House of Commons
Prayers
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Mr Speaker
I have received a report from the Tellers in the No Lobby for the Division at 2.30 pm on 29 November on the amendment to the main Question. The hon. Members for Livingston (Graeme Morrice) and for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) have informed me that the number of No votes was erroneously reported as 321, instead of 311. I will direct the Clerk to correct the numbers in the Journal accordingly. The Ayes were five and the Noes were 311.
Point of Order
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. During his statement yesterday afternoon, the Prime Minister referred to his predecessor by name, rather than by title. I understand from a number of colleagues that that has become a pattern in the past few days. I am sure that you agree that all Members are entitled to the same courtesies and respect, so is there some way of bringing that to the attention of the Government?
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. It is a question not merely of drawing that to the attention of the Government, as he puts it, but of drawing it again to the attention of all Members of the House. He has already played his part in so doing, and I feel sure that his point of order and my response to it will have been widely noted.
Mental Health (Discrimination) (No. 2) Bill
(12 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)
I beg to move amendment 1, page 1, line 9, leave out from beginning to ‘, for’ in line 10 and insert—
‘(1) In section 1 of the Juries Act 1974 (qualification for jury service)—
(a) in subsection (1), omit paragraph (c) (but not the “and” after it),
(b) omit subsection (2), and
(c) in subsection (3), for “Part 2 of the Schedule” substitute “Schedule 1”.
(2) In Schedule 1 to that Act (the title to which becomes “Persons Disqualified for Jury Service”, with the title to Part 1 becoming “Persons subject to the Mental Health Act 1983 or Mental Capacity Act 2005” and the title to Part 2 becoming “Other Persons Disqualified for Jury Service”)’.
My amendment would make a minor technical change to the amendments the Bill makes to the Juries Act 1974. It would remove the term “mentally disordered persons” from section 1 of the Act and tidy up the cross-referencing between section 1 and the list of those disqualified for jury service in schedule 1. The amendment is supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell).
Specifically, the references to “Mentally disordered persons” in section 1 of the 1974 Act will be removed and further provisions made in section 1 consequential to that. That will leave the section so worded as to provide that those persons listed in schedule 1 to the 1974 Act will be disqualified from jury service. The title of schedule 1 to that Act will be amended to read “Persons Disqualified for Jury Service”. The headings to parts I and II of schedule 1 are amended accordingly, from “Mentally disordered persons” to “Persons subject to the Mental Health Act 1983 or Mental Capacity Act 2005” and from “Persons disqualified” to “Other persons disqualified for jury service” respectively. The substantive change that the Bill makes to the 1974 Act, which is to remove the disqualification on service as a juror from those who voluntarily receive treatment in the community for a mental health disorder, remains the same.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
I support the amendment. It will not change the Bill’s original wording to a great extent, but the language implications are very important. We must ensure that we deal with people who suffer from mental illness without the stigma of titles, so this small amendment is important. Clause 2 is also very important. Since we started discussing the Bill, I have received numerous e-mails and correspondence about it. A solicitor wrote to me to say that although she practises in court every day, she cannot be a juror because she is currently undergoing treatment for a mental health condition. The amendment would make a small change to the language, but I think it is important for the wider debate and for the wider implications of the Bill to ensure that we end discrimination against people who suffer from mental illness.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
I support the amendment and welcome the contribution from the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones). I want to raise a point that I do not think is covered by the Bill but which is associated with the thought: whether someone who has or has had a mental health condition and who feels that they would not be capable of serving as a juror at a particular time can say so and whether that would be accepted by the court. My hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) might not be able to answer straight away, but I would be grateful if the Minister could let me know later, perhaps in writing.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Miss Chloe Smith)
I support amendment 1, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker). It is of a minor and technical nature and it builds on the amendments to the Juries Act 1974 under clause 2 of the Bill. The Government are happy to accept the amendment, which, although it is technical and does not affect the substance of the Bill, is very important in terms of presentation because through its inclusion the Bill will more fully reflect the intention that we all share in this House of removing legislative provisions that prevent people from participating fully in society merely because they have a mental health condition.
I am happy to confirm to my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) that there are indeed measures that would still allow a person called for jury service to indicate that they felt unable to carry it out. I shall be happy to provide any further information that he requires on that.
Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)
As my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) said, I am happy to support his amendment. I hope that he will not be embarrassed but I congratulate him on the expert way in which he described the technical effects of the amendment so clearly. Given his ability to do so, I think it is only a matter of time before he is summoned to the Front Bench. The hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) clearly explained his rationale for supporting the amendment.
As I said on Second Reading, the Bill has two purposes. In certain clearly defined areas, it seeks to remove legislative provisions that prevent people from contributing to various aspects of our public life, but its wider aim is to challenge the stigma that people with mental health conditions experience in our society and to send a wider message beyond this House to society as whole. It is therefore absolutely essential to get the language right. That is why I support the amendment.
In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), the provision that he has in mind does exist. Anyone summoned for jury service is entitled to request an excusal or deferral by completing the relevant section of the summons form. Such applications are then considered by officers of the Jury Central Summoning Bureau.
Amendment 1 agreed to.
Third Reading
Gavin Barwell
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
I will speak only briefly because we had a very full debate on the Bill on Second Reading and a good debate in Committee.
I want to underline the importance of this Bill and what it is seeking to achieve. Over the period of my adult lifetime, this House has passed important legislation to deal with other areas of discrimination such as race relations, gender and sexual orientation, but on mental health there remain on the statute book several provisions that are openly stigmatising and serve no good purpose in terms of public policy. The Bill tries to bring the law of this country into the 21st century by removing those provisions so that people with mental health conditions can serve on juries and contribute to our criminal justice system. The hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) referred to the nonsensical situation of people who are able to practise as solicitors in our courts of law but unable to serve on a jury.
The Bill also makes changes in relation to company directors. A provision in the model rules says that if somebody lacks capacity, as judged by their GP, they can lose their position as a company director. That is another provision relating solely to mental health that is wholly unnecessary and stigmatising.
Finally, and just as important, the Bill amends the provisions relating to a Member of Parliament who is detained under the mental health legislation for a period of six months or more. No equivalent provision exists in relation to preventing those with physical conditions from serving. Indeed, Members can be sentenced to prison for longer than six months and not lose their position in this House. The Bill deals with those issues, but I hope that it also sends a much wider message to society about the need for a change in attitudes to those with mental health conditions.
I conclude by expressing my thanks to a few people for their support on the Bill. First, I thank Lord Stevenson of Coddenham, who in the previous Session introduced a very similar Bill in the other place that sadly was unable to complete its passage owing to a lack of parliamentary time. I thank Mind, Rethink Mental Illness and the Royal College of Psychiatrists for their support and the background work that they have done on the Bill and the wider campaign that they have been running, Time to Change, which is trying to change attitudes towards those who experience mental illness.
Finally, I thank my hon. Friend the Minister and the officials in the Cabinet Office who have provided very welcome help and support, and those in my own office. Members on both sides of the House will know of the huge contribution that our staff make in supporting the work that we do as Members of this House. I am hugely grateful for all that help. I hope that today the House will see the completion of the passage of this Bill, which will be a welcome landmark statement that attitudes towards those with mental health conditions are changing. I also hope that it will have speedy passage through the other place.
Mr Kevan Jones
I congratulate the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) not only on selecting this subject for his private Member’s Bill but on eloquently arguing its case throughout its parliamentary stages. He can rightly congratulate himself—of course, he will feel in need of some congratulations in Croydon after yesterday’s by-election result—on arguing so strongly for it. As a member of the small club of individuals who have got a private Member’s Bill passed by the House—I hope to welcome him to it—I know about the hard work that has to go into steering a Bill through this House. He was right to thank the staff, who I think will not be encouraging him to put in for the ballot in future given the amount of work that they have done.
The Bill should be supported because it gets rid of anachronistic legislative provisions. The provision on the disqualification of Members of Parliament has changed very little since 1886. The only thing that has changed is the description of who has to draw up the report for you, Mr Speaker. Possibly some of the language has been modified over the years, but in effect the same provision still applies.
Another issue is jury service. The existing provisions stigmatise those who are receiving treatment for mental illness by saying that they can practise as a solicitor or a barrister but cannot serve on a jury. That makes no sense at all. The important provision about company directorships has not received a great deal of coverage during the passage of the Bill, but it will make a difference to company directors who suffer from mental illness.
As the hon. Gentleman said, the Bill is important not only for those provisions but for the broader message that it sends out about the view of this House and of society about mental illness. I, too, pay tribute to the organisations that he mentioned, which have campaigned and worked very hard not only on making sure that there is support for the Bill but on helping to ensure that the stigma around mental health is eradicated. Will the Bill in itself do that? No, it will not—I do not think that for one minute—but I hope that it will show, as the hon. Gentleman said, that this House is determined to ensure that mental health stigma becomes a thing of the past.
It will take time to change people’s attitudes, but the debate in this House on 14 June and the passage of the Bill show that mental illness is on the political radar and will not go away. I encourage the House to continue the debate because our recent debates show that this is an issue that we should talk about. Mental illness is often not prioritised in terms of resources or in the workplace because it is not talked about. Let us hope that we will continue to talk openly about mental illness, not as something that is an impediment to people making a full contribution to public life or to their own personal life and development, but as something that, with effective treatment and support, allows individuals to make a proper and rightful contribution to society.
I thank the hon. Member for Croydon Central again for bringing the Bill forward and congratulate him on the way in which he has done so.
Mr Charles Walker
I just want to express a few thanks. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) for piloting the Bill so expertly through Parliament. What a fantastic job he has done! I thank Rowena Daw of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, who has been a fantastic supporter of the Bill. I thank the officials. I suspect that there has been a true Horatio among them who has worked very hard to bring the Bill to fruition. I thank the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) for his sterling support from the Opposition Benches. He, too, has been a true hero.
This is great occasion for Parliament and I am glad to have had a small walk-on part in it.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) on introducing the Bill. It would be fair to say that we do not agree on everything, but I think we agree on more than he realises. We certainly agree about the Bill. He works tirelessly not only on behalf of his constituents but on behalf of the important causes to which the Bill relates.
I also congratulate the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) on their work in this field. They have shown great courage in speaking out on these matters when other people may not have done so. We should all be grateful for what they do. They were both worthy recipients of awards at Dods’ The House magazine awards this week. I cannot think of two more deserving winners. This has been a red-letter week for them.
I want to tease out some points about the Bill’s three main clauses, which my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central could perhaps clarify. Even though I support the Bill, it is important to clarify on the record any points that may arise.
Clause 1 relates to the mental health of MPs. It abolishes section 141 of the Mental Health Act 1983, and also relates to the devolved Assemblies and Parliaments. The Cabinet Office website states, so it must be true:
“The provisions in Section 141 of the Mental Health Act 1983 replaced provisions in the Mental Health Act 1959 which itself replaced provisions in the Lunacy (Vacating of Seats) Act 1886.”
As far as I am aware, section 141 of the 1983 Act has never been used. Perhaps it is good to get rid of legislation that is anachronistic and has never been used, but we could ask whether there is any point in doing so. As I understand it, the only time that any of this legislation has been used was in 1916, when Dr Charles Leach was removed from his seat after a protracted illness. I think it is worth getting rid of this section, but I note that it has never actually been used.
I want to flag up a potential anomaly. I assure the House that, as usual on such occasions, I do not intend to speak for long. I say that for the avoidance of doubt, because I do not want anybody to be concerned. I merely wish to rattle through a few points. Under the Bill, there would be no bar on somebody standing for Parliament with a mental health condition of any kind and there would be no procedure to remove somebody who developed a condition while they were in Parliament. Does that mean that the Bill could create a situation in which the constituents of an MP end up with effectively no representation for an entire term of office because a condition is found to exist very late in an election campaign or early on in a Parliament?
Mr Kevan Jones
I agree with that point, but there is no difference between that example and a Member who has a stroke and goes into a long-term vegetative state. There is no provision to remove such a Member. The Bill is just saying that mental illness should be on a par with other medical conditions.
Philip Davies
I agree with that point. I am merely using this opportunity to ensure that people know exactly what the Bill would do and to check whether there are potential anomalies. I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point that the same situation applies to people with other conditions and that there should perhaps be no difference between them.
Another anomaly that may arise is that somebody could stand for Parliament and continue as a Member of Parliament who may not be eligible to vote because of the existing regulations on voting. As this is a Third Reading debate, I must talk only about what is in the Bill, rather than what should be in the Bill, but I hope that you will allow me to say in passing, Mr Speaker, that perhaps the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central in this field is not yet done. Although I support the Bill, it might create anomalies that we have to come back to on another occasion. I therefore hope that this is a work in progress.
I am not sure whether the provisions on juries deal with somebody who has just been released from being sectioned or who ought to have been sectioned but has not been because nobody knows about their condition. Perhaps the Bill might have been better if it had included an additional time period for such people. I am not sure whether the lack of such a period will cause a problem. The point has been well made throughout the debate that mental illness is not necessarily permanent or constant, but safeguards need to be in place to limit the exposure of those with recent conditions and those who have perhaps not been identified.
The proposals on company directors cover the model articles of association for normal companies and right-to-manage companies. Unless I have missed something, which is not impossible, there is nothing in the Bill to prevent a company from using the old provisions in its articles of association if it chooses to deviate from the model articles of association. Will companies that are already in existence be affected by the Bill? If so, and if it has an immediate effect, what will happen if a company has already invoked this particular part of their articles of association from the model version and is in the middle of proceedings? If the Bill affects only new companies, does that mean that the 2.5 million companies that are already registered with Companies House will not be covered? It is important that we deal with the model articles of association because they are the default position, but have we missed something with regard to individual articles of association? What happens if a company has only one director and they have the most serious long-term mental health condition?
I support my hon. Friend—the whole House should support and congratulate him—but there are anomalies in the Bill, and the Bill might create even more. I hope the House can tackle those in future to ensure that we do what my hon. Friend and other hon. Members intend, which is to give the best possible opportunities to people with mental health problems, who for far too long have been unfairly discriminated against under the law.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
I add my thanks to those of my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) to my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) for his work in piloting the Bill so skilfully. As a Member who has been involved in such matters, I know how much work goes on behind the scenes to achieve what he has achieved. He deserves massive thanks from everybody. I thank him not only on my own behalf but on behalf of all the organisations and groups in my constituency, which are extremely grateful to him for his work and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), with the support of the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones).
The Bill is important because it specifically removes discrimination on grounds of mental health, but its greater importance is in the wider message it sends to society about how we should see those who, sadly, suffer from mental health problems. If the Bill goes some small way towards removing the taboo of mental health, it will have played a very important role. It will help to remove the prejudice and misunderstandings surrounding mental health, and put mental health on the same footing as other disabilities and illnesses.
I do not propose to detain the House for long. I simply wanted to put on record, as I did on Second Reading, my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central for his work. I wish the Bill well in the other place and a speedy passage on to the statute book.
Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
May I add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) on introducing the Bill? Plenty has been said in congratulating him, but it is an important Bill. I am slightly jealous that he has got his private Member’s Bill this far and been so successful. I cannot think of a better issue to debate in the House.
I also add my congratulations, thanks and support to my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) on everything they have done on the Bill. It is important that we change attitudes and perceptions of mental health. It would sometimes be nice to get attitudes into the 20th century, never mind the 21st century, but it is crucial that Parliament leads the way and shows that mental health must be addressed. The changes to archaic and discriminatory laws will, I hope, send an important message to wider society that unfair discrimination has no place in modern Britain. People who suffer mental ill health have a wealth of knowledge and experience and can now play their part in public life in a number of ways. It is crucial that we do not lose knowledge and experience that can benefit and improve society.
I do not wish to detain the House. I reiterate my congratulations. I hope the Bill is the start of ensuring that 21st-century Britain is as accepting of people with mental ill health as it is of people who have sprained an ankle or broken an arm, or who have another day-to-day ailment. The number of people with mental ill health in the UK means that it is a day-to-day problem. I congratulate and thank the hon. Member for Croydon Central.
Miss Chloe Smith
If my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) is happy for me to attempt to answer a few of the points on the detail, which were raised mainly by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), I shall do so, and further indicate the Government’s support for the Bill.
On clause 1, my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley queried whether the House should seek to amend measures that have never been used when we could simply let them wither on the vine. It is my firm view and that of other hon. Members that we ought to tackle discriminatory and stigmatic anachronisms when we come across them. We are proud that the Bill does that.
My hon. Friend asked how constituents can be represented by an MP who comes under the provisions of the Bill. When Members suffer from a physical health problem, informal arrangements are made and support is given to them by the House and their party. The Government believe that similar arrangements should apply in cases of mental illness. He asked about eligibility to vote, and I will be happy to come back to him on that another time.
My hon. Friend asked whether there should be a post-detention time limit with regard to jury service. I can confirm that when somebody is no longer detained under the Mental Health Act 1983, they should no longer be subject to constraints. After all, they will have been assessed and deemed not to be suffering to an extent that prevents them from leading a normal life. It is possible to see the Bill in that light.
Finally, my hon. Friend asked about the provision on directorships. I can confirm that the provision applies only to companies—whether existing or new—that use model articles.
I hope that that covers my hon. Friend’s questions. It falls to me to add once again the Government’s support for the Bill. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central on promoting the Bill to this conclusion. He has done an excellent job in gaining such overwhelming support for it. I, too, am grateful to all hon. Members who have taken part in debates on the Bill, and to two hon. Members at least for their humbling openness.
I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) for playing his part in making the amendment today. I can confirm that the reforms in the Bill are, in totality, an essential part of the Government’s drive to tackle the stigma and discrimination still associated with mental health. It is my hope that the work hon. Members have done on the Bill today and in other debates will encourage more sympathetic treatment, not only in law, but in the mainstream media and other places. The Bill represents a simple but fundamental change in removing discrimination against those who suffer from mental health disorders so that they can participate in public life in a number of key ways, and I commend it to the House.
Sir Peter Bottomley
I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for her support for the Bill. I was honoured to be asked to be a sponsor of the Bill. It would be wrong if Third Reading was completed without hon. Members recognising that some of the changes come from the Speaker’s Conference on parliamentary representation. One of the roles of the holder of your office, Mr Speaker, is to allow issues to be considered and proposals to be put that benefit the House. We should thank you and your colleagues for that.
Taking medication for being over-happy or unhappy, or in some other way affected, should be as interesting or as uninteresting as consuming pills to deal with the pain in my heel or taking statins to deal with cholesterol. Instead of some people having their behaviour or misbehaviour described in the media, and then writing articles 20 years later saying that they used to be on drugs—illegal street substances—people should be able to be open now about the fact that they are unhappy or manic, or that they have a phobia or an obsession. I am not saying that everyone should lay out all their conditions, but it should be as easy as saying, “I see you have a broken leg or carcinoma.”
I pay tribute to my hon. Friends on both sides of the House. It would be useful to have a major debate every two years on progress in mental health and mental illness. Hospital closures and accident and emergency wards matter, but each of us in our constituencies has people who are affected by unhappiness, mental health or mental illness. I pay tribute to the many people who are involved professionally and voluntarily in helping and serving them.
Perhaps I can conclude with a minor reflection on a remark made by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) about the people he referred to as the “Horatios”—I think Horatia would look rather better, unless the Department has sent front people out who look rather different.
Gavin Barwell
With the leave of the House, I would like to respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) and to make one final point. I have a very high regard for my hon. Friend. As he said, we do not agree on every issue, but he is an excellent Member of this House. He made two points and I thought it was worth making one further point in response. He asked about the value of repealing legislation if it has never been used. There is a danger with the law as it currently stands of an hon. Member with a health condition being reluctant to seek medical treatment because of the consequences—the risk of losing their job.
The Speaker’s Conference recommended that a Select Committee might look at how the wider issue of the lack of constituents’ representation if their MP has a serious mental or physical health condition is addressed beyond the informal arrangements to which the Minister referred.
Mr Kevan Jones
That is a problem because, as the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Norwich North (Miss Smith) said, I think most parties will put informal arrangements in place, as they do for MPs who suffer from long-term physical conditions, or those who take holidays on reality TV shows in Australia.
Gavin Barwell
The hon. Gentleman seeks to draw me somewhere I do not wish to go—neither intellectually nor physically, I should say, in case any of my constituents are watching. I have direct experience of the point that he and the Minister made about informal arrangements. My predecessor as the hon. Member for Croydon Central suffered some difficulties with his mental health and my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway) covered both his office here in this House and his surgery and other duties during that period. Those arrangements can certainly work, but from the point at which I introduced the Bill people have contacted me and made the point that the hon. Member for Shipley makes. It is well worth a Select Committee looking at those issues and deciding whether the informal arrangements are sufficient, or whether there should be other rules.
The hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) teased me mildly in his remarks about the results of the Croydon North by-election. The by-election has a relevance to this issue. It was a good result for Labour and I look forward to Steve Reed taking his seat, but the swing was significantly less than in the other by-elections we have had recently and in the national opinion polls. The reason for that was the Conservative party candidate. In his gracious concession speech, Andy Stranack made the point that, as someone who suffers from cerebral palsy, he hoped that one of the lessons of his campaign was that he had not in any way not been able to run a robust, energetic, effective campaign and do the job expected of a parliamentary candidate.
That is relevant to the debate, because I want to end by saying a word or two about the hon. Member for North Durham and my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker). Their courage, in the debate we had earlier this year on mental health, in talking about their own experiences, and in their participation in this House on this business and on other issues, demonstrates visibly that those who experience mental health difficulties are just as able as anybody else to fulfil the duties of being a Member of this House. That sends an important message and point to the country as a whole as we try to change attitudes and perceptions.
I do not want to detain the House any further, but I want to end, if the hon. Member for North Durham will forgive me, by saying something about my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne in particular. When my name came high up in the ballot for private Members’ Bills, I was inundated by e-mails and phone calls suggesting issues that I might like to take up. Some might have found favour with my hon. Friends on the Front Bench, and others might have been less well regarded. A key reason for choosing this issue was my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne. He came to my office and explained to me for about half an hour why he regarded it as being of such importance. In the two and a half years I have been in the House, I never heard anyone speak with such passion about the subject and about the effect that legislation can have. My name is on the Bill and I hope it will go on to become an Act, but one of the people who deserves enormous credit for reaching this point is my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne and his passion for this issue. I think that that is a fitting point on which to end my remarks.
Bill read the Third time and passed.
Prisons (Property) Bill
(12 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
11:38 - The House divided: - Ayes: 2 / Noes: 40 - Question accordingly negatived.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
I beg to move amendment 2, page 1, line 9, leave out ‘,’ and insert
‘or any other location that the prisoner attends while in custody,’.
Mr Speaker
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 3, line 16, after ‘prison’, insert ‘or prison officer’.
Amendment 4, line 23, at end insert—
‘(d) for any unauthorised or unlawful purpose.’.
Amendment 5, page 2, line 9, at end insert
‘recycling it or donating it to any charity.’.
Amendment 6, line 12, leave out from ‘force’ to end of line 14 and insert
‘and which is held by the prison on that date;’.
Amendment 7, line 15 , leave out paragraph (b).
Amendment 8, line 17, leave out from second ‘article’ to end of line 20 and insert
‘covered by this Act if it had been in force at the time the items were seized.’.
Amendment 9, line 20, at end insert—
‘(1A) The power under subsection (1) shall not be exercisable in relation to anything which might contain or constitute evidence of a criminal offence.’.
Philip Davies
This is a rare situation for me. We have come to the second private Member’s Bill of the day, both of which I wholeheartedly support—an unusual occurrence for a Friday. I find myself in a slightly uncomfortable situation in that regard. I have tabled the amendments not to bury the Bill, but to try to improve it. It is already an excellent Bill, but it could be further strengthened. I hope to persuade my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew), whom I congratulate on getting the Bill to this stage, that my amendments would enhance his Bill, and I will give it my best shot.
I begin by congratulating you, Mr Speaker, on not selecting my first amendment. It is what is known, I believe, as a consequential amendment, and it suggested leaving out the word “or” and inserting a comma instead. The House would probably not have wanted to have had a Division on such a lead amendment, so I congratulate you on not indulging the House with it. The other amendments are well worthy of at least consideration.
On the disposal of unauthorised or unattributable property, clause 1 states:
“an article found inside the prison or in a prisoner escort vehicle”.
Amendment 2 suggests an addition to include:
“any other location that the prisoner attends while in custody,”
Obviously, the Bill covers the prison and prison escort vehicles—that is perfectly reasonable. I am concerned, however, about all the other places prisoners might find themselves while in custody. It would be bizarre if something was not covered because of a technicality—because the prisoner did not happen to be in prison or a prisoner escort vehicle at the time.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
I understand my hon. Friend’s point. When I attended a hospital out-patients department on the Isle of Wight, half the people there appeared to be prisoners under escort. That is an example of precisely what he describes
Philip Davies
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He might think it easy for me to say—now he has made the point—but I was specifically thinking of hospitals when I drew up the amendment. As he said, lots of prisoners have health problems and require medical treatment, entailing a trip either to a doctors’ surgery for an assessment or to hospital for treatment or a more detailed assessment. The last Government did an awful lot in that regard, taking forward telemedicine so that people could be seen while still in prison via video link. That was a perfectly good innovation, but it does not apply in every case. As my hon. Friend said, prisoners often have to visit hospital.
It is not just about hospitals, however; lots of prisoners go out to work on day release, if they are coming to the end of their sentence, as part of their rehabilitation. Many people in open prisons go out to work or out into other parts of society to do some rehabilitation work. As things stand, however, it seems that the Bill would not cover those people. People in custody also go to court, either to have their remand hearing considered or to have further charges put to them, and it would be bizarre if something was found while somebody was in court but was not covered by the Bill just because they happened to be in court rather than in prison.
I genuinely do not know—perhaps the Minister will tell us—how many trips are paid to hospital, how many people go out to work each day or how many court appearances are made, but I am sure there are people with better minds in this place who do know. It would help to have that information. It seems to me, however, that many people make such trips, so there might be a large loophole when prisoners are away from their prison and prisoner escort vehicle and therefore not covered by the Bill.
I am also slightly concerned about the use of the term “prisoner escort vehicle”. I wonder exactly what it covers. Again, I would not want people to get away on a technicality. We have lots of clever members of the legal profession in the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) being one of them, and I would not want any of those clever people—much cleverer than me—to be able to find a loophole by which it could be claimed that a vehicle was not strictly speaking a “prisoner escort vehicle”. I wonder, therefore, if we have a definition of exactly what it means.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
My hon. Friend makes a valid point about the definition of “prisoner escort vehicle”, but I am concerned that the problem would not be dealt with by his amendment 2, on the grounds that a similarly silver-tongued lawyer might say that “location” does not include a moving vehicle.
Philip Davies
I would never describe my hon. Friend as a silver-tongued lawyer—it seems to have a rather pejorative connotation—but he is certainly a clever lawyer, and I take his point. I am not a lawyer, and I do not know whether a vehicle would be a location. Again, there are finer minds in the House than mine who will clarify that point. Even if he is right, as he normally is on these matters, the much tighter definition in the amendment would still be a step forward, because it would, as my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) said, include areas such as hospitals, courts and other specific locations. I would like to think that my amendment also covered other vehicles, but I will let the House debate that point, if it so wishes.
In simple terms, for the duration of a prisoner’s sentence or the time they are on remand, they are in custody, so, for the purposes of the Bill, they should be treated in exactly the same way as if they were in prison, wherever they might be and whatever they happen to be doing. My amendment therefore covers any period while the prisoner is in custody, and so would deal with time spent in court and the other eventualities Time will tell whether it includes vehicles other than those deemed to be prisoner escort vehicles. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey will see that I am trying to help, rather than hinder the Bill’s progress.
Proposed new section 42A(2) states that an
“article which a prisoner is authorised to have in his or her possession is to be treated for the purposes of subsection (1) as not so authorised where the governor or director of the prison reasonably believes that the article is being, has been or may be used for any of the purposes mentioned in subsection (3).”
Amendment 3 would add, after “governor or director of the prison”, the words “prison officer”. I seek to make it easier for a decision to be taken on the possible unauthorised use of an item by allowing prison officers, who are most likely to have the direct intelligence about someone or something, to make those decisions. I have always believed that the people who know best are those on the ground and doing it all the time. When I worked for Asda, there was no doubt that the people on the shop floor and the checkouts were best placed to know exactly what was going right and what was going wrong in our stores. I have no doubt that in a prison the people who are best placed to know exactly what is going on are the prison officers, who deal daily with prisoners.
I was a bit concerned that if a prison governor or director always had to make the decision, one of two things could happen. Either the governor would spend a lot of his time being told little details to authorise a course of action under the Bill, or the slowness of the process or lack of involvement from the governor would hinder its effectiveness. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey had neither of those scenarios in mind when he introduced his Bill. Surely, if a prison officer sees or hears something that leads him to confiscate an item on the basis of any of the Bill’s provisions, that should be more than adequate for the item then to be disposed of under the Bill. I wonder whether we are introducing too much bureaucracy by insisting that it has to be a prison governor or director.
The implication of not including prison officers is that we do not trust them to make these decisions. It would be rather unfortunate if the message went out from the House that we did not think them capable or trusted enough to make those decisions, which should be the types of decisions they take daily anyway. It would certainly improve the Bill and, I am sure, the morale of prison officers if we made it clear in the Bill that we trusted them to take such decisions and did not put too many barriers in their way. Indeed, putting up such barriers might inadvertently undermine their authority in the prison among the inmates. If the inmates thought, “Well you can’t do anything about this, so I’m not really interested in what you think,” that would be a rather unfortunate consequence of what my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey is trying to do.
Philip Davies
I was misguided in thinking that my hon. Friend momentarily wanted to intervene, but he did not. He has obviously been so persuaded by my case that he could not think of anything in amendment 4 to disagree with, as he could with amendment 3.
Proposed new section 42A of the Prison Act 1952, in clause 1, deals with
“Disposal of unauthorised or unattributable property”.
Where an article is being used for any of the purposes set out in subsection (3), it is not authorised. Those purposes include
“concealing an article which a prisoner is not authorised to have in his or her possession…causing harm to the prisoner or others…prejudicing the security or operation of the prison.”
My amendment 4 would add another category, in proposed new subsection (3)(d), which reads:
“for any unauthorised or unlawful purpose.”
Again, the amendment is designed to strengthen the reasons in the Bill for which property may be confiscated and destroyed. Perhaps it is too restricting simply to use the criteria currently set out in subsection (3). There could be circumstances where property was being used for another unlawful or unauthorised purpose, which would not be covered without my amendment. Surely we are not talking just about things that cause harm to the prisoner or prejudice the security or operation of the prison. Subsection (3)(a) refers to
“concealing an article which a prisoner is not authorised to have”,
but what if someone is caught red handed with an article that they are not concealing, but brandishing openly in front of everybody? Would we then find ourselves in the ridiculous situation where if a prisoner was hiding the article, that would be covered, but if they were brandishing it openly, that would not?
Perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey is satisfied that everything is covered by the Bill. However, there is certainly no harm in the belt-and-braces approach adopted by my amendment. For example, what if an item was being used to facilitate the taking of drugs? That would not necessarily fall under either “concealing” an item or
“causing harm to the prisoner or others”,
nor would it be
“prejudicing the security or operation of the prison”,
yet I am sure we would all want to ensure that those things were covered. My amendment would introduce a catch-all element to ensure that any property associated with any unauthorised or unlawful use could be seized and disposed of.
Amendment 5 would insert
“recycling it or donating it to any charity”
at the end of proposed new section 42A(5)(c) of the 1952 Act, as set out in clause 1. Again, I guess—[Interruption.] I am pleased to see the return of my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North, because this might be another area where he can help out, with his undoubted expertise on legal matters. As the Bill stands, proposed new subsection (5) says:
“In this section…references to disposing of an article include selling it”,
but I do not know whether the Bill is trying to say, “You can do that if you want to,” or whether that is the preferred way of dealing with such articles. In any case, if references to the disposal of an item are to include selling it, it seems perfectly worth while to include other options, including recycling things or donating them to any charity. If items could only be either destroyed or sold, that would leave out some of the things that most people would consider to be the most appropriate ways of disposing of them. If we were talking about things of particular use to a charity or things that could be recycled, why would we not want to do that?
Sir Peter Bottomley
No doubt the Minister will in time sort this issue out for us, but proposed new section 42A(1) of the 1952 Act says:
“The governor or director…may destroy or otherwise dispose of”,
so clearly there are ways of disposing with such property other than destruction, otherwise that phrase would not have been included. However, we are still left with the question, which my hon. Friend is raising, why selling is then specified. If something is not sold, the only other thing that can be done is to give it away—or perhaps leave it somewhere for someone else to steal, although if one does not want it back, I suppose that is not stealing. We await with interest to hear what my hon. Friend the Minister has to say.
Philip Davies
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. As ever, he is eagle-eyed on these matters. The point he makes about proposed new section 42A(1) is a good one, but like him, I would have thought that if “otherwise dispose of” included any other method, there would be no need for the words “selling it” in proposed new subsection 42A(5). Perhaps the Minister may like to explain that. My concern is that the Bill might encourage prisons to go down that line—it is as though that kind of behaviour is being encouraged. Personally, the behaviour I would most like to encourage is recycling or donating to charity. The things that are most likely to be caught include mobile phones, for instance, which mobile phone companies are trying to encourage us to recycle. It would be bizarre if we ended up destroying things that could otherwise be recycled.
Mr Nuttall
In drafting amendment 4, my hon. Friend has not referred specifically to a “registered charity”, but simply to a “charity”. I wonder whether he could clarify whether, in not using the word “registered”, he had in mind general good causes, which might not necessarily have formally registered as charities.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend makes a good point. It just goes to show the value I would have gained from speaking to him before I drew up my amendments. There is certainly a lesson in there for me. Indeed, given his nature and the fact that he is so expert at looking at such details, I am rather surprised that I did not discuss my amendments with him before tabling them. He makes a good point, although he seemed to imply that I went through a certain thought process—that I considered putting down “any registered charity”, but made a conscious decision not to and instead just put down “any charity”. He is doing me far too much credit by suggesting that I went through that thought process. The fact of the matter is—as I am sure you would have well known, Madam Deputy Speaker, knowing me as you do—that I did not go through any such thought process. I merely put down the sentiment, I guess, that such items should be given to any charity. I will certainly consult my hon. Friend in future, because as ever he spots things that I always miss. If he will bear with me, I will leave that detail to one side for the moment.
We should trust the prison officers, governors and directors to decide how best to deal with the items in question. I would not want us to push them down a particular route if there was a better one available. They might wish to support a local charity, for example, and the amendment would encourage them to use their discretion as widely as possible. My suggestion on Second Reading regarding the use of eBay was mentioned in Committee. Prisons might be able to make some money from the sale of the items. Times are tough, and I would not have a problem with a prison setting up its own eBay personality to sell those items in order to make money that could be reinvested in the prison. I want to give prisons the greatest possible flexibility.
Amendment 6 would remove the words after “force” and insert the words
“and which is held by the prison on that date”
into clause 1(6)(a). As the clause stands, the power to dispose of property
“may be exercised in relation to the relevant article found before the day on which this section comes into force if the article remains unclaimed at the end of six months beginning with that day.”
I think that that is too prescriptive. I would like to give the prisons the widest possible scope, and they should not have to wait six months to dispose of an item. If they think that the prisoner should not have an item, and that it ought to be disposed of, why should we insist that they wait six months to see whether it is claimed?
I want to speed through these matters a bit more now, and I will briefly mention amendments 7 and 8. Amendment 7 would remove clause 1(6)(b), which states that the power to dispose of items
“may not otherwise be exercised in relation to an article found before that day.”
Amendment 8 would remove parts of clause 1(7) and insert the words
“covered by this Act if it had been in force at the time the items were seized.”
All three amendments are trying to make the same point. As the Bill stands, it would cover only items seized after its introduction, or a limited type of item that had not been claimed six months after its introduction. That is very weak. It should be dealing with all confiscated items, not just those that have not been claimed. Whether or not they have been claimed is wholly irrelevant. It is beyond me to understand why on earth an unauthorised or illegal item should be given back to someone just because they claim it is theirs.
There are many examples of the appropriateness and correct application of this approach. A pertinent one relates to sentencing. Someone might commit a crime before a change to the sentencing guidelines, but if they fall to be sentenced after the change, they will be sentenced as per the new guideline. I am suggesting a similar approach in the Bill. It would be ironic if someone had an item confiscated after committing a crime and it was handed back because it had been confiscated before the change took place, and if that same person could go to court and be sentenced on the basis of the sentencing guidelines that pertained on the day of sentence, rather than on the day of the offence. That would be a topsy-turvy situation.
Mr Nuttall
I have been gently supportive of my hon. Friend’s amendments so far, but I have my reservations about this one. I fear that it might be used to ensure that items of property were never disposed of. There is always a chance that a device could contain evidence, even if it was not known about at the time of confiscation, and that, in six months or a year’s time, that evidence could turn out to be relevant to a crime.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend kindly says that he has been “gently supportive” of my amendments. He could have fooled me! I have heard nothing but criticism from him so far, so I would hate to think what he would have said if he had disagreed with me. I ought to be grateful that he is gently supportive. He makes a good point; we might well want to avoid enabling the scenario that he mentions. I am sure that he would acknowledge, however, that it would be a travesty if an item that contained evidence of a serious offence could no longer be used by the authorities because it had been disposed of. The prison authorities could find themselves in an embarrassing situation if the perpetrators of a serious offence had been recorded on a device, and that device had been tossed away without giving any thought to the possibility of it containing such evidence. We could all end up looking rather silly if that were to happen.
Amendment 9 would protect the data on phones, for example. If the measure looked likely to result in a significant reduction in the number of items being disposed of, it might be sufficient to say that an expert should remove all the data from the device and assess it. The device could then be disposed of.
I do not really know what happens at the moment. This is an important issue for this particular amendment. I do not know—perhaps the Minister can explain it—whether or not all illegal phones or unauthorised phones that are confiscated in prisons or any other recording devices or whatever are scoured for evidence or intelligence whenever they are confiscated. I do not know whether that is a natural practice that happens in prisons. I absolutely hope that that is what happens when these things are confiscated. I hope that we do not have some sort of ridiculous human rights law stopping prison officers and prison governors from looking into these things to see whether what they have confiscated contains any evidence. If it does already happen as a matter of course, I would be the first to concede that the amendment might not be necessary. If that is not happening, however, and if the Government are not giving out that guidance to prisons or other laws are preventing that from happening, I would like to think that my amendment is an essential safeguard to stop any particular offence going undetected.
In a nutshell, those are my amendments. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey on his Bill, which I warmly support. I hope that my amendments will not be seen as trying to ruin the Bill; I hope my hon. Friend sees that I am trying to strengthen it. His heart is absolutely in the right place with this Bill. I simply think that my amendments would improve it further.
Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)
I welcome the interest of my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). I have no doubt that he wants to do all he can to make sure that the Bill achieves what we all want it to achieve.
It was said on Second Reading and in Committee that this was a simple Bill—led by a simple person, I suppose—and I hope that we are not going to over-complicate it. As I say, I want the Bill to do what we set out to achieve through it. Let me go through all the points that my hon. Friend made, as I hope to persuade him that many of the legitimate issues he raised are already covered in the Bill.
Beginning with amendment 2, the power already exists for these items to be confiscated wherever they may be. If a prisoner is in a hospital or at another venue as my hon. Friend described, they will, on return to prison, be searched, and if an item is found, it will be confiscated. Equally, if it is found on them in the hospital, it can be confiscated and taken back to the prison where it will be dealt with through the processes that we seek to introduce through the Bill.
Sir Peter Bottomley
On that point, proposed new subsection (1)(a) refers to
“an article found in the possession of a prisoner who is not authorised to have it in his or her possession”,
while (1)(b) refers to
“an article found inside the prison or in a prisoner escort vehicle”.
My hon. Friend may be able to assist us now, or perhaps the Minister later, to clarify why the prisoner escort vehicles provisions are sufficient to deal with the point that the amendment addresses.
Stuart Andrew
My hon. Friend is challenging me, so I am going to defer that one to the Minister. I thank him for his interest, but I am going to move on to amendment 3.
Philip Davies
Before my hon. Friend moves on, I take the point he made about my amendment 2, which was a helpful clarification. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) for pressing him on it, but the problem is that the provisions talk about articles
“found inside the prison or in a prisoner escort vehicle”
or
“found in the possession of a prisoner”,
but if something is found in the possession of the prisoner in another place such as a hospital, I wonder whether that could be a potential loophole.
Stuart Andrew
As I understand it, prisoners would not be able to take such an item back into prison with them—that is the whole point. If an item is found in the prisoner’s possession in the hospital and the prisoner tries to take it back to prison with them, it will be confiscated as an unauthorised item. It would therefore be subjected to disposal and destruction.
Philip Davies
I am sorry to press my hon. Friend, but there are two remaining loopholes. The first is that some of these things are not detected by the detection units when the prisoner goes back into prison. Some of these things like BOSS—body orifice security scanner—chairs do not always work, so we cannot always be confident that these things will be found. Furthermore, if in a hospital, a prisoner could take something out and leave it for somebody else to collect outside the prison.
Stuart Andrew
The issue here is that the item can be taken from prisoners, but that the confiscation process would happen back at the prison. I believe that the provisions cover this point clearly.
Stuart Andrew
My hon. Friend wants to intervene, so perhaps he can help me.
Sir Peter Bottomley
I think we are beginning to get closer to the issue, but the Minister will no doubt be able to sort us all out. As I pointed out before, (1)(a) talks about
“an article… in the possession of a prisoner who is not authorised to have it”.
Wherever the prisoner has such an article, it can be removed from them. On the other hand, (1)(b) refers to prison-controlled areas
“inside the prison or in a prisoner escort vehicle”,
so everything else is presumably not controlled by the prison. If the prisoner happened to be somewhere else and either leaves property there himself or it is left there for him, the escort officers may not be able to show that the item is the prisoner’s or was left for him, so they may not be able to take it. If people are trying to pass items to prisoners in a non-prison-controlled area, it should be possible for someone to say, “This item is suspicious” and something should then happen to it. My guess is that either the Minister or my hon. Friend will tell us that the item will go to the police who will judge it on its merits, and they will probably have powers of disposal.
Stuart Andrew
I think that is probably correct, but we need absolute clarification from the Minister. I see the point, but as I understand it, the processes involved are clearly dealt with in the Bill and in the guidance notes for governors that will follow implementation. Let us wait for the Minister to clarify.
Sir Peter Bottomley
On that point, we may be able to help the Minister. Amendment 9 refers to items that
“might contain or constitute evidence of a criminal offence.”
With a criminal offence carried out outside the prison or outside the prison vehicle, the article may need to be taken back by the prison, and the police may need to liaise with it. There is therefore going to be an issue about what happens in practice. It may not be essential to the Bill or to the amendment, but if we are trying to deter crime, knowing how often people in prison or under prison control obtain illegal or unauthorised substances—mobile phones or street drugs—we need to ensure that any potential evidence is taken and linked to the prisoner. I add a last statistical point. On how many occasions when a prison has illegal drugs is it recorded as a crime? If it is detected by the prison warders, it probably is not, or if it is detected by the police, it probably is. There is a degree of uncertainty regarding liaison between the two services.
Stuart Andrew
We are talking about unauthorised items here. Illegal items would be referred to the police, and there would then need to be a criminal investigation. I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s points, and I feel sure that the Minister has taken note of them and will answer them in due course.
On amendment 3, I support what my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley said. The people at the front line are often those who know the circumstances best. It is not true to say that we do not trust them. Prison officers currently have the ability and the right to confiscate items under powers given to them by the prison governor. They have the delegated authority of the governor to confiscate the item in the first place, and it is then up to the governor to decide what to do with it.
Mr Nuttall
I should say at the outset that I know that the amendments presented so ably by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) are not in any sense wrecking amendments designed to destroy the central thrust of the Bill. Indeed, they are very much in the spirit of the Bill, and are intended to strengthen it so that it achieves the purpose that we all want it to achieve.
Let me begin with amendment 2. As we have heard, there are many reasons why a prisoner may be away from the confines of the prison. He may, for example, be visiting a hospital, or he may have been released to attend a funeral. The question has been raised of how many times a prisoner will leave the prison in the course of a year. Given that there are 85,000 people in prison, and given all the reasons why a prisoner might want to leave the prison, the number of such occasions must amount to many hundreds of thousands.
Philip Davies
As my hon. Friend knows, it is not just a question of 85,000 prisoners. Far more than 85,000 people go to prison over the course of a year. There are about 80,000 people in prison at any one time, but obviously many more thousands go to prison during the year, and all of them may at some point leave the prison for the day.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend is right. There are probably 85,000 prisoners at any given moment in time, but over the course of a calendar year the number will be vastly greater. When, back in 2007, my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) asked how drugs had got into Dorchester prison, the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), who was a Minister at the time, replied that in a single year there had been
“Under the current system, 405,259 releases on temporary licence”.—[Official Report, 19 June 2007; Vol. 461, c. 1253.]
There is, therefore, some evidence to support my estimate that there are some hundreds of thousands of such releases each year.
It now seems to me that the point about the definition of “prisoner escort vehicle”—I wondered whether my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) would mention this—is covered by clause 1(5), which defines it as
“a vehicle used for taking a prisoner to or from a prison or other place while in custody”.
I think, on reflection, that I am satisfied that the provision is drawn widely enough to defeat any silver-tongued lawyer who might suggest that a vehicle was not, in fact, a prisoner escort vehicle. I therefore intend to support amendment 2.
I think that there is some merit in amendment 3. Those who are closest to the prisoners and to what is going on in the prison environment should be allowed to determine whether something is used or may be used for unauthorised purposes, within the terms of the Bill, instead of having to refer the matter to the governor or director of the prison. I appreciate that some may not share that view, however.
Sir Peter Bottomley
I used to feel the same way as my hon. Friend, but I think that if a prison officer decides that an unauthorised item should be destroyed or disposed of, a senior manager of the prison ought to agree with that. The issue is not about whether an article is unauthorised or being used in a way that is unauthorised; it is about the disposal of the article afterwards. I am now convinced that the right approach is for a prison officer to be able to confiscate an article and for the governor or director of the prison to decide about disposal.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes a valuable point, and he has persuaded me on it. I would be interested to know, however, whether the Minister has had any feedback on amendment 3, perhaps from the Prison Officers Association.
Amendment 4 is a sensible proposal, and I have nothing further to say on it this morning.
Amendment 5 is of considerable interest. I asked in an intervention whether my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley had deliberately not put “registered” before “charity”. Whether or not that is the case, it is the right decision, as it overcomes any bureaucratic problems that might arise over whether a local charitable organisation had gone through the registration process. Such an organisation may be in the process of registration—indeed, that is often the case. The amendment would serve to avoid long-winded discussions as to whether individuals who are doing good work should be prevented from benefiting from confiscated property. Most of this property is mobile phones and there is a considerable market in recycling them, so they have a great value, especially as nowadays most of them are, in fact, small mobile computers.
Amendment 9 addresses the question of the data on these phones. The right solution is for the data to be routinely taken off the phones and stored on a central hard disc, logged with the prisoner’s name and number. Therefore, if at any point in the future it turns out that some of that information is pertinent to an alleged offence, it can be used in evidence.
Philip Davies
I agree with my hon. Friend, but does he agree that there would be a different perspective on this question if the Minister were unable to give the assurance that these data will be routinely checked and stored? Does my hon. Friend agree that that would give some merit to my amendment that the Minister currently does not see?
Mr Nuttall
That is right. Our concern is that property that was disposed of might later turn out to have contained evidence that was central to securing a conviction. I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey, the promoter of the Bill, would not want that information to be unavailable. There is a great deal of merit in having routine cleansing of phones, but only after having saved all the data contained on them on a central hard disc for possible future use.
We know from the Minister’s comments on Second Reading that 41,000 phones are currently stored, so I accept that storing these data would be a major task. We were told on Second Reading that the cost of storing the phones is £20,000 a year, and they are seized at the rate of 800 a month. This is a major problem, therefore, and there would be a great deal of merit in the Minister’s exploring the possibility of a standardised system whereby information is taken off phones and stored for future reference.
Sir Peter Bottomley
About 13 years ago I became rather conscious of what was going on in prisons. I had taken part in a campaign to help overturn the convictions and to free Ruth Wyner and John Brock, who had been working at the Wintercomfort project in Cambridge, helping the homeless. I remember helping to lead a procession across London that had the slogan, “Help the homeless: jail the social workers?” An account of these events is given in Alexander Masters’ book, “Stuart: a life lived backwards”. With the knowledge of the police, these two people were running a project for homeless people, some of whom were addicted to illegal street drugs. Another police officer found that some people were exchanging drugs on or outside the premises, and for some ludicrous reason the people running the project were prosecuted and jailed.
In jail, Ruth Wyner was asked to sign a confidentiality agreement so as to give counselling to other prisoners who were getting illegal street drugs in prison. I asked how many times each year someone in prison was detected as having used illegal street drugs. The answer was about 20,000, which is really quite high. I then asked somebody who had worked for me but who went on to work in the Prison Service how the drugs got into prison. The answer was, “Sometimes they’re thrown over the wall.”
I also refer Members to the first book Lord Archer wrote about his prison experience. It described how new prisoners, most of whom were inexperienced at crime—and at life—were sent to a high-security prison for a period, and if they were not on drugs before they went, they were often on drugs by the time they had finished their three weeks there, because the senior, experienced prisoners would arrange for the new prisoner to get their family to pay the experienced person’s family or associates outside the prison. That demonstrates why the mobile phones issue is important and why detecting unauthorised possession of mobile phones matters.
We ought to support the Bill. The question of how to deal with the amendments will be determined by the Minister’s responses to the points made by my hon. Friends the Members for Shipley (Philip Davies) and for Bury North (Mr Nuttall). I am grateful to the Bill’s promoter, my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew), and I wish him success with it.
We must address the underlying issue, which is that 800 mobile phones are detected a month, and many more surely go undetected. A technical fix ought to be possible, so that any use of a mobile phone in a prison is linked to the identification number of a phone, and if any phone is used that is not part of the approved list, investigations should take place and people should find out where it is. The technology cannot be that difficult. Perhaps that is how it is done anyway, and that is why the detection rate is as high as it is.
I am a great believer in helping prisoners to be rehabilitated, but if there is a currency in mobile phones in a prison, let alone in controlled or illegal drugs, we need to stop it. The Bill is about the particular issue of how one can dispose of or destroy items that are not illegal to possess but that are unauthorised in prisons. Its limited purpose is one that this House should support, and I do support it.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mrs Helen Grant)
Amendment 2 proposes an addition to proposed new section 42A(1) of the Prison Act 1952, as inserted by clause 1 of the Bill, which would extend the power of a governor or director to places outside a prison or prison escort vehicle, such as a hospital, court cells or a police station where a prisoner might be detained in custody. In some circumstances, the prisoner, although they are in custody, will not be in the custody of the governor. It would therefore not be appropriate to extend the powers in such a way. I think that deals with the question raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) about extending the power beyond the prisoner escort vehicle.
It is already possible to remove any unauthorised items found on a prisoner while they are in custody outside the prison. Such items would be returned to the prison with the prisoner and dealt with as the prisoner re-entered the prison. The prison governor or directors could authorise the prisoner to keep the item with him or her in prison or disposal could be required. If appropriate, the governor could confiscate it and use the general power of destruction already provided in the Bill. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) will therefore withdraw his amendment.
Amendment 3 is not necessary. Prison officers will have the power to act in the way envisaged by the amendment through the delegated authority of the prison governor. It is therefore not necessary specifically to include them in that power. In addition, “prison officer” is the term used to describe officers in a public sector prison and would not cover prison custody officers, who carry out the same function in private sector prisons. I therefore hope that my hon. Friend will not press that amendment.
The purpose of amendment 4 would appear to be to create a catch-all power to cover all property used for any unauthorised or unlawful purpose. Although I can understand my hon. Friend’s reasons for tabling the amendment, I do not believe that it is necessary. Any unauthorised item could be confiscated and destroyed under the power created in subsection (1)(a) or (b) of proposed new section 42A. Furthermore, an item used for unlawful or unauthorised purposes that would clearly prejudice the security or operation of the prison or cause harm to prisoners or others would be dealt with by proposed new subsection 3(c) or (b). I therefore hope that my hon. Friend will agree with me that the amendment is not necessary.
On amendment 5, I applaud my hon. Friend’s desire to see that confiscated property is put to good use and to ensure that charities might benefit wherever possible. The Bill already enables that. Proposed new section 42A enables a governor or director to
“destroy or otherwise dispose of”
confiscated property. My hon. Friend’s amendment is not necessary, because the phrase “otherwise dispose of” would allow the item to be recycled or donated to charity. I can assure him that the guidance given to governors and directors in the relevant Prison Service instruction will make it clear that those options are available.
The sale of property, mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West, would involve a financial gain for the Prison Service and has therefore been specified in the Bill. Other methods of disposal, such as recycling, do not need express provision as they are covered, as I have explained, by the expression “otherwise dispose of”.
Amendments 6,7 and 8 are the most significant and have the potential to undermine the progress of the Bill. The Bill as drafted contains a limited retrospective power and although retrospective legislation is generally not a good idea, that limited power has a specific purpose with which I am sure the House will agree. It is intended to enable the Prison Service to deal with the large number of mobile telephones held in storage. The House will be aware from previous debates on the Bill that more than 40,000 telephones are held at a cost of £20,000 a year and it is appropriate that we should take a power to deal with them. It is, after all, a criminal offence both to possess a mobile telephone in prison and to bring one into a prison. Governors and directors have options for other property that is not illegal per se. They can authorise the item, place it in central storage, require a prisoner to send it out of the prison or otherwise dispose of it. There is therefore no need for a general retrospective power to deal with such property and I hope that my hon. Friend will not press those amendments.
Amendment 9 is intended to address the ability of the Prison Service to destroy or dispose of mobile phones found in prisons. It is unlawful to possess or use a mobile phone in prison. The amendment would therefore prevent the Prison Service from disposing of them, as it is likely that every unauthorised mobile phone found in prison would contain or constitute evidence of a criminal offence. My hon. Friend asked about the checking of mobile phones and I understand that they are interrogated for evidence of criminality on confiscation. I hope that in the circumstances he will therefore agree not to press the amendment.
Mr Nuttall
The Minister has told the House that the mobile phones are interrogated. Will she briefly expand on what happens to any information that is found after they have been interrogated?
Philip Davies
I am grateful to everybody who has contributed to the debate on the amendments, and to the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) for addressing the points that I raised.
Let me take the amendments in a rather jumbled-up order. Amendment 3 refers to “prison officer” as well as “prison”. The Minister’s explanation that the definition of “prison officer” would not include prison custody officer did not entirely convince me, because that suggests that my amendment needs to be expanded rather than left out. However, I took the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey—my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) made the same point—that nothing stops a prison officer confiscating an item, and that it may be in everybody’s best interests, not least the prison officer’s, if the authority to dispose of property was taken by a senior manager or the prison governor. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West, I was much persuaded by the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey. I am grateful to him for that.
I was reassured to a certain extent by the explanation that amendment 4 is already covered. I hope that the Minister is right that
“prejudicing the security or operation of the prison”
has exactly the same effect as,
“any unauthorised or unlawful purpose.”
I am not entirely convinced that the amendment is covered by the Bill, but I am happy to leave it and see who turns out to be right.
I am not convinced by the Minister’s explanation about amendment 5 and “otherwise dispose of”. My hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey said that he thought that the amendment might be too prescriptive, but that does not explain why the Bill includes “selling it” in the “references to disposing of”. The Minister claims that the phrase “otherwise dispose of” covers
“recycling… or donating it to any charity”,
in the amendment. Again, that does not explain the paragraph,
“references to disposing of an article include selling it”,
if the Minister claims that everything is covered by “otherwise dispose of”.
Sir Peter Bottomley
We have picked up that if the Prison Service was going to make a profit or a gain, that would need a separate provision. The item could be sold in other ways—for example, the money could be given to a charity, so that the Prison Service did not gain, but that is not being proposed. Therefore, at the risk of sounding like someone who is after a job, I would say that the Minister explained the matter quite well.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is obviously more easily persuaded than me, but I know that, like me, he does not do anything to try to get a job. Nobody could ever accuse him of that, and I hope that he would never accuse me of it. However, I was not persuaded because I am not sure what “otherwise dispose of” means. I am concerned that “dispose of” implies getting rid of something, perhaps by throwing it in a bin.
Stuart Andrew
The Minister clearly said that there would be a Prison Service instruction that would give guidance so that “otherwise dispose of” will include recycling or donating items to charity. That will be covered in the Prison Service instruction.
Philip Davies
I knew that if I gave my hon. Friend enough of a chance, he would come up trumps and persuade me of the merits of his case. I will take my hon. Friend’s word that the substance of the amendment will be covered in guidance to prisons to encourage them to follow that route, despite the only reference to a definition of disposal being “selling it”. He has eventually reassured me; my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West was reassured much earlier.
I take the point that the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey made about amendments 6, 7 and 8. As I said at the start, I do not intend to do anything to cause the Bill any problems. If my hon. Friends say that those amendments would introduce too much controversy into the Bill, and that they may not be supported elsewhere, thus putting the measure at risk, I accept that they are not worth pursuing.
On amendment 9, I am greatly reassured by the Minister’s comment that things are interrogated for evidence when they are confiscated. That is very helpful. I noted that she said that she would write to my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) with more detail about that matter. We thank her for that.
However, we come back to amendment 2. We had an interesting and extensive debate about what was covered. The Minister tried to make it clear that everything that amendment 2 tries to do is already covered by the Bill. I am afraid that I am not persuaded that that is the case. The Bill therefore contains a loophole that should be avoided. Even if the Minister turned out to be right and I turned out to be wrong—it certainly would not be the first time and I am sure that it will not be the last—I do not understand what harm the amendment would do. It tries to ensure that everything is covered. If the Minister thinks that it is unnecessary, it nevertheless does nothing to detract from the measure. In the worst case scenario, it would be a belt-and-braces approach. I do not want some of the loopholes that my hon. Friends the Members for Bury North and for Worthing West discussed to be left in the Bill.
My hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey has done a brilliant job in getting the measure this far. Today is probably our only chance to get it right. I cannot see anybody revisiting it ever—or at least not for many years—and I am anxious that we do not leave any loopholes in it. I therefore want to press the amendment 2 to a Division.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Stuart Andrew
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
The process of getting the Bill through Parliament has been a steep learning curve for me, but a most enjoyable one too. I am grateful for the cross-party support that we have had. There have been many contributions during the Bill’s passage through the House which have helped us to scrutinise the detail of it. Although it is a small and, as I said earlier, simple Bill, it is important that we get it right.
Prior to 2009 unauthorised items which may have presented a threat to prison security, such as mobile phones, were seized from prisoners and destroyed, in reliance on powers contained in the Prison Rules 1999. However, in 2009 the administrative court held that governors have no authority to do that. We are now in the bizarre situation where unauthorised property can be taken from prisoners but cannot be destroyed. Instead, it must be stored until they leave prison and can claim it. Some 40,000 mobile phones are now being stored by the Prison Service, at great cost—£20,000 is spent every year to store items that prisoners know they should never have had in the first place—which is terrible.
It really is odd that we have had to introduce this Bill, but it is absolutely necessary that we do so, because the effects that possession of a mobile phone in prison can have are quite stark, as I mentioned on Second Reading. It is important to refer to a number of cases in which mobile phones have been used either to perpetrate further crime or to intimidate victims and witnesses. On Second Reading I mentioned the case of Andrew Wanogho, who was shot dead on a London street in the early hours of April 2006. Delphon Nicholas seemed to have a cast-iron alibi because he was on remand in Belmarsh prison at the time, but that did not prevent him from co-ordinating the murder by using a smuggled mobile phone.
In 2007 Ryan Lloyd was jailed for life for the murder of Liam Smith, who was shot dead outside a prison in Liverpool in 2006. Lloyd had used a contraband mobile phone to call an accomplice. In 2009 a gang leader, Nigel Ramsey, was jailed for organising from his cell in Humberside the murder of a 17-year-old. The fact is that prisoners can use mobile phones not only for social purposes but to organise crime.
Mobile phones can be used to sell drugs. When Jordan Moore found himself behind bars, he soon realised that he had a captive market of addicts and quickly worked out a way to take control and cash in on them. He used his mobile phone to operate a business from his prison cell by arranging for drugs to be thrown over the prison walls, which we heard about a moment ago.
Violent criminals, including murderers, have also been using Facebook to taunt victims and their families from behind bars. Other prisoners have maintained their criminal empires via social networking sites. Inmates are of course banned from accessing the internet, but they manage to get online by using mobile phones that have been smuggled into prisons. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) rightly pointed out, mobile phones are so much more that just phones these days; they are mini computers. Prisoners can access all the social networks out there and communicate to the wider world. In fact, in the past two years nearly 350 prisoners have been discovered posting messages on Facebook. It is likely that dozens of others are using the site without the authorities being aware of it. Javed Khan, the chief executive of Victim Support, has said:
“Offenders using Facebook from prison make a mockery of the idea that they are being punished. It adds insult to injury when they use it to intimidate victims and witnesses. Victim Support would like to see this more tightly controlled and monitored.”
I hope that the Bill will at least make that organisation happy.
Ministry of Justice figures released after a freedom of information request show that 143 Facebook profiles were removed between July 2009 and June 2010 and another 199 were removed between July 2010 and June last year. They were all closed by Facebook following investigations by prison officials. The bizarre thing is that these mobile phones will simply be taken off prisoners and stored, when frankly they should be destroyed. Statistics compiled by the National Offender Management Service show that between February 2009 and January 2010 the authorities found over 4,000 mobiles and 4,300 SIM cards in prison in England and Wales.
As well as using mobile phones themselves, many inmates charge others to use them at extortionate rates. It is a lucrative business.
Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman suggests that the phones should be destroyed. Does he think that they should be interrogated before they are destroyed, and is that addressed in his Bill?
Stuart Andrew
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. Funnily enough, we have just had this discussion. The Minister has confirmed the position, and I believe that she is going to write to my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North about the processes involved. Yes, the phones are checked for any information that might lead to any criminal convictions or be of any other use.
Graham Jones
Will that action be retrospective on the 40,000 phones that are currently held or will it apply only to those that are confiscated once the Bill is passed?
Stuart Andrew
I am pretty sure that that is absolutely correct, but I am looking to my hon. Friend the Minister for clarification; perhaps she can give a more definitive answer.
Most mobile phones now have cameras, and these have been used to take photographs of prison officers so that those on the outside can target and intimidate them. That is clearly unacceptable in this day and age.
The taunting of victims from prison is also unacceptable. We all heard about the tragedy of the killing of 16-year-old Ben Kinsella. One of his killers, Jade Braithwaite, used Facebook to taunt the victim’s family from behind bars, boasting that he was “down but not out.” For his profile picture he mocked up a T-shirt emblazoned with his face and the slogan “Free Jade Braithwaite”. It is horrible for the families to be taunted in this way.
I have had a personal experience of this through a dear constituent of mine, Lorraine Fraser. Four of the people who killed her 16-year-old son are in prison, but one of them escaped to Pakistan and has been taunting her via Facebook. I know the impact that that has. It is bad enough that she knows he is on the run in Pakistan, with the torment that that causes her, so imagine what it must be like to know that the person is in prison and able to taunt the family in this way. It is simply unacceptable.
There have been ridiculous examples where people boast about the criminal activities that they are taking part in while in prison. David Wibberley was an inmate who used his mobile phone, which had been illegally smuggled in, to boast on Facebook of smoking cannabis in prison. He posted updates on the social networking site from a prison in Cumbria, where he is serving time for the possession of the class B drug. In the posts that could easily be seen online, he boasted about “chilling” in his “pad”, “skinning up” cannabis joints and being stoned or, as he called it, “whiffed out me ’ed”. Such examples are totally unacceptable. That is why it is imperative that we do everything that we can to help those who work in the prison system.
Prison officers often report that the inmates know their rights. When officers confiscate unauthorised items, there is nothing more frustrating than the prisoners demanding that they be stored for them until their release. That is why the Prison Officers Association was very keen to support the Bill. I have received a message of support from it. I have also received messages of support from support groups for victims and their families, because they find it unbelievable that this anomaly exists. That is why I believe that the Bill is crucial.
I am grateful to Members from all parts of the House for the support that they have given the Bill so far.
Philip Davies
I do not intend to detain the House for long. I just want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) for bringing the Bill forward. He has done a great service to the House, and done so with the levels of charm, skill and talent that we have come to expect from him. The only bad thing about him is that he is my constituency next-door neighbour and regularly outshines me in the local area. One might say that that is not difficult, but he does it nevertheless. It shows my inadequacies as the Member of Parliament for Shipley when my constituents see such a guiding light next door.
In all seriousness, this is an important piece of legislation. It deals with a situation that my constituents, like those of my hon. Friend next door in Pudsey, are sick to the back teeth of. As they see it, the rights of prisoners seem to come ahead of the rights of everybody else. This legislation will even up the score on the side of the victims of crime and decent, law-abiding people. If the Bill completes its passage, it will give people confidence that prisoners will be treated much more appropriately than they are at the moment. That is something that we should all support.
I am sorry that my hon. Friend could not see the merit of my amendments. I maintain that the Bill would have been even better if amendment 2 had been accepted. Despite that, it is still an excellent piece of legislation of which he should be very proud. It takes great skill and it is a great honour to bring forward a piece of legislation that completes its passage through the House of Commons and, hopefully, into law. That will never happen to me, but is something that I can only dream of. My hon. Friend should be extremely proud of himself because he has done a fantastic job. He should know that many of my constituents will think that this is an extremely worthwhile piece of legislation, unlike many Bills that come before the House on a Friday.
Sir Peter Bottomley
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). I have gone into the private Members’ Bills ballot on 36 occasions and I have not come up once. I suppose that that is roughly right, given that there are some 650 MPs. That might be wrong, but my maths has deserted me this afternoon.
I join in the congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew). It seems a bit odd that we have had to wait this long to put right the consequences of a decision by an administrative judge, but that is life. It might be worth it if the judiciary got to understand the consequences of some of the decisions that they make. Obviously, they have to judge the issues on their merits, but the consequences of their decisions ought to be one of the merits. We are trying to put right a situation that has caused a great deal of confusion.
The way in which the Bill has been prepared and presented has been admirable. If it has the blessing of my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley, it must be very good indeed.
Mr Nuttall
I rise merely to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) for steering the Bill to Third Reading. The Bill is sponsored by Conservative Members only and does not have cross-party sponsorship, but it has nevertheless received cross-party support. On behalf of my constituents, I thank my hon. Friend for his work, and wish the Bill a speedy passage in the other place.
Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
I add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) on introducing the Bill, which addresses a serious issue. I do not wish to repeat the valid and sound points he raised on prisoners misusing equipment, terrorising people, and furthering their criminal activities. I, too, wish the Bill a speedy enactment, and look forward to the benefits it will bring when it is enacted and begins to address the huge problem the hon. Gentleman has described.
Mrs Grant
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) on his success in the private Member’s Bill ballot in the summer and on introducing this worthwhile measure. In promoting the Bill, he has given the House the opportunity to debate the security and good order of our prisons, which is important. The Bill was fully debated on Second Reading, and Members made some helpful contributions. It also passed successfully through Committee. Clearly, there is considerable support for it in the House.
My hon. Friend explained that his Bill will enable prison governors and directors to confiscate, destroy, dispose of or sell property that prisoners should not have in their possession, including items that it would be illegal to possess in the community, such as illicit drugs; items that can threaten prison security and good order, such as mobile phones; authorised items that have been adapted to conceal illicit items; and items that have been smuggled into the prison or coerced from another prisoner. In principle, the Government believe that the objective being pursued is justified and we welcome the Bill.
Although the Bill has been debated previously, it might be helpful if I again explain the process by which prisoners’ property is managed. Prisoners’ property needs to be managed efficiently, effectively and with care. Maintaining the security and good order of the prison is paramount. Therefore, within the constraints of the prison environment, prisoners can have sufficient property in their possession as is considered necessary for their day-to-day life, and which will help them to achieve the aims of their sentence. Prisoners must also comply with the rules on what property they can have in their possession.
On Second Reading, my hon. Friend said he found his visit to Leeds prison extremely interesting. Leeds is a busy local prison. Prisoners have lots of property that they want to keep with them, including property that they brought with them at reception from court and items they have received during their period in custody. Prisoners arriving at Leeds prison—this is the case for prisoners arriving at all other prison establishments—are provided with detailed information on the items of property they can retain in their possession. That information is also displayed throughout the prison, including in residential units and the library. Prisoners should therefore be in no doubt about what they can and cannot possess while in prison. All property accompanying prisoners on entering any prison, whether they are new to custody or being transferred from another prison or other criminal justice agency, will be searched and recorded on a property record card, which is an inventory of a prisoner’s property. Depending on the item of property, prisoners will be able to keep it with them in their cell, or it will be confiscated or stored and given to them on their release.
Stored property will be kept in local storage or at the prison, or it will be sent to the Prison Service’s central storage facility. The prisoner’s property card will record where the property is held, and will be updated during the course of their imprisonment to reflect changes in its location. The property will be returned to them on their release from custody. As the House will by now appreciate, some prisoners’ property will be stored for many years. Alternatively, prisoners may send their property to a relative or a friend instead of keeping it in storage. At present, property that is left behind by a prisoner after release can be disposed of only after a year has elapsed.
Property that a prisoner can keep in their cell is known as in-possession property—property they have been authorised to have in their cell by the governor or director. What they can keep in their cell will depend on many variables, such as whether the prisoner is on remand or has been convicted and sentenced, what level of privileges they have, and, sometimes, the nature of their offence. Most prisoners will be allowed to have in their possession such items as photographs of relatives, basic toiletries and some books.
That said, the amount and type of property a prisoner can have in their possession is restricted. This is important as it aids effective searching and assists governors and directors in applying a prison’s privilege regime. Prisoners should be clear about the type of property they are allowed to retain in their possession, as lists of types of items that can be held in their cells are normally displayed in a prison’s reception areas and on wings. Prisoners are not allowed to transfer in-possession property to the ownership of other prisoners unless the governor or director is satisfied that such transfers are voluntary and for acceptable reasons. Property must not be transferred as a result of bullying or in exchange for illicit items, and transfers must not undermine good order or discipline, or, indeed, the system of granting privileges to prisoners for good behaviour. For example, prisoners who have earned the privilege of having a radio in their cell should not be allowed to transfer the radio to a prisoner who has not earned that right. If a transfer of property is authorised by the governor, it must be recorded on the appropriate property card of the prisoners concerned.
Unauthorised property is property that a prisoner has in their possession that is not recorded on their property card. It will include: items that are unlawful to possess in the community generally, such as controlled drugs and offensive weapons; items that are illegal to possess inside a prison, such as mobile phones; items that may threaten good order and discipline, such as alcohol; items that may threaten the security of the prison, such as property that has been adapted to hide illicit items; and items that may have been smuggled in to the prison by visitors, or even by throwing them over a wall.
As I have explained, prisoners may also have obtained property from another prisoner by bullying or coercion. However, there will also be situations where prisoners have transferred what I might refer to as innocuous property between themselves, but for which they have not sought prior approval of the governor or director. Such property is unauthorised, and so will not have been included on the prisoner’s property card. The current arrangement for dealing with unauthorised property is that, when discovered, the item will be confiscated unless it is noxious, in which case it will be destroyed, or unless it is, for example, an offensive weapon or controlled drug, which will be passed to the police.
Other items may be confiscated only temporarily. The consequence of this limitation is that the property has to be stored either locally or at the Prison Service’s central facility until the prisoner is released from custody. If the prisoner asks for the item to be returned to them on release, the prison must do so. This cannot be right. The historical context to the existing position is that in 2009 the administrative court decided that there was no lawful basis for prisons permanently to confiscate and destroy unauthorised property. The case before the court related to a mobile telephone. As a result, prisons are currently storing unauthorised property, as I outlined earlier. That is perverse, particularly in relation to mobile phones seized from prisoners or found within a prison and which are not items that can be lawfully possessed in prison.
I will give hon. Members an example of the lengths to which prisoners will go to smuggle in illicit items, including mobile phones, and often conceal them in authorised items of property. In January 2012, the National Offender Management Service north-west team reported a seizure by team members of three weapons at HMP Wymott. During the course of a search of prisoner accommodation, staff found three adapted slashing weapons, wrapped together in a strip of bed sheeting, wedged behind copper piping in a wing toilet. The weapons had been adapted from authorised items, namely disposable razors and toothbrush handles, a strip of bed sheeting and disposable razor blades. I hope that gives a sense of the task that prison staff face daily.
The intention behind the Bill is to provide a lawful basis for the disposal of all unauthorised property found in prisons. For the power to be effective, it needs to be retrospective in respect of certain categories of property seized prior to the Bill becoming law. The Bill is a common-sense measure. It strikes a fair balance between prisoners’ property interests and the public interest, in removing from prison and destroying property that might prejudice good order and discipline or prison security. I am sure that many ordinary people will be startled to learn that, as the law stands, jails can find items that should not be on the premises but have no power to destroy them. The Bill is an important step forward and rectifies an unacceptable anomaly. It should help build trust in the system and allow governors to run safe and secure regimes, with rules that are meaningful and enforceable. I applaud my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey for taking up this issue, and I commend the Bill to the House and support its continuing good passage through the other place.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
Marine Navigation (No. 2) Bill
(12 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 1, page 2, line 5, leave out clause 2.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 2, page 2, line 7, leave out
‘a member of the crew’
and insert
‘master, first mate or senior navigating officer’.
Government amendment 12 , line 7, leave out ‘member of the crew’ and insert ‘deck officer’.
Government amendment 13, line 8, leave out
‘omit “of which he is master or first mate”’
and insert
‘for “master or first mate” substitute “a deck officer”’.
Amendment 3, line 8, leave out
‘of which he is master or first mate’
and insert
‘master, first mate or senior navigating officer’.
Amendment 4, line 9, leave out
‘a member of the crew of the ship’
and insert
‘master, first mate or senior navigating officer’.
Government amendment 14, line 10, leave out ‘member of the crew’ and insert ‘deck officer’.
Government amendment 15, line 12, leave out ‘person’ and insert ‘deck officer’.
Amendment 5, line 12, leave out ‘person’ and insert
‘master, first mate or senior navigating officer’.
Government amendment 16, line 12, at end insert—
‘( ) In section 31(1) (interpretation) at the appropriate place insert—
“deck officer”, in relation to a ship, includes the master and first mate;”.’.
Jim Fitzpatrick
I am delighted to be here today. This is the third time we have had to debate clause 2. On Second Reading, we raised concerns about clause 2 and the pilotage exemption certificates, and in Committee we debated amendments that detailed some of our concerns. The Minister undertook to consider those and gave us some assurances. Those assurances were accepted, and we withdrew the amendments. We are pleased, now, to have what we hope will be a final debate on clause 2. It is the only clause that causes the Opposition any concern.
As we said on Second Reading and in Committee, we support the Bill and would like to see it pass today, but that will be down to the will of the House, the assurances we receive from the hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray), whom I congratulate on piloting—forgive the pun—the Bill to this point, and, obviously, the assurances that the Minister can give on our amendments.
I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss the amendments in my name, including amendment 1, which the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) supports. I know that the Government take every amendment seriously—even more so when those on the Opposition Front Bench attach their names to it—but when the hon. Gentleman adds his tag it captures the Government’s attention, because they know there will be a good discussion about the amendment. Amendment 1 would delete clause 2 in its entirety, whereas our amendments 2 to 5 would amend it.
Amendment 1 registers the principle of opposition to change, based on the need for the certainty that exists at present. In previous debates I quoted from the Library note on the Bill, which outlines the history of pilot exemption certificates—and, indeed, the pilotage regulations—when it says:
“In March 1997 the Marine Accident Investigation Branch…published its findings into the grounding of the Sea Empress at Milford Haven in February 1996.”
The MAIB found that
“the initial grounding was caused by pilot error, due in part to inadequate training and experience in the pilotage of large tankers. It recommended that procedures should be developed and implemented for the effective monitoring of”
competent harbour authorities’ “standards and examination” of all pilots. That is what led to the present arrangements to ensure that vessels are piloted. That is the key issue, because any collision involving a vessel will lead to damage of the vessel or vessels and also poor infrastructure, while any subsequent pollution can have significant consequences, which we all want to avoid.
It was clear in Committee that there was support from the UK Maritime Pilots Association, which I know has been in correspondence with the hon. Member for South East Cornwall, the Minister and others. It said in an e-mail to me that clause 2
“is based on the specific commercial requirements of a small (aggregate dredging) sector of the UK shipping industry which for operational reasons is falling foul of the Working Time regulations. The net result of the clause will be to increase the risk of a serious maritime casualty within a UK port or approaches, seriously threatening: the safety of mariners and riparian communities, the safety of other shipping or vessels, ports’ infrastructures and ability to operate efficiently, environmental protection through increased risk of pollution”.
That is the UK Maritime Pilots Association’s starting point. I know that the whole House agrees that safety is a prime consideration in transport; therefore, when professional organisations raise concerns, they need to be addressed adequately. I am sure that in due course the Minister will respond in detail to the points I raise.
After the UKMPA’s e-mail there was correspondence from the officers’ representative body, Nautilus International, which said:
“It is important to state at the outset that Nautilus has been concerned for many years about the way in which PECs”—
pilot exemption certificates—
“are issued.”
Nautilus continued:
“we struggle to find any rational justification for the clause”—
clause 2—
“which would remove the existing restrictions requiring that PEC candidates should be a bona fide first mate or master.”
If amendment 1 is not accepted, which is contingent on what the Minister and others add to this debate, amendments 2 to 5 would address what we believe to be an inadequacy. The Government agree that there is a deficiency, as they have joined the hon. Member for South East Cornwall to table amendments 12 to 16, which give additional detail about the appropriate officer who should be empowered to pilot a vessel, so clearly there is an issue to clarify. We propose to add the words “senior deck officer”, whereas the Government and the hon. Lady propose the words “deck officer”. We are keen to hear the Government’s logic behind that—I will return to why we would include the word “senior” in a moment.
The Transport Committee’s 2008 report referred to pilotage exemption certificates and to the amendment in the original draft Bill to amend the provision for pilotage to extend the scope of those who can hold a PEC. The report stated:
“The proposed change would impose additional burdens on competent harbour authorities and make it harder to ensure that only appropriately qualified staff carried out pilotage. This could create unnecessary dangers. If it is necessary for the references to the Master or First Mate of a ship to be removed from the 1987 Act, we recommend that the reference to “bona fide” members of a ship’s crew be retained, for the avoidance of doubt. The Government should specify an appropriate rank or level of qualification for PEC-holders, following further consultation with the industry rather than leaving it to individual CHAs to assess each individual applicant’s relevant skills.”
We have also raised the question of the pressure that shipping lines might bring to bear on smaller ports to accept different levels of qualification.
The position in respect of the concerns about PEC holders was supported by port owners and unions alike at the time. Indeed, in Committee recently we heard that the British Ports Association and the UK Major Ports Group were still unhappy with the clause as it stood. I referred to the relevant correspondence, and the Minister kindly said that he would seek further clarification from the industry. I am sure that he will update the House on the outcome of those discussions shortly.
Industry representatives have subsequently written to say that they support the Government’s amendment whereby PECs would be extended to include the term “deck officer”, and that the term should be defined in the “Port Marine Safety Code” and the “Guide to Good Practice”. However, the second paragraph of their communication detailing this change of heart states:
“Having looked in some detail with both the Chamber of Shipping and the DfT as to whether a fuller definition could be contained within the Act, it is apparent that requiring, for example, STCW(Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping) qualifications, would debar some existing PEC holders who are already operating safely and with the full support of the harbour authorities concerned.”
I hope that the Minister will be able to clarify that the term “deck officer” will not compromise that definition.
The UK Maritime Pilots Association takes a different view. It states that amendments 2 to 5 adequately cover the need for the appropriate competence and qualification. Its correspondence goes further, stating:
“The recently published Final Report of the EU PEC study determines the eligibility of PEC holders throughout Europe that generally the PEC applicant must hold a Master’s (STCW 11/2) certificate and that different rules exist as to whether a Chief Officer can obtain a PEC. There is no mention of junior officers being able to hold a PEC.”
So the definition of “deck officer” is very important to the debate, and I hope that the Minister will be able to give us the reassurance we are seeking.
There is an argument that the term “deck officer” in the amendments tabled by the Government and the hon. Member for South East Cornwall is inadequate. The UKMPA argues that the words in the Bill should read:
“Master, Chief Mate or other deck officer engaged on board at Management level holding an STCW A-11/2 Certificate of Competency”.
That illustrates the UKMPA’s acceptance of the term “senior deck officer” that we have proposed. The term “management level” is used in the STCW convention and the UKMPA believes that the term “senior deck officer” captures that meaning. The organisation e-mailed me to say:
“We now understand that it was the use of the word ‘senior’ that the DfT objected to in our proposed amendment…because the word ‘senior’ does not appear in the STCW convention, instead the phrase ‘Management level’ is the term used in its place.”
We are talking about the terms “senior deck officer”, “deck officer” and “management level”. The competence of the officer who may hold a PEC is critical in this regard.
Nautilus International believes that
“there is considerable evidence to show that the issue of PECs should be restricted to vessels that operate on regular trades and where it can be demonstrated that there is adequate manning”—
a word that I am unhappy about; I would much prefer “crewing”—
“to conduct safe pilotage. There is an associated need for a more effective regime to govern the issue of PECs and improved controls against their misuse.”
In conclusion, we still seek reassurance from the Minister and from the hon. Member for South East Cornwall on the very important question of PECs. We will listen carefully to their comments, and especially to the Minister’s response, to see how the Department for Transport interprets some amendments and reacts to others. Once we have listened to the Minister and received any explanation or reassurance he might be able to offer, we will decide whether the Opposition wish to press our amendments or support others.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick). I am a big fan of his, to be perfectly honest, although I am sure that such a declaration will not do much for his reputation. Nevertheless I am a fan, and I think he made some excellent points. I would also like to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) on getting her Bill to this stage, which is an achievement in itself—something that many people do not do.
Jim Fitzpatrick
I just wanted to draw to the hon. Gentleman’s attention, in case it was not mentioned by his hon. Friends, that Hansard will show that I said some nice things about him as well, when he was temporarily not in his place at the beginning of this debate.
Philip Davies
I am very grateful for that, and I apologise for missing it. It was obviously my embarrassment that forced me to miss his saying nice things about me, but I am grateful. I shall certainly consult Hansard at the earliest opportunity to find out just how nice he was about me.
I rise mainly to discuss clause 2 and amendment 1, which is the only one that has my name attached to it, along with that of the hon. Gentleman, who made some extremely good points.
I support the thrust of the Bill and certainly wish it well in the broadest possible sense, but it is crucial to ensure that any legislation we pass is not passed solely on the basis that we broadly support what is in it, which we generally do. The hon. Gentleman and the Labour party, for example, broadly support what the Bill is trying to achieve and no one wishes it any ill will in that regard. It is important, however, that any legislation we pass is fit for purpose and properly considered and will achieve what we all want it to do.
As things stand at the moment—although I am certainly prepared to listen to what the Minister and my hon. Friend have to say—I have many of the same concerns expressed by the hon. Gentleman. I do not understand the reasoning behind clause 2, as it seems to be a solution looking for a problem in respect of where we are now. It is my understanding—I am sure I will be corrected if I am wrong—that the clause proposes to reduce a long-standing, efficient and effective risk mitigation measure in regard to the limitation of pilotage exemption certificate holders to master and first mate only. As far as I can see, none of the reasoning behind the clause substantiates the Bill’s goals, and the hon. Gentleman made the same point.
This provision is based on the specific commercial requirements of a small sector of the UK shipping industry, which, for operational reasons, is falling foul of the working time regulations. As it happens, I am not going to stand up for working time regulations in all their glory or for all the other things passed by the European Union, but that seems to be where we are. If people want to correct me, I would be happy for them to do so.
Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
I do not know whether my hon. Friend has consulted the Pilotage Act 1987, which the Bill amends, but it makes it clear that to qualify for a pilotage exemption certificate an applicant would still need to demonstrate possession of the
“skill, experience and local knowledge”
that a competent harbour authority judges to be necessary for him to be capable of piloting the ship, or ships, to which the certificate applies. Applicants must still have that expertise, as well as language expertise. Clause 2 merely allows that requirement to apply to people other than senior officers.
Philip Davies
I understand my hon. Friend’s point, and I do not doubt her intention, but it seems to me that we currently have a clear basis for knowing about the competence of people who are dealing with these matters, and I am not entirely certain that, under clause 2 as it stands, that will necessarily be the proven case in the future. As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, the clause has the potential to increase the risk of a serious casualty within a UK port or its approach, threatening the safety of the various people to whom he referred.
There are plenty of good things in the Bill, and I do not want them to be undermined by our leaving open the possibility of things going wrong. Obviously that would not be good for the people concerned, but it would not be good for my hon. Friend and her Bill either. Clause 2 is, as it were, a bridge that does not need to be crossed, given that there does not seem to be a massive problem with the current position.
The clause also directly contradicts and contravenes policy and guidance in the shipping industry, such as the requirements of the port marine safety code and some of the requirements of the standards of training, certification and watchkeeping, all of which refer to the specific duties of and differences between officers with managerial roles on board a ship—namely the master and first mate—and those in an operational capacity—namely junior officers, the second mate, and others whose role is to support a bridge team led by a senior officer—in specialist circumstances, for instance in pilotage waters, in the context of the established principles of proper and effective bridge management practices prescribed by the International Chamber of Shipping. Cutting across all those requirements, as the clause does, is opening a can of worms, and such action should be taken only when it has been considered in legislation that allows more detailed consideration than a private Member’s Bill.
The clause is based on arguments in support of the Department for Transport’s impact assessment, which many people believe to be based on incorrect assumptions in the interpretation of available evidence. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the Maritime Pilots’ Association. As my hon. Friend will know, it is the body that is most concerned about her proposals. It does not necessarily accept that the assumptions in the impact assessment justify the clause.
I am all for the Government’s stated one in, one out policy on regulation. In fact, I think the Government’s one in, one out policy is a modest commitment. Throughout the last Parliament we Conservatives were saying that there was far too much red tape and regulation in this country. This policy will serve to add to the regulations, and I think a policy of one in, two out would be far better.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
I fear the situation is even worse than my hon. Friend suggests. Does he share my concern that because the one in, one out rule does not apply to EU regulations, the European Union can send as many of them over as it likes, so that body of law will continue to grow?
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is right, but I am sure, Mr Deputy Speaker, that you would not want me to get sidetracked into discussing the merits, or otherwise, of EU regulations, so I will not do so.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Stephen Hammond)
I have good news for my hon. Friend on this point. The Government intend to move from one in, one out to one in, two out as of next year. I am surprised to see him today. He is rightly raising concerns about safety, but he is also raising concerns about regulation rather than deregulation.
Philip Davies
I take on board the Minister’s point. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway) mutters that perhaps we could move to one in, three out, and that would certainly be a step to be encouraged. The point is that the question of one in, one out and regulation and deregulation is not just a numbers game. Although the aim is to have less regulation overall, we want to keep the regulations that serve a good purpose and get rid of the ones that are wholly unnecessary. I firmly agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) about European regulations.
I agree with the thrust of the Government’s one in, one out target, or one in, two out, which would be even better—or even the one in, three out proposal of my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South. I would be happy to start a bidding war on that. The problem, however, is that a deregulatory measure might be proposed not because it deregulates in the right area, but because it meets the numbers target we have set ourselves. I would not want us to get into that situation. We must address each proposal on its merits, and I am not convinced that we have chosen the best measure in this instance. The Government’s impact assessment suggests to me there may be too much attention on hitting this particular target, and not enough on the merits of each proposal.
Jim Fitzpatrick
The key point is safety, not questions of one regulation in, one out. The point is whether the regulations make the situation safer or less safe. Last week in Westminster Hall we had a disagreement with the Government about European regulations on pilots’ hours, because we thought the UK standard was better and safer than the European standard. So far as we are concerned, the question being discussed today is also fundamentally a safety issue, and we want the Minister to give assurances on the hon. Gentleman’s concerns, which we share.
Philip Davies
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He puts the case far better than I could. His comments highlight why I wonder whether clause 2 is misguided. Our concerns about it may well be shown to be unjustified and my hon. Friend and the Minister shown to be right: everything carries on as before and all is fine and dandy. But it might also turn out that something goes wrong. We can argue the merits of whether such measures should be introduced in the first place, but once they have been introduced it is a lot more difficult to get rid of them. In effect, it will put the Minister and my hon. Friend on tenterhooks for ever as they will basically be hoping that nothing ever goes wrong in future.
Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for his co-operation in facilitating the availability of his officials since the Committee stage. It has caused me to do an awful lot of reading, for which I do not necessarily thank him. We are dealing with incredibly complex regulations and I want to put on record, having previously chaired the Deregulation Committee, that I believe that there is undoubtedly a case for better regulation, and the Bill is part of that process. When we deal with the regulatory regime, we should not simply count numbers, but focus on better regulation all round.
We cannot compromise on marine safety. Things go wrong at sea and close to shore. Some have tragic consequences and others have an element of humour, not least the recent case of Sandy island. I do not know whether the Minister has caught up with that story, but the island has been on charts since 1876, and it has taken till 2012 for the error to be spotted. A whaling ship—I do not know whether it had a drunken skipper—spotted the island in 1876, and only now has it been proven not to exist.
However, the Bill deals with very serious matters. The difference between us is a matter of definition, as the Minister knows, but the definitions are critical. My hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) referred to evidence that we received from the United Kingdom Maritime Pilots Association, which says that the current wording of clause 2 contravenes: Department for Transport and Maritime and Coastguard Agency policies and guidance; the Department for Transport and port marine safety code; the International Maritime Organisation standards of training, certification and watchkeeping regulations; the IMO international safety management code; and bridge resource management. The Department has signed up to all those principles.
In Committee, the Minister tried to explain that, in his view, the language of the clauses was adequate to keep within not only the spirit, but the letter of such regulations. However, it is clearly the professionals’ view that that is not the case. I hope that, when the Minister speaks to his amendments, we will have some clear answers to those challenging points, which are very serious.
The first code that I mentioned refers to 10 years and thousands of hours of work required to reach the status of an expert in some of the disciplines that are needed. It is therefore important, as my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse said, that we ensure that the skill levels are properly defined so that we do not put anyone at risk.
The reference to management level is appropriate. There is sufficient cross-referencing in the various regulations and in the way that marine officers, ship owners and Governments have interpreted the law over many years to mean that if we incorporate the word “senior”, we get some way there. The Minister may be able to convince us that he has got it right.
I have received further guidance from my constituent, Mr Youde, who I know has written to the Minister—
Andrew Miller
He has also written to the Prime Minister, extensively. Mr Youde refers to an incident which, coincidentally, came up in discussion with the Minister’s officials, and he refers to the report published by the marine accident investigation branch, in which a pilotage exemption certificate under section 8 of the Pilotage Act 1987 is a significant feature. The report relates to the collision in March this year outside Belfast between the short sea ferry Stena Feronia and the small bulk carrier Union Moon. The Union Moon was outward bound and had discharged her pilot. The Stena ship was inward bound under the pilotage of a PEC holder.
The report states in express terms in the synopsis that the PEC holder was on board the ship solely for the purpose of conducting pilotage, both at Belfast and at Liverpool, and had no other duty on board the vessel.
Sheryll Murray
Does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that the master of the Union Moon had 123 micrograms of alcohol per 100 mm of breath when he was operating vessel?
Andrew Miller
I am reading from the synopsis of the report, which makes it clear, according to my constituent, that the PEC holder was not a bona fide member of the crew of Stena Feronia. This is where the kind of difficulties that have been described become important. We need to be very precise.
As I said in Committee, I accept that the Minister is acting in an honourable way and is taking advice from people who are clearly knowledgeable about the subject, but the view has been expressed that the breach of the terms of the Pilotage Act that appears to have occurred should be taken seriously. There is, however, Mr Youde says, no indication yet that any prosecution might arise in respect of the apparent breach of section 15(1).
If, under the current regulations, such incidents occur and there is no prosecution, how seriously does the Department take the matter? I am not asking in an aggressive way; I am inquiring. Are there other factors, as the hon. Lady indicated, which mean that it is not appropriate to mount a prosecution? It seems to me that if alcohol was involved, somebody should perhaps have been prosecuted. These are the kind of issues that we need to be certain about as we progress the clause.
I want the Bill to succeed, but I want it to bear the label of better regulation and not to be open to endless litigation and interpretation in court, which would mean that we had wasted our time. I hope the Minister can give us confidence that his interpretation or his acceptance of our amendments would be the right way forward.
Stephen Hammond
We have had a wide-ranging debate on clause 2 and on the amendments, to which the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) spoke ably, as ever. Let me say at the outset—I know that the hon. Gentleman accepts this, but I want to put it on the record—that the Government will do nothing in legislation that would in any way endanger safety at sea. Only a mad hatter would believe that we would do anything that mad.
I listened carefully to the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), who, as ever, has been thorough in his investigation and exploration of the clause we are considering. I hope that he is reassured by some of the helpful assurances that I was able to give the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller) on Second Reading and in Committee. For example, I was able to say that the Government would reconsider the clause and bring forward amendments on Report, as we are today.
Let me deal with each amendment in turn. Amendment 1 would leave out clause 2. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse for setting out his reasons for tabling the amendment. As with other amendments that have been proposed, alternative definitions of who should hold a PEC have become the crux of what we are debating. The existing restriction limiting the issue of PECs to masters and first mates only no longer reflects maritime operations. For example, many ships and ferries making short voyages no longer have a single master or first mate, because they need to be able to keep the ship almost constantly active. On longer routes, where it is more likely that there is a single holder of each of those roles, there is often the risk of fatigue.
There will always be the alternative for a master to take on board a marine pilot if circumstances mean that none of the PEC holders on the ship is available to pilot it because of the hours worked or limited crew numbers, but if a suitably qualified person is available, it cannot be justifiable that, simply because they do not have the right title, they should not hold a PEC and pilot the ship.
Both the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse and my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley suggested that the clause was being introduced solely to satisfy the demands of a small number of operators of dredgers on the River Thames. I say gently to them that that explanation is like the fish that is so rarely caught on the River Thames: the red herring. It is simply not the case—[Interruption.] I am glad my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) enjoyed that joke; this is a serious matter and there are few opportunities for levity.
The UK Chamber of Shipping has highlighted its desire to see that change in the UK ferry industry. It considers that recognition of the expertise that already exists on its ships will improve the flexibility and efficiency of operations. The industry is also looking ahead and training younger officers so that they are ready to fill senior roles in coming years, recognising that a large proportion of officers are approaching retirement in the next five years. Clause 2 supports the aspirations of those young officers by offering the opportunity to apply for a PEC when they are ready and able to do so, rather than just holding them back because of a job title. I hope that the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse, on reflection, will consider withdrawing amendment 1.
I am also grateful to the hon. Gentleman for explaining the problems he is seeking to address through his other amendments to clause 2. I have already stated that the maintenance of maritime safety must be our key concern. That is why I think that the Bill contains three balanced clauses relating to the management and usage of PECs. I firmly believe that competent harbour authorities would not issue a PEC to unqualified individuals. The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston will remember the clarification that I was able to give him on Second Reading and in Committee about exactly when a PEC is in operation.
Further, the Bill does not remove or amend in any way the essential safeguard whereby competent harbour authorities may only award a PEC to those whose
“skill, experience and local knowledge”
is sufficient to pilot the named ship or ships to which the PEC applies. The amendments would prevent the deck officers who have that skill, experience and local knowledge from holding a PEC merely because they are not a master or first mate. The addition of a senior navigating officer would not, in practice, extend the restriction at all. Aside from the fact that the definition of the term would be somewhat imprecise, common usage would associate it with what most people call the chief mate under the international convention on standards of training, certification and watchkeeping for seafarers.
The term “deck officer” is well known and makes it clear that PECs can be held only by crew members who are regularly tasked with the navigation of the named ship. This definition can be supported by guidance in the co-produced port marine safety code and the accompanying guide to good practice about the qualifications that deck officers are likely to have achieved before they are ready to take the PEC exam.
Clause 2 amends the criteria in the Pilotage Act 1987 for those who are eligible to be granted a PEC. At the moment, an applicant must satisfy the criteria that they must be a bona fide master or first mate and must demonstrate the skill, experience and knowledge sufficient to be capable of piloting the ship specified within the harbour to which the PEC applies. Let me be clear: the clause amends only the first criterion; the second is entirely unaffected by the Bill and remains a vital safeguard to ensure that competent harbour authorities issue PECs only to mariners who can demonstrate that they can safely navigate the ships specified on the PEC. That addresses several of the points made by hon. Friend the Member for Shipley. He should be absolutely clear about the fact that the PEC can be issued only to mariners who have the necessary skill and that it applies only to a specific harbour. I hope that he will reflect on that and recognise that the Bill does not affect the issue at all. All that clause 2 changes in relation to the Pilotage Act is the definition.
Let me turn to the Government amendments. The Government propose that we use the term “deck officer” rather than the terms suggested in other amendments. In Committee, I gave a guarantee that given the importance of this matter to maritime safety, we would give further consideration to exactly what might be the best terminology. The current terminology for such crew as would be appropriate for the qualification of a PEC is “deck officer”, which enjoys the following dictionary definition:
“an officer in charge of the above-deck workings and manoeuvres at sea of a ship or boat.”
I suggest that that covers several of the concerns expressed by the hon. Members for Poplar and Limehouse and for Ellesmere Port and Neston.
Members have suggested qualifying terms such as “senior” or “certified” deck officer. However, those do not have the required clarity and are not in common usage, and would therefore maintain the current restriction. I was interested in the term “management-level deck officer” and accept that it could have some merit, but again, it is not in common usage. There may or may not be such a definition in maritime law, but there is no clarity about that.
Andrew Miller
In the STCW regulations, there is a reference to “management level”, but there is also a reference to “operational level”. Perhaps the Minister should look for a way of bringing the two together, because somebody can have managerial responsibility without having a hands-on role. The definition must ensure that the person is of operational level. Later in the regulations, there is a reference to
“officers in charge of a navigational watch”.
Somewhere in there, I think that there is a definition that everyone could buy into. The term “deck officer” does not exist in the regulations.
Stephen Hammond
The term “deck officer” does not exist there, but it does exist. I ask the hon. Gentleman to reflect on the point that management level is covered by the usual definition of deck officer, which is
“an officer in charge of the above-deck workings and manoeuvres at sea”.
That implies that the officer must have operational and management level qualifications.
The term “deck officer” is clear and is widely accepted to be in current usage. It excludes members of the crew who are not responsible for navigating the ship. The second criterion will still apply, so a deck officer would still need to have the requisite
“skill, experience and local knowledge”
to qualify for a PEC.
The port marine safety code and the accompanying guide to good practice are co-produced by the ports, the shipping industry, trade unions, maritime experts and the Government. They provide guidance for ports on the management of PECs and already suggest that competent harbour authorities seek a valid certificate of competency as a deck officer from PEC applicants.
I suggest that the Government amendments are a way forward. We have listened carefully to the concerns of the Opposition and other Members about the definition. Our proposals reflect the ambition of the Bill to reflect modern usage. I hope that the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse and my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley will be reassured by the Government amendments and will not press their own.
Jim Fitzpatrick
I have listened carefully to the Minister’s response on our amendments. As I outlined in my opening remarks, the deletion of clause 2 was a principled defence of the status quo in the absence of an alternative.
The alternative that we suggested was “senior deck officer” because that is what was suggested to us. The Minister stated that “deck officer” is a recognised term in the industry. He also acknowledged that our suggestion of replacing “senior” with “management-level” would be appropriate and that that term is contained in other regulations.
In essence, what we are talking about is safety. As the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) said, this is not an insignificant element of the proposals, but relates to the fundamental question of safety. We would not want to challenge the Government on their commitment to safety, because we accept the Minister’s assurances. I also know that the hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray), in whose name the Bill stands, would not want to do anything other than improve safety for mariners. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendments made: Government amendment 12, page 2, line 7, leave out ‘member of the crew’ and insert ‘deck officer’.
Government amendment 13, page 2, line 8, leave out ‘omit “of which he is master or first mate”’ and insert ‘for “master or first mate” substitute “a deck officer”’.
Government amendment 14, page 2, line 10, leave out ‘member of the crew’ and insert ‘deck officer’.
Government amendment 15, page 2, line 12, leave out ‘person’ and insert ‘deck officer’.
Government amendment 16, page 2, line 12, at end insert—
‘( ) In section 31(1) (interpretation) at the appropriate place insert—
“deck officer”, in relation to a ship, includes the master and first mate;”.’.—(Stephen Hammond.)
Clause 5
Harbour directions
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
I beg to move amendment 8, page 3, line 27, leave out clause 5.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 9, page 3, line 34, in clause 5, at end insert—
‘for the purpose of promoting safety of navigation’.
Amendment 11, page 4, line 19, at end insert—
‘(8) An order designating a harbour authority shall not be made unless the Welsh Ministers, the Secretary of State or the Scottish Ministers, as the case may be, are satisfied that the harbour authority has in place appropriate procedures for resolving any disputes that may arise in relation to a proposed harbour direction.’.
Amendment 7, page 4, line 27, at end insert—
‘(3A) Section 236(3) to (8) and section 238 of the Local Government Act 1972 apply to all harbour directions made by a designated harbour authority under section 40A and those provisions so applied have effect subject to the modification that for references to byelaws there are substituted references to harbour directions and for references to a local authority there are substituted references to a designated harbour authority.
(3B) The confirming authority for the purposes of section 236 in its application to harbour directions made under section 40A shall be the Secretary of State.’.
Government amendment 17, page 9, line 12, at end insert—
‘() the apprehension of offenders within the port constable’s police area in respect of offences committed outside that area and the transport of them to police stations outside that area;’.
Government amendment 18, page 11, line 8, leave out ‘subsection’ and insert ‘subsections (1A) and’.
Government amendment 19, page 11, line 8, at end insert—
‘(1A) Sections 5 and 6 come into force in relation to fishery harbours in Wales on such day or days as the Welsh Ministers may by order made by statutory instrument appoint.’.
Sir Peter Bottomley
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) on promoting the Bill and recognise that there is growing interest in it. The Government have managed to accommodate the substantial points made on pilotage. I congratulate the shadow Minister, to whom the Bill is familiar, and my hon. Friend the Minister on that achievement.
I have a number of proposals, one of which is that the simplest thing to do with clause 5 is remove it, which amendment 8 would do. I ought to explain to the House that I spoke briefly in Committee—I cleared my throat—for 15 minutes. We now have 75 minutes for the Bill to make progress. Were we to have, say, two Divisions, we would have about 45 minutes. Hon. Members need to recognise that there are time limitations.
Much in the Bill is of advantage, but clause 5, which amends the Harbours Act 1964, provides that each national authority can designate harbour authorities, which means we can anticipate a larger number of harbour authorities, which can give general harbour directions to ships within or entering or leaving their harbours. That currently requires a byelaw, which requires the approval of the Department. If a Minister is not prepared to approve the byelaw, it does not happen. I believe I am right that the Minister would be advised on whether the byelaw proposed is right and rational, and on whether the authority has been rational in terms of the results of the consultation—the requirement for a consultation will remain if a harbour is designated.
It has been said that, if the Government’s proposals go through, an interested group or person can object to the decision through judicial review, but that is too big a weapon for too many people. In any case, judicial review decides whether the way in which the harbour authority went about its decision was rational. If it goes about the decision unfairly, it can be stopped, but if it does it wrongly, it cannot. The decision would then be made. In the years that my wife and I were Ministers, we never had a judicial review application against us upheld. That means not that all our decisions were right, but that how we reached them was right. That illustrates the distinction.
Proposed new section 40A of the 1964 Act deals with the designation of harbour authorities. Proposed section 40B, which governs the procedure applicable to harbour direction, states that a harbour authority is required to consult users and publicise a harbour direction before and after it is given.
Proposed new section 40C, on enforcement, creates an offence. The Royal Yachting Association, of which I have been a member for some time, has raised issues with this measure. Those with longer memories will recall that, in 2008 and later, when a Bill of this nature was in the House of Lords, there was no equivalent of clause 5, because there were problems with such a proposal.
I should tell my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall and the Minister that there will be significant interest in the measure in the House of Lords, to which one anticipates the Bill going after today. I predict that the Bill will be amended if the provisions are not satisfactory—I am not threatening, but anticipating. Private Member’s Bill procedures mean that a Bill amended in the House of Lords will not be at the top of the list of priorities when it returns to the Commons, so getting the Bill right between now and when the House of Lords considers it matters.
Jim Fitzpatrick
Just to reinforce the hon. Gentleman’s point, I do not anticipate that the question of pilotage is over and done with either. I am sure that noble Lords in the other place will want to go through exactly the same discussion that we have had in recent months, just in the way that he is describing for clause 5.
Sir Peter Bottomley
I could go on at great length, but I will spare the House. Trying to create good will while being very clear and determined is probably the most useful way forward. I will certainly listen with interest to what my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall has to say, and, if I may say so, to my hon. Friend the Minister when he responds to the amendments.
It has been suggested that the process that was started—I would say started a bit late—between the port authorities, with the help of the Department and the yachting interests, could lead to a code of practice. Only one draft code of practice has been put forward, by the Royal Yachting Association. I understand that in the middle of December there is to be a meeting between the various bodies. It will be interesting to hear—now if the Minister can, but certainly by then—whether the draft code of practice and the methods put forward for consideration for agreement are likely to be agreed in substance or completely.
The next question is what the Minister will say about designating harbour authorities—I do not anticipate that he will be able to speak for the other national authorities other than those for England, but he could indicate whether others may do the same—and whether he will bear in mind the commitment to adhere to an agreed code of practice, and that that commitment, which will not be onerous, and no one is trying to suggest something that would cause more bureaucracy, will be a factor when considering designation. That is one of the crucial issues on which the Minister can address the House. [Interruption.] Is he addressing the House now?
Stephen Hammond
I tried, on Second Reading and in Committee, to be as helpful as possible as early as possible so that there was no cause for confusion. It is my expectation and the expectation of the Department for Transport that, when applying for a designation, a harbour authority would sign up to the code of practice.
Sir Peter Bottomley
I am sure that what the Minister said will be helpful. The question of whether it is sufficiently helpful will be a second test, but I am grateful to my hon. Friend and I will take that into account.
Mr Deputy Speaker, the selection of amendments to other clauses in the same debate is, if I may say so, generous to the promoter of the Bill, because it allows for fewer debates than would otherwise happen. I do not make any criticism—I just note that.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I am sure there is no criticism of the Chair.
Sir Peter Bottomley
I do not propose to speak to the amendments on the other clauses, as a way of bowing with respect to my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall.
Amendment 9 would insert, on page 3, line 34, the words:
“for the purpose of promoting safety of navigation”.
That is an essential point. My hon. Friend the Minister says that that is not necessary, although when I was having a discussion with my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall I saw references to lobster pots and fishing lines and wondered whether the navigation point had been slightly lost, but that was a letter to her rather than a letter from her, so perhaps we can pass on from that.
The alternative or additional way is to look at amendment 11, which, at the end of line 19, would insert the words:
“(8) An order designating a harbour authority shall not be made unless the Welsh Ministers, the Secretary of State or the Scottish Ministers, as the case may be, are satisfied that the harbour authority has in place appropriate procedures for resolving any disputes that may arise in relation to a proposed harbour direction.”
My hon. Friend the Minister has made a comment on that, as far as he is able to, and we cannot expect him to speak for Welsh or Scottish Ministers, but I think they would be irrational if they did not have the same intention in mind.
Finally, amendment 7 would insert proposed new subsection (3A):
“Section 236(3) to (8) and section 238 of the Local Government Act 1972 apply to all harbour directions made by a designated harbour authority under section 40A and those provisions so applied have effect subject to the modification that for references to byelaws there are substituted references to harbour directions and for references to a local authority there are substituted references to a designated harbour authority.”
It would also insert proposed new subsection (3B):
“The confirming authority for the purposes of section 236 in its application to harbour directions made under section 40A shall be the Secretary of State.”
The point is this: clause 5 will potentially give, not just to existing designated harbour authorities, but to many, many others, the power of creating criminal offences.
Sheryll Murray
Will my hon. Friend name any specific prosecutions brought in relation to the 30% of harbour authorities that already have powers of general direction?
Sir Peter Bottomley
I shall think out loud, rather than direct my comments directly to my hon. Friend. If we have three times as many harbour authorities with 100% less experience taking advice from people who will not be the Secretary of State’s advisers, we can anticipate problems.
Sir Peter Bottomley
The Bill has to clear in about 60 minutes, so let us pretend that this exchange has concluded there.
Sheryll Murray
Will my hon. Friend just accept that there has not been one prosecution to date?
Sir Peter Bottomley
I am prepared to accept anything that my hon. Friend says; I just wish she would do the same with me.
Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)
If, as my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray), who is promoting the Bill very successfully, has said, there have been no prosecutions, presumably she will have no trouble with the deletion of clause 5 altogether, as it clearly is not necessary.
Sir Peter Bottomley
Or perhaps just deleting new section 40C—the enforcement element—would suffice. Nevertheless, my hon. Friend cheerfully makes the point, and the deletion of clause 5 would have been accepted in another place on another time—but this is a different House and a different year.
I will conclude my remarks for now—although with the leave of the House, or even without it, I might make a comment towards the end of the debate—by saying that in essence the test is: will the genuine concerns, which were recognised in the past, be recognised this time?
I say to my hon. Friend the Minister that if the Bill passes today—there are many good, uncontroversial elements to it—that code of practice, with people signing up to and agreeing it, will make a significant difference. I will not put it more boldly than that, but I hope that the message has clearly got through.
Richard Ottaway
I start by declaring my interests. I have been a recreational yachtsman all my life, starting from the time I was a boy scout and including my service in the Royal Navy, when I commanded several vessels and was the officer of the watch of the Royal Navy’s largest-ever warship. I am also a member of the Royal Yachting Association—I was on its council for three years, from 2005 to 2008—and I am the owner of two boats.
Indeed, I would have paid much closer attention to the Bill, were it not for the fact that I chair probably the busiest Select Committee in the House—I have been abroad all week looking at Her Majesty’s Government’s policy on the European Union. I am here today, however, and although I support the principles and good intentions behind the Bill, and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray), I wish to express my concern about the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) in Committee and today.
It might be observed that it is hard to get much further from the sea than my wonderful constituency of Croydon South. None the less, a significant number of my constituents live in south London so that they can work in the city in the week and head for the south coast at the weekend. I represent a number of recreational yacht users. I should also point out that, as is declared in the register, I am a solicitor specialising in maritime law and maritime arbitration. I therefore hope that the House will accept that, from a recreational and professional point of view and from my naval career, I have a feel for the issues at play.
Sheryll Murray
Has my hon. Friend not heard of battery-operated and rechargeable VHF radios? Will he assure me that he is not suggesting that anyone should go to sea without carrying a VHF radio to communicate with others for safety purposes?
Richard Ottaway
I have to say to my hon. Friend that I suspect that the vast majority of boat movements around the south coast of Britain on any given weekend are undertaken by boats that are not carrying a radio. The fact that she is unaware of that gives me huge cause for alarm.
Sir Peter Bottomley
I should like to give the House an anecdote. When our daughter, then aged 11, sailed an Optimist from Priory bay on the Isle of Wight to Chichester harbour and then over to Portsmouth harbour, there was hardly room on board to carry food for the day, let alone a radio. My hon. Friend is illustrating the potential for a naive, newly designated harbour authority to do something impractical, and we need to pay attention to that.
Richard Ottaway
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for confirming that point.
Another scenario could involve a stipulation that all ships, including sailing and motorised dinghies and other small craft used in navigation, must carry specified equipment such as anchors. I do not know whether my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall believes that every boat carries an anchor, but I can assure her that the vast majority do not do so. It could be decreed, however, that they must do so in a tideway so that they could get out of the way and drop anchor. Another possibility could be a requirement that fairways must be avoided by recreational craft, irrespective of whether other shipping is present.
Further possibilities include unjustifiable prohibitions from navigating within a specified distance of environmental features, and prohibitions from anchoring for recreational purposes. Indeed, there is a major dispute at the moment between yachtsmen in the Solent and the National Trust over anchoring in Osborne bay on the Isle of Wight, close to the home of Queen Victoria. The National Trust appears to have exceeded its powers in demanding that yachtsmen should not anchor in the bay adjacent to Osborne house. That is yet another illustration of how unelected authorities can impose a regulation, without having the power to do so or, indeed, without any thought for competing interests. Even if a harbour authority exercises its discretion not to prosecute the skipper of a recreational craft for infringing a harbour direction, the mere existence of that direction may be sufficient to invalidate the vessel’s insurance policy under section 41 of the Marine Insurance Act 1906.
Such general powers of direction have been attained over the years by a number of individual harbour authorities, starting with the Port of London Authority in 1968 and have then gradually taken the place of byelaws, which, unlike harbour directions, have to be confirmed by the Secretary of State and are subject to clear checks and balances. That is why I hope I can persuade the Bill’s promoter to accept amendment 7.
The Royal Yachting Association has become increasingly concerned in recent years at the potential for such powers to give harbour directions to be exercised indiscriminately in a manner that is unnecessary and harmful to the lawful exercise of recreational and other navigational rights. There are instances—quite a number of them—of harbour authorities routinely disregarding the views of their statutory advisory committees. For example, the Saundersfoot harbour commissioners have ignored the views of their statutory advisers, while the Wells harbour commissioners have purported to issue harbour directions despite not having the lawful authority to do so. Those examples do not give me confidence that the power contained in clause 5 would be exercised rationally and with due regard for the interests of all harbour users.
I consider the powers to give harbour directions, in the form proposed in the Bill, to be generally unmerited for a variety of reasons. The making of harbour directions involves the creation of new criminal offences, which many local harbour authorities are not equipped to do. Even democratically elected local authorities do not have such powers and the Bill contains none of the supervisory safeguards usually imposed for law-making bodies. I say to the Minister in all sincerity that granting an unelected harbour authority law-making powers that are not subject to democratic checks and balances and full transparency runs counter to the Government’s own localism policy.
Harbour directions could be made under the power over wide areas used by recreational craft in a disproportionate manner, without proper risk assessment or consideration of the full implications and possible alternatives. They could be used to impose very significant and potentially burdensome restrictions on the navigation and use of recreational craft. It is worth noting, as I described earlier in relation to the Southampton harbour authority, that many harbour authorities have jurisdiction over substantial areas going out to sea, and not just over partially enclosed harbour areas.
Prior consultation is an inadequate safeguard, not least because—notwithstanding that prior consultation—inappropriate or flawed decisions often still follow, as experience across the public and private sector generally shows. Furthermore, as my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) pointed out, judicial review is not an adequate remedy against an objectionable direction where, as here, powers are expressed without meaningful limitations. There is unlikely ever to be any procedural or substantive illegality to provide a course of action.
The RYA has expressed its concerns over a number of years to representatives of the port industry and to the Government, including in a response to a Government consultation on the draft Marine Navigation Bill of 2008, which contained an equivalent provision to that set out in clause 5. As my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West said, a meeting between the RYA, the Member in charge of the Bill and the Minister has now taken place, but the RYA understands that those behind the Bill do not propose to drop the provision or amend it in any way to meet the RYA’s concerns. I have to say that that gives me cause for concern. [Interruption.]
I beg the Minister’s pardon. I thought at that point that his body language was moving towards the Dispatch Box.
Stephen Hammond
I shall move slowly in the direction of the Dispatch Box.
It was somewhat frustrating that in some of the discussions we thought that we had moved to certain places, and then found two hours later that we had not. Let me gently say that it would be helpful if both sides were prepared to concede some points, so that we could proceed towards the establishment of a non-statutory code of conduct.
Richard Ottaway
I hope that that is right, but, as we have only 45 minutes left, it would be of great assistance if the Minister told us now that there would be some movement in that regard.
Richard Ottaway
I was not present during the discussions, but those who were have told me that there has not been movement. If the Minister is able to confirm that there has been, and that he can agree to the code of conduct that is being proposed, his throat can then dry up and we can all move on, quite satisfactorily.
It has been suggested to the RYA that a non-statutory process should be established to ensure that the powers to make harbour directions under clause 5 are used appropriately. That might include a code of conduct setting out how harbour authorities would use their powers to make harbour directions and providing for levels of consultation, a dispute resolution process if objections cannot be resolved, and an arbitration process if the code of conduct has not been adhered to. Model harbour directions would also be developed.
While, from the Department’s point of view, such a non-statutory process no doubt has the advantage of enabling the Department to avoid taking any responsibility for the matter or expending any resources, it would offer no real safeguards against the misuse of the proposed new powers unless all harbour authorities were required by the Secretary of State to commit themselves to the code of conduct as a prerequisite to being designated under clause 5. Given that elected local authorities are subject to such a requirement, why should it not apply to unelected harbour authorities?
Stephen Hammond
I said on Second Reading and in Committee that the Department would issue guidelines on the competence of harbour authorities to make directions, and I have already given my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) the reassurance that my hon. Friend has just sought.
Richard Ottaway
I am grateful to the Minister, but he has yet to explain why local authorities, Transport for London and the Civil Aviation Authority should be treated differently from unelected harbour authorities.
I had many more points to make, but it might be sensible for me to allow the Minister to set out in some depth exactly what his reaction will be. As my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West pointed out, the Bill still has to pass through the other place. There is a substantial shipping lobby there, which will take a close interest in the Bill. If the Minister can give us some assurances, I imagine that the Bill will be given a speedy passage through both Houses.
Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
I did not plan to speak today, and I certainly do not want to take up much time, because I want the Bill to make progress. However, I feel that I must make a few brief points.
I am a lifelong sailor, and—although I have not had a distinguished Royal Navy career like my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway), whom I have the privilege of succeeding in the debate—I do represent a port: the port of Falmouth, which has many of the features described by my hon. Friend. It is a very busy port, with conflicting usages of the harbour authority area. I firmly believe that the prevention of injury and the safety of everyone who uses the port—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. The hon. Lady has been a Member for a long time now and, as important as I think Mr Ottaway is, she should address the Chair.
Sarah Newton
Thank you for that reminder, Mr Deputy Speaker. I was overcome by passion for my argument. [Interruption.] It is the effect you have on us, Mr Deputy Speaker.
Falmouth harbour has many of the features that have been described in this debate. There has been a great increase in recreational activity and there is also a vibrant fishing industry, and Falmouth is a commercial port, too. Our harbour authority must have the proposed powers, therefore, but with that power comes responsibility. It will be responsible for careful stakeholder engagement and for ensuring that any measures introduced take into account the views of all the often competing interest groups at the harbour. By and large, our harbour authority achieves that very well. I can therefore reassure Members that that is already happening, so I am confident any proposals will be introduced in a sensible and measured way.
Let me illustrate the importance of these provisions for saving lives in my port and in ports all around the country. This summer we had a dreadful incident: two water skiers collided with each other, and somebody was seriously injured. If our port wants to respond to such an event by introducing common-sense measures—speed limits, perhaps, or zones for safe usage of jet skies—it has to apply to the Secretary of State for changes in bye laws, and therefore years will pass by and lives could well be lost. The measures in this Bill would allow the port locally and speedily—and accountably to its community—to manage the safety of people at sea, which is our overriding concern.
Richard Ottaway
My hon. Friend says that there would be accountability to the local community under these measures, but there is no such accountability. No one is elected to serve on these authorities, so there is no line of accountability.
Sarah Newton
There are various ways in which people can be accountable. My hon. Friend is trying to compartmentalise people. The people on the harbour authority are sailors themselves, and they live in the community and want to see good and balanced decision-making, taking account of all elements in the community.
I am very supportive of the Royal Yachting Association—and, as I have said, I have been a lifelong sailor—but in this instance it is out of touch with its members. That was also the case in respect of the reorganisation of the coastguards. The national body of the RYA took one position and its members locally took a different position.
No RYA members or yacht clubs in my constituency have raised the issue under discussion. Falmouth is home to the Royal Cornwall Yacht Club, and it is where Olympic sailor Ben Ainslie started sailing. It is an international centre of sailing, but none of these clubs has raised this issue with me. They currently work collaboratively with the harbour authority, and they welcome these measures.
Sheryll Murray
I will be very brief, as I know time is running out, but I want to assure those Members who are concerned about safety that nobody knows better than me that incidents that cannot be legislated for can happen at sea, because my family has paid the cost of that. I have spoken to a lot of yachtsmen, and members of the RYA and harbourmasters. This measure is about port safety. I urge those Members who have spoken so eloquently about the RYA to consider the safety implications of having congested harbours and a harbourmaster who cannot move boats from one area of the harbour when dredging takes place.
I pay tribute to the my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway), who had a distinguished career in the Royal Navy. I should declare a special interest, as my daughter is involved in navigation as a lieutenant commander in the Royal Navy and my son deals with electronic navigational aids. I also want to put on record an interest to which I do not strictly need to refer today, and that is my membership of the Sea Safety Group, which I sincerely hope will form the type of organisation that will bring everybody together to draw up the code of practice. Not only was I a member of the Plymouth sea safety group, which brought merchant shipping people, ports, port and harbour authorities and every other user of the sea, including the RNLI and RYA, together, but so was my late husband. I am so sorry that I got angry when I heard that yachtsmen were going to sea without using VHF radios, but nobody knows more than me what that can mean. I apologise for my anger, but I believe that everybody should go to sea with a VHF radio and an emergency position indicating radio beacon.
I am sorry to have taken up so much time and I sincerely hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) will consider withdrawing the amendment.
Stephen Hammond
This has been a passionate debate and I recognise the concerns raised by my hon. Friends the Members for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) and for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway), both of whom spoke passionately and with knowledge. I hope that they accept, as I do, that the concerns have been raised a number of times and I hope we are moving towards a solution. The concerns were raised at a meeting with me before the Committee stage of the Bill. I hope that I will be able to allay some of them by explaining why the Government have chosen the non-statutory safeguards that complement the statutory provisions in the Bill. I understand that they have been agreed in principle by industry in its widest sense, by the Department and in principle although not in detail by the RYA. In total, there are 12 safeguards, some of which are detailed in the Bill. Others are non-statutory and I want to focus on them.
A set of harbour directions will be made available for harbours to adopt, as will guidance on how to use the power. A code of conduct covering good practice on consultation and a mechanism to resolve disputes about harbour directions before they are made will be developed by representatives of the port and the port users. An independently chaired panel will be established to develop and maintain the code of conduct and model harbour directions and I have given assurances on Second Reading and in Committee that the Department will actively engage in ensuring that there are guidelines for what should be covered in the code of conduct, how the harbour authority should make those directions and whom they should be consulting.
I expect the code of conduct to be agreed. I want it agreed by all sides—that is, not just by my Department but by the RYA. That is why the meeting in December is greatly important, as it will bring together a number of the major key stakeholders: the RYA, the UK Major Ports Group, the British Ports Association and my Department. I hope that given my assurance that I expect the code to be agreed or, if it is not agreed, amended as promised in the other place, my hon. Friends will consider that as basis for accepting some reassurance today.
On clause 5 and amendment 7, I have tried explicitly to give the assurance that, when a harbour authority expects to participate, it will have to sign up to the code of conduct before it makes the application.
Sir Peter Bottomley
We are grateful to the promoter and the Minister for speaking clearly and relatively briefly, which was important. They could have said much more.
The Minister’s clarity and commitment are welcome. We trust that those who come to the meeting in December will reach agreement on the draft code of conduct. I am not saying that no word can be changed, but having a system of review and, if necessary, arbitration, will make a difference. I emphasise that that is not just for those who go to sea in small boats. My open canoe will not carry an anchor or much heavy equipment, besides me, unless I lose a bit of weight. It affects commercial shipping, the ferry companies, the fishing industry and other harbour users.
I also want to make it plain that no one will defend unsafe use of our waters. Collisions will happen, but not to learn the lessons from things that go wrong would be to fail to honour the memory of those who have suffered at sea.
I am grateful for the Minister’s comments and for the co-operation of those who advise him. On the basis of what he has said, I do not intend to press any of my amendments to a Division. I cannot say that I withdraw the amendment happily—I should have preferred a different way—but I will withdraw it.
The Minister’s amendments are worth supporting. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 7
Port Constables: Extension of Jurisdiction in England and Wales
Amendment made: 17, page 9, line 12, at end insert—
‘() the apprehension of offenders within the port constable’s police area in respect of offences committed outside that area and the transport of them to police stations outside that area;’.—(Stephen Hammond.)
Clause 13
Commencement
Amendments made: 18, page 11, line 8, leave out ‘subsection’ and insert ‘subsections (1A) and’.
Amendment 19, page 11, line 8, at end insert—
‘(1A) Sections 5 and 6 come into force in relation to fishery harbours in Wales on such day or days as the Welsh Ministers may by order made by statutory instrument appoint.’.—(Stephen Hammond.)
Third Reading
Sheryll Murray
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
Enough discussion has taken place. I thank all hon. Members who have contributed.
Sir Peter Bottomley
In anticipation of the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), and after our hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray), the Bill should probably be known as the Murray-Fitzpatrick Bill, and if it becomes an Act, they can share the credit.
Jim Fitzpatrick
The hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) is very generous with his description. I am not sure the Minister would entirely agree, given the amount of work that he has put in during his short time in his ministerial post to ensure that the Bill has made such progress. It is a tribute to the hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) that she brought the Bill to us, steered it through Committee, and managed—very eloquently, I thought—to dissuade her hon. Friends from pressing their amendments. They were extremely generous in their acceptance of her commitments and the assurances from the Minister.
I will not detain the House, except to repeat that we have had some serious discussions on the pilotage issue. The hon. Member for Worthing West moved his amendments, and he and the hon. Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway) indicated their continuing interest in the development of the Bill.
There are other elements of the Bill that we have not even touched today—the tidying up of the issue of port constables and the important reforms to the benefit of the lighthouse authorities, for which the whole industry has been waiting for some time. Its members will have been watching and listening to this debate and wondering whether they would get a mention. The fact that the Government have successfully introduced those reforms will go down well with the whole shipping industry.
Once again, I congratulate the hon. Member for South East Cornwall. We are happy to support the Bill and see it pass to the other place.
Andrew Miller
I congratulate the hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) on bringing forward an immensely complicated Bill in so few clauses. A number of issues still need clarification. The Minister has done a good job of helping the House understand his position on these matters. I hope strong messages go out to the harbour authorities, in the spirit of what the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) said, so that we get total clarity on that.
On pilotage, I accept the position that the Minister set out in an honourable manner and I hope we can make progress. I am more satisfied than I was initially that those complex interrelations between the various codes can be met by his form of wording. If, however, he subsequently finds in discussion that that still could be finessed, I hope he will indicate that he is prepared to be flexible. There is no difference between us in principle. We want to make sure that safety is at the heart of everything that we are doing.
Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)
I will not detain the House too long. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) for the measures that she included in her Bill to address the anomalies facing the port police. They play a valuable role supporting the efforts of the border force and special branch at our ports, stopping nasty things coming in and out of our country. It is important that these provisions are enacted so that they can do that without any challenge before the courts. The Bill also enables us to make best use of their service, which is provided at no cost to the taxpayer.
Stephen Hammond
It is a great pleasure to bring to a close today’s debate on this welcome Bill, as we acknowledge the Bill that was started under the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) in his time. I am grateful to him and to his colleague, the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller), for their helpful and constructive contributions.
The Bill has been acknowledged on both sides of the House as desirable and as needing some fine-tuning, which is why we listened in Committee. I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friends the Members for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) and for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway) and glad that I have been able to provide them with some reassurance on the matters they are concerned about. I accept that further work is needed, particularly on the code of practice, and look forward to ensuring that happens, in line with the commitments I have given today. My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) is absolutely right that one of the important aspects of the Bill is what it does in relation to the ports police.
Of course, it is much to the credit of my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) that her Bill has made such rapid progress so far. Taking on board the maritime theme, I think that it has made the progress of a speedy catamaran, rather than a ponderous super-tanker—that is probably enough of my laboured jokes for one day. I am delighted that the Bill has made its way through this House and look forward to watching its progress through the other place.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
Presumption of Death Bill
(12 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
I will speak briefly, because we had a full discussion on Second Reading and in Committee and I do not wish to repeat the arguments. I think that it is appropriate that I draw attention to the considerable work that has been done by the Justice Committee, the charity Missing People and the hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), who have supported me in bringing the Bill to this stage.
The Bill will introduce a new court-based procedure to enable those left behind to obtain from the High Court a declaration that a missing person is deemed to have died. The certificate will be conclusive about the presumed death and effective for all purposes and against all persons. Essentially, it will act as a death certificate. I believe that the Bill will provide a great deal of solace to those families who are going through an extremely difficult time by simplifying the number of legal processes and financial hoops they have to go through to tidy up the affairs of the estate of a missing loved one or relative.
The Bill will ensure that England and Wales are on the same footing as Scotland and Northern Ireland. It will make a real difference to the lives of those who are left behind. We anticipate that between 30 and 40 such declarations will be made each year. The Bill makes provision to deal with the unlikely possibility that a person might not have died; there is provision in clause 5 to allow variance on a certificate and to revoke a declaration.
During the Bill’s passage through this House so far there has been some consideration of the provision of guardianship, which many people wanted to be included. That has not been included in the Bill but, as I have said on previous occasions, I believe that it will need to be looked at in future. There are several issues relating to how that process would work and considerable consultation is needed. I serve notice that I will be looking at the matter in future, because I think that ideally it should have been included in the Bill.
There is little more to say, as the Bill was not amended in Committee. I hope to see it progress and receive Royal Assent in due course.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mrs Helen Grant)
As hon. Members know, the Government support the Bill. We believe that it will simplify and streamline the procedures that people encounter when dealing with the property and affairs of a loved one who has disappeared and is thought to be dead. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) on his success in piloting the Bill through the House to its Third Reading. I hope that the House will join me in supporting the Bill’s Third Reading and wishing it a speedy and successful passage through the other place.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
Mobile Homes Bill
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
I beg to move amendment 1, page 28, line 30, leave out subsections (1) and (2) and insert—
‘(1) Clauses 1 to 7 shall come into force on 1 April 2014.
(2) Clauses 8,13 and 14 shall come into force on such day as the Secretary of State may by order made by statutory instrument appoint.
(2A) Clauses 9 to 12 and 15 shall come into force two months after Royal Assent.’.
This small amendment would improve the Bill, and it would ensure that what the Government want to happen will happen. A small part of the Bill—in fact, it is the heart of the Bill—affects the dubious actions of a few mobile home park owners in restricting the rights of individuals to sell their own plot. The Bill as it stands allows this to be dealt with through regulation by the Government. However, the Government sometimes do not get round to introducing regulations, and there would undoubtedly be a delay. The amendment would ensure that on this specific part of the Bill—clauses 9 to 12 and 15—the regulations would apply two months after it is enacted. That is all that it would do; everything else would stay exactly the same. I hope that the Government will accept the amendment.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Nick Boles)
The Bill is a hugely important piece of legislation supported by Members in all parts of the House. It will, if enacted, enable residents of mobile home sites better to exercise their rights, such as the right to sell their home, and afford them better protection from poor conditions through a robust licensing scheme. The amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) is sensible and would bring the legislation into force at the earliest opportunity, which the Government are committed to doing. The provisions in clauses 1 to 7 are subject to the moratorium on new burdens on micro-businesses, and the amendment respects that. The Government are therefore pleased to support it.
Amendment 1 agreed to.
Third Reading
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
The purpose of the Bill is to update the law as it relates to park homes, which has become ineffective and outdated. As a result, a minority of rogue site owners have made the lives of some park home owners a misery by not maintaining their site properly and bullying residents and preventing them from exercising their legal rights, particularly when they wish to sell their homes. Members in all parts of the House have come together to right this wrong, and I believe that the challenge has been approached in the right way.
The Bill had the initial advantage of being based on evidence provided through the consultation undertaken by the Department for Communities and Local Government, the inquiry by the Communities and Local Government Committee, and the wide-ranging investigation by Consumer Focus. We then moved on to fully scrutinise the Bill on Second Reading and in Committee. In doing so, the issue arose that my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) described, for which I thank him.
I believe that the Bill achieves its objective of providing an effective and up-to-date legal framework that ensures that the mobile homes sector runs properly and fairly: a framework that drives out unscrupulous and rogue site owners who have made many people’s lives a misery; a framework that gives local authorities the resources to oversee sites properly and provides them with effective licensing powers; a framework with proportionate sanctions and fines that will act as a deterrent to some of the practices that have taken place; and a system that safeguards the interests of responsible site owners and does not penalise them for the criminal acts of others.
The Bill provides hope and optimism for the park homes sector, but there is still work to be done.
Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)
There is a park homes site in Haslingden in my constituency and I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman has brought the Bill forward. I support it wholeheartedly.
Peter Aldous
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. A feature of the debate on the Bill has been the support from all parts of the House.
Mrs Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend on behalf of the many people who have suffered in park homes over recent years, and whose suffering will be relieved because of the Bill. He has done them a tremendous service in getting the Bill to this stage.
Peter Aldous
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her kind words. I echo them back to her for the sterling work that she has done and for her impassioned speech on Second Reading.
There is still work to be done to help park owners to obtain a better understanding of their agreements, rights and obligations. We must address the issue of fuel poverty, which affects many park home owners in a variety of forms. I discussed that matter yesterday evening with the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker).
I hope that the Bill will now move on to the other place, where the noble Lord Best will take the lead in its scrutiny. I conclude by thanking the right hon. and hon. Members, site owners, park home owners and their representatives, and officials at the Department for Communities and Local Government who have given me so much support in promoting the Bill. Time does not permit me to name them all. I commend the Bill to the House.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
I will be brief because of the time.
All Members of this House matter, and private Members can make a difference. This is a classic example of a Member, the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), making a difference.
This noble Bill was born out of the bitter experiences of too many of the 160,000 residents of the 84,000 park homes. I am pleased to confirm the strong support of the Opposition for the Bill. The House is united in saying that park home owners must enjoy greater security and an end to second-class and sometimes shameful treatment. Reputable park home site owners deserve no longer to be undermined or have their reputation damaged by the rogues. Just as there is no place for rogue landlords, there must be no place for rogue site owners. We hope that there will be robust enforcement of the notion that to be a site owner, one needs to be a fit and proper person.
All Members who have been engaged in scrutinising the Bill have received hundreds of e-mails and letters from all over the country. The best way to conclude is to read a sentence from one of the e-mails that I received, which is from Sheila Austin of Ladycroft park:
“The first 10 years of me living in a Park Home were great with a good owner, overnight our lives changed when Sines bought the park and as a consequence the last 11 years have been a living hell.”
The Bill is determined to bring to an end that shameful treatment and we are happy to support it.
Nick Boles
The Government fully support the Bill and will continue to do so as it moves to the other place. As a junior Minister who is trying to shepherd the Growth and Infrastructure Bill through the House, I am in awe of my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), who has achieved something to which I have not yet even come close by winning the support of Members on both sides of the House—we have sadly not managed to do that in respect of the Growth and Infrastructure Bill. He has received warm words of support from both sides, including Opposition Front Benchers. That is down to his working hard, arguing passionately and highlighting clearly the benefits that the Mobile Homes Bill will bring to important and vulnerable people.
Although the measures in the Bill affect only a tiny part of the housing market—some 85,000 homes—they are hugely important to those residents, who, as I have said, are often older and more vulnerable. The measures will make a huge difference, ensuring that their health and safety is better protected, and that their rights as home owners are respected, particularly the right to sell the home to a person of their choice.
My hon. Friend is also to be congratulated on getting the balance right. The measures are carefully targeted at those operators who abuse their positions as owners. Decent site owners who run law-abiding businesses will not be adversely affected, and minimum burdens will be placed on them.
Further consideration will be given to the practical application of the measures in the Bill. The noble Lord Best will shepherd the Bill through the upper House—no one is more qualified or has a greater record of passionate commitment to the housing rights of the British people.
The Government will continue to work closely with key industry, resident and local authority partners on the development of the measures. I am happy to say that the Government will continue to support the Bill through every stage until it is on the statute book and the people living in mobile homes in our country can be sure that their proper rights are respected.
Nick Boles
I have not yet had the great benefit of my hon. Friend’s help in any of my work, but I look forward to it and await with eager anticipation his contribution on Report and Third Reading of the Growth and Infrastructure Bill. The House will agree that no debate, legislation or deliberation by the House is not improved by his contribution. We want a contribution from him in every debate we have for the rest of this year.
My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney and I came into the House at the same time. His achievements as of today and the final passage of the Mobile Homes Bill, are far greater than mine or those of any member of the Government who was elected in 2010. I hope that he and his constituents are aware of that, but I am certain that residents of mobile homes throughout the country are aware of it. His name will be up in lights above those mobile home estates for many months to come. I therefore commend the Bill to the House and urge hon. Members on both sides of the House—present and absent—to vote for it in spirit and action.
Peter Aldous
I am grateful for the Minister’s kind words and have very little more to say.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
Property Boundaries (Resolution of Disputes) Bill
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
My hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), on whose behalf I have moved Second Reading, was called away. I am an ex-surveyor, so I have had an awful lot to do with property boundaries over the years. I thought I left them behind when I was elected, but all of a sudden—
Business without Debate
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. In response to an urgent question on 19 November from my hon. Friend the Member for Bury South (Mr Lewis), the shadow International Development Secretary, the International Development Secretary refused to give any commitment on whether she would cease aid to Rwanda in light of concerns about the regime’s connection with the M23 group, saying repeatedly that this was a decision she would take in December. Why has she then today, on what some might consider an excellent day to bury news, released a written statement saying that £21 million of support to Rwanda would not now be released, also pre-empting the publication today of the Select Committee on International Development’s report on Rwanda, which one would have thought she might have wanted to read first? Will the Deputy Speaker ask the International Development Secretary to come to the House to explain why the decision has now been taken today?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
The hon. Lady has certainly got it on the record and made the point. I think it will have been heard on the Government Benches. I am sure that on Monday, if not satisfied, somebody may use other courses of action to bring this forward.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Am I incorrect then in thinking that it would have been possible for any hon. Member to have asked for an urgent question on any subject they were worried about today?
Mr Deputy Speaker
That is correct, subject to people actually knowing what was laid earlier today.
Liquid Nitrogen Drinks
(12 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)
I thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to speak on the important issue of banning liquid nitrogen as an ingredient in cocktails and other drinks. It is important from the outset that I make it clear that I do not propose to prevent the usage of liquid nitrogen in food preparation and production. In my view, using liquid nitrogen to chill foods and drinks is acceptable, but to put it in drinks is extremely dangerous and must be stopped, not least because nitrogen boils at minus 196° centigrade, making it very dangerous in liquid form. The idea that someone could drink a cocktail that contains an ingredient that is minus 196° centigrade is obviously dangerous and must stop.
As a little background, I should say that this issue first came to my attention as a result of the serious injuries sustained by Gaby Scanlon from Heysham in my constituency. On her 18th birthday she went to a bar in Lancaster and drank two “nitro Jagermeister” cocktails costing £8.95. These drinks look very appealing because the nitrogen boils in the glass and creates a smoke effect. I can understand fully why Miss Scanlon wanted to try these drinks and I believe her actions on the night were those of a normal 18 year old. When she bought the drinks, she had a reasonable assumption that something she bought in a licensed bar was safe to drink. Sadly, however, the complete opposite proved to be true. What followed is really horrific. The liquid nitrogen froze her stomach and, as it boiled her stomach, it began to rupture, leaving her in the sort of agony that is hard to imagine. Clinicians at the Royal Lancaster infirmary took the decision to remove her stomach in emergency surgery. They say that she may have died without this procedure.
This is the only case of serious injury of this kind that has been reported in the media across the world, and to think that it happened here in the UK is shocking. We must take action before this problem becomes more widespread. As we know, there are lots of laws and regulations on the food and drink we consume, and it is illegal to serve anything that is injurious to health, but how many people know of the dangers of liquid nitrogen used in this fashion? Gaby Scanlon did not know, and, had I been in that bar at the time, I would not have known. Bars and restaurants across the country do not know either, yet they serve this cocktail daily.
Tonight, young people across the country will be served these drinks by staff at bars that do not know the dangers. No one believes that the bar that served Gaby Scanlon wanted to hurt her; it simply did not know the dangers. That lack of knowledge cannot continue. I appreciate the work of the Food Standards Agency in issuing advice to environmental health officers, but in response 80% of EHOs have said that there must be an outright ban on liquid nitrogen being used in this fashion and that it should not be used as an ingredient under any circumstances. I agree with them.
I do not support greater vigilance; I support an outright ban. In consultation with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Department of Health can issue an emergency control order banning the use of any ingredient. It happens regularly when an ingredient is found to be unsafe but still in widespread use. The issuing of these orders is comparatively easy and does not require any sort of primary legislation, because the powers already exist. I hope that the Minister will update the House on what discussions have taken place between DEFRA and the Department for Health, and that he will say whether any other cases of this sort have been reported. Furthermore, what discussions has his Department had with relevant professionals and local authorities?
The last thing I want to do is play the blame game. Too few people know about the dangers of liquid nitrogen drinks, but that is starting to change. I am delighted that this debate has been covered by Radio 1’s “Newsbeat”, listeners to which are in the age group most at risk. I hope that coverage of this debate will warn even more young people of the dangers of these drinks. My message to all young people is that liquid nitrogen drinks are not worth the risk.
I call on Health Ministers to support an outright ban on the use of liquid nitrogen as an ingredient. If we take this opportunity now, we will prevent other young people from going through the shock, pain and disruption that Gaby Scanlon did. When someone walks into a bar or restaurant in this country, they have a right to know that what is being served is safe, and the House has a duty to enforce that right.
In closing, I want to wish Miss Scanlon well. She is slowly but surely returning to health, and the whole House will want to offer its good wishes to her and her family.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris) on securing this debate and on his continuing strong advocacy for his constituents. I know that he has been a diligent and hard-working constituency MP since he was elected, and I pay tribute to his work in bringing forward this issue. As a doctor, I was sad to hear of the ordeal that Gaby Scanlon endured when she went out to celebrate her 18th birthday, and of the distress caused not only to her but to her family and friends. I acknowledge my hon. Friend’s determination, therefore, in following up on the serious injury suffered by his constituent.
As my hon. Friend rightly outlined, the incident on 2 October has attracted considerable media attention. Tonight being a Friday night, I am sure that many young people will be going out into bars and clubs in the places they live or perhaps further afield. This debate has also attracted attention in Australia and New Zealand. As we know, this is the first time that the Food Standards Agency has been made aware of a food incident involving the use of liquid nitrogen. I say “a food incident”. The FSA, a national body working in close partnership with local licensing authorities, has responsibility to ensure that food and drink in our restaurants, bars and clubs and elsewhere is served responsibly and safely. When it became aware of the incident, the FSA immediately issued a warning to raise consumers’ awareness of the dangers of consuming drinks containing liquid nitrogen. The FSA also encouraged all environmental health officers to be vigilant about the use of liquid nitrogen in food or drink when carrying out their routine inspections of food and hospitality premises.
I hope my hon. Friend will be reassured to hear about the controls that are already in place. Food law prohibits the sale of harmful foods and drinks in the UK. Manufacturers, retailers and businesses in the UK have a legal obligation to ensure that the food and drink they serve to the public is fit for human consumption. There are industry safety and handling guidelines around the use and storage of liquid nitrogen. Business owners are responsible for training their staff, making them aware of the potential risks of using liquid nitrogen and having appropriate safety measures in place to protect staff and consumers. Existing legislation prohibits the sale of food and drink that is unsafe. Enforcement of both health and safety measures and food safety legislation is the responsibility of the relevant local authority—in this case Lancaster city council. Businesses selling alcohol that are convicted of food safety offences can have their alcohol licences withdrawn by the local licensing authority.
It is worth touching on the wider point about the glamorisation of alcohol—sometimes by the food and drink industry, but particularly by wider sectors of the media. As I have said, tonight many young people will go out to bars, clubs and other settings in town centres and elsewhere, including the village and market town pubs in my constituency, to enjoy an evening out with friends. On the whole, things will pass successfully and without any adverse incident. However, we know that there has been a problem in parts of the country where certain bars and clubs have been irresponsible in their marketing of alcohol. It is the responsibility of licensing authorities to ensure good practice in the performance of their local bars and clubs and to ensure that they are run responsibly. With regard to the premises in question, that is something that I know the local council will look at seriously in the ongoing investigation in this case.
We expect those who sell and promote alcohol to do so responsibly. The alcohol industry in general has made a core commitment, through the public health responsibility deal, to foster a better culture of responsible drinking. We are grateful for the national recognition of the importance of the issue by the alcohol industry, but the Government’s alcohol strategy goes further in fostering responsible drinking, aiming to cut the number of people drinking to harmful levels. It addresses both health and social harms, describing co-ordinated actions across Government, and includes a commitment to introduce a minimum unit price for alcohol to tackle the sale of heavily discounted alcohol, with further action to ensure that local authorities have the licensing powers they need to protect local communities. The strategy will deal not just with binge drinking, but with all activities to do with responsible drinking, promoting safe places for people, young or old, to go out in town centres in the evenings. On 28 November, the Government launched a consultation on a number of areas set out in the strategy, including a recommended price of 45p per unit of alcohol. We are taking that action to ensure a sensible price for drinks that cause harm.
What is the local authority doing in this case? Lancaster city council is rightly investigating the events that led to Gaby’s very serious injury. The full details of what happened in this incident are not yet publicly available, because of the ongoing review and investigation of the case by the city council. However, I can reassure my hon. Friend that once they have concluded, government departments such as the Food Standards Agency will consider whether further guidance is necessary. As I outlined earlier, initial action has been taken to warn consumers of the risks of consuming drinks containing liquid nitrogen and to ensure that local authorities are vigilant in their inspection of food businesses with regard to the sale of this product. We do not yet have all the information about what happened in the bar in Lancaster, so we need to wait for the conclusion of the investigation by the council. However, I reassure my hon. Friend that we will take the results of that investigation seriously and the FSA will consider them. We must ensure that what happened to Gaby does not happen again to other young people.
Question put and agreed to.
Written Ministerial Statements
Retail and Manufacturing
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Jo Swinson)
The Government are committed under the Red Tape Challenge to reduce the burden of regulation which acts as a barrier to growth. Unnecessary regulation has to be removed especially if it is outdated and now covered by more current legislation.
We have laid before the House a statutory instrument which will amend and revoke two measures identified under the retail theme of the Red Tape Challenge. This is detailed in the second Government response and follows on from the initial Government response to the retail and manufacturing consultation which was published on 16 July 2012.
The second Government response details our plans to amend the Pyrotechnic Articles (Safety) Regulations 2010 to reduce the age at which children can legally purchase Christmas crackers from 16 to 12-years-old which is the minimum age allowed under current EU legislation (The Pyrotechnic Articles Directive 2007/23/EC). This is to promote greater personal freedom as heavy-handed intervention is unnecessary for Christmas crackers which are low-risk items.
Additionally, we will revoke the Pencils and Graphic Instruments (Safety) Regulations 1998 because the safety standards they refer to are outdated and no longer reflect current products and processes. The regulations mostly use safety limits which have remained unchanged since 1974. Currently, there are more recent product safety standards which cover the same areas and offer consumers a comparable level of protection. Therefore we are revoking the Pencils and Graphic Instruments (Safety) Regulations 1998.
The amendment and removal of these measures will not reduce consumers’ protections but increase clarity and make the law for business and consumers more straightforward.
The following regulation will be amended by the 6 April 2013 common commencement date:
Pyrotechnic Articles (Safety) Regulations 2010 (SI 2010/1554).
The following regulation will be revoked by the 6 April 2013 common commencement date:
Pencils and Graphic Instruments (Safety) Regulations 1998 (SI 1998/2406).
Ministerial Responsibilities
(12 years ago)
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The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
The new list of ministerial responsibilities has been published today. Copies have been placed in the Vote Office and the Libraries of both Houses. Copies will also be sent to each MP’s office.
The list can also be accessed on the Cabinet Office website at:–
http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/resource-library/government-ministers-and-responsibilities.
Balance of Competences Review (Taxation)
(12 years ago)
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The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Mr David Gauke)
The Government have today published a call for evidence on the balance of competence between the United Kingdom and the European Union on taxation.
Following the Foreign Secretary’s oral statement launching the Balance of Competence Review in July 2012 and written statement on the progress of the review on 23 October 2012, Official Report, column 46WS, the public call for evidence on taxation will run for 12 weeks from 29 November 2012 to 22 February 2013.
HM Treasury is seeking evidence from individuals and groups with an interest or experience in taxation policy and its application.
The report, following the call for evidence, on the current balance of competence on taxation and what this means for the national interest will be published by the summer of 2013.
Copies of the document have been deposited in the Libraries of both Houses and are available on the Treasury website at: www.hm-treasury.gov.uk
Foreign Affairs Council/Defence Foreign Affairs Council/General Affairs Council
(12 years ago)
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The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)
The Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) responsible for international security strategy attended the European Defence Agency Steering Board and the Defence Foreign Affairs Council (Defence FAC) in Brussels on the morning of 19 November. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary attended the Foreign Affairs Council (FAC) in Brussels on the afternoon of 19 November. They both attended a lunch for Foreign and Defence Ministers. I attended the General Affairs Council (GAC) in Brussels on 20 November.
Foreign Affairs Council, Defence Foreign Affairs Council, and related meetings
These meetings were chaired by the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Baroness Ashton of Upholland. Commissioners Piebaigs (Development), Barnier (Internal Market and Services), and Füle (Enlargement and European Neighbourhood Policy) were also in attendance for some of the discussions.
A provisional report of the meetings and all conclusions adopted can be found at:
http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/EN/foraff/133604.pdf.
European Defence Agency (EDA) Steering Board
An EDA Steering Board at Defence Ministers level was held immediately before the Defence FAC. Norway was present for the first time since signing a co-operation agreement with the EDA.
The Steering Board agreed the EDA work programme 2013 and the EDA work plan for 2013-15. In addition to these action points, the Steering Board endorsed a pooling and sharing code of conduct to be implemented voluntarily at national level and received an update on the interaction between defence and wider EU policies.
Defence Foreign Affairs Council
The three current EU military operations. Operation Atalanta (counter-piracy). Operation Althea (Bosnia and Herzegovina) and the EU training mission Somalia (military training mission) were discussed in the Council. The Minister expressed the UK’s support for these ongoing operations.
The Minister raised the UK’s desire to increase the utility of Battle groups including through better use of their constituent capabilities. The NATO Secretary-General was present throughout the operational discussions, focusing on the importance of EU and NATO co-operation.
Commissioner Barnier briefed Ministers on the work of the defence taskforce designed to foster a stronger and more competitive European defence industry ahead of the December 2013 European Council discussion on defence. The High Representative concluded that the issue deserved further attention in spring 2013 and that the EDA should continue to represent member states’ views on the taskforce.
The Minister successfully secured a budget freeze for the European Defence Agency (EDA) for 2013, making clear that in the current financial climate, when we were making cuts to the UK defence (and other) budgets, we must seek continuously to drive efficiency and scrutinise every pound spent on defence. For this reason, we could not accept a budget increase at this time. The Council subsequently agreed to freeze the EDA budget for 2013 at the same level as 2012 (€30.5 million).
Defence and Foreign Ministers Lunch
Mali
Foreign and Defence Ministers discussed the situation in Mali, including planning for a possible EU training mission. Ministers agreed conclusions on Mali, and recognised the need for EU action. UK Ministers stressed the need for adequate planning, including force protection and co-ordination with the planned Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) operation. The High Representative said that the European External Action Service (EEAS) would adapt the crisis management concept on this basis and that she was considering appointing an EU special representative for the Sahel.
2013 European Council on Defence
Ministers held an orientation debate in view of the substantial debate on defence matters that is set to take place at the European Council in December 2013.
Ministers endorsed the High Representative’s intention to frame the debate around the EU’s collective ambition to act as a security provider through the common security and defence policy (CSDP) as part of a comprehensive approach; to work closely with strategic partners to develop defence capabilities; and to innovate, notably through a strong industrial and technological base. UK Ministers stressed that a successful debate should focus on practical issues including how to ensure that Europe develops better defence capabilities; that our defence industrial base is well placed to produce these capabilities; and that we improve the delivery of CSDP missions and operations.
Foreign Affairs Council
Middle East Peace Process
Ministers agreed conclusions calling for an urgent de-escalation of the violence in southern Israel and Gaza; strongly condemning rocket attacks on southern Israel; and stressing the need for all sides to fully respect international humanitarian law. The conclusions stated that the current situation underlined once more the urgent need to move towards a two-state solution allowing both sides to live side-by-side in peace and security.
The High Representative urged EU unity on the possibility of a Palestinian application to the UN General Assembly to upgrade their status to that of a non-member observer state. The Foreign Secretary stated that if the Palestinians could not be persuaded to delay the EU should strive to maintain unity, and that whatever the outcome of the vote the EU should take an activist approach to reinvigorating the peace process.
Southern Neighbourhood
Ministers reviewed developments in Syria, Egypt, Libya, and Lebanon.
Ministers agreed conclusions on Syria, expressing their concern at the situation and its regional impact; welcoming the outcome of the Doha meeting; considering the national coalition for Syrian revolutionary and opposition forces as the legitimate representatives of the aspirations of the Syrian people; and committing to increased humanitarian assistance. The conclusions reiterated the full support of the EU to the efforts of the joint special representative of the UN and the League of Arab states, Lakhdar Brahimi, in finding a political solution to the crisis.
The conclusions also reiterated the EU’s commitment to increase further its humanitarian assistance to alleviate the suffering of all affected population throughout Syria and refugees in neighbouring countries, bearing in mind the deteriorating humanitarian situation and the approaching winter, and called on all donors to do the same.
Ministers discussed the EU-Egypt Task Force. The High Representative was of the view that progress had been made.
On Libya, Ministers discussed the dispatch of a fact- finding mission on a potential CSDP border management mission following the formation of the new Libyan Government.
Ministers agreed conclusions on Lebanon condemning the recent violence; supporting the Lebanese institutions; calling on all parties to engage in dialogue; and commending Lebanon for its support to Syrian refugees and disassociating itself from the Syrian conflict.
Yemen
Ministers agreed conclusions on Yemen, welcoming the progress made in the first year of Yemen’s political transition; urging continued momentum; and criticising those seeking to derail the transition. Ministers welcomed pledges of economic support to Yemen and encouraged these to be translated into concrete action.
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
Ministers agreed conclusions that condemned the resumption of hostilities by the M23; demanded that external support to the M23 stop; delivered a clear message to the Government of the DRC that it needed to strengthen efforts to establish security and the rule of law in the east; encouraged the United Nations Organisation Mission in the DRC (MONUSCO) in its role to protect civilians; and tasked the EEAS to present a strategic approach outlining how the EU could assist in resolving the crisis.
The High Representative updated the Council on the deteriorating situation in the eastern DRC following the advances by the M23 over the weekend. The situation was dire and humanitarian impacts severe. Commissioner Piebaigs agreed that the humanitarian situation was serious and worsening; there were an additional 650,000 internally displaced persons since the recent flare-up in violence.
Cuba
Ministers approved starting a process towards upgrading EU relations with Cuba. The High Representative noted that the existing framework for EU-Cuba relations, the common position, was 16-years-old and losing relevance. The EU needed to decide how best to engage in support of the ongoing reform process or it risked being left behind. An EU-Cuba agreement could codify existing elements of co-operation with Cuba and put it on a stronger footing. However, the High Representative noted the need to proceed cautiously given remaining concerns over human rights. The process should be stoppable and the existing common position should remain in place throughout any negotiations on a new agreement.
Ukraine
Ministers discussed the situation in Ukraine following the parliamentary elections of 28 October. They also considered how to take forward the EU-Ukraine relationship, including the association agreement and deep and comprehensive free trade agreement. The High Representative concluded that Ministers might need to consider the issue further at the December Foreign Affairs Council.
EU-US
A planned discussion of the United States was removed from the agenda due to time constraints.
Other business
Ministers agreed without discussion a number of others measures, including:
Noting the single progress report on the development of the EU military capabilities from November 2011 to October 2012.
Noting the report by the head of European Defence Agency about its efforts for improving the defence capabilities of participating member states.
Adoption of guidelines for the European Defence Agency’s work in 2013.
Adoption of conclusions on the development of military capabilities.
Approval of a draft security arrangement between the European Space Agency Security Office and the European Defence Agency Security Office for the protection and safeguarding of classified information exchanged between the European Space Agency and the European Defence Agency.
Allocation of €1.86 million from the EU budget to support arms export control in third countries.
Approval of the 13th progress report on the implementation of the EU strategy to combat illicit accumulation and trafficking of small arms and light weapons and their ammunition, covering activities during the first half of 2012.
Noting the annual report on the control of military technology and equipment exports, in accordance with common position 2008/944/CFSP.
Adoption of conclusions on the review of Council common position on the EU arms export control framework
Approval of the EU’s position for the third review conference of the convention on the prohibition of the development, production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons and their destruction (CWC), scheduled to take place in April 2013.
Adoption of conclusions on the action plan on visa liberalisation regarding the Republic of Moldova.
Adoption of conclusions establishing a human rights dialogue between the EU and South Africa.
Setting the ceiling for member states’ contributions to the European development fund for 2014, the annual amount of the contribution for 2013 and the amount of the first instalment of the contribution for 2013.
Adoption of conclusions endorsing the joint Caribbean-EU partnership strategy.
General Affairs Council
The GAC was chaired by the Cypriot EU Presidency, Mr Andreas Mavroyiannis, Deputy Minister for European Affairs. A provisional report of the meeting can be found at:
http://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/EN/genaff/133629.pdf
Informal dinner hosted by the President of the European Council
The night before the plenary session of the GAC the President of the European Council, Herman van Rompuy, hosted an informal dinner meeting to discuss the multi-annual financial framework (MFF) ahead of the special European Council on 22 and 23 November. This meeting gave member states the last opportunity to highlight their views on the draft European Council conclusions released on 13 November. Together with my like-minded colleagues, I argued that the proposed level of the MFF, at €973 billion commitments, was still too high at a time of fiscal austerity, and in excess of the UK’s demand of a real terms freeze on payments. I highlighted several areas of the budget, including the Connecting Europe Facility, which could see significant reductions from the Commission’s original proposal while still enabling above inflation increases.
The proposed text also included suggested changes to the Own Resources system, including to the UK rebate. I made clear that this, along with proposals to extend macro-economic conditionality to apply to the UK, was unacceptable.
Some other countries argued in favour of a larger budget, or for specific considerations for domestic priorities such as cohesion funding or the common agricultural policy.
Cohesion Policy Legislative package
On 20 November it was felt unnecessary to have further discussion on the MFF following the extensive exchange of views the previous evening. The first key item on the agenda was a discussion on cohesion policy where the presidency sought agreement to a partial general approach (PGA) to another legislative block. PGAs were agreed on 17 blocks at the GACs in April, June and October. These two additional blocks covered financial management and the common strategic framework; agreement of these final two blocks gave the presidency a mandate to enter into informal discussions with the European Parliament.
The Council was able to agree to the PGA on the basis that nothing was agreed until everything was agreed. Poland, Italy and Slovakia also submitted a statement calling for further political discussions on cohesion policy and sought for this commitment to be incorporated within legislation. Despite supporting the principle of further political discussion I argued that including this within legislation was unnecessary. I also asked for sufficient time to be provided to enable consultation with national Parliaments due to the ongoing difficulties we have had ensuring sufficient time for Parliamentary scrutiny. Despite these additional issues, the GAC was able to reach agreement on the PGAs in the spirit of compromise.
The presidency also presented its conclusions for the informal meeting of Ministers for cohesion policy which took place on 6 November.
European Commission Work Programme for 2013
The Commission set out the main elements of their proposed work programme for 2013. This included a sizable portion of the programme devoted to developing Economic and Monetary Union proposals. The Commission emphasised that they sought to focus on areas that could create stability and promote Europe’s competitiveness. The work programme included the Single Market II proposals and the Commission expressed their hope that these proposals could be agreed before the end of this European Parliament. There were other reforms cited, such as on climate change and energy policy, and establishing a European public prosecutor. The Commission also hoped to achieve trade deals with the US and Japan and for an ambitious agenda for 2013 on enlargement and neighbourhood policy.
Ireland, who will take on the EU Presidency in January, welcomed the proposals and emphasised the importance of progress on trade agreements and enlargement on which we will work closely with them. I argued that in all areas of EU business we would look for efforts to ensure that the regulatory burden is minimised, both through active consideration and through the use of rigorous impact assessments for each new proposal.
Preparation for the European Council on 13 and 14 December
In a follow-up to the 18 and 19 October European Council the President of the European Council, Herman van Rompuy, will send a letter on the single market to EU Leaders with an update and outline of action required at the European Council on 13 and 14 December to deliver the progress sought in the previous European Council conclusions.
The December European Council agenda covers Economic and Monetary Union proposals including on Banking Union, discussion of the Single Market Acts I and II, defence and enlargement. Foreign policy issues are also likely to be discussed but these will be determined closer to the time. The Commission hope the European Council will endorse the Single Market Act II, and make real progress on Single Supervisory Mechanism and the Capital Requirements Directive IV.
In this discussion I emphasised the need to maintain progress on these areas but also to ensure that the integrity of the Single Market is preserved. I also expressed the UK's support for an ambitious enlargement agenda that promotes stability in both candidate and neighbourhood countries.
I will continue to update Parliament on future Foreign Affairs Councils, Defence Foreign Affairs Councils, and General Affairs Councils.
Public Records
(12 years ago)
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The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)
On 5 December 2011, Official Report, column 6WS, I informed the House of our plans to make a large collection of colonial administration files available to the public over a two-year period.
We have today made the fourth tranche of files available for the public to view at the National Archives (TNA) at Kew. This marks the halfway point. I am pleased to confirm that we remain on track to complete the transfer of the entire collection of files to TNA by the end of 2013 as per the schedule published on the FCO website. As promised, we have kept redactions to an absolute minimum. I am very grateful to the independent reviewer, Professor Anthony Badger, for overseeing this work with such care and commitment.
It remains the case that the FCO is still unable to confirm the existence or destruction of 170 boxes of top secret colonial administration files known to have been returned to the UK. There is some evidence that the Singapore top secret colonial administration files were destroyed as part of a review of FCO post files in the 1990s. The FCO continues to search for these files or for further evidence of their destruction.
The work on the colonial files has, regrettably, caused a short-term backlog in the regular annual transfer of some FCO departmental files from 1981 and 1982. Additional staff resource has been allocated to tackle this. We will publish on the FCO website a timetable to transfer the remaining 1981 and 1982 files between 2013 and 2015.
In his statement to the House on 5 May 2011, Official Report, column 24WS, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary undertook to implement in full the recommendations of the Cary review into the colonial administration files. These included an up-to-date inventory of the FCO’s archival holdings. This has brought to light a large accumulation of other material outside the FCO departmental file series, much of which is over 30-years-old and therefore overdue for review. The FCO has not identified any colonial administration files among these papers beyond those currently being transferred. In keeping with this Government’s commitment to transparency, we will be publishing a copy of the high-level inventory of these “Special Collections” on the FCO website. We remain fully committed both to complying with our public records obligations and to doing so with maximum transparency.
Personal Health Budgets
(12 years ago)
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The Minister of State, Department of Health (Norman Lamb)
I am announcing the publication of the final independent evaluation report on personal health budgets, which have been piloted in the national health service since 2009 as a way to give people more choice and control over their care.
In summary, the results show that:
personal health budgets are cost-effective when implemented as the policy intended and patients have genuine control;
they improve people’s quality of life, well-being and feeling of being in control—but do not generally have any statistically significant effect on health status or clinical measures such as blood sugar levels for diabetics;
they may be more effective for people who are higher users of NHS services (such as people receiving NHS continuing health care) and those with mental health needs; and
they may reduce use of NHS services indirectly—particularly by reducing hospital admissions.
These are positive findings, which provide evidence for rolling out personal health budgets beyond the pilot programme. However, there is still much to learn about implementing personal health budgets for large numbers of people. This argues for a measured approach: setting a clear strategic direction of travel and supporting further learning as personal health budgets are scaled up.
In the light of the evidence, I can make a number of commitments.
First, the Government can confirm the ambitious objective set in the mandate to the NHS Commissioning Board, that
“patients who could benefit will have the option to hold their own personal health budget, subject to the evaluation of the pilot programme, as a way to have even more control over their care”.
Secondly, we also reaffirm our commitment to introduce a right, from April 2014, for people receiving NHS continuing health care to ask for a personal health budget; the evaluation clearly suggests that personal budgets have benefits for this group of people.
Thirdly, we want to enable NHS commissioners across the country to offer personal health budgets, including through the option of a direct payment. Direct payments for health care are currently only lawful within pilot schemes, but the Health Act 2009 gave power to extend them nationally by order, with the approval of both Houses of Parliament under the affirmative resolution procedure. We intend to bring forward proposals for this. To help inform the process, we will be launching a public consultation later this year on updating the regulations for direct payments. Meanwhile, existing pilot sites will still be able to offer direct payments, and will be able to act as early leaders in rolling out personal health budgets more widely.
Fourthly, we will be providing additional support to nine areas that are “Going Further, Faster”, pushing ahead with implementation on a larger scale and demonstrating how personal health budgets can be extended beyond NHS continuing health care. The Department will provide £1.5 million of funding to support early roll-out of personal health budgets in the period until April 2013, when responsibility will transfer to the NHS Commissioning Board.
Finally, we have also today launched a toolkit that is available to everyone who has an interest in personal health budgets. It contains a wide range of learning from the pilot programme, including practical advice and information to support the implementation of personal health budgets.
More information on personal health budgets, including the toolkit and stories of people who have budgets can be found on the personal health budgets learning network at: www.personalhealthbudgets.dh.gov.uk.
The evaluation report has been placed in the Library. Copies are available to hon. Members from the Vote Office and to noble Lords from the Printed Paper Office.
Rwanda
(12 years ago)
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The Secretary of State for International Development (Justine Greening)
I have today taken a decision not to release £21 million of support to Rwanda. This aid was due to be paid in December.
This Government believe strongly that aid will be most effective when the Governments we partner meet all our four partnership principles: a strong commitment to reach the poorest people; to take strong action in tackling corruption; to be accountable and transparent to their citizens; and to live up to their international obligations to support peace and respect human rights.
I have taken this decision because I consider that the evidence that the Government of Rwanda have supported the M23 rebel group in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) appears to be credible and compelling. This constitutes a breach of these important partnership principles that underpin general budget support.
The UK wants to continue with our long-term and successful development partnership with Rwanda, and to work with the Government of Rwanda to secure a peaceful resolution to the situation in eastern DRC. Meeting the partnership principles alongside tangible improvements on the ground, and continued progress made by the Government of Rwanda in supporting peace, are key factors in any decision on general budget support next year.
I strongly welcome the progress made by Presidents Kagame of Rwanda, Kabila of Democratic Republic of Congo and Museveni of Uganda last week and at the summit on 24 November. This latest summit resulted in an important 10-point communiqué, specifying long and short-term actions to be taken by all parties, but crucially including a renewed call for the M23 to leave Goma without delay, which must happen as part of any sustainable solution to the situation in the region.
The situation in eastern DRC remains very unstable and very frightening for the communities involved. A large number of vulnerable people have had their lives disrupted yet again and are without food and shelter. I am also, therefore, announcing a further £18 million of support for immediate humanitarian needs in DRC which will provide 100,000 people with three months of emergency food assistance, as well as access to clean water, essential household items and emergency education for more than 130,000 people. I urge the Governments of Rwanda and DRC to exercise their maximum influence to ensure the safe passage of humanitarian relief.
The UK remains committed to supporting long-term solutions which bring stability and remove the causes of conflict which currently leave space for armed groups to prosper, especially in eastern DRC.
Solutions must be led by the Government of DRC and we will remain engaged with President Kabila’s Government and urge him to work with us. We will ensure that our development programme in the DRC has renewed emphasis on programmes in the east to meet the needs of the victims of conflict and promote longer-term development. In return we expect President Kabila and his Government, with the support of the international community, to show strong leadership and take on the huge challenge of ending this long-running conflict, addressing grievances and creating the right conditions for development programmes to succeed.
Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority
(12 years ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mrs Helen Grant)
In March 2011 the Government responded to the Public Accounts Select Committee report “Smaller Government: Shrinking the Quango State” setting out the coalition’s plans for reforming the public bodies sector. It includes the requirement to undertake triennial reviews of Executive and advisory non-departmental public bodies (NDPBs).
The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority is the Government body responsible for administering the compensation schemes for criminal injuries and victims of overseas terrorism in England, Scotland and Wales. Its aim is to compensate the blameless victims of violent crime or acts of terrorism overseas. Part of the Ministry of Justice, it was established in 1994 under prerogative powers.
To deliver the coalition Government’s commitment to transparency and accountability the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority will be subject to a triennial review. The Ministry of Justice, as the sponsoring Department, has today launched a consultation, which will last until 8 February 2013, inviting views. In line with Cabinet Office guidance, the review will consider the following:
the continuing need for the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority—both its functions and its form; and
where it is agreed that it should remain, to review the control and governance arrangements in place to ensure that the public body is complying with recognised principles of good corporate governance.
In conducting the triennial review, officials will be engaging with a broad range of stakeholders and users of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority. The review will be aligned with guidance published by the Cabinet Office: “Guidance on Reviews of Non-Departmental Public Bodies”. The final report and findings will be laid in this House.
House of Lords
Prevention of Social Housing Fraud Bill
Baroness Eaton
My Lords, there are around 4 million social homes in England and more than 200,000 in Wales. These homes provide safety and security, allowing roots to be put down and families to flourish. Social tenants enjoy a comparatively high level of statutory protection and, of course, benefit from submarket rents. In some parts of the country, social rent is less than 50% of the market rent. In addition, many social homes can ultimately be purchased by the tenant at a substantial discount under the right-to-buy scheme. It is therefore unsurprising that there is such a high level of demand for these homes: almost 2 million households are on the waiting list, many of whom are living in accommodation that is completely unsuited to their needs.
At the same time, some people are cheating the system. Whether it is by subletting a home they have been allocated or by lying about their circumstances to be allocated one in the first place, they are depriving of a settled home those in genuine need who play by the rules. Earlier this month, the Audit Commission revised upwards its estimate of the number of social homes in England that are being unlawfully occupied. That figure now stands at 98,000. I should of course remind the House that the vast majority of social tenants play by the rules and are no doubt as appalled as everyone else by this abuse.
The Prevention of Social Housing Fraud Bill has a very simple aim: to reduce the amount of social housing that is being misused, thereby ensuring that more of it is available to those in genuine need and who play by the rules. It seeks to do this by increasing the deterrent to those considering cheating the system and by strengthening the ability of landlords to detect and punish those who do. I congratulate Richard Harrington MP both on introducing this important Bill in the other place and on ensuring its rapid progress there, which I know was helped greatly by the generous support given by the Opposition.
Over the past few years, social landlords have been encouraged, both by this Government and the previous one, to crack down on the abuse of their stock. It is pleasing that an ever-increasing number are doing just this. However, while it is perfectly reasonable to expect social landlords to tackle this abuse, it is essential that there is legislation in place that will both help and encourage them to do so. That is where the Bill comes in.
This is not the time to go through each clause of the Bill in detail, but I will very briefly highlight its main provisions. Many forms of social housing fraud are already criminal offences: fraudulent right-to-buy applications and lying on the form when applying for a social home are caught by existing criminal legislation. However, there is a gap when it comes to what is often perceived to be the most prevalent form of social housing fraud: subletting. It is very important that this gap is filled.
A subletter can earn very substantial amounts of money, often by continuing to pay social rent to their local authority or housing association landlord while charging the subtenant the market rent. In areas where there is a big difference between social and market rents, it is not unusual for a tenant to make many thousands of pounds a year, all of it hidden from the tax man. As the Second Reading debate in the other place made clear, subletting is a problem even in low-rent areas.
In the vast majority of cases currently detected, the subletting tenant simply has to hand back the keys, resulting in the loss of a home that they were not living in anyway. They walk away, often with a very tidy profit and nothing to deter them from trying their luck somewhere else. The Bill deals with this by creating new criminal offences of subletting without permission, as well as enabling a court to award to the landlord any profit the tenant has made from the subletting, regardless of whether the landlord has incurred a loss.
The other area is access to data. Landlords often cite their lack of access to data as a significant obstacle that prevents them recovering as many homes as they otherwise could and they compare the powers available to them with those available to their housing benefit counterparts, who can compel a long list of organisations to provide them with data in connection with their investigations. By contrast, social housing fraud investigators cannot compel anyone to supply them with data. As a result, they are able to detect and prosecute far fewer cases than they otherwise could. Both forms of fraud come at a considerable cost to the taxpayer and it is not right that there is such a difference in the powers available to detect them.
The Bill would rectify this imbalance by allowing the making of regulations that would give social housing fraud investigators similar powers to those currently enjoyed by housing benefit investigators. These regulations will be subject to affirmative resolution. Importantly, this Bill will not affect tenants' current rights to take in lodgers or to sublet part of the property, provided that the tenant lives there too. In some cases this is a statutory right, in others it is a common feature of the tenancy agreement. I should add that the Bill would not criminalise those tenants who sublet not knowing it to be against the rules and would not criminalise those who unwittingly rent a social home from the tenant.
Discussions with landlords have shown that often subtenants do not know that the home in which they are living is in fact a social home. If, as can happen, they have seen the property advertised by an estate agent, have put down a deposit and pay market rent then it is fair that they would assume they are renting from a private owner. The first time many realise that the home they are renting is in fact a social home is when the local authority or housing association landlord knocks on their door. As I hope I have made clear, this is not an attack on social tenants, most of whom I am sure would welcome this Bill. What it seeks is to bring about a fairer system, rectifying the anomalous situation where the incentive to cheat is so much greater than both the risk of detection and the eventual penalty incurred.
This is a Private Member's Bill, but it does contain some significant provisions that will be welcomed by the housing sector and, no doubt, by the taxpayer. I hope the wide support it has received up to this point will continue in this House. I do not claim this Bill to be the single answer to all the issues affecting social housing in this country, but it will undoubtedly ensure that more of it is used by those in genuine need.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I first congratulate my noble friend Lady Eaton on bringing the Bill to this House, her presentation of it, her clear explanation of its basic contents and the balanced way in which she put it forward. I join her in thanking Richard Harrington for introducing the Bill in the House of Commons and welcome the Government’s support. There is every likelihood that it will come into law.
In one sense, it is quite extraordinary that in so many cases councils and housing associations do not know who is living in their houses and that this clear misuse and abuse of the system of what we now call social housing in this country is so prevalent. It may well be that the true figure is around 100,000. Nobody knows exactly, but it is fairly clear that it takes place on a wide scale. I think back to the days when I started getting involved in local government and how the world has changed. Forty years ago, it would have been almost impossible for this kind of fraud to take place because the local authorities, who then owned almost all the social housing, simply knew who was living in their houses and what they were doing. Before local government reorganisation, when a council house became empty in one of our local authorities—a small urban district of which I was not a member—then its housing committee, consisting of all the authority’s members, would sit round the table at its next meeting and decide who would get the tenancy of that council house.
This is clearly a world away from the present circumstances in which local authorities and housing associations in particular are large-scale organisations run in what some people might think is a bureaucratic way. They are run much more like a business, rather than as the local community-based organisation that we looked to in the past, when everybody knew exactly what was going on. The world has changed. Now local authorities and housing associations do not generally employ rent collectors. In the days when the rent collector went round every week, it would be impossible for this kind of fraud to take place. It is often similar with repairs. When repairs are ordered now, they are either done by a large-scale organisation employed directly by the landlords or often by outside contractors. There is not the local knowledge there was when one or two tradesmen directly employed by the authority went round the estate or a local area doing the repairs. Again, these people would know who the tenants were. Councillors representing much smaller wards in those days would also be able to keep an eye on this kind of thing.
I come from an area where I do not think that this type of fraud takes place on any sort of scale. I was trying to think of an instance in my ward in either the main housing association in the area, which looks after the former council housing, or one of the other housing associations which have small numbers of properties in the area, but I do not think that this kind of fraud takes place on any scale at all in that kind of area. However, rents are generally low in both the private sector and the social housing sector in such areas and there is not the great gap in the level of rents described by the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, that exists, for example, in many parts of London. However, it is clear that in many parts of the country this kind of fraud is rife, and the Bill is welcome as a means of dealing with it.
There is a hope that the Bill will not need an extended Committee stage; it is in a good form and could be passed into law fairly quickly. That is the hope around the House and I would like to ask the Minister, when she speaks from the Government’s point of view, what they will do if and when this Bill becomes law.
First, it is clear that a fundamental part of this legislation will be the need to inform and advise tenants about exactly what they can and cannot do and about the important distinction between their right to take in lodgers and their non-right—and the fact that it will be illegal—to sublet without permission following the passing of this Bill. It is very important that people occupying social housing legitimately understand the difference between those two positions because it might not be too obvious to people who do not go into the details of the different legislation. We do not want to discourage people in council and other social housing from taking in legitimate lodgers, which is a perfectly proper and reasonable way of using accommodation to its full and of providing accommodation for people who need it and who otherwise might not have it.
Secondly, what will happen in circumstances where people, whether or not they know about the rules, contravene the new legislation by not asking for permission to sublet but, if they had asked, it would have been granted? It would be wrong if they were to be arraigned before the courts. It is a typical situation in planning legislation and planning control that people often carry out development or changes of use without asking for permission, but when complaints are made and the enforcement process goes into operation it becomes clear that if they had asked for permission they would have got it. There is a parallel here and it would be wrong for people to be arraigned before the courts and action taken against them if they would have received permission. In other words, what advice will be given to local authorities for retrospective permission to be given when it would otherwise have been thought to be reasonable?
Thirdly, if and when this legislation is passed—which we hope will be soon—what is the Government’s intention on commencement? Is it that commencement orders will be made fairly quickly and advice given to local authorities and social landlords so that the new system can be brought into operation? Perhaps the Minister will give an assurance about that.
Some of the MPs who took part in the debate in the House of Commons were a little optimistic about the extent to which this legislation will release a great deal of new council and social housing for people on waiting lists. It will clearly have some effect there but the real effect will be that it will stop people abusing the system and bring this housing back into the use for which it is intended. On that basis, I am pleased to support the legislation.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, on taking on responsibility for this Private Member’s Bill and for the comprehensive manner in which she introduced it. It is understood that the Bill has the continuing support of the Government and it should also be clear from its consideration in another place that it has our support also. I was pleased to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, that it has his support. He took us down memory lane to the years when a rent collector would go round the estates on a weekly basis. The housing committee in the authority on which I served did not have every member of the council on it. It was seen as a committee for senior members and it was about 10 years before they would let me near it.
There are various forms of tenancy fraud but this Bill concentrates on the unlawful subletting of social rented housing. The scale of this tenancy fraud is difficult to measure but, as we have heard, the Audit Commission’s updated figures now show that social landlords have lost control of some 98,000 properties. The original estimated cost to the Exchequer of £900 million will obviously have grown since. We know that it is a particular problem in London because high private sector rent levels provide an opportunity to make significant profits. However, it is a problem which is by no means limited to London.
There are, of course, current civil remedies available to landlords through repossession action and recovery of unlawful profit. Some councils have sought to use the Fraud Act, although there remains some doubt about its general applicability in cases of tenancy fraud. There was a major national crackdown in 2009 involving some 150 councils and specific additional funding has been committed by this Administration to tackle the problem. While increasing numbers of tenancy fraud have been identified and challenged, the crackdown has come nowhere near eradicating the fraud. More needs to be done and the measures in this Bill will make an important contribution to the effort.
As we have heard, the Bill includes the creation of new criminal offences of unlawful subletting by assured and secure tenants in social housing; the power for local authorities to prosecute; the ability for courts to order the recovery of any profit from unlawful subletting; and a restriction on assured tenants who sublet regaining their security of tenure.
We should remember that the primary victims of tenancy fraud are those individuals and families on the waiting list and in temporary, often substandard, accommodation who are denied the opportunity to access decent affordable housing. The public purse also suffers because the cost of supporting those denied will inevitably be greater than supporting them in affordable housing. However, increasingly, restrictions on housing benefit will mean that tenants denied access to affordable housing will have to pick up part of this tab themselves. With some 2 million estimated to be on a waiting list for social housing already and the collapse in new social housing starts, the leakage of even 50,000 properties—now estimated at 98,000—from the system should not be allowed to continue
These new criminal powers will undoubtedly assist in providing another route to landlords gaining possession but will, as importantly, also act as a deterrent. The two-tier approach for both secure and assured tenancies, with offences involving dishonesty carrying higher penalties, will reinforce this. We support the exclusions in Clauses 1 and 2, particularly those relating to domestic violence. We also support the provisions in the Bill for the court to make an unlawful profit order, the proceeds of which can flow to the landlord. The maximum payable under these provisions is the amount of rent receivable by the offender less any payments—rents and service charges—payable to the landlord. However, I have a question about how the tax system will fit into all of this.
The rental income receivable for the letting will be taxable, subject, of course, to deductions for rent paid to the landlord. Presumably it would be for the court to take account of this in evaluating any unlawful profit, but it is quite possible, of course, that somebody involved in unlawful subletting would not be rushing to file a self-assessment form. How is it intended that information relating to informal subletting will be shared with HMRC? Noble Lords will be aware of the provisions in the Welfare Reform Act which restrict housing benefit for tenants of social housing when they are deemed to underoccupy their home. We have made clear on numerous occasions, as indeed has this House, how much we deplore this pernicious legislation. However, my point in raising it this morning is not to revisit these arguments, which we will continue to pursue on other occasions, but to examine a related point, the one touched upon by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves.
The Government have suggested that one of the ways a tenant might mitigate the loss of benefit is to sublet a room or take in a lodger. Of course, there are strong reasons why such a course of action would be inappropriate for many families, but for those who might consider it we need to know that there is nothing in the Bill which would make it more difficult to do. It is understood that secure tenants, which includes most council tenants, have a statutory right to take in a lodger. Both secure and assured tenants will need their landlord’s permission to sublet. It seems clear that for secure tenancies, subletting would not create an offence if the written permission of the landlord is obtained, but the drafting in respect of assured tenancies is different and does not seem to allow an exemption even when the landlord gives written permission. Doubtless there is a good reason for this drafting, so perhaps the Minister will explain what it is.
The power to deal with tenancy fraud is one thing; what is as important is the ability to identify and detect cases. The government response to the consultation on social housing fraud indicates support for the creation of a mandatory gateway to require certain bodies to provide relevant information to facilitate detection and prosecution of tenancy fraud. We support this. That response indicates that work on this is being undertaken across government and that the Government will bring forward legislation when the right opportunity arises. Perhaps the Minister will indicate when this might be. Is it intended that this be done utilising the regulation-making powers in the Bill, or otherwise?
There has not been much focus at the other end, although it has been touched upon today by the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, on the position of tenants to whom property is sublet fraudulently. Clearly, a consequence of the Bill will be that they have to give up possession, and presumably thereafter have to seek alternative accommodation, presumably in the private sector. However, in so far as they have a right to access social housing, can it be confirmed that no detriment will arise for them if they have not been complicit in the fraudulent subletting? Indeed, what if they have? Tenancy fraud is a serious issue and the Bill will help to tackle it, but we must not allow that effort to stigmatise the overwhelming majority of tenants who properly occupy social housing, who strive to pay their rent and be good neighbours.
In conclusion, this is a worthy Bill, we thank the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, for taking it forward and we trust that it will have a speedy passage on to the statute book.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Hanham)
My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lady Eaton for bringing the Bill to this House and my honourable friend Richard Harrington for having taken it through the House of Commons. As the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, has said, it is an important Bill: it may have a small number of clauses but its effect is very serious indeed. I am happy to confirm that the Government have been very pleased to support it through the House of Commons and will continue to support it here. This is a Private Member’s Bill and noble Lords will know that it is up to the mover to respond to questions, but I think it is appropriate for me to say at the outset that we want to see this legislation introduced as soon as possible.
As other noble Lords have said, social housing fraud is a stain on our communities. It causes substantial financial loss and damage, especially to those who are stuck on a waiting list and in desperate need of housing: it denies them that opportunity. Introducing measures to reduce the number of homes occupied by those who are cheating the system and who often make a substantial profit in doing so, as my noble friend Lady Eaton said, is, by the sound of it, something that the whole House is going to endorse and I am grateful for that. We cannot ignore the financial cost. To replace social homes that are being unlawfully occupied, to house those who are being denied a property by tenancy fraudsters, would cost several billion pounds. We already know that we need to build a very substantial number of new houses to meet the demand anyway.
The Government have worked with local authorities and housing associations over the past couple of years to help them recognise that fraud is taking place and to deal with the problem. In 2010, as the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, said, grant aid to local authorities of £19 million over four years was announced, as well as the Government funding a team at the Chartered Institute of Housing to help increase expertise and spread good practice. Both these factors, as well as a number of conferences, which I hope that I helped at, have raised the profile of this issue and, importantly, increased the number of homes recovered for reallocation to those in genuine need. The Audit Committee has estimated that 1,800 local authority properties have been recovered in the past year, but noble Lords will recognise that that still leaves a substantial number.
My noble friend Lady Eaton touched upon the importance of increasing landlords’ ability to access data: that is another matter that has been raised by the two noble Lords who have spoken. Those data should be available when investigating social housing fraud and I am very pleased that the Bill contains regulation-making powers to this end. The Government are, of course, committed to introducing the appropriate safeguards alongside any enhancement of landlords’ powers in this area. Of course, access to data will be limited, as one would expect.
Social landlords should be able to make best use of their stock in a way which satisfactorily meets the needs of their local area. Cutting down fraud is a key part of ensuring that this happens. Many landlords have stepped up their efforts and are now giving this matter the attention it deserves, but it is only right—I do not know whether there has been an oversight up to now—that there is proper legislation to support their work, as well as criminal procedures and penalties. That is what has been missing in order to underline the seriousness of this matter: they have been civil penalties up to now.
I was asked a couple of questions, but noble Lords will know that it is the mover of a Private Member’s Bill who answers those. I shall therefore not steal my noble friend’s thunder; I reiterate that we support what she says, and I am grateful that, so far, the House has indicated that it supports it too.
Baroness Eaton
My Lords, I thank most sincerely the noble Lords, Lord Greaves and Lord McKenzie of Luton, and my noble friend Lady Hanham, who have so kindly contributed to the debate on the Bill. I am delighted that there is support for the proposal that this Bill should reach the statute book speedily. I was very interested in the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, about the changing scene in landlords and social housing. Having cut my teeth as a new councillor in the field of housing, I realise what a different arena it is some 28 years on. We now have large landlords who often stretch across a number of authorities and into the regions. It is very different from the days when someone could walk around the streets and know precisely who lived in each house.
The noble Lord asked about prosecuting tenants who may have sublet their property. My understanding is that whether subletting is allowed or not is normally made very clear in the tenancy agreement. In the Bill we recognise that it is the landlord who will decide whether to prosecute. It is expected that criminal sanctions will be used only in the most serious cases of deliberate attempts to defraud. If the activity of subletting has been allowed, it is understood that that would be taken into account in any course of action that the landlord may wish to take.
The question on tax from the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, was most interesting. Because of the expectations of self-certification, I will need to take further advice and write to the noble Lord on that point. However, it is a valid question given that one of the main thrusts of the Bill is to save the public purse from fraudulent behaviour. I will make sure that these points are addressed. I am also pleased to note that the Government are working closely with the housing sector, and indeed my noble friend Lady Hanham mentioned the Chartered Institute of Housing. The Local Government Association is working to ensure that, as far as possible, tenants will be aware of the new arrangements and there is an expectation that landlords will make the implications of any new legislation clear to tenants.
Again, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions.
Disabled Persons’ Parking Badges Bill
(12 years ago)
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Baroness Thomas of Winchester
My Lords, this Bill is a vital step in the fight against the fraudulent use of the much-prized blue badge. It will give local authorities some clear powers of enforcement and provide a welcome extension of the blue badge scheme to Armed Forces personnel and their families posted overseas on UK bases. I congratulate Simon Kirby MP on steering the Bill through the sometimes choppy waters of the other place, although it did have cross-party support, and making sure that it landed safely on the firmer ground for Private Member’s Bills of this House. I am extremely grateful for the help I have had from officials in my noble friend’s department. Also, before I go any further, I must declare my interest in that I am a blue badge holder.
The disabled parking scheme administered by local authorities has existed since 1971 and has enabled over 2.5 million disabled people to park close to where they need to be if they display a valid blue badge. It was originally introduced in the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970, the late Lord Morris of Manchester’s pioneering Act which has done so much for disabled people since that date, and who we have been remembering a lot since his death in August this year. There is no doubt that the blue badge scheme has transformed the lives of those of us who rely on it on a daily basis for our independence. We rely on it for where we live and how we live, and for our ability to travel the length and breadth of the country, knowing that we can nearly always park somewhere suitable to our needs.
However, as time goes on, the value of the badge becomes ever higher, sadly leading to an incentive to fraudsters to abuse the scheme. The National Fraud Authority estimates that abuse of the scheme is now costing local authorities up to £46 million per annum in lost parking revenue, added to which is the deprivation of suitable parking places for genuinely disabled people. Examples of abuse include copying and forging badges, changing the expiry date on the badge, failing to return expired badges, or the misuse of genuine badges by those who are not disabled in any way and who are often, I fear, family members. We all know about the families who take granny and her blue badge out and leave her in the car parked in the disabled bay while they go shopping. No one can do anything about that kind of abuse.
Reform is clearly necessary to try to stop the growing tide of real blue badge fraud. The Government have already introduced important non-regulatory improvements to the scheme, including a new fraud-resistant badge design and a common, shared database across the UK that will prevent multiple and fraudulent applications and enable quick and easy validity checks. It is now time for the law to be clarified to strengthen powers against fraud even further.
Before describing the clauses of the Bill in a bit more detail, I should spell out what the Bill is not about. It is not about the detail of eligibility for a blue badge; or about the exact details of where and when a person can park with a badge; and it is not about the admittedly rigorous application process or the equally rigorous renewal process. I am sure that my noble friend the Minister is prepared to answer questions about those aspects if necessary, but they do not come within the parameters of this Bill.
I turn now to the Bill. Clause 1 removes the requirement for the Secretary of State to prescribe the exact design of the badge in regulations. This will protect the high security features of new blue badges from disclosure, thus helping to prevent forgery. Clause 2 gives local authorities the power to cancel a badge that has been lost or stolen. Up to 25,000 badges come into this category each year. This means that if enforcement officers come across such a badge, they can check its validity on the national database quickly and, if appropriate, can recover it. The person who has lost the badge or has had it stolen will still be able to be issued with a replacement in the knowledge that the original badge has been cancelled and the thief will not be able to use it. Clause 3 clarifies the existing offences relating to the wrongful use of a badge. Existing legislation is ambiguous about whether it is an offence to use a badge which should have been returned to the issuing authority, and this clause makes it clear that it is an offence. However, it is important to point out that, under the Bill, it will not be an offence not to return a badge that should have been returned to the local authority, for example, on the death of a badge holder, because it might just have been overlooked. However, it will be an offence for another person to use the badge.
Clause 4 gives a power to enforcement officers in plain clothes but with appropriate identification to retain a badge which appears to be fake, which has been cancelled and due for return, or is being misused. I must make it clear that enforcement officers will not be empowered to use force to seize a badge and they will not, contrary to some reports, be able to make a value judgment as to the mobility of the blue badge holder. They will be able to check immediately on a national database and discover whether the blue badge holder is on that database, because of the number on the badge that is displayed on the windscreen. At present, a local authority can only recover a badge if a police officer is summoned. This clause brings the law up to date with the current practice of parking enforcement being largely a civil matter. If an enforcement officer finds that someone is misusing another person’s valid badge, regulations will require that the local authority returns it to the legitimate badge holder. A growing number of local authorities are establishing dedicated fraud teams to undertake blue badge enforcement, thus recognising the seriousness of fraud and misuse. This Bill will greatly facilitate this practice.
Clause 5 removes, in England, a very limited right of appeal to the Secretary of State. This right of appeal does not apply to badge applications or eligibility —it applies only to cases relating to the misuse of badges, such as where an authority may require the return of a badge following a conviction. There are only one or two such appeals each year. Currently, the Local Government Ombudsman resolves most complaints against local authorities about blue badges; in future the ombudsman will also review complaints in the circumstances I have described.
Finally, Clause 6 extends the blue badge scheme to UK military bases overseas. This extension will be widely welcomed and will allow disabled members of the Armed Forces community who are resident on UK military bases abroad to apply for a badge.
The provisions in the Bill have been widely consulted on and guidance will be given to local authorities about their enhanced powers of enforcement. To sum up, this Bill is vital to bring the invaluable blue badge scheme up to date and, in particular, to help tackle fraud. Those involved in both using and administering the scheme are eager to see these measures implemented. I commend the Bill to the House.
Lord Dubs
My Lords, first, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, on this Bill and the opportunity it gives us all to debate a pretty important issue. We do this having had the most successful Paralympics in history, so that the country as a whole is more conscious of the situation and needs of disabled people. I hope that the tendency to abuse the blue badge scheme will itself be lessened through a greater awareness of the situation of disabled people.
I have some experience of the blue badge scheme, because a member of my family has one. It is amazing how, if one is closely involved with a scheme, one is so much more conscious of its use and misuse. Even if I am not with that disabled person, when I drive somewhere I look at every blue badge parking space to see whether it is being used properly or not. I look into the windscreens to see whether the car has the blue badge there. One is much more aware of these things, as one is if one is pushing a wheelchair around. In theory we all know about kerbstones and all the other impediments, but if you get behind a wheelchair and push, you know just what it is like when you are in a local authority area that does not have the kerbstones adjusted so that one can push the wheelchair up. However, I have digressed from the Bill.
I am aware of the fraud and misuse of blue badges. It is extremely upsetting when this happens for people who have a blue badge and want to park but cannot find anywhere to do it. There is also the misuse of spaces that are designated for blue badge holders by other people, thereby denying the blue badge holder ease of access to the building, home or whatever it is. I will say a little more about that in a minute.
Some years ago, when I was a junior Minister in the Northern Ireland Office, this particular area was one of my responsibilities. The disability organisations in Belfast came to me saying that far too few spaces were designated for blue badge holders in Belfast city centre—I realise that the Bill is for England only, but the example applies—so that people with a blue badge could not find anywhere to park, as the spaces were all taken up by other motorists. One of the beauties of being a direct rule Minister was that I could change things very quickly, and I got a few more spaces installed right away. I am not even sure we had to do any consultation, and it happened within a short period of time. Sometimes there is a case for not having too much consultation if you want to get something done. It made me much more aware of the difficulties and the situations.
I understand that even ahead of this Bill, arrangements for the renewal of blue badges have been tightened up. The blue badge must now be collected in person by the holder within a six-week period, otherwise the badge is revoked. However, getting to the place where the blue badges are issued can sometimes be a problem, and one should be aware that these are extra burdens imposed on people who do not have the ease of access and mobility that the rest of us have.
There is one issue about enforcement that I will just mention. I once drove a disabled person and dropped him near a shop that he wanted to go to. I then drove the car to a parking space and put the blue badge up, but thought to myself that if someone sees me doing that and hopping out of the car, they will say I am abusing it. I thought I might have to explain this, so was ready with my explanation; which was that it was too far to get the disabled person from the space to the shop he wanted to go to, so I left him at the edge of the kerb with somebody else. If one is being tough on enforcement—as one should be—there are certain sensitivities about the way other people help disabled people. Although the Bill does not apply to supermarket and other private car parks, there is still a problem of enforcement there. I only hope that, as a result of this measure, the owners of supermarkets and other private car parks will enforce the blue badge parking bays. There are blue badge parking bays at my local Sainsbury’s, and I think they are being properly used—because I tend to look at them to see—but enforcement is sometimes not carried out as well in some supermarkets as it might be.
One key point is that there is still a lot of confusion and uncertainty about the scheme and the entitlements of blue badge holders. There is a very good website, which is clear, but you cannot always say to people when they get a blue badge, “Look at the website and go through it all before you go out in the vehicle”. I understand that these Explanatory Notes have been prepared by the government department, but there is at least one mistake in them. In paragraph 4, the notes say that the Bill,
“provides parking concessions for certain severely disabled people to enable them to park without charge or time limit”.
Unfortunately, in the four central London boroughs—Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, part of Camden and the City of London—there is a three-hour time limit. That may be necessary because of the enormous pressure on parking in the central London boroughs; on the other hand, if you do not know about it and come from outer London, you can be caught. Even a three-hour time limit can be difficult, because a lot of the hospitals that people with blue badges may need to visit for appointments are in the three-hour time limit area. One cannot always predict that one will be seen within the three-hour period and therefore it is hard to know how to manage the parking to make a hospital appointment. My point is that there is some confusion and uncertainly about it. It is fair enough in one’s own local area, because the blue badge holder gets to know what the conditions are there, but that does not apply if one goes outside one’s local authority area. All I can do is plead for more sensitivity and more information, because if a blue badge holder goes outside their own area, or is driven outside it, there are not always signs up saying what the conditions are.
One thing I did not know, which I checked with the carer for a blue badge holder, and which is also in the Explanatory Notes, is that there is permission to park on yellow lines in England for up to three hours. The carer did not know that; she had no idea one could park on yellow lines. Did your Lordships all know that? Maybe I am the only one who did not, but I certainly did not. However, it is not quite as simple as that, because it also applies to double yellow lines—but there are exceptions, such as where there are the vertical kerbstone markings, although that does not always apply in all local authorities, so the advice is to phone up the local authority and check. That is a bit of a performance but I understand that is how the system works. Confusion and uncertainty are a problem for those with blue badges.
Another problem is that some local authorities have bays that are designated for named persons. That is fair enough. Others do not. If one has a blue badge bay outside one’s house, which is not designated to the person in the house, and somebody else parks there it can be very difficult getting into one’s home because there is not a parking bay there. That designation of parking spaces for individual blue badge holders varies from local authority to local authority. I understand that Westminster does it, but others do not, so there can be a real problem there.
I will quote an example that I have quoted once before. The carer of a blue badge holder parked in the blue badge space outside the home. Life can be pretty stressful and she did not put the blue badge up, although she also had a resident’s parking permit for the borough. The wheelchair was perfectly visible in the back of the car. The car was towed away within minutes and that cost her £250. I thought that the insensitivity of the local authority to tow away a disabled person’s car with a wheelchair in it, without any notice, took some beating.
I very much welcome this Bill. Obviously, we would all like to go a bit further but Private Members’ Bills can only go so far and so quickly. The noble Baroness is nodding; she understands that. I welcome the tougher enforcement that is going to happen; that is a good thing, but there also needs to be greater clarity so that legitimate holders of blue badges are not caught by the tougher enforcement.
Baroness Brinton
My Lords, I, too, declare an interest as the holder of a disabled person’s parking badge. This Bill is an essential tool for the prevention and reduction of fraud and is long overdue, for many of the reasons that have been outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and my noble friend Lady Thomas of Winchester.
Picking up on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, on the abuse of space—which I have mentioned before in your Lordships’ House—there is a cultural issue in this country where people do not think that it is particularly upsetting, if there are lots of disabled spaces, to just nip into one briefly for a while. Compare that with France, where the major supermarket chain Leclerc has a little sign below each blue badge that says, “You take my space, you can take my handicap”. There is very little abuse of the system in France, and it is that cultural change that forces people to think about what they are doing that we need to get to in this country. In the mean time, we need to make sure that fraud and abuse of the system are reduced.
I, too, have looked at the web guide. In the main, I found it extremely helpful but I wondered if I needed to print out some of the 20-odd pages, particularly those on when you can and cannot use your badge on a yellow line. Having looked at it, I certainly could not memorise all the different strands. Perhaps there is a way of simplifying that, perhaps into a handy little pocket thing that might go out with the new badge when it is reissued that would give users and their carers an easy aide-memoire.
I note that the Bill does not tackle the highly contentious issue of eligibility for a badge, although I suspect that eligibility is the area that many people with disabilities are more concerned about.
Most of this short Bill is very sensible, and helpful to local authorities and the police in terms of setting out formal processes for the cancelling of badges when they are no longer held by the person to whom they were issued, and to increase the number of people able to inspect badges.
I am sure that it is right and helpful to permit authorised enforcement officers in plain clothes to inspect badges. It is also right for them to be able to confiscate a badge which they believe to have been cancelled, due for return, or because it is a fake. However, I have slight concerns about the wording in Clause 3(4)(a), which could be interpreted as a very sweeping statement. It says,
“should have been returned to the issuing authority in compliance with regulations under subsection (6) of that section or a notice under subsection (7A)(b) of that section”.
My noble friend Lady Thomas has helpfully clarified that these powers are limited and do not give an enforcement officer the right to confiscate a badge should they believe the holder is no longer displaying a level of disability that would entitle them to a badge. If so, I am reassured. It would be very worrying if untrained officers, who know nothing about the wide range of disabilities and how they manifest themselves, took it upon themselves to seize a badge. For example, someone with an invisible heart condition might appear well, might even be able to walk to the shop that they are trying to get to, and to all intents and purposes look fit and healthy to an untrained eye.
This raises the more general issue about the training of enforcement officers. Will my noble friend Lady Thomas or the Minister tell the House what training there is for those police or enforcement officers who have the power to confiscate? Do they have training to understand and recognise disabilities and how to work with people with disabilities? For example, what skills are they given in communicating with people with disabilities such as severe hearing loss, who may be unable to discuss the matter easily with an officer? Perhaps this is an area that local authorities could look at with their staff and enforcement officers.
I have a minor concern about Clause 5, which concerns appeals. I absolutely agree that it should not be necessary for a badge holder to appeal to the Secretary of State should they be refused a badge, but I am worried that it appears there is no recourse to appeal against the decision of a local authority. Can the Minister confirm that this is the case? If so, is it right or fair that there is no appeal? For example, can a sub-committee be set up in a local authority to review that initial decision? That seems to be against natural justice.
Finally, I am pleased with the proposals for the Secretary of State to be responsible for issuing blue badges to members of the Armed Forces and persons employed in their support who are resident overseas. This is eminently sensible, given the movement of service personnel and the European nature of the current badge.
I thank my noble friend Lady Thomas of Winchester for bringing forward this Bill to your Lordships’ House. With those very minor concerns, I absolutely support the Bill.
Lord Macdonald of Tradeston
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, for giving us this opportunity to support her Bill.
As Minister for Transport between 1999 and 2001, I was aware of the widespread concern about the misuse of blue badges and had hoped to act to reduce fraud and abuse. Unfortunately, in those years the Department for Transport was preoccupied with a series of crises, particularly regarding the safety of our railways, which understandably took priority.
The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, will remember that difficult period very well since he was even then the opposition spokesman for transport in your Lordships’ House. His knowledge of transport legislation is very extensive. His open mind and his direct but courteous manner as a Minister are also much admired, and I am sure that he will make every effort to get this Bill passed and implemented as soon as possible.
As has been mentioned, it is also reassuring that this Private Member’s Bill has come to us from the House of Common with cross-party support. Let us now ensure that it passes through its remaining stages in this House quickly and intact.
The blue badge system was introduced in 1970 but despite growing concern over the decades about the increase in its abuse, government in general have been very slow to act. However, in 2007 the then Labour Government at long last reviewed the blue badge regime. The following year the Department for Transport published its Comprehensive Blue Badge (Disabled Parking) Reform Strategy.
The consultation process that followed was certainly comprehensive. Indeed, it was not concluded until 2010 —just in time to be picked up by the incoming coalition Government. After such a long wait, it is good to see that some overdue reforms are already in place. We now have the Blue Badge Improvement Service, which will offer more secure printing, supply and distribution of blue badges. Its database will also enable verification checks to be made quickly and easily. The responsible local authorities will now share access to a BBIS management information system, which should make blue badge schemes more consistent across the county and help reduce abuse. Most importantly, since the start of this year, new blue badges are being issued which have been redesigned to make them harder to alter, copy or forge. In addition, badge holders are now able to report lost or stolen badges online, which, combined with the measures proposed in this Bill, should also reduce fraud.
Let us hope that these reforms lead to a greater commitment at local authority level. At present, regrettably, it is estimated that about 80% of councils are not actively enforcing existing rules. These inactive councils should be made aware that tighter enforcement in large cities has significantly reduced offending rates. This has been most effective in London boroughs where, of course, with high parking charges and the Transport for London congestion charge in the centre of town, abusers can save large sums of money. As the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, said, the National Fraud Authority estimates that abuse of the blue badge scheme might be costing around £50 million a year, although we cannot be sure of that figure because detection and prosecution rates at present are so low. But that, too, might now change. What we do know is that half of all blue badge holders blame the widespread abuse of the scheme by able-bodied drivers for the difficulties that they often find in parking.
However, our concern should not just be about the cost of fraud or even the inconvenience caused to the disabled; it must also be about the cynicism bred by the old, ineffective regime which contributes to the general disillusionment about government’s inability at local and national level to sort out such common problems. With 2.5 million badges in circulation and subject to widespread fraud, those motorists who play by the rules become increasingly, and quite understandably, frustrated and angry about our failure to act. Sadly, disabled badge holders have also been increasingly embarrassed by resentment of their parking privileges, fuelled by suspicion that they, too, might somehow be abusing the system.
Therefore, if and when the overdue but very welcome reform proposed in the Bill becomes law, I hope that the Minister, the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, will encourage the transport department and local authorities to make a special effort to publicise their improved security measures and enforcement powers. Such a campaign would not only act as a deterrent by warning of the increased likelihood of getting caught and punished for misuse and abuse of the scheme but it might also reassure all those law-abiding motorists who do not have a blue badge that government, at local and national level, is now as keen as they are to combat fraud and abuse on our roads.
Lord Touhig
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, for agreeing to pilot this Bill through your Lordships’ House. I should begin by declaring an interest: I am president of Access, a campaigning group working for the benefit of people with disabilities. I certainly welcome this Bill. It will ensure that people who genuinely need the blue badge are better protected and will help clamp down on the abuse of this very worthwhile scheme.
I know from talking to public officials in my own part of Wales that they are often frustrated by the lack of opportunity to act against those who abuse the present scheme. They welcome amendments to inspection powers so that officers in plain clothes may inspect badges. This, coupled with provision to allow councils to cancel badges which are not held by the person to whom they have been issued, will go a long way to improving the governance and management of the scheme.
They tell me that demand for blue badges is constantly increasing, yet there is no incentive for people to hand back a blue badge if and when they are no longer required. Among the commonplace scams are using a blue badge without the badge holder’s knowledge, keeping the blue badge when the person to whom it was awarded has died, photocopying genuine badges and acquiring stolen ones. I remember reading an article in the Daily Telegraph more than two years ago which stated that in Leeds, it was estimated that 60% of badges were misused; that in Newcastle around half the 4,000 issued badges were used illegally; and that in Edinburgh the figure jumped to 70%. I know that in south-east Wales, close to the English border, misuse of the blue badge is popular because possession of it allows motorists to cross the Severn bridges without paying. I therefore commend the Welsh Government on having launched a new blue badge scheme in March this year with many additional security features which make them harder to forge.
However, more than one in three people in Wales do not understand the eligibility rules for blue badge disability parking. In some cases, this has led to unpleasant remarks being aimed at legitimate users of the blue badge scheme in accessing parking spaces. Thirty-five per cent of people questioned in a survey said that they believed that disabled persons' parking spaces were provided only for vehicles carrying a wheelchair user. In fact, they are reserved for a wide range of people with mobility problems, including those with less obvious disabilities such as severe sight impairment, heart or lung conditions, or a prosthetic limb that may make it difficult for them to walk even short distances.
The misconceptions about the blue badge parking system emerged in a survey of more than a thousand people conducted for the Welsh Government as part of their drive to encourage greater respect for the parking rights of disabled vehicle users. The Welsh Government released the survey figures as part of their “space invaders” campaign to promote the new-style, more secure blue badge and to deter ineligible motorists being tempted to abuse the scheme. An earlier survey across Wales showed that one in 10 motorists admitted using blue badge spaces illegally and, in some areas, the figure was as high as one in four. Recently, on a very wet Saturday while driving out of the car park at my local Sainsbury’s at Pontllanfraith, I saw a motorist drive in, park in a disabled person’s parking space, get out of the car and run into the store. I am only sorry that the Bill does not give the police powers to seize and to crush the cars of motorists who take a disabled person’s parking space. Frankly, for me, whether they remove the driver first is an option for them. If they had such powers, it would certainly help deter these space invaders.
Another misunderstanding about the scheme was revealed in the Welsh survey, with 10% of respondents believing that anyone using a blue badge holder’s vehicle could park in the restricted spaces even if the eligible person was not with them. Former Royal Welch Fusilier Paul Davies, of Bargoed, who was paralysed from the waist down after being injured in a military rugby game, said that he regularly encountered these space invaders. Mr Davies helped launch the Welsh Government’s blue badge scheme and was quoted as saying:
“Drivers take no notice of the signs, either because of laziness or ignorance of how difficult it really is for a disabled person to park in a normal space”.
Finally, I welcome Clause 6, covering the provision of badges for disabled service personnel. This is a well intentioned move to bolster the Armed Forces covenant. As a former Veterans Minister, I believe that any new commitment to improve the quality of life of those who have served our country and to whom we owe a debt that we can never fully repay is right and just.
People who take a disabled person’s parking space and who abuse the blue badge scheme do a considerable disservice to disabled people and harm their quality of life. The Government are right to do something about this, and I certainly welcome this Bill.
Lord Davies of Oldham
My Lords, as has been indicated by a number of speakers in the debate, we all owe a real debt to the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, for sponsoring this Bill and introducing it into the House. We also appreciate the accuracy with which she took us through each clause, hoping, I think, to ward off too many contributions which might stray a little far from its direct content. That is in the nature of Private Member’s Bills. This House always has a large number of noble Lords with experience in the field of any particular Private Member’s Bill. They will make their major issues part of the debate. Therefore, I hope the Minister will not be too upset by the fact that several contributions already have ranged quite widely in advocacy of the interests of the disabled. I hope, too, that I may be forgiven in that respect.
As my noble friend Lord Macdonald indicated, this Bill clearly has cross-party support. We from the opposition Front Bench wish it every success. We appreciate of course that the Bill is also derivative of the seminal work of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970, which our great friend Lord Morris of Manchester introduced at that time. He of course succeeded subsequently in developing many areas of work of great help to the disabled. I am pleased that this is my first opportunity to put that on record. I knew Alf for nearly 40 years. There was no one I held in greater respect in terms of his contribution. This issue with regard to the blue badge is a small tribute to his work. The blue badge scheme is of course of immense value to the disabled, but because of that it also incurs the tendency to a great deal of fraud and illegitimate use. That is why we welcome the fact that the Bill tightens up areas in significant ways that will aid the direct purposes of the blue badge concept—that is, service to the disabled.
I hope that the Minister is able to reassure us that there are no extra demands upon the resources of local authorities as a consequence of the Bill because we are all too well aware that our local authority budgets are greatly stretched at present. I want some reassurance on that front. Also, have the Government addressed this question of enforcement? We all recognise the very different concepts of civil enforcement and the operation of the police with regard to criminal enforcement. The police are able pretty much instantaneously to have access to the police databank on vehicles and their misuse. I am not at all sure that the enforcement officers envisaged in this Bill would have anything like that access to the resources necessary for them to carry out the role.
Let me say how very difficult this can be. On this occasion, an authority acted in my view entirely properly but it was of great distress to a dear neighbour of mine who is safely into her 90s. First, she found that in order to renew her badge there was a six-week period and she was late with that so the new badge was not issued in time. She got a ticket for the car parked outside her house in her reserved space because the old badge was out of date. Credit is due to those carrying out enforcement, except that they might have regarded the situation of a ratepayer of the local authority perched on a space correctly created for her with a little more understanding and consideration. Worse, she went straight to the local authority to complain about this and parked in a disabled spot. When she came out, a second ticket had appeared on her car. We need to recognise that as far as the disabled are concerned some understanding needs to be employed. I am therefore interested in this question of enforcement. We all want rigorous enforcement against those who misuse badges but we also want to make sure that the interests of those who legitimately use badges are safeguarded.
The Minister will also want to comment on the issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. We recognise how limited appeals were to the Secretary of State and there is no great loss in the withdrawal of that particular aspect but we want to be reassured about the question of appeals against the withdrawal of a badge. We all know how significant a badge is to a disabled person. It would be a significant loss, which can only be justified if every conceivable angle on the issue has been considered. That is why we need some kind of consideration on the question of scope for appeals.
I also appreciated the contribution by my noble friend Lord Dubs, who pressed the case for consistency with regard to application. Life is complex enough for all of us who cope with the myriad problems of parking. For the disabled to have the additional difficulties of the complexity and uncertainty of application is something we must take very seriously. I want reassurances from the Minister that the points that my noble friend Lord Dubs made will be taken fully into account.
This has been an extraordinarily constructive debate. It has shown the House at its best in circumstances where we seek to aid a very important part of our community—the disabled—and particularly to protect them in areas where the existence of fraud in the use of badges has been a clear abuse and very much to their detriment and the effectiveness of the scheme. I very much welcome the extent to which the Bill advances the interests of the scheme and gives great help to the disabled.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, today’s Second Reading marks an important step in the reform of the blue badge disabled parking scheme and I thank my noble friend Lady Thomas for the excellent way in which she introduced her Bill. It has the full support of the Government.
As the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of Tradeston, observed, Governments have long understood the need to reform the blue badge scheme. Until last year, very few changes had been made to the scheme since its establishment in the 1970s. I had an office near to that of Lord Morris of Manchester and I much enjoyed his company and wise counsel. Since coming to power, this Government have continued to work with disabled people’s groups and local authorities to develop improvements. The changes we have introduced are neatly complemented by the contents of my noble friend’s Bill, which in essence completes the reform package which has obviously been in gestation for many years. The noble Lord, Lord Touhig, suggested that cars involved in abuse should be crushed. That might be a bit draconian for this Government but if we did go down that route, I think the power should be invested in a Minister in the Government Whips Office.
Last year, the Government announced plans for reforming the scheme. Those plans were two-fold: first, to tackle rising levels of fraud and abuse; secondly, to ensure that badges are issued more fairly and consistently across the country. This would thereby ensure the scheme remains sustainable in the long term for those who rely upon it most. Given my background as a Territorial Army officer, I am delighted to see the provision in my noble friend’s Bill enabling the Armed Forces on UK bases overseas to apply for a badge, as this is about fairness and complements the Government’s aims.
The Government have made great strides in delivering reforms. Last year we amended regulations so that a badge can be withdrawn by a local authority following a relevant conviction for misuse. Previously, a local authority was obliged to obtain three relevant convictions before a badge could be withdrawn. That was unduly cumbersome. We have reduced that to one conviction to support local authorities in their attempts to stamp out abuse. In this context, the provision in my noble friend’s Bill to clarify existing offences relating to the wrongful use of parking badges is extremely important. Local authorities need to be clear about what constitutes an offence and what behaviour may be prosecuted.
More recently, on 1 January this year the Government introduced the Blue Badge Improvement Service. This is a major initiative aimed at tackling rising levels of fraud and abuse, while helping to ensure that disabled people receive improved customer service. I am delighted to say that every local authority in England has signed up to use it. It is a service that provides for online applications and, since it went live, over 800,000 badges have been issued. The local authorities use a central, secure print facility to supply and distribute badges and are able to make administrative savings by sharing services.
I am grateful for the kind words of the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of Tradeston, when he described the system, which provides local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales with a single, national database of all blue badge holders and their key details, therefore preventing multiple and fraudulent applications. This new tool is a major step forwards in tackling fraud and the powers being proposed in this Bill—specifically, allowing inspections by officers in plain clothes and enabling on-street recovery of badges that are fake, cancelled or being misused—will enhance its value. Enforcement officers can run quick validity checks of badges on the street via their handheld devices and if a badge is forged, stolen, expired or being misused they will be able to take it off the offender to prevent further abuse.
The noble Lord, Lord Touhig, touched on the possibility of photocopying a badge. I assure him that the new badge is completely resistant to this type of fraud. Furthermore, since the new system went live the Government have built on the functionality available in the online form and members of the public can now report lost and stolen badges and any changes of circumstances online. This function will be enhanced by the new power proposed in the Bill enabling local authorities to cancel badges that are no longer in the holder’s possession, which means that on-street enforcement officers will have access to the most up-to-date information when interrogating the database.
To help counteract fraud, the Government have also introduced a new badge design that is harder to copy, forge or alter. The old-style cardboard badge has been replaced by a superb new badge made from a hard plastic material, which contains a number of overt and covert security features as used in banknotes and driving licences. As my noble friend Lady Thomas explained, the Bill has an important role here too by removing the need to prescribe the badge details in regulations. Already, people are attempting to make copies of the new badge and I am pleased to say that they are bad copies. However, we do not want to help those criminals by publishing the badge security details.
The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, talked about misuse of the blue badge. It is important to understand that there is a limitation on how much we can do. If we have too many badges in use, too many parking spaces will be used and we will devalue the badge itself. Of course, the same arguments apply to abuse. He also talked about the need to collect badges in person within six weeks. There is no requirement for this practice. It is for local authorities to decide their own arrangements. Some ask people to collect them to help ensure that they are delivered to the right people; some also take payment at that time. The noble Lord referred to signs and parking on yellow lines; my noble friend Lady Brinton also touched on this. Local authorities are required to put signs up explaining who can park there. All badge holders receive a rights and responsibilities leaflet, explaining about yellow lines. I am afraid that they may have to check the rules in their local area because local authorities have to manage their own traffic situation.
The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, also talked about towing and clamping. A vehicle displaying a blue badge must not be clamped but if the vehicle avoids clamping in circumstances where the badge was being misused, an offence is committed and the badge user could be prosecuted. The department advises local authorities that vehicles displaying blue badges should be removed only for emergency, security or ceremonial reasons, where the vehicle is a serious safety hazard or obstruction. However, local authorities may remove a vehicle displaying a blue badge if it is in contravention of a parking prohibition and a penalty charge notice has been appropriately issued. Depending upon the terms of the parking orders, contraventions could include circumstances where a blue badge is not valid or is being misused by a third party.
The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, also talked about parking bays. Broadly speaking, there are two types of on-street disabled persons’ parking bay. The first type is installed by local authorities who have powers under the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 to designate by order a parking place reserved for a disabled badge holder. If a disabled persons’ parking bay has been designated, it would be an offence for a non-disabled person to use the space. Contraventions can be enforced with penalty charges; the offender may also be prosecuted and be liable for a fine of up to £1,000. Disabled bays that are backed by an order take longer to implement, as their provision requires public consultation and objections need to be considered before they can be implemented. It can therefore take some considerable time for such bays to be installed, unlike advisory bays which can be given quick consideration. Their use, however, cannot be enforced by parking authorities. Such bays are marked out on the road surface and are often installed by local authorities in residential areas, where it is expected that neighbours will respect them.
Many noble Lords talked about off-street parking. There are no plans to apply the scheme to off-street parking or private land. The Government do not believe that they should impose a prescriptive regulatory scheme on car parks, which are very often privately owned. Where car parks are on private land and owned, for example, by a supermarket it is entirely a matter for the landowner to determine the terms and conditions by which that land may be used and how parking spaces may be allocated. However, I am sure that supermarkets would pay attention to the presence of a blue badge. The Equality Act already places a broad duty on providers of services, including car parks, to take reasonable steps to ensure that disabled people are not substantially disadvantaged compared to nondisabled people when accessing a service. This has implications for car park owners, who may have to demonstrate that as well as marking out disabled persons’ parking spaces they have taken reasonable steps to ensure that they are made available to disabled people. My noble friend Mr Norman Baker, the Transport Minister, wrote to the main supermarkets in March and September last year to encourage them to actively monitor and enforce their disabled bays.
The noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of Tradeston, asked about local publicity campaigns. The Government issue guidelines to local authorities recommending that they enforce a scheme and publicise activity locally, but it is of course a matter for local authorities as to how they do that.
The noble Lord, Lord Touhig, suggested that there is no incentive to hand back a badge if no longer needed. This is required in the legislation; local authorities can take action to recover a badge and the Bill would make it an offence to use a badge that should have been returned. Of course, the badge will have limited utility because if an enforcement officer uses his scanner, he will straightaway be able to see that the badge is no longer in effect.
The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, touched on public expenditure. The Bill is expected to have no impact on public service manpower and will impose no significant additional public expenditure. Use of the new powers by local authorities will be voluntary and badges could be recovered in the course of current routine enforcement patrols. Local authorities choosing to use the new powers could benefit from a reduction in lost parking revenue through better enforcement—and with the security features in the new badge, it will be much more efficient for local authorities to police it. There may be a minimal cost to the Government in issuing badges to eligible members of the Armed Forces resident overseas, but this could be offset by charging applicants the £10 fee payable by other badge holders.
The noble Lord, Lord Davies, touched on the problem of when a badge holder’s badge becomes out of date. The Blue Badge Improvement Service automatically notifies badge holders when their badge is due for renewal. The noble Lord also talked about parking tickets for expired badges. It is the responsibility of the holder not to display an expired badge. I have already touched on the benefits of the Blue Badge Improvement Service.
The noble Lord asked about appeals, and this is quite an important point. There is no formal appeal route to the Secretary of State when a local authority determines that an applicant is not eligible for a badge. However, local authorities may have their own appeal procedures. In addition, if the applicant believes that the regulations have not been applied properly, he may ask the Local Government Ombudsman to review his complaint. The Bill, as my noble friend explained when she introduced it, removes in England the limited right of appeal to the Secretary of State in cases where, for example, an authority requires the return of a badge or for reasons relating to the misuse of badges. Only one or two such appeals are made each year. It is an anomaly that, while local authorities administer the blue badge scheme, the Secretary of State for Transport is required to consider these appeals. The department is not best placed to consider these. In future the Local Government Ombudsman will review these complaints under existing powers. The ombudsman has the expertise of dealing with over 10,000 complaints per year.
During Questions last month I was asked by the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, about an appeal process for people who might lose their right to a badge following the introduction of the personal independence payment. If someone did not qualify for a badge via the PIP, they would be free to make a separate application to the local authority for a blue badge. If the authority assessed that the individual met the eligibility requirements set down in the regulations, they would still qualify for a badge. If the individual did not meet the eligibility criteria, it would be correct for the local authority to refuse to issue a badge. There is no formal right of appeal against a decision not to issue a badge but, if an individual feels that he has been treated unfairly or that the local authority has not properly applied the regulations, he may ask the local authority to reconsider and/or take his complaint to the Local Government Ombudsman.
If I have missed any important points, I will of course write in the usual way, as I am sure will my noble friend Lady Thomas. To conclude, the Department for Transport undertook a full consultation on the reform measures introduced by the Government and those in my noble friend’s Bill. The consultation showed widespread support for the changes, which are long overdue. I hope that the House will recognise the considerable benefits that the Bill will bring to disabled people who rely upon the blue badge scheme and to local authorities in their efforts to reduce fraud against public sector. To that end, I join my noble friend Lady Thomas in commending it to the House.
Baroness Thomas of Winchester
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate, which I have enjoyed very much and I hope that other noble Lords have as well. It has ranged much wider than the Bill, as I thought it probably would. I was hoping that my noble friend would answer all the non-Bill questions, and I think that he probably has.
I have a lot of sympathy with the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs; he lives in London, as do I, where there are completely different rules all over the place and you have to be pretty sharp to know what they are in each borough. I agree with him that it is a problem when someone drops off a very disabled person by a shop, then parks the car himself or herself in a disabled bay and gets out of the car but is an able-bodied person. Strictly speaking, the driver should not use that bay, but I understand that it is tempting to do that because then they are near to pick the person up again. However, that is one of those problems to which I do not think there is a solution.
My noble friend Lady Brinton talked about the training of enforcement officers, and that is a very good point. In one sense, their job will be much easier than it might have been because all they have to do is look at the number on a badge if they are in doubt about it and ring up the national database to check that that number is on it. That will stop them having to decide whether a person’s car is in the wrong place. On the other hand, it is important that they have training so that they are not tempted to make any sort of value judgment about people who may have hidden disabilities.
The speech by the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, was extremely valuable in telling us about the scale of abuse. I take his point about crushing cars belonging to people who park in the wrong places; so many of us have seen people park in disabled bays at the supermarket, saying, “I’m just going to rush in and out”. You feel like saying, “It’s all very well for you; some of us can’t rush in and out”. The noble Lord, Lord Davies, talked about resources, but I think that this is very much up to the local authority. Other noble Lords have talked about some of the problems with renewing badges and so on. I have used my local councillor to press my cause if I feel that I have been badly let down by a local authority. I was once given a ticket because the badge was on upside down; it had dropped off, and someone had kindly put it back on the windscreen but the wrong way up, and I had a penalty charge. That was ludicrous, and the councillor made quite sure that it did not go any further. Local authorities have to be aware that there are such problems.
I am pleased that there is support all around the House for the Bill.
Scrap Metal Dealers Bill
(12 years ago)
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Baroness Browning
My Lords, I am pleased to present the Second Reading of the Scrap Metal Dealers Bill to your Lordships’ House as a result of its successful passage through another place, where my honourable friend Richard Ottaway MP chose to reform the Scrap Metal Dealers Act 1964 when he drew second place in the Private Members’ ballot. Metal theft and its illegal disposal have increased in recent years in line with world market prices for a range of metals commonly used in cabling, buildings and street furniture, among other things. Copper, aluminium, brass and lead are all widely used but so too, due to rising prices, are rare earths found in smartphones, computers and wind turbines. Thieves are quick to diversify their activities.
For too long, the disruption caused by the theft of metals has had a damaging impact on thousands of people and businesses. According to Network Rail, a cable theft in Crewe in October last year caused huge problems on the west coast main line as far as Preston and Liverpool, with 67 trains cancelled and 944 delayed as a result of that one incident. In Woking in June last year, 56 trains were cancelled and 43 part-cancelled when cable theft resulted in passengers alighting on to the tracks, causing extra delay and putting lives at risk. In Bermondsey in September last year, the theft of 65 metres of cable caused massive delays to services from London Bridge, with 146 trains cancelled and 840 delayed.
The Energy Networks Association reports an average of 20 attacks a day on its systems. The removal of BT cables from a small village can affect everyone: the till in the village shop, people working at home from computers and elderly people living alone with safety pendants who are suddenly left without a lifeline.
The cost to the economy is estimated by the Association of Chief Police Officers to cost £770 million a year, but the damage goes further than this. The theft of metal plaques from war memorials and graves causes great anguish to the loved ones. I saw only last week that a memorial bench on a cliff-top walk I take regularly had had the small brass plate removed. It was a couple of ounces at most, but the removal would be a distressing experience for the loved ones who placed it there.
Then there is the removal of lead from the roofs of churches. Many experience the theft several times over, with consequential difficulty in getting reinsurance. When I was a Minister at the Home Office in 2011, I was seized of the need to change the 1964 Act, as it was clearly inadequate. Among those making the case for change was the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, who is in his place today. I am looking forward to his contribution.
At this point I should mention the work that has gone into mitigating the damage caused by metal theft. New technologies to mark metal cables, smart water and alternative materials to be used on roofs have all been adopted wherever possible. The combined efforts of the national metal theft task force, supported by the police, the industry and the Government, have been brought to bear to try to frustrate and stop the criminals. This work needs to continue, but weak regulation needs changing as it currently favours the criminal over the legitimate trade.
The Bill before us today will enable a more robust licensing scheme by repealing the 1964 Act. It will be replaced with legislation which will require an application for a licence which the local authority can turn down or revoke. Local authorities will have the power to turn down unsuitable applicants. There will be a more rigorous identification scheme at the point of sale. Sellers will have to provide recordable personal identification; there have been too many sales transacted by Minnie Mouse and D Duck. There will be new powers for the police and local authorities to enter and inspect sites. A central register will be created of all licensed dealers, which will be held by the Environment Agency. The definition of a scrap metal dealer will be widened to include motor salvage operators. The offence of buying metal with cash will be extended to itinerant metal collectors.
I know from previous debates in your Lordships’ House that cash transactions for the purchase of scrap metal have been a contributory factor that has compounded the rise in illegal sales of metal, and I am pleased that this has been addressed in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, due to a clause tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, who is in his place. I pay tribute to the hard work he has done on the proposed reforms before the House today.
It is encouraging that the Bill has received support from so many people across the political divide and among organisations that wish to see an end to illegal trading, not least the legitimate trade which is the target of metal thieves, losing some 15,000 tonnes of metal a year from its sites. The director-general of the British Metals Recycling Association told me this week,
“The association is in complete support of the steps being taken to replace the out-dated and ineffective Scrap Metal Dealers Act 1964. Urgent regulatory reform is necessary to bear down on metal theft, give the authorities robust and enforceable powers to tackle illegal operators and deliver a much improved environment in which the legitimate metal recycling trade—the largest and most successful recycling sector in the UK—can operate. We endorse the Bill unreservedly”.
Metal theft is not petty crime. There is evidence that it is part of organised crime. It causes significant economic damage and personal distress, and too many criminals—those who steal and those who receive—have got away with it for too long. We now have the opportunity to support the legal trade and tighten the law on the illegal trade. My honourable friend’s Bill has the support of the Government, and I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken time to attend today’s Second Reading. I look forward to the contributions from the House. I beg to move.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester
My Lords, I offer my congratulations and thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Browning. I congratulate her on introducing the Bill with such skill, and I thank her for the very kind things she said about my contribution to this issue over the past year and a half or so. I am delighted that she has taken on the responsibility of piloting the Bill through your Lordships’ House. There is no better champion for it. In the regrettably all-too-short time that she was a Minister in the Home Office, she demonstrated commitment and sureness of touch on this issue. I have seen some of the letters that she wrote in support of measures that are not very different from those that are contained in the Bill before she left office in September 2011.
I also congratulate the honourable Member Richard Ottaway for his patience and skill in getting the Bill through the other place. There was a very trying final day when it looked as though some of his honourable friends might have sought to talk the Bill out. Happily, that did not happen, and the Bill is in front of us today in a form that I hope the whole House will be able to support. As the noble Baroness said, the Bill is supported by all responsible members of the scrap metal and recycling industry, by numerous trade bodies, the Local Government Association, the British Transport Police and the civilian police.
The noble Baroness referred to the fact that I raised the issue of metal theft in 2011. In October, I put a Question to the noble Lord, Lord Henley, whom I am delighted to see in his place, and I look forward to his speech. It was on cashless transactions, a cause that I pursued in March this year with an amendment to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill. I was happy to accept the Government’s alternative version, despite the inclusion of exemptions for itinerant sellers and motor salvage operators, the logic of which I never understood, and which I am happy to see disappear in this Bill.
The cashless provisions of the LASPO Act finally come into force this Monday, 3 December, and I would be most grateful if the Minister, when he replies, could give some indication of how he expects these measures to work. The measures in the LASPO Act were never intended to be the last word, and we all agreed that nothing short of a rewriting of the Scrap Metal Dealers Act 1964 would do. That is exactly what your Lordships have in front of you today. There is no need to go through the provisions of the Bill clause by clause. We will have the opportunity to do that if we have a Committee stage, although I hope it does not take too long or delay the Bill’s passage.
The need for the Bill is undeniable for all the reasons that the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, said. I am sure that I am not alone in having received persuasive briefing from organisations as diverse as the Local Government Association, the Energy Networks Association, Network Rail, the British Metals Recycling Association and Alchemy Metals. All of them, without exception, fully support the Bill, and I have had no representations expressing a contrary view. It is worth putting on the record some of the points that they have made. I shall do so without repeating any of the points that the noble Baroness has made. The Local Government Association, for example, says that it carried out research into the levels of metal theft experienced by councils between April 2009 and early 2012. Only one in 10, or 12%, of respondents had not suffered any metal thefts. The Local Government Association says:
“Not only is there disruption to public transport, there is also the theft of lead from schools and other council buildings, the desecration of war memorials, along with the loss of bus shelters, street signs, and manhole and gully covers. This puts members of the public at risk of serious injury or harm and imposes a further financial burden on councils in replacing the stolen property”.
The Energy Networks Association reports that there continue to be deaths as a result of attempted metal theft, including a 16 year-old boy killed trying to steal earthing cable from an underground trench. He was aided by two other boys and, it is assumed, others to remove a 1.5 tonne concrete block used to access the trench for maintenance. Another example is of a father and son who had cut down a wooden pole to steal cable. The son was fatally electrocuted while trying to coil up the cable and his father suffered burns to the hands and arms. On presenting himself at hospital he denied all knowledge to the police that his son had been killed or that he had even been there.
Network Rail says that incidents of cable theft were responsible for,
“causing nearly 22,000 hours of passenger delays in past four years and costing the rail industry £61 million”.
I am sure that there are very few Members of your Lordships’ House who use the railway who have not been delayed as a consequence of theft of signalling cable.
The company Alchemy Metals has written to me to say,
“the 1964 Act … is abundantly unfit for purpose. The removal of loopholes such as the Itinerant Trader and Motor Salvage Operator exemption must now pass to law as a matter of urgency. This, combined with further police powers and a comprehensive registration system will give the relevant authorities and the scrap industry itself the powers needed to combat metal theft once and for all”.
Amid all this gloom there is a little heartening news, which the noble Baroness referred to. That is the success of Operation Tornado, for which the noble Lord, Lord Henley, certainly deserves credit, and the activities of the National Metal Theft Taskforce programme, announced by the Government on 29 November 2011. That received funding of £5 million for extra operational activity to tackle metal theft. The lead in this was taken by the British Transport Police, which set up a central team to manage the programme and provide dedicated co-ordination and support in each region of the country. The taskforce programme has financially supported the pilot of Operation Tornado and the implementation of Tornado tactics by forces and agencies across the country. It is an enhanced identification initiative agreed by the British Metals Recycling Association and the police. Of the forces providing figures, 72% of yards have signed up to Operation Tornado.
What has been the effect on metal theft? The British Transport Police tell me that there has been a decrease in reported metal theft of 52%. This is particularly good news for Network Rail, as it has led to a reduction of 59% in the total amount of delay minutes and has reduced the company’s compensation payments by £5.6 million. I understand that the Ecclesiastical Insurance company has reported that the number of claims for theft of metal from church buildings have fallen sharply; no doubt we will hear more about this from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, whose speech I am also very much looking forward to.
If we look at the national average reductions achieved in reported metal crime, currently 38%, and make a comparison with the figures in the Deloitte report in 2011 in which they said that metal theft costs the UK economy £220 million to £260 million a year, then it is likely that the £5 million taskforce money has delivered harm reduction for the UK of between £83 million and £98 million. That is a pretty good rate of return, as a relatively small investment of public money seems to have led to a substantial reduction in metal theft. Of course, this is a pilot study, not a complete picture. It needs now to be followed by the implementation of the measures contained in the Bill.
I have a question for the Minister on Operation Tornado. Its funding and that for the taskforce are due to come to an end in March 2013. Do the Government intend that this will be renewed, at least until the provisions of the Bill are fully implemented? The danger is that if the funding stops, police forces will start to focus on other priorities, and the momentum that they have gained will peter out. I cannot believe that that is what the Government would like to see happen.
Meanwhile, I am very happy indeed to support the Bill. I congratulate the noble Baroness on introducing it, and I hope that it can pass speedily through this House.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, I, too, welcome the Bill. I had come here prepared to hear a number of anecdotes—indeed, horror stories—ranging on a spectrum from the inconvenient to the tragic; we have already heard some of them. It was clear that there was a real problem when the monitor of national concern, “The Archers”, had a storyline about metal theft.
When the issue hit the headlines, I found that every time I went past a group of people with a white van digging up the road, I started to suspect whether they were legitimate. I had to tell myself to take a rather more positive view of society. That was fulfilled by the occasions when members of the public got together to subscribe to replace war memorials, which happened locally to me in Twickenham. I heard of a scrap metal dealer in Sutton, I think it was, who spent £20,000 restoring a memorial for the sake of the reputation of his own trade. These things, as has been said, should never have happened in the first place.
There are a lot of statistics around this. The one which really grabbed my attention was seeing that almost 2,000 offences relating to metal theft occurred each week last year. I am delighted that the noble Baroness has been able to advance the Bill following its steering through the Commons by Richard Ottaway, MP. However, my biggest question is why this hand-out Bill did not come from the Government, who would not have needed to use a great deal of ingenuity to tack this on to their own legislation; it might well have been shoehorned, for instance, into the Crime and Courts Bill. One should not call into question House of Commons procedures, but hand-out Bills seem to be a way of going about things which detracts from the ability of Private Members’ Bills to be used for the large number of purposes for which there is a call. I do not expect the noble Baroness to answer that. Indeed, having once, many years ago, been able to move that “The Bill do now pass”, I certainly do not begrudge her the rosy glow that there will be in a very few weeks’ time. Some of that glow should spill over to the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner. It is clear that legislation is needed, even though the taskforce has actually undertaken tasks and not been a talking shop.
The second biggest puzzle to me, although it is one that one gets used to, is that of Treasury rules, which in this case have precluded the Environment Agency using income from the regulated sector to pay for enforcement work in the unregulated sector. It is to the credit of the legitimate trade that they have not just supported but actively promoted the Bill. It was not until I saw their briefing that I completely made the connection with the recycling industry and the need to use and re-use resources, and all those benefits that will come with this legislation. That will include reputational benefit. Disrepute can spill over. The first time that I went to Italy, the first phrase which was translated for me was “divieto di scarico”: “no tipping”.
I understand the call for extending the regulatory regime to second-hand domestic appliance traders; that is assuming that the appliances are not salvageable and refurbishable. However, I will not be pressing that amendment, nor any amendment. I understand the need to get the Bill on to the statute book. Enforcement has been mentioned. I wonder whether there will be teething problems as the industry becomes used to recording all the information that is required under the Bill. The dealers will require some of the information, such as type, weight and so on, for their own purposes. They also will be required to record identifying marks and “distinguishing features”, and I hope that they are never faced with having to work out how to describe a Barbara Hepworth or a Henry Moore again. They also will have to record,
“information and the scrap metal to which it relates to be readily identified by reference to each other”.
That could cause some challenges but they will have to face them.
I was concerned that I might hear that these provisions would be a burden on local authorities. I checked that their briefing, which I had printed out, was not more than one page. I remembered that my printer had run out of paper at about that time but the briefing was only one page and it was supportive. Local authorities will have new duties, so there will be burdens on them. The new duties will require more than just checking some tick-boxes, especially when they have to ensure that an applicant has demonstrated,
“adequate procedures to ensure that the provisions of”,
what I hope will soon be an Act, have been complied with.
I end with one question for the Minister. Will he tell the House when the Government will bring forward the regulations and guidance that will be needed to ensure that this Bill, when it is an Act, will not be just a piece of paper but a living and enforceable set of arrangements?
The Lord Bishop of London
My Lords, perhaps I may add my voice to those of other Members of your Lordships’ House who have paid tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, for the way in which she has introduced this legislation and for her sustained zeal in continuing to focus on this area. When it comes to prizes for sustained zeal, I think that we all are extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, for his assiduity in following up this matter.
Of course, we are all grateful to Richard Ottaway. He has produced workable legislation having, as we have heard, worked not only with the Home Office but with the trade and the enforcement agencies to produce something that will make a difference. I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, has said about the extreme importance of continuing the funding in the short term for Operation Tornado. As we know, it started in the north-east and has demonstrated that cashless transactions and closer ID examination reduce this crime.
However, Operation Tornado has also shown how necessary it is that we should have this new legislation, as the police have no powers to enter unlicensed yards or to close them down if they find strong evidence of illegal trade. It is vital that time is given to get this Bill through the necessary stages. As we have heard, metal theft is a major threat to the infrastructure of the whole country.
Of course, I represent one particular part of this problem and I must declare an interest as chairman of the church and cathedrals division of the Church of England. Perhaps our experience can underline the need for urgency as we look countrywide at a situation where there are, on average, three such thefts a day from churches alone. This year, ecclesiastical insurers already have handled 831 claims between January and October, which, in our small constituency, amounts to £1.5 million.
Security marking, roof alarms and increased vigilance are having some effect. In my diocese a neighbour acted promptly when, detecting people were on the roof lifting the lead, they simply removed the ladders which the felons had used to make their ascent. The neighbour phoned the police and the felons were still there fuming when the constabulary arrived. But those measures are not sufficient.
Since the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has provoked us to give examples, I shall give one or two from all over the country. St Peter’s Plemstall, a grade 1 listed building, is in the diocese of my brother, the Bishop of Chester. Because a comparatively small amount of lead was taken from the central valley of the roof, rain got in. The church had to be closed for several months to enable the interior to dry out. There was thousands of pounds worth of damage to the organ and the roof repairs cost a considerable sum. Those charges fall on volunteers who look after an inheritance of art and architecture which belongs to the whole community.
The church of St Mary, Wrawby, in the diocese of Lincoln, also a grade 1 listed building, has had eight thefts and has no indemnity left on its insurance. Therefore, at the moment the roof is felt, pending yet another campaign to replace it with something more adequate. In my diocese, All Saints Fulham had a bronze memorial sculpture by Helen Sinclair, which was a community, millennium project. Hundreds of people contributed to it. The thieves tried pulling it off its plinth but it had been installed too stoutly, so they took an angle grinder to it. We are looking at replacing it with stone resin. Finally, All Saints’ Church, Evesham, has been the victim of five thefts in seven months. The vicar, Andrew Spurr, has said, “Every time we have a roof replacement bill it damages our ability to serve the community in other ways”. Even the local policeman from the Evesham police station said that it was “an appalling theft from a community building which has only just had the roof replaced following a previous theft”.
I could go on but noble Lords cannot bear it now and I think that we are largely of one mind in your Lordships’ House. But suffice it to say that one-third of our 16,000 parish churches have suffered. There have been 10,700 claims, amounting to £27 million, which certainly is an underestimate of what it has cost local communities to repair the damage.
The scrap metal trade, which is worth more than £6 billion a year, is, as your Lordships know well, vital to the UK economy. Wearing another hat, as chairman of the church’s recycling and conservation campaign, I could not support measures that would harm the trade or have a negative environmental impact, because they do things of considerable value to the whole community.
However, certainly in view of the evidence that we have heard from the trade associations, I most emphatically support this Bill and underline the need to make sufficient parliamentary time available to pass it into law sooner rather than too late. I end again with gratitude to the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, for having brought this matter to the House today.
Lord Henley
My Lords, as always, it is a privilege to follow the right reverend Prelate, particularly as he ended with remarks about the importance of the recycling industry. As a former Defra Minister, and particularly when I was a Home Office Minister with responsibility for metal theft, I always felt that it was very important that whatever we did, we maintained the success of that industry and continued to see that as much recycling of metal went on as possible but to make sure that it was legit. I think that that is what we are all trying to do.
I also thank the right reverend Prelate because I think that he was the first to come to see me after I moved to the Home Office to tell me about the problems that the church in particular was facing in terms of metal theft. I seem to remember that the day on which he came to see me also was the day when a few local difficulties were starting at St Paul’s. He might have had other matters on his mind but certainly he put his point to me forcefully. That point has been made by my noble friend Lady Browning and others as regards the problems that we are facing as a result of metal theft and the increased price of metal. We have seen an increased amount of metal theft. My noble friend made clear the problems we have been having with train delays and problems with the emergency services, hospitals losing power, loss of communications, theft from war memorials and churches, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, said, we are now seeing deaths occurring as a result of metal theft.
In my time as a Home Office Minister, I made it clear that the old 1964 Act was past its sell-by date. I think that was the phrase which I used. New legislation is necessary. Therefore, I am very grateful to my honourable friend Richard Ottaway and to my noble friend Lady Browning for bringing forward legislation. However, legislation should not be the only method that we look at to help solve this problem. Therefore, I am also very grateful to my noble friend for stressing the importance of mitigation by means of design. I am very grateful for all the work that has been done in the Home Office. I hope that my noble friend will refer to that when he replies to the debate. That work involves making metals more traceable and looking for new materials which are less stealable to replace some metals. I appreciate the work that is being done on mitigation measures and that which has been done on enforcement.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, for his comments on the success of Operation Tornado. I seem to remember that in the initial stages of that operation there was a decline in occurrences of this problem of something like 50% in the north-east. I would be grateful if my noble friend could give us further figures on declines in the incidence of this problem not only in the north-east but in the rest of the country.
I am also very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, for the amendment that he brought forward on the LASPO Bill. As he put it, he could not quite understand why we had to have the exemption for itinerant sellers in that Bill. I hoped that I had explained why it was necessary to have that exemption at the time, but the noble Lord obviously did not understand the explanations that I gave on that occasion. However, that problem will be dealt with in this Bill, so I hope that it will go away.
I wanted to make only a brief intervention in this debate to offer my support as a former Home Office Minister, and one who was very grateful for the fact that my honourable friend was able to introduce the Bill in the Commons. I am even more grateful for the fact that my noble friend was able to bring it forward in this House. I look forward to a very speedy passage of this Bill through this House. Given the support for it that we have had so far in this debate, and which I am sure it will continue to have, I am sure that it will be a very speedy passage. Like others, I commend it to the House.
Lord Greaves
My Lords, I start by reminding the House of my interest as a district councillor for Pendle in Lancashire. I think that I should have declared the same interest in a previous Second Reading debate this morning, on the Prevention of Social Housing Fraud Bill. I apologise for not doing so at that time and do so belatedly now.
I, too, support all the past—and probably all the future—speakers in this debate in welcoming this Bill and supporting it. My noble friend Lady Hamwee said that we would hear lots of anecdotes from people about the situation in different areas and I am always reluctant to disappoint my noble friend. One of the main problems in my part of the world in east Lancashire is the theft of metal gully grates. That obviously causes great danger to people and expense to Lancashire County Council, which has to replace them. However, in many cases the county council refuses to replace them because they are in unadopted streets, and so potentially there could be, literally all over the place, very dangerous large square holes, particularly in back streets, which at this time of the year will be full of leaves and litter. In the event, it comes down to the borough council of Pendle and town and parish councils to put their hands in their pockets and provide the money for replacing the gully grates because relying on house owners and landlords to do so is an impossible situation.
There are also real problems with back yards in closely packed terraced streets, where people will simply take away anything that is left in a back yard, or they will go in and take pieces of the downspouts and the troughings—anything that they can come round and check out and then return at two o’clock in the morning to remove. I received an ironic telephone call fairly recently. Pendle council has a service for taking away washing machines, dishwashers, fridges and anything like that. You leave it out in the back yard, tell the council you want it removed and it comes and takes it away. Somebody rang me up and asked why the council was employing people to remove their washing machine at two o’clock in the morning. Of course, it was not the council but somebody who was taking it away and doing the council’s job for it. We hear accounts from the local police, who are obviously involved in all this, that raiding parties from over the border in Yorkshire often come and take away all this stuff. This seems to be their excuse, although it appears that people do come over the border from Yorkshire and steal our stuff. It is not just metal either. Metal theft is just part and parcel of a wider problem. This Bill is clearly restricted to metal theft.
Lord Willis of Knaresborough
May I say that I object very strongly to these appalling assertions about the people of Yorkshire?
Lord Greaves
As a Yorkshireman living in Lancashire, I sometimes find myself with dual loyalties. However, I can assure my noble friend that it is not Yorkshire as a whole that people blame: it is specifically people from Bradford. As a Bradfordian, I still have dual loyalties there.
Obviously, this Bill is just about metal. However, people steal not just metal but stone. Colne is a stone town and people will come and remove copings from people’s back yards and flagstones. They came to the parish church and raided not just the lead from the roof but took the big stone balls which were on top of the gate pillars outside the church. We are talking about a grade 1 listed building. So it is a huge problem. The most ludicrous example occurred last week. The council had just provided new turf to grass over a rather overgrown area where houses had been pulled down. Some people came, possibly over the border from Yorkshire, rolled up some of the new turf and took it away. It is quite extraordinary what people will do. I am not quite sure whether they wanted it for their cricket pitches in Yorkshire.
It would be out of character if I did not pick up a couple of detailed points. Perhaps the Minister or the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, can answer these points, or they can write to me later if they cannot answer them today. There is a question about the exclusion of residential premises from Schedule 2, which refers to closure notices and closure orders, and exactly what is meant by residential premises. I think that there was very brief discussion of this in the House of Commons Committee on whether, if somebody has a scrapyard and they put a caravan on it and have somebody living there, that counts as residential premises. To what degree would a house surrounded by a big garden have to be used for the purposes of buying and selling scrap metal before it was defined as a scrapyard? There is an issue there which may need resolution.
On the question of inspection and enforcement, I think it is fairly clear that the cost of the licences that people will have to take out under this Bill will be expected to cover a local authority’s administrative costs in running the system. Will they also be expected to cover the additional costs that will inevitably exist for local authorities that take seriously their duties of inspection and enforcement within the system? Inspection and enforcement will in part be the duty of the local police, working with the local authority, but clearly there will be extra work for the local authority. Will it be able to cover those costs from licensing?
The Bill will not solve all our problems. Noble Lords talked about other things that will be necessary, particularly an effective local neighbourhood policing system that can collect together the local knowledge and information that is so often necessary in order to track down people who are doing this—even if they are coming over the border from Yorkshire. However, it is a useful and necessary step forward. It may not be a panacea but it is welcome and I, too, join my noble friend in asking the Government to give guarantees that they will bring the legislation into operation pretty quickly after it has—as we hope—passed through your Lordships’ House.
Baroness Andrews
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, who is already beginning to apply his forensic skills to the Bill. It is a great pleasure to welcome the Bill and to join so many others around the House who have already given it their support. Private Members’ Bills are often precarious little craft. The whole House has expressed its pleasure in knowing that this Bill is in such a safe and experienced pair of hands as that of the noble Baroness, Lady Browning. The way she introduced it demonstrated her complete grasp of the issues. It will be a pleasure to engage with the Bill as it goes—I hope very swiftly—through the House. It is very good to know that it has the support of the Government. It can do nothing but bring credit to them. The fact that it has the support of the scrap industry is also extremely significant. Clearly it meets the industry’s aspirations to be seen as reputable and determined to outlaw rogue traders. That is extremely encouraging.
My reason for supporting the Bill is obvious. I declare an interest as the chair of English Heritage. We have been very concerned for a long time about metal theft. We have taken active steps to protect the very precious heritage that is put at risk by the very wicked activity of metal thieves. We very much welcome the Bill as a beneficiary of what it will do rather than as a body that will be directly concerned with its operation. At first sight it may seem an unglamorous Bill, but often the best legislation that has the greatest impact is not glamorous. Both in the House today and at the excellent Second Reading debate in the House of Commons, many examples were given of the way in which metal theft creates private grief and impacts on public safety, of the failure of existing regulation to prevent it, of the timeliness of the Bill and of the complete chaos that exists around the identities of traders, record-keeping, transactions and tax. I hope that the Bill will address those issues.
We are talking about scrap metal, but the title of the Bill is something of a misnomer because these metals are very precious, for example because of the churches they protect. We very much welcome the words of the right reverend Prelate. English Heritage has been very proud in recent years to work with the Church of England and to do what it can. The metals are precious because of the names of our war heroes that are etched in their surfaces, and perhaps because of the extraordinary art and craftsmanship that their form displays. We are dealing with metal that has a value far beyond its market price and which reflects much of our history.
In recent years, all of that has proved vulnerable in a way that we could not have predicted. Like many other noble Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Faulkner. I am glad to hear that the task force has had such an impact, and I join him in hoping that that will continue. Metal theft is a relatively new threat to our heritage, which we are now addressing. The Bill is an act of public service and we welcome it. I shall not address the detail of the regulatory measures, but obviously we support the Bill because it will simply and effectively reduce the ease with which stolen metal can be converted into cash. We need prevention because the damage that is done is often irreversible. There is no cure.
We are not talking about a handful of distressing cases. As we heard, it is a large-scale problem. The crime is neither casual nor opportunistic, although there are such elements in the community that conducts these thefts. The operation is very sophisticated and well organised. It is driven by a market in metals that has shot up in recent years because it is very hard to control demand. Our research shows that last year 6% of all listed buildings were harmed by metal theft. That means around 22,000 of our nationally important, historic buildings suffer damage every year from metal theft. With that rate of attrition every year, we are looking at a potential catastrophe if it continues—a real danger that this generation will fail in its duty to protect our fabulously rich heritage.
The right reverend Prelate gave some very graphic illustrations of the impact of this crime. It is no surprise that churches and war memorials are the most vulnerable and worst hit buildings. The church’s own inquiry into metal theft in 2011 reported a 33% increase year-on-year in the number of claims and the cost of the crime. The average cost of a metal theft is £27,000. However, insurance cover is often capped at £5,000 or £10,000, so even the richest congregation has a challenge on its hands. The noble Lord, Lord Rowe-Beddoe, who cannot be in his place today, urged me to speak about Wales as well, which I will do with great pleasure. He drew attention to the situation in Wales, where the church has to look after 1,400 churches and where in the past five years it has paid out £300,000 on 90 insurance claims. Again, the insurance did not cover the costs. He referred to a particularly distressing case involving the theft of dozens of brass plates from a garden of rest. It is really hard to contemplate the nature of the people who commit these sorts of crimes. Our own research suggested that 14% of churches suffered metal theft in 2011 and Ecclesiastical Insurance says it has received 9,000 claims, worth £25 million, for churches in the past four years alone..
As we all agree, reeling off statistics hardly gives an idea of the real distress and damage caused to the confidence of small congregations who try their best with overwhelming problems and face yet another—maybe a third or fourth—attempt on the church roof. I have seen many sad cases in recent years. Most recently, I was in Yorkshire. I am sorry that the noble Lord from Yorkshire has left his place, because I was going to tell him how wonderful Yorkshire is, although I did not particularly want to join that debate. I was at St John’s Church at Birkby, near Huddersfield, where an extraordinary thing had happened. The thieves attached the end of the copper lightning conductor to a rope that was fixed to their getaway vehicle and they drove it away from the building. The lightning conductor was pulled away, but it brought down with it the top half of the steeple, which then crashed through the roof of the church. I leave you to imagine how the congregation is coping—and the cost, anxiety and frustration of it. The danger does not need to be described.
As for war memorials, it is absolutely impossible without quickly getting very angry to contemplate the contrast between the sacrifice of those whose names are inscribed and who died for the freedoms of this country and the callousness of the thieves. As we approach the centenary of the First World War, we are becoming more sensitive to the need to remember and record that debt. The legislation will provide a proper regulatory framework that will identify the decent traders and protect them but, as other noble Lords have said, it is not the only answer. I am pleased to say that we in English Heritage have been dealing with heritage crime of different sorts for a long time. We have received a fantastic response from the police and the other partners we have engaged with in our heritage crime programme. We have our own policeman in English Heritage who leads this work for us. For the past few years we have been working not just with the Church of England but with police and local authorities all over England to improve crime prevention for historic places and ensure that the law enforcement matches the seriousness of the offences.
It is a perennial task, but it is bearing fruit. For example, we recently worked in partnership with Lincolnshire Police and the Church of England in bringing justice to a gang which admitted stealing lead from more than 20 churches across that county. That case, among many others, shows the industrial scale of the threat as well as the benefits of conservation and law enforcement professionals working together. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for raising the wider issues around the theft of historic fabrics. When flagstones, cobblestones and building materials go, the character of the neighbourhood goes into a rapid decline. It is totally demoralising. These materials are vital.
The Bill is a significant step forward and I am cheering it on heartily, but I ask the Government, local authorities and the police and crime commissioners in particular to complete the task and really aid us in this, and ensure that heritage crime is embedded in all relevant law enforcement activities, as it should be. We are pleased that Chief Constable Andrew Bliss of Hertfordshire Police has agreed to be the national lead for heritage crime for the Association of Chief Police Officers. I know that he views this as a matter of great importance. I am grateful to both the noble Lord, Lord Henley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, as Ministers, for giving a lead to the police on this. I will shortly write to police and crime commissioners to bring these issues to their attention and direct them to the help that English Heritage can give through the programme that we have devised.
In conclusion, I do not want to repeat anything that has been said, although it is clearly the case that metal theft does serious and rapid damage to public safety and to so much else in the country. It attacks the places where we should be able to see investment and economic life flourishing. When one drives out crime, one drives in investment, which is a wider story. I am confident that the Bill will have a swift and successful passage through the House. There is so much support for it and I can assure the noble Baroness that I will assist her in every way that I can.
Lord Rosser
My Lords, although this is a Private Member’s Bill, it is nevertheless still a Bill of 23 clauses and two schedules. I gather it is what is known in the parliamentary trade as a handout Bill, which is apparently a Bill offered by the Government to a Back-Bench MP to take forward as a Private Member’s Bill. It seems that Governments do this either because they cannot find the time in their legislative programme or because, for some other reason, they do not want to present it themselves. I am not sure in which of those two categories this Bill falls.
Last year we called for tougher powers to close down rogue traders; for everyone selling scrap to have proof of identity and a record from the point of sale; for the licensing of scrap metal dealers, rather than the current method of registration; and for a move to ban cash transactions, especially for large-scale, high-value scrap metal deals. These measures formed the basis of much of the Private Member’s Bill—the Metal Theft (Prevention) Bill—introduced by the Member of Parliament for Hyndburn in November 2011. That Bill, which amended the Scrap Metal Dealers Act 1964, made provision for a new registration scheme for scrap dealers, restricted financial transactions to cashless payments and gave police officers new powers to enter, inspect and close scrap yards.
Unfortunately, the Bill was blocked at Second Reading in the Commons, with the active support of the government Front Bench team there. The following week, the Government announced that they would introduce their own amendments to the 1964 Act, banning cash payments by scrap metal dealers, but with an exemption for itinerant collectors; increasing the level of fines available for offences; and giving police new powers of entry to scrap yards. These amendments were introduced into what became the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012.
Now the Government have accepted that their amendments to the LASPO Act 2012 were inadequate. This was pointed out at the time, not least by my noble friend Lord Faulkner of Worcester, who has done so much to push successfully for the provisions in this Bill. The Government are now supporting the Bill we are debating today, which is very similar to the Bill from the Member of Parliament for Hyndburn that was blocked in the Commons last year. This Bill also repeals amendments—the Government’s own amendments —which were inserted into the LASPO Act 2012 only a few months ago, and which are in the process now of being repealed before they have even been implemented.
For a reason that is not clear, the Government did not produce a Bill of their own following the blocking of the Private Member’s Bill in the Commons last year. As a result, the Government are now supporting this very similar Private Member’s Bill after a year’s delay and, as a consequence of the measures being in a Private Member’s Bill, it appears that the Government found themselves boxed into a corner at the end of the proceedings on the Bill in the Commons by a handful of their own Back-Benchers and had, apparently, to agree to bring forward what is, in effect, a sunset or expiry clause for this Bill after five years in order not to risk losing the Bill in the Commons due to lack of time—a situation which, if I am correct, would not have arisen had the Government produced their own Bill. While this Bill is most welcome, the Government’s handling of legislation on this issue has not been without delay and indecision.
The Bill includes the measures for which we have been calling for some time and addresses the issues so powerfully highlighted and explained by the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, which have been the cause of real concern. This is not only about the hundreds of millions of pounds that metal theft is costing the UK economy each year, serious though that is—with the biggest economic impact being on the telecoms, utilities and transport sectors, as well as on local authorities through the theft of lead from schools and other public buildings and the theft of street signs and manhole covers—but about the dangers to life and limb that metal theft can bring, not least, as has been said, on our railway network. This applies not only to those carrying out such thefts but, much more significantly, to the far greater numbers of those who might suffer not only serious and costly disruption and delay to their journey but could also conceivably be injured or killed in a railway accident attributed in part or in whole to such thefts which damage or put out of action line-side and other equipment crucial to the safety of the network. It is also about the wanton desecration of war memorials which mean so much to so many; it is about damage to our churches, which are part of our heritage as well as places of worship and centres for communities large and small; it is about the premeditated heartlessness, and often brazenness, of those who plan and commit these crimes, which are certainly not spur of the moment acts. Indeed, in the area in which I live, individuals dressed up to look like workmen were stripping the roof of a town hall in broad daylight.
With the rise in the value of metal, metal thefts have increased in number and in value and to many of those involved it has become big business. This Bill cannot, of course, stop people committing such thefts. However, what it can and does do is make it much more difficult to sell on the stolen metal without leaving a clear link back to the perpetrators of the theft, the handlers of the stolen goods or both. The scrap metal industry is the main outlet for stolen metal. It is inadequately regulated, with cash transactions all too often the norm, providing anonymity and a lack of traceability of stolen metals. No records are kept and almost certainly insufficient tax is paid. This Bill will do much to bring to an end the relatively risk-free way that metal thieves have for quickly disposing of stolen property and equally quickly converting it into cash.
Scrap metal dealers are already subject to controls under the Scrap Metal Dealers Act 1964 and the Environmental Protection Act 1990. The LASPO Act 2012 introduced further changes to the regulation of scrap metal dealers, including creating a new offence of buying scrap metal for cash and laying down that a scrap metal dealer must not pay for scrap metal except by a cheque or an electronic transfer of funds. That important but insufficient step began to close the door on transactions being undertaken that left no audit trail to help identify those involved. However, a number of issues still remained to be addressed, including limited powers to enter and inspect unregistered scrap metal dealer sites; inadequate record-keeping of transactions by scrap metal dealers; the inability by local authorities to revoke or vary licences granted to scrap metal dealers; and the fact that the ban on scrap metal dealers paying for metal with cash did not extend to all those who deal with scrap metal.
These issues and others are addressed in this Bill, which seeks to replace the 1964 Act. The Bill extends the offence of buying metal with cash to itinerant metal collectors; it gives new powers for the police and local authorities to enter and inspect sites; it requires all sellers of metal to provide personal identification at the point of sale, which is then recorded by the scrap metal dealer; and gives local authorities the power to revoke or vary a licence where appropriate, as well as the power to turn down unsuitable applicants for a scrap metal dealer licence. However, I want to raise a few points.
Concerns have been expressed that second-hand domestic appliances have been excluded from the Bill and that that creates a significant loophole because it will not be easy to distinguish whether an old appliance that is sold is scrap metal or a second-hand item that might be considered for repair. Secondly, gold and silver have been excluded from the definition of scrap. We have all seen the traders in the high street offering cash for gold. Since, under the Bill, they will continue to be able to offer cash, will they not provide unfair competition for more orthodox operators, as well as a potential ready outlet for quickly converting stolen metal into cash, when the Bill seeks to stop such transactions? Once again, what is the response to that concern?
Thirdly, the Bill extends the offence of buying metal with cash to itinerant metal collectors who, like scrap dealers, will not be allowed to pay for scrap metal except by cheque or by an electronic transfer of funds. However, payment by cheque may not necessarily achieve the desired objective. The dealer gives a cheque to the individual from whom he is purchasing scrap metal. The individual gives it straight back to the dealer, who is also an agent for one of those operators who offer people cash for cheques. Since the cheque the dealer is receiving back is not made out to him and he is acting as an agent for the cash-for-cheques operator, he now gives the individual from whom he is purchasing scrap metal cash equivalent to the value of the cheque. The cheque is then processed through the cash-for-cheques operator, and it could then involve considerable time and resources by the police to trace it back to the dealer and particular transactions. The effect would be very similar to a cash transaction for the potentially stolen scrap metal, in terms of finding an audit trail. Why was it not possible to say that payment for scrap metal had to be through a transfer of funds via the bank accounts of the dealer and the seller, and not leave a potential loophole open through payment by cheque?
Fourthly, local authorities will be managing a greatly enhanced licensing scheme. What is the estimate of the additional costs that this will place on local authorities and will all the additional costs be covered by the licence fee? What is the estimate of the likely level or range of the licence fee in order to cover the anticipated additional costs involved, bearing in mind that a local authority will have to have regard to the guidance issued from time to time by the Secretary of State with the approval of the Treasury? What will the additional workload for local authorities represent in terms of additional full-time posts? Will skills be required to carry out the new, enhanced role that do not currently exist, or do not currently exist to the required extent, within local authorities?
Apart from Clauses 20 and 23, when will the other provisions of the Bill be brought into force? The Explanatory Notes say that a period of at least six months will be required between Royal Assent and commencement,
“to allow licensing authorities to put in place suitable infrastructure to meet the new demands”.
What is this suitable infrastructure and will local authorities be able to recover these apparent start-up costs through the licence fee?
Finally, the minimum period for bringing in the Bill is at least six months. What is the maximum period after Royal Assent that the Secretary of State will allow to elapse before bringing in the provisions of the Bill, which everyone seems to accept are urgently needed? Does the delay after Royal Assent before bringing in the provisions of the Bill mean that the sections of the LASPO Act 2012 on prohibiting cash transactions for scrap metal dealers will be implemented, if they have not already been, and remain in force pending the provisions of the Bill coming into force?
We congratulate and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, for sponsoring this badly needed Bill, which we support. We will do what we can to see that it is passed in good time. We hope that we will not see in this House the kind of antics we saw from some government Back-Benchers in the Commons.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Taylor of Holbeach)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Browning for introducing so skilfully the Bill for noble Lords’ consideration and for her important contribution to developing the war against this abuse of metal theft, about which all noble Lords have spoken very robustly today. There is considerable consensus around the House that this illegal activity needs to be tackled. It is fitting that my noble friend was asked to take on this Bill by its sponsor, Richard Ottaway MP, because as noble Lords will know, my noble friend was a Minister in the Home Office when the metal theft epidemic erupted. During her term of office she played a considerable part in developing the Government’s response. I also join all noble Lords in acknowledging the work of my honourable friend the Member for Croydon South, Mr Richard Ottaway, and for bringing forward this Bill. He has immersed himself in this topic by meeting and consulting with stakeholders, and then developing and fostering cross-party and industry support. We have that evidenced in the correspondence that Peers in this House have received. There is widespread support for the Bill.
How pleasant it is for me to be able to thank my noble friend Lord Henley not only for his contribution to this debate, but also as my predecessor in the role that I am now undertaking. I know how deeply he was engaged in dealing with the challenge of legislating for this problem in the Home Office. It may not be particularly appropriate to use the analogy of apostolic succession, but at the very time that my noble friend moved to the Home Office, I was in Defra. We were working in conjunction with the Home Office through the Environment Agency to set up the task force and other arrangements for dealing with this abuse. I am sure that the right reverend Prelate will forgive me, but we have an apostolic succession here today and noble Lords have been able to hear from all three of us.
Let me make it clear that this Bill has wholehearted government support, and it is important to note that the support does not just end there. We have witnessed the support for it here in this Chamber. It is supported by police forces, including the Association of Chief Police Officers, and it is supported by the Local Government Association and local authorities across England and Wales which are keen to be given the powers to regulate scrap metal dealers properly. One of the problems is that there are insufficient powers for enforcement agencies actually to deal with this problem. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, asked about local authorities’ attitude to seeing this legislation through. I know that they have made it clear that they are keen to see this legislation enacted and implemented as soon as possible. A number of other bodies have written to noble Lords, all expressing their support for the Bill. It is supported by those who have suffered from metal theft, including private industry, those responsible for transport infrastructure and, indeed, the church. More importantly, it is supported by many legitimate scrap metal dealers who seek more effective regulation of their sector. Before I move on, I would like to express my particular thanks for the contribution of the British Metals Recycling Association and its director-general, Ian Hetherington. The BMRA has worked closely with Richard Ottaway on the development of this Bill and with the Government on wider measures to tackle metal theft. The association has at all times sought to represent its members’ interests as well as those of the wider industry, and it continues to provide challenge to government on their behalf. Time and again we have heard examples of unscrupulous scrap metal dealers prospering at the expense of legitimate operators. I believe that this Bill will change that and level the playing field across the metal recycling sector.
The Bill seeks to reform the regulation of the industry, which is currently regulated by legislation dating back to the 1960s—the Scrap Metal Dealers Act 1964. The Government believe that this Act is outdated and no longer reflects the 21st century. This is a £5.6 billion industry, and its development means that the legislation needs to be correspondingly robust. It may interest noble Lords to know that the Scrap Metal Dealers Act 1964 originated in this House, and that the Bill was introduced by Lord Auckland. However, its days are numbered and this Bill is designed to replace it.
Reform of the industry is important for many reasons but I believe that it will make a significant contribution to tackling metal theft. Parts of the scrap metal sector offer the principal market for stolen metal. Unscrupulous scrap metal dealers either purposefully purchase stolen metal, knowing full well what they are doing; or they purchase it without undertaking any checks or due diligence, knowing that lax regulation will allow them to do so without attracting the adverse attention of the authorities.
The rising commodity prices of metals on the world market, coupled with this low-risk, “no questions asked” marketplace, have seen the theft of metals turn into a growing, acquisitive crime. I have a number of examples of my own but will not rehearse them as noble Lords have all been able to come forward with very graphic examples of the economic and cultural damage that has been caused by this pernicious crime.
Metal theft peaked in the UK in 2010-11. Since then, there has been considerable work by a range of organisations to tackle metal theft, which is having some success. Last month, ACPO estimated that reported metal thefts have fallen by around 39% this year; an excellent achievement. I have some Home Office figures here that will perhaps help my noble friend Lord Henley, who wanted to know what the impact had actually been of the Operation Tornado task force and of the anti-theft design of many materials. I will read out this tabulation as it will be useful to put it on the record.
Scotland has seen a 64% reduction, north-east England 53% and north-west England 58%. I do not know what the noble Lords, Lord Greaves, and Lord Willis, will make of that. The noble Lord, Lord Willis, is not in his place now but Yorkshire and the Humber has only seen a 16% reduction. We would have to calculate whether that was because they were all going across to the north-west, as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, alleged. The east Midlands has seen a 29% reduction, the West Midlands 48%, Wales 26%, south-west England 50%, south-east England 49%, London 29% and the east of England 60%. These are sizeable figures and show that there has already been an impact as a result of having more confident enforcement in this area. How much better it will be when we have these measures in place, which is why I hope we will be able to implement them.
The noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, asked about funding. I cannot give him a positive response. Of course, we are awaiting the Autumn Statement. We are aware of the considerable representations that have been made on this issue, and will be looking at whether it will be possible to implement it. This debate has reinforced the continuing importance of this enforcement drive.
The reduction in metal theft can be put down to a number of different activities, including: greater law enforcement activity by a number of organisations, assisted by the £5 million made available to the national metal theft task force; seeking design solutions, which has made a great deal of difference, as my noble friend Lord Henley mentioned; strengthening the intelligence on metal thefts and offenders; working with the scrap metal industry to voluntarily improve its trading standards, in particular through Operation Tornado; and seeking to strengthen the criminal justice system response to metal theft cases, including working with the Crown Prosecution Service and metal theft victims to inform the courts of the full costs, including consequential costs, of all metal theft offences, especially to help inform sentencing decisions.
All this activity is making an impact and we hope the response will be strengthened further by the measures, commencing on Monday, that the Home Office included —at the prompting of the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner—in the LASPO Act 2012. These measures include: the prohibition of cash payments to purchase scrap metal, which will bring greater traceability for those selling metals—I assure the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, that cheques given in payment need to be crossed, and a paper trail will still exist even in the circumstances that he described; increasing the financial penalty for offences in the Scrap Metal Dealers Act 1964; and revising the police’s powers of entry into unregistered scrap metal yards, which was an anomaly that I think all noble Lords accept was one of the biggest difficulties for the police.
The noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, asked how these measures will work. The Home Office has worked very closely with the British Transport Police and ACPO to deliver guidance in relation to the new provisions that come into force on Monday. We are confident that they will make a difference.
The Bill has been refined in its passage through the other place and I believe that it now provides effective and proportionate regulation of the scrap metal sector. The Bill has many important features. I will not talk about each one but will limit myself to what I consider to be the most important. The Bill will allow for local authorities to properly manage this sector, allowing them to decide who should and should not be licensed. The fee covers not just the costs associated with administering the licensing procedure but the enforcement that is involved for local authorities. Although the guidance will be given by the Secretary of State and we expect local authorities to abide by that, we anticipate that local authorities will be able to recover the costs that this Bill imposes upon them.
The Bill will also provide much needed closure powers to tackle unscrupulous dealers who operate without a licence. My noble friend Lord Greaves asked what “residential premises” are. No definition is provided in the Bill; it would be for the police to decide whether premises were predominantly used as a home or were business premises. This will be a question of substance rather than superficial appearance. I hope that that provides some answer to my noble friend on that issue.
The Bill will also require scrap metal dealers to record fully the metals that they are purchasing and disposing of, as well verifying the identification of the people with whom they transact. The Bill will end the exception for itinerant collectors, which the Government no longer wish to continue. Finally, the Bill will integrate the separate regulation for motor salvage operators with the scrap metal sector.
I know that the Bill was written and developed following close consultation with many legitimate scrap metal dealers, who, as the House knows, fully support the Bill. The Bill strikes the right balance between supporting legitimate operators and providing powers to tackle those who wilfully break the law. It should contribute to raising trading standards across the whole of the scrap metal sector. It will restrict the market for stolen metal that part of the industry currently offers. As noble Lords will know, there is a point at which stolen metal enters this trade, and it is sealing off that point of entry that the legislation is designed to do. The Bill will provide local authorities and the police with the powers they need to tackle businesses that operate illegally. The Bill will build on good practice already used by parts of the industry, such as strengthening the record-keeping requirements that have formed the key component of the successful Operation Tornado.
A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, and my noble friend Lady Hamwee, asked about the commencement of the provisions of the Bill. As has been said in guidance, it is recognised that around six months will probably be needed for local authorities to have in place the necessary provisions so that licensing can commence. Subject to any requirement to adhere to common commencement dates and the introduction of regulations, the dates are mandated by BIS, so we need to work this together. However, it is the Government’s intention that the Bill should be effective and brought into play as quickly as possible.
The response to metal theft does not rest with this Bill, but I remain convinced that the only long-term response to metal theft is to introduce a new, more robust system of regulation for the scrap metal sector, which is what this Bill is designed to achieve. I am delighted that it has been welcomed by all corners of the House.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester
My Lords, there was a suggestion that the Government intended to move an amendment in Committee to insert a sunset clause into the Bill. The Minister has not referred to that, and I cannot see why it should be necessary when one views Clause 18, which provides for review after five years. Is the Minister able to clarify that?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
The noble Lord is right about the review, but my honourable friend the Minister for Crime Prevention, Mr Jeremy Browne, made a commitment to insert a sunset clause into the Bill. I imagine the details of that will be presented to this House in Committee. That provision was agreed by the Government during the Bill’s passage through the other place. I am pleased to confirm that. It was alluded to earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser.
I was in full-flight oratory, saying how much I welcome the support of the House at this Second Reading. We all wish the Bill well. It is designed to tackle an abuse that we all condemn. The Government give the Bill their full support.
Baroness Browning
My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend the Minister for rounding off the debate. It has been encouraging to hear so many contributions that clearly all travel in the same direction to bring about legislation that will put an end to this illegal trade. I am grateful, too, to the opposition Front Bench for its support for the Bill.
The noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, has worked hard on this. Given his persistence, I hope that he can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Even if not, I hope he will enjoy bathing in the rosy glow that my noble friend Lady Hamwee bestowed on him today. Of course, I thank her, too, for her contribution. As always, my noble friend had done her homework with attention to detail. She reminded us of the parts of the Bill that we need to focus on. If the Bill comes forward in Committee, I hope that we will be able to satisfy any concerns that she has.
As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London described the sheer scale of the damage to churches around the country, the word “plunder” came to mind. I do not know why but it did. It seems to be on that scale. It is quite horrifying that church communities have had to deal with that scale of illegal action. It has not just damaged the fabric of churches but also caused such damage to the hearts and souls of those who care for and look after these wonderful buildings.
My noble friend Lord Henley brought his support from experience in two ministries—Defra and the Home Office. I am enormously grateful for his contribution and for the fact that he carried the baton through the Home Office. As many noble Lords will know, however obvious the need for legislation and whatever Government are in power, it is not simply a matter of sitting down and saying, “Hey, I have a good idea: we really ought to do this as there is a problem here”. You have to battle and fight for change in all Governments. I thank my noble friend for the part he played.
I do not want to get too involved with my noble friend Lord Greaves in the Yorkshire/Lancashire thing but nor do I want him to be too disappointed. If the Bill is passed eventually, I do not think that it will solve the pending “War of the Roses”, which I sense is coming up over the hill. That might be for another piece of legislation. He explained the way in which gully grates are stolen; we have gone today from some of our most famous buildings down to gully grates. That just shows the scale to which these people will go to steal things that are not theirs for cash.
There is such an interest across the whole country in the heritage and buildings that are so important us. The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, reminded us that that value is beyond market prices. That message went through many of the contributions we have had today. I am very grateful to everyone who has taken part today. I commend the Bill to the House.