned after each section of the Statement or at the end? Can he also tell us in what precise capacity the noble Lord, Lord McNally, is to address the House? Is he speaking as the leader of a political party in this House, or is he speaking on behalf of the Government? If he is speaking on behalf of the Government and my noble friend is speaking on behalf of the Government, what conclusions can we draw from that extraordinary state of affairs?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I am delighted that so many noble Lords are sharp-eyed and have spotted that the annunciator has said that there will be two Statements after the Labour Party debates this afternoon. I am very happy to explain the position to the House. The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, says that this is unprecedented. It is certainly unprecedented in living memory.
Lord Strathclyde
But, my Lords, I gather that in the 1930s this sort of arrangement apparently took place. We have a coalition. On occasions—
Lord Strathclyde
On occasions, the different parties of the coalition should be able to make their views known to Parliament, and it looks as though this afternoon is one of those occasions.
As to the propriety of this House, what we are doing in this House is really quite simple. We are simply repeating Statements that have been made in the House of Commons: one being made by the Prime Minister and the other by the Deputy Prime Minister. As is standard practice on these occasions these Statements were offered to the Opposition, who can agree either to take them or not, or to defer them. Quite rightly, they agreed to take them. If the House does not wish to listen to me or to my noble friend Lord McNally repeating the Statements of the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister, it really does not need to at all. It will be quite late, after all, on a Thursday afternoon.
As to my noble friend Lord Cormack’s question, the Statements will be taken sequentially. What is interesting is that I am not entirely certain exactly how the Labour Party will approach this. I shall repeat the Statement of the Prime Minister, the Opposition will then reply, and then there will be 20 minutes’ Back-Bench time in the normal way that we wholly understand. After that is over, my noble friend Lord McNally will repeat a Statement of the Deputy Prime Minister. I am full of interest as to whether the Opposition will then say nothing, repeat the reply that they have already made or, more intriguingly, make a different reply to my noble friend’s Statement. There will then be another 20 minutes, if noble Lords wish to comment on it, and then we shall go on to the next business.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, for so eloquently explaining the difficulties that the Government have found themselves in. Presumably that was an offer for me to make a statement—and presumably from the government Benches—because it seems that anyone can speak for the Government on these matters.
This really is a genuine first, when the coalition is so comprehensively divided that we have to go through this ludicrous episode this afternoon. I remind the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, that the Companion states:
“Statements by ministers on matters of public importance may be made by leave of the House without notice”.
He has not really answered his noble friend Lord Cormack. When the noble Lord speaks as Leader of the House, will he be speaking for the Government? When the noble Lord, Lord McNally, speaks, will he speak on behalf of the Government? Or do we have two Governments, or perhaps no Government? Is this a precedent for the future? This afternoon in the other place there is to be an energy Statement. Is Mr Davey going to make one Statement on wind farms and Mr John Hayes another? I also do not think that it would be amiss for me to point out to your Lordships’ House that the coalition is not exactly united on Europe. Can we look forward to two Statements on Europe when the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, repeats a Statement on Council meetings in future?
The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, has been very keen in recent weeks to remind your Lordships’ House of the importance of sticking to the rules, but now we are apparently just waving the Companion away. Indeed, the Companion seems to have become the noble Lord’s flexible friend. Perhaps the real message for your Lordships’ House today is that this coalition Government’s days are numbered—and a jolly good thing too.
Lord Touhig
If the Statements are to be taken this way, would it then be in order for the noble Lord, Lord McNally, to question the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, on his Statement, and for the noble Lord to question the noble Lord, Lord McNally, on his?
Lord Dykes
I am sure that my noble friend wishes to help the House in this unusual situation. Will he give the example from the 1930s where a precedent was established?
Lord Richard
Before the noble Lord replies, I wonder if I could ask him one simple question. There are two parties in the coalition: the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats. The Conservative view will be put by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, and the Liberal Democrat view will be put by the noble Lord, Lord McNally. Which of them represents the policy of the Government?
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
My Lords, in relation to the point that I raised initially about who should agree to two Statements, now that we have had an excellent explanation by the Leader of the House, I am absolutely certain that this House would agree unanimously and that we look forward to the entertainment later this afternoon.
Lord Greaves
My Lords—before my convenor speaks—is it not the case that the British constitution, in its wonderful unwritten form, consists of precedents, all of which have been developed in a completely pragmatic, evolutionary way in order to meet the circumstances of the day? It is indeed a different situation when we have a coalition like this and an issue like this. Is it not extraordinary that the Labour Party is the conservative force here that cannot keep up with these evolutionary, pragmatic changes which inevitably take place when we have a completely different situation with a coalition Government?
Lord Alderdice
Does my noble friend the Leader of the House share my curiosity that there was such unanimity in this House, and indeed in the other place, in welcoming the developments of very unusual forms of coalition in my part of the United Kingdom and regarding those as important pieces of political progress, and yet when it comes to having to face exactly the same kinds of issues of coalition together in this place, there seems to be a mixture of puzzlement and amusement? Would it not be wise for those who may find themselves in a coalition Government in the future to be a little more circumspect or they will find such matters being quoted against them, as has repeatedly been the case in the last little while on a number of matters of policy where the Labour Party in its previous incarnation said rather different things from what it has said while on the opposition Benches?
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
Surely this House is about holding the Government to account, and we have Statements so that we can hold the Government to account—not for people to issue their manifestos on particular issues. Surely the purpose of this House is to hold the Government to account, but we need someone to tell us what the Government’s policy is. We cannot have a pick-and-mix approach to government policy. Are we to find that Ministers speaking from the Front Bench give two answers to the same question? What conclusion can we reach if they give different answers to the same question?
Lord Cormack
Is it now not abundantly plain that antiphonal would be better?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I think that my noble friend Lord Cormack is enjoying himself far too much by repeating that word. Actually, I think the whole House is enjoying itself far too much and we really need to bring this very short debate to an end. My noble friend Lord Alderdice had it pretty well. We have a coalition and we are gently feeling our way on occasion as to the right approach.
I do think that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, protests a little bit too much. I am sure that although from his Front Bench he will make one Statement, he will find a lot of disagreement with what he says from his Back-Benchers in both Houses.
The noble Lord, Lord Dykes, asked when the precedent was. I took a view a long time ago that any precedent from before the Second World War probably was not worth having, so I have not got it at my fingertips. However, I am reliably informed that it does exist. If I thought that we were breaking the rules of the House in doing this I would have said that to the House and then made a recommendation. There is absolutely nothing in the Companion that stops us having an innovative procedure on this, which is precisely what we are doing.
I know that noble Lords—the noble Lord, Lord Richard, and my noble friend Lord Forsyth—are exercised about what, therefore, is government policy. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister set up this inquiry on behalf of the Government. He will make his Statement on behalf of the Government in the House of Commons; I shall repeat it here. However, my right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister has taken the opportunity, as I think that both Houses will wish him to do, to make a separate Statement which will represent a view of the second party of the coalition. I think that we have flexible enough rules to be able to deal with that, and I very much look forward to the debate later on this afternoon.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I do not want to detain the House, although clearly the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, is enjoying this debate. However, I would refer him to the Companion. It refers to “a government announcement”—it does not talk about separate government announcements. The noble Lord cannot have it both ways. He has just said that he will be making a Statement this afternoon. He has still not answered the point as to who on earth he is making that Statement on behalf of.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, this is pedantry. If the noble Lords opposite really did not want these Statements they could have said so and the Statements would not be taking place.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
My Lords, can the noble Lord the Leader of the House confirm that because this procedure is being accepted by him—and, I presume, very shortly by the House—we can therefore assume that the party other than the Conservative Party in the coalition did not feel strongly enough on student tuition costs or the Health Bill to issue a separate Statement?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, the noble Baroness, and no doubt other noble Lords, can make all sorts of accusations to my noble friends as part of this coalition. I think that it might be better if we wait until we have seen the response of Lord Justice Leveson and the Statements, and then the noble Baroness can make whatever point she wishes.
Social Care
(11 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Pitkeathley
That this House takes note of the impact of changes in local authority budgets on the provision of social care and its integration with other health, housing and care services.
Baroness Pitkeathley
Well, my Lords, here we are again. It is almost exactly a year since I last introduced a debate on social care, and once again I feel like Captain Renault in my favourite film, “Casablanca”, rounding up the usual suspects. Noble Lords speaking today are once again those with form on this issue, although I am pleased to say that we have some new recruits to our numbers as well.
Last year’s debate focused on the report of the Dilnot commission, and it is a matter of great regret to me—and to many others, I am sure—that, in spite of general agreement around the House at that time that doing nothing was not an option, still no decision has been taken about these important proposals. Andrew Dilnot and his colleagues continue to press the issue with hope and enthusiasm, and we hear lots of rumours that we may have an announcement in the Autumn Budget Statement, next spring, next Budget or in the next spending review—but still no actual commitment.
In his response to the debate last year, the Minister said that we have an opportunity to get this right and we must not miss it. No one could possibly disagree with that but I must begin this debate by recording my intense disappointment that, one year on, we are no further ahead with implementing a long-term solution to the problems of social care.
However, we are focusing today on the immediate problems faced by local authorities and the impact of those on the rest of the system. When we discuss integration, as we often have during the past year, we usually focus on the particular interface between health and social care services. The topic of this debate is deliberately wider, though, acknowledging that care needs do not come in discrete packages but are stretched across the whole of an elderly or disabled person’s life, including their housing, their families and their income.
We must acknowledge that we are not in exactly the same place that we were last year. The Health and Social Care Bill that we were debating then is now an Act, and many promises were made about how it would make integration between health and social care easier. It perhaps is too early to say whether this is becoming a universal reality but none of the reports coming out of local authorities and the NHS fill one with hope. In a recent survey by the NHS Confederation, for example, 66% of NHS leaders said that shortfalls in local authority spending had impacted on their services last year. Delayed transfers of care cost the NHS about £200 million a year, and the human distress that such delays cause to patients and families is incalculable.
I know that the Minister will remind us that in last year’s CSR the Government transferred an extra £2 billion to social care by 2015, £1 billion of that coming from the NHS. Local authorities were grateful for that, of course, although it has been called a sticking-plaster solution. Even if it were to be allocated on a permanent basis, £2 billion is not nearly adequate to meet the needs of the social care system. While the transfer of funds from the NHS to social care has been crucial, not all areas have been able to use the money in the way intended—for example, on hospital discharge, reablement and intermediate care. These have made a difference in some areas but too often they paper over cracks in a system that is groaning and only storing up more problems for the future.
In summary—I will say this briefly since I know that the usual suspects are only too familiar with it—the system is not fit for purpose and we spend inadequate amounts on care and support both publicly and privately. Social care funding has totally failed to keep pace with demographic change. Since 2004, while spending in the NHS has risen by £25 billion, spending on social care has risen by just £43 million.
I am always aware of saying how inadequate our care provision is, lest it be seen as criticism of the many dedicated people who work in the system providing care and sometimes pushing the boundaries to focus on prevention and innovative ways of meeting need. We cannot avoid recognising that the way in which local authorities have dealt with the fact that need has far outstretched funding has been to increase charges and rapidly to raise the threshold at which you can qualify for care. You get care only if your needs are seen as substantial or critical.
In too many areas, services are provided only to those whose care needs are the most severe. The LGA has stated that it expects a funding gap for local authority services of £16.5 billion a year by 2019, or a 29% shortfall, between revenue and spending pressures. It further estimates that in the not-too-distant future, social care and waste spending together will absorb such a huge percentage of their funding that other services will have to take an 80% cut.
Without action on funding and integration, even very basic care—those basic 15 minutes a day, which is all that many elderly and disabled people can expect—will not be available in future. Only this week, the weather sees us having to factor into local authority budgets the huge extra costs that many of them will have as a result of the floods. Not only is this level of care completely inadequate but the fact that it is provided only to those with severe or critical needs makes a nonsense of the prevention that all sides say is the key to ensuring that care needs do not escalate to crisis point.
Moreover, this takes no account at all of the many people who currently meet their own care needs in full. Not only may they have to use local authority services in future but no attempt to preserve the quality of the services can be made for those people. Mencap provides clear evidence that local authorities are struggling with reduced funding from central government and increased demand for services. Over the past three years, one in three local authorities has closed day services and 57% of people with a learning disability no longer receive any day-service provision. Carers UK reports that carers are being affected by the closure of council-run services and by the cuts to grants to the voluntary sector, which provides vital services locally. One carer said that getting respite care service nowadays is like getting blood out of a stone.
When people’s care needs are not met by social care systems, what happens? They turn, of course, to the NHS. This results in increased demand for unplanned and emergency services and delays in hospital discharge. In addition, 88% of GPs surveyed recently by Carers UK report that their patients are being put at risk due to a lack of social care support.
These extra pressures come at a time when the NHS is already under severe financial pressure. The CSR protected NHS funding to some degree but did not take account of rising demand and rapidly increasing healthcare costs. We all know that the NHS is expected to make £20 billion of savings and efficiencies by 2014-15, and the recent report from the CQC paints a sad picture of how cost-cutting is being put ahead of patient welfare, with 16% of hospitals surveyed not meeting the CQC standards for having enough staff on duty to care properly for patients, and warns that this may lead to a culture in which unacceptable standards of care become the norm. Yesterday’s report from the King’s Fund paints a similar picture for the NHS of bed closures, lost services and low morale.
No one could possibly disagree that the NHS and all care services must be run as efficiently as possible. One of the most important ways in which to make efficiencies in either health or social care is through integrating services, an issue that we have debated many times in your Lordships’ House. The money transferred to local authorities from the NHS has helped to stimulate integration and certainly to develop interest in it, but evidence given by the King’s Fund to the Health Select Committee notes that a lack of urgency in delivering integrated care remains and, indeed, that the huge upheaval that we have seen in the NHS since last year has hampered progress and resulted in lost momentum. In this context, it was a positive step to see a paragraph in the recently published mandate emphasise the role of the Commissioning Board in driving and co-ordinating engagement with local councils. For the sake of the increasing numbers of people in urgent need of co-ordinated services, we must hope that the mandate delivers.
The other significant development since last year is, of course, the draft Care and Support Bill. I am honoured to be a member, along with my noble friend Lord Warner, of the pre-legislative scrutiny committee considering this. We shall spend many happy hours with colleagues from this House and another place hearing evidence, testing proposals and debating provisions. There is not time to go into the detail of that Bill here, save to say that there are many welcome proposals in it, and the Government are to be congratulated on an excellent attempt to achieve co-ordination of the many disparate strands of care legislation and to give greater recognition and more rights to users and carers.
In terms of the issue that we are debating today, it is hard to feel anything but anxiety about the extra duties placed on local authorities and on how on earth they are to be funded. Do not mistake me—I could not be more delighted that support for carers will be strengthened or that there will be an obligation on local authorities to provide information and advice to promote diversity and quality, or with the references to assessments and care and support plans, as well as a very much to be praised reference to national eligibility criteria. But even those far-reaching reforms could be viewed as a sticking-plaster solution if we do not tackle the fundamental problem of how social care is funded. The inconsistency between fully funded NHS care and means-tested social care not only confuses users and carers but inevitably hampers the delivery of a comprehensive care package.
Noble Lords may have noticed thus far my subtle references to a need for more money in the system. In conclusion, I want to focus on money. I know that the Government’s response to calls for more money in the system is always, understandably, “There is no more money”. As Andrew Dilnot frequently says, though, it is a question not of “can’t afford it” but of “won’t afford it”. Our GDP shows that we are five times better off than we were in 1948. Time and again, we find that social care properly delivered, of good reliable quality and with an emphasis on preventive care is a better way of caring for older and disabled people than healthcare, especially in a hospital bed, could ever be. If we pool the risk—after all, only one in five of us will ever need high levels of social care—and give it the priority that it deserves, we can afford it. It is a matter of priorities. We can easily find several billion pounds by stopping tax avoidance if we really put our minds to it.
We need to start thinking long-term about the real costs of failures in social care and think more broadly about what those failures will mean to the economy as a whole. I shall give an example. Diminishing social care from councils has hit business productivity. As fewer older and disabled people are able to access social care services, growing numbers of family members are being forced to give up work to care for their loved ones. An estimated 1 million people have given up paid work or reduced their working hours to care for their loved ones. The LSE tells us that the public expenditure cost of families giving up work is £1.3 billion a year in additional expenditure on carers’ benefits and lost tax revenues. If lost earnings are taken into account, the figure rises to £5.3 billion. These are the sort of long-term effects of the current shortages in funding that we should be considering.
I know, as do all noble Lords, that the Minister cannot make a commitment here today to put more much needed money into the system. However, I know him to be a man of commitment and vision, as well as a very busy one today—I also know that the whole House will be delighted with the award that he received last night—and I ask that he commits to taking the message from your Lordships’ House back to his department and to the coalition Government and tries to persuade colleagues to see that investing properly in social care is just that—an investment, not a drain. It saves costs down the line, assuages one of the worst worries of citizens and will earn the thanks of the nation, both those in need of care at present and all of us who may need it in future.
As for the argument that says that times are hard and this is not the time to enter into major extra commitments, I remind your Lordships that the Beveridge report of 70 years ago was published and accepted in the middle of a world war, yet our forebears had no problem with the vision and commitment to take on those far-reaching changes even though the country was, in the words of one noble Lord in this House this week, absolutely skint. We are not skint. We live in a time of relative peace and prosperity. Should we not be prepared to follow in the footsteps of those courageous forebears? I beg to move.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
My Lords, I am one of those old hands to whom the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, referred in her speech. No one knows more on this subject than she does and I pay tribute to the great work that she has always done. However, there is nothing new in this problem. It has grown hugely but there is nothing new about it. I was chairman of social services on a London council in the 1970s under the then Wilson Government. We were terribly short of money and had to choose between providing social care or saving the buildings in which we were doing it. We did not have the money for both. These extremely difficult choices have always had to be made.
Like the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, I am very disappointed that, one year on, we still have not had a real response to the Dilnot report. However, as she said, everything is stretched. The linkage between housing, health and care has always been terribly important. There is nothing new in that. I would be sorry to see unacceptable standards become the norm, as the noble Baroness fears, but we have reached the point where there is simply no money. Local authorities have done everything they can to reduce their expenditure. They have put a lot of the care out to agencies because that saves hugely on management costs and staff costs and they believe that that is more effective. I am not so sure of that. I met a woman who was going to take on a caring job and found that she had to see eight different clients a day at eight different venues, each one supposedly for an hour. However, in that hour she had to do everything for that client. As has been said, 15 minutes is more the norm—someone runs in, makes a cup of tea, gives the client a bath or dresses them and then is gone. If they are doing breakfast for people, those people are getting their breakfast at all times of the day because the same person is running from house to house.
The woman who applied to the local authority agency found that she would have been paid nothing for her travelling time between jobs, which could be half an hour or more. She would have had to locate each address herself and then go to it. The whole thing was not on. This is a very genuine and loving Latin American woman. I came across her through an immigration issue. She has been here for many years. She works for 48 hours non-stop, day and night, for an elderly lady. She lives with her, looks after her, gets up in the middle of the night and does everything. She does this on a self-employed basis. I have raised this matter before in the House. If you are self-employed, there is no talk of a working wage or even a minimum wage. There is no wage protection for carers who are self-employed. The family of the lady with dementia pays her £100 for two days and two nights—48 hours. That is £2-something an hour. How can we expect people to work for that sort of money?
We rely on people working. In the past you could rely on family because people lived near to one another. In my GLC days you could exchange your social housing and move nearer those who could care for you. None of that—or very little—is available now. Most people are lucky to have a roof over their heads at all. It has reached the point where local authorities have combined forces so that several boroughs can work together to reduce costs and spread the load. These things are not easy now. People are reaching the limit of their resilience. They have made efforts again and again. We keep trying and we make a little progress, and then we find that the demands are growing all the time. The huge growth in the number of elderly people who survive is perhaps something that no one could have foreseen. Perhaps it is a reflection of how successful our health service and way of life are. The basic issue is money.
I went—I think it was yesterday but I lose track of time—to a meeting on the future of nursing. Everyone talked about the need for more time for each nurse to do her job. We read press reports on this. Nothing could have been reported more than the issue we are debating. I have picked out three headlines. The first is very emotive and states:
“Hungry, sick, neglected: the care home scandal”.
The next one states:
“Urgent action needed to tackle care failings that lead to horrific abuse”.
These things are absolutely vital. Care inspections are very important, but will be effective only if they are unannounced and unexpected. If you have told people that you are coming, you will not get the true picture at all. Today, I read in the paper:
“Cruelty had been ‘normalised’ in parts of the NHS, the Health Secretary declared yesterday”.
It may be that that emotive word had been picked out, but what is happening in most cases is not deliberate cruelty. In many cases people are giving a marvellous service. However, the cases that all the press sensation is about are ones where staff are failing.
I was in hospital two or three years ago. I was put in a ward full of elderly people. All night the woman in the bed next to me said, “Help, help, help”—non-stop, for the whole night. Of course the nurse responding to that had become case hardened, because she had heard the woman saying “help” not just the night I was there but probably every day and night of the week. People are amazingly patient and good, but it is an impossible task. Everyone knows that it comes down to the need for more money—but where are we going to find it? The medical set-up is also in a state of chaos while staff adjust to all the changes. It is extremely difficult.
We want to see social care of good, reliable quality. We want to see specialist hospital facilities used only where there is a real benefit from them. We do not want people to be occupying hospital beds that could be used by acute care cases when another type of accommodation might be better. It is alarming for people. They know that they do not have the money to pay for things themselves. But the changes in family patterns—the geographical thing—are very worrying.
Expectation is another big problem. We have all raised expectations to a point where we expect everything to be perfect all the time, but no one has the money for that. This is an extremely complicated issue that we have to be very aware of, and today’s debate must help to increase awareness and show all the various aspects of it. There is no simple solution. I wish there was. It is going to take a lot of time and effort and we will still be relying to a very large extent on volunteers, which the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, knows so much about.
Baroness Barker
My Lords, I, too, am one of the usual suspects. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, for bringing us back to this subject.
I will start by pointing out the contrast between today and a year ago. A year ago, we were inundated with messages about what people thought about the Health and Social Care Act and their fears for the NHS. Now, when we are talking about social care, which probably has a bigger impact on more people, we have received almost nothing. I know that over recent weeks a number of noble Lords have attended a lot of very good briefings and meetings with some of the more noted social care policy bodies—but apart from that, nothing. That is very telling. The future well-being of many of our citizens relies on the extent to which the NHS engages with, understands and promotes social care, so that fewer people end up going to hospital and those who do quickly return to the place where most healthcare will happen in future—their own homes. That is the debate that we should be having with people in the NHS, and we are not.
It is understandable that people talk in apocalyptic terms about social care. The Barnet graph of doom says it all. I have to say that the LGA laid it on by doing exactly what I would have done in those circumstances, which is to pick the very worst case.
The key issues in social care arise because of the successes of the NHS. The NHS was designed for and spectacularly successful at organising acute care for treatable conditions. As a result, the majority of people now live with long-term care conditions, but we still have a health service based on that old model. We need to work out ways in which the NHS and local authorities together can buy packages of health and social care that enable people to go along a health and care pathway. At the moment most people’s experience of health or social care is that a part of it may work fantastically well but it is not related to any other parts of the pathway of their lives. That experience and the economic models that underlie it are the key things that we have to turn our attention to.
I want to say a little bit about personalisation, a subject that I talk about quite a lot, as the noble Earl, Lord Howe, will know. It is the chosen method of the previous Government and this Government for addressing some of the many deficiencies in social care. I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, will be delighted when I say that the big problem with personalisation is that it has been taken by many people in its most basic and crude form to mean a direct payment and a list of providers. It is about much more than that. It is about more than disaggregating existing services and giving people money to purchase them. It is about finding new ways to enable people to have the power to shape the services they need. The Housing Learning and Improvement Network is currently engaged in working on some very interesting different forms of collectivisation of personal payments, enabling people, for example, to combine in buying a core housing service and then buying different personal services to turn what was previously residential care into assisted living. That is the sort of work which local authorities and, in future, the NHS need to support so that we can ensure that more older people remain in assisted living for longer, rather than ending up in hospital and acute care.
We have a plethora of examples of how community care can be improved and work very well in preventing people needing higher levels of care. All the usual suspects will recognise Dorset POPP, North East Lincolnshire Care Trust Plus and Southwark Circle—all of them packed with evidence about how older people can thrive in supported settings. However, to the best of my knowledge none of them has a model of economic sustainability. My key question for the Minister is whether, in this coming year—with the potential of health and well-being boards and the potential which arises from some of the changes in the NHS radically to alter the way in which services are commissioned, designed and provided—the Government will continue to work on developing economic models which can show us whether those small localised examples can be either scaled up or replicated in different parts of the country.
We are in danger of missing the point that the creation of health and well-being boards gives us the potential to do what is brought out in the subject of this debate—to create communities in places where older people want to be. They want to be at home; they do not want to be in hospital. It is for the Government to provide these new bodies with research, which so far has been lacking, into the efficacy of social care compared with acute treatment to enable the joint pathways of care that I talked about earlier not only to be real in terms of the services that they give older people but to be viable models in which the NHS feels it can safely invest, as opposed to investing, as it has done, in acute care.
In my remaining final minute, I want to say that so far we have achieved something quite remarkable—a consensus on Andrew Dilnot’s report. I hope that that consensus continues because, whatever one may think of its deficiencies, it is the only game in town. It is important that a form of Dilnot comes about soon and that it should be a compulsory and not a voluntary scheme. If that does not happen, we will never get the economic basis on which to build the new future of health and social care to which we aspire.
Baroness Campbell of Surbiton
My Lords, I, too, am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, for securing this debate. We have worked together for many, many years, and I am afraid that I am another usual suspect.
The integration of social care is a complex nut to crack. I am sure that Ministers with responsibility for health, both acute and primary, local government, housing, and work and pensions will also wish to pay attention to what is said here today. Together, they are responsible for the solution.
There is widespread agreement that care and support services are underfunded. The distinguished economist Andrew Dilnot, expertly advised by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said as much in his report on how to fund the future of social care. There is not enough money in the system and we all know it. It is not just that the growth in demand for support has not been matched by a growth in resources; it is also clear that the needs and circumstances, and the aspirations, of disabled people, old and young, are increasingly complex. I am far from alone in your Lordships’ House in speaking from personal experience on these matters.
Budget restrictions are causing local authorities to make terrible decisions. Would any of your Lordships wish to tell a severely disabled lady that she cannot have help to go to the toilet at night and that she must wear incontinence pads even though she is not incontinent? Would you wish your names to be on a letter telling a frail, elderly couple that charges for their home care are to be increased by 30% when they cannot even pay their heating bill? These things are happening now and every day.
Yet, around the country some local authorities and their NHS partners are tackling these pressures with more constructiveness, co-operation and creativity than others. The Social Care Institute for Excellence, of which I had the privilege to be the founding chair, is looking at such examples through the eyes of service users. I applaud this approach. Service users are genuine experts by experience. For some local authorities the funding challenges have been a catalyst for new ways of working. They have encouraged the statutory authorities to work in partnership with people and their families; to listen to what they want to achieve and how they want to live their lives; and to work out the best way of supporting them to stay independent. Some councils are using a whole range of resources to come up with really innovative solutions tailored to individual circumstances. They have rediscovered the value of putting people—not services or resources—at the centre of decision-making. This is music to my ears. It reassures me that many in charge of care and support will not simply take the easy and destructive option of cutting services in a sheep-like fashion.
I was deeply troubled when I heard of a local authority, Worcestershire, announcing a blanket policy of cuts, including capping non-residential care costs to a level equivalent to the residential care rate. I knew that it would not be long before yet another authority followed suit, and I was right. At least three other local authorities are now proposing the same policy. There is nothing creative or collaborative about this approach. Such a policy has the potential to overturn three decades of building an independent living culture for those with the highest support needs. Surely we do not want to go back to the 1970s when disabled people and those with long-term medical conditions were invisible in society—patients or residents but not people, expected to live out their days in a hospital or nursing home, or trapped at home in the back bedroom. Denial of independent living is a breach of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
I would like to remind your Lordships of the late Baroness Lane-Fox. She was a remarkable disabled Peer with a much larger electric wheelchair than mine. She championed the cause of patients living in iron lungs at Guy’s Hospital during the 1970s and early 1980s. She brokered an initiative between government, healthcare, social care and housing to get them living in the community. These victims of polio were under the care of Dr Geoffrey Spencer, a visionary physician who placed nothing in the “too difficult” tray. I do not know whether any of your Lordships have ever seen an iron lung. It is like a seven-foot cylindrical missile on wheels—a challenge for an integrated team in the 21st century, let alone one in 1981 when Felicity Lane-Fox joined the Conservative Benches and captured the imagination and support of this House and the other place, and got money where there was no money to pay for it. In those days, as I said earlier, there was no budget line. We were really, really strapped for cash. There were no complex-needs commissioning boards and no integrated housing or social service practice guidance, just a shared belief that these patients should enjoy the same human rights as the rest of society and should be prioritised. Government money for their care in hospital was creatively redirected and renamed as “health research”. Occupational therapists and clinicians worked with local authorities as one team. Together, they liberated these reluctant bed-blockers, who became known as “responauts”—a remarkable achievement.
Now fast-forward 30 years to 2011. The JCHR conducted an inquiry into disabled people’s right to independent living. We heard from witnesses about situations not so different from those of the hospital-bound responauts. It struck me how easy it has been over the past few years of austerity to slip back to a time when young and old people with significant support needs were second-class citizens, denied their human and civil rights. It is a travesty that lessons learnt from an emerging human rights approach to the funding and delivery of care and support in this country have been so easily cast aside in the name of austerity.
At the launch of the JCHR report, I found myself making pleas not dissimilar to those made by Baroness Lane-Fox 30 years ago—this time for a young Asian man with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, stuck in the same respiratory unit as the 1979 responauts. He was there for four months longer than was necessary, surrounded by critically ill patients, reminding him daily of his recent trauma. The reason was not financial. The cost to the state was more than £900 per day, as opposed to a maximum of £400 in the community. No, the reason was that the local authority social care services had no budget compared to their health services partner. The result was the usual “who pays?” war, preventing a joined-up approach. This caused the inability of both to put the young man and his family at the centre of planning. His well established independent living arrangements were torn apart by the long unnecessary stay in hospital. He lost opportunities to work and further his career, and his overall well-being suffered inextricably. He paid a high personal cost and much-needed public money was wasted.
The JCHR made many recommendations in its Article 19 inquiry report last year—recommendations that will help the Government to regain their international reputation for delivering a human rights approach to care and support in this country. They challenge us all to understand, and action, the true meaning of mutually supportive systems, spending and consuming.
In conclusion—I know I am running out of time—I would be grateful if the Minister would tell your Lordships about the current status of the Government’s plans to address the conclusions and recommendations in the JCHR report. To date, it simply has not been good enough
Among the concerns of witnesses at that inquiry was, of course, the closure of the independent living fund. Will the Minister explain how the Government will ensure that money currently safeguarded through the mechanism of the Independent Living Fund will continue to be used only for modern independent living purposes? Will he again reconsider ring-fencing that money?
Please, do not let this be another debate where we share human rights stories. The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities embodies 21st-century ideals of what public support services should be striving towards. Rather than allow the backward slide to accelerate, let us begin by taking Dilnot off the shelf and working together to fix social care.
The Lord Bishop of Liverpool
My Lords, I begin by declaring that I am not one of the usual suspects in this debate and I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, and others will forgive me, as a novice, speaking. I defer, of course, to her experience and expertise and that of other noble Baronesses who have spoken, especially the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell. On behalf of the communities in Liverpool, I thank the noble Baroness for this debate and for the opportunity to consider the impact of the reduced local authority budgets on the welfare of the people of Merseyside, and to localise the debate in that way, if possible.
I do not deny the need to be financially prudent or the need to live within our means. I also understand how difficult it is for the Government to be pressed persistently to fund all the demands on the public purse. The question I want to press in the debate is not whether there should be cuts to the budget but, rather, how assured the Government are that the financial settlement across the nation is fair. In his response to the debate, I would like to hear the Minister say that he is prepared to review the local authority settlement in terms of the provision for social care.
The city of Liverpool is expected to reduce its spending by 52% over the next four years. This cut is more draconian than elsewhere and leaves us asking why the north-west seems to be targeted more severely than, say, places such as London, Bournemouth or Brighton. For people to be able to accept such drastic measures there has to be a sense of fairness across the country. I hesitate to paint the picture of need in Liverpool for fear of giving the wrong impression of the city and of the region. The truth is that Liverpool is a thriving European city, with a vibrant cultural life, three universities and an enterprising business community. The elected mayor is pragmatic politically, seeking every opportunity to gain investment in the city.
However, alongside this cultural and economic renaissance, there are areas of consolidated poverty that demand intervention. We have the highest percentage of people with a history of substance abuse and some of the highest rates of unemployment, cancer and teenage pregnancy. That is why there is genuine fear in the city over the impact of 25% cuts in adult social care over the next four years and 25% cuts in children’s services.
The council knows that throwing money at these problems is not the solution, which is why it is already working in partnerships to maximise the value of the money already invested, and economies are certainly being made through better co-ordination and management. However, save as it tries, there remains an axe hanging over the head of the support services—the home visits and support for the elderly and the mentally ill. If these go under the axe, it will only put more pressure on the front-line services, as we have already heard. To support someone in their own home costs Liverpool City Council up to £250 per week. If you cut these services and the patient ends up in a nursing home, the cost goes from £250 to £550 per week. I would be glad if the Minister could tell us how the Government view this problem and whether they are prepared to be more creative and flexible, channelling between the different silos of policy and funding to avoid the social disaster that might follow. It is demoralising for the city council to analyse the statistics across the country and discover that, far from there being a level playing field, there are staggeringly steep differences in funding across the nation, which makes the pain of applying these cuts even more severe.
I have refrained from anecdotes, although I could give noble Lords many of them. In fact, the cuts and the anecdotes are much greater and more numerous than people are already testifying to, because once these 52% cuts have really kicked in there will be dramatic stories of people who are not cared for in their own homes and further afield. Will the Minister please review the settlement and give us an assurance that these cuts are fair across the country?
Baroness Wheatcroft
My Lords, I should like to add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, for securing this important debate and for her eloquent speech which showed how well she knows this important sector and the issues it faces. She also made an eloquent plea, as have others, for more money. But money is not the only answer to this problem, and that is just as well because, as we know, we are living in a time of austerity and the money to do everything we would like to do simply is not there. We have to look for more creative and collaborative solutions, as the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, has just said. We have to look for more integration and the greater use of computer technology. We have to be inventive.
There are productivity gains to be had. A recent report from the King’s Fund pointed to the fact that there is a great search for cuts as an end in itself rather than a search for the productivity gains that could deliver cuts in spending. A recent report from the Policy Exchange, of which I am delighted to be a trustee, sets out the following sentiment:
“If we could provide integrated care bringing together primary, community, acute and social care we could provide better care for the frail elderly and save a great deal of money”.
That statement was made by David Prior, the chairman of the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust—and he was talking only about integration within the NHS itself. Here we are talking about the need for integration across the NHS, social services and housing, but none of that can be done until the NHS itself manages to bring down some of the extraordinary barriers it has put up between the various parts of its own organisation. The NHS could and should be a much more integrated and efficient organisation. Experiments are being carried out in parts of the country, but nowhere near enough is being done on that front. Even the Local Government Association accepts the need for reform and that money alone will not be enough to solve the problems we now face in this area.
The state cannot do it all. Although we have already heard some appalling stories of people who are really suffering, I would maintain that that is not just because of the cuts; they are suffering because of some very severe breakdowns in our society. Those who have seen the Times today will have noted the headline on the front page about the number of people in our country who will spend Christmas alone this year—some 250,000. The Times quotes a survey which has found that one in 10 of those aged over 75 confesses to being intensely lonely all of the time. Loneliness is not just a misery in itself; it is a cause of ill health. It drives people to see their doctors. It is something that we all need to address together. Family breakdown has caused severe agony in this country. We have to look for creative solutions to help those who are growing old not to feel lonely and end up seeking medical help. They need to be integrated into communities and not to live in single-person households, as so many do, unless that is what they really want. We should be able to offer more constructive, healthy and enjoyable alternatives. While they are still fit and well, we need to get people to move into communities where they will have the sort of wonderful life that we in this House enjoy. It actually encourages life expectancy far beyond the norm. People need to be in groups. If they were living in groups, the state could provide at much less expense the sort of 24-hour care that will eventually be required.
We have heard about people who have had to give up their jobs to care for elderly members of their families, but they are rarities now. What we need is to make sure that the community as a whole takes on the responsibility of looking after its elderly. There are other constructive ways in which we can do this. Some schemes arrange for younger people with nowhere to live to be paired with elderly people who live in houses with too much space. The relationship benefits both sides. The young person agrees to do a certain amount of work helping around the house and doing the shopping, although just being there is often more than enough. That sort of help can preserve an elderly person’s sanity and keep them fit for many years.
We will hear again today about the need for more money and more spending, but I think that we could spend what we have more effectively, more efficiently and more creatively.
Baroness Donaghy
My Lords, I am extremely grateful to my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley for her perseverance in this important area. Those of us who sat through the debates on the Local Government Finance Bill can be in no doubt about the parlous state of local government funding, and the Question asked in the House yesterday about cuts in arts funding in Newcastle brought it home even more how councils are having to set priorities which are assessed on the least harm rather than the most good. I start from the standpoint of being a supporter of local government, but that is not to say that there are no failings in the system, if you can call the state of social care in this country a system. I will concentrate my remarks on care for the elderly and, in particular, those who need nursing care as opposed to residential care.
A growing number of frail elderly people are living alone when it is no longer safe for them to do so. The care they receive, if they receive it, is often totally inadequate for their needs. This is not new, as the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, pointed out, it is just getting worse. Let us look at the demographics. Last year, 720,000 people reached the age of 65, the largest number ever to do so. They are the cod liver oil generation and they are better nourished than any previous generation. Some continue in paid employment, and a considerable proportion of their number will still be around in 2031 when they reach the age of 85. That is good news, but by then many more will require support in their homes or in residential or nursing care. Moreover, many among those 720,000 people are already caring for elderly relations, as I did a few years ago. They are finding out for the first time in their lives the extent of the financial and administrative hurdles they have to overcome on behalf of their loved one or ones.
Today’s 85 year-olds are not a sufficient political lobby to frighten any Chancellor of the Exchequer into taking action on social care, but the generation that retired last year is a different matter. Their experience as carers and their concern for their own futures will affect the political agenda. By way of a word of advice to my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley, if she moves the same Motion for debate this time next year, she ought to ask the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon or his successor to reply instead of the noble Earl, Lord Howe, because this is a Treasury issue.
We all believe that care is in desperate need of reform, that it is urgent and that cross-party consent is probably the only way we are going to achieve it. Having said that, I first participated in a debate on the urgent need to integrate health and local government services for the elderly in 1973—so the word “urgent” is losing its meaning. It is shocking to learn that social care for older people in England makes up about 1% of total public expenditure in the UK. We know that much of NHS expenditure is also concentrated in this area, to some extent subsidising the failure of social care, the lack of adequate housing and the diminution of the role of extended families. Although the Government have announced new social care funding, rising from £1.18 billion in 2011-12 to £2 billion per year by 2014-15, which of course is welcome, that is in the context of overall cuts and cancelled funding from central government of £3.5 billion.
This area has always been underfunded. Age UK has said that,
“care is not fit for purpose”.
Each year, the level of unmet need has increased as people are excluded from accessing services or have their care packages reduced. In 2009-10, the total hours of support purchased by local authorities for older people fell from 2 million hours to 1.85 million hours. People who are unable to undertake essential personal care tasks find themselves ineligible for support depending on where they live. It is estimated that 800,000 older people with care-related needs receive no support of any kind from public or private sector agencies. This figure is likely to rise to 1 million people by 2020. Those who are poor and have no family support face a grim future.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, said, although funding is of course very important, we must look to different ways of spending it. We should find out why our elderly are more isolated than elderly people in some other countries in Europe, where specially built communities exist. Perhaps older people in this country cling on to their own— sometimes hopelessly inappropriate—accommodation because it is preferable to going into a home or living with their children. Of course there are purpose-built homes with community facilities now, but we must find ways of ensuring that, once someone has bought a property in such a purpose-built facility, the annual service and maintenance charges do not overtake their budget and reach nightmarish levels. At a time when housing budgets are facing dire shortfalls, it may seem fanciful to demand new forms of housing or to persuade the elderly to move from the suburbs into the city, as they do in Copenhagen, but when times are desperate we need to be at our most imaginative.
Another area that I think deserves independent examination is the administration of the estates of deceased nursing home residents, many of whom have no living family member. I realise it is not something that the CQC can deal with, but I feel that a lot of money is being made by some solicitors, and probably banks, with little oversight. This is an area where local authorities could become entrepreneurial—the salaries of the staff who are employed would be covered several times over and the elderly residents’ interests would be better protected.
We should ask ourselves whether nursing homes, as presently constituted, are the right model for the future. There is no doubt that cuts in local authority funding force authorities to cut the fees they pay to private nursing homes, which forces many to close. After all, local authorities fund about half the places, but shareholder value may well be the decisive factor. Is the comfort and well-being of the patients in nursing homes given more priority than their potential for bed-wetting? I ask these questions because of my own experience. The CQC report is, if anything, an understatement of the real problem. I wish my noble friends Lady Pitkeathley and Lord Warner, and other colleagues, all the best in their endeavours to keep Dilnot alive.
Baroness Tyler of Enfield
My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, on being such an excellent and enduring champion in this area. I view the issue of how adult social care is provided to vulnerable elderly people and to those with disabilities as the pre-eminent social issue facing this country.
Integration has been a buzzword around health and care services for a long time. Overcoming the entrenched divisions between health, social care, housing and wider services is indeed a major challenge, particularly with the great financial pressures that we are currently under, which is very much the focus of this debate. It is important that we are realistic about some of the barriers faced, which include cultural barriers as well as those to do with separate funding and planning systems and separate workforce training—I could go on. We probably all agree that making a reality of integrated care is now an absolute imperative.
I talked about the need for realism. Despite what has been described as its optimistic modelling, the LGA’s funding outlook report confronts us with some pretty brutal figures, such as a £16.5 billion shortfall in funding by 2020. Of course these kinds of savings cannot come from efficiency alone. In my view, it will require a fundamental and system-wide reform. I am also clear that more money is needed. The Barnet graph of doom has been very effective in placing a spotlight on the very real dilemmas faced by local authorities; but equally, it must not lead to a complete counsel of despair. Through well co-ordinated services that look to prevention as well as crisis response, it should be possible to make some contribution to the efficiencies needed and certainly to achieve greater cost-effectiveness, for example by reducing emergency admissions or readmissions and by speeding up discharge from hospital to the community. Integrated care can no longer be reserved as somewhere for rhetoric but has to become a reality. How do we actually do that? The most important thing is getting the right financial incentives in the system, both nationally and locally.
The additional money that was announced in the last spending review for social care was welcome. I am well aware that £1 billion of that was redeployed from the NHS. However, the evidence that we have seen so far says that too often that money has to be used to offset budget cuts and to meet changing demographic needs rather than to promote integration. Ultimately, real progress should focus on aligning the whole of the £121 billion currently spent on health and social care around the needs of individuals, particularly by pooling some of the local budgets, and having shared budgets and a much more strategic assessment of the funding needs in the round.
I have talked about joining up statutory services, which I think is key, but I also want to draw the attention of the House today to the value and potential of our voluntary sector in tackling some of the important problems of isolation and loneliness, which have already been referred to by other noble Lords. If you ask older people which local services make the biggest difference to their lives, they point to lunch clubs, keep-fit classes and day centres. It is often through organised group activities that many older people keep active, make friends and stay engaged with the world around them. We know that problems of isolation and loneliness are not just emotional—they have a very real impact on people’s physical and mental health. Research shows that loneliness can increase the risk of heart disease, blood clots and dementia, and that it encourages people to exercise less, drink more and avoid going out. It can also mean that people are more likely to undergo early admission into residential or nursing care. The introduction of a new loneliness measure as part of the adult social care initiative is therefore a very welcome move. But how is this going to be achieved in practice? I would be very grateful if the Minister could explain the thinking in this area.
For many who take part, volunteer-led local services are rare, even unique, opportunities for social interaction in a friendly and supportive environment. By creating networks of people who are looking out for one another, local services can generate vital sources of informal care, with benefits which resonate across the health and social care services. Instead of an older person’s health deteriorating without anyone noticing before a crisis happens, these services can prompt earlier intervention and help prevent problems escalating.
Sadly, these schemes and activities often do not get the support that they need. Alongside the tightened local authority budgets about which we have heard quite a lot today, the emphasis on personalisation is inadvertently taking its toll on some such voluntary sector services. As we have heard today—not least from my noble friend Lady Barker—personalisation is a perfectly good principle and has many benefits, but it has also had some unintended results. Fragmented amounts of money are difficult to tack together and shared approaches can become much harder. So, yes, of course, we must start with the individual, but what that sometimes reveals is the importance of collective and inclusive approaches which benefit both the people involved and the public purse.
These services do not need to cost much. Largely dependent on local volunteers, such initiatives have got by up till now mainly on small grants from their local authorities. Age UK, which does so much vital work in this area, recently told me of a discussion with one director of social services whose first instinct had been to withdraw funding from her local daycare services provided by the voluntary sector to help make the books balance, but she then realised, when she looked at it more carefully, just what a cost-effective and crucial access point they offered. Not only did the service enable her to stay in touch with how the older people in her area were doing but it provided a platform for delivering key services.
As I said at the beginning of my speech, as funding is reined in, so the focus shifts to acute needs. Daycare services, under pressure to take on older people with illnesses such as dementia, become less suitable places for older people looking for a lower level care. Of course, it is no criticism of local authorities that, when resources are scarce and they are being reduced to their bare essentials, acute needs become the main focus.
I conclude by returning to the big picture. I chose to make the focus of my remarks today the often undervalued and underfunded contribution of the voluntary sector—it is dear to my heart—but the big picture is critical. As so many other noble Lords have said, there are two key issues for the Government to address: first, the current funding gap for social care and, secondly, the need to implement a long-term, sustainable funding settlement for social care. On the former, without further action on funding, even the basic and too often inadequate social care currently provided will no longer be available from local authority-funded care. On the longer-term issue, there is a wide consensus, which I strongly share, that the Dilnot proposals are the most credible and practical solution. Difficult as it is in the current financial climate, the Government must make a firm commitment in the next spending review to implement Dilnot. The time for talk and deliberation is over; it is now time for action.
Lord Warner
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on securing this debate and opening it in her customarily clear, knowledgeable and wise way. I shall not repeat her analysis. I want to talk about the funding crisis. It is pretty clear from the contributions so far that there is a funding crisis in social care in a wider context. I shall touch on Dilnot—here, I declare my interest as a member of the Dilnot commission—but we cannot solve the problems of stabilising social care funding by Dilnot alone.
We are seeing local government in many areas having to concentrate virtually all its discretionary spending on adult social care and child protection, a situation to which the right reverend Prelate drew our attention. This will mean that big cities in particular lose those civic services around arts, leisure and other things which make for a civilised society as their authorities concentrate on social care and child protection. Yet these sacrifices may be insufficient to preserve good-quality, publicly funded social care services. Eligibility criteria will be tightened even further. Quality of care will deteriorate in a labour-intensive sector where the people providing the services have less money to ensure the quality and training of staff. These things are happening now on a considerable scale and the situation will only get worse. Local authorities will continue to chop their payments for publicly funded care.
We will see, and it has already started, private payers taking more of the services because the providers of those services, which are largely no longer public bodies, will have to concentrate their investment and activities on people who pay the true cost of care. Increasingly, that is not those who are in receipt of publicly funded social care.
Nothing stops the remorseless arithmetic of demography. The ageing and longevity of the population base of adult social care inexorably increase demand for care. With more than a third of the adult population having long-term conditions, and often with multiple morbidities, the demands on health and social care services will rise year by year for at least the next two decades. Yet we still pretend that the core business of the NHS is acute hospital treatment, when it is now community-based care involving care pathways that embrace health and social care and often housing and financial support. Yet our funding is in separate silos, with strong incentives to cost-shunt and to protect hospital budgets.
We have to begin treating the Department of Health budget as a single budget to be spent in the most cost-effective way for people’s care needs. We need to reimagine the whole system as a care system with a medical treatment adjunct rather than as a hospital treatment system with a care adjunct. We need money flows and payment systems that reinforce that new approach, rather than one that incentivises and reinforces episodes of care in acute hospitals and diverts money from overstretched community-based care. This means radically changing political and public attitudes to hospitals so that we can reduce the excessive number of 24/7 acute hospitals trying to provide a full range of medical specialties and concentrate specialist services on fewer sites. Not only would that be more cost-effective but it would be safer in many areas, such as maternity, for the public who receive those services. Money is now locked up and being spent in inappropriate ways in acute hospitals. That money should be extracted and used to boost community health and social care services.
We cannot expect local commissioners to produce these changes without national leadership. I am all in favour of localism, but to expect local commissioners to engineer these big-scale changes is frankly fantasy politics. I would like to see set up an independent, medical-specialty review of 24/7 acute services, led by specialist doctors and possibly under the aegis of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges. I would ask them to see how these specialist services could be reconfigured on fewer sites, with the objective of safer specialist services that released—let us say—£l0 billion over five years to create a new time-limited care development fund. The fund’s mission would be the joint development by local authorities, clinical commissioning groups and health and well-being boards of more community-based care services. It is not a fantasy idea. In the US, Medicare is setting up a $10 billion fund to develop these kinds of community-based services.
Even with such changes, we still need major reform of the funding of social care to make it sustainable in the long term. This is because people have to save more for their old age and use more of their own assets to pay for their care, especially by equity release from housing assets. To do this we have to find a way of implementing some version of the Dilnot recommendations instead of sheltering behind the current fiscal difficulties to not do so.
As my noble friend said, there are ways of funding the relatively modest cost of starting on Dilnot. If we set the Dilnot cap at £50,000 or £60,000 and implemented the commission’s other recommendations, it would cost barely £1 billion a year or less to make that start. We could do this for three years by using underspends on NHS capital rather than repatriating them to the Treasury, and then if necessary find other funding sources including subsidies from the care development fund that I am proposing. There is a lot of money knocking around in government that could actually get Dilnot going in a reasonable way.
We cannot ask the social care world to adapt and find new ways of working without demanding much more from its wealthy relative, the NHS. Without more radical funding reform involving more use of NHS resources for social care, the good intentions of the draft Care and Support Bill will simply remain a wish list with no Santa Claus to deliver it. I hope the Minister—and my own Front Bench both here and in another place—will see these as constructive suggestions for further consideration.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
My Lords, I too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, for organising what seems to be an annual reunion of those of us who are the usual suspects. I would like to think that after the Minister’s speech the noble Baroness will organise an annual celebration, but perhaps I will hold my breath on that.
My remarks are intended to help establish two main points. First, the lack of central policy in England on the relationship between social care and healthcare is creating huge uncertainties for both providers and clients. Secondly, much of the difficulty already recounted in the debate is to be found in the practicalities of providing unified care services for many of those who need them. These difficulties of both policy and implementation will not be resolved until there is clear leadership at both national and local levels. Alongside this, structures must be created to enable the positive implementation of new policies. I pay tribute to the analysis that the noble Lord, Lord Warner, just gave on this.
What of the uncertainties that I mentioned? The legacy of a decade and more of a failure of leadership to face demographic realities is that it has brought huge uncertainty and consequent misery. The realities have been known for a long time. The demographic changes in society are as plain as plain could be. Whether we think of the developed or the developing world, even China now has begun to take note of the fact that the one child per family policy is building future demographic nightmares. To compare that with something else, the facts of climate change are all too evident this week as much as any. Those facts now have a leadership response from the Government and things are beginning to happen. Perhaps some would like them to happen more quickly but they are beginning.
The realities of demographic change are equally plain if not less contestable. Why does no similar cold shower of reality bring minds and political will to the table of demographic change? I can think of many reasons for that. One is that we always have on our desks the “too hard” basket. It is easy—and has been too easy—to put this set of issues into that basket. I confess that my own “too hard” basket at home contains a series of domestic tasks that I think are too hard but my wife clearly does not. However, if I were a government Minister, I would have a rather different use for that basket. That is what tends to happen.
The second possible reason is that it will cost too much. The issue has been raised of how much is too much when the reality of demographic change, rather than evading it, calls for a change in leadership direction. Reality, not habit and precedent, should dictate priorities in spending. If reality means spending less on this or that to face demographic change, then so be it. That is not a request for an additional or new priority to be added, but rather to reassert and re-examine what our priorities are. Are they still top of the list in view of demographic change?
A third reason given for doing nothing is, “We shall deal with this after the next election”. We have heard that more than once. What we have after the next election is usually a request for a review, report or even a commission. God forbid that that is where we will be in 2015, but we begin to worry that that will be the reality. The burst of enthusiasm that leaders have before elections for this issue tails off into long discussion and prevarication. The Dilnot report is the latest example of this—and, some are beginning to fear, the latest victim.
What are the uncertainties of which I speak? There are uncertainties, for example, for those attempting to make provision for themselves and their family. There are questions that they all ask: “Where do I go?”, “Whom do I ask?”, “How much will it cost?”, “Can I afford it?” and, “Can I insure against future need?”. Those are real questions masking real uncertainties. There is uncertainty for those in the insurance industry, who could surely help us here. They ask: “Are the risks pooled in any way?”, “Is there a cap on liability?” and, “How much will the market bear as a charge for insurance products in this area?”. We tend not to pay too much attention to private providers and the banks which finance them, but they have uncertainty, too: “Should I invest in building new care homes?”, “Should I invest in extending, refurbishing and improving my current stock of care homes?”, “Will local authorities commission places from me?” and, “Will they be able to afford to do so?”. Bankers might reasonably ask: “Should my bank offer loans to any of the above?”. Unless there is investment, there will not be adequate provision for the future. The banks would reasonably ask what the rate of return will be.
Then, of course, there are the uncertainties for those already in the care system: “Will I have to sell my house?”, “What happens if the money runs out?”, “Is my care package portable if I move to be nearer relatives?” and, “Are benefits assessed and commissioned to common standards or is there still a postcode lottery?”. I acknowledge the points made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool on that. There will be differences and those will become accentuated. Successive Governments have failed to deal with these core uncertainties over at least 15 years. Ironically, the only certainty is the remorseless march of demographic change and yet we do not recognise it for what it is. The system is burst and we must fix it, and fixing it means radical thought and change.
In conclusion, I refer the Government to some recent research sources which point to future action. The King’s Fund has already been mentioned more than once. It commissioned a series of studies recently, including an excellent and balanced study by Raphael Wittenberg and his colleagues from the LSE. These complement work in this area in pointing to the central pathway down which we must travel—a unified system of providing and funding care, initially and most importantly by removing disincentives to combining assessment, commissioning and the provision of care packages. As the noble Lord, Lord Warner, pointed out, the disincentives are there now and we have to get away from that. We all know something of the problem of delayed discharges and unplanned hospital admissions—indeed, of unplanned readmissions. The separation of the budgets for health and social care and restrictions within healthcare budgets between one area and another add to the difficulty rather than contract it.
Lastly, in the University of Edinburgh and the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh, there is important new research about what happens to those discharged from intensive care units. The researchers reckon that approximately 60% will be readmitted. Many of those readmissions are unplanned. The reason for that—this is an area to which not enough attention has been given—is a lack of coherent and adequate community provision. A re-examination of priorities would show real leadership.
Baroness Wilkins
My Lords, I, too, warmly congratulate my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley on obtaining this debate. Most especially, I applaud her for highlighting the significant role which housing plays in this debate. The impact which the lack of housing—poor, inaccessible and unsafe homes—have on our health and social care is too often ignored. It is rarely even mentioned, but cuts in the housing budget impact significantly on increasing expenditure on health and social care. I thank Sue Adams of Care and Repair England for her advice and help.
The crisis in housing means that, at last, it is moving up the political agenda. The Government have set out plans for a £220 care and support specialised housing fund to encourage providers to develop new accommodation options for older and disabled people. That is very welcome, but it comes in response to a severe housing shortage and a scandalous lack of new homes being built. In the past year, new home starts fell by 9%. Building new homes takes time. In the mean time, the Government’s benefit and housing policies are greatly exacerbating the problem, creating what many people have termed a perfect storm. The benefit cap, the bedroom tax and the removal of permanent tenancies and succession rights will all serve to increase the ill health of those affected and impact particularly severely on disabled and older people, multiplying the pressures on the health and social care services.
In 2006, a PSSRU discussion paper pointed out that, if we do nothing to change the current housing situation, occupied places in care homes and hospitals would need to rise by 151% by 2051. Some estimate long-term care expenditure will rise by around 325% in real terms by 2041. With such a depressing prospect, let us not waste this crisis but seize the opportunity to put effective reforms in place.
The Papworth Trust published a timely report this month based on a survey of 640 disabled and older people. It clearly demonstrates the cost to our health and social care budgets of not addressing the problems with housing. The trust’s research found that almost one in four people could not get around their home safely and two in five said that the design of their home meant that they needed help to do everyday things, such as cooking—all increasing their dependence on other people and potential costs to the health and social care budgets. The great majority of those people did not require rehousing, with the cost and upheaval that that entails, but the provision of relatively simple adaptations, such as grab rails, more accessible shelves and cupboards or level-access showers.
There is ample evidence that spending on those relatively simple adaptations to people’s homes can produce major savings to the health and social care budgets. A study published this year by the London School of Economics suggests that the annual spend of about £270 million on disabled facilities grants is worth up to £560 million in health and social care savings and quality-of-life gains. In other words, for every pound spent on DFGs, two pounds is saved on health and social care costs. A fractured hip can cost the state an estimated £28,000, so £30 on a grab rail is quite good value for money. Falls by older people cost more than £1 billion a year in the UK. The Welsh Government have estimated that a programme to help older people to remain living independently in their own homes has saved the NHS and social care budgets more than £101 million since it was set up 10 years ago.
Local authorities administer the home adaptation services, so cuts to local authority budgets are impacting on an already inadequate, overstretched and underfunded service. The service consists of two main elements: disabled facilities grants, which provided finance; and home improvement agencies, providing help and advice. For many years, there have been calls to strengthen the system and address its many problems.
A survey of English local authorities published in August this year by the Labour Party through freedom of information requests found that 17% fewer grant applications were approved in the past two years. That means that an estimated 10,700 fewer people received funding for home adaptations in 2011-12 than in 2009-10. Over the past two years, there has been a 31% increase in the number of delayed discharges from hospitals due to lack of appropriate home adaptations. That is costing the NHS £985,000 a month.
Despite a welcome extra £20 million provided by the Government for DFGs in January 2011, the money is not ring-fenced, with the result that some local authorities have used the extra funding to reduce their contribution rather than to fund extra work. The trust’s report of October this year found that, of the 326 local authorities which receive DFG funding from the Government, 62 have stopped providing Home Improvement Agency services altogether. That figure has doubled since June 2010.
The Papworth report recommends a radical overhaul of the DFG system. It sees it as wrong that responsibility for home adaptation lies solely with district councils, and proposes that local government and health money is pooled together in a DFG pot to be administered by the new health and well-being boards and clinical commissioning groups.
Finally, anyone who heard yesterday the devastating account of the research done into the situation of spinal-cord injured people in care homes, recently published by ASPIRE, could not fail to acknowledge the crucial role which housing plays in reducing the health and social care budgets. Following successful rehabilitation in a spinal injuries centre, the scandalous lack of accessible housing results in 20% of those patients being discharged by their local authorities into an elderly care home, with an average stay of two years. Twenty-five per cent of those people had tried to kill themselves. ASPIRE has made repeated requests to meet the housing Minister, with no success to date. I ask the noble Earl to do all he can to facilitate that meeting.
In conclusion, there is no denying that we are in a crisis, but let us not waste the opportunity that this crisis offers to make sure that we put in place the essential reforms needed, just as Beveridge did in the Second World War.
Lord Shipley
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, for initiating this debate and declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. My contribution will amount to a plea for urgent clarity in the future funding of adult social care. Time is short, given the enormous pressures on local authority budgets, where the cuts in central government grant amount to 28% overall in the four years up to 2014-15 but which in their implementation have impacted most heavily on the poorer parts of the country, where demand for publicly funded social care can be very high.
It has been generally agreed for some time that social care reform is essential. From the perspective of elderly people, local government, central government, the NHS, the voluntary sector and care providers, clear policy decisions are necessary to enable planning to take place and responsibilities to be agreed that will stand the test of time. Without that clarity, councils risk running out of money. That is a very serious matter, so I hope that the reports published yesterday that work is concluding on the recommendations of the Dilnot report prove to be true.
However, this is not just about Dilnot. There is a financial vacuum which needs to be overcome, of course, but it is not just about affordability. Government policy needs to be agreed as a crucial building block for allocating financial responsibilities. Policy-making affects individuals needing support; councils trying to cope with rising demand and reducing budgets; central government trying to cope with having less money to distribute; voluntary groups trying to plan and deliver services; the NHS trying to control its costs; and care home providers trying to maintain both capacity and standards of care.
From the perspective of local government, by 2019-20 there will be a funding gap of £16.5 billion—or 29%—between the revenue available and the spending pressures forecast. Assuming that social care is funded as now and that other essential statutory requirements are met by councils, there will be cuts of two-thirds in cash terms to all local government services other than social care. If concessionary fares are also fully funded and capital financing charges are met, 90% of current spending on other services will disappear. I believe this to be simply undeliverable for those other services include leisure, libraries and transport, all of which play a major role in the lives of elderly people and their health and well-being.
From the perspective of central government, net public spending on social care and continuing healthcare for older people will rise from £9 billion in 2010 to £13 billion in the early 2020s if current demand and spending assumptions apply—a rise of a little under 50%. There is actually a current funding gap, which has in practice been papered over through temporary financial solutions. The imperative of a long-term solution commanding all-party support has become overwhelming. Dilnot has been estimated to cost £2 billion. Current suggestions are that the cost will prove to be higher and require a higher cap. All this tells us that there is a very serious financial problem. I hope that the Minister will be able to say a little more about how the Government plan to address this funding problem and, in particular, what might be done in the very short term given that the focus of cuts is at the moment being applied to the poorer parts of the country.
We should remember that older people are a massive asset to their communities. They may become recipients of care but they are for many years essential providers of help and support to neighbours, families and friends, saving substantial sums of public money through their voluntary action. Implementing Dilnot would give many of them, and their families, peace of mind and confidence in their financial planning. It would also give the Government greater certainty about how to manage a 60% forecast growth in the number of over-75s within the next 20 years.
Perhaps I may draw your Lordships’ attention to the perspective of care home providers. Providers are claiming that there is now a funding gap of approaching £1 billion between the cost of providing quality care and the amounts paid to them by councils. Indeed, it is claimed that the average residential care home fee paid by councils does not meet the essential standards of the Care Quality Commission. If this is true, there needs to be an urgent review of why and what can be done because one of the consequences of inaction is a risk of more hospitalisations. We should note that fewer older people are now getting care, with a reduction from 1.2 million to 1.06 million in the past three years, which in itself may increase the numbers entering hospital directly. Yet we know that investment in prevention and in the voluntary sector saves money for the NHS. We also know that delayed transfers from hospitals are estimated to cost the NHS £200 million a year, which pooled budgeting might reduce.
While the Caring for our Future White Paper is in principle welcome, unless answers to Dilnot and related funding problems are given speedily there is a danger that councils will cut spending on social care, reducing levels of support to “critical only” and reducing fee payments in real terms to providers. Some older people who are not able to afford extra costs might then have to be looked after by the NHS. The long-term costs to the NHS of this could be substantial, which is why we need so urgently an agreed funding system for care.
In conclusion, we spend £121 billion on health and social care. I feel certain that the King’s Fund is right when it says that budgets should be pooled locally, with a single strategic assessment of the funding needs of the NHS and social care. It is vital that health and well-being boards should work well because they will drive the integration of adult care and health, which should in turn generate some efficiency savings to be redirected into service provision. It is vital that spending on prevention gets protected because in the end that is better for the individual but cheaper, too, for the public purse. Above all, it is vital that we get clarity in implementing Dilnot as the first step in building a system of adult social care that is sustainable into the future.
Much of this is about the medium to longer term but there is a massive problem now in some parts of the country. Over the past two years, I understand that the NHS has sent back to the Treasury some £3 billion. If that is the case, might the Government return that to health and well-being boards to enable them to find local solutions to their specific funding problems and for those parts of the country suffering the biggest cuts to get further support to reduce their impact?
Lord MacKenzie of Culkein
My Lords, I join in the thanks to my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley for securing this important debate and for her most eloquent speech. This debate is about the ambition to integrate health and social care. I am not, I think, one of the usual suspects because nurses of my generation were not very good on social care. One of the joys of being in this House is that one is always on a learning curve.
The integration of health and social care is a laudable objective and whether it succeeds, as we all hope it will, will depend on a number of important matters. Are NHS trusts, local authorities, clinical commissioning groups and health and well-being boards going to work well together, or will a new commissioning and marketisation framework, together with the existing barriers, lead to fragmentation and diversification in care services and perhaps disrupt any consensus? Will we get the innovation that we need? That must be the way forward. Or could it be that without proper regulatory guidance and funding, any new social service will end up like the present model—best described as patchy, incomplete and with a lot of staff who are poorly trained and paid, and unregulated. Will there be multiprofessional input into clinical commissioning groups? Will nurses be properly involved in hospital discharge policy and the development of community care?
The elephant in the room is: will there be sufficient money? It is fine to talk about efficiencies but so many so-called efficiencies are, in reality, not showing any demonstrable improvement in care. All too often they are a euphemism for cuts, rather than savings being reinvested into services. There are dark clouds on the horizon. The worst scenario, if I can repeat a phrase used a few minutes ago, is a perfect storm of demographic pressures combined with cuts in central grant support, council tax freezes and NHS organisational change, which could lead to a worsening of social care and further reductions in services, leaving the Government’s aspirations and policy in tatters. A lot of the money from the NHS that is designed to encourage joint working is, in reality, being used to avoid further cuts in services. That is a real concern.
I am also concerned about what might be said to be an auction race to the bottom, with providers appearing to win contracts by bidding at lowest cost rather than on quality. For example, when the Serco conglomerate took over the excellent Suffolk Community Healthcare, it was predicted by UNISON that there would be job losses. That was, I understand, denied. Now Serco, following its usual pattern, has proposed cutting more than one in six posts. That is how one can underbid an already good provider by some £10 million. The combination of financial restriction and the delivery of quality care is, to say the least, extremely difficult.
In domiciliary care, there is much reported worry, and much has been said about it today. I fail to see how we can have dignity, client choice and safeguarding with the present “time and task” system, which is so often the pattern. A recent UNISON survey showed a situation for many care staff which rather reminds me of the low-cost airline model of employment, with staff under pressure and paying for their uniform and training, quick turnarounds and wages varying every week. As the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, said, many of these care staff are not being paid for time travelling between visits and have zero-hours contracts. There is one difference: easyJet would not tolerate for one moment its customers being treated in the way that vulnerable elderly people or people with disabilities are being cared for in short, 15-minute visits. It is not possible in so many domiciliary care settings for there to be proper adherence to safeguarding principles and practice, and much too often the possibility of the client exercising choice is not a realistic proposition.
The situation in many care homes is little better. Nurses I speak to report that there are intolerable staffing pressures with often poorly trained staff. When things go wrong, the staff are made scapegoats when the resources are not being provided and managers and home owners are not held accountable.
The pattern is repeated for nurses working in the community. A recent Royal College of Nursing survey showed that 6% of respondents said they could deliver the quality of care that they wished to, and 75% of community nurses indicated that pressure on the nursing team had increased, leading to considerable concern about their capacity to protect adults and children at risk. Much of this problem emanates from cuts in social care budgets.
Who picks up the pieces? We have already heard today, and UNISON and the RCN remind us, as does the King’s Fund, that it is the National Health Service. Pressures on social care budgets lead to increased emergency admissions and pressures on A&E departments and continue the revolving door, with which we are so familiar, delivering inappropriate care in the wrong setting. That is not good for the National Health Service or for patients who are so often denied, for example, the prospect of good palliative care at the end of life at home or in a hospice.
The health charity sector is also suffering at a time when the need for its contribution has perhaps never been greater. There is no doubt that the Government will be looking to it to pick up more of the pieces as funding from local authorities and NHS commissioning is cut. Smaller charities, in particular, are affected, with the probability that staffing will be reduced or, as in the case of that great charity, Turning Point, that staff will be dismissed to be re-employed on poorer terms and conditions. That is an unenviable choice for dedicated staff and for the charities that do so much to fill gaps in our health and social services.
Social care is a complex subject. There are many areas one could speak on, for example, housing and so on. Others have spoken eloquently on them, so I shall conclude by mentioning the Local Government Association’s “Show Us You Care” campaign. I will not repeat all the details or even the bullet points. The Government know full well what that campaign is about. It is about the current funding problems, the future of social care, fairness and the ability in the future to maintain roads, libraries, swimming pools and so on.
This leads me neatly to the Dilnot commission, which has been much mentioned this afternoon. My noble friend Lord Warner said that it may not solve all the problems, but I think it will go some considerable way and would be a good start. I hope that the Minister can tell us when we will hear about the Government’s proposals following on from that excellent piece of work. There were reports in yesterday’s press that we might hear something in the near future, and it would be wonderful if the Minister could confirm that that is the case.
I again thank my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley, and I look forward to what the Minister will tell us when he winds up.
Lord Lipsey
My Lords, it is said that there are many Members of your Lordships’ House who habitually recite Trollope in their sleep, but I do not think many of them will have read his novel The Fixed Period, and I do not suggest that they do because it is pretty dreadful. It is set on the island of Brittanula where the law says that on reaching the very advanced age of 67—two years less than the age of the average Member of your Lordships’ House—people should be admitted to the college, as it is called, to spend a final year reflecting on their life. Then they are placed in a warm bath amid the smell of incense and their veins are opened so their life flows away. It turns out that this solution to the problems that we are considering today has certain disadvantages—for example, healthy inhabitants in their 66th year frequently try to flee the island—but, and this is the serious point, if we continue as we are in this country, the disadvantages of Brittanula may seem as nothing compared with the disadvantages of continuing life into an old age which, for poor people in particular, is characterised by neglect and degradation on an incomparable scale.
The signs of stress are already there. Fewer councils provide home care services for those with less than substantial needs. There are tales of care homes on the verge of bankruptcy because they cannot afford to provide decent services on the inadequate rates local authorities pay and of 15-minute home visits, which is barely time to change a diaper, let alone to have a chat.
The Government have sought to take some steps to mitigate the worst effects of fiscal stringency, although whether the extra money notionally made available is actually flowing through to services on the ground is another matter. Care services have been cut by less than other services, as the excellent IFS briefing circulated for this debate shows. There has been a cut of 4% in social care, but planning and development has been cut by 43%. However, this is cold comfort, for the plain fact is that we should not be contemplating spending less on care services—that is, if we want to avoid the Trollope solution—but more because the number of older people is growing rapidly. The number of those aged 65 or more will go up by 27% between 2010 and 2022, according to the OPCS. We should be spending more because the number of old people in impaired health at the end of life is increasing. There will be a 32% rise in those with disabilities in that period, according to the PSSRU at the LSE. The old hope that as we lived longer, we would have shorter or the same periods of ill health at the end of our life is unfortunately not necessarily being realised, and more people seem to be lingering on in more difficult states. We should be spending more because the cost of providing care will escalate. You cannot readily increase productivity in care in the way you can in some other walks of life. Just think about it; how do you change a nappy quicker? We should be spending more, increasingly, I am afraid, as the Government’s anti-immigration policies bite, making it harder to attract decent staff.
We are not allowed visual aids in this Chamber, or I should now hold up the notorious Barnet graph of doom, which was referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker. It shows what the council expects to spend on services and, on another line, what it expects to be allowed to spend in total. By 2030, spending on social services alone, the bulk of that on old people, exceeds the total budget. Either no bins will be emptied in Barnet and there will be no libraries or parks—no town hall, even—or there will be further big cuts for old people.
It is important that the more that needs to be spent does not have to be just public money; we know there are restrictions on that. There is private money available, most particularly, the very large sums that increasing numbers of people have locked up in a valuable asset; namely, their house. It is surely right that they contribute from that to the cost of their care and do not just give it to their children, much though they may wish to do so, and as desirable as it often is. Their care should come first. Of course, half the people in care homes at the moment do not have to pay because their wealth and income are too low. There will need to be public money for them.
Where does Dilnot fit into this? We are in danger of confusing Dilnot with the shortage of funds. Dilnot is not aimed at the shortage of funds problem. It is aimed at quite a different problem: the care lottery which means that some people, the better-off people, will not need to spend anything on care because they will live to a hearty age and then die, whereas others will need to find literally hundreds of thousands of pounds to fund their care. That is deeply unfair.
The Dilnot solution has attracted consensus support. I am part of that consensus, but with one proviso. Public spending is limited. The more we spend to implement Dilnot, the less we will have to put in place better care services. We are given a choice, and we have to be careful that it is weighted in favour of decent care services, not in favour of more help for people to pay for them. I favour Dilnot, but on as cheap a basis as possible, with a £75,000 cap the minimum that should be contemplated, as was floated in the White Paper.
Finally, and wearily, I turn to the integration of health and social care. Wearily for this reason: I, we, all of us have been talking about this for years and years. It features in every single report that comes out on the subject, and to say that progress is “patchy” is to take an extremely optimistic view. I am afraid that I do not expect that to change soon. Everybody pays lip service to integrated care, but the brute fact is that, on one side, you have local authority budgets with one set of incentives, including the incentive to pass as much cost as possible to health authorities; and, on the other side, you have health authorities with another set of incentives, including the incentive to pass as much cost as possible to local authorities. While that persists, we will not get very far. Without integrated budgets, you will not get integrated services. It is as simple as that in principle, if extremely hard to put right in practice.
Baroness Scott of Needham Market
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, for securing today’s debate. Like the right reverend Prelate, I am not one of the usual suspects; I rather share his nervousness about stepping into this. However, as the chair of the England Volunteering Development Council, I want to speak today to talk a little about the role of volunteers and the voluntary sector as they relate to social care.
Of course, people are living longer across all age groups, with much more complex needs, and there is a rightful expectation that they will be cared for. The noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, was quite right to set this in a human rights context. The strain of trying to provide social care and the scale and cost of this provision have been well highlighted in the briefings from the LGA and the NHS. It still begs a response from the Government. While I accept that Dilnot is not the answer to everything, it still represents the best that I have seen in many years. Therefore, I am also looking forward to hearing what the Government might say. I was very taken by the comments of my noble friend Lord Sutherland about the worry and stress on individuals who are concerned about what may face them as they get older.
In medical terms, this is not a crisis but a chronic condition. The situation has been getting worse for many years, as my noble friend Lady Gardner points out; it did not start in May 2010, nor will it end at the end of this Parliament. We therefore have to look at more long-term sustainable solutions, of which I would argue the voluntary sector is a part. That is particularly the case with the growing concern about the quality of care and the isolation and vulnerability of people, either in private care settings, as we heard in the Southern Cross case, in their own homes or even in hospitals, as we saw in the recent reports from the Patients Association and the CQC.
Set against this, there is an important role for volunteers to play in the care of vulnerable people as befrienders and advocates, and in complementing much of the work of the statutory services. I was pleased that my noble friend Lord Shipley made the point that older people are also of huge benefit to society. We must not always couch the “aging population” debate in negative terms.
The genuine integration of social care cannot happen unless there is a real community dimension to it, and that means using volunteers. For example, we need to have a proper look at how care homes can be opened up to the community, with more volunteers going in to offer personalised support, friendship and advocacy, and helping to generate a better quality-of-life experience. No regulator can be on hand all the time, nor can they see everything. Indeed, in my experience, regulators operating within statutory frameworks, subject to legal challenge and so on, often focus on systems and fail to be centred on individuals. As a complement to the work of regulators, volunteers can be around to see that individuals’ interests are foremost.
Volunteers can add enough support to enable someone to stay at home instead of in hospital. It is a much more humane as well as cost-effective approach, a point made well by my noble friend Lady Barker. Indeed, having someone around a little more of the time who can spot problems in earlier stages can reduce the need for later acute visits and hospitalisation. There are some very good case studies in the briefing from the WRVS.
I noted with interest last week the PM’s announcement on dementia, which came the week after an announcement that prisoners on release would be provided with one-to-one support. Both of these initiatives will rely on volunteers to deliver them. I make two points to the Government on this. First, the enthusiasm for volunteering that we saw during the Olympics had a lot to do with involvement in an iconic, one-off event. It is a different proposition to go from that one-off commitment to a weekly commitment to one individual who can have very difficult needs. Secondly, volunteering is not free. The Government have to put money in to recruit volunteers, to sort out the ones who are suitable and to train and organise them. The great lesson that we should learn from the Olympic volunteering programme is that it worked because the money went it to make sure that it worked.
Moving from individual volunteers to voluntary organisations, a piece of work needs to be done, on which I am sure that Volunteering England would be happy to work with the Government, on the placement of volunteers in care homes. I recognise that placing volunteers in a commercial operation is a controversial proposition. We probably need to do some work to develop protocols for that, as I know that Volunteering England already has with the rather tricky question of job substitution.
It is just over 20 years since I went into local government. At the start we always just talked about inputs; it was about how much we were spending. Then we started thinking about the outputs, and then finally we started talking about outcomes. Voluntary organisations by their nature are focused on outcomes; it is what they do. The conundrum now is that, with tight budgets, the focus on outcomes runs the risk of becoming lost. For example, a local charity or social enterprise that uses ex-offenders to deliver a lunch club to older people has multiple benefits, but they are quite hard to monetise. Outcome-based procurement requires commissioners to be much less prescriptive about how something is delivered and just to empower providers to deliver it. Commissioners often look down their noses at these soft outcomes—“Give us hard facts”, they say—but there is nothing soft or woolly about measuring the internal changes that service users experience.
There is a problem with commissioning. Public authorities are not good at seeing the added value that comes, for example, from giving contracts to organisations that use small local suppliers or those that employ long-term unemployed or people with mental health problems. Among local authorities and health authorities, procurement is the sort of area where cutbacks have resulted in fewer staff. They tend to take the rather easy route of offering single, larger contracts that are much less likely to deliver added value. Small to medium voluntary sector organisations and social enterprises do not always have the capacity to join in a lengthy bidding process. Even larger ones like CABs and volunteer centres are having their core funding cut. If you do not have core funding, you do not have an organisation to make robust bids. The social value Bill has been designed to get at some of this, but help is still needed to learn how to value certain things and to assist smaller organisations in the procurement jungle.
We should not still be having this debate; we have been talking about it for years. Therefore, will the Minister say something about how the new commissioning arrangements will work in this regard, and how he sees the voluntary sector interfacing with the health and well-being boards? I genuinely believe that the voluntary, community and social enterprise sectors have a fundamental role to play in securing and facilitating this community involvement and genuine integration of health and social care. However, it needs the Government to think carefully about their policies in a whole range of areas.
Baroness Greengross
My Lords, the reason why we are facing this huge crisis in health and social care is the amazing advance that has been made, mostly in medical care, in controlling a lot of acute conditions that used to kill people. Those people are now able to continue to live and we must celebrate that. However, because we have not changed the systems adequately to cope with that advance, we are in crisis. We should not think of it all negatively, but we should be quicker to change and adapt our systems to cope with what has happened.
Integrating the two funding streams of health and social care seems a huge problem. However, if we take advantage of the localism agenda and the fact that funding from Government is coming down to the clinical commissioning groups and the health and well-being boards at a local level, and if that money can be ring-fenced and secured at that level, the CCGs or the boards can mix the funding and solve that crisis by using it in the best way available to meet the needs of this population. It cannot be difficult to achieve that. Maybe the Minister will tell me whether he thinks that that is nonsense or whether it might be possible; I cannot see why it is not.
We need to get other changes into the system very quickly, including the culture change from a clinically driven focus on acute care to a patient-driven focus on long-term conditions. That is all part of the same change. Because it needs to be managed differently, it is a question of managing it at the different levels—national, regional and local. We must bring more to the forefront of these caring changes. The allied domains of care—housing and welfare benefits, the DLA and attendance allowance—are all part of the changes that have to be incorporated into getting this right.
We must also remember that we are not dealing just with elderly people. As the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, among others, has reminded us, we are dealing with people with disabilities who now, thankfully, live to a greater age. Their care goes across their life, so we need a pan-age mechanism for treating people on an equal basis. At the moment, that does not happen. Younger people who need long-term care get a breadth of care plans that is not available to older people. Therefore, discrimination is often apparent in the system that we have now.
We have to expand the evidence base for early intervention and really understand the benefits of that. The ILC, with which I work, has done a lot to look at saving money through people going into extra-care housing. It has clearly demonstrated that this saves a huge amount of money because people do not go into much more expensive care in a care home or even in hospital until a much later age. I believe that that is a system change that we can achieve. I hope that the Minister will confirm he feels that this is possible.
We know that by speeding up home adaptations and equipment, we can also help people to stay at home for longer. The city of Hull did something that is purely common sense. It realised that no one would ask for a ramp or a plastic lavatory seat unless they needed it because neither is very decorative in one’s home. It decided that, rather than wait for someone to assess the need and then exchange information, which takes several months, before allocating a ramp or a loo seat to anyone, it would just give them to anyone who asked. Hull has saved a huge amount of money and immediately speeded up the process by doing that. Things can be done.
The goals that the Government have indicated that they want to achieve are achievable if sometimes we just use common sense. We are all determined to speed up the process of what we need to do to make life tolerable for a whole lot of people who at the moment are subject to quite a lot of neglect. There have been many illustrations of that in the speeches made by noble Lords today.
The recent Nuffield Trust report on integrated care for patients and populations gave the Government measures that I hope they will adopt—in fact, I think that they already have. I hope that we will get clear, measurable goals to improve the experience of people; that we will be able to enhance these goals by guaranteeing a certain standard of care for patients with complex needs; and that we, and the Government, will recognise that we are talking about people for whom time is very precious. They do not have that much longer to live, so we have to have timetables that are kept to and we have to understand the complex needs of the population that we are seeking to serve. I hope that the Minister, who I know feels very strongly about these issues, in representing the Government can assure us that he will take into consideration those and the many other points that have been raised today.
Lord Turnberg
My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley for introducing this timely debate. She made a remarkably robust case and we have had some excellent, well informed speeches today. I imagine that it is very hard for the Minister not to have got the message, even though I suspect he does not need it. I, too, am struck by the faint ring of familiarity about this debate.
I want to focus on just two aspects: standards of care for the elderly and the mentally ill, and the integration of hospital and community services. Last week, we had two important reports. One was on the prosecution of those responsible for maltreating an elephant and the other from the Care Quality Commission about the poor standards of care for the elderly and mentally ill—and here, this elephant in the room, although rather more devastating, disappeared from the news rather too quickly.
The CQC painted a picture in which, faced with a rising demand from increasing numbers of elderly patients suffering from an often complex mixture of diseases, many nursing homes and some NHS hospitals were failing to meet basic standards of care. Failing to treat patients with the dignity that they need, failing to feed them properly and failing to care for their basic needs was just too common for comfort. Very importantly, it also found that management and staff vacancy rates were very high. As a result, poorly trained staff were rushed and asked to take on tasks for which they were ill equipped. Patients with complex multiple diseases need well trained staff, and these are in short supply.
All this may sound familiar and similar to repeated reports going back at least 15 years. We have had Age Concern’s report in 1997, the Healthcare Commission in 2004, its successor in 2007, and now in 2012, with so far not much change. If we do not do something now, it will just get worse. So is there anything we can do, apart from putting more money in? Of course, we need more money. Incidentally, the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, spoke about the valuable contribution that the elderly make to society. I do not think that we should forget that the elderly—that is, those over 65—who are supposed to be retired contribute to the national Exchequer through taxed income, and that needs examining. Apart from putting more money in, though, we could look again at the need for the proper training and registration of healthcare assistants. It was a grave error that we were unable to persuade the Government to include in the recent Health and Social Care Act a requirement for healthcare assistants to be trained and registered. I hope that the Minister will look again at the proposal to wait three years before we can revisit that decision.
I turn to the need to co-ordinate care between hospital and community, which has been the subject of some discussion this afternoon, and the need for the seamless care that we are supposed to provide. The problem has been well rehearsed, with elderly patients sitting in acute hospital beds when they would be better off at home or in accommodation more suited to their needs. There are many causes, including, of course, the lack of resources in the community that we have heard about, but often it is the result of failures in communication between the hospital and social services—and it is particularly bad at weekends and holidays. No one seems to take responsibility for this liaison, which is so essential, yet we know what to do, and indeed it is being done in many places. We do not have to go to Canada, where they have set up a very effective multidisciplinary team devoted to integrating care; we have excellent examples in Torbay, which is always being cited, where they have a single, merged care trust. Hereford and Devon have different but innovative schemes for integration. It is not only in leafy, affluent parts of the country where they are making a change; great work is going on in Bradford, Wolverhampton and South Birmingham.
So we know what to do, and one wonders why it is not being done everywhere. Partly it is a lack of lack of local leadership, and perhaps a touch of NIH syndrome—“not invented here”—that sets up resistance to change. Equally, though, we have not seen enough pressure and incentives from the centre. We need to use more carrots and sticks, as well as local leadership. Perhaps the emphasis in the new NHS mandate on care of the elderly and mentally ill will give us the push that we desperately need, and yesterday’s speech by the Secretary of State shows that it has moved up the agenda. I reiterate that we need action on many fronts: to encourage integration between hospital and social services; to ensure the better training and recruitment of healthcare assistants; and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, pleaded, to have more resources for community services.
Baroness Wheeler
My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley for securing this debate and for once again giving us the opportunity to place a spotlight on the growing crisis in social care provision and funding as well as on the importance of developing joined-up services between the NHS and local authorities and within and across the range of services that local councils provide. As usual, my noble friend provides us with a clear strategic overview of the situation and of the impact of cuts to NHS and local authority budgets, as well as firmly rooting the debate in the day-to-day realities faced by thousands of people and their carers who are struggling to cope without the support that they need, often for help with basic everyday tasks, such as getting up, washing and eating.
We last debated social care when the Government’s long-awaited White Paper was published in July, setting out key law and system changes in the Care and Support Bill, and the process for pre-legislative scrutiny, on which we are about to embark, but, of course, sadly ducking the issue that needs to be addressed for any new system to be implemented and for it to work; namely, social care funding and Dilnot.
Dilnot was then widely seen to have effectively been kicked into the long grass by the Government’s in principle only decision. Since then we have had a “will they, won’t they” stop/start coalition dance on the funding issue. Over the summer, our hopes were raised by media reports about U-turns, rethinks, and Prime Ministerial determination to implement Dilnot. If you fast forward to this parliamentary Session, however, there is continued confusion, with the reappearance of the unattributed leaks from government sources about the issue not being a priority, and the Health Secretary himself telling the Tory Party conference that the costs were unaffordable, while, ironically, only a few weeks later, stating his ambition to make England,
“the best place in Europe to grow old”.
He was referring to recent welcome initiatives on dementia care, but with an estimated 1 million people likely to be suffering from dementia by 2021, and 600,000 family carers currently caring for people with dementia, surely the only long-term solution for ensuring that we can address their future care and support needs is to reach agreement on social care funding. Otherwise, the current system, or the new system post the Care and Support Bill, just will not be able to cope.
Most recently, we have yesterday’s Daily Telegraph report that the coalition Government are close to agreeing a cap on elderly care, which could form a centrepiece of the coalition’s mid-term re-launch next year. Like other noble Lords, I look forward to the Minister updating us on what is going on. Does he accept that the need for a long-term funding settlement for social care has never been more urgent?
The debate today focuses on the role of local authorities in the provision of social care, housing and other care services, and it is good for us to be considering council funding and responsibilities in this wider care context. Council responsibilities run across social care, adult and children’s, mental health and learning disabilities, disability support, education, housing, welfare, leisure and transport—the services that people needing social care use or interact with. Last week’s debate on services for people with neurological and other long-term health conditions, for example, underlined the complex care pathways across NHS, council and voluntary sector care provision that need to be better integrated, including health and social care with housing and welfare.
Huge responsibility is placed on local councils to provide or jointly fund these vital services, but we have heard from noble Lords how the scale of reductions across council budgets and in social care highlighted by previous speakers are having a major impact. ADASS and LGA estimate that £1.89 billion have been taken off adult social care budgets in the past two years and that there will be a likely overall funding gap of more than £16 billion a year in overall council spending through to 2020.
There is welcome evidence that the funding transferred from the NHS budget to support social care has helped to stimulate joint working, but the reality is that the bulk of this money is being used to offset cuts to services, although to their credit, surveys show that half of the councils in England are seeking to protect adult social care from the most drastic cuts they are having to make. However, Labour’s and other surveys show that this is predominantly being achieved by holding down residential care placements and agency home care hours costs, and we know that this is simply not sustainable. One large independent sector provider has said that the multi-million pound funding shortfall between the true cost of providing quality care that meets CQC standards and the fees paid by local authorities to care home providers has increased by 16% in just 12 months.
References have been made to this year’s survey by Labour, which showed an 11% fall in the past two years of the number of vulnerable, old and disabled people having home care services fully paid for by the local authority. Eight out of 10 councils provide free care only for people with substantial or critical need. It also found that the average charge for an hour of home care had risen over the same period by 10%.
Noble Lords have underlined the impact that local authority budget cuts have on hospitals as social care funding is squeezed. One often underestimated impact is on accident and emergency services, as more people come through because primary care is becoming less accessible and social care is reduced. The system often seems as if it is in danger of falling over.
The Minister has been asked many questions and I look forward to his response. I want to touch on a couple of those questions. On personalisation, with the personal budget deadline of April 2013 fast approaching, we need to assess any potential negative impacts on existing services such as the provision of daycare centres. I welcome the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, on the need for more economic modelling on new services, and the references of my noble friend Lord Warner to ensuring that money flows to support these new initiatives.
On children’s services, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool referred to a potential 20% of cuts in children’s services there, and the likely impact on the NHS. On residential care, I was struck by the key quality of care test suggested by my noble friend Lady Donaghy: namely, are residents’ comfort and well-being viewed as of less import than the potential for bed-wetting? The noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, summed up integration as a complex nut to crack. I think that we all recognise this. She rightly praised local authorities that have introduced innovation into care support, even while having to make what she called terrible decisions about care provision.
I would like, in the time left, to pick up on the crucial issue of mental health. Labour has pledged to do all it can to support achieving real parity of esteem between mental and physical health, as Ed Miliband made clear in a keynote speech last month to the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He described mental health as,
“the biggest unaddressed health challenge of our age”,
and said that it affects,
“one in six people across Britain”.
Local government is a key player in mental health, in shaping and commissioning services in social and residential care and in local community services such as advocacy, mental health outreach, befriending, drop-in groups and daycare provision, working with the NHS, community and voluntary sector providers.
As the chair of Blackfriars Settlement, a small local multi-service provider in the London Borough of Southwark, I can cite direct experience of how important the local authority role and support is, and how challenging and difficult it is for the voluntary sector to get funding to replace the reductions in funding. The settlement is one of a consortium of council funded voluntary organisations helping to deliver the borough’s mental health strategy. We have traditionally specialised in work with people with severe and enduring mental health problems, many of whom have been in the system for a long time. We are having to work hard to adapt our services to meet the new challenges on the ground. Our previous delivery model has been updated and adapted to provide a service menu for clients with personal budgets, and we are working hard to develop partnerships with local community groups on a number of projects. We have set up, with Big Lottery funding, a small social enterprise called Art to Print which provides employment and training in art and design production for local people with mental health problems, many of whom have never worked before. However, it is tough going and if we do not succeed in keeping these vital services going, our clients will just not have anywhere else to go.
The Centre for Mental Health underlines that social care input into mental health services is vital for recovery, but the information to measure and assess progress is hard to come by from local authorities because of the absence of systematic reporting on mental health spending and service provision at local level. The charity Rethink’s report, Lost in Localism, this year pointed out the difficulties of assessing the proportion of local authority social care spending on mental health, which is currently achievable only through freedom of information requests. Will the Minister outline any plans the Government have to improve data on local authority mental health spending and services which will help measure progress on how parity of esteem can become a reality?
There are significant reductions in parenting programmes’ budgets to support families at high risk, particularly parents who themselves have poor mental health. The British Association of Social Workers has estimated that around 40% of local authorities have removed, or are considering removing, mental health social workers from NHS-led mental health community and crisis teams. Action for Advocacy’s recent survey found that organisations providing advocacy services for vulnerable groups have had their funding cut by an average 36%, mainly by councils.
I was going to refer to a number of other things, but I see that time is running out. Therefore, I shall put two final questions to the Minister. Although the barriers to providing integrated services are well known, mental health has to date been one area where there have been long-standing partnership arrangements between the NHS and local authorities, including secondments and Section 75 agreements delegating functions to NHS trusts. Given this existing good platform, what are the Government doing to promote the continuation of this?
On parity of esteem, the NHS mandate commits the NHS Commissioning Board to deliver the Government’s commitment of at least 15% of adults with relevant mental health disorders having timely access to services with a recovery rate of 50%. What are the timescales, costs and funding sources for this? The Minister assured us that the mandate had been fully costed and could be carried out within these costs. Is 15% good enough?
Like the majority of noble Lords who have spoken in today’s debate, I hope that the Minister’s responses will show us that the Government understand the scale and urgency of the social care crisis and are prepared to take effective action in this Parliament to address it.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)
My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, for calling this debate and for having introduced it so well. As the contributions today have amply illustrated, this is a subject of vital importance.
Care and support will affect most people in England at some point in their lives. More than 80% of people in their 60s now will need care in their old age. The fact that people are now living longer thanks to medical advances is something that we should all celebrate. The Government see care and support as essential to helping people live lives that are full and independent. Our vision is, first, for timely care that is preventive rather than simply catching people at a point of crisis. Secondly, to pick up a theme so well articulated by my noble friends Lady Wheatcroft and Lady Barker, and the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, we believe that care is best when centred on the person and their family. This means that it is joined up with the other services that they use—health, housing and in the community. We also recognise that good, integrated care is important for the sustainability of the NHS.
Due to the economic situation, this spending review has been challenging for local government. However, we have been clear that social care must be protected. We moved swiftly to allocate an additional £7.2 billion over the spending review period to protect adult care. Since then we have allocated an additional half a billion pounds. We remain firmly of the view that the funding we have provided is enough to allow authorities to maintain access to services and to provide good-quality care. Independent research from the King’s Fund corroborates this. This does depend on authorities providing care and support in a cost-effective way, which is a principle we insist on for all public spending. The funding we provide assumes that authorities improve cost-effectiveness by 3% each year in this spending review period. This is an ambitious programme of efficiency savings, but one that partners in the care sector, including the LGA and ADASS, agreed was achievable.
The opportunity is there to make savings and improve outcomes for users at the same time: through investing in reablement—to pick up the word “investment” used by the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley—so that people regain their independence following a crisis; through developing integrated crisis services to deliver health and social support quickly; through rolling out telecare, which is proven to move support from clinics and institutions into the home; and minimising back-office administration to focus resources on users. The Government have provided sufficient funding but authorities are responsible for how it is used. This is an important principle. Whitehall cannot dictate what is best for communities; nor do councils want it to. However, this means that we cannot guarantee that all authorities will prioritise social care or deliver it in the same way.
Social care has been protected more than other services. Many areas have increased their spending but, unfortunately, this is not the case everywhere. It is true that expenditure has fallen when seen at a national level. However, this is not the story of cuts that some critics have made out, and there is only limited evidence of impact on services or on users. My noble friend Lady Tyler will be interested to know that ADASS has found that three-quarters of the reductions are from increased cost-effectiveness. That is, councils are making savings by doing things better. They are achieving an average of 5% efficiency, which is 2% higher than we expected. There are exciting successes and my noble friend Lady Tyler referred to some. For example, Dorset has invested £1.6 million to help people regain independence at home after a crisis. It expects to save £3 million a year from providing preventive, integrated care. That is exactly the type of initiative that we want to see.
Councils have broadly maintained eligibility for services. A few have raised eligibility levels from “moderate”, but only to join the overwhelming majority of councils that already set eligibility at “substantial”. No council has raised eligibility higher than this. We have seen a reduction in the number of people receiving state-funded residential and domiciliary care, but this reflects a return on preventive policies such as those mentioned by the noble Baronesses, Lady Wilkins and Lady Greengross, that are helping people stay independent and in their own home.
The noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, referred to integration of services. This theme was taken up by the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, and others. When money is tight for local government, as it is for the NHS and the public sector, the most important way that health and social care services can meet this challenge is through better co-operation and more integrated working. I stress this to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool. It is why the SR settlement includes annual transfers from the NHS to be spent within social care. This year the NHS has provided £622 million in funding for social care.
Local authorities must agree with their PCT how the money will be used. From 2013-14, the conversation will take place through health and well-being boards and will involve the CCG, public health and social care. This is a real opportunity for integrated care. The evidence to date is that, precisely as we had hoped, local areas are investing the NHS contribution in reablement services, and are working in partnership with hospitals. There are some excellent examples of this. Some were cited by the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg. I was in Calderdale last week. Calderdale CCG has taken a joint approach with the local authority and other partners to introduce an integrated intermediate-tier service, informed by a consultation with patients, carers and the public. The single point of access was launched about a year ago. Services are delivered by Calderdale Council’s gateway to care. Patients and carers now need to make only one call to get access to a range of support and reablement services.
It is no coincidence that we have placed such emphasis on integration in the mandate to the NHS Commissioning Board and in the NHS outcomes framework. The department is doing a great deal of work in this area with the board, Monitor and the Local Government Association. We will publish a framework next year.
My noble friend Lady Barker asked what the Government would do by way of an economic evaluation of integrated care. We constantly evaluate new initiatives to get the best possible evidence to inform our policies. In addition, we are engaging with academics and partners from across the sector. For example, a number of local authorities are currently piloting a community budgets approach to integration. We are working with, and offering support to, local authorities to evaluate their pilots, and we will continue to look at emerging evidence.
Looking ahead, we are increasing NHS funding for care services over the next two years. By 2014-15 the NHS will provide £900 million in support for local care services. This increase in joint working will benefit health and care, and patients and the public. We have also invested in housing. I completely agreed with the noble Baronesses, Lady Donaghy and Lady Wilkins, that where the elderly choose to live is of real importance to their independence and well-being. In October, the Government announced an extra £300 million of capital funding to encourage providers to develop new accommodation for older people and disabled adults.
The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, was absolutely right, as she so often is, that this will support people to stay independent for longer by allowing them to receive care in their own home and by reducing the need for them to go into care homes and hospitals. We have announced a national eligibility threshold that from 2015 will ensure consistent access to care and will end the postcode lottery. The measures in the care and support White Paper and accompanying draft Bill will ensure that prevention, personalisation and integration will become the standard. I will refer to those again in a second.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool urged the Government to review the local authority funding settlement. We will of course review funding in the next spending review period. When we look at the current situation, it is not in fact accurate to say—as was implied by one or two noble Lords—that cuts to central government grants have hit poorer councils hardest. This year’s formula grant reductions are generally smaller for the most deprived areas and larger for the less deprived ones. The data that we have seen do not show that the most deprived areas have seen the greatest reductions in social care spend. The 10 councils with the greatest increases in spending on social care include Knowsley and Rochdale, which are two of the most deprived local authority areas in the country.
The noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, referred to increases in charges. Of course, she knows that charging decisions for community-based services are the responsibility of local authorities, in line with guidance produced by the department. We have no evidence of widespread increases in what authorities charge for services. However, as a general point, I recognise that this has been an extremely challenging settlement for local government. A number of councils are cutting services or tightening eligibility, as I mentioned. Those councils will have to justify their decisions to the communities that they serve. While any change is regrettable, only six local authorities have tightened eligibility criteria this year, compared to 15 last year. Of these, none has tightened beyond the broad average position of “substantial”.
A recent report by Demos and Scope, Coping with the Cuts, suggested that there was no direct correlation between the budget reductions faced by adult social care services and the impact on local people. This demonstrates that if local authorities make appropriate efficiency savings and develop innovative solutions, they can maintain and improve people’s outcomes and access to the services that they need.
A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Warner, in his extremely thoughtful and constructive speech, the noble Baronesses, Lady Wheeler and Lady Pitkeathley, the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, and my noble friends Lord Shipley and Lady Tyler, referred to the need to address funding reform and to the Dilnot report. We have stated that we agree with the principles of the Dilnot recommendations. However, I hope that I may be forgiven for repeating that funding reform is complex. In the current economic climate, it is right for us to wait until the spending review, when we can consider funding reform alongside other spending priorities. The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, was right to make that point.
This will give us time to engage with stakeholders on these difficult issues, which we are already doing, to ensure that we have the right information before making a decision, not least on points of detail that affect the cost and practicalities of implementing a cap. This matter is definitely not on the back burner. Solving social care funding remains one of the key priorities of our time. In response to a number of noble Lords, I will say that since the Dilnot report was published the Government have been very clear about the value that they place on political consensus, and about their commitment to cross-party dialogue in pursuit of that objective. Our offer to the Opposition remains on the table. It is of course up to them to decide when and how to work with us on this.
A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord MacKenzie and Lord Sutherland, and my noble friends Lady Barker and Lord Shipley referred to the problem of delayed transfers out of hospital. I will say as a general point that no one should have to stay in hospital longer than is necessary. The NHS must work collaboratively and innovatively with local authorities to help improve discharge, reduce delays and improve outcomes for patients. Older people often need particular support after a spell in hospital. That is why we have made available the £300 million in the current year to develop local reablement services and help people settle back into their homes and recover their strength and independence.
My noble friend Lord Shipley rightly mentioned pooled budgets. As I mentioned, in 2012-13 PCTs will also receive a total of £622 million to invest in social care services. That is in addition to funding for reablement services. In the year up to September 2012 the number of patients with delayed transfers was 5% lower than in the previous year. Delays because of social care issues fell by 12% over the same period.
My noble friend Lady Gardner and the noble Lord, Lord MacKenzie, spoke very powerfully about the tendency for care visits to last for about 15 minutes. While local authorities are responsible for the commissioning of services, not the Government, both the Government and ADASS are fully in agreement that 15-minute visits for personal care are absolutely unacceptable. We will bring an end to commissioning practices that undermine people’s dignity and choice, including commissioning care by the minute. We will work with commissioners, care providers, people who use services, carers and the Think Local, Act Personal partnership to end these practices.
My noble friend Lady Gardner also, rightly, pointed out the need for good regulation by the CQC to ensure quality. The CQC can and will take action where it finds residential services that are not meeting essential standards, and this action ranges from requiring improvement plans to restrictions on, or even the closure of, care and nursing homes in extreme cases.
The noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, spoke powerfully about the quality of care, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, about the importance of dignity and respect. The care and support White Paper sets out our plans. A national minimum eligibility threshold will make access to care more consistent. People will have clear, practical information and advice on the care system and new ways to report poor care. People will have easy access to information to help them narrow down their search for quality care providers. The new quality profiles will bring much needed transparency to the quality of care people can expect from a care provider. More care workers will be trained, including an ambition to double the number of care apprenticeships by 2017—a subject we debated earlier today. Dignity and respect will be at the heart of a new code of conduct and national minimum training standards.
The noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, spoke about the JCHR and human rights. She raised some extremely important issues and I listened with care to what she said. I hope that she will allow me to write to her to update her as to where we are on that subject.
The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, spoke about the need to encourage preventive services in particular and I quite agree with all that she said on that subject. As part of the shift to a more preventive approach to care and support, the draft care and support Bill includes a duty on local authorities to commission and provide preventive services. Preventing needs from arising, or reducing them where they exist, is a critical part of local authorities’ responsibilities for care and support.
My noble friend Lady Wheatcroft referred to the centrally important phenomenon of social isolation and loneliness among the elderly. I agree that communities should ensure that people are not alone or isolated. Social isolation is a measure that will be covered in the social care outcomes framework. I will write to her with more information about that.
The noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, spoke about housing and her wish to meet the Minister for Housing, and about the disabled facilities grant. The draft care and support Bill will set out new duties to be placed on local authorities to ensure that adult social care and housing departments work together. This will support adaptations and ensure that services are joined up better with people’s care and support. I hear her concerns about the disabled facilities grant and grants for housing. I will discuss them with my housing colleagues and respond to her in writing.
My noble friend Lady Scott and the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, highlighted the importance of voluntary organisations and volunteers in helping to care for our ageing population, including in the field of mental health. Of course, the Government agree that volunteers and charities play a crucial role, which we must support. I will respond with a note containing more detail on this, including how voluntary organisations may contract with health and well-being boards.
My noble friend Lady Barker and the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, spoke about personalisation; in particular, personal budgets, which are only part of the personalisation agenda. Again, the draft care and support Bill places personal budgets in law as the default option for adults and carers alike. People will be provided with a clear allocation of resources so that they can control as much of their care and support as they wish. This will ensure that all people in need of care and support benefit from the choice and control that personal budgets can bring, not least those suffering from mental health conditions.
We have supported social care in this spending review and have made additional funding available. We have provided funding in forms that support integrated and preventive care, extra resources from the NHS and extra resources for housing. There is variation in how well councils are coping with tighter funding. However, many councils are rising to the challenge; they are prioritising care, increasing efficiency and maintaining outcomes for their users. It is clear that this is where councils should be focusing and where we expect services to be by 2015.
Baroness Pitkeathley
My Lords, it is a comfort to me that the number of usual suspects swelled gratifyingly for this debate—a sign, perhaps, that we are getting nearer to understanding that this is the pre-eminent social issue of our times, in terms of both the current gap and the need for long-term solutions.
We have had a wide-ranging debate and a powerful set of speeches. There is agreement that there is a crisis—or rather a series of crises, in the short, medium and long term—and suggestions for how to tackle those. We have had ideas and examples focusing on innovation, integration, efficiency, and we have even had ideas about how we can get more money into the system. We also have agreement about the urgency of the need and about the importance of that old chestnut for many of us, integrated care.
The Minister has given us his usual thoughtful response, for which I thank him, and we all know his sincere commitment to finding a solution to the problem of social care, although I find it hard to recognise the picture of local services he paints from the ones presented to me. I shall take pleasure in checking this out with the group of 200 carers whom I am addressing tomorrow at a carers’ rights day. I shall ask them for their opinion of the situation.
I return to my original thought—which others have echoed, including the Minister—that social care should be seen as an investment, as a way of saving money, especially for the NHS. But this needs much more sharing of money and much less silo thinking, and more focus on the consequences of not doing it rather than on the cost of doing it. For example, if we just take Dilnot—and I am grateful for the calls from many Peers for Dilnot to be implemented—we know that the cost of implementation is about £2 billion. It is not the whole solution, as many noble Lords have said, but no one has yet found a better place to start. To set that £2 billion in context, family carers are contributing care worth at least £119 billion a year. If only 10% of them give up because they are too exhausted, stressed and poor to continue, that will cost £12 billion—six times the cost of Dilnot. Can we not afford to make the investment that local authorities, the NHS and, above all, the users and carers deserve?
The issue of social care needs radical thought and change, and leadership at national level. As has been said, the inexorable arithmetic of the demographics means that we cannot ignore it and put it into the “too difficult” box, however tempting that may be. Without tackling the resource issue, things will only get worse. Will we be here again next year, reporting on how the situation has deteriorated further? I sincerely hope not. I thank all noble Lords who have spoken, and beg to move.
NHS: Diabetic Services
(11 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Harrison
That this House takes note of the management of diabetic services in the National Health Service.
Lord Harrison
My Lords, as a type 1 diabetic of 43 years’ standing, I have received unparalleled support from the NHS and, in recent decades, from health professionals in Chester and Liverpool. I am ever grateful for their continuing expertise and engagement. However, recently I have witnessed a worrying decline in the care offered to me and other diabetics. First, my excellent local hospital no longer invites me for my annual diabetic check-up. Similarly, the regular check on my eyes at the hospital is being curtailed, blindness being a not infrequent complication of diabetes for one in seven of us.
My big concern here is that the onus is falling on the individual diabetic to repair to the GP at the first signs of disquieting changes in his or her health for referral to the relevant specialist. That is all well and good if you are alert and dedicated to preserving your health, as am I, but that is not true of all of us. I have sat in the waiting rooms of diabetic clinics next to other, less articulate and perhaps less personally organised patients, who have turned up at the wrong hospital, never mind getting the date and time of their appointment wrong. In a hospital that I know, missing an appointment means instant dismissal from the clinic, with all the morbid consequences for the diabetic involved. Moreover, the regular diabetic check-up uncovers trends and problems that patients may not have recognised themselves. Action can be taken. Potential blindness, the amputation of a septic foot or the continuation of an unhealthy lifestyle can be diverted by action, and a life or a limb can be saved.
Therefore, my first question to the Minister is this: does he recognise that there is folly in short-termism, such as the cutting of annual clinics, which brings in its wake long-term deleterious consequences for the individual and, in the end, greater NHS expenditure in administering to the diabetic at peril?
A very recent example of a laudable NHS innovation is the potential treatment and advice to be given to patients online to save GP surgery time. However, that may lead to a greater exposure to danger for diabetics. All such worthy changes and innovations in the treatment of diabetics must be tempered by acknowledging that penumbra of citizens afflicted with diabetes who are less accustomed to the computer cursor. How will the Minister ensure that the computer-averse are not left behind? Perhaps, too, the Minister, who is admired on all sides of the House for his deep knowledge of his brief, could roundly repudiate the Tory GP Back-Bencher who foolishly opined last week that type 2 diabetics were to blame for their condition and should be deprived of NHS services as a punishment. That kind of response to the diabetes epidemic is unworthy and unrealistic. Nevertheless, diabetes is the UK’s number one health threat. Some 3.7 million of us live with the condition and a further 7 million are at high risk of type 2 diabetes. Half of those diagnosed with type 2 already have serious complications, thereby incurring increasing costs for the NHS budget, which currently stands at £10 billion a year and is rising. Action now on this killer disease is imperative. There is a need for a matching application of enthusiasm, expertise and expenditure to be granted to defeating diabetes that have rightly been developed for heart disease and cancer treatment in recent decades.
The National Audit Office found that diabetic care in the NHS is poor, with low achievements of treatment standards and high numbers of avoidable deaths. Indeed, 80% of the NHS costs are spent on the complications stemming from the condition, which are largely avoidable. Can we tolerate the fact that 24,000 people die each year from the condition needlessly, avoidably and with attendant unsung misery to their families and friends? The excoriating report of the Commons Public Accounts Committee rightly demands, in the words of its chair, Margaret Hodge, “straightforward care and support” for diabetics. Can the Minister be equally straightforward and respond to the detailed shortcomings exposed in the PAC report on diabetes care?
The noble Baroness, Lady Young, the chief executive of Diabetes UK, who is on duty in New York today, notes the postcode-lottery nature of diabetes cover across the UK. Can the Minister guarantee the maintenance of high standards, as in the established “15 healthcare essentials” for diabetics, so woefully underpowered in application at the moment? As the PAC report shows, these essential desiderata are simply not being met. Tailored education about their condition is essential for individual diabetics but this ambition fails to be fulfilled. Can the Minister comment on the important work done by the DAFNE programme? This is already being delivered in 70 centres around Britain and helps to provide proper cholesterol control among other tasks, such as promoting healthy eating among diabetics. Given the imprimatur that it has received from NICE, can this programme not have wider reach and support within the NHS?
April is the cruellest month, for in April next year we are to come under the reformed regime of local commissioning in the NHS. Some of us quake in our boots at this prospect. The PAC report tells us that the current NHS accountability structures have palpably failed to hold commissioners of diabetic services to account for poor performance. Indeed, it details other failings. Only one in two patients receives all the basic tests to monitor their condition, and only one in five achieves recommended levels for blood glucose and blood pressure, as well as the vital cholesterol norms. Will the Minister respond to the charge that the department is failing to incentivise delivery of all these aspects of its recommended standards of care through the medium of the payments system and that it neglects to gather the cost information and to carry out general monitoring? These responsibilities of the department are vital for proper reform.
I do indeed stand in the Chamber before your Lordships today because of the excellent care that has been accorded to my feet. I suffer from severe neuropathy, where one has no feeling at all in the feet, and I have a minor debriding of part of one foot. My wife and I have become foot fetishists in constantly visually examining my feet for any minor changes that might presage drastic and draconian complications. Indeed, at the recent Putting Feet First reception, Diabetes UK and the College of Podiatry noted that 125 amputations are carried out each week, of which 80% are preventable, costing the NHS some £700 million each year. Can the Minister ensure that all diabetics become foot fetishists in assiduously committing to look at their feet twice daily? Can he also ensure that health professionals are aware of the imperative to so monitor feet and that the integrated pathway approach to the diabetic foot, which characterised the approach of the care I received from Broadgreen in Liverpool, is applied universally? Incidentally, that is where my shoes are made at a cost to the NHS, but it means that I can become economically productive, as can many other diabetics, because they can get on their feet and do a job.
I await with interest the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, on the imperative of an integrated approach to the treatment of diabetes as a whole. I hope that the noble Lord might also offer us some insights into Britain’s ethnic groups, who suffer disproportionately from diabetes. Indeed, he and the Minister may know of the recent research findings from Imperial College London detailing the worryingly high incidence of type 2 diabetes among our Asian, black African and African Caribbean communities. At November’s south Asian health education reception in the Lords, we learnt of the courses run in temples, mosques, gurdwaras and community centres assessing diabetic risk among these populations. Perhaps our Christian church-based communities might take up that useful contribution. I note the presence of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool, who might communicate that to colleagues.
Beyond that, I ask the Minister what is being done at the European Union level to share best practice among health professionals and health Ministers on the treatment of diabetes—I sense that the desirable exchange of knowledge is piecemeal at best—and also about our engagement internationally on reducing the terrible toll of 4 million deaths each year round the world. Tragically the notion that diabetes is the rich world’s disease is sorely mistaken. I ask the Minister, if I may, when he last had a conversation with another Minister from the European Union on the question of diabetes. It would be intriguing to know.
Let us return home. In-patient care studies, according to the 2011 in-patient audit, reveal: stark problems in the referral processes; a decline in diabetic consultant availability; no fewer than one in three entities lacking diabetic in-patient specialist nurses and, more specifically, no essential podiatric provision; and diet advice to diabetics deteriorating. A diabetic nurse at the Countess of Chester replied to my inquiry, “How can we do things better in the NHS?”, by volunteering that she would like to visit all the wards in the hospital and peek under the bedclothes to see the feet of new patients. No, she is not another foot fetishist. The purpose of such inspections is to identify potential problems by scrutinising feet when there is a captive audience within the hospital.
The national Health Check programme which was introduced four years ago to promote early diagnosis has been patchily implemented. Many PCTs fail to offer such checks. Next year this responsibility falls to local authorities whose budgets are being negligently cut by the Government, who continue to pile responsibility on responsibility on local authorities with no additional compensating funding. Can the Minister give us some hope and allay this fear?
Recently the Minister kindly replied to some Written Questions that I posed on the incidence of the very frightening and life-threatening condition for children of diabetic ketoacidosis. Some one in five children is diagnosed with type 1 diabetes through a DKA episode. What improvements are being made in the early diagnosis of children’s typically type 1 diabetes, and also in the auxiliary help given to parents and carers who, untutored, have to face the heart-rending job of explaining to their child the necessity of insulin injections and renouncing chocolates? I celebrate all those parents and carers who so dedicatedly help bring their children to maturity by their love and unstinting work. I know that others will highlight the needs of the diabetic child but it is imperative that paediatric and adult services combine to offer effective, tailored care for the individual child. Does HMG support the so-called transition clinic to help the child come to terms with their diabetes? Transition clinics are characterised by their multidisciplinary approach.
Could the Minister also report on the work done by his department and the education services on the diabetic child’s exclusion in so many ways from PE, school trips and so on? They are denied access to necessary medicines for the lack of a nurse or private space to inject insulin or take a blood reading. They can experience bullying as a result of being the child excluded by a diabetic condition. These are all examples of plain discrimination that must be tackled head-on in the classroom. Sometimes there is also a need for children and adults to have access to appropriate psychological and emotional support services. To many diabetics their condition is inexplicable, frightening and paralysing socially. Given that some two in five diabetics suffer poor psychological well-being, can HMG assure us that resources will be found?
Finally, when he replies, will the Minister tackle the vexed question of giving appropriate help to diabetics in hospitals? Sometimes appalling food is served up. I well remember the very sweet puddings that I was offered in the two periods that I stayed in hospital. I am most grateful to colleagues here today and hope to hear a report from the Minister that will perhaps give us some hope of ensuring that diabetic services are maintained at a level that is appropriate for the population.
Lord Rennard
The 3 million people living with diabetes in the UK will share my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, for securing this important debate today. So, in particular, should the 850,000 people in this country who have the condition but are unaware of it, and the 7 million people he referred to who are at high risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
I wish, first, to declare an interest as the director of communications of the British Healthcare Trade Association, but my personal interest in diabetes is longstanding. My father was an insulin-dependent diabetic. It was possibly the shock of losing a leg when wounded in the First World War that brought on his diabetic condition. He was, therefore, one of the first people in the world to benefit from insulin, as far back as the 1920s. Without it, obviously, I would not be here today. My father went on to live a relatively long life. Indeed, he was 71 when I was born and 73 when he died.
I was myself diagnosed with type 2 diabetes at the relatively early age for this condition of 34, some 18 years ago, and I have been dependent on insulin for the past seven years. I am personally grateful to the staff at St Thomas’s hospital, just across the river from here, for their help and support in managing this condition, especially when I let it get significantly out of control for a long period several years ago. I had to work hard and change things in my life to achieve better control. However, the issues surrounding diabetes are of great concern not just to those who may be directly affected or those closest to them but to everyone because of the growing scale of the problem, its consequences and the costs of trying to deal with it.
The number of people with diabetes in this country is expected to increase by 23% to 3.8 million by 2020. This will have a huge impact on NHS resources unless the efficiency and effectiveness of existing services are improved. We all know about the commitment to £20 billion of efficiency savings under the Nicholson challenge. The biggest challenge in diabetes will be how to commission cost-effective care while at the same time improving the quality of services and delivering excellent outcomes for patients. To do this, we need to recognise the growing scale of the challenge. Since 1996 the number of people living with diabetes has increased from 1.4 million to 2.9 million. We need to look at the weaknesses in the system at present. In England, almost half of the people with type 2 diabetes—47 per cent of them—are missing out on the nine basic health checks recommended by NICE, such as foot care and retinopathy screening.
Fewer than one in five people with diabetes are achieving the recommended standards for controlling blood glucose, blood pressure and cholesterol levels. We have to recognise that variations in the quality of care for diabetes patients cannot be explained by need or spending alone, and are influenced by the way in which local health services are organised and managed. We have to look at the human cost of diabetes and the adverse effects of the disease. The mismanagement of diabetes can lead to heart disease, stroke, blindness, kidney disease and amputations that in many cases could have been prevented. More than 100 amputations take place in England every week due to diabetes, while 4,200 people in England are blind due to diabetic complications, and this figure increases by 1,280 each year. There are 24,000 people with diabetes in England who die each year from causes that could have been avoided through better management of their condition.
It is estimated that already almost 10% of the NHS budget is spent on diabetes, around £10 billion a year. When we factor in the loss of working days, early death and informal care costs, the cost of the condition to the NHS will rise to almost £40 billion by 2035. When we look at the current situation for diabetes patients, we learn from the Public Accounts Committee that NHS accountability structures have failed to hold commissioners of diabetic services to account for poor performance as they have no mandatory performance targets like those in place for other conditions such as cancer.
The committee also found that information on diabetes is not being used effectively by the NHS to assess the quality of care and to seek to improve it, and that many people with diabetes develop avoidable complications because they are not effectively supported to manage their condition.
So, what must be done? Inequalities exist in the quality of diabetes care across the country and they need to be addressed if we are to develop better outcomes for patients and improve efficiencies in the NHS. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence quality standard for diabetes should act as a benchmark to improve the quality of diabetes care.
The National Audit Office report on the management of diabetes in the NHS called for a review of the current system of incentives, so that GPs are paid for diabetes care only if they ensure that all nine care processes are delivered to people with the condition. Other recommendations call for greater collaboration and co-ordination between the new organisations and levers of the reformed NHS, such as the NHS Commissioning Board and Public Health England.
I know that NHS Diabetes is developing an implementation guide for treating diabetes patients in the NHS, which, in contrast to the diabetes action plan, will examine how diabetes care is commissioned and its implications for patients. We need to ensure that it addresses the health and economic impact of diabetes-related complications. In particular, I hope that the implementation guide will address how to reduce the variations that exist in diabetes care and the outcomes across the country.
Raising awareness of the causes, symptoms and consequences of diabetes is also crucial for increasing understanding about the disease and improving outcomes. I know from my own experience that diabetes specialist nurses play an essential role in helping patients to manage their condition and are a key source of information and advice for patients. Their posts should be protected during the current transition and all patients should have access to a named diabetes specialist nurse during their treatment.
I hope that the Government will make a commitment to the delivery of a national approach to addressing diabetes from 2013, set out by clear milestones and procedures for delivery, and using the recommendations of the National Audit Office as a guideline. The development of integrated care pathways should be encouraged as a means of reducing the postcode lottery of care for diabetes patients and reducing adverse outcomes of the disease, including mortality. Local health and well-being boards should scrutinise local commissioning plans to ensure that the delivery of diabetes services is joined up across public health, the NHS and social care. Finally, local commissioners should implement the NICE quality standard for diabetes and, where commissioners are not complying with the standard, they must be made to set out their reasons in their commissioning plans.
Baroness Masham of Ilton
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, for raising the issue of the need for good managed services for people with diabetes today. I consider the noble Lord to be the expert patient for diabetes in your Lordships’ House.
The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Diabetes is very active and effective, keeping parliamentarians from both Houses up to date with the many needs of people of all ages living with diabetes. Diabetes spans several government departments—first, the NHS—but it is also a serious public health issue. With many aspects of diabetes going over to local authorities, I hope Public Health England will take diabetes as a priority. Unless primary and secondary care services work closely together, the treatment of diabetes will suffer.
I cannot stress enough the importance of the diabetic nurse and I am glad that that has already been stressed by the previous two speakers. Diabetic nurses can be the important link between primary and secondary care. They teach patients and their carers about diabetes and also community nurses. They are a vital resource for the management of diabetic services. When there are problems with insulin and patient stability, the diabetic nurse is often at the end of the telephone to give advice.
Diabetes often causes extra complications. Some years ago, a well known and well liked television presenter, Richard Whiteley, from Yorkshire, who hosted the programme “Countdown”, went into hospital for a heart operation, but sadly died due to complications because he was diabetic. More research needs to be undertaken into the causes of type 2 diabetes. I read in the press yesterday of a link between type 2 diabetes and food sweeteners:
“A sweetener used in food manufacture could be partly to blame for rising rates of type 2 diabetes … Countries that use large amounts of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) have higher rates of the disease than those that consume little, says a new study”.
Professor Stanley Ulijaszek from Oxford University, who co-led the study, said:
“This research suggests that HFCS can increase the risk of type-2 diabetes, which is one of the most common causes of death in the world today”.
The syrup is widely used in drinks and processed foods because it acts as a sweetener, helps to keep food moist and is cheaper than regular cane sugar. Tim Lobstein, director of policy for the UK-based International Association for the Study of Obesity, has said that,
“if HFCS is a risk factor for diabetes—one of the world’s most serious chronic diseases—then we need to rewrite national dietary guidelines … and foods should carry warning labels”.
Diabetes can be a very complex condition. During this time of change in the NHS, many people are unsure of where their services will be coming from. There is dismay when people hear of the closure of A&E departments and walk-in clinics. Evenings, weekends and bank holidays mean that for long periods it is impossible to see a GP. There are real risks for people living with diabetes when things go wrong. They may have a hypo and need urgent help. Diabetes has become a ticking time bomb with increasing rates of the condition in many places around the world. When we were on holiday in Barbados some time ago, a taxi driver told us that he took the day off every Sunday in order to bicycle from one end of the island to the other. But he also said that the sugar workers used to slash the sugar cane manually, using much sweat and energy. Today they sit on tractors and everything is done mechanically. Diabetes has hugely increased in modern life.
Recently we saw an interesting presentation about the diabetic leg. We were told that the West Country is the worst region for amputations due to infections in the leg as a result of circulation problems caused by diabetes. Specialist centres in London ensure that people’s legs can be saved through expert vascular surgery. There seems to be a postcode lottery in different parts of the country.
This week, international attention is focused on HIV and AIDS. When someone has HIV/AIDS and diabetes, sometimes along with other co-infections, treatment can be very complicated, and some HIV drugs can encourage the development of diabetes. I have discussed this with Dr Jane Anderson, a marvellously dedicated HIV specialist who works at the Homerton University Hospital. She has seen co-infected patients with problems. These patients need the expertise of endocrinologists and HIV specialists to sort out their complications.
For good management, all those who are involved with those who have diabetes must be well educated about the condition. They may be teachers, medical personnel, or those involved in sports and leisure or food and drink, but it is diabetics themselves and the people closest to them who are the most important of all. The aim should be to keep fit within the community and to lead happy and healthy lives.
Baroness Thornton
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Harrison for bringing this important debate to the House. I am going to concentrate on one aspect of diabetes services today, and it is one that I have raised in the House at least once since 2010. I wish to examine the impact and efficacy of podiatry services for those with diabetes. The Minister may recall that in April last year I asked him about nail-cutting services, including his own, and on 4 November 2010 I asked,
“how the Government can ensure that both the teams and the technology are available and funded”—[Official Report, 4/11/10; col. 1828.]
to avoid amputations and deaths. So here we are a year later returning to what is a worsening situation. I thank the College of Podiatry for its excellent brief on this matter.
The starting point for my contribution is the undeniably shocking statistic that was mentioned by my noble friend. Each week, 125 amputations take place, and in many ways it is even more shocking that 80% of those are preventable. My contention is not only that something must be done, and done urgently, to bear down on this unacceptable state of affairs but that to do so would save the NHS money. There really cannot be any reason not to give this issue some real priority, end suffering and save money. Why can that not be the case?
We all know that 4% of the population currently suffers from diabetes and 15% to 20% of those will develop a foot ulcer at some time. It has been estimated that 61,000 people with diabetes in England have foot ulcers at any one time. It is certainly possible to manage foot ulcers but too many are being missed, not spotted in time or not being treated swiftly enough, unfortunately leading sometimes to complications, surgery and amputations. Amputation is not only devastating but significantly increases the likelihood of death. According to NHS Diabetes statistics, the mortality rate for those with diabetic ulcers and who have had amputations is greater than for those with breast or prostate cancer. Although the five-year survival rate for those with breast or prostate cancer is now about or above 80%, for those with diabetic foot ulcers it is worse, at just under 60%. In other words, two out of five people with foot ulcers that are not treated will not survive for five years or more. I am afraid to say that once someone has had a lower limb amputation their survival rate worsens considerably—after five years it has been estimated somewhere between 68% to 79% will die. Of these amputations, which lead to these deaths, 80% are preventable.
Ulcers and amputations also cost the NHS, according to the acknowledged expert Marion Kerr, between £600 million and £700 million each year. If better foot care was available and these amputations were prevented, that much money would be saved. However, as things stand, the number of amputations is going up not down, as the diabetic population increases. I invite the Minister to support the alliance that has come together under the Putting Feet First banner, which has already been mentioned and which includes NHS Diabetes and Diabetes UK as well as the College of Podiatry. Does the Minister think that it would be sensible to say—I will use the word “target” but I do not mind what terminology he uses—that there should be a 50% reduction in amputations by, say, 2018? How does he believe that could be delivered? It seems to me that surely an effort from everyone, from the national Commissioning Board to CCGs and from the Government to clinicians on the ground, is what is needed. Of course there is also a huge role for patients learning to manage their own condition and becoming, as my noble friend put it, “foot fetishists”, specifically by taking care to maintain their own healthy feet.
However, it is indisputable that better services are also needed and that this will require more podiatrists, more specialist nurses and more multidisciplinary teams. I wonder how this might be delivered with the urgency required at a time when economies, reorganisation and cuts in podiatry services are already apparent. What will the Government do to drive forward a programme that delivers across the country?
Currently there is, as has been mentioned, a staggering tenfold variation in amputation rates across former PCT areas. Such a variation, as an example of a postcode lottery, is surely unacceptable. However, it is not surprising if one knows that more than half of hospitals do not have a multidisciplinary foot care team, while 31% of hospitals do not even have an in-patient podiatry service, an increase from 27% in 2010. There is evidence that one of the current problems is that GPs have no incentive to refer their patients on to foot protection teams for education, follow up and so on. There is evidence that the number of posts is being frozen or reduced, which is not the way to deal with a preventable problem. With that, staff are also experiencing “de-banding”, leading to reduced morale.
The College of Podiatry, along with Diabetes UK and NHS Diabetes, believes that the time has come for this goal to be promoted by the Government, adopted by the NHS Commissioning Board and worked towards by every clinical commissioning group. The QIPP—quality, innovation, productivity and performance—agenda also provides an opportunity to redesign services along the best practice lines so that there is a multidisciplinary foot care team in each hospital as well as foot protection teams in every community. However, unfortunately at the moment there is evidence that the opposite is happening and that services are not improving. The danger of new arrangements is that this important issue falls between the cracks, is left to local decision-making and does not get the prioritisation it deserves.
The College of Podiatry tells me that it is,
“fearful that public expenditure constraints mean that rather than being prioritised through the QIPP agenda, current podiatric services are at best, being frozen and in some cases being reduced, with patient services including the diabetic foot service deteriorating as a consequence”.
We know that best practice exists. For example, the multidisciplinary foot care team approach for in-patients with diabetes in Southampton led to a reduction in the length of in-patient stays from 50 days to 18. Not only were patient outcomes improved but annual savings to the NHS of £889,000 were generated on the back of an investment of £180,000. Let us imagine if that were repeated everywhere.
To address this issue is wholly in line with the outcomes that the NHS mandate has identified for the NHS Commissioning Board; that is, reducing preventive mortality, improving care for the chronically sick and driving up patients’ experience of care. The Putting Feet First campaign has already produced guidance and circulated it to CCGs and existing PCT commissioners showing how savings and improved patient services might be achieved. What is required now is political prioritisation; what is required is a guarantee of an increased supply of podiatrists. Given that the number of those suffering from diabetes will have increased to 5 million by 2025 and that as diabetes increases so do preventable amputations, it really is imperative that action is taken now to end what is really nothing short of a scandal.
Lord Kakkar
My Lords, I join others in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, on having secured this important debate and declare my own interest as professor of surgery and consultant surgeon at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. We have heard during this debate about the profound burden of diabetes in our country. Some 24,000 excess deaths are reported in those with diabetes annually, some 13,000 strokes, 11,000 heart attacks and more than 4,000 minor and major amputations, in addition to the complications seen in the eye, the kidney and the nervous system. All have a profound impact on the individuals who suffer from this potentially devastating disease. As a result, and quite rightly, diabetes has received an awful lot of attention, not only in clinical practice and research but in government during the past 10 to 12 years, with the growing recognition that the burden of this chronic disease on society and the National Health Service will be profound.
The recent inquiry by the Public Accounts Committee in the other place failed to reach a consensus position with Her Majesty’s Government on the cost to the National Health Service of diabetes, but the figures range between some £4.6 billion and £10 billion, looking at the broad impact of the disease on NHS services. This is quite striking at a time when the service needs to spend its resources more efficiently and effectively. Among the issues raised in that report are: how diabetic services should be commissioned, why commissioning to date through primary care trusts appears to have failed patients and how looking at the new arrangements for the delivery and commissioning of NHS services as a result of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 might be used to improve outcomes for diabetic patients.
What we know in terms of reports and strategies such as the national service framework in 2001 and the production of NICE clinical standards in 2011 is that simple interventions provided annually for patients with diabetes can have a profound impact on improving their clinical outcomes. These include, for instance, annual examination of the eyes to determine whether patients are developing retinopathy; annual, or more frequent if necessary, examination of the feet to guard against diabetic foot complications; regular measurement of the blood sugar, particularly glycosylated haemoglobin, to determine whether the longer-term management of sugar is appropriate; the evaluation of blood lipids and blood pressure, because cardiovascular complications in diabetics can be more devastating and occur with greater frequency; and, of course, testing the urine for protein and testing the blood for creatinine to determine whether the kidney is being affected by diabetes and whether more careful clinical attention needs to be paid to protecting that important organ. In addition, it is well recognised that education of diabetics is vital. Of course, the preparation of women with diabetes for pregnancy is vital, too, to ensure that we do not see the devastating potential complications of diabetes during pregnancy.
These complications and the measures are well understood. What is often forgotten is the fact that diabetics entering hospital for management of other conditions will often have complications at a much higher rate and frequency as a result of having diabetes. One of the most important is, of course, the development of infection in hospital, which is seen more frequently in patients in whom diabetes is not appropriately controlled. It is quite right to say that multidisciplinary care is vital.
To return to the NICE care standards and processes described—simple, authoritative measures—if we ask how frequently and successfully those are being applied to patients with diabetes in communities around the country, the data are quite startling. For interventions that could prevent a heart attack, stroke, amputation or early death, we find that only 50% of diabetics have all nine simple care measures applied on an annual basis. In two PCTs, less than 10% of patients have those nine standards assessed on an annual basis, and in the best PCT only 69% have those measures conducted on a regular basis. The reality of the situation is that the Department of Health, giving evidence to the Public Accounts Committee in the other place, stated that 100% achievement of these nine care processes was unrealistic and a more realistic target was only 75%. That seems rather disappointing, bearing in mind the burden not only for the individual patient but for society more generally and the NHS in terms of its resources attending complications of diabetes.
It is clear that the current arrangements for holding commissioners to account have failed. Of course, we will see the disappearance of those arrangements—and of primary care trusts—on 31 March next year. The provision of these appropriate care measures to much larger numbers of diabetic patients would be a first, early and important test of the new commissioning arrangements through the NHS Commissioning Board and the clinical commissioning groups.
With that in mind, is the Minister able to say what progress has been made with regard to putting at the centre of diabetic care the provision of integrated care pathways? It is quite right for a chronic condition that the majority of care should be provided in the community setting but it is also very clear for diabetics that provision of or access to ancillary services is vital. We have heard about feet and eye services, but there is also access to specialists in hospital because diabetes is much more than a disease of blood sugar. It is a complex metabolic condition with profound cardiovascular, neurological and peripheral vascular implications. It is very important that any commissioning arrangements incentivise excellent care in the community but also make it mandatory for early referral to more specialist centres for early intervention on developing complications.
In this regard, will the quality outcomes framework in primary care be modified to incentivise integrated care? Will payment by results for secondary and tertiary care providers ensure that integrated care across multiple providers in the community and in hospital becomes the norm rather than the exception for the provision of the management of diabetes? In addition, if more care is to be given at the primary care level, it is vital that general practitioners are properly trained and continue to receive ongoing training and professional development to ensure that appropriate care is given to diabetic patients, and that we have an emphasis on ongoing research in both the primary and secondary environments if more patients are to be managed out of hospital.
Finally, the question of the role of Public Health England has been raised. This is a major societal problem with major public health implications. It is critical that Public Health England takes as one of its early priorities the question of screening for diabetes in high-risk populations—for instance, in certain ethnic minority communities, as we heard about from the noble Lord, Lord Harrison—and sees that every opportunity is used to ensure that patients who develop diabetes can be identified early rather than later and that intervention can be provided to avoid potentially devastating complications.
Lord Morris of Aberavon
My Lords, I am particularly grateful to my noble friend Lord Harrison for choosing to raise the subject of diabetic services. I will concentrate on type 1, in which I declare a family interest. I have had the advantage of consulting Professor Amiel of King’s College Hospital and hope to visit the research unit of Professor Johnson in Oxford in January for further discussion. I am grateful for the excellent briefing by JDRF.
The recently published report by the House Of Commons Public Accounts Committee, which has already been referred to, notes that the incidence of diabetes has doubled in the past five years. The report concentrates on type 2, which comprises the greater number, and is one of the most damning I have ever read. It states:
“There is no strong national leadership, no effective accountability arrangements for commissioners, and no appropriate performance incentives for providers. We have seen no evidence that the Department will ensure that these issues are addressed effectively in the new NHS structure”.
My simple question for the Minister is: are things going to get better after that damning report?
Type 1 diabetes is a chronic, life-threatening condition which has a lifelong impact on those diagnosed and their families. I hope that this debate will send a clear message that the cause of type 1 diabetes does not involve lifestyle factors such as obesity, poor diet or lack of exercise. There is currently no way to prevent the condition and no cure.
I have been trying for some time to get a complete breakdown of the cost of management of type 1, as opposed to type 2. I have had only modest success in the disaggregation of the figures. I firmly believe that when you have a clear idea of specific costs, you can start to prioritise and direct funds. It is estimated that the direct and indirect cost to the National Health Service of treating type 1 is nearly £2 billion a year; 400,000 people are affected, including 26,000 children; and the numbers are growing at 4% per year. The current spending for research on type 1 is inadequate and falls way behind that of other developed countries. In 2009, government spending bodies committed £51 million to fund research into diabetes. Of this, only £6 million was applicable to type 1.
When I was a young Transport Minister in 1966, just before the ark, I learnt of the methods of cost-benefit analysis. It must be painfully obvious that as 26,000 children are already affected and they are growing in number, the cost of lifetime care will be disproportionately high and merits the targeting of research funding. There is an immense issue of management to achieve a target of long-term blood glucose levels. The challenge for the family is that a child aged five faces 19,000 injections by the time he is 18, and will have pricked his finger to draw blood 50,000 times, according to the JDRF.
NICE recommends insulin pump therapy as a clinically and cost-efficient treatment option for type 1. A report by the Medical Technology Group points to significant inequality of provision of pumps across England and a lack of adherence to NICE guidelines. NICE recommends that 12% of people with type 1 should be eligible for a pump and that for children under 12 it should be 33%. The average rate of pump utilisation is 3.9%, which is still the lowest in Europe though substantially better than it was a few years ago. In the United States, provision is estimated at 33%. Mr Burstow, a Health Minister, was able to assure me on 25 April this year that we were generally in line with the United States. How he could reach that conclusion is beyond comprehension. Perhaps the Minister will be able to correct it. If the number of pumps was increased by seven percentage points to reach the 12% benchmark, additional savings on consultant visits and hospital admissions would add between £37 million and £62 million, hence my attachment to cost-benefit analysis.
I welcome the announcement of the publication of NHS scoreboards for availability, delays and access to treatment. Those PCTs not complying—a number of which have been indicated in the various reports—will have to explain themselves, I trust.
It has been emphasised to me by clinicians that providing a pump is part of a package, with structured education first. If injections do not achieve treatment targets, then there is a move on to the provision of a pump. Many achieve the required outcome without it. Evidence-based work is still evolving on how best to provide such education for children. Increasing the skilled force within the NHS to provide such structured education is not without cost. We need to raise the profile of this need if we are to achieve equity of access to such skilled healthcare professionals across the country and across the range for people with type 1 diabetes.
It would be a tragedy if the needs of those with type 1 were lost within the greater number of those with type 2. The current reorganisation of the NHS could be a great opportunity to improve the availability of treatment for those with type 1. I understand that representations were made to the Department of Health for recognition that type 1 people are a small group with a need for highly specialised support. However, the request that type 1 diabetes be commissioned separately, or at least differently, from type 2 has not been approved.
I welcome the work that is being done at King’s, Cambridge, Oxford and Sheffield on the artificial pancreas. It is vital that adequate funding is provided for what could be a welcome and major breakthrough and that, particularly in this period of change, the general issue of funding for type 1 will be addressed. I am told that there has never been a real budget for type 1 services, which have been developed on the back of academic interest and clinical recognition of need. Greater investment by the Department of Health in both the research still required to develop a viable artificial pancreas and in providing technology, as and when it becomes available, and on its role, benefits and limitations, would be very welcome to all concerned for those who suffer from type 1 diabetes. I hope that in my short remarks I have highlighted the separate needs of those with type 1 as well as type 2.
Lord Roberts of Llandudno
My Lords, first, can I say how much I appreciate the opportunity granted to me by the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, by his entering this area? I enter with tremendous humility as well as deep concern because many have spoken in a personal way. They know the problems while we on the outside—we are possibly not going to be there long on the outside—do not know in depth what the real problem is, while they face this situation day after day.
Last year, on a wet night, I was crossing Westminster Bridge. We had just finished here, so it must have been after 10 o’clock. On the other side, just where County Hall used to be, a man was lying in the pouring rain. What should I do? Was he bait? Would other men attack me and mug me? Or was he desperately ill and in need of attention? I did not know. Rightly or wrongly, I went on my way, but others might have been more Christian than me.
We need awareness of the various conditions that people face. There has been a series of television advertisements about stroke, and HIV/AIDS had a tremendous media and television presence. Do we not need something—television adverts—so that we, the ordinary public, are made aware of the emergency that some people might encounter? Low blood sugar can induce something that might be thought of as drunkenness, but we do not know that. We must learn. Some sort of advertising is necessary in order to make us aware because, as my noble friend Lord Rennard said, 3 million people are now suffering from diabetes. I tried to work out what that means in Wales. It means 150,000 people in Wales, or about 5,000 or 6,000 people in each parliamentary constituency. It is a massive number that we have to take great notice of. We could produce adverts for television about what to do if you see somebody ill and have some idea of what the problem might be.
A good place to start is with children in schools. I am told that most children who have diabetes have type 1 diabetes. Other children in their school should be made aware that there is a problem. Teachers must also be aware so that they are able to be confident in the way that they deal with children who have problems. We are told that there are 26,500 children under the age of 15 with type 1 diabetes. In the home, in school and in the playground, youngsters with diabetes have my tremendous admiration: little youngsters who need to inject themselves and check exactly how many carbohydrates there are in every meal they are eating. For some youngsters, it is extremely difficult, so they need all the support we can give them.
I am trying to pronounce a word here: ketoacidosis. I am glad I have got it right. Twenty-five per cent of newly diagnosed children of all ages suffer in this way, and it is a life-threatening situation, and 35% of children under five years of age. We know the consequences. They have been mentioned: amputations, kidney failure and blindness. To tackle them early, as has already been urged upon us, is essential. When we are looking at expenditure in the NHS, in the long term, we would deeply regret doing anything to undermine this. You can reduce taxes, but not at the cost of threatening health and life. The lives of children come first.
Children with diabetes are often excluded from school trips, physical education and sports. A school can be afraid of admitting children with diabetes, although I am told that 52% of schools have such children. Only this morning, I was told of the common assessment framework, in which every child, every individual, particularly those who might have problems, is assessed and has individual concern and treatment for whatever might be their particular need. It is important that fellow pupils as well as teachers and other staff can recognise children with these conditions.
Some schools hold assemblies in which the children and staff are informed as to exactly what the situation is. Some schools also issue help cards to children, information telling them that if their diabetic classmate is showing symptoms, they should please take some action. Of course, a certain number of teachers are given courses on what they have to do if any child is in diabetic difficulties.
The recommendation of Diabetes UK is that every school should have people who are well versed in the relevant needs, and that secondary schools should have a school nurse. I have heard recently of the cuts made in school nursing levels. Is this a cut that we can really justify? Is it not time that we should assess this according to the need of the particular school? It is also suggested that there should be a nurse for a cluster of smaller schools, such as junior and infant schools: somebody who is well versed in and able to tackle these problems. In rural Wales, you could not have a nurse who would reach a school in time. That means that it is even more important that teachers and other school staff know exactly what to do when an emergency arises. We must all find the best way possible to ensure that no child suffers without somebody being there who can help them.
I will be visiting on Wednesday of next week a school with disabled and disadvantaged children; that is, those who are not able to cope quite as well as others. These are a particular problem: a child who possibly cannot read, or inject him or herself. How are we helping them? I am sure that this needs to be another of our priorities.
School meals need to be labelled in such a way that their content is easily understood. How much insulin is going to be needed in order to cope with this meal? That information is often difficult to understand. A youngster of seven, eight, nine or 10 years of age is trying to work out this complicated arithmetic to know exactly how much insulin to inject. What is the sugar level? Is it low or high? Somehow we need to signify that on every meal, wherever it is.
I am glad that some of the fast food chains, like McDonald’s, are providing the necessary information on their food tray papers. Other shops, hotels and others should follow suit. We are glad about what is happening. There is a lot more to be done. I am at least grateful for the opportunity to contribute in some way to this debate.
Viscount Falkland
My Lords, I, too, am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, for this debate. Particularly after the long discussions that we had about the House of Lords and its future, this debate so far has shown how it combines expertise, such as my noble friend Lord Kakkar’s expertise as a doctor, experience, such as those of us who are here as diabetics, and those like the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Llandudno, speaking with articulate concern. It has been a wonderful debate.
A light has been shone on this subject this week. It was unfortunate for the MP for Slough, who is apparently a doctor, to imply that diabetes is a result of a poor lifestyle, and that those who indulge in a poor lifestyle and have diabetes should be deprived of the funding for their medication. That was stupid and irresponsible. What has been said so far in this debate shows that this is a complex condition that we have; I know that I have a complex condition. As I hope your Lordships can see, I am relatively well. I have had diabetes for 13 years. It was diagnosed in this House and I fully admit that I had been in denial. My wife had suggested that I might have diabetes. A good friend of mine in this House asked me to join him for lunch with his guest. After about five or 10 minutes, he noticed that I had been drinking a lot of water, which is one of the signs of a surplus amount of glucose in the bloodstream. He asked me some further questions and said, “Look, I am a diabetic and I think you are too”. He asked me whether I had a doctor. I said that I had hardly ever seen a doctor and that I belonged to a National Health Service panel. He excused himself, saying, “You wait here. I’m going to make an appointment for you this afternoon”.
My friend got me an appointment for that afternoon, which was the last appointment with that particular private doctor before Easter—I did not have a private doctor at that time. The doctor conducted a simple test and said, “You’ve certainly got diabetes and I’m going to pass you on; I don’t feel capable of dealing with it and I think you need immediate attention”. He rang a specialist diabetes clinic and I got an appointment for the following day, which, again, was the last appointment before Easter. I have been with that clinic ever since. However, I use the National Health Service and I talk to the doctor about my diabetes when we have a regular discussion about my medication. I am very thankful to the National Health Service for providing me with my medication and I am very thankful for the nurses, who have been mentioned, in my practice. They often seem to be more on top of the developments than the doctors.
Being a diabetic has been an extraordinary experience. I have had to give up certain things, and I am not talking about just Mars bars and pastry: I have had to give up playing golf; I cannot play with the same concentration that I used to because the blood sugars alter the whole time in one’s bloodstream. For six years I have been an insulin-dependent diabetic, which makes it even more difficult to do certain things, although I can drive a vehicle because I am very conscientious.
I wonder how many diabetics are conscious of the fact that they should report their condition to the DVLA. The DVLA guidelines are rather strange but basically they point in the right direction. If you are an insulin-dependent diabetic, you should check your blood sugar every time you go anywhere near a vehicle. If you are caught in an accident with a low level, you are committing an offence and will pay a penalty.
Generally speaking, my life is pretty good. When I first saw the specialist, he said, “You are in a very bad condition, aren’t you? Do you realise what your blood sugar level is?”. I will not mention the technical term for it but for the average person—for those in this Chamber even—whose pancreas is working properly, the blood sugar level would be about 5.5 or 5.7. Mine was 29 and the specialist said, “You are one Coca-Cola away from a coma”. I said, “I feel perfectly all right”. He said, “That is odd. I have people with a quarter of your level who are almost crawling in through my door”. It is curious because I have a reasonable feeling of well-being most of the time, although not all the time. I think that diabetics can feel like that.
However, I am not convinced that the NHS generally, as has been mentioned today, gives the kind of service that allows people to have the lucky break that I had when my diabetes was spotted. The number of people who are undiagnosed has been mentioned. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, mentioned the cost and ramifications of that. If you have nearly 1 million people with diabetes all wandering around the streets not feeling 100%, they are likely to have complications without having had the original diabetes diagnosed. Finally, something may bring them to realise it, but it will be a serious business and they may not have long to live. The cost of dealing with that emergency to the NHS is out of all proportion to what would have to be spent on medication on a daily basis.
I do not want to decry the NHS—I am the first person to praise it—but diabetes is an extremely odd, and serious, condition; one’s requirements change the whole time. One very important thing that the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, mentioned, and which saved my life, is the specialist diabetic nurses. It is all that they do, and they are absolutely essential; if you have any stress or worry, they talk you through it and get you to make the necessary adjustments, such as going to see your doctor or changing your medication. So it is quite extraordinary what can be done on a personal level. That is where the NHS is in trouble, because it is really not equipped to deal on a personal level with all the people who have diabetes.
There must be a better interface between the NHS and the private sector. Education and training is essential and can be provided to the NHS, if it cannot handle the problem, by the private sector, and not expensively. In any case, even if it is expensive, it is going to save a lot of money in the long run by preventing the kind of complications that cost all the money. We have already mentioned amputations and heart disease, and all the rest.
That is my first suggestion and question to the Minister. Why can we not work towards closer co-operation on these services with the NHS? When I go to my NHS people, they are sent everything from the private clinic but they do not have a compatible computer, which seems strange. That would seem to me the first step. They get the written stuff, which goes into a file. So when I go in, nobody ever knows what has happened the previous year. I have taken to having just a brief summary of what happened at my last inspection. I go regularly and have all the things that have been mentioned—a carotid examination, a foot examination, everything. I am thankful for that and for the course that my condition has taken. Whether I shall be standing here much longer in this condition, I do not know; I shall not say that I do not care about it, but I am optimistic. I think that I will probably have a pump, in the long run; they have been mentioned for type 1 diabetes but I think that in the end, most people like me, with type 2, will also have pumps. Then perhaps I will be able to go back to the golf tee and play golf again. Who knows?
How can we reduce the number of people who do not realise that they have this condition? As long as it remains at this level, we are in trouble.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Harrison for putting this debate before us. I suspect that I come under the category that was just described as “articulate concern”. I am certainly concerned; whether I am articulate remains to be seen.
I was drawn to the report by the Public Accounts Committee. In particular, I want to address the recommendation where it talked about the projected increase in the diabetic population having a significant impact on NHS resources. It said:
“The Department and Public Health England should set out the steps they will take to minimise the growth in numbers through well-resourced public health campaigns and action on the risk factors for diabetes, such as the link with obesity, and the complications they can cause”.
It is to those that I wish to address my remarks. Before doing so, I offer the Minister, at the end of rather a hard day for him, with quite a battering, some words of encouragement and thanks. I thank the Government for announcing yesterday in a Written Statement that they will consult on the proposal to introduce a 45p minimum unit price for alcohol. That is a brave step forward, on which they are to be congratulated. The figure is different from that in Scotland, but that is the lesser of the issues. I hope that all will come together, including the BMA and the rest of the medical profession, and work with the Government to move forward on this front.
This process will not be easy. It has taken time to get to the consultation stage and plenty of people will try to prevent this new policy being put in place. I have recently spent some time with the drinks and retail industry looking at the Government’s strategic policy on alcohol, and have encountered little enthusiasm for this change. Indeed, we have already seen one legal challenge against the Scottish proposal. I understand that the Bulgarians have a great interest in this matter and will raise question marks and seek a legal challenge. I suspect that there will also be a legal challenge against the Government’s proposal.
As I say, the Government’s action is a step in the right direction. In the past, the important link between alcohol consumption and diabetes has in many respects not been addressed to the extent that I would have hoped. I shall speak primarily about type 2 diabetes, and alcohol consumption causes difficulties in that respect as well as the consumption of high-fat and sugary foods. Drinks, particularly alcoholic drinks, contain a significant amount of sugar, of which nobody who consumes them is aware. Although food and fizzy drink labels show fat and calorific content, alcoholic drinks are totally exempt from any requirement to show energy or calorific factors. This means that people who drink excessively are not only harming themselves in other areas but are particularly at risk of raising their sugar levels, which may lead to type 2 diabetes.
The Minister seemed surprised to hear about what has been going on at the other end of the Corridor, but Dr Phillip Lee MP has said this week that, as a doctor, he believes that type 2 diabetes is self-inflicted in many respects and that, due to cost factors, the department should stop providing free prescriptions for people with this type of diabetes. Like my noble friend Lord Harrison, I hope that the Minister will state very clearly this afternoon where the Government stand on this issue and will refute Dr Lee’s proposition. That is not to say that there may not be some fundamental issues behind Dr Lee’s comments regarding costs in the NHS that we need to address, and I will come to that.
I see a link between drinking, obesity, diabetes and alcohol abuse. I hope that the Government will be prepared to stick to their objectives on that front and resist any challenges that may arise in Europe. I have taken soundings, as that is what we can do in this amazing Chamber, from some of my learned counsel friends who tell me that, if we are challenged in Europe, there is an opportunity for us to fight that very vigorously indeed on the basis of our having a margin of appreciation—that is, because of the scale of the problem with diabetes in the UK, we should have the freedom to act differently on this issue from other countries in Europe, even though the Commission may initially oppose such action.
Similarly, with regard to alcohol labelling, which the Minister knows I have raised previously, I have been encouraged to wait until the Commission comes back to this issue in 2014 because we cannot move unilaterally. Again, noble counsel here tells me that we could use the exemption that I referred to as a means to press the industry to move quickly and require it to move forward and introduce labelling on alcohol products that would show the number of calories in them. We should also think about the energy side of that.
Opportunities are there for us to keep pressing ahead on this front. This links to where we stand on public education, on which I will spend a few moments. Last night I had the good fortune to go to a celebration that was held in the River Room by the Terrence Higgins Trust to celebrate its 30 years of existence and the work that it has done. We were addressed by the noble Lord, Lord Fowler. He is a former Health Secretary who is remembered particularly—this was discussed at some length last night—for the very effective and world-leading public campaign on HIV that he raised in the 1980s and 1990s, and which had such a great impact on public health in this country.
After seeing reference to the emergence of a strategy on obesity, I look to see what the Government will do on that front, too. There have been plenty of other campaigns in addition to the one on HIV. There were campaigns on alcohol and drinking and driving and a range of campaigns on smoking, and they have been very effective. However, we await a national programme to highlight the problems that arise from eating and drinking too much. When can we anticipate something moving on this front? Given the evidence that we face with obesity and type 2 diabetes, such a campaign should be on the kind of scale that we had in the past. In particular, I look to see a Government that will address some of these issues in relation to children. A phenomenal number of young children are now classed as obese, and a growing number in turn will be likely to fall into the group of the 7 million possible candidates for type 2 diabetes.
We must be honest and straightforward in such a campaign. We must recognise that not only must the food and drinks industry be socially responsible but we must seek to persuade people in all the ways we can to accept responsibility for their own health. That means letting people—particularly young people—see that if they do not care for their health in the way that is best for them, there is a distinct possibility that their lives will be shortened, their health diminished and their opportunities greatly reduced. We need to highlight some of the topics that we have been talking about today, such as the risks of amputation, blindness and so on. We should not run away from presenting them to the public at large in a wide-scale programme of action. I hope that the Minister will tell us when we can expect a campaign of major proportions to come forward.
Lord Collins of Highbury
My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Harrison for initiating this very timely debate. Five years ago I stopped smoking and subsequently put on weight. I stress that this was not through drink; I had a weakness for sweets. I thank my noble friend for reminding me of that. I had an eye infection and had taken on a very stressful job. My infection got worse and, after using all the available creams from the local chemist, I was finally persuaded to drop into the walk-in centre in Victoria Street, which unfortunately, as we heard recently in a debate, has since closed. The centre nurses helped me with my eye and also gave me a quick check-up that covered blood pressure and heart rate. The result was an urgent referral to my GP for very high blood pressure. The GP undertook a series of tests that led to an early diagnosis of diabetes type 2. I am therefore acutely aware of the need to raise awareness of diabetes, not only to help prevent the condition but to promote early diagnosis.
My early diagnosis and the excellent response of the NHS have meant that I have a chance of avoiding the worst consequences of diabetes. Early preventive action saves not only lives but money. As my noble friend Lord Harrison was right to point out, there is a worrying tendency to put the onus on the individual—it was the Tory Back-Bench MP for Bracknell, not Slough, I must add to the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland. Instead, as other noble Lords have indicated, we should focus more on the food industry that since the war has pumped out high-salt, high-fat and high-sugar products without any proper warnings.
However, as we have heard in today’s debate, there is a genuine fear that, at a time when the priority of diabetes should be enhanced, the new NHS arrangements seem to be removing diabetes-specific leadership, dedicated staff and specific plans. Many noble Lords have referred to the National Audit Office investigation into diabetes care, which found that:
“Diabetes care in the NHS is poor, with low achievement of treatment standards, high numbers of avoidable deaths and annual spending reaching an estimated £3.9 billion”.
In its response, the Public Accounts Committee highlighted how barely half of people with diabetes get the nine basic checks they need to manage their condition, and fewer than one in five has the recommended levels of blood glucose, blood pressure and cholesterol, leaving an unacceptably high number at risk of developing complications, being admitted to hospital and costing the NHS more money. As we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, the Public Accounts Committee also criticised NHS accountability structures for failing to hold commissioners of diabetes services to account for poor performance. He expressed optimism about the future, but I wonder how the new structures will stand up to the challenge of diabetes.
As the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, said, both type 1 and type 2 diabetes can lead to costly and life-shattering complications, including kidney failure, blindness and amputations, which my noble friend Lady Thornton focused on. Amputation is not only devastating, it is expensive. In England between £500 million and £600 million is spent each year on foot ulcers and amputations. I am lucky to see a podiatrist at regular six-monthly intervals. Speaking to my podiatrist, I discovered that as a consequence of the service being moved from the PCT to the local hospital trust, recruitment was frozen. His concern, as he was looking at my feet, was that without sufficient staff regular check-ups would not be carried out, so that instead of preventive treatment, he would be dealing with an increasing number of ulcers and other serious infections.
My noble and learned friend Lord Morris also pointed out that although the major rise is in type 2 diabetes, type 1 is also rising. As was referenced in a Question I put down, the first ever report into mortality from the national diabetes audit was published just under 12 months ago. It found that up to 24,000 people with diabetes are dying in England each year from causes that could be avoided through better management of their condition. About three-quarters of those are aged 65 and over. However, the gap in the death rate between those who have and those who do not have diabetes becomes more extreme when comparing those who are younger. It was truly shocking to learn that so many young people are dying from diabetes. Type 1 is a particularly difficult condition to live with, as my noble friend pointed out, and we need to raise awareness in schools and workplaces. At the end of the day, we need a huge public awareness campaign to help both to prevent and to detect diabetes.
The focus of today’s debate has been on the need for action. As I said at the beginning of my contribution, early diagnosis is key to both saving lives and saving money. We have heard about the NHS Health Check programme, which can help to detect and prevent the onset of type 2 diabetes. As my noble friend Lord Harrison said, implementation of the programme has been poor, and patchy at best. A number of PCTs failed to offer a single person an NHS health check last year, and so far this year the poor performance has continued, with two PCTs having offered no health checks to date. There is considerable variation in the way that PCTs have delivered the programme, and overall its implementation has been poor.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, said, in April next year the responsibility for commissioning the NHS Health Check programme will shift to local authorities as part of their new public health duties. She is right to be concerned about the impact of this transfer on the future sustainability of the programme and the potential for further variation in its implementation.
This morning, I said in my Oral Question on HIV services that supporting self-management is critical. This approach helps people to gain the confidence, skills and knowledge to manage their own health, with resulting improvements in quality of life and even independence. My personal experience of the DESMOND programme has taught me how important this resource can be. Proper care planning, structured education and access to psychological and emotional support are essential if we are to deal with the challenge of diabetes.
In conclusion, I have a number of specific points, many of which have been raised by noble Lords today, but there is one that I want to focus on in particular. Will the Minister ensure that diabetes is given sufficient priority? There is an absolute need for a clinical lead in, and function for, diabetes within the national Commissioning Board. As we have heard, multidisciplinary networks working across all aspects of diabetes care are vital, and local commissioning work is going well for diabetes care.
My final point concerns the health checks. Will the Minister ensure that there is national delivery and national promotion of this vital work to prevent people developing diabetes? Unless there is urgent action on diabetes, thousands more people a year will be condemned to debilitating complications and early death. The time for action is now.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords and, in particular, the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, for an extremely interesting and knowledgeable debate. Given the range of comments and issues raised, if I do not cover all the substantive issues, I hope that noble Lords will allow me to write to them.
I do not need to repeat all the statistics. It is abundantly clear that diabetes is a major current and future challenge for this country. It has to be a priority for the National Health Service. Diabetes is a priority for the Government and, as a long-term condition, it has been prioritised in the mandate for the NHS Commissioning Board. It is also a key marker of improvements in the NHS. Diabetes affects every system in the body. There should be no hiding place for this condition, but as the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, reminded us, it frequently remains hidden from the patient who does not realise he or she has it, and from healthcare services that treat the complications of diabetes without managing their cause.
This year, the National Audit Office reviewed the management of adult diabetes services in the NHS. This highlighted the progress that has been made over the past 10 years, but also the significant challenges that we face over the next 10 years. As a number of noble Lords have pointed out, there is unwarranted variation in diabetes care. The management of people with diabetes has not been optimised. There is no excuse for poor diabetes care. No one with diabetes should lose their leg or their vision if this could have been prevented. We know what needs to be done and we have to ensure we meet this challenge head on.
A Public Accounts Committee hearing followed the publication of the NAO report, and the PAC has recently published its report. The Government are currently considering the PAC’s recommendations and will prepare a Treasury minute in response, which will be published in the new year. The noble Lords, Lord Harrison and Lord Kakkar, stressed the importance of integration of the patient pathway. The NHS has clear statements of good-quality care, with the publication of the NICE quality standards and a range of NICE clinical guidelines. These were informed by the national service framework for diabetes published in 2001, which sets out the key areas of development required for diabetes services in the NHS. The NICE quality standards require integrated care. They will be used by the NHS Commissioning Board as a basis for describing what good-quality care looks like.
The Quality and Outcomes Framework—QOF—introduced in 2003-04 has incentivised primary care to perform the nine care processes for people with diabetes, even though the percentage of people diagnosed with diabetes has more than doubled since 2004. NICE has been asked to review the quality and outcomes framework and we await its response and findings. We have a wealth of information and data on the provision of services and where we need to improve. The national diabetes audit started in 2004 and is now the world’s largest published clinical audit. There has been a year-on-year improvement in a number of areas. The audit shows that 54% of people with diabetes receive all nine care processes; 76% of people with diabetes had eight of the nine, which equates to 1.4 million people. However, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, that much more needs to be done. We need to ensure that everyone with diabetes for whom it is appropriate receives these essential care processes annually. We aim to achieve nine processes for as many people with diabetes as possible. However, each person needs individual care and it may not be clinically appropriate to do the tests in everyone. Some patients decline blood tests or other procedures. Nevertheless, I take the noble Lord’s point that the variation in the number of people with type 2 diabetes receiving all nine care processes is completely unacceptable.
A lot of work is being undertaken to drive up improvements in care and outcomes for people with diabetes, and I must now commend the work of Diabetes UK in driving change and raising awareness of issues for people with diabetes. I part company, very respectfully, with my honourable friend Dr Lee in another place on this issue. We know what needs to be done. We have the data and the guidelines to support this, and we must ensure that in the future structure clinicians and commissioners come together to commission services that meet the needs of people with this condition.
I went to Huddersfield last week to visit a general practice which is doing just that. The Grange Group practice, which provides a one-stop clinic for people with diabetes, impressed me a lot. It has developed an integrated and multidisciplinary team approach to the management of people with diabetes. It is a great example of a CCG taking the lead on improving the management of diabetes. It is not a one-off: there are examples of this up and down the country and it should become the norm.
The prime objective of the NHS Commissioning Board will be driving improvement in the quality of NHS services and we will hold it to account for this through the NHS mandate. Following the reforms to the NHS, the NHS Commissioning Board will use accredited evidence, such as NICE quality standards for diabetes, to guide local commissioners to improve outcomes for people with the condition. Commissioners can use the Atlas of Variation to identify the areas in their community that need improving and there is a wealth of clinical guidance and commissioning support for diabetes services. All this means that people with diabetes can expect to see a better service, with improved outcomes, and an end to unwarranted variation.
In addition, through the NHS outcomes framework we will be able to track the overall progress of the NHS in delivering improved health and outcomes. For people with long-term conditions such as diabetes, this will be measured by whether patients are in good health and are able to live active, fulfilling lives. Diabetes is relevant to all five domains in the outcomes framework, so it is important that when work programmes are developed they consider diabetes and how optimising care can help to deliver improvements.
We face substantial challenges in the next five to 10 years due to the changing age and ethnicity structure of the population, increased numbers of people with multi-morbidities and the challenges allied with obesity and activity. In 2020, it is estimated that 8.5% of people over 16 years of age will have diabetes—that is 3.8 million people in England. While type 1 diabetes is not currently preventable—I will say more about that in a moment—we must ensure that those with this form of the disease have access to appropriate services and have the knowledge and support to self-manage their condition.
We are fully committed to the prevention of type 2 diabetes. All our work on promoting an active lifestyle and tackling obesity will support this aim. The NHS Health Check programme has real potential to prevent many cases of type 2 diabetes and to identify thousands earlier. The Government have an ambitious programme to improve public health through strengthening local action, supporting self-esteem and behavioural changes, promoting healthy choices and changing the environment to support healthier lives. The Change for Life national campaign is raising awareness around eating healthily and increasing activity. The National Child Measurement Programme is giving people the information they need to make informed decisions about their child’s risk of becoming overweight.
We launched a new national ambition in January this year for a year-on-year increase in the number of adults doing 150 minutes of exercise a week. The public health outcomes framework was published in early 2012 and has key indicators for Public Health England, including diet, excess weight and physical activity.
The NHS Health Check programme, which I mentioned a moment ago, is a universal and systematic programme for everyone between the ages of 40 and 74. It assesses people’s risk of heart disease, stroke, kidney disease and diabetes, and it then supports people to reduce or manage that risk through individually tailored advice. I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord Collins, that the NHS Health Check programme is a key performance measure in the NHS operating framework this year, and take-up of the NHS health checks by the eligible population is another indicator in the public health outcomes framework. Local authorities will be mandated to offer risk assessments to their eligible populations from April next year—and I stress the word “mandated”.
The noble Lord, Lord Collins, referred to the NHS reforms and what these will mean for diabetes commissioning and care. He particularly stressed the importance of clinical leadership in the NHS Commissioning Board. I agree that clinical leadership has been key in driving improvements in care in recent years. Diabetes is a very high priority for the domain directors of the NHS Commissioning Board, both from the perspective of reducing premature mortality and improving the quality of life.
The noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, was right to remind us of the costs of diabetes care. These costs are hard to pin down—he is correct—because people with diabetes can be found in every part of the NHS. The thing to remember is that the greatest cost of diabetes is to the person with diabetes himself or herself in terms of the distress, disability and premature death that can ensue.
The noble Lord, Lord Harrison, spoke about the risk of short-termism and he was concerned that annual checks might be cut and replaced with online advice. He rightly asked about those people who are computer-averse. Annual checks are required by NICE and the Quality and Outcomes Framework and they must be face to face. Online advice does not replace them and, when it occurs, it is an additional option for patients who might find it helpful.
A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Harrison, Lord Kakkar and Lord Collins, referred to the importance of self-management, and I agree with what they said on this subject. The department is working to promote self-management in the care of diabetes through patient education and support from appropriately trained service providers, including the DAFNE and DESMOND programmes. The NHS reforms present an opportunity for stronger and closer partnership working between GPs and specialists, ensuring that the right care is commissioned and that it is focused on the needs of each individual patient and carer.
The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, brought us to the subject of alcohol, and particularly calorie counts in labelling. People with diabetes most certainly should have access to dietary advice, and that should include advice on alcoholic drinks. It is a subject that he raises regularly and he is right to do so. Around a quarter of adult men and a fifth of women report drinking at levels that are above the NHS guidelines, and in fact some 2.2 million people have said that they drink more than twice the amount set in the guidelines. That puts them at most risk of illness and death from alcohol. The noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, talked about safe driving with diabetes. I welcome the reminder he gave us that people with diabetes should follow DVLA guidance, and that includes the need for blood glucose testing if the driver is on insulin.
The noble Lord, Lord Harrison, spoke about transitional care, and particularly about children with diabetes in schools, an issue also referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke. There has been long-standing work between the national clinical directors for diabetes and children and young people on improving diabetes care in children and those in the younger age groups. There is now a best practice tariff for children’s diabetes care. NHS Diabetes has been supporting work with young people on transitional care and there are regional paediatric diabetes networks. My noble friend Lord Roberts of Llandudno rightly drew attention to the late diagnosis of diabetes and diabetic ketoacidosis. I agree that it is important that all parents, teachers and healthcare professionals should be aware of the symptoms of diabetes, and I particularly welcome the “Four Ts” campaign from Diabetes UK. He referred to hypoglycaemia and the awareness of diabetes and its consequences. Again, I agree how important it is that children, young people and their families are taught how to avoid unduly low blood glucose levels. Friends, schoolmates and especially teachers should learn about this. An example is the work being done in Essex by the local authority with schools and parents as well as children.
The noble Baroness, Lady Masham, referred to specialist nurses. The Government consider that diabetes specialist nurses are an essential part of the diabetes specialist team. They have a valuable part to play in supporting people with diabetes. It is local healthcare organisations, with their knowledge of the healthcare needs of their populations, that are best placed to determine the workforce required to deliver safe patient care within their available resources, but the reforms once again present an opportunity for stronger, closer partnership working between the new primary care commissioners and secondary care specialists so that evidence-based, multidisciplinary care is focused on the needs of the individual patient. Once again, I saw this for myself last week when I visited Yorkshire. The noble Baroness also drew attention to high-fructose corn syrup, which is used as a food additive. I will write to her on that very important subject, on which a lot of work has been done.
A number of noble Lords, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Masham and Lady Thornton, focused on the very grave issue of amputation of limbs among those with diabetes. The National Diabetes Audit and the Atlas of Variation have both shown that there are unacceptable levels of variation in the care received by people with diabetes, and the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, gave eminently sensible and important advice. It is important that clinicians review data relevant to their practice and make improvements to the care that they provide to reduce variation. We have plenty of examples of excellent patient-centred services that have improved outcomes and provided value for money. NICE guidance was published in January 2004. The guidelines include recommendations for primary and secondary care settings.
The incidence of amputation among people with diabetes has been declining over time, but the absolute number of diabetes-related amputations is rising as the prevalence of type 2 diabetes increases, and I agree fully with the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, that the numbers need to come down. Diabetic foot disease accounts for more hospital bed days than all other diabetes complications put together. In the UK, 100 people a week lose a lower limb because of complications from diabetes. One in 20 people with diabetes will develop a foot ulcer in one year, and up to 70% of people die within five years of having an amputation. That shows how important an issue this is, but once again there is evidence that rapid access to multidisciplinary foot care teams can lead to faster healing, fewer amputations and improved survival. Savings to the NHS can substantially exceed the cost of the team. The noble Baroness spoke extremely powerfully on this subject. We join her in supporting the Putting Feet First campaign by Diabetes UK and NHS Diabetes and good patient education. The ambitions for the NHS are set out in the NHS outcomes framework and of course include improving the quality of life. Good care costs less for everyone.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, and the noble Lord, Lord Collins, spoke about type 1 diabetes. I agree that it is important to provide high standards of care for the 250,000 with type 1 diabetes, and that it would be helpful to improve the costing data around that. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, was right to mention insulin pumps in this context. NICE recommend pump therapy as an option for adults and children over the age of 12 with type 1 diabetes if multiple daily insulin therapy has failed. In May this year, NHS Diabetes launched an insulin pump network to ensure an effective two-way sharing of the most up-to-date guidance, tools, best practice and resources. An insulin pump audit, the first to be undertaken nationally, is currently under way, and provisional unpublished data suggest that 11,985 adults and 4,447 children are currently on insulin pump therapy. Some 8% of people with type 1 diabetes now have insulin pumps. That is an increase, but we still need to go further to achieve the 12% to 15% advised by NICE.
As regards research, the department is currently supporting more than 60 studies into type 1 diabetes through the diabetes clinical research network. The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation has spent £1 billion on research around the world into treatments and prevention of the condition. I also acknowledge the major contribution of Diabetes UK to type 1 diabetes research.
Time prevents my replying to the points made about in-patient care, HIV/AIDS and diabetes, and the points made very powerfully about ethnic minorities. The noble Lord, Lord Harrison, asked me about the European Union and sharing ideas. I will write on those topics but will just say that progress has been made. It has been good progress, but we are not there yet. It is encouraging to see that many of the building blocks for making real progress are there and that, in the new NHS structure, there will be renewed awareness and mandated responsibility to improve care and services for all those at risk of this devastating condition.
Lord Harrison
My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for his repudiation of the intemperate remarks made at the other end about type 2 diabetes. I share his acknowledgement of the width and the depth of this debate, in which so many interesting individual contributions were made. I thank colleagues who have joined us in the Chamber to hear my last words on this important day. As the warm-up act for the Leveson inquiry, perhaps I may just identify the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Llandudno, that diabetes is not properly represented on radio and TV. If the press have nothing better to do in the future after Leveson, perhaps they could explore and investigate some of the problems that we have identified today in the care given to diabetics, and many of the exhilarating stories of diabetics who have resisted their disease and who should be celebrated in the press and the highest organs of the state.
Leveson Inquiry
(11 years, 5 months ago)
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The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)
My Lords, as I said earlier on today, I thought that I should repeat the Statement made by the Prime Minister immediately after this debate and I should now like to do exactly that. The Statement was made by the Prime Minister a few minutes ago in the House of Commons and is as follows:
“With permission, Mr Speaker, I should like to make a statement on today’s report from Lord Justice Leveson. As we consider this report, we should consider the victims. We should remember how the parents of Milly Dowler, at their most vulnerable moment, had their daughter’s phone hacked and were followed and photographed; how Christopher Jefferies’s reputation was destroyed by false accusations; and how the mother of Madeleine McCann, Kate, had her private diary printed without her permission and how she and her husband were falsely accused of keeping their daughter’s body in their freezer. These victims, and many other innocent people who have never sought the limelight, have suffered in a way that we can barely begin to imagine. That is why, last summer, I asked Lord Justice Leveson to lead an independent inquiry.
The inquiry had the power to see any document and summon any witness under oath to be examined by a barrister in public. It has been, as Lord Justice Leveson says,
‘the most public and the most concentrated look at the press that this country has seen’.
I thank Lord Justice Leveson and his entire team for the work that they have undertaken.
Lord Justice Leveson makes findings and recommendations in three areas: on the relationship between the press and the police; on the relationship between the press and politicians; and on the relationship between the press and the public. Let me take each in turn—first, the press and the police. Lord Justice Leveson makes it clear that he does not find a basis for challenging the integrity of the police, but he raises a number of areas which he felt were a cause for public concern, such as tip-offs, off-the-record briefings and, more broadly, “excessive proximity” between the press and the police. He makes a number of recommendations, including national guidance on appropriate gifts and hospitality, record-keeping of contact between very senior police officers and journalists and a 12-month “cooling-off” period for senior police officers being employed by the press. These are designed to break the perception of an excessively cosy relationship between the press and the police, and we support these recommendations.
When I set up this inquiry, I also said there would be a second part, to investigate wrongdoing in the press and the police, including the conduct of the first police investigation. This second stage cannot go ahead until the current criminal proceedings have concluded, but we remain committed to the inquiry as it was first established.
The next area is the relationship between politicians and the media. As Lord Justice Leveson has found,
‘over the last 30-35 years and probably much longer, the political parties of UK national Government and of UK official Opposition, have had or developed too close a relationship with the press in a way which has not been in the public interest’.
I made this point last summer when I set up this inquiry, and at the same time I set in train reforms to improve transparency.
This is the first Government ever to publish details of meetings between senior politicians and proprietors, editors or senior executives, as Lord Justice Leveson recommends in his report. He also recommends disclosing further information on the overall level of interaction between politicians and the press. This would apply to all parties and on the Government’s behalf I can say we accept the recommendation.
During the course of the inquiry, a number of serious allegations were made. I want to deal with them directly. First was that my party struck a deal with News International. This allegation was repeated again and again on the Floor of the House and at the inquiry itself. Lord Justice Leveson looked at this in detail and rejects the allegation emphatically. Let me read his conclusion:
‘The evidence does not, of course, establish anything resembling a ‘deal’ whereby News International’s support was traded for the expectation of policy favours’.
Those who repeatedly made these allegations—including Members of this House and, I have to say, the former Prime Minister—should now acknowledge they were wrong.
Secondly, it was alleged that I gave my right honourable friend, the then Culture Secretary and now the Health Secretary, the responsibility of handling the BSkyB bid in order to fix the outcome. Lord Justice Leveson states clearly that,
‘the evidence does not begin to support a conclusion that the choice of Mr Hunt was the product of improper media pressure, still less an attempt to guarantee a particular outcome to the process’.
That is another allegation repeatedly made again and shown to be wrong.
Thirdly, there was the criticism that the then Culture Secretary had rigged the handling of the BSkyB bid. Again, today’s report rejects that as well. My right honourable friend,
‘put in place robust systems to ensure that the remaining stages of the bid would be handled with fairness, impartiality and transparency’.
Indeed Lord Justice Leveson goes further, concluding that my right honourable friend’s,
‘extensive reliance on external advice … was a wise and effective means of helping him to keep to the statutory test’.
He concludes that,
‘there is no credible evidence of actual bias’.
Of course, as my right honourable friend has said himself, there are lessons to learn about how quasi-judicial decisions are made and we must learn those lessons. But let me say this: my right honourable friend, now the Health Secretary, has endured a stream of allegations with great dignity. The report confirms something that we on this side of the House knew all along: we were right to stand by him. Let me also say this: Lord Justice Leveson finds in respect to my right honourable friend the Business Secretary that he,
‘acted with scrupulous care and impartiality’.
Next—and most important of all—let me turn to what Lord Justice Leveson says about the relationship between the press and the public. As he says very clearly, even after 16 months of this inquiry, he remains,
‘firmly of the belief that the British press—all of it—serves the country very well for the vast majority of the time’.
But on the culture, practices and ethics of some in the press, his words are very stark. He finds that,
‘there have been too many times when, chasing the story, parts of the press have acted as if its own code, which it wrote, simply did not exist’.
He cites,
‘press behaviour that, at times, can only be described as outrageous’.
He catalogues a number of examples of such behaviour, going wider than phone hacking. He refers to,
‘a recklessness in prioritising sensational stories, almost irrespective of the harm that the stories may cause and the rights of those who would be affected’.
He finds that,
‘when the story is just too big and the public appetite too great, there has been significant and reckless disregard for accuracy’.
And he reports,
‘a cultural tendency within parts of the press vigorously to resist or dismiss complainants almost as a matter of course’.
In a free society, the press is subject to criminal law, civil law and requirements for data protection. But there should be a proper regulatory system as well to ensure that standards are upheld, complaints are heard and there is proper redress for those who have been wronged. That is what the current system should have delivered. It has not. As Lord Justice Leveson says, the Press Complaints Commission is,
‘neither a regulator, nor fit for purpose to fulfil that responsibility’.
That is why changes are urgently needed.
We welcome the fact that the press industry has put forward its own proposals for a new system of regulation, but we agree with Lord Justice Leveson that those proposals do not yet go far enough.
In Volume IV of the report, Lord Justice Leveson sets out proposals for independent self-regulation organised by the media. He details the key requirements that an independent self-regulatory body should meet, including: independence of appointments and funding; a standards code; an arbitration service; and a speedy complaint-handling mechanism. Crucially, it must have the power to demand upfront apologies and impose million-pound fines.
These are the Leveson principles. They are the central recommendations of the report. If they can be put in place, we truly will have a regulatory system that delivers public confidence, justice for the victims, and a step-change in the way the press is regulated in our country. I accept these principles and I hope the whole House will come behind them. The onus should now be on the press to implement them, and to implement them radically.
In support of this, Lord Justice Leveson makes some important proposals. First, he proposes some changes to the Data Protection Act that would reduce the special treatment that journalists are afforded when dealing with personal data. We must consider that very carefully—particularly the impact that it could have on investigative journalism. While I have been able to make only preliminary investigations about that since reading the report, I am instinctively concerned about that proposal.
Secondly, he proposes changes to establish a system of incentives for each newspaper to take part in the system of independent regulation. I agree that there should be incentives and believe that those he sets out, such as the award of costs and exemplary damages in litigation, could be effective.
Lord Justice Leveson goes on to propose legislation that would help deliver those incentives but that would also, crucially, provide,
‘an independent process to recognise the new self-regulatory body’.
This would, he says,
‘reassure the public that the basic requirements of independence and effectiveness were met and continue to be met’.
I have some serious concerns and misgivings about this recommendation. They break down into issues of principle, practicality and necessity.
The issue of principle is that, for the first time, we would have crossed the Rubicon by writing elements of press regulation into the law of the land. We should be wary of any legislation that has the potential to infringe free speech and a free press. In this House, which has been the bulwark of democracy for centuries, we should think very carefully before crossing this line.
On the grounds of practicality, no matter how simple the intention of the new law, the legislation required to underpin the regulatory body would, I believe, become more complicated. Paragraphs 71 and 72 of the executive summary begin to set out what would be needed in the legislation. For example, it refers to validating the standards code and recognising the powers of the new body.
If you turn to page 1772 in Volume IV of the full report, it says this about the new law. It must,
‘identify those legitimate requirements and provide a mechanism to recognise and certify that a new body meets them’.
The danger is that that would create a vehicle for politicians, whether today or at some time in future, to impose regulations and obligations on the press—something that Lord Justice Leveson himself wishes to avoid.
Thirdly, on the grounds of necessity, I am not convinced at this stage that statute is necessary to achieve Lord Justice Leveson’s objectives. I believe that there may be alternative options for putting in place incentives, providing reassurance to the public and ensuring that the Leveson principles are put in place, and that these options should be explored.
These questions, including those about data protection, are fundamental questions that we must resolve. I have therefore invited the Deputy Prime Minister and the leader of the Opposition to join me in cross-party talks, starting immediately after this Statement. But let me be clear: a regulatory system that complies with the Leveson principles should be put in place rapidly. I favour giving the press a limited period of time in which to do this. It does not need to wait for all the other elements of Lord Justice Leveson’s report to be implemented. While no one wants to see full statutory regulation, let me stress: the status quo is not an option. Be in no doubt; we should be determined to see Lord Justice Leveson’s principles implemented.
Mr Speaker, there is much that we in this country can be proud of—the oldest democracy in the world, freedom of speech, a free press, and frank and healthy public debate—but this report lays bare that the system of press regulation we have is badly broken and has let down victims badly. Our responsibility is to fix this. The task for us now is to build this new system of press regulation that supports our great traditions of investigative journalism and free speech but protects the rights of the vulnerable and the innocent, and commands the confidence of the whole country. I commend this Statement to the House.”
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord the Leader of the House for repeating a Statement given in the other place by the Prime Minister on the report published today of the inquiry carried out by Lord Justice Leveson. I also say to the noble Lord that I welcome the opportunity for cross-party discussions. For our part, we will seek to convince the Government—or indeed, the noble Lord’s part of the Government—to put their faith in all the recommendations of the report.
I start by echoing the tribute that the noble Lord has paid to Lord Justice Leveson and his team. In particular, I thank them for the painstaking, impartial and comprehensive way in which they have conducted this inquiry. I thank the Lord Justice for the clarity with which he has explained his report today. Most of all, we on these Benches want to pay tribute to the innocent victims who gave evidence to the inquiry—people who did not seek to be in the public eye, who suffered deep loss and grief and who then faced further trauma at the hands of sections of the press. We pay tribute to Bob and Sally Dowler—it is easy to forget now that without their revelations last July about what happened to them and their daughter, and their courage in speaking out, we would not be here today—and to Gerry and Kate McCann, who suffered so much and showed such courage. Kate McCann, whose daughter remains missing, saw her private diary published by the News of the World for the sake of a story. They gave evidence to the inquiry to serve the wider public interest and I pay tribute to them. It is they who should be at the forefront of our minds today.
A free press is essential to a functioning democracy. The press must be able to hold the powerful, especially politicians, to account without fear or favour. That is part of the character of our country. At the same time, we do not want to live in a country where innocent families such as the McCanns and the Dowlers can see their lives torn apart simply for the sake of profit and where powerful interests in the press know that they will not be held to account. This is also about the character of our country. There never was just one rogue reporter. Lord Justice Leveson concludes that a whole range of practices from phone hacking to covert surveillance, harassment and other wrongful behaviour were widespread—all in breach of the code by which the press was supposed to abide.
We on these Benches recognise that many decent people work in our country’s newspapers and that not every newspaper did wrong. However, Lord Justice Leveson concludes:
“it is argued that these are aberrations and do not reflect on the culture, practices or ethics of the press as a whole. I wholly reject this analysis”.
That will not come as a surprise to many people but, as Lord Justice Leveson also concludes:
“there has been a persistent failure”,
by politicians,
“to respond … to public concern about the culture, practices and ethics of the press”.
All politicians must take responsibility for that.
The publication of this report is the moment when we must put that right, upholding the freedom of the press and guaranteeing protection and redress for the citizen. As the Prime Minister himself said at the Leveson inquiry:
“If the families like the Dowlers feel this has really changed the way they would have been treated, we would have done our job properly”.
The Opposition agree very much with that statement.
We should be clear about Lord Justice Leveson’s proposals and why they are different from the present system. He proposes a genuinely independent regulator with effective powers to protect and provide redress for the victims of abuse. He gives responsibility for establishing the system to the press, as now, but he provides a crucial new guarantee which we have never had before. He builds in a role for the media regulator, Ofcom, to ensure that the system that is established passes the test we would all want to see applied to it—that is, that it is truly independent and provides effective protection for people such as the McCanns and the Dowlers. To make this guarantee real, he recommends that both Ofcom’s power and these criteria of independence and effectiveness should be set out in statute, a law of this Parliament, with truly independent regulation of the press guaranteed by law.
Lord Justice Leveson’s proposals are measured, reasonable and proportionate. We on this side unequivocally endorse both the principles set out and his central recommendations. We support this new system of regulation. We support the Lord Justice’s view that Ofcom is the right body to carry out the task of recognition of the new regulator. We support his proposal that Parliament should lay down in statute the role of Ofcom. We endorse Lord Justice Leveson’s proposal that the criteria any new regulatory body must meet should be set out in statute.
Does the noble Lord the Leader of the House accept Lord Justice Leveson’s analysis that his recommendations cannot be characterised as statutory regulation of the press? He argues that what is proposed is independent regulation of the press, organised by the press, with a statutory verification process to ensure that the required levels of independence and effectiveness are met by the system “in order”, as he says,
“for publishers to take advantage of the benefits arising as a result of membership”.
Does the noble Lord accept that analysis? Does the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, also not follow the point made by Lord Justice Leveson that it is essential that there should be legislation to underpin the independent self-regulatory system and to facilitate its recognition in legal processes?
Lord Justice Leveson has, I believe, made every effort to meet the concerns of the industry. There are some who will say that this will not work because the press will not co-operate. Does the noble Lord the Leader agree that this arrangement, as Lord Justice Leveson says, will work, but only if the press now come forward to sign up to it with genuine commitment? If we cannot achieve a comprehensive system involving all major newspapers then Lord Justice Leveson has set out the necessary alternative—essentially, direct statutory regulation. Do the Government agree that if the newspapers refuse to adopt the system proposed, this will be necessary and will need to be implemented?
Lord Justice Leveson has genuinely listened. He has acted with the utmost responsibility. Surely newspaper editors and proprietors should now do the same. He also reaches important conclusions on the need to prevent too much media influence ending up in one pair of hands. He proposes that there should be continuous scrutiny of the degree of media plurality and a lower cap than that provided by competition law. Will the noble Lord the Leader say that the Government will now take this forward? Lord Justice Leveson also makes specific suggestions about greater transparency about meetings and contacts between politicians and the press. He says that they should be considered as an immediate need. We agree, and we hope that they can be taken forward too.
As I said earlier, we welcome the Prime Minister’s offer of immediate cross-party talks on the implementation of the recommendations on press regulation, but those talks must be about implementing these recommendations, not whether we implement them. These talks must agree a swift timetable for implementation. They must agree to legislate in the next Session of Parliament with a new system up and running at the very latest by 2015. By the end of January next year, we should have an opportunity for Parliament to endorse and proceed with the Leveson proposals. Does the noble Lord the Leader of the House agree?
We should move forward together. After 70 years, seven reports and many last-chance saloons which have gone absolutely nowhere, now is the time to act. The case is compelling and the evidence is overwhelming. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make change that the public can trust. In doing so, we ought to remember the words of Bob and Sally Dowler at the Leveson inquiry. They said:
“there is nothing that can be done to rectify the damage that has been done to our family… All that we can hope for is a positive outcome from this inquiry so that other families are not affected in the way that we have been”.
Surely, on behalf of every decent British citizen who wants protection for people like the Dowler family, and who wants a truly free press that can expose abuse of power without abusing its own power, we must act.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, very much for his response. He has made a similar analysis to that of the Prime Minister on the virtues of the Leveson report, come to many similar conclusions and, indeed, accepted many of the same recommendations as the Prime Minister has done on behalf of the Government. The noble Lord was right to reiterate his thanks to Lord Justice Leveson and to remind us that the reason why all this came to a head was that the disgraceful way in which so many innocent victims had been affected by the press’s behaviour over a great deal of time came to light. It is right that Parliament and politicians should be part of the responsibility for allowing that to happen over many decades. The noble Lord talked about cross-party talks, and I am glad that the Labour Party will play its full part.
The report that has been published stands almost six inches high. It is an extremely authoritative document. It will take time to read and to digest. I am glad to be able to announce to the House that we will have an opportunity for a full debate on the report on Tuesday 18 December, which will give us time to digest the report and its implications before coming back to the House and making, no doubt, substantive speeches on its conclusions.
The noble Lord said that we should try to deal with this as quickly as possible. Our view, with which I hope the noble Lord will agree, is that there is much here that the press can get on with immediately. They do not need any more encouragement from Parliament or from Lord Justice Leveson to put the changes into effect, and they should do so. The noble Lord asked about the role of Ofcom. That is one of the things that we need to discuss in the cross-party discussions.
As to whether or not this is statutory regulation, I agree with the analysis of Lord Justice Leveson, as the noble Lord invited me to do. In fact, Lord Justice Leveson argued strongly that his model is not statutory regulation. He says in his report:
“Despite what will be said about these recommendations by those who oppose them, this is not, and cannot be characterised as, statutory regulation of the press”.
It is a statement of belief in independent self-regulation. However, there are aspects of statutory regulation that are required in all of this. We are not convinced that statutory regulation would be the best way of providing for these things. There needs to be some further discussion, and that is what we will continue to have in the cross-party talks.
I hope that the talks will be businesslike; there is no reason why they should not be. They will be carried on as well by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. I hope that we will be able to conclude those discussions as soon as possible.
Lord Fowler
My Lords, are there not two major points on which we can all agree? First, the campaign organised by the big newspapers before the report was even published to say that Leveson was backing a state-regulated press has been shown to be utterly false, and the newspaper advertisements suggesting that he was about to side with Mugabe, Castro and all kinds of other dictators should be condemned in the strongest possible terms.
Secondly, I think that I was the first parliamentarian to call for an inquiry. Can we also agree that Lord Justice Leveson has done the country an enormous service by exposing the corruption that has taken place in some parts of the press and by criticising the inadequacy of the Press Complaints Commission? Lord Justice Leveson has proposed a new, absolutely independent complaints body with the very minimum of statutory underpinning, which, in my view, is good for the public and good for the press. I urge the Government to take the opportunity of the inquiry that they set up and to implement these eminently sensible proposals. If we falter now, I think that we will live to regret it.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I very much welcome what my noble friend Lord Fowler has said. He is right that there has been an extraordinary mood of hysteria in recent days and weeks about what the Leveson report would come out with. Many people will regard what my noble friend said about the report to be right. He was right to call for an inquiry and my right honourable friend the Prime Minister was right to set it up. That decision has been vindicated: the report has exposed corruption and the inadequacy of the current press regulatory system, and has pointed us in the right direction to go forward from here.
Baroness Hollins
My Lords, I gave evidence to the Leveson inquiry and I am very pleased to see his report. I have read only the executive summary. I gave evidence because, after my daughter was attacked, my family and I were subject to sustained harassment, press intrusion and misinformation, which continued for about five years. The coverage usually was sensational but usually kindly in tone. However, its main purpose was commercial. Will the noble Lord the Leader of the House reassure us that the Government will act swiftly to implement the recommendations made by Lord Justice Leveson? Victims of abuse deserve nothing less. Will he also tell us what steps the Government will take to prevent a decisive response being derailed by vociferous elements of the industry—those parts of the industry that have been thoroughly disgraced and remain remorseless?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, the noble Baroness’s words are particularly poignant because of what she and her family went through some years ago. I am sure that I speak for the whole House in saying that there is no place in ethical journalism for what happened to her; it was outrageous. It is one of the issues that have brought the reasons for this report to a head.
I confirm that we will act swiftly. We have acted swiftly already today by announcing the areas on which we comprehensively agree and in announcing cross-party talks. Perhaps I may reiterate what I said a moment ago: there is no reason why the press cannot start in this new direction as quickly as possible, providing a system of independent and transparent regulation with very firm criteria, along the lines proposed in the report from Lord Justice Leveson.
Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury
Lord Justice Leveson said today that the Black-Hunt proposal for a reformed PCC does not come close to delivering regulation that is genuinely free and independent both of the industry and political control, and has called for an independent verifier established by statute. Twenty years ago, David Calcutt QC came to virtually the same conclusion and was ignored. Are we not in danger here of repeating the mistake of 1992 of asking for advice and then ignoring it?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, the overwhelming majority of the recommendations, suggestions and thought process that Lord Justice Leveson has gone through have been accepted by us and, no doubt, by the press. I say “no doubt”—I very much hope that that applies to the press. There are issues that we believe need to be explored more thoroughly, particularly about the role that legislation should play. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister said this afternoon that he had issues on the principle, the practicality and the necessity of that. These are issues that we can explore in the near future.
Lord Prescott
My Lords, I speak as a victim of our free press. The failure of the PCC and the Metropolitan Police is well recorded in this excellent report by Lord Justice Leveson, who has given us solutions to that failure. I welcome the report, as it recommends change and accepts the recommendations that I made for change, including the voluntary and statutory framework, when he invited me to do so in giving evidence to his inquiry. Does the Minister accept that Lord Justice Leveson was well aware that there could be a failure, as there has been in the past six inquiries into the press, as to whether they would carry out their promises and make the change? In those circumstances, is the Minister prepared to consider in the legislation that will come before this House a sunset clause that makes it clear that, if the press fail to carry out their promises, we have the authority in the Bill to bring forward a statutory framework, which Lord Justice Leveson said was the only alternative?
Lord Strathclyde
The noble Lord was clearly wronged by elements of the press. He is right to say that Lord Justice Leveson has comprehensively exposed a failure in the PCC, which cannot continue any more. He largely absolves the police from blame, although he has made some important recommendations on certain changes relating to the relationship between the police and the press.
I know that there are a lot of speakers. I shall try not to make my answers too long so as to get in as many as we possibly can, but I remind noble Lords that there will be another Statement along in a minute.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern
My Lords, I shall try to follow that good example. When Lord Justice Leveson was appointed, I knew that we had an excellent judge to undertake this task. I knew from a certain amount of experience of being in Government in the past that he was dealing with an extremely difficult problem. We had the “last chance saloon” and so on over the time when I was in Government, so I know how difficult it is. Surely we have a unique opportunity at this time to go ahead with an extremely well thought-out system for giving the press the right of self-regulation that is seen to work in the public interest. The only purpose of the statutory arrangement is to ensure that that self-regulation will be properly independent in the sense that Lord Justice Leveson explained. I would have thought that the sooner we can get all-party consent to this, the better. There will be a certain amount of discussion about detail, but the principles and essentials of the legislation can surely be put in place very quickly. We owe it to people like those who have been referred to to do it as quickly as possible to prevent that kind of thing happening again.
Lord Strathclyde
My noble and learned friend has a great deal of experience and knowledge on this subject, and I agree with him that what we asked Lord Justice Leveson to do was extremely difficult—yet what he has done is to bring his intellect to bear and publish an extremely impressive report and analysis. I agree with much of what my noble friend said; there is an opportunity for us to work together on a cross-party basis to bring about some extremely good results as quickly and effectively as possible.
Lord Mandelson
My Lords, the Prime Minister said at the beginning of his Statement that above all we should put the interests of the victims first. I am afraid that in his response to Leveson he is doing the very opposite of that: he is putting politics and the perceived power of certain sections of the press before the interests of the victims. Let us be honest, he is not the first Prime Minister to be in that position.
The Leveson report is a very moderate and realistic set of proposals that seeks to achieve two things. First, it seeks to achieve high standards of journalism in this country and the untrammelled ability of journalists to pursue those high standards, while at the same time putting in place a rudimentary protection of the rights and freedoms of individuals. It is perfectly clear that what certain sections of the press—they are by no means unified—want to put forward instead is a variation of the PCC, which, as we know, is and always has been a plaything of the Daily Mail and News International—nothing more or less than that.
Leveson is right: we need a statutory longstop to a genuinely independent system of regulation—a statute that should give privileges to the press because of the unique role that they play in our society, but should make absolutely clear that while they enjoy those unique privileges, they are none the less not above the law in how they behave.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, it is truly astonishing to hear the noble Lord complain about politicians being political. I cannot join him in his accusation that my right honourable friend is afraid of the power of the press; in fact, I think that my right honourable friend has accepted most of the criteria set out in this report. Where I agree with the noble Lord is that we should have uppermost in our minds the interests of the victims, and should judge the criteria and the new system of regulation against that. The new regulatory system, unlike the current one, will be devoid of editors and members of the Government on its governing board. That is an enormous strength to ensure that it can never again become a plaything of any newspaper group.
The Lord Bishop of Liverpool
My Lords, in the public debate there is sometimes an assumption that the problem with the press is that of a rogue reporter distorting a story. When I chaired the Hillsborough independent panel, we became aware of the way that one news agency failed not just one national newspaper but several, which between them became cumulatively responsible for misrepresenting the events of Hillsborough for a generation. Will the Government ensure that the regulatory body is sufficiently equipped to deal with complaints against such complex and enormous misrepresentation?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, the right reverend Prelate brings a very particular experience of abuses of the press that have recently come to light. Again, it will be a test of the new regulatory system whether or not it will have the resources that he mentioned. At first reading of the executive summary, I am bound to say that I think the intention is that it will. However, that is precisely the kind of thing that we will be able to discuss in great detail.
Lord Soley
My Lords, some people have been quick to demand that the powerful be held to account. Now is the time to hold the press to account because they have avoided that for too many years and we have all ducked the problem for too long. What troubles me about the Statement repeated by the Leader of the House today is that it calls on the press to make these changes, with which I agree, but if that means that they then do not proceed to legislate on the Leveson proposal, I will tell him exactly what will happen: in about two or three years’ time, when the spotlight of Leveson has dimmed, they will go back to their old ways. We must have Leveson.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord. Lord Justice Leveson has created a new, self-regulatory system. We expect the press to put it into effect as quickly as possible. We should all be guardians to make sure that the press sticks to the new regulatory system.
Lord Elystan-Morgan
My Lords, I join in with the well deserved congratulations tendered in respect of Lord Justice Leveson, but does the Minister agree that a great deal of irrelevant nonsense has been spoken on the issue of freedom of the press? The press is subject to the law of sedition, defamation, treason, contempt and dozens of other fundamental legal principles, yet remains free. In Leveson we have nothing more than a statutory framework for spelling out certain principles of human decency that should have been abided by all along.
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I do not entirely agree with the noble Lord that there has been a lot of nonsense spoken, but I do agree that there are statutes designed specifically to deal with excesses not just of the press but of other people as well. There are also instances—for example data protection—where the press has a privileged position and is excluded from the law. This is one area we need to examine.
Lord Hattersley
My Lords, in another place the Prime Minister was less than precise about how a regulatory authority that was not statutorily backed would be constituted. Does the Leader of the House agree that were the regulatory authority to be financed and nominated by the press itself, it would no longer be independent?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, there is perhaps a small misunderstanding. The authority will not be nominated by the press. It will be a truly independent body that will not have editors on it, as the current body has.
Lord Black of Brentwood
My Lords, I agree with my noble friend on the need to get on with establishing a new system of tough, independent regulation. The Prime Minister has laid down a tough challenge to the newspaper industry to proceed quickly. I reassure him that the industry will rise energetically to the challenge, starting tomorrow. There is much in the Leveson principles that he referred to that the industry can agree with. The proposals can be fully deployed in the proposals set out by my noble friend Lord Hunt. As the report says on page 1769, there is no reason why the industry model should not be capable of adaptation to meet the requirements set down. I concur, and we can look at the various points raised.
Finally, I echo the great caution expressed about the role in the new system of the statutory regulator Ofcom. I should have prefaced my remarks by declaring my interest as executive director of the Telegraph Media Group. I draw the Leader’s attention to paragraph 6.16 in volume 4 of the report, which states that the recognition body would be required to determine whether the standards code met statutory requirements. That would put a state regulator at the very heart of the newsroom. Does he agree that if the industry can make rapid progress in the task of establishing a new system, such a move would be not just profoundly dangerous but completely unnecessary?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I very much welcome what my noble friend said about the press welcoming this report as much as we do. It is for the press to come up with a very firm timetable for how quickly they will put this into effect. The issue of Ofcom is one that we will discuss over the next few weeks.
Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale
My Lords, I discovered towards the end of the Leveson inquiry that my daughter’s mobile phone had been hacked 10 years ago. Her intimate conversations were used in a story published in the News of the World and other publications. Will the Government and the leaders of all parties bear in mind that it is not just those in the public eye but the families of those in the public eye, including the wider families—the brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, mothers and fathers—who suffer from press intrusion even though they have never volunteered to be in public life. Will the Government also consider, in the discussions that are about to take place about the importance of the media outwith London, the culture of the media across the whole of the United Kingdom, particularly in Scotland and Northern Ireland, where the national media operate in just as influential a way as they do in London for the rest of the UK?
Lord Strathclyde
My Lords, I agree entirely with what the noble Lord said. He is also right about the rest of the United Kingdom, and we shall need to take into account the devolved Administrations to make sure that they are fully on board with some of these changes.
Leveson Inquiry
(11 years, 5 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)
My Lords, I would like to repeat a Statement on the Leveson inquiry made earlier in the House of Commons by the Deputy Prime Minister. The Statement is as follows:
“Mr Speaker, I am grateful for the opportunity to address the House. I know it is unusual, but this is an unusual debate. The terms of reference for Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry were agreed on a cross-party basis. As the House has heard, we intend to proceed on a cross-party basis. So I think it is right that Parliament is clear on the initial views of the Government—across the coalition.
First, let me say that I agree with a huge amount that has already been said by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, which bodes well for the cross-party talks taking place later this afternoon.
I would like to thank Lord Justice Leveson for his extremely thorough report. In my view, there are two big liberal principles at play in this debate: on the one hand, the belief that a raucous and vigorous press is the lifeblood of a healthy democracy; on the other, the belief that the vulnerable, the innocent and the weak should be protected from powerful vested interests.
A free press does not mean a press that is free to bully innocent people or to abuse grieving families. What I want now is for us to strike a better balance between those two liberal principles, so that our media can scrutinise the powers that be, but cannot destroy innocent lives; so that the journalists up in the Press Gallery can hold us, the politicians, to account, but we can look up to the individuals and families in the Public Gallery knowing they have the right protections in place.
I have always said that I would support Lord Justice Leveson’s reforms, providing they are proportionate and workable. I will come on to why, at first glance, I believe that to be the case for the report’s core proposal for a tougher system of self-regulation, supported by new, independent checks, recognised in law.
However, I do not want to disguise the fact that I have some specific concerns about some specific recommendations; for example, on data protection rules, and any changes to the way in which journalists can use personal information when reporting in the public interest; and on the suggestion that it should be Ofcom that independently verifies the new press watchdog. Ofcom has a key role in regulating the content of broadcast media, but I am yet to be convinced that it is best placed to take on this new, light-touch function with the print media as well. Lord Justice Leveson has himself said this function could be fulfilled by a new body.
However, on the basic model, of a new, self-regulatory body, established with a change to the law, in principle, I believe this can be done in a proportionate and workable way. I understand the entirely legitimate reasons why some Members of this House are wary of using legislation. I myself have thought long and hard about this. I am a liberal; I do not make laws for the sake of it—and certainly not when it comes to the press. Indeed, when I gave my own evidence to the inquiry, I made the point that, if we could create a rigorous, independent, system of regulation that covers all the major players, without any changes to the law, of course we should. But no one has yet come up with a way of doing that.
Lord Justice Leveson has considered these issues at length. He has found that changing the law is the only way to guarantee a system of self-regulation that seeks to cover all of the press, and he explains why the system of sticks and carrots he proposes has to be recognised in statute in order to be properly implemented by the courts.
What is more, changing the law is the only way to give us all the assurance that the new regulator is not just independent for a few months or years but independent for good. Someone will need to check, periodically, that the independence of the regulator has not been weakened over time. The report explains why that needs to be set out in law. As Lord Justice Leveson himself says:
‘This is not, and cannot be characterised as, statutory regulation of the press’.
This is a voluntary system, based on incentives, with a guarantee of proper standards. It is not illiberal state regulation.
It is worth dwelling on that point for a moment because, while there has, rightly, been a lot of discussion about the risks of legislating, there have, so far, been key arguments missing from this debate. First, the press does not operate in some kind of lawless vacuum; it has to abide by the law. In many instances it is already protected by the law, and I agree with the report that we should actually go further in enshrining the freedom of the press in statute.
Secondly, it has been suggested that using the law will blur the line between politicians and the media, but we must not ignore the extent to which that line has already been blurred under the current system of self-regulation. It is the status quo which has allowed such cosy relationships between political and media elites to arise in the first place. And let us not forget that, of the five PCC chairs, three were serving parliamentarians who took a party whip. Far from allowing greater overlap, the laws that have been proposed give us a chance to create a hard wall between politics and the press.
Thirdly, as the report notes, there is already an example of statutory underpinning in the Press Council of Ireland, which has been accepted by a number of UK newspapers. The Daily Mail, the Daily Mirror, the Daily Star, the Sun, the Sunday Times, the Mail on Sunday and the Sunday Mirror are all members; they all publish Irish editions. I have not yet heard these papers complain of a deeply illiberal press environment across the Irish Sea.
Of course, neither I nor anyone can be certain of exactly how these proposals will look until we have worked up the detail. The two tests I have set—that any reforms must be workable and proportionate—will need to be met in practice as much as in principle, and if they are not I will be the first to sound the alarm. In that event, we would then need to consider alternatives.
Absolutely the worst outcome in all this would be for nothing to happen at all, but we must not now prevaricate. I, like many people, am impatient for reform. Bluntly, nothing I have seen so far in this debate suggests to me that we will find a better solution than the one which has been proposed. Nor do I draw any hope from the repeated failure of pure self-regulation that we have seen over the past 60 years. We need to get on with this, without delay. We owe it to the victims of these scandals, who have already waited too long for us to do the right thing—too long for an independent press watchdog, in which they can put their trust. I am determined we do not make them wait any more”.
I commend this Statement to the House.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, for repeating the Statement of his right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister in the other place. It is a bit like the No. 11 bus: we have been waiting a long time for a Statement on press regulation and two come along at the same time. The House has shown remarkable sympathy to accommodate the strains and stresses of the coalition Government and allow this to happen. Perhaps it will be equally accommodating when we are dealing with the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill, which we hope will come along at some point.
I found myself largely in agreement with much of what the noble Lord, Lord McNally, said. I also pay tribute to his long-standing and consistent work in this area. Of course, the reason why the Deputy Prime Minister found it necessary to make a statement separate from that of the Prime Minister is now clear: there is a fundamental difference between the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is extremely reluctant that statute should be involved in any way in a system of independent regulation of the press, whereas the Deputy Prime Minister is clearly convinced that a new system of independent regulation must be supported by statute. I invite the noble Lord, Lord McNally, to reiterate that Lord Justice Leveson could not have been clearer about why statutory underpinning of his proposed system of independent self-regulation is required. Paragraph 70 of the executive summary of the Leveson report says plainly that,
“it is essential that there should be legislation to underpin the independent self-regulatory system and facilitate its recognition in legal processes”.
Does the noble Lord, Lord McNally, accept that Lord Justice Leveson absolutely rejects as inadequate the proposals put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Black? In paragraph 53 of the executive summary, Lord Leveson says that,
“the new body must represent the interests of the public as well as the press and the proposed model”—
the Black model—
“does not go anything like far enough to demonstrate sufficient independence from the industry (and in particular, serving editors) or sufficient security of high and unalienable standards for the public; neither does it appear to have sufficient support from all the major participants within the industry”.
Surely that is persuasive in the need for action to provide the statutory underpinning that Lord Justice Leveson puts forward.
In his response, the Prime Minister seems to be setting himself against a fundamental point of what Lord Justice Leveson proposes. He is setting himself against where the public are and he is certainly setting himself against where victims of the media want politicians to be. Of course, legislating on the press is a difficult and complex area but we believe that the Prime Minister is making a misjudgment on this issue. He should put his faith in what Lord Justice Leveson is proposing and enact it.
We welcome the Statement from the noble Lord, Lord McNally, and look forward to working in cross-party talks with him and his party on this point. It is very simple: we should not allow the press to have another lock-in at the last chance saloon, which has lasted for so many decades. Our democracy needs a free press, but a clean press, too. We will work very hard to achieve that.
Lord McNally
My Lords, I am grateful for the kind, personal remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. The noble Lord, Lord Prescott, called out from a sedentary position, “What’s the difference?”. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, tries to find differences. One of the things that I found most encouraging about the two Statements—indeed, the three Statements made in the other place today—is the broad level of common ground. I hope that everyone will take the opportunity, including my noble friend Lord Black, to read the Leveson report and then match the statements that they made before reading it in the light of it. In some ways it is an insult to someone who has spent as long as Lord Justice Leveson has, whether it was a year or nine months—I am never quite sure, but it was a very long time—to produce a four-volume 2,000-page report, and then to announce, “I agree with this; I agree with this; I agree with this”. Let us read the report and think about how to go forward. I am pleased that, as far as I am aware, those cross-party talks have already been in place for the past 55 minutes, which bodes well.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws
My Lords, clearly Lord Justice Leveson’s report managed to answer the tests that he was set, which were basically how to reconcile freedom of the press with concern for the many victims who have suffered terrible mistreatment at the hands of the media. I think there is consensus in this House and in the other place that he has managed to do that with great aplomb, skill and proportionality.
I listened with care to what the noble Lord, Lord Black, said, and it filled me with concern. Here we are with a report that recommends regulation with the lightest of touch—it really only creates backstop oversight and allows the press themselves to create the independent regulatory system that we would all like to see—yet there is still a sense that somehow the media will not be satisfied and that the press barons and their supporters will rally to prevent anything happening.
There was a wonderful moment in the Leveson inquiry when Stephen Dorrell—who is not much remembered anymore but he was a Minister in the early 1990s in what was then the Department of National Heritage, now the Department for Culture—told how someone working on his team had produced a memo. Calcutt had just reported and the memo said, “We can’t do anything; we’re not going to do anything; we can’t say we are not going to do anything; we therefore have to find something to say that sounds as though we’re not going to be doing nothing”. That is the terrible thing that I feel could easily happen here again. We must not descend again. I would like the Minister—who, as everyone has said, has a great track record on this—to reassure us that he is not going to allow this to become the purview yet again of those masters of the universe who happen to run some sections of our press.
Lord McNally
My Lords, there will be a test tomorrow. If tomorrow’s newspapers and editorials follow the lines suggested by the noble Baroness, I—and, I hope, the noble Lord, Lord Black, and anyone who has influence on it—will say that our media have misjudged horrendously the public mood and the public disgust at their behaviour. It is simply not good enough to wave the flag that it will be a state-controlled press and Russia and Turkey will be pleased at what we are doing, when manifestly that is not the case. That would be really sad.
There is also a responsibility on us. I do not mind the odd bit of knockabout, and I might remind the other side of its record in this area at some points in this questioning, but the responsibility of the three parties that have had experience of government is immense. This is our chance, a chance that may not come again, and it would be a betrayal if we did not take it.
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon
My Lords, in that precise context, does my noble friend agree that those in the press who have so overplayed their hand in their pre-emptive bombardment of Leveson, in the hope that we would somehow put it aside, have woefully misjudged both the public mood and the seriousness of the problem that confronts them, to which Lord Justice Leveson has provided such a balanced reply?
Lord McNally
After long experience, I always agree with the noble Lord, Lord Ashdown.
Lord Clinton-Davis
My Lords, the Minister spoke about the vulnerable, the innocent and poor people. Undoubtedly the issues that such people face will be complex and they will need help. Will the noble Lord undertake that, in suitable cases, legal aid will be available to them?
Lord McNally
I suspect that legal aid would be available. However, this is not the evening to discuss that issue.
Baroness Hollins
My Lords, can the Minister suggest an appropriate and achievable timetable to scrutinise Lord Justice Leveson’s proposals for legislative action? Can he reassure the House that the case for legislation to underpin independent self-regulation will not simply be referred to another committee?
Lord McNally
I most sincerely hope not. As I said earlier, all-party talks started, as I understand it, at five o’clock. When I had the pleasure earlier today of sitting in on a meeting between the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister, they were both clearly determined that this issue would be pressed with all possible urgency. It will not run into the sand or go into the long grass, and the sooner that the press understand that and respond with a sense of urgency and reality, the better.
Lord Inglewood
My Lords, I should declare an interest as chairman of the Cumbrian Newspaper Group, not that that makes me much of a press baron. Will my noble friend confirm that the Government accept Lord Justice Leveson’s findings of fact in his report?
Lord McNally
I would assume so, although I am not sure whether there is an elephant trap in that. One of the things that have been said by all those who have responded is that they pay tribute to the absolute thoroughness of the work done by Lord Justice Leveson.
The Lord Bishop of Chester
My Lords, I welcome the report. Perhaps I may follow up the aside of the previous speaker and ask where do the press begin and where they end. It is not clear how much printed media there will be in the coming 20 years; increasingly they are going to be in the blogosphere, twittering and whatever, and it seems that, whatever the Government do, they must weigh that very carefully. The problems of the press are increasingly going to be the problems of the paperless media. I would like a reassurance that, in swiftly implementing what the inquiry says, the matter will be given careful thought.
Lord McNally
My Lords, we are most certainly moving into a new age, but let us be clear: newspapers that publish online are already subject to the same disciplines as the printed versions of those newspapers. As I think we discovered in the Lord McAlpine case, electronic tweeting, e-mails and so on are not protected from the other laws of this land.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Strathclyde)
My Lords, I think we should hear from the noble Lord, Lord Whitty.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, there seems to be one dimension that the discussion in this House so far has missed. A truly free press requires diversity of opinion and therefore diversity of ownership. A whole chunk of the recommendations in the report relate to that plurality point. The Government have a great chance. There is a Bill already before this House, the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, in which the recommendations made here on media ownership, competition and plurality could be introduced at this stage. Will the noble Lord and, indeed, the Leader of the House prevail upon their colleagues to consider putting them into the Bill?
Lord McNally
I will certainly take that suggestion back, and I think that the noble Lord is quite right. Although the Leveson report devotes a relatively small amount of attention to plurality, it throws on our respective Houses and on the Government the responsibility of looking at, monitoring and, if necessary, responding to questions of plurality. I hope that we will take up the challenge posed in the report because, as has been said, this is an industry in technical change and we may find that there are very rapid concentrations of power. We may well need to be able to respond to such concentrations, but whether or not that is done through the noble Lord’s suggestions is above my pay grade.
Lord Steel of Aikwood
My Lords, I hope I am not alone in expressing my deep sympathies for my noble friend and for the Leader of the House at having to repeat these two Statements in the House because it is surely not the right way to proceed. What really matters are the all-party talks, and I am delighted to hear from my noble friend that they have already started. The danger about these Statements is that they overemphasise the differences within the coalition before the talks have started. That is not the right way. Lord Justice Leveson took a long time to produce a weighty report, so we should treat it seriously and see that it is properly implemented.
Lord McNally
I hear what my noble friend said, but this is one of those dilemmas. In each House, my right honourable friend and I could have sat silently while a Conservative made the points, or we could have done what I think is the sensible thing, which is to set out clearly the attitudes of the three major parties that are going to have responsibility for seeing this through. I think we took the right decision and do not agree with my noble friend.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
On the specific point made by the noble Lord, Lord McNally, this is a different House from the House of Commons and very different in its procedures. I have agreed with everything that the noble Lord has said so I hope he will forgive me if I ask him: in what capacity was he speaking from the Dispatch Box? Why could he not have done what has been done on a number of previous occasions—the noble Lords, Lord Alderdice, and Lord Dholakia, have done it—and expressed a point of view from the Liberal Democrat Benches? That is what is done in this House, which is different from the other place.
Lord McNally
This House would not then have had the benefit of hearing what my right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister said in the other place. I was trying to work out how long the noble Lord and I have known each other. I think it is—
Lord McNally
So he knows the affection in which I hold him. However, I do not think that this is an issue for the barrack-room lawyers. It is a time for statesmanship in all three parties.
Lord Elystan-Morgan
My Lords, I resist completely any temptation to embarrass the noble Lord in relation to the issue of legal aid, something that I have assiduously sought to do over the past six months, but does the Minister accept that Lord Justice Leveson says in his report that any complaint should be made,
“without cost to the complainant”?
Therefore it does not matter whether that comes from legal aid or some other public purse—there should be that complete freedom and guarantee in this regard.
Lord McNally
As with other parts of the Leveson report, we will have to look at this. However, one of the things that I know is in the report is the suggestion that, rather than a purely legalistic solution, there should be a road for settling complaints against the press that is cost-free.
Lord Strathclyde
We have only had one Conservative speak so I think it should be my noble friend Lord Elton.
Lord Elton
My Lords, I come back to the involvement of statute. I was 12 years old when the first of the succession of reports on the misconduct of the press was published. I was not old enough to take much interest in it, but I have taken an increasing level of interest in the successive ones. Every report has concluded that the press has undertaken to behave better. I was greatly impressed by the proposals from my noble friends Lord Hunt and Lord Black but it comes down to the fact that if their working is dependent on the press fulfilling its undertakings to behave differently, then I hope my noble friend and his right honourable friend will look at the record before deciding how much weight to put on those undertakings.
Lord McNally
My noble friend makes a very sound point, and it is extremely good that it comes from someone on the Conservative Benches with such long experience of these matters.
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean
My Lords, the Deputy Prime Minister’s Statement makes the very important point that the statutory underpinning of the Press Council of Ireland is accepted by those very newspapers that have become so hysterical about the possibility of statutory underpinning in this country. Will the Deputy Leader of the House assure the House that this crucially important point will not be lost in the cross-party discussions that will take place and that the Deputy Prime Minister will stick to his guns on this point?
Lord Clement-Jones
My Lords, Lord Justice Leveson makes clear recommendations about changes to the framework of the Data Protection Act in terms of eliminating some of the exceptions that currently apply to the media. I note in the Statement repeated by my noble friend that my right honourable friend has certain reservations about that set of recommendations. Is the abuse of personal information not one of the root problems that we have seen during the past few years? Should we not proceed with those changes, particularly in light of the fact that his department would be responsible for making them?
Lord McNally
No, my Lords, we should not proceed with those changes but we should certainly move with speed to see how such changes could and should be implemented. The recommendations on data protection came slightly from left field; I am not sure that anyone was fully aware that Lord Justice Leveson would make suggestions in this area. It is an area where we are discussing matters in a European context, in terms of revising the European data directive and our own legislation. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Justice and I have already commissioned work within our own department to respond to the Leveson suggestions. As with other parts of the report, we will move forward with all due purpose.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
My Lords, while joining all the speakers who have condemned the attacks on people who are particularly vulnerable at times in their lives, such as the McCanns, and noting the Leveson report’s reference to a second inquiry, which cannot be discussed at this stage, will the Minister please confirm that not only the weak and vulnerable but everyone who has the sought the limelight or is in public life should be exempt from anything that is found to be an illegal action?
Lord McNally
Yes, my Lords, I am sure that that is broadly the case. I have just been asked to remind the House, in relation to the question asked by my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones, that the illegal use of data is already against the criminal law. I say in response to the noble Baroness that what we want is a press that respects us all, and for us all to respect that press.
Baroness Rawlings
My Lords, Lord Justice Leveson recommends that there should be a new a regulatory body for the press, that it should not be made up of the press, as was the PCC, and that it should not be made up of parliamentarians or Ministers. Who would make up this new independent body? Who would appoint the members? Would they be elected and what role would the judiciary play?
Lord McNally
These matters will be looked at because they are not prescribed in the report. Although the judiciary must be feeling a little overworked these days because of the number of times we ask them to pick up hot potatoes for us, it is an interesting thought that there may be some judicial role in setting up the body.
The key thing is to emphasise that there is a broad measure of support for this and, I suspect, a broad measure of political determination. There have been views from different places this evening. Although I have occasionally thought that this House could be reformed, I have never been in any doubt that there is a collective wisdom in the House that Governments should draw on, particularly at times like this. On 18 December, we will have a debate on this in the House. The other place contains faster readers and they will have their debate on Monday. The debate on 18 December could—and, knowing this House as I do, will—contain a great detail of experience and wisdom, which will carry us forward on this issue.
Violence Against Women
(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Jenkin of Kennington
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to prevent violence against women.
Baroness Jenkin of Kennington
My Lords, I am grateful for this opportunity to open this timely debate on violence against women. As noble Lords will appreciate, it is timed to coincide with the annual International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on 25 November, designated by the UN General Assembly to raise awareness of the fact that women around the world are subject to rape, domestic violence and other forms of violence, the scale and true nature of which is often hidden. Each year, this creates an opportunity for individuals, groups and NGOs such as Women for Women International, UN Women, UNICEF, ActionAid and of course DfID—to name but a few—to promote 16 days of activism, joining together to speak out against and raise awareness of the need to end violence against women. Over the past few days, I have found the tweets of these various organisations extremely illuminating. I am delighted that this debate falls within the 16-day campaign period which ends on 10 December. I hope that it, too, will serve to highlight and draw attention to some of the issues both domestically and internationally which so many others around the world are also currently discussing.
I am far from an expert in this area and look forward to hearing from noble Lords across the Chamber who speak with great experience and authority. I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Rendell, who, along with my honourable friend Jane Ellison in the other place, has been a leading campaigner on the issue of female genital mutilation. I look forward to her contribution to the debate. I look forward to hearing from the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, whose review into the treatment of rape complaints by public authorities has had such a significant impact.
I am also delighted that we will hear from three noble Lords. As in so many areas of policy, we need the support of men for things to change and for progress to be made. Here, I take the opportunity to pay tribute to two men of vision who have by their actions proved this point. Andrew Mitchell, when Secretary of State at DfID, ensured that women and girls are at the heart of every DfID programme—that includes 16 programmes in this area alone. As he said on International Women’s Day earlier this year,
“Discrimination and violence destroys the potential of girls and women in developing countries and prevents them from pulling themselves out of poverty”.
Also, the announcement of our Foreign Secretary, William Hague, earlier this month on preventing sexual violence in conflict and post-conflict situations was groundbreaking. I will return to that later in my remarks.
Before preparing for this debate, I was of course aware of the basic facts and statistics with regard to domestic violence, many of which have been raised in this Chamber during Questions or in debates, and will I am sure be raised again today. But looking through the briefings which we will all have been sent, I confess to being utterly shocked by the extent of what is going on under our own eyes. A friend of mine was recently hospitalised with broken ribs. It turned out that her husband had been beating her for years and neither her friends nor her family had any idea. She is one of the fewer than one in four victims who, suffering abuse at the hands of their partner, report it to the police. That means we have to do more to help victims feel confident about reporting these crimes and overcome the feelings of guilt they have about the consequences of doing so. As a society, we are failing to remedy the tragedy of gendered violence. In the UK alone, two women every week are killed by a partner or ex-partner, and every year 60,000 women are raped. Sexual harassment in schools, communities and workplaces is routine.
However, the hour is late and the time is tight. I shall focus my comments on the global situation. I hope that my noble friend in her closing remarks will expand on recent changes domestically which are addressing many of the challenges that we will discuss today. They include the new anti-stalking legislation, the Home Office’s call to end violence against women and girls and the fact that forcing a girl to marry against her will is to become a criminal offence in England and Wales.
I am sure that all of us in this Chamber welcome the Government’s new cross-governmental definition of domestic violence, which will be implemented next March. That definition will reduce the age at which domestic violence can be recognised from 18 to 16—something that is necessary given that the British Crime Survey in 2010 found that 16 to 19 year-olds are the most likely to suffer abuse from a partner. It affects more than one in 10 girls in that age group.
Violence against women and girls is the most widespread form of abuse world wide, affecting one-third of all women in their lifetime. Addressing violence against women and girls is a central development goal in its own right and key to achieving other development outcomes for individual women and their families, communities and nations. Globally, 603 million women live in countries where domestic violence is not yet considered a crime.
To mention a few specific issues, more than 60 million girls are child brides. I recommend the report of the APPG on Population, Development and Reproductive Health, A Childhood Lost, published earlier this week, which is packed with detailed information spelling out the consequences of child marriage, as well as some utterly tragic case histories.
Yesterday’s horrifying news of the beheading of a 15 year-old in northern Afghanistan because her father thought she was too young to marry, is the latest in an alarming trend of similar violence in the area. About 100 million to 140 million girls and women have experienced FGM. More than 600,000 women and girls are trafficked across borders each year, the vast majority for sexual exploitation. In a survey in India, 50% of men and women agree that wife beating is justified if the woman disrespects her in-laws or neglects the house. When violence against women is justified and attributed to the victim, change is very unlikely to occur.
In the South Kivu Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, reportedly the worst place in the world to be a woman or a child, there is an epidemic of rape—according to UNFPA, an average of 40 women every day. Given how difficult it is to get news out from some of those remote places, we can only assume that these dreadful stories are merely the tip of the iceberg.
As mentioned earlier, in his speech on 14 November about the use of violence and rape in war, William Hague said that we must shatter the culture of impunity for those who use rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war and shift the balance of shame away from survivors to the perpetrators of that crime. The Foreign Secretary is right to address what is a common view in some parts of the world that it is the victims who should feel ashamed. We need a cultural change through education and media so that women are empowered and gender relations can be built that sustain respect, harmony and non-violence. Those are all issues which need to be addressed both for the victims’ sake and for development reasons
Violence against women has its roots deeply embedded in the inequality between men and women. Violence is used as a tool to maintain subordination of and control over women. Gender inequalities and discrimination are exacerbated during crisis and social breakdown, meaning that already vulnerable girls and women are increasingly less likely to be able to defend themselves, or to break the cycle.
As I mentioned, violence against females impacts negatively on economic growth—indeed, the cost to society is billions of dollars in lost opportunities from education and employment as well as more direct costs for policing, healthcare and the justice system. Violence against girls has a direct correlation to poor performance in school, lower enrolment and high dropout rates. Females are often forced into pregnancy, and abuse can have serious repercussions for their physical and psychological ability to gain employment and participate in what we would consider to be normal lives.
I end by looking back briefly to the origins of this particular day. The international recognition that women have a right to a life free from violence is recent. Historically, their struggle with violence, and with the impunity that often protects the perpetrators, has been linked with their fight to overcome discrimination. Since its founding, the United Nations has concerned itself with the advancement of women's rights, but it was not until 1993 that it specifically targeted the high rates of violence against women. One of the aims of the resolution which adopted the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women was to overturn the prevailing governmental stance that violence against women was a private, domestic matter, not requiring state intervention.
Next March, Governments, NGOs and civil society leaders will again meet at the UN in New York for the 57th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. The priority theme is the elimination and prevention of all forms of violence against women and girls. As they meet, and as we continue our deliberations today, I hope that they and we bear in mind the remarks made at that meeting nearly 20 years ago by Boutros Boutros-Ghali, when he issued a statement in preparation of the declaration. He said:
“The struggle for women’s rights, and the task of creating a new United Nations, able to promote peace and the values which nurture and sustain it, are one and the same. Today—more than ever—the cause of women is the cause of all humanity”.
Baroness Rendell of Babergh
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, for introducing this debate on a subject that, sadly, is always with us. It comes at an apposite time for a new development that is taking place in the campaign against a particularly horrible type of violence against women. I speak, of course, about female genital mutilation.
Almost a decade has gone by since the passing of the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003, which makes it an offence to take a child abroad for mutilation and carries a maximum penalty of 14 years’ imprisonment. All of us associated with the Bill that became that Act hoped confidently for prosecutions but none has been brought. Three cases have been referred to the Crown Prosecution Service but none has made it to court. The police have tried, but a major objection has been and is that the young girls—it is usually children under 12 who are cut—are unwilling to give evidence against their parents. Another is that Horn of Africa communities maintain silence, even among themselves, on FGM issues.
Now, however, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, has spoken out on the criminality of this practice and published an action plan. The 10 provisions in the plan include: gathering more robust data on allegations of FGM, so that the scale of the problem can be gauged; identifying case studies from the data to examine emerging issues as to why the police officer or doctor did not proceed; investigating what has hindered investigations and prosecutions; raising with Ministers what the existing reporting duties are for medical professionals, social care professionals and teachers in referring possible FGM cases to the police; exploring how other jurisdictions prosecute this crime; examining how these have prosecuted cases of FGM; and asking what evidence is required to support charges of conspiracy to commit, or to aid and abet, the offence.
The plan proposes that the Director of Public Prosecutions should raise with Justice Ministers whether current legislation should be reviewed. Other police tactical options might operate and the question asked as to what intelligence could be collated to support evidence-gathering for a prosecution. The police and the Crown Prosecution Service should develop a protocol for the police to refer all cases of FGM to the CPS for early advice on lines of inquiry and evidential issues, so that the police can build a strong case. Discussions will take place with the Department for Education on whether guidance on Working Together to Safeguard Children requires updating for further clarity about FGM. A steering group has been established to oversee the progress on the action points ahead of the DPP’s next FGM prosecution round table in summer 2013.
I cannot stress too strongly the pleasure and hope that learning of this action plan will bring to the many who have supported campaigns against FGM and suffered continual disappointment during the past years. In the past decade, it has appeared that whatever might be happening in other EU countries—France, Italy and Sweden, among others—the UK was to remain a safe haven for those who practised with impunity the excision of young children’s genitalia. If this action plan can set in train a real advance in prosecution and therefore a warning to those contemplating FGM, it will be a step forward that should have happened 10 years ago, but now that such a decisive plan has been formulated, it must not be allowed to founder. Its progress will be watched avidly by the dozens, by now hundreds, of groups and organisations across the United Kingdom set up over the years to oppose this particular type of child abuse.
Baroness Hussein-Ece
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, for securing this important debate. I, too, woke up this morning to the horrifying headline news of the 14 year-old Afghan child who was beheaded by members of her family because her father had refused a marriage proposal for her. As we debate how we have a responsibility to lend our weight to end violence against women around the world, this terrible tragedy comes as a stark reminder of the urgency of this issue.
Michelle Bachelet, director of UN Women, in her message for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, called for bold action and decisive leadership to galvanise efforts to end the pandemic of violence against women and girls. Today, we know that 125 countries have laws that penalise domestic violence, which is a huge step forward from a decade ago, but that is not enough as 603 million women live in countries where domestic violence is still not a crime. Recently, a high-profile, educated woman from the Indian subcontinent told me of an incident where a senior official casually in conversation talked of how when he beat his wife, she knew what she had done wrong. This is by no means an unusual attitude and is not necessarily confined to poorer communities. I experienced threats of violence myself some years ago, when I set up the first project and centre to support Turkish and Kurdish women who experienced violence in the UK, from the very men who perpetrated that violence against women and their family behind closed doors, or who, often in the name of their so-called honour, which, as we all know, is dishonour, tried to control women by using violent methods.
Having laws in place is not enough. We need those laws to be properly implemented. We know that legislatures and enforcement authorities are usually dominated by men who often do not see this issue as a priority. We must do better to protect women and prevent this pervasive human rights violation. Governments and leaders must lead by example. Many Governments, such as the Afghan authorities, make promises, but it is time for Governments to translate international promises into concrete action. We need an increased number of women in politics, law enforcement and peacekeeping forces as well as economic opportunities for women. We also need educational campaigns, both here in the UK and elsewhere, that teach human rights and advocate mutual respect that will inspire young people so that the next generation can show leadership on ending violence against women.
Here in the UK, we are still working hard to eliminate and educate people in our society to change behaviour and attitudes, but according to the NSPCC sadly one in three teenage girls experience sexual violence from their boyfriends. We need to look at how women are being portrayed in some sections of the media, particularly in online sites.
In showing leadership and using our influence to progress this work internationally, will the Minister consider whether the UK will lend its support to the recommendations that Oxfam, among others, has put forward on human rights featuring prominently in UK diplomacy at international and country level with specific attention to gender-based violence, including sexual violence, and also on championing a place at the table for women in peace negotiations, in line with UN Security Council Resolution 1325, to help to ensure that gender-based violence is recognised as part of any peace process and that women’s rights are sustained over the long term?
As the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, said, the 57th session of the Commission on the Status of Women will be held next March and will be on this theme. It is important that the UK Government show leadership at this event and support the call from UN Women and its expert group for the development of an international implementation plan to end violence against women. Will the Minister say whether this will be the case?
Baroness Stern
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, for initiating this important debate during the 16 days. I shall concentrate my remarks on what needs to be done to prevent rape and serious sexual assault in this country; I am talking particularly about the rape of those over the age of 13, not young children.
Great progress in dealing with rape and serious sexual assault has been made in recent years, both under the previous Government and under the coalition Government. The Government have made clear in a number of policy documents what they see as the right approach, with which I agree wholeheartedly. First, the victim must be central to the response, and help and services should be provided regardless of the possible criminal justice outcome. Secondly, good specialist law enforcement is essential. Thirdly, prevention must always be accorded time and resources.
Those three aspects are interconnected. If victims are at the centre and given the support and help they need, they are more likely to stick with the legal process and more likely to give information that might help prevention efforts. I will illustrate this with one small example. Sexual assault referral centres are key to an approach that puts the victim first. These are places that are run ideally by the NHS and commissioned jointly by the police and the NHS, where victims reporting rape go straight away for forensic testing and attention to any other immediate needs. In the London sexual assault referral centres, of which I am patron, a nurse reads all the reports of all the cases that they deal with: those reported to the police and those of people who come to be tested but do not want to report to the police. The nurse puts stickers on a map which identify the clubs and nightspots which seem to be producing a number of cases. Where there is a cluster which suggests a particular nightspot is attracting those who prey on vulnerable women, the nurse talks to the management of the club and offers training to the staff to understand what is going on on their premises and work to prevent women being harmed.
That is one small example of how prevention should be woven into the thinking of every agency that sees and deals with the victim. Of course, spreading understanding of the law about rape, particularly to young people, must also be done. The London sexual assault referral centres have produced an interactive video, aimed at young men, called “Where is your line?”, aiming to make it clear that sex without consent is rape. I also congratulate the Home Office for its online educational campaign about rape and sexual assault, targeting 13 to 18 year-olds.
Dealing with rape and sexual exploitation is not a simple matter of a victim making a report, a suspect being charged, a court case and a conviction. Success is not that easy to measure. It is a complex matter involving a strategic approach in every area, with the police ideally having a specialist rape unit working in an integrated way with health and with the involvement of the range of organisations that care for the many vulnerable groups that are especially at risk.
Success cannot be measured by any one indicator on its own. I first ask the Minister therefore, how are the Government going to try and get this complex message across to the police and crime commissioners, who will now be in charge of policy in their areas? Secondly, is the Home Office anticipating a phase two of the online educational campaign that was so successful the first time around?
The Lord Bishop of Liverpool
My Lords, in thanking the noble Baroness for this debate, I must also apologise to the House that there are no women on these Benches to contribute to this important debate today. The fact that they are excluded from the Bench of Bishops is not unrelated to how women are treated generally throughout the world. Although religion can be a liberating force, history shows that it also can be used to confine and to constrain, and to reinforce prejudice against women.
One reason why I believe that women should be bishops in the Church of England is that in the history of my faith you can trace the liberation of women. I would go as far as to say that the cursive script of the hand of God in the course of history is seen through the development of the leadership of women: namely, in the Bible; in the early church; on the mission field; in the fact that the Supreme Governor of the Church of England is a woman; in that women serve on the General Synod; and in the exercise of leadership of women in our parishes where one-third of all clergy in the Church of England are now women. Indeed, if women did not serve in leadership in our parishes, the parish network of the Church of England would collapse today if they withdrew the gifts that they bring to the church and to the world.
I believe that the time has come in this historic development to open the door of the House of Bishops to the spirit of God and to the women of God. Not to do so reinforces prejudice and discrimination on the grounds of gender, and defies the biblical understanding that women, as well as men, equally bear the image of God.
In my capacity as Bishop to Prisons, I am particularly aware of the issues surrounding women in prison and on probation. Last January, I explored some of these themes in a BBC Radio 4 series, “The Bishop and the Prisoner”. At the risk of generalisation, and without exonerating perpetrators of crime, it is clear that the context in which many women offend is coloured by them being victims of abuse and violence. In 2002, according to the Ministry of Justice, more than 50% of women in prison reported suffering domestic violence and one in three reported sexual abuse.
The diocese of Liverpool sponsors a bail hostel, Adelaide House, for women who have come out of prison or are on probation. On one visit I met a number of women and in each case her story of offending was linked with her being the victim of physical abuse. They were not trying to excuse their behaviour but simply giving an account of their actions and reactions to being the victims of violence.
I should like the Minister to respond to two points. First, what progress are the Government making on implementing the proposals brought forward through the Corston report, especially in relation to female offenders who are the victims of violence? Secondly, on the point with which I began, will the Minister for Equality be seeking a formal meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury to explore how the Church of England might, with equity and justice, serve all the people of England?
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone
My Lords, I am honoured to follow the right reverend Prelate. I warmly commend his approach, and that of many of his colleagues, of taking every opportunity available, whatever the topic of debate, to reinforce the arguments for women on the Bishops’ Benches. Many of us should follow that example. If we could extend it to the Roman Catholic Church we might really be making progress. I entirely am with him on that issue.
I believe that many of these issues are deeply and profoundly cultural. We know that there was legislation to protect animals 20 years before legislation to protect children. The idea that a woman is somehow a chattel is very recent in our lives. For some years I, with my noble friend Lady Howe, was particularly involved in Brixton and Peckham, working with the Child Poverty Action Group. I remember an evening when a woman was screaming out at about one o’clock in the morning near where I lived. We went out and took her in, and had her for the night. The following morning she went home. No police came and there was no support for her. Only 20 years ago, there was the idea that culturally these issues were taboo and unacceptable, and that somehow it was the individual’s own fault.
More shockingly and more recently, we all have personal examples where we have been taken aback by the horror of the situation. A woman who worked with us for 25 years in Surrey suddenly arrived with bruises in her early 80s. Her husband suffered from pathological jealousy and, when he had his walking stick, all the way through his marriage, he would trip her up and then beat her with it—and this in a respectable Surrey village, with the shame and humiliation. That happened four years ago.
We talk about progress, as the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, did—and there has been great progress. The humiliation of being treated following rape by, I am sorry to say, some of the police and other forces, was almost as bad as the rape itself. Some of the agencies have been deeply unhelpful and humiliating, and have hurtfully said that women had brought it on themselves. I am delighted that the Home Secretary and the Minister for Equality, Maria Miller, have taken this seriously, with the 100 step action plan—and there is not only that but, as has been said, the work being done at DfID and the Foreign Office.
I can recall the British Council visiting a women’s group in Kenya, where the women were beaten and left in the back kitchen. When they could finally bear it no more they went back to their homes and the parents said, “You have brought shame on us—you must go back to your husband”. The British Council introduced legal rights and education policies to try to make progress.
People have talked about the subcontinent. India is a country where seven chief executives of banks are women but somehow there is still this massive group of women who have no rights and no dignity. I like practical projects. I know of a man called Vineet Nayar who has introduced 400 teachers in communities. They have the teacher only if they have 100% attendance by the girl children.
I know that I am encroaching on what the following speaker is going to discuss, but I have been very struck not only by what government can do and what charitable agencies can do—Oxfam, refuges, Women’s Aid—but also by what employers can do. My great good news at the moment is that there is a new charity, the Corporate Alliance Against Domestic Violence. What do we do at work about domestic violence? Who at work ever thinks that people are late or delayed or fearful about domestic violence spreading into the workplace? This is an organisation that reaches out to people in HR and business, which can do a huge amount of good. I hand over to the noble Baroness.
Baroness Scotland of Asthal
My Lords, I commend the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, for bringing forward this wonderful and important debate—and, indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, for introducing so generously a subject that I shall touch on. Noble Lords will know that I have to declare my interest as patron of the Corporate Alliance Against Domestic Violence, the Global Foundation for the Elimination of Domestic Violence, and chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Domestic and Sexual Violence.
This debate is timely, because we still live in a world where one in three women will suffer from domestic violence at some stage in their lives. It is still the greatest cause of morbidity in women and girls worldwide. Some 75% of those victims suffer abuse while at work and 56% of victims do not go to work at least five times a month. It was for that reason that we created the Corporate Alliance Against Domestic Violence in 2005, when I left government, to assist businesses to do what they could to reduce the impact of domestic violence on the workforce.
This issue can be tackled, but it needs us to tackle it together. In this country, we have moved from serial dysfunction to function by coming together in partnership to make a difference. Noble Lords will know that we managed together, with all parties working with the third sector and business, to reduce domestic violence in our country by 64% and reduce the economic cost of domestic violence by more than £7 billion.
However, it is not just in this country that we can do that. We worked with Spanish Ministers in 2006. As a result of that joint work and initiative, our Spanish colleagues took the matter further and reduced domestic violence homicide in Spain in 2006-10 by 25%. This is something we can do worldwide. For that reason I created the Global Foundation for the Elimination of Domestic Violence in 2011. I was proud to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Hussein-Ece, talk about the work of UN Women, because the global foundation joined its expert panel and assisted in drafting the UN policy in December 2011. We are now working in a number of countries, not least Turkey, where we have done a full in-country assessment. We launched EDV India in February this year. We have also formed a coalition of more than 200 organisations in 85 countries—the largest coalition to combat domestic violence—along with the Global Truce 2012 campaign. In doing that, we have, together with Peace One Day, reached 280 million people, and we hope to reach 3 billion people by 2015, so there is a great deal we can do.
However, there is concern here in our country that our focus hitherto has not been as good as it could be. Wearing my various hats, I am constantly being contacted by a number of our voluntary organisations, which are very concerned about this issue. Yesterday I was contacted by the Changing Lives project, which said that many female participants with whom it deals have overcome significant barriers around domestic violence, sexual abuse and forced marriages. The Changing Lives project provides advice and counselling to ensure that victims get support from local services. It trains staff and offers an advanced certificate in systemic family therapy. It also offers a brand of systemic family intervention that combines therapeutic support with parenting skills, and does so in community languages to bridge the gap. However, with the changes in funding, the level of support available to those affected by domestic violence has gone down significantly. As a significant number of community advice services have lost their funding and are no longer available to provide legal advice to these women, and they are not entitled to legal aid, many of these women and their children are experiencing a cycle of stress, physical health problems and mental distress.
All of us in this House, together with those outside, have fought very hard to change that paradigm. Have Her Majesty’s Government assessed, or do they intend to monitor, the effect that the cuts in public funding to legal aid, the provision of Sure Start places and parenting skills programmes, such as those provided in Bengali, Urdu and Somali, is having on vulnerable and hard-to-reach families? Will the Government help us to better address these issues in future?
Baroness Brinton
My Lords, the threat of violence remains a shocking part of everyday life for too many people. Noble Lords have spoken movingly of that in this important debate. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin of Kennington, for securing this debate.
Some noble Lords will be aware of my own experience of being stalked—thankfully, it was never actually violent. I want to focus on how the new law that came into effect last Sunday will begin to transform the lives of victims of stalkers, the vast majority of whom are women. The independent stalking inquiry chaired by Elfyn Llwyd MP, on which I was privileged to sit, heard evidence last year which shows that stalkers are frequently very bright, extremely manipulative and seek to control the lives of those whom they stalk in every way, every hour of every day. Problems have arisen in the past when the police and criminal justice system have not recognised the threat of violence, resulting in tragic consequences. For example, at the inquest of Clare Bernal, murdered by a former admirer in Harvey Nichols in 2006, the coroner said that the police could not have prevented her murder. However, this ignored the many signs which the police and others ignored. These included his threats to kill her and the fact that he had approached colleagues for advice on how to buy a gun and on the jail sentence for murder—all at a time when he had been arrested for harassment, stalking and threatening to kill, had been rearrested for breaking bail conditions, had talked of suicide and had lost his job. But no one thought to assess the risk he posed to Clare.
It did not have to be like this. The examples of Australia and the United States, which legislated some time before us, prove that comprehensive anti-stalking legislation can be highly effective. The Australian legislation, which first separated stalking from harassment and domestic violence, as we have now done, has led to a substantial decrease in stalking. Key to the legislation are police protocols to assist victims through their ordeal, including the allocation of a trained police officer as primary liaison and the training of all—yes, all—police officers to recognise stalking and its dangers.
Sadly, prosecution alone is often not enough to help a victim overcome the complex consequences of their ordeal. In America, stalking survivors have explained which measures undertaken by their local police department made the biggest difference in their cases and, ultimately, their lives. These included the speed of the officers’ response, putting safety first, the use of technology in recording evidence, and help for victims to understand the risks to themselves.
The new stalking law in England and Wales makes stalking a criminal offence in its own right and no longer just part of harassment. It gives courts the ability to sentence stalkers threatening violence to up to five years in prison. Unlike the Scottish law introduced two years ago, the legislation here goes further by stating that training and support is necessary for the entire criminal justice system. The victims of stalking also need expert help to protect themselves from the perpetrators.
I give my personal thanks to all Ministers who supported this legislation as it progressed through Parliament, and particularly to Lynne Featherstone, who made it a priority to champion the fight against violence against women in any form. It remains essential that we hear the voices of the victims and assess the risks to them. An anti-stalking law is only as effective as those who enforce it. The culture change proposed in the new law may take a while to implement, but I am sure that now we have a tool that can give women peace of mind and safety from the persistent nightmare of stalkers.
Lord McColl of Dulwich
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, for initiating this debate. What I am about to say may sound rather detached and clinical, because I shall draw on my experience as a surgeon. I will give your Lordships an example of this terrible problem. One evening a man started attacking his partner at home. He put her up against a wall and beat her for three hours, smashing her face with his fist, his foot and then with an instrument. Throughout the night he beat her intermittently and finally he raped her. She thought she was dying. The surgery to repair the terrible damage took five hours and cost thousands of pounds. Further operations had to be carried out over the ensuing six months. Such was the skill of the surgeon that the physical result was perfect, but the psychological damage continues. In half of victims, it remains all their life.
There are three aspects to this that need to be emphasised. First, physical violence is a sign of an abusive relationship. Such are the complexities of human make-up that the abused person—as has been said—may blame herself for her injuries. This is one of the reasons why I commend to the House charities that are working together to transform abusive relationships and address the root of the problem. Among them is Restored, an umbrella organisation working in this country and overseas to end violence against women.
This violence usually escalates. It may start as a slap, go on to a punch in the abdomen, perhaps next time to a smash in the face and eventually to death. The problem often goes undetected. On the first occasion the attacker may be forgiven by the victim, and when they go together to the casualty department the story is that she fell against a wall or a door. The woman will deny that she was attacked. After the next assault they go to a different hospital; after the third attack they visit yet another one, so the problem is not picked up. When the doctor in the casualty department suspects what is going on, there is a reluctance to report the case for many reasons, including lack of proof.
To try to solve this problem, Professor lain Hutchison of the Royal London Hospital has established the National Facial, Oral and Oculoplastic Research Centre in Leeds to collect data to help identify victims early on. His scheme is as follows: when one suspects such a victim, a note is made that this may be an example of potential domestic violence—PDV—and it is recorded at the national centre in Leeds. Two notifications will alert the authorities and three will trigger an investigation.
Another possible solution that might reduce this appalling scourge is to make facial injury caused by personal violence a notifiable disease or condition. This was suggested by a surgeon who spends most of his time operating on these victims to repair the damage. Nowadays these injuries are more violent and destructive than ever and the facial bones are so severely smashed to pieces, making reconstructive surgery a lengthy and complicated process, to say nothing of the suffering and cost. The majority of cases go unreported for a variety of reasons, including lack of understanding by the authorities, fear of reprisal and further suffering. The police are often not informed. If the condition were made a notifiable disease, this would bring to light the huge extent and severity of the problem and ultimately reduce the number of cases. Will the Minister kindly consider this suggestion?
Finally, it is essential to have an integrated multiagency response that includes medical professionals, police, judiciary, social services and others. It is vital that perpetrators are held to account for their appalling crimes. I also stress the importance of debates such as this to raise awareness, encourage disclosure and make the abuse of women, in any form, socially unacceptable.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin of Kennington, for sponsoring this debate, and for her introductory speech, which set the tone for us.
I declare an interest as a joint patron of the Everyman Project, which is a small London-based charity that provides training for men who are violent in family relationships but who want to stop it. Last Thursday I tried to get in a question and had I done so I would have been putting this question to the Minister—today I get the opportunity to ask her just how much money is being spent on men who are prepared to undergo training to alter their behaviour.
I know very well that if you get yourself into the criminal justice system and you end up in prison or on probation, there is an opportunity for anger management training and for individuals to try to change their practices. But for those who do not get to that stage but who want to change, I suspect that the amount of money that is available to assist them is very small indeed, and this really ought to be changed.
The vast bulk of money that is spent in this area comes from the charitable and voluntary sector. Of course, at the moment, it is extraordinarily difficult to raise cash. For example, the Everyman Project does not get a penny piece from the public purse yet it provides a 13-week training course for men who want to change. Unfortunately, we have to turn away far more men than we are able to offer training to because we simply do not have the resources to accommodate them all.
If the Government are really serious about trying to help in this area, I hope—even though I have made this plea previously, unsuccessfully—that they will be prepared to look again at the possibility of going into partnership with a number of charities, where perhaps matched funding arrangements could be made, to try to ensure that we get far more men going on these training courses. Ultimately, that is going to be a far more effective way of utilising money than the cost that is accrued when people end up in the courts and go to jail, although at the end of it they have an opportunity to get training if they are prepared to embark on it. I make an open, unabashed approach to the Minister to see whether she is prepared to take this away and give some consideration to it. I ask that question against a background of rumours that more women were killed in violent incidents in domestic disputes last year than in the previous year. I hope I am wrong on that but there are stories that that is the case. Can the Minister provide some clarity on that?
I should also like to pick up on the point made by my noble and learned friend Lady Scotland about the Corporate Alliance Against Domestic Violence, and again this goes back to government departments. I understand that the NHS has signed up to this organisation and fully supports it, but I also understand that a number of government departments have declined to do so or have not indicated a willingness to join up so far. Can the Minister say whether that is the case, which departments they are and whether she will bring pressure to bear to ensure that they go along with it?
Baroness Bakewell
My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, for bringing forward this debate and I thank all the other speakers for such an informed session. In recent days I have read many thousands of words about the initiatives that people are taking and I am really impressed. There are initiatives from the Home Office, from Europe, from the police and from the UN. I read that 125 countries now have laws that penalise domestic violence. This is a positive demonstration of the will of civilised legislators to bring an end to what they all agree is pernicious behaviour, yet I have noticed a distinct lag between all these good intentions and what is actually happening on the ground. Changes are intended and many are coming, but they are happening too slowly and, so far, on too modest a scale. I shall give some examples.
Forced marriage is currently a civil offence in Britain. Government proposals will make it a criminal offence and that will go before Parliament in 2013. That is all well and good. In 2002—10 years ago—the Government created the Forced Marriage Unit. In 2008, forced marriage protection orders came into being and a statutory duty was placed on public bodies to protect both children and adults. However, in 2011 the Forced Marriage Unit helpline received 1,400 calls and, in 2012, some 600 by the time this excellent report that we have all had—A Childhood Lost—was compiled. Yet it is estimated that each year around 5,000 women are at risk of being forced into marriage against their will. If that is an annual estimate, then 50,000 women are being threatened. With 1,400 calls but 50,000 women at risk, it is clear that the message is not getting right through. The people who need the help are not being reached.
In the matter of honour-related violence, according to the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation, more than 2,800 honour-related cases were reported in the UK in 2010, and police say that that was an increase of 47%. However, in 2011-12, only 172 cases of honour-related violence were prosecuted and, of those, only 50%—some 80—were successful. That number was down from the figure of 52% for successes in the previous year. Therefore, these modest achievements—positive gains in the face of intolerable violence—are no match for the scale of the problem.
This is indeed a global and cultural problem of huge dimensions. It is well established in many cultures that men have the right to exercise control, which often means violence, over their women. That cultural belief is often rooted in the fundamental religion that prevails in the country. I suggest that the religious leaders of the world should perhaps be invited to examine the texts on which these acts of violence are justified. The enlightened leaders of religion know that violence against women is not a moral activity. It would be good if they were to examine the texts, just as the leaders of the anti-slavery trade campaign examined the texts in the Bible that supported slavery. They examined the texts and revised the attitude of their followers.
I have two further suggestions for the Minister. Britain sends trade delegations around the world. The delegations speak up for human rights and plead the case of prisoners wrongfully detained. Could not violence against women be specifically noted in their agendas? Could not a woman be included in delegations, specifically with the idea in mind to meet up with women in other countries and bring the issue into arenas of debate at a high level, with ambassadors, consular officials, and so on, being properly briefed to meet the people who are now speaking out in often very backward countries with little support?
Secondly, the treatment of women fleeing violence who seek asylum in this country is far from satisfactory. The organisation, Women for Asylum Women, has charted many cases where women are summarily turned away by the UK Border Agency and sent back to face the abuse that they were fleeing. The Home Office must instruct the interrogating staff about the nature and scale of violence that such women are fleeing, and allow those women asylum. We are not short of suggestions in this Chamber; we want to see them activated.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin of Kennington, for this debate. Yes, indeed, let us have plenty more on this subject. As we know, violence against women has been with us for far longer than any of us can imagine, and probably since the world began. Indeed, in this country in the past, such violence was regarded almost as acceptable family behaviour; it was seldom discussed openly, and certainly not if it happened in a middle-class family because of the shame felt by the woman concerned. Thankfully, those issues are now slightly more of a priority for open discussion and solution.
I want to concentrate my comments on three areas in which I hope the Government have active plans to support and encourage. First, midwives and health visitors are those who have the earliest contact with mothers and their babies and they may well have reason to suspect that there is a history of violence in a particular family. Can the Minister assure the House that there will be enough trained and aware staff—albeit working with skilled volunteers, such as those from Home Start—to provide the family with the support needed in such circumstances?
Secondly, given the views of Schools Safe 4 Girls and the End Violence Against Women Coalition, and many others, that sexual bullying and harassment are routine in UK schools, will the Government encourage all schools to run compulsory parenting classes? I mean not just classes that teach children how to cope with their parents but classes that concentrate on ensuring that all girls, and indeed boys, know the essential skills and loving relationships needed to bring up their own children as responsible, well-adjusted citizens. Thirdly, as preventing bullying at school could set the tone for acceptable behaviour across all lifetime relationships, including employment, will the Government consider encouraging the successful practice employed by some schools where a slightly older child mentor is provided for each new school entrant and that mentor gets brownie points on the quality and success of that pupil’s integration?
Some progress has been made and we should acknowledge it. For example, and as we have already heard, the new law against stalking is an important first step in coping with a number of problems that the internet world has created for us. I have to say that I think that many more steps will be needed but that one is important.
I remain worried about the effect of the increasing volume and escalation of violent and explicitly sexual activities shown on all forms of media. Of course, my own Online Safety Bill is relevant for child protection and I hope that, ultimately, the Government will support it. However, my unease grows that there is a growing appetite for the explicit sexual violence that is being created, with its obvious implications for increased violence against women.
Baroness Crawley
My Lords, I say, “Hear, hear” to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool on his commitment to women bishops—and that is from a collapsed Catholic. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin of Kennington, for raising this vital area of concern to all of us.
I welcome the work that the Government have achieved so far in combating violence against women and girls. Their plan of 88 actions has been set out clearly and their work on encouraging prosecutions and on stalking, in which my noble friend Lady Royall played so vital a role, is to be rightly acknowledged. However, I, too, wish to sound a note of caution about the notorious nature of the under-reporting of this area of crime, as many noble Lords have said. That has been acknowledged clearly by the CPS in its most recent report. We still have a long way to go before we can claim that we are having a positive effect on the majority of the lives of vulnerable women and girls in the UK.
The recession has been bad for everyone but it has been a total disaster for vulnerable women and their families. Tensions within households that can lead to violence and breakdown are exacerbated by unemployment, lack of certainty over permanent housing, lack of food, lack of heating, an increase in consumer debt—the list goes on and on.
These are desperate times for many vulnerable women and their children, who need the safety, the calm and the specialist advice of local refuges. Yet that safety from violence is being sought at a time of unprecedented cutbacks in the funding of women’s refuges. The executive director of the Colchester and Tendring Women’s Refuge says in its latest annual report:
“The ever present threat of cuts to statutory funding and the uncertainty around future commissioning of refuge services in Essex, means that we are constantly looking for additional avenues of income”.
She goes on to say:
“Last year, cuts to our Supporting People grant forced us to make difficult staffing decisions, and we are waiting to see what impact the Welfare Reform Bill will have on the Housing Benefit we receive on behalf of our residents, a significant part of our income for front line services”.
What action are the Government taking to ensure that the safeguarding and the survival of the women’s refuge network carries on at local level?
While it is right and proper to acknowledge the work that the Government are undertaking on behalf of vulnerable women, it is also only fair to point out that they did not start with a blank sheet. I am pleased to see my noble and learned friend Lady Scotland in her place. I am reminded of her own tireless work, and the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, in tackling the victimisation of women. Convictions for rape increased by 45% under my noble and learned friend’s watch and I, for one, am proud of the way in which the previous Labour Government put women and children at the heart of their policy-making legislation.
I end by asking the Minister if she would bring the House up to date on those actions set out in the Government’s action plan which have a completion date of December 2012. If time is short, obviously the noble Baroness can do this in writing. I refer to points 10, 11, 14, 15, 17, 45 and 61. She will know what I am talking about. The Government’s work so far on the vital issue of violence against women will be eroded unless local government cutbacks are revised and economic growth is urgently achieved.
Baroness Thornton
My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin of Kennington, for initiating this very important debate. I have only a few minutes in which to speak and the hour is late. I am also feeling extremely cold, so if anyone notices a colleague falling asleep they had better wake them up, because I have been in this Chamber for about five hours and I am now very chilled. I shall limit my speech to putting to the Minister a few questions about the problems we face in the UK. We have had an extremely good debate that has covered both the world and many of the issues, and I congratulate noble Lords on doing that.
Like my noble friend Lady Crawley, I read with interest the latest report from the Home Secretary, A Call to End Violence Against Women and Girls: Taking Action—The Next Chapter, that was published in March this year. It sets out progress on the 88 recommendations in the action plan. It is indeed a comprehensive round-up of what the Government are doing and what they want to do. It reads well and in some parts it is very good. However, it may ring hollow in places because the broader policies being implemented by the Government will undermine many of the aspirations set out in the document. For example, on page 17 the Government want to achieve outcomes that include that:
“VAWG victims receive a good and consistent level of service across England and Wales”.
I wonder how this will be possible given what is happening on the ground.
I turn first to intelligence and information. In 2007 and 2009 the End Violence Against Women coalition was funded to provide what were called the Map of Gaps reports. Both of them were very important documents, and I shall highlight the main points. The first pointed to the fact that a third of local authorities provided no services at all for women suffering domestic violence, while the second report published in 2009 similarly reported gaps in services, pointing in particular to the problems faced by ethnic minority women. Of course, the funding for this ended in 2010. My question for the Minister is therefore about how information and intelligence is being gathered now. How accurate will the Government’s picture be of refuges and the services that are available in 2012? Who is collating the information and where and when will it be published?
What we know is that the cuts of 27% to local authority budgets appear to have been translated into cuts of 31% to the services that protect women who are experiencing violence. For example, Eaves, a local charity that supports vulnerable women, has reported that demand for its services has increased from 366 referrals for advice and support in 2009-10 to 548 in 2010-11, a 50% rise on the previous year. The 31% funding cut in the domestic violence and sexual abuse sector means a reduction from £7.8 million to £5.4 million. According to a Women’s Aid survey, on a typical day some 3,410 women and 2,502 children were living in refuge accommodation, but that 230 women seeking refuge—around 9%—were turned away due to lack of space. The number of independent domestic violence advisers, who we regarded as crucial, has been reduced. In 2011 eight major IVDA service providers supported 13,180 clients, but two of them faced cuts. This means that those services are not being provided.
I have two other issues that I wish to highlight because I think that they will have a terrible effect on services for abused women. One of them has already been mentioned by my noble friend. Refuges are going to be particularly hard hit by the changes being made to housing benefit. Are the Government monitoring the effect that this is going to have on abused women?
The second issue concerns changes to the legal aid structure that will make it more difficult for women to get legal aid when they need it. I recommend a briefing that has just been produced by Gingerbread, Resolution and Women’s Aid, which explains the problems that there are going to be for the domestic violence gateway criteria. Will the Minister assure the House that she and the Equalities Minister will be monitoring this issue and the effect that it is going to have, and will take action if what we think will happen happens?
I congratulate all noble Lords who have spoken. We have had a good and hard discussion but clearly there is much more to do.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
My Lords, this has been a very powerful and timely debate, coming as it does within the 16 days of action following last Sunday’s UN International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. I congratulate my noble friend Lady Jenkin on securing this debate and on setting out so comprehensively the massive problem that we are trying to combat and its effects. I also pay tribute to all noble Lords who have contributed today. I know that this is an opportunity for me to respond, and lots of questions have been put to me, but I also consider it an opportunity to listen and learn, which I have certainly done.
We have covered a wide range of issues. In responding, I will talk briefly about international issues later on but will concentrate on the domestic—by which I mean national—front. I will write to all noble Lords if I fail to cover any of their points, which I know I will do. I know for sure that I am not going to be able to respond to the questions from the noble Baroness, Lady Crawley, about the action plan.
I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, who said that the scale of the problem was not being matched in global terms by action. In global terms, that is evident and it is why we continue to raise this issue and put it right at the top of all agendas. I will respond right at the start to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, who asked a specific question about the number of domestic homicides and whether that has increased recently. I am not aware of any increase in those numbers, and certainly not in the last published crime statistics.
Violence against women is not a political issue; it is too important for that. Combating it for good is a real ambition that we all share. This Government’s strategy, which we first published in 2010 and which has been referred to by many noble Lords today, has that as its clear purpose. It can be explained quite simply in three parts: it seeks to help prevent violence against women happening in the first place; to provide adequate levels of support where that violence, regrettably, occurs; and to bring perpetrators to justice. All our work in these areas is in partnership with many other agencies and voluntary organisations, some of which noble Lords have referred to today.
Our strategy and our commitment to it is underpinned by the guaranteed funding of £40 million, which we have allocated until 2015, for specialist local domestic and sexual violence support services, a range of national phone lines, existing rape centres and developing some new centres, where there are gaps in provision.
While I am talking about funding it is probably the right moment to answer some of the points that the noble Baronesses, Lady Thornton and Lady Crawley, made about funding. Of course I understand people’s concerns about potential cuts to any kind of local authority funding. I can absolutely see why people would raise that. However, we do not recognise the 31% figure that has just been quoted. Many local authorities are not making cuts and indeed some are increasing their funding. I point to Westminster as one example, which is putting its funding for outreach work up from £440,000 to £760,000. All that said, to try to understand the situation around local funding further, the Home Office is holding a round-table meeting with the Local Government Association in January.
While we are talking about local services and local provision, I make it clear that it dismays me as much as everyone else to hear of any woman who is turned away if they are seeking refuge. I do not want to hear that; none of us does. I would like to think that provision exists to meet everybody’s needs. While some women may be turned away from some of the refuges designated as local authority refuges, they are not the only place where women seek refuge. If refuge is not available to them there, it is often available elsewhere. We fund a database delivered by Women’s Aid which enables those working with victims to identify appropriate services and refuge vacancies.
If I have misunderstood the point on refuges and housing benefit, I shall come back to it in the letter with which I shall follow up the debate. The concern expressed by women and women’s groups about women in refuges who are in receipt of housing benefit has now been addressed. It was a legitimate concern and it is my understanding that it no longer remains a problem.
The noble Baroness, Lady Stern, asked about the future of SARCs—sexual assault referral centres. These have been locally commissioned up till now on a collaborative basis by police and NHS primary care trusts. We have decided that, for the future—at least in the short to medium term—responsibility for them will rest with the NHS Commissioning Board.
The noble Baroness also asked what role PCCs would play in tackling violence against women. I shall not go into great detail about this, because I answered a Question on it recently. The best way in which I can respond is to point to what Boris Johnson has done here in London, because he has been the nearest example that we have had to a PCC before those who were recently elected. It has been striking how, in working with London women’s groups, he has diverted some of his own funding alongside national funding to increase the number of rape centres in London. He shows us that there is real potential for violence to be tackled through the new police and crime commissioner structure.
If we are to end violence against women and girls, we need to challenge attitudes—that has been made clear by many noble Lords today—and raise awareness of abuse and educate young people. There is always more that we can do in this area and we have to keep looking for new opportunities to do so. One of the things that we are doing in the 16 days of action is to restart this very weekend the teenage rape prevention advertising campaign. Its target audience is 13 to 18 year-olds and it will run until the end of January. The noble Baroness asked about the website alongside that. That will be available and be part of that campaign.
My noble friend Lady Bottomley raised questions about awareness of domestic violence in the workplace and the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, said that it was important that we debate domestic violence. I hope that we can encourage employers to do this in the workplace and encourage women who may be feeling isolated to come forward. I have taken on board that point.
The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, and my noble friend Lady Hussein-Ece referred to sexualisation of women and children. This is of course a matter of great concern. Since the controls on online pornography recently introduced by ISPs, the Government have reconsulted on online controls. Fairly soon we should be making public some new thoughts on the way forward to build on what has already announced. We are very aware that this is something that continues to concern all parents. With regard to child sexualisation, one useful initiative was the launch of ParentPort—a single website for complaints and feedback to regulators if parents see any inappropriate advertising located where children might see it.
Obviously we can use the law and strengthen it to prevent violence against women and girls. My noble friend Lady Brinton referred to the new stalking offences. I share with her and those others who commented on this the fact that we as a Government are proud to have introduced these new laws but we recognise the contribution made by so many people to make that happen, including Members of this House.
I will skip along because I am running out of time. We are introducing lots of new measures in terms of new laws. One of the most important ones is about extending the definition of domestic violence to include 16 and 17 year-olds, and another is for the definition to include coercive control—or mental cruelty, as other people might recognise it.
My noble friend Lord McColl made a very interesting proposal about the collection of data on potential domestic violence. I have already asked my colleagues in the Home Office to raise that with the Department of Health because my noble friend was kind enough to give me advance notice of it. I will certainly come back and write to him about that.
The noble Baroness, Lady Rendell, spoke in great detail about female genital mutilation so I will not go over that in any detail myself. I am so pleased that she welcomed what Keir Starmer announced at the weekend; we very much share her view that this is absolutely vital. Having that law in place is not enough. We need prosecutions, and action to bring prosecutions to bear.
On the international agenda, my noble friend Lady Jenkin trailed the Commission on the Status of Women next year, the focus being on the elimination and prevention of all forms of violence against women and girls. I hope it will give some comfort to the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, and my noble friend Lady Hussein-Ece that my officials have already started preliminary work to ensure that this agenda moves on next year and is not just something that we have ambitions for that are not fulfilled.
Also in the international arena next year, the UK will take the presidency of the G8. As my noble friend mentioned, the Foreign Secretary is using the profile of that forum—the world’s richest countries—to promote the UK’s initiative on preventing rape as a weapon of war. I am so pleased that someone of that rank in the Cabinet has taken this on board and will take it forward. If noble Lords have not yet had the opportunity, I urge them to read the speech that he gave about that earlier this month.
Lots of questions have been asked; I have a pile here of things that I need to come back on. Forgive me that I am not able to cover them all now. In closing, we are committed to maintaining our strong lead on both the national and the international stages. Ending violence against women and girls is not possible for Government alone. The progress that we have made would not have been possible without the hard work of so many people, including Members of this House. The challenge now is to sustain that collective commitment, to challenge the inequalities and attitudes that can encourage violence against women and to drive improved service for those victims. I believe that we are on the right path to creating a society where no women or girl need live in fear, but we are clearly far away from actually getting there.