Westminster Hall

Wednesday 5th December 2012 Westminster Hall

Wednesday 5 December 2012

[Ms Nadine Dorries in the Chair]

Unemployment in Scotland

Wednesday 5th December 2012 Westminster Hall

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned.—(Nicky Morgan.)

09:30

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries.

In West Dunbartonshire and in so many other constituencies in Scotland, unemployment is now a desperately serious challenge. This debate is for the 218,000 people who are out of work in Scotland, but it is also about many more than that, as not just that number are affected. There are 218,000 families, so we can double, treble or possibly quadruple that to get to the real figure of how many men, women and children are blighted by the scar of unemployment and the poverty that it creates. We have not seen the current levels of long-term unemployment among men in Scotland since 1997, and long-term unemployment for women this year is among the highest since data have been available.

People should have the right to work—that is not asking for too much. On Monday it is human rights day, when the UN’s adoption of the universal declaration of human rights is celebrated. It is well worth reflecting on article 23(1) of that declaration, which states:

“Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.”

Unless something changes, all those people will continue to be let down and their right to work will be ignored. Scottish people are being hammered. They are trapped between two ideologies, by two sets of politicians who are too blinkered to lift their eyes and see what is really going on, and too stubborn to put aside their political ambitions to do what is needed.

On one hand, we have the Tory and Liberal Government pursuing ideological cuts to jobs and services, cutting too far and too fast, and if this morning’s reports are correct, it sounds as though the austerity is going to be here with us for years to come. What is the result? Prices are rising faster than wages, our economy has flatlined for two years and long-term unemployment is soaring. Raising taxes and cutting spending too far and too fast is not working, which means that the Government are borrowing more this year, failing the one test that they set themselves. On the other hand, we have a Scottish Government standing on the sidelines, wilfully refusing to use the levers that they have to help people back into jobs. They have, in fact, cut jobs; in the public sector alone, John Swinney has cut more public sector jobs in Scotland than the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

However, I first want to look at what the UK Government are—or are not—doing.

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Gemma Doyle]

As the hon. Gentleman has just come into the Chamber, I will make a wee bit of progress.

The UK Government did have a plan to help people back into jobs, but the Work programme is not working. In the great fanfare around its launch, we were promised a revolution in getting people back to work that would transform the way people were supported, reducing the benefits bill and getting people into jobs, while ensuring value for money for the taxpayer. What a joke—instead it has been a comprehensive failure. The 3.8% success rate in Scotland—I am looking at the success rate over 14 months—falls some way behind the Government’s minimum target. The success rate in West Dunbartonshire is 1.7%, which means that less than two of every 100 people on the programme get a job. That is a shocking statistic.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (David Mundell)]

I welcome the opportunity to debate the Work programme, but it is important that we do so on a factual basis. The hon. Lady is referring to outcomes in relation to the report on the Work programme, but that is not the same as people moving into work or off benefits. Therefore, if we are to have a debate about unemployment, that is what we should be discussing and not outcomes in terms of the Work programme report.

[Gemma Doyle]

We could have a debate about what outcomes mean, but for my constituents and people in Scotland, they mean getting a job and getting into work.

What is just as shocking is the Government’s estimate that if the Work programme did not even exist, five in every 100 people would be getting a job. In an astonishing act of irony, it is the first back-to-work programme where people are more likely to get a job if they are not on it.

[Ann McKechin (Glasgow North) (Lab)]

I welcome the fact that my hon. Friend has secured the debate this morning. Does she share my concern that the Scottish Government are refusing to provide training programmes for those who are currently on the Work programme, so people on the programme in Scotland are in a worse position than those south of the border? That is totally unacceptable.

[Gemma Doyle]

My hon. Friend makes a useful point, and we have seen exactly those problems in my constituency as well.

We have been told that things will get better, but we have heard that one before, and we are already £400 million into this failing project. People do not want to hear that things will get better eventually. They want and need proper help and support now. The truth is that the Government scrapped a successful job creation scheme. Labour’s future jobs fund had real success in helping people off benefits and back into the workplace. It created 10,000 jobs in Scotland and was a proven success, but only weeks after the general election, one of the first things that the Government did was scrap it. Why was it scrapped? Just because the Labour party had set it up—how spiteful.

The report by the Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion on the future jobs fund clearly set out the scheme’s benefits: raising aspirations for work; moving people off long-term benefits; and helping people into jobs. Some 101,000 Scottish young people are out of work and the Government should be investing in programmes that work, not pumping money into programmes that do not.

It was around this time last year that plans for the Youth Contract were first announced. Last month I asked the Employment Minister, the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban), if the rumours are true that millions of pounds are sitting unallocated and helping no one because the Government cannot get employers on board with the Youth Contract. It is worth bearing in mind that almost 1,000 young people are out of work in West Dunbartonshire. What was the Minister’s response to me? He dismissed my concern and told me that 20 young people in my constituency have had work experience through the Youth Contract. That was 20 out of 1,000, and it was work experience, not a job. The only place that those young people can see employment is in the Minister’s job title, and he should hang his head in shame.

However, it does not matter how many schemes and programmes there are; if there are no jobs for people to go into, it does not make a blind bit of difference. In recent months, as many as 36 people have been chasing every vacancy in West Dunbartonshire. In my constituency, as in many others, the challenge is not getting people ready for work; it is making sure that there are jobs for them to go into. That is why one of the first things that the newly elected Labour council in West Dunbartonshire did earlier this year was to launch an ambitious programme to create 1,000 new jobs and apprenticeships in our area. However, we also need a larger, more robust private sector in West Dunbartonshire. Public service has always been valued in Scotland. We do not subscribe to the Tories’ fixation on “Public, bad; private, good.”, nor do we accept their attempts to divide public and private sector workers by placing a higher value on one group.

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Lady is right that there are plenty of complaints about the Conservative Government in Westminster, but will she put her ambitions in London aside and do what is needed, as she said earlier—and so that the Scottish Government would be less hamstrung by Westminster—and support moves to give more powers to Scotland, and also crucially, support the Scottish National party’s call for funding support for shovel-ready projects?

[Gemma Doyle]

If the hon. Gentleman bears with me, he will hear that I do not believe that the Scottish Government are using the levers that they already have. If he is patient, I will come on to those issues. West Dunbartonshire was named as the area of the UK least able to weather the Government’s cuts, partly because of our high reliance on public sector jobs. When 40 people are chasing every vacancy in my constituency, as there have been at times during the past two and a half years, we have a responsibility to do everything possible to grow the existing businesses and to attract new ones.

In Aggreko and Polaroid, we have world-leading companies in West Dunbartonshire. We distil and bottle some of the finest whiskies in the world. We have diverse manufacturing companies. Our tourism product is second to none. The Clyde shipyards are a stone’s throw away, and the Clyde naval base is on our doorstop. All of that is sandwiched between the fabulous city of Glasgow and the beautiful Loch Lomond. West Dunbartonshire is a great place to do business, and there are real opportunities to be had, but we need the Government to change course.

There is an alternative to the Government’s cuts agenda. There has to be, because we must jump-start growth, get the economy moving again and create jobs. The real jobs guarantee, which we have proposed and which would be funded by a tax on bankers’ bonuses, would guarantee a job to 110,000 young people. We also want investment in infrastructure projects, a cut in VAT, a one-year national insurance tax break for every small firm that takes on extra workers, a one-year cut in VAT to 5% on home improvements and a properly resourced British investment bank to boost lending to small and medium-sized enterprises.

No one claimed that the path to economic recovery was going to be easy after the collapse, but the Government know and I am sure that the Minister knows that at the time of the 2010 general election, our economy was recovering. Growth was up, and unemployment was going down. We were on the right track, and the worst of it should have been over. From 1997 to 2008, unemployment in West Dunbartonshire more than halved. Yes, the financial crisis meant that it started to go back up, but the action that the previous Labour Government were taking pushed it back into a downward trend.

That is where we were at the start of 2010, but when the current Government took over, they took the wrong path. Their austerity measures have sent our economy and the job prospects of thousands of Scots spiralling downwards. We have seen a double-dip recession and borrowing go up. Is it any wonder that people are wondering whether there is even still a plan to stick to or whether the Government are making it all up on the hoof, as they go along?

We can all hope that the Chancellor will change course later today, but I sincerely doubt that any of us should hold our breath on that. I want to know what the Scotland Office will do about it. It beggars belief that no Scotland Office Minister takes part in any of the key Cabinet Committees on the economy or on welfare reform. The Minister has a duty to ensure that he is at the table and to force his way into those discussions, because Scots expect him to be there and to be making our case.

In Scotland, we thought that we would be protected from the worst of the Tories’ cuts, because one of the Labour Government’s greatest achievements was to establish the Scottish Parliament. It should have protected us from the worst excesses of a Conservative Government, but instead, 15 years on, we have a Scottish Government plagued by inaction, standing by and letting the Tories do their worst.

[Mr MacNeil]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Gemma Doyle]

I think that I shall make a bit of progress.

The truth is that for the past three months, unemployment in Scotland has continued to rise, while it has begun to fall, albeit very slowly and with no guarantees, across the rest of the UK. Unemployment rates in Scotland are up compared with the UK average. I want to know what the Scottish Government will do about that. Instead of using the powers that they have, the nationalist Government are sticking their heads in the sand, kidding themselves that it is all someone else’s fault and leaving the people of Scotland to suffer under the Tories once again.

[Mr MacNeil]

Would the hon. Lady like to tell us whether the former Labour Government introduced any cuts at all?

[Gemma Doyle]

I think that the hon. Gentleman will find that we are discussing unemployment in Scotland. I am setting out very clearly what the Scottish Government whom he supports are failing to do. We need to get the economy back on track. There is no black-and-white answer, but the Scottish Government are failing desperately the people of Scotland. If more of the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues were interested, perhaps they would have turned up this morning.

The hon. Gentleman does not have to listen just to me. The Scottish Chambers of Commerce is also very concerned and has called on the Scottish Government to use the levers at their disposal to stimulate business growth, because they clearly are not doing so at the moment.

[Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. She is making a very positive and passionate case. On the point made by the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) about the unemployment statistics in Scotland, my hon. Friend is right to say that unemployment has fallen across the UK but risen by 7,000 in the last quarter in Scotland. One reason for that is the number of people who are leaving school and not going into employment or to university or college as a direct result of the thousands of college places cut by the SNP Government.

[Gemma Doyle]

My hon. Friend is spot-on. I have met 17-year-olds in my constituency who were due to start a college course and thought that they had their future mapped out, but whose course was cut at a day’s notice because of cuts to Clydebank college. My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

My constituents have been particularly badly let down by the Scottish Government. Despite having one of the most challenging job markets in the whole UK, the Scottish Government have chosen to ignore us. In the initial plans to set up enterprise zones in Scotland, West Dunbartonshire did not even merit inclusion in the initial considerations. After snubbing our area, the Finance Secretary refused to meet me and local representatives to discuss his decision. In March this year, when West Dunbartonshire had the highest youth unemployment in Scotland, we were excluded from any support from the Scottish Government’s youth unemployment strategy fund.

There is no logic, no help, no jobs—only politics. The Scottish Government talk only of the limitations of the current constitutional settlement. Let us imagine the position if there were another devolved nation in the UK, one that could lead the way and would grab and use every power that it had to help its young people and wring every drop of help out of the levers of power that it had. It just so happens that, in Wales, Labour’s Welsh Government are doing exactly that through Jobs Growth Wales. That scheme is providing jobs—not work experience or training—for unemployed 16 to 24-year-olds, paying them the national minimum wage for a minimum of 25 hours a week and getting 4,000 young people a year back to work. I am told that most of those jobs are in the private sector. The scheme requires the positions to be new, not replacements—helping Welsh businesses to grow even in this tough economic climate.

If that is good enough for young people in Wales, it should be good enough for young people in Scotland. However, the Scottish Government have one priority, which they are pursuing relentlessly. I wish that it were job creation, and I hope that they will look very carefully at the Welsh scheme. At the moment, however, they are pushing everything else aside to pursue separation, in the hope that the people of Scotland will take a risk and cross their fingers that the grass will be greener on the other side.

Only last week, someone from Scottish civic society told me that their fear is that the Scottish Government are standing back deliberately, letting things get worse and worse, all to boost the fading chances that people will back their flawed plans for separation come 2014. At the heart of the SNP is a mistruth, the often repeated mantra that separating from the rest of the UK will mean that all of Scotland’s problems will be solved.

I want to roll back the years slightly to 1968, when Mick McGahey, the National Union of Mineworkers Scotland Area president, argued at the Scottish Trades Union Congress for a Scottish Parliament but against separation. He said that his members had more in common with the London dockers, the Durham miners and the Sheffield engineers than they had ever had with the “barons and landlord traitors”, as he called them, of Scotland. That is still true today, because someone unemployed in West Dunbartonshire has more in common with someone unemployed in the west midlands than with the speculators who caused the economic collapse, even the Scottish ones.

The workers movement has always been an international one. Constitutional wrangling will do nothing for the 218,000 Scots who want a job. In fact, it may harm business confidence. Last month, Rupert Soames, chief executive officer of Aggreko, which is one of Scotland’s six FTSE 100 companies, the largest temporary power generator company in the world and based in Dumbarton, said that the disadvantages of separation were

“large, serious and…likely to arise”

and would create

“a great deal of business disruption”.

Most worryingly, he said that business leaders were unwilling to speak out because

“over the past couple of years, anyone who has dared open their mouths on the subject with views that are contrary to those of the SNP have brought down on themselves rains of bile and ire, which is really very unpleasant.”

He said that a lot of the language was very intimidatory. What a damning indictment of Scotland’s Government. I am sure that the bile and ire will be raining down on me on Twitter later. In fact, I saw the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) on his phone, so perhaps he has already been at it. We need the voice of business in this debate. We need them to be the job and wealth creators. We need a frank discussion, for the 218,000 families dealing with unemployment and for every person in Scotland.

I am told that during a recent conference, the Deputy First Minister, who walked away from Scotland’s health service to lead the nationalists’ referendum strategy, was asked about plans for welfare provision in a separate Scotland. He reportedly said that it would take four or five years to work out the details. Scots do not button up the back; we are not going to vote for a blank sheet of paper. No answers on welfare, no attempt to drive down unemployment and no real dialogue with business—only an obsession with separation. We should not be in a situation where almost a quarter of a million people are out of work without any proper provision to help them back into jobs. It just is not good enough.

I want us to debate employment, not unemployment, and celebrate our world-leading sectors of energy, food and drink—particularly whisky—tourism, life sciences, electronics, defence and aerospace, and manufacturing. Right now, Scots are caught in a toxic storm of the Tory-led Government’s cuts and the Scottish Government’s refusal to help. It is time for them both to step up to the plate, put aside their obsessions and ideologies, and help the people of Scotland back into work.

09:52

[Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire (Gemma Doyle) on a superb speech, full of passion for not only her constituents but the people of Scotland more widely, particularly those facing unemployment.

I want to take a few moments to highlight issues in my constituency, some of which will be familiar to the Minister because I have raised them previously. Jobs and employment is the biggest issue that I hear about when I speak to people on the doorsteps or when they come to see me. There are concerns about the number of young people who are unable to secure a job after they have completed a college course. We have a good local college—Kilmarnock college—working extremely hard to encourage more people to take up training opportunities, notwithstanding the difficulties of the cuts to college funding in Scotland. In the not-too-distant future, it will benefit from a new campus in Kilmarnock. Many young people are supported through college courses and their hopes built up, only to have those hopes dashed once they finish college and cannot find employment in their chosen field.

People coming to my surgeries are increasingly raising concerns at the other end of the spectrum—people in their late 40s or early 50s, who did not expect to have a job for life but certainly expected to be able to use their skills to move from one job to another. They now find it extremely difficult to find work. Many people who have built up skills over time expected to move to another job, only to find when they are unemployed that the job vacancies are simply not there.

The Government have to look at the figures. In response to a parliamentary question, I was told that in October 2012, 355 full-time and 77 part-time vacancies were advertised in the Jobcentre Plus office in my constituency. The claimant count figures for the same period show that 3,432 people were claiming jobseeker’s allowance in Kilmarnock and Loudoun. I also asked about the proportion of people aged 18 to 64 who are not in work or claiming benefits—those I describe as the “hidden unemployed” because they do not show up in the JSA figures. The Office for National Statistics, as part of work undertaken for the annual population survey, estimates that 4,000 people were in that category in Kilmarnock and Loudoun. The Minister is aware that many such estimates are qualified as likely to be imprecise or not reliable enough for what the ONS describes as “practical purposes”. That estimate, however, is one of those “considered acceptable”—to use the ONS’s term.

Those in their late 40s and early 50s are too young to retire. Many have worked hard and built up savings, but will have found themselves using up those savings to keep their heads above water for a year or so and ensure that they are able to get back into the job market. They are now finding difficulties in paying their mortgage, fuel bills and so on. Their savings have gone and the grind of looking for work every day is extremely difficult. We will see many more such people coming to us in the not-too-distant future.

The number of those claiming JSA for more than 12 months in my constituency has gone up from 635 in October 2011 to 1,125 in October 2012. More people are unemployed for longer. The problem is at both ends: the very young, coming out of college and school looking for their first job, and those at the other end of the spectrum.

Just in the past 48 hours we have heard of another blow to jobs in Kilmarnock. I am not sure whether the Minister is aware of it yet, but he knows of my concerns over the MAHLE Group plant in Kilmarnock. To be fair, Ministers responded the last time there were difficulties in the plant. This week, we heard that there are likely to be 82 redundancies, out of a work force of about 400, in the next three months. That is a significant blow to the local economy in Kilmarnock and comes on the back of the inability to replace the lost Diageo jobs.

That may sound like a picture of doom and gloom, but I do not want to sell Kilmarnock and my constituency as all doom and gloom, because it is far from it. There are businesses, many of which I met over the summer, that want to take on more employees, but find that some of the programmes the Government are offering, such as Working Links or the Work programme, do not necessarily deliver what they want as employers. They tell me that schemes such as the national insurance contribution holiday are too difficult to access and are not designed to meet their needs. I have raised that with Ministers before.

My constituency was not considered an area suitable to become an enterprise zone. It is great that North Ayrshire and Arran, the next-door constituency, can benefit from the scheme, but why could not the whole of Ayrshire have been looked at with a sensible, joined-up approach, given the numbers of people who could commute to work within it? The Governments in both Scotland and the UK could do more. At some stage, we have to rise above one person or one Government blaming another for the problem. The people expect us to work together to do something about it.

I was disappointed with another answer to a parliamentary question I received—the Minister might think that all I do is table parliamentary questions. Such answers are important, because they get to the heart of what the Government are doing and are part of how we hold them to account. I tabled a question at the end of November:

“To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, when he last met Ministers in the Scottish Government to discuss the Scottish manufacturing and construction sectors; and when he plans next to meet Ministers in the Scottish Government for such discussions.”

I was disappointed to get the response:

“There have been no recent discussions at ministerial level about these specific issues with the Scottish Government, and none are planned”.

What does that tell us, and what signal does that send to the people of Scotland who are out of work and desperately want to work, and to those in the manufacturing sector who want to continue their work and take advantage of export as well as domestic markets? However, the answer also stated that

“BIS officials are in regular contact with officials in the Scottish Government on a wide-range of issues affecting the manufacturing and construction sectors.”—[Official Report, 27 November 2012; Vol. 554, c. 298W.]

May I gently ask the Minister to use his good offices to get people together in a room at ministerial level to start such talks, and to begin to look at what more can be done in Scotland to support the positive initiatives that exist?

The Minister may be aware of the Entrepreneurial Spark—ESpark—initiative, which both UK Ministers and some Scottish Ministers have been keen to champion, which encourages people to start their own businesses. Several very innovative projects have arisen as a result, as I have seen in Ayrshire. Businesses that have been started up ought to be enabled to grow and to take on other employees, so what more can the two Governments do to ensure that?

[Ann McKechin]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s comments, and she has made some good points. Does she agree that both Governments should concentrate on procurement, because many local businesses find it difficult to work through complex procurement systems? The Work programme system is one, and the Forth road bridge—for which most of the steel will be manufactured in China—is another example of local businesses being unable to compete because of the design of the procurement process.

[Cathy Jamieson]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. This may come up later in the debate—I am not sure—but the whole issue of the Scottish Government’s intentions on procurement, and those of the UK Government, is important. Will the Minister give us information about how the two Governments are working together to ensure that tendering processes are available to local firms?

[David Mundell]

On that point, the hon. Lady may be aware that the Secretary of State has announced that there will be a Scottish Employability Forum, which will bring together the Scottish Secretary, the Scottish Government represented by John Swinney, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities represented by Councillor Harry McGuigan from North Lanarkshire council and a range of other stakeholders. That forum will address exactly the issues highlighted by her and the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Gemma Doyle). It will ensure that the two Governments and local government, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire, actually work together; local government has an extremely important role. I therefore believe that there is significant progress.

[Cathy Jamieson]

I welcome what the Minister says. However, to pick up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire, for many people currently out of work, the issue is not employability, because they are employable and are desperate to be employed; the simple problem is that the jobs are not there.

To return to the figures, with some 366 people chasing every vacancy in East Ayrshire, one person gets the job, while the other 365 are employable, want to work and are desperate to get that start. They are desperate either to get their foot in the door by having a first job or to return to work to support their family. That has to be considered, and the question is how firms can be encouraged to take people on and to expand. There is still more that both the Scottish Government and the UK Government could do, and they should look to build on the successful companies that exist and, wherever possible, to maintain and save jobs. In that context, I hope that the Minister will offer his support for ways of helping to retain the jobs currently under threat in my constituency.

I have probably taken up my fair share of time. I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate. I again make the plea that both Governments should recognise that this issue is about people’s real-life situations; it is not a political football to be battered back and forth.

[Mr MacNeil]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Cathy Jamieson]

That is probably exactly what the hon. Gentleman is about to do; I hope not.

[Mr MacNeil]

I, too, hope that we find some agreement. Does the hon. Lady agree that it might help if the Scottish Government had capital borrowing powers to enable them to stimulate the economy and create jobs in Scotland?

[Cathy Jamieson]

The hon. Gentleman always takes an opportunity to have a moan about what the Scottish Government do not have or cannot do, rather than to look at the levers and powers that they have. The important question is: what can the Scottish Government do? They have plenty of powers at their disposal, as do the UK Government. It is for both of them to work together, and that is what I hope comes out of this morning’s debate.

10:05

[Graeme Morrice (Livingston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries, and it is good to see you back out of the jungle. I welcome the opportunity to speak in this important debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire (Gemma Doyle) on securing it.

This debate is being held on the day that the Chancellor of the Exchequer delivers his autumn statement, which will highlight the true scale of his poor performance in the period of high unemployment, weak growth, rising borrowing and declining wages that is gripping the nation. Even the outgoing Governor of the Bank of England has warned that the UK faces a

“rather unappealing combination of a subdued recovery, with inflation remaining above target for a while”.

The latest quarterly inflation report indicates that the UK could be stuck in a low-growth environment, with economic problems in the eurozone and the rest of the world continuing to have an impact.

The Ernst and Young ITEM Club report published on Monday states that Scotland’s overall output decline of 4% over the past four years puts it on a par with the troubled Spanish economy, and that Scotland’s economy is unlikely fully to recover until 2016. This year will be the third out of five in which the Scottish economy has shrunk. The report also predicts growth of just 0.7% next year, which was “well below normal” and lower than the expected UK figure. It estimates that 60,000 jobs will be shed in the Scottish public sector between the start of the 2008 financial crisis and the end of its forecast in 2015.

[Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries.

Is my hon. Friend aware that the local government in Fife is investing £5 million in creating modern apprenticeships, which is an extension of the jobs fund?

[Graeme Morrice]

Yes, and I welcome that initiative by Labour-led Fife council. Others that have been mentioned—initiated by Labour-led local authorities in Scotland—are clearly to be welcomed.

The matters I was referring to represent yet more miserable news for Scotland, and underline the need to address business growth and harness the job-creation potential of our small and medium-sized businesses as a top priority. It is a cause of concern that the Scottish unemployment rate is 8.1%, which is higher than that of the UK. Some 218,000 people are now out of work in Scotland. The UK and Scottish Governments must share responsibility for those continually disappointing figures. As a result of their decisions, this is a really bad time for families who are worried about their jobs and their children’s futures, and are struggling with higher food prices and energy bills.

In my constituency, long-term unemployment rose by 380% in the past year, which is the worst figure since the general election. That is truly depressing news for young people and women, and for the 1,700 workers who are losing their jobs at the Hall’s of Broxburn meat processing plant and for the 50 employees at Vion’s headquarters in Livingston. People in Scotland are not only falling victim to the failed policies of this bungling Tory-led and Lib Dem coalition in Westminster, but are suffering from the Scottish National party’s inaction and incompetence in Holyrood. I notice that the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) has just left.

The coalition Government are running out of excuses. Their flagship welfare-to-work programme has failed to get people into proper jobs. Under the Work programme, firms and charities are paid to find jobs for the long-term unemployed, but as my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire said, only 3.8%—four in every 100— of Scottish people on the programme succeeded in gaining a job for six months or more, which is well below target.

[Jim McGovern (Dundee West) (Lab)]

It gives me no pleasure to say that the Dundee city council area has the worst record for creating jobs under the Work programme. The figure currently stands at 1.4%. We obviously have the separatists in power in Edinburgh and in Dundee. When can we expect them to stop saying that the big bad boy in Westminster did it and ran away?

[Graeme Morrice]

Indeed. I certainly concur with my hon. Friend’s comment. I will be coming to that same point shortly. Let me emphasise again that the Work programme is a miserable failure because the Government are not taking seriously their responsibility to create jobs, and what they have done has been exposed as worse than doing nothing.

The figures show that 101,000 young people are out of work in Scotland and, at 23.5%, the proportion is higher than in the UK. That means that close to half of all unemployed people in Scotland are between the ages of 16 and 24. If we deprive such a substantial number of young people of the benefits of work, we will once again pay the price for many generations to come. They are David Cameron’s lost generation. With such high levels of youth unemployment, education and training are crucial to enhancing young people’s skills and improving their chances of finding a job. Many young people I speak to in my constituency express the view that Government, and decision makers more generally, have abandoned them.

The default position of Alex Salmond and the SNP Government at Holyrood is to blame the situation on the London parties, and that is now wearing thin. It would be a tragedy for Scotland, and for the UK as a whole, if the devastating impact of the economic slump on hard-working people, families and communities is made worse by the unholy trinity of David Cameron, George Osborne and Alex Salmond failing dismally to do anything meaningful on jobs for Scots.

In contrast, Labour has a clear, coherent five-point plan for growth and jobs to help struggling families and support small businesses. Increasing employment will only come from business growth, so both Governments must boost capital investment, and the UK Government must incentivise business lending, to enable firms to create more jobs. The Government can start to address the matter in Scotland, and across the UK, by using the £3 billion windfall generated from the sale of the 4G mobile phone spectrum.

I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to offer at the end of this debate. The Government must take responsibility and come forward with an action plan to tackle unemployment and give Scotland’s people the opportunities that they need to thrive.

10:13

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire (Gemma Doyle) for giving Members an opportunity to discuss an issue of such great importance. Like other colleagues, I will concentrate on issues that relate to my constituency. Edinburgh North and Leith does not have the extreme levels of high unemployment that are suffered by some other constituencies. It normally comes somewhere in the middle of the UK figures. As unemployment goes up in the UK, so, too, does it in my constituency, and it stays roughly in the middle range. However, as with all our constituencies, and indeed the country as a whole, the broad picture does not always accurately reflect the position on the ground. It would not surprise many Members in the Chamber to hear that my constituency has areas that are among the richest in not just Scotland but the UK as a whole, and also areas that come near the top of the deprivation and unemployment rates in Edinburgh and, in some cases, in Scotland as a whole.

Youth unemployment has risen sharply in my constituency. A year or so ago, we found that we had the highest rate in Scotland of 16 to 17-year-olds not in education or employment. My constituency has certainly suffered from recent events in line with the rest of the UK. I suspect that we are also experiencing the phenomenon to which my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire referred of unemployment not really showing up in the figures. That is perhaps more true in my constituency than in any other. I strongly suspect that underemployment is a major factor, with people who want to work full time finding themselves working part time because there is no alternative.

I am aware that many people in my constituency are self-employed. There are those who were on contracts to work in the financial services sector or who were in some ways linked to it. They are still self-employed, but the amount of work they are getting has dropped dramatically, as has their income. Although this is difficult to work out from the figures, I suspect that that is a particularly severe problem in my constituency.

The house building figures are also low, showing a dramatic lack of activity in my constituency. House building is always a sign of activity in the economy as a whole, and the latest figures from the National House-Building Council show that the number of new home starts in my constituency over the last quarter was just eight, and that is in a constituency and a city where the population is still growing. The population of Edinburgh is now almost half a million; it has grown by almost 20% over the past 10 years and it is projected to grow still further. We certainly would not expect such a low number of new home starts if the economy was going well, and it clearly is not.

We have heard from colleagues about the lack of success of the Work programme. For me, people getting into a job at the end of it is a pretty good indicator of whether the scheme is working. Again, the number of people in my constituency who have found work is not as low as elsewhere—my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire referred to a figure of 2%. In my constituency, it is 3% of those over 25. It seems that people who go on the programme are getting work at a lower rate than those who do not, which does not sound like a recipe for success.

[Jim McGovern]

My own daughter, Jillian McGovern, is one of my hon. Friend’s constituents, and she was made redundant earlier this year. Thankfully, she has managed to find a new job, with no assistance whatever from the Department for Work and Pensions. Does my hon. Friend agree that the DWP Work programme seems to be drastically unsuccessful?

[Mark Lazarowicz]

The figures clearly speak for themselves. I am glad that my hon. Friend’s daughter has found employment. Of course, one of the tragedies is that many staff in the DWP are working hard to try to make the scheme work, but are unable to do so. We all know that when there is a general backdrop of high unemployment and low economic activity, there is only so much that can be done.

Some things are being done by various levels of Government. I am pleased to say that the Edinburgh city council, through the Edinburgh Guarantee scheme, has been active not just in itself as an authority but in the private sector, encouraging the provision of real jobs and opportunities for young people. In the current year, Edinburgh city council is offering 50 new apprenticeships, 18 new training places and 50 further opportunities with council contractors. It has been encouraging private sector employers to take up that approach as well, with some success. Of course Edinburgh has a Labour-led council, which may have something to do with the success, but it certainly shows what can be done by local government, at city or district level, to respond to the current difficulties.

Clearly, a local authority can only do so much, so what we need is a change in the national picture and the national direction. We need a change of course, such as the one that my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire referred to in her opening contribution. We also need action at Scottish level.

One of the ways in which we can provide real jobs and use the current economic downturn to provide a way out and a way forward for the future is, of course, to invest in infrastructure projects. Both the UK Government and the Scottish Government have been slow off the mark in coming up with new infrastructure projects to meet the needs of the time. I have lost count of the number of times that this Government—the UK Government—have announced new infrastructure schemes and projects, and processes and mechanisms to try to bring jobs into the sector. I accept that things are slowly happening. However, it is two and a half years in now, and we have seen hardly any new projects and hardly any new jobs on the ground as a result of the UK Government’s limited measures to promote infrastructure investment.

I also have to say that the Scottish Government have been slow off the mark. Of course, their powers are not as wide as some of their members would like, but there is a lot that they could do with their existing taxation powers and spending programmes to boost jobs and infrastructure in Scotland.

I am pleased that the Scottish Government’s Cabinet Secretary has recently presented the UK Government with a list of “shovel-ready” projects, as he described them. I think that he could have been preparing that list a bit earlier on in the scheme of things, but nevertheless it has now come forward. I know that one of the major schemes on that list is for investment of more than £100 million to develop the port of Leith in my constituency, which will be important not only for Leith—obviously—but for the whole Scottish economy. That is certainly good, and I hope that in his response to the debate the Minister will tell us that he and his colleagues in the Scotland Office—or rather, his colleague, the Secretary of State—are lobbying actively to ensure that Scotland gets its fair share of the infrastructure investments that come forward, and that those investments are put into effect as soon as possible.

That is the key point—we need action now. We do not need promises of infrastructure investment or activity two, three, four years down the line. We do not want people to be promised training places with no jobs to go into at the end of the training period. We need a change of course, and we need the measures that the Government have promised, particularly on infrastructure, to be put into effect as soon as possible, so that we see some urgency from the Government in a way that, frankly, we have not seen in the past two and a half years.

10:19

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

Thank you very much, Ms Dorries. It is a pleasure to serve under you this morning.

I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire (Gemma Doyle) on securing this debate. I think that many of us had suspected that we would have seen the full ranks of the Scottish National party here in Westminster Hall this morning. Instead, they sent the normal token gesture in—the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil)—and he has fled the scene of the crime already. That is no help whatsoever.

All too often we hear from the SNP about “shovel-ready” projects; indeed, they have been mentioned again in Westminster Hall this morning. I can tell everyone here today that there are hundreds of young people in my constituency who would desperately love to get on the end of a shovel and be gainfully employed, because that is the thing that they really want to do and the inability do it causes deep depression in households and communities, which is something that, as a nation, we can ill afford. When I say “a nation”, I do not just mean Scotland; I mean the entire UK. Young people desperately want to be out there being gainfully employed.

In about three hours’ time, we will have heard the bulk of what the Chancellor has had to say today. I do not hold out many hopes, but I am open to persuasion and I am ready to be surprised as he makes his autumn statement. However, my area is a rural area. I will mention figures this morning and I apologise to the Minister before I start mentioning them, because those figures are for Dumfries and Galloway; they are figures not only for my constituency and my backyard but for part of his backyard as well. The reality is that although the unemployment figures in our area are desperately high, he and I both know that our local economy is based around small and medium-sized enterprises, and there are enough SMEs that if all of them took on one extra person we would just about wipe out unemployment in my local area.

The difficulty is that our two largest employers are the local authority and the local health board, and the impact of the cuts that we have seen in the last few years, both under the coalition Government in Westminster and under the SNP Government in Edinburgh, is really breathtaking. It is not a surprise to those of us here in Westminster Hall today, but it may well be to those outwith here, that we actually saw cuts happening in Scotland in our local area in the public sector at least two years before there was any cut in block grant to the Scottish Government. So it was all happening under the guise of this great nationalist Government, and quite frankly it was destroying the base for jobs and any sort of growth in my local area.

In October 2010, there were 2,691 jobseeker’s allowance claimants in Dumfries and Galloway; in October 2011, there were 3,042; and in October 2012 the figure had grown to 3,205. As for the long-term unemployed, there are now just over 900 people who are long-term unemployed in Dumfries and Galloway, which is the highest level since 1999. Those long-term unemployed people, many of whom are young people aged between 18 and 25, find themselves in a desperate plight.

Again, it is unfortunate that the sole SNP Member who was present earlier—the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar—has now left, because we even had a situation earlier in the year when one of our local regional list MSPs, a lady by the name of Joan McAlpine, decided to have a jobs summit. [Interruption.] A sharp intake of breath—no further comments please. She decided to hold a jobs summit and she introduced to the local community the Minister responsible for youth unemployment, a lady called Angela Constance. We have heard nothing since. That “summit” was a talking shop and I regret to say that I had to force my way in to see what was actually going on. It was all window dressing, with nothing to show for it.

I know that colleagues have already mentioned the future jobs fund and how some people have said that it was not working. In fact, the Prime Minister himself said that it was

“expensive, badly targeted and did not work.”—[Official Report, 19 January 2011; Vol. 521, c. 832.]

So, at a very early stage of this coalition Government, the decision was made to scrap the future jobs fund. That left many of us somewhat bewildered and confused, because not that many months beforehand officials in the Department for Work and Pensions were saying that it was a good programme and it was working.

I apologise to colleagues if I am about to divulge information that they are already aware of, but only last month the DWP published a document entitled, “Impacts and Costs and Benefits of the Future Jobs Fund”. It said:

“Under the baseline assumptions, the FJF programme is estimated to result in a net benefit to participants.”

That was estimated at approximately £4,000 per participant. In addition, the net benefit to employers was estimated at approximately £6,850 per participant; the net cost to the Exchequer was estimated at approximately £3,100 per participant; and the net benefit to society was estimated at approximately £7,750 per participant. I am no economist—quite frankly, I am not an expert in anything—but I would have thought that those figures showed some sign of a good return for the investment that was being put in.

I visited a number of young people who were working on a future jobs fund programme, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Ann McKechin) who is sitting beside me now and who was a Minister at the time. We jointly visited a group of young people and they were delighted at the opportunity that they were being given to work. Suddenly, however, the new Government deemed that the future jobs fund was a failure.

I could go on at length, but I will not because I know that there is another colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde (Mr McKenzie), who wants to speak. However, we have seen the cuts in the numbers of nurses and midwives in our areas, and the cut in police support staff in our areas, and quite frankly that is down to a combination of the coalition Government and the SNP. So, if we are talking about crime, they are partners in crime in what has happened in my area.

It is not that Labour does not have an answer. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), the shadow Chancellor, will make his point this morning, and it is about the 4G mobile spectrum and the £3 billion that can come from that, and it is also about tax on bankers’ bonuses. Those are not just warm words: this money can be used constructively, to do something for our country and for the unemployed. On the back of some of that, we could have 100,000 jobs for young people and bring forward investment.

The country has been here before. When the Labour party came to power in 1997, we gave a commitment to the people of this country that we would use a windfall levy on the privatised utilities to create the new deal; we carried that commitment through, and it worked for the benefit of unemployed people. I just hope the Chancellor will listen a little today to the shadow Chancellor and to some of the views expressed in this debate.

[Mr Iain McKenzie (Inverclyde) (Lab)]

rose—

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Order. Mr McKenzie, I will call the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman at 10.40 am, so if you take just 10 minutes, that would be great.

10:30

[Mr Iain McKenzie (Inverclyde) (Lab)]

Thank you, Ms Dorries. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire (Gemma Doyle) on securing this important debate.

I would love to be here debating employment levels in Scotland, but, unfortunately, we are here to debate Scotland’s unemployment figures, which are, quite frankly, a national disgrace. It seems that when the Conservatives get into power, they look on unemployment as a price worth paying, and as something that has to exist to balance employment. We know, however, that it does not have to exist.

The Scottish unemployment rate is above the UK average, and Scotland is a black spot of unemployment on the UK map. What a message that sends to the rest of the UK and beyond, especially when we are trying to attract business and inward investment to Scotland.

Why are these things happening? The UK Government and the Scottish Government are failing the people of Scotland. One is preoccupied with austerity and cuts, while the other is preoccupied with the constitution and a desire to march into a dreamland of independence, although what Scots people have at the moment is a nightmare of unemployment.

Youth unemployment is at crisis levels. What message does that send to our young people, who need work and who want to work? They now find that their only opportunity of finding work is probably to leave Scotland, and our numbers are diminishing across communities.

I want to spend a bit of time contrasting those issues with what has been happening in my constituency. Inverclyde is a speck of light on the dark map of unemployment that is Scotland. Believe it or not, Inverclyde has actually managed to reduce its unemployment numbers. There are several reasons for that, which I will go into later, but it is also thanks to Labour—a Labour MP, a Labour MSP and a Labour-led council—which has focused on, and been delivering, jobs for the people of Inverclyde.

Two years ago, the council took the brave decision to go it alone and fund the future jobs fund, which the Government cut when they came to power. That will be increasingly difficult as the council’s budget is squeezed, and this year’s settlement for local government looks bleak indeed. In the past, Inverclyde was the second-best performer across the UK on the future jobs fund, with a success rate that saw 90% of people going into jobs. In terms of young people not in education, employment or training, we have achieved single figures, and we would hope to achieve zero this year, although, as I said, it looks as though local government funding will, unfortunately, mean that that target is out of our reach.

We hear much about Government contracts with jobs and apprenticeships written into them, but that is nothing new in Inverclyde, where we have had such things for many years. We set ourselves an ambitious school estates reprovision programme, and we wrote into the contracts the need to provide for local labour and a number of apprenticeships if those contracts were to be won, and that was very successful. By 2014, our school-building programme will mean that across Inverclyde all schools will be new or refurbished, and that will bring many jobs.

Just last week, I brought together 40 employers, the jobcentre and unemployed people in Inverclyde at a jobs fair. Our target is to ask employers to give the best possible start to someone in Inverclyde in the new year, by giving them a job.

Along with the local MSP, I have been highlighting our area’s ability to play a part in renewable energy and wind turbine construction. We have the skills and the infrastructure, but, unfortunately, we do not have the backing of the Scottish Government, who have been extremely unhelpful, cutting our regeneration projects to zero next year, which will eliminate any progress on our waterfront development. They have also given only a small amount of support to our schools programme—just £5 million, as opposed to the £80 million we were given when Labour was in power in Scotland, which allowed us to create many jobs and regenerate Inverclyde.

In the 2011 by-election, the First Minister and many others visited Inverclyde, telling us that good times were around the corner and that jobs were there for us—if we just voted a particular way, the jobs would emerge. The First Minister promised us so much, but absolutely nothing has materialised—evidently, we did not vote the way he wished. Two hundred Scots are losing their jobs every day. We are facing an unemployment emergency, and the lack of action by either Government is resulting in increasing unemployment levels, which look to be the worst for many years.

Many of my hon. Friends have mentioned how drastically ineffectual the Work programme is and that it has had no impact whatever on unemployment levels. Its lack of success in my constituency is such that it has placed only 1% of people in employment. Goodness me, I could have done that myself over a weekend and saved the Government a fortune. That was a saving that could have been made.

Labour Members believe we can create jobs using a tax on bankers’ bonuses and a windfall from 4G. We can put people to work and give young people hope again; if the Government really want to create jobs, they can. Our constituents need and want work, and young people need hope for the future. We should not let another generation be sacrificed to unemployment.

10:37

[Gordon Banks (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Lab)]

I welcome you to the Chair, Ms Dorries. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire (Gemma Doyle) on securing the debate and on tackling head-on the vital issue of unemployment in Scotland.

We have heard throughout the debate that the people of Scotland are being failed by two Governments, in Westminster and in Holyrood. The coalition can barely keep itself together, never mind effectively govern the country, and the SNP is entirely consumed by the independence referendum, which means that it is not tackling the real problems Scots face in their everyday lives. With 218,000 Scots unemployed, few issues are more important for both Governments to tackle, or indeed more important for the people of Scotland, but our priority does not, sadly, appear to be the priority of either Government.

The coalition’s ill-fated Work programme, which we have heard about this morning, has got only four out of every 100 Scots back to work. That figure is really startling and lays bare the Government’s complete failure to get to grips with the unemployment crisis. It is also alarming that the Scottish unemployment rate is 8.1%, which is higher than the 7.8% UK average. As a result of the bleak economic outlook, underemployment has also been on the increase. This Government simply cannot get Britain working, and as a result they cannot get its economy growing again.

Youth unemployment is a particular concern. It is another statistic that is higher in Scotland than in the UK as a whole, at 23.5% compared with 21.7%, with nearly half of all unemployed Scots being aged 16 to 24—a tragic proportion, of which the Minister should be ashamed. If action is not taken soon to tackle that, those young people will become, as one of my hon. Friends has said, Cameron’s lost generation, and Scotland will be less able to take full advantage of opportunities that come our way in the future, which would be a total and utter disgrace.

Long-term unemployment also contributes to an ever-increasing welfare spend. Some 38,395 people in Scotland have been claiming jobseeker’s allowance for longer than six months, which is in contrast to fewer than 8,000 in 2008. Even more worryingly, the number of Scots claiming JSA for at least 12 months has grown by 198% since 2008.

Something has gone seriously wrong with the Government’s unemployment strategy, and they plainly have no ideas about how to bring jobs and growth to Scotland. The failure of the Work programme has contributed to an increase in welfare spend of about £20 billion more than expected. The priorities are all wrong, as can be seen in the Chancellor casting 100,000 16 to 24-year-old Scots on to the dole, while giving a tax cut to millionaires.

To try to tackle that £20 billion overspend in the welfare budget, significant changes will come into force shortly, and they will have a devastating impact on Scotland. It has been calculated that, due to the welfare changes, £114.8 million will be removed from the Scottish economy in Glasgow alone, and £6 million will be removed from the economy of Clackmannanshire, which is Scotland’s smallest county and is in my constituency. I have no doubt that that cash grab will affect local economies, and it will, according to the Fraser of Allander Institute, lead to a further 2,000 or so job losses and—guess what?—an even greater demand for welfare.

To kick-start the economy and create jobs, the Government should, as has been said, take on board Labour’s proposal to put revenues from the 4G spectrum auction to good use. Scottish Labour at Holyrood would use any Barnett consequentials from the growth spending on key investment priorities, such as house building, which I feel extremely strongly about. With nearly 40 years’ experience in the construction industry, I am dismayed to see the stagnation from which the industry is suffering, but that is no surprise when the Government are cutting capital investment by 21% by 2014.

The Government seem to be failing to grasp that with every £1 invested in construction the economy benefits by £3—those numbers have been confirmed by independent economic research. The promise of a threefold return should be incentive enough for the Government to invest in the industry. There are few better ways to kick-start economic growth than with a national house-building scheme and support for construction. There are few better ways to deliver skills in great numbers than through investment in the construction industry, and there are few better ways to impact positively on our high streets than through investment in housing and construction.

I want to pick up on some of the points that have been made this morning. That there are no Scotland Office Ministers on key Cabinet Committees that focus on growth, such as the Growth Implementation Committee, is indeed a great worry for Scotland and, I imagine, a great embarrassment to the current residents of the Scotland Office. I share the opinion expressed by my hon. Friends that the scrapping of the future jobs fund, which has been recognised by the Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion for its achievements, was a mistake, and there is a stark contrast between that recognition and the failure of the current programmes.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire talked about how the Scottish National party has cut more than 30,000 public sector jobs, but I want to take this opportunity to make the Chamber aware of remarks made by Keith Brown, the Transport Minister in the Scottish Parliament, who, when pressed recently in a debate with me on what would happen to UK civil service jobs in an independent Scotland, said:

“I was waiting for the day when someone from Labour came forward with a positive reason for independence and perhaps we’ve just heard it—a reduction in the number of civil servants in Scotland”.

I am afraid that if that lot have their way there will be many more public service job losses in Scotland.

We have heard what Labour is doing where Labour is in power. We have heard about what Labour is doing in West Dunbartonshire, in Fife, in Edinburgh, in Inverclyde and in Wales, and all those efforts are to be applauded. I also want to draw attention to the Glasgow Guarantee made by Scottish Labour in power in Glasgow city council, which has resulted in a 4.4% fall in the number of young people claiming JSA in the past two years. The real point here is to compare that achievement with that of the Minister and his Government colleagues, which is a 6.9% rise over the same period.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire referred to what I can only liken to attempted bullying by the Scottish Government in respect of separation, and I think we all agree that such activity is reprehensible. Indeed, over the past few days Mr Salmond has been defending the right to free speech in the press while at the same time appearing hellbent on stifling it in the Scottish business world.

Many issues are hitting Scotland hard at this time, with 218,000 people out of work, a Work programme that does not work, a rising welfare bill, welfare cuts that will increase the demands on welfare, a lack of growth in the economy, 16 to 24-year-olds being condemned to a future on the dole, a growth in underemployment, rising energy costs, a fixation in the Scottish Government with separation, and a lack of investment from Holyrood in further education for our young people.

[Anas Sarwar]

My hon. Friend mentioned the fixation with independence. Is he aware of figures out this week that show that corporation tax in the Republic of Ireland is 12.5%, with unemployment at 15%, and in Northern Ireland the figures are 24% and 8% respectively? Does that not show that the SNP’s policy of cutting corporation tax is incoherent and does not guarantee jobs?

[Gordon Banks]

I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend. There is a lot that the SNP says in Holyrood that does not bear true when put under the microscope.

The Governments in Holyrood and Westminster are not focusing on policies to address unemployment. They are too distracted with their own agendas of cuts and separation. That is why one in 10 Scots are working fewer hours than they would wish to, which is contributing to a rise in in-work poverty. It is why unemployment has increased by 3.3% since 2008, and it is why 80,000 people in Scotland have been unemployed for more than 12 months. It is also why, in the past year, long-term unemployment has risen by 3% in the UK but by 11% in Scotland, and it is why economic inactivity among disabled people stands at more than 49% in Scotland. That nearly half of all unemployed Scottish workers are aged 16 to 24 is a damning statistic, but neither the coalition nor Alex Salmond seems to be focusing on that as a major issue.

In light of those extremely worrying trends, the Governments in Westminster and Holyrood need to take positive action, and I want to make a brief remark about shovel-ready projects. We are all in favour of moving such projects into job creation, but if we do that in Scotland in the way that the Forth road bridge project was handled, with all the contracts being given to overseas companies, keeping people in work in Spain, Poland, Switzerland and Germany rather than in Scotland, there is something fundamentally wrong with the procurement process, as we have heard this morning.

I urge the Chancellor to get a grip of his welfare policies and to understand their impact on our economy, and to get a work programme that does what it says on the tin. The priorities of both Governments need to change from the narrow agenda of cuts and separation, and to focus on the real tragedies occurring in our cities, towns and villages. It is the Scottish people who can deliver growth into the Scottish economy if the Governments of Holyrood and Westminster provide them with the right tools and opportunities. To do anything less demonstrates that the priorities of the Governments are not those of the Scottish people.

10:40

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (David Mundell)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. You are certainly the Member of Parliament my constituents most often ask me about, and I am sure they will be delighted to learn that you have chaired the debate today.

I congratulate the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Gemma Doyle) on securing this important debate. Based on what has been said I feel that there might be little that we agree on, but I do agree on the importance of having a debate such as this here at Westminster, to focus on issues that are the responsibility of the UK Government, and also on the importance of Members from Scotland holding the Government to account for their policies and actions in Scotland.

I find it disappointing that the Scottish National party has not sought to contribute to this debate, other than through a few random interventions. I do not want to be in the position that the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Cathy Jamieson) spoke about, of blaming the other Government—the Government in Scotland—for everything that is going wrong, which would be to adopt the reality of Alex Salmond’s “plan McB”: to claim credit for everything that is good and to blame the Westminster Government for everything that is bad.

Opposition Members, other than the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun, to be fair, chose to use their contributions to blame both Governments for everything that is happening. As usual—I had no expectation otherwise—they took no responsibility whatever for the catastrophic state in which they left the UK economy when they left office in 2010. Indeed, we may hear once and for all an apology from the shadow Chancellor today for the state of the economy at that time, which would be good.

[Mr Russell Brown]

I recognise that the Minister and his colleagues are very good at talking about the mess that they were left, but will he share with the Chamber what the black hole was? What was that debt? If we remove from that debt what was provided to support the banks and the UK economy, how big really was that black hole?

[David Mundell]

There was a black hole because, for a significant period of time, the previous Government were spending more than they brought in. That is the reality, and the hon. Gentleman cannot pretend otherwise. Today we have heard various versions of the plan Labour now has to turn the economy around, but the core of that plan remains more spending, more borrowing and more debt—exactly the same prescription that brought the country to its current state.

[Graeme Morrice]

Is it not the case that the current Government are borrowing far in excess of what they are spending? Indeed, based on their original projections, they are borrowing substantially more than they anticipated.

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Order. We are getting into a debate on the economy, rather than on unemployment in Scotland. Can we keep to the subject of the debate?

[David Mundell]

Indeed. I will leave the economy to my colleague the Chancellor, who will no doubt respond to the exact issue raised by the hon. Member for Livingston (Graeme Morrice).

Some important points have been raised, and hon. Members have taken the opportunity to highlight what is being done in their local authority areas. We have to recognise what an important role local government plays in taking forward the jobs agenda.

I am pleased to confirm the work of the Scottish Employability Forum. Although the title includes the word “employability,” the forum actually focuses on all employment issues, because as the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Ann McKechin) made clear in an intervention, things are not working as well as they could be for the Scottish Government in their partnerships with both local government and the UK Government. In fact, people in the Work programme in Scotland are being refused training, which is a great concern to us all.

[Cathy Jamieson]

I thank the Minister for confirming that the Scottish Employability Forum will consider all aspects of employment. Will he give us further information on any specific actions that that forum will take? When will the forum report, and when will it make recommendations on its outcomes?

[David Mundell]

The forum will meet for the first time early in the new year, and its prime focus will be to co-ordinate the different interests and to ensure that there is a seamless programme of support for people looking for work, thereby ensuring that they are neither passed around nor a victim of conflicting agendas. The forum has an important role to play, because it is quite clear that we have to bring together more close working.

I am concerned about a couple of issues that were raised.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

Will the Minister give way?

[David Mundell]

No, I want to deal with the issue of Jillian McGovern and address the concerns raised by the hon. Member for Dundee West (Jim McGovern) about the Department for Work and Pensions. I would be pleased to hear more about what did not happen in that regard, because I have a high regard for the DWP’s work in Scotland. Every single day in Scotland, the DWP deals with an average of 1,500 new job vacancies; conducts some 7,000 jobcentre adviser interviews; receives more than 82,000 searches for Jobcentre Plus job vacancies; and helps an average of more than 1,000 people move into work. The DWP is playing an important role, and if any Member has examples of that not working for their constituents, we want to know about them.

I have asked for a report on why Dundee city council appears at the very bottom of the report on the Work programme, and it is important to understand that, but I want to try to dispel two myths. The shadow Minister sought to perpetuate the myth that, somehow, the youth unemployment issues are a direct result of this Government’s policies. Youth unemployment is a serious issue about which we should all be concerned. As the right hon. Member for South Shields (David Miliband) has said, youth unemployment started to become a problem in this country in 2004; it is not a product of the current Government. We all have to do more to work with employers to encourage them to take on young people.

[Jim McGovern]

Will the Minister give way?

[David Mundell]

No, I want to conclude this point, because it is very important. Youth unemployment is a scourge, and we all have a part to play in dealing with it. There is a serious attitudinal problem among employers about taking on young people. They think that if they take on a young person—this is particularly the case with small and medium-sized businesses—that will create hassle and difficulty for them. We have to feed back to them that taking on a young person is a positive thing. We have to encourage employers to take a more positive attitude to bringing young people into work.

[Gemma Doyle]

I am conscious that the Minister does not have much time, but I am desperately worried that we are not getting to grips with the issues that have been raised this morning. He has been challenged directly about no Scotland Office Minister being involved in any of the key Cabinet Committees on the economy and welfare reform. Will he respond to that point? Will he give a commitment that he will make representations that a Scotland Office Minister should be involved in those Cabinet Committees?

[David Mundell]

The hon. Lady’s colleague, the shadow Secretary of State, has already written to the Secretary of State on those issues, and the shadow Secretary of State was given a full reply, which I am sure she will share with the hon. Lady.

I want to use my remaining time to respond to the issues raised about the Work programme. There has been a misrepresentation of it, which I hope is not deliberate—I am sure it is not just for the purposes of the template press releases that have been put out by the Labour party across Scotland. It is simply too early to judge whether the Work programme is succeeding against its objectives, because it is a two-year programme that has been running for just about a year.

“Outcomes” is a defined term in the report on the Work programme, and it means that a work provider has been paid for someone being in work for six months. It does not mean that those are the only people who have gone into work through the Work programme. In fact, the bulk of the people who are in the process are still on the programme, because they have not been able to complete the six-month period. There has been an attempt to distort the figures to decry the Work programme, and I would be disappointed if any Member present took any pleasure in the idea that the Work programme could somehow be described as a failure. It cannot, because it is not a failure. The figures are not available to make the sort of judgment that Opposition Members leapt to today.

Police and Crime Commissioners

Wednesday 5th December 2012 Westminster Hall

11:00

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

It is nice to be under your chairmanship for the first time, Ms Dorries. I begin this debate on police commissioners’ role in early intervention by congratulating all the police and crime commissioners elected last month. They have an historic role, and they bring a long-overdue democratic element to policing that will strengthen both policing and democracy over time. I hope that by the next police commissioner elections, they will be an even more important and legitimate part of our society, particularly if those elections are held at a sensible time of year with properly resourced freepost election addresses and without the low-level point-scoring that characterised this year’s campaign.

Central to that mission is the clarity and relevance of the vision for police commissioners, and that is what I will address today. My first specific ask for the Minister is to accept my invitation to deliver the keynote address at a House of Commons conference of all police and crime commissioners, discussing how they can help stop crime through early intervention. The conference follows on from the highly successful early intervention and crime conference opened by the Home Secretary last March.

We need our police commissioners to hammer home the two key principles of modern policing: partnership and prevention. Those two principles come together in early intervention. The police have long since realised that they cannot tackle crime on their own. They need effective partnership, and police commissioners are the perfect people to deliver that. One of the smarter breed of top cops, John Carnochan, former head of homicide in Glasgow, says that 1,000 extra police officers would be great, but 1,000 extra health visitors would be clever. He knows that working with health, education, the third sector and other partners to stop crime before it happens—rather than just picking up the pieces afterwards —is the future of policing.

The new police commissioners could be the midwives of a cultural change in policing from late intervention to early and pre-emptive intervention. The police will always have the task of reacting to crime, but sustained crime prevention and reduction requires a strategy that unites the police with all the other agencies, whether public, private, third sector or business, that can help tackle the behaviours and lifestyles that breed antisocial behaviour and crime.

Talk to any experienced police officer, from the local bobby to the chief constable, and they will tell you the same stories about the families that cause trouble and the newborn baby destined to carry on the tradition who will come their way in 12, 14 or 16 years’ time. Many of us—teachers, health workers, councillors and MPs—have the same experience. We all know that if we were not so busy firefighting, the best time to sort out the problem would be in the first few years of life. That has been common sense for many centuries, but it is now confirmed by a robust scientific evidence base.

Bessel van der Kolk, writing in the US Psychiatric Annals, said that according to his research, people with childhood histories of trauma, abuse and neglect make up almost the entire criminal population. More than one third of the 100,000 most hardened criminals in the UK were in care as children, and half have no school qualifications at all. The Centre for Mental Health tells me that six out of 10 child offenders have speech and communication problems. Tim Bull of the Brook Trust reinforces that tackling the trauma of sexual abuse would greatly affect offending behaviour later in life. I also agree strongly with Chief Superintendent Irene Curtis, president-elect of the Police Superintendents Association of England and Wales, who said:

“I see the new role of police and crime commissioners as an opportunity for someone to have an overview of the increasing demands in relation to community safety in its widest sense that face all public sector organisations at a local level and to look for innovative and creative, sustainable solutions.”

If children acquire a bedrock of basic social and emotional skills in the first three years of life, they have a better chance of being successful in the rest of life, achieving at school, in further education and in work, developing good physical and mental health, making good lifestyle choices and, above all, forming relationships that lead to becoming great parents or carers for the next generation. For all those reasons, police commissioners and police officers know that early intervention programmes giving a good start in the first few years of life are the best possible method of preventing future criminal behaviour.

That was the central message of the two reports on early intervention that I wrote for Her Majesty’s Government last year, and it is why I then wrote to all police and crime commissioner candidates challenging them to adopt early intervention policies as the unique selling point in their relationship with the police. Instead of treading on operational toes or seeking populism and publicity, police commissioners could use their skills, their independence and their role to bring a strategic and long-term view to reducing crime, which would be welcomed by police officers, victims and taxpayers.

I have been pleasantly surprised by the positive response that this debate has generated already. The Revolving Doors Agency reminded me that a quarter of young offenders are themselves fathers, perpetuating an intergenerational cycle that must be broken. Andrew Balchin, the communities director in Wakefield, referred to “bobbies and babies” initiatives in which police community support officers help parents keep children from offending. Councillor Maxi Martin of Merton said that “partnership, partnership, partnership” is everything. Guy Mason reminded me of Save the Children’s families and schools together programme, which is supported by Morrisons. Jean Gross talked about the social and emotional aspects of learning, or SEAL, programme used in every primary class in Nottingham between ages five and 11. Marion Bennathan of the Nurture Group Network highlighted the link between absenteeism at school and crime. Effective information sharing between partners was mentioned by Neal Kieran, principal community protection officer in St Albans.

Many other practical points have been made. The Local Government Association and the Children’s Society have taken an interest in this debate, because they see that police commissioners can play a role in getting to the source of crime rather than waiting until 15, 16 or 20 years later to pick up the pieces expensively. That demonstrates to me that massive expertise is available if Government can encourage police commissioners to use it.

Many police commissioners to whom I have spoken are well aware of this agenda. They range across the parties and include Staffordshire’s Matthew Ellis, Nottinghamshire’s Paddy Tipping, Nick Alston of Essex and Winston Roddick of North Wales, to name but a few. Police commissioners are perfectly positioned to explore the role of policy making based on evidence of what works, as well as social finance and payment by results in reducing crime.

We pioneered that approach with the police and other partners in developing Nottingham as the first early intervention city. Enlightened, forward-thinking police officers became the driving force of the new partnership. Alan Given, Shaun Beebe, Peter Moyes and many others were at the forefront of the movement. At one point, local police were prepared to signal their commitment to stopping crime before it started by financially supporting local health visitors. We then brought the family nurse partnership programme to Nottingham, giving more than 100 teen mums and their babies a dedicated health visitor and the social and emotional skills to make a bright future for themselves. It cost the same amount of money as banging up three 16-year-olds in a secure unit for a year, two of whom, incidentally will go on to reoffend. That sort of investment in cutting the supply of dysfunction and criminality is a no-brainer. I ask the police commissioners to join the rest of us in explaining this to the Treasury as the biggest deficit reduction program it could dream of. Billions of pounds that we currently spend on late intervention could be saved by small investments early in life, to prevent people from going wrong.

The police commissioners should follow the words of Sir Robert Peel, who wisely put preventing crime first in the list when creating the Metropolitan police, even ahead of catching offenders. This is going further than police commissioners lobbying to ensure that those on the edges of the justice system or at risk of offending receive support, which they should, from mental health, social care, drug and alcohol and employment services, important as those things are. This deeper step is about pre-emption: stopping crime before it starts. With the right early intervention policies, we can forestall many of the mental and social problems that are factors in generating antisocial behaviour and crime later in life. Cut off the supply. Tackle the causes, not just the symptoms. Yes, swat mosquitoes, but drain the swamp, too.

Early intervention can break the cycle of dysfunction that makes some families nurseries for offending. It can do this much more cheaply and reliably than intervening later and can generate lasting savings for local budgets, and lasting gains in the quality of life for local neighbourhoods.

Police commissioners using early intervention to attack the causes of crime at the source will also unlock, with tiny investments, a huge new stream of money. We are already seeing payback from investment in social and emotional programmes; those involving young offenders are massively reducing costly reoffending. Such programmes —for example, at Peterborough and Doncaster prisons— are also the pioneers of social finance and innovative bond issues.

I was recently in New York, where the deputy mayor made an innovative agreement with Goldman Sachs and a provider of social and emotional development. This reduced recidivism in 16 to 18-year-olds, generated a profit for Goldman and may ultimately result in a money-saving wing or prison closure.

Police commissioners should, in their oversight of policing budgets, work with institutions like the Early Intervention Foundation and others to insist that every police service has, as standard, such long-sighted invest-to-save programmes. That will create an income stream that the police will be pleased to receive year after year, as the savings accumulate.

Doing this locally is difficult. Sharing the costs and the benefits is the key to such innovative investment. If a health visitor can help prevent the expensive costs of policing and criminal justice further down the line, police commissioners should start working with local health services to plan for the spending and saving from prevention and early intervention. Local authorities, which are now taking on new responsibilities for public health, need to join these new collective financial arrangements, to invest a little bit now and redistribute transparently the funds that are generated by stopping crime early. Building effective partnerships with education and health will enable joint spending to take place early on, followed by redistribution of the big savings to all partners later.

My second ask of the Minister is that he encourages examples of early intervention and promotes it by recruiting just 10 of our willing police commissioners and linking them with those who have the expertise to provide evidence-based programmes, the monetisation of outcomes and the sometimes complicated contractual partnership arrangements—let us try to get some standardisation into the programmes to save a lot of money—to help us make such arrangements an everyday feature of policing by the end of the first term of the first police commissioners.

This is not hopeful speculation; this is happening now. Early intervention has proven results. I mentioned attaching health visitors to teenage mothers, as is done in Nottingham. We draw on a 30-year evidence base from the family nurse partnership and see reduced crime, better job prospects and educational achievement. We introduced the family intervention project, which has seen 100% of its clients complying with community sentences while engaged on the programme. These are not just the noisy neighbours; they are the most difficult families in our city. There has been a 56% improvement in children’s attendance at school. There have been big gains. Police commissioners could also link with the new troubled families initiative and make self-financing and, indeed, profit-making deals that could reduce crime as well as harvest dividends for reinvestment in policing.

Again, if the Minister and the Home Office wish to take this further, those of us involved in early intervention would be happy to help with the nuts and bolts.

In a typically British way, this important extension of democracy has had a difficult birth. However, police commissioners should put that behind them. They now have it within their power not only to give voice to ordinary people, but to make a strategic, lasting contribution to making our society a safer and happier place. If they use their position creatively to become champions of early intervention and argue for effective crime-reduction programmes that make us safer and generate a return to the taxpayer, they will demonstrate to all those who did not vote last week that there is a clear reason to do so next time.

11:16

[The Minister of State, Home Department (Mr Jeremy Browne)]

It is a pleasure for all hon. Members to see you safely back in our parliamentary bosom, Ms Dorries.

As always, I congratulate the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), whom for the purposes of this debate I call my hon. Friend, on his sterling and sustained work on early intervention. To summarise what I am going to say in the next 10 to 12 minutes, I agree with him. He is right to give this issue his attention. The evidence is compelling. There are some encouraging long-term crime trends in Britain and other countries in the western world, but those will only be sustained by having a long-term analysis of and understanding about what causes crime, and with solutions to those causes that drive down the figures in future.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned police and crime commissioners. People abbreviate that, calling them police commissioners, and in doing so risk overlooking an important component of the commissioners’ work, which is the “and crime” dimension. They are not just the chairman of the local police force, organising its budgets and recruitment practices. They are also there to take a view about how to reduce crime in the area that they are responsible for, which may mean short-term interventions with immediate crime problems—I hope that they will do that—and about having a broader, longer-term view about the causes of crime and what they can do to bring about positive changes.

I will talk a little bit about police and crime commissioners, but first let me illustrate why early intervention is so important and then talk briefly about some measures that we are already putting place, which could work either with the commissioners or standing on their own, but are nevertheless important in terms of the broader issue that the hon. Gentleman brings to our attention.

On the benefits of early intervention, I want to bring two brief studies to the attention of the House. One was an American study that found that children growing up in violent households had a seven times higher chance of developing alcohol problems than children who did not suffer such adverse experiences at home in their formative years; the chance of developing illicit drug use problems was four and a half times higher, and the chance of committing violence was nearly nine times higher. There are causal links, and the likelihood of children whose first few years are the most difficult having such problems is not just 5% or 10% greater, but hundreds per cent. greater. The second study was done in the United Kingdom, and it showed that children who were identified as being at risk at the age of three had two and a half times more criminal convictions by the time they turned 21 than those not so identified.

The value of what the hon. Gentleman has brought to our attention is obvious, and the benefits are felt sooner than some people might realise in some contexts, such as truanting from school and petty—entry-level, if you like—criminality among relatively young children. We are not necessarily talking about a 20 or even 15-year time lag; there might be a much shorter time lag before the benefits of today’s early intervention can be seen.

The Government have introduced several measures that we hope will have a beneficial impact. We are spending —if the different funds are aggregated—£2.3 billion this year, £2.4 billion next year and £2.5 billion the year after on the early intervention grant. I should not anticipate the autumn statement, which will happen in just over an hour, but I suspect that not every Government budget will receive such year-on-year increases. However, we are keen to sustain funding for the early intervention grant. The Government are also extending entitlement to free early education to two-year-olds from next year, so that more children will be given opportunities at that formative stage. A separate sum of £448 million has been allocated for the troubled families programme, to ensure that we have the right multi-agency hands-on approach for the 120,000 families around the country who have been identified as in the greatest difficulty. I know from first-hand experience, because I have sat in on the meetings, that the Prime Minister takes a direct interest in that initiative, and that it has the support of many Departments. It is hugely important for the life opportunities and prospects of the children of those families that it should succeed; and it is also important in relation to the issue that we are debating—the impact on crime in the future.

The family nurse partnership programme is a scheme to help, particularly, vulnerable teenage mothers who perhaps do not have the support network that they need in their family or community to give their children the best start in life. We are expanding that, and thousands of young women will experience the benefits of the programme in the next three years. That is intended to ensure that children have the right early upbringing—that they are raised well and have the right diet—to stand them in good stead.

There are other schemes being run in different Departments. We hope that many of the changes in the Department for Education will be beneficial for attendance rates and ways of dealing with children who have behavioural problems, and will improve performance and exam attainment. There is a quite close correlation between success at school and likely propensity to criminality either while the child should be at school or later. The link is not an absolute one: some high-achieving children go on to be criminal, and some low-achieving ones do not; but there is a correlation. On the employment side, there is also a link between worklessness and a propensity to a life of criminality, and we are trying to do more to help young people to get apprenticeships, for example. The Government funded 360,000 apprenticeships last year, and have also spent £30 million on the innovation fund, which supports about 17,000 of the most vulnerable young people over a three-year period. I have mentioned those things because I would not want the House to form the impression that the area in question is receiving no attention. Senior and Cabinet-level Ministers, including in the Home Office—the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is another good example—are trying to do more about the problems that the hon. Gentleman has raised.

The hon. Gentleman discussed police and crime commissioners and I want to spend the last few minutes of my speech on that subject. Their purpose is to give the work of the police greater public accountability, but also to give a sense of leadership, in public communications terms, to policing in each community. I hope that they will become important figureheads and help to give impetus to improvements in their police forces, but also drive a public debate within communities about what can be done to tackle the sorts of crime that MPs hear about every day—lower-level crime, vandalism, antisocial behaviour, late-night noise and graffiti. I hope that they will be interested in all those issues, as well as in more serious crimes such as domestic violence and burglary.

I hope that the commissioners will see—and this is the purpose of the debate—the wider benefits of working with other agencies besides the police. The police in my constituency of Taunton Deane are very responsive in working with schools, voluntary community groups, neighbourhood watch schemes, churches, cadets and scout groups. All those groups can play an important role. Local businesses are also often willing to support initiatives that reduce local crime and help with early intervention. I hope that PCCs will be imaginative about their use of budgets and time, so that as well as working with the police they can encourage the police and others to work together for the benefit of the community.

The hon. Gentleman raised two specific points—two “asks”, I think he said. The first one was easy, when he was good enough to ask me whether I would speak at an event he is arranging with police and crime commissioners. I would be delighted to speak at such an event and hope that by doing so I give force and the Government’s backing to exactly the type of activity that he brings to our attention. Diary permitting, obviously, I say yes, thank you, to that invitation.

The second point was about bringing together a group of police and crime commissioners. I think that the hon. Gentleman suggested a group of 10. I am interested in that, and would like to consider what we could do and how officials might want to organise it. Of course, the Home Office must do a difficult balancing act: we cannot tell police forces that we are letting go and that we want police and crime commissioners with their direct electoral mandate to make decisions about their time and budgets in their area and then, as soon as we have said it, tell them that we are going to organise lots of events where we will tell them how to organise their affairs. We want to get the right balance, and we want them to take the leadership role. However, the Home Office Ministers met all the police and crime commissioners on Monday to talk through some of the programme and the activities that we have in the Home Office, to introduce them to some of the ideas. I see huge virtue in sharing early intervention best practice, particularly with police and crime commissioners who are interested. I am keen to work with the hon. Gentleman on ideas of that type, and on other projects, to make further progress on early intervention.

11:29

Sitting suspended.

Regional Newspapers

Wednesday 5th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Jim Hood in the Chair]

14:30

[Mr Jim Hood (in the Chair)]

Members will have noticed the new clock displays in the Chamber. As before, the top display is the current time and the bottom display, when a speech is not being timed, will show the time it started. If it becomes necessary to introduce a speech limit, the bottom display will change, to show the time remaining to the Member who currently has the Floor. As in the main Chamber, the display can now award an extra minute for the first two interventions in a speech.

The first debate this afternoon is on the future of regional newspapers. I call Andrew Griffiths.

[Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Hood. It is a great pleasure to be serving under your chairmanship today.

I welcome all those colleagues who have taken the time and trouble to take part in this important debate on this busy day. I think that is because we all recognise the importance of our local newspapers in the communities that we represent. We recognise the value and contribution that a daily or weekly newspaper makes to the lives of the people we seek to serve.

The debate is topical because of two important developments in the past few days. First, as colleagues understand, this week the House has been debating the consequences of the Leveson report. None of us can fail to be appalled by the revelations that came out of the phone-hacking inquiries and by the disreputable activities of some members of the journalist profession. It is only right for us to consider the future implications for our free press. What was clear from the report, however, was that the one sector of the media industry that was free from blame was our regional and local newspapers.

[Mr Lee Scott (Ilford North) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Does he agree that it would be totally wrong for the local press which are not at fault for anything—as acknowledged in the Leveson report—to be punished for the fault of other, far larger newspapers of national consequence? The local press have done nothing wrong whatever.

[Andrew Griffiths]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important intervention and agree with him wholeheartedly, because it is essential that our regional press, which are under the greatest pressure, should not be burdened with expensive and difficult regulation, and the finger of blame should not be pointed at them. As Justice Leveson points out, the regional press are free from such accusations. I draw attention to what he says in the report:

“In relation to regional and local newspapers, I do not make a specific recommendation but I suggest that the Government should look urgently as what action it might be able take to help safeguard the ongoing viability of this much valued and important part of the British press. It is clear to me that local, high-quality and trusted newspapers are good for our communities, our identity and our democracy and play an important social role.”

He goes on to say, in the executive summary, that many local and regional newspapers

“are no longer financially viable and they are all under enormous pressure as they strive to re-write the business model necessary for survival. Yet their demise would be a huge setback for communities (where they report on local politics, occurrences in the local courts, local events, local sports and the like) and would be a real loss for our democracy.”

That is why it is so important for us to have the debate today and why we agree the importance of the Government focusing on providing a sustainable future for our regional press.

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

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. We have touched on the Leveson report and certain comments from it. May I refer to another comment by Lord Justice Leveson? He said that the contribution of regional newspapers to local life is “truly without parallel”. In my constituency, we have the Kent Messenger and the Medway Messenger, with circulation of 370,000 a week and 270,000 hits on the internet site, clearly showing how important their contribution is.

[Andrew Griffiths]

My hon. Friend wins the prize for being the first Member to mention his local newspaper. For anyone who was having a sweep, we were about five minutes into this important debate at the first name check. However, I agree wholeheartedly with him.

The second development that I draw colleagues’ attention to is the announcement in the past few days of the amalgamation of Local World, a new joint venture that we hope will be part of the solution for the future of our regional newspapers. As colleagues know, it is a joint venture with the Daily Mail group’s Northcliffe Media and includes investment from Trinity Mirror. The new company will contain 100 regional newspapers and 60 websites, which is a massive development in the situation of our regional newspapers. This is the first opportunity for the Minister to put on record his thoughts on the future effect of that and on what more needs to be done in the wake of the announcement.

We have to recognise that our regional newspapers are in a pretty poor state. They are under pressure in a way that national newspapers do not suffer. We all recognise that the print media generally are having a tough time, because of the internet and the change in how people are viewing their media, but regional newspapers are particularly hard hit. Let us look at the figures. Advertising and circulation revenue for regional newspapers in 2004 was £3.113 billion; six years later, in 2010, that figure had fallen to £1.599 billion. The number of regional daily newspapers has fallen from 109 in 2002 to only 84 today. Two hundred regional newspapers, including dailies and weeklies, have been lost in the past decade. We all recognise that the loss of a local newspaper is a loss of an important part of our communities.

We all bemoan the loss of a post office or the local pub—I declare an interest as the chair of the all-party parliamentary beer group—but we should bemoan the loss of our local newspapers in the same way, because they are the key to information within our communities.

[Karen Lumley (Redditch) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing the debate. I obviously have to mention the Redditch Standard and the Redditch Advertiser in my constituency, which employ local journalists with great knowledge of our area. For example, we have a hospital threatened with closure, and local newspapers allow people to have their say. Does he agree that if we are serious about local democracy and keeping it, we must help our local press?

[Andrew Griffiths]

I am sure that my hon. Friend appears regularly in her local newspapers because she makes important contributions such as that. She touches on two important points: democracy, which I will come on to later; and employment. Not only do local newspapers employ a number of people in our constituencies, they are also the training or breeding grounds for the national journalists of tomorrow. We can all point to august journalists, people with a fine career in journalism, who have earned their spurs, done their apprenticeship and learned the trade in regional newspapers—covering the parish council, the village fête and the flower show. This is a good training ground to understand grass-roots communities and grass-roots’ politics. We lose that at our perils, although losing it we are. Since January 2002, we have lost 13.2% of our local newspapers, and I do not want to lose any more. My hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Karen Lumley) referred to democracy. We all recognise the important role that local newspapers play in holding local authorities and public figures to account for their decisions.

One of the key thrusts of the Government’s agenda is localism. We want to devolve power down to the lowest possible level. We want to empower local communities, through local councils, to make decisions that best affect their communities. If we are to hand down that responsibility, and if we are to hand down that power to elected councillors and officials, such as police commissioners, it is even more important that we have the right checks and balances in place to hold them to account. It is even more important that people scrutinise the work of our councils and police commissioners to ensure that local people are properly represented, that they get the government they deserve, and that local money is spent effectively. How can that be done if local reporters do not attend council meetings?

[Mr Scott]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the biggest assets of a local press—I feel duty-bound to mention the Ilford Recorder and the Wanstead and Woodford Guardian in which hon. Members may read my column tomorrow—is that they print facts, not with glamour or spin, but just the facts of what happens, whether a flower show, a council meeting or any other event?

[Andrew Griffiths]

I will dash to my computer tomorrow morning to find my hon. Friend’s column online. He is absolutely right. Lord Justice Leveson said in his report that although there are sometimes allegations of inaccuracy in local media, they do not have the same political allegiances, and they report both sides of the argument. I am sure that all hon. Members can point to stories that they disagree with, but people cannot hide from their local newspapers, because they have phone numbers and know where people live, and can hold them to account for decisions that affect their readership and our constituents. That is hugely important to us as politicians.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Is my hon. Friend aware of the distinction between local and regional newspapers, and will he say a bit more for my benefit about what is happening at regional level? My local newspaper, the Isle of Wight County Press, is absolutely fine and is widely read in the county, but what is happening with regional newspapers?

[Andrew Griffiths]

I am sorry to tell my hon. Friend that the picture is the same for local and regional newspapers. They are all suffering loss of revenue, for various reasons. The internet has had an impact on advertising revenue, as has the slow-down in the employment market, the rise in job websites, and the loss of advertising for car sales and estate agents. All that is adding to the severe drop in income for regional newspapers. We must see what we can do to make them more sustainable.

The free weekly newspapers are suffering most, because they are feeling the loss of advertising revenue much more than those that receive a contribution from people who pay for newspapers. There has been some stability in income in recent months, but much of it is because newspapers have been forced to raise their prices. Readership continues to fall, and at the moment newspapers are bridging the gap, but that is not sustainable in the long term, and we must see what we can do to make them sustainable.

[Rehman Chishti]

Does my hon. Friend agree that some newspapers have diversified, such as the Kent Messenger, which has an internet page that receives 292,000 clicks a month? KMFM radio is also available, and if local newspapers are to survive in the long term, they must diversify and attract different audiences. Some are not doing that.

[Mr Jim Hood (in the Chair)]

Order. Will hon. Members make their interventions shorter?

[Andrew Griffiths]

Thank you, Mr Hood, for that advice. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Newspapers are businesses, and are run by business people. They recognise that they must diversify, and they are looking for alternative income and revenue streams. All our newspapers now have internet sites, and are looking at how to spread their contents on as many platforms as possible. I hope that the Local World venture will help in that objective, but the reality is that advertising revenue through the internet is much lower than what can be expected through the printed medium, and that is disappointing for the many newspapers that have invested heavily in their online presence and advertising. They are competing with a whole host of different bodies, and competing with advertising on Google, Yahoo and other providers. It is difficult for them to compete.

The problem is not a UK phenomenon. The Newspaper Association of America says that industry losses account for some £500 million in a half year, which is offset by only a £20 million increase in online revenue. That shows the position that our newspapers are in. They are trying to be good businesses, and looking for new markets, but those new markets have much smaller margins and revenue income. We must look at what we can do.

I touched briefly on democracy. We all recognise how much more difficult it would be to communicate with our constituents without a local newspaper to get our message across. It is a case of, “If it didn’t exist, we’d have to invent it.” We must look at the implications for us as politicians and as the Government if we lose this important communication tool. I have a hardy band of deliverers in Burton, but my ability to communicate with my constituents would be vastly reduced if I lost my local newspapers, and I would be remiss if I did not mention the Burton Mail. I am lucky to have such a great newspaper. It is a daily newspaper, and run by a fantastic editor, Mr Kevin Booth. I am also lucky to have three weekly newspapers, the Uttoxeter Post and Times, the Uttoxeter Echo and the Uttoxeter Advertiser. Strangely, they all serve Uttoxeter in my constituency.

Those newspapers, particularly the Burton Mail, serve another purpose. They are local campaigning tools. They are the voice for the local community. They do not just transmit information to my constituents; they take up causes on their behalf. The Burton Mail has run a whole host of campaigns on issues such as knife crime, making the town centre safer, and keeping the Margaret Stanhope mental health centre in my constituency open. A plethora of great campaigns have galvanised the community in the way that a Facebook page simply cannot. If we lose our newspapers’ campaigning ability, the voice of our communities will be diminished, and we should care deeply about that if we care about our constituents.

Our local newspapers are the first point of call for people to find information. Although my local councils—East Staffordshire borough council and Staffordshire county council—have fantastic websites, Twitter feeds and Facebook accounts, to try to communicate with the people who pay council tax, those people do not visit the websites daily to look for information, whereas local newspapers are such a repository of information. I said earlier that if we did not have them, we would have to reinvent them.

The Government must realise the importance of our local newspapers in communicating messages to the country. The Government advertising budget is under pressure. We recognise that we must make serious savings, and the Government are looking at communicating through new media, but many of my constituents are older people. Although we have a large number of silver surfers in Burton, many people still do not use the internet, Twitter, or Facebook, and turn to local newspapers for information. If we lose that, it will be to all our detriment.

The Government need to look at what more we can do. I have come up with the phrase “community capital”, and I think there is some community value in what our local newspapers do. In the same way that we support post offices through Government initiatives for the provision of services, and the voluntary sector through the Big Society Bank and investment in voluntary services, we should look at supporting our local newspapers to ensure that that community capital is not lost.

I point to two things. First, I recognise that the Government have taken some steps on tackling the issue of council newspapers. We have all seen the growth of free local council newspapers that go through doors at quite some expense, and my right hon. Friend and chum the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government has done a great deal to try and rein in the worst excesses of those councils. However, we are still seeing some councils, such as Cardiff city council, spend huge amounts of money. A newspaper is produced there 13 times a year at a cost of some £33 million to the taxpayer. Is that a good use of council tax payers’ money, or should we be looking at what we can do to support our local newspapers?

Secondly, I touch on the issue of Department for Transport notices. A consultation ended earlier this year, as the Minister will know, on the DFT and its use of advertising notices in our local newspapers to ensure that local residents understand properly what is going on with the transport network in our constituencies. Were that important income revenue to be lost to local newspapers, I have absolutely no doubt that it would lead to the loss of journalists and tip some of our weaker local newspapers, which might disappear for ever, over the edge.

I am fast coming to the end of the time that I have to speak.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

More!

[Andrew Griffiths]

I thank the Minister for demanding more, but sadly no one behind me is saying the same.

I know that the Minister is a champion for local newspapers. I have seen the number of times that he has appeared, peering out from the pages of the Wantage and Grove Herald, and I know how he supports his local newspapers. However, although he is responsible for this issue in his Department, we need to look at the wider landscape and what the Government can do to support local newspapers, if we are serious about a sustainable future for them. I urge him to look at what he can do to get a council of war together with other Departments. Let us look at what we can do with the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Cabinet Office, in relation to the big society, and at what we are doing with Departments such as the Department for Transport. Let us get all those Departments together and see how we can maximise the benefit of our local newspapers.

I am a Conservative and I hate to use the word “subsidy”—I do not use that word lightly—but there are ways in which the Government can do more to support, rather than subsidise, our local newspapers. We have to look innovatively at how we can channel Government activity and use our local newspapers to their benefit and that of Government.

Trust is hugely important. As we have seen in recent weeks, although Twitter is a fantastic vehicle for getting information out, it is also hugely unreliable. We have seen the implications that that has had for people who have been thrust into the media spotlight through no fault of their own. Local newspapers are trusted in a way that no other form of information is. We as a Government support the BBC, local television and Channel 4 through various mechanisms, and it is important for us to begin to re-examine how we support our local newspapers to ensure that they continue to hold us as politicians to account, continue to be champions for their local communities, and continue to support our local communities in achieving all that they can.

14:55

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths) on securing the debate and on the way in which he has introduced it. He referred to Leveson, and it is worth repeating that Leveson said that local papers’

“contribution to local life is truly without parallel…their demise would be a huge setback for communities

and

“a real loss for our democracy”.

Their demise has taken place before our eyes—that is the problem.

Let me give the figures from the National Union of Journalists—I am the secretary of the NUJ parliamentary group and my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) is the chair. We have been engaged in debates such as this for some time and things have got worse, not better. Over the past seven years, since we had one of our earliest debates, 20% of the UK’s local newspapers have closed. We have lost 240 titles and at the moment, we are fighting on a range of fronts. The Press Association has been closing its regional lobby service and making journalists redundant. We have tabled early-day motion 715, which exposes what is happening at the Press Association, and I invite Members to sign it.

At the moment, Johnston Press is trawling for redundancies of more than 50 posts, and the NUJ has been denied collective consultation on the cuts so far. That is not the sort of commitment we were given by some proprietors last year, who said that there would at least be a dialogue with their staff about what was happening in their companies. Trinity Mirror has just announced 75 job cuts, amounting to an 18.75% cut of its editorial work force. Interestingly enough, the company, while it is sacking its own staff, has bought a 20% stake in David Montgomery’s Local World, but it will not be putting its regional or local papers into that operation. The Daily Mail and General Trust has shed about a quarter of its work force of 3,000 since 2010 and it has announced a further 13% cut in regional editorial costs this year. The number of people employed at Northcliffe stood at 2,450 in 2012, compared with 3,130 in October 2010.

The jobs are going. We have been tabling early-day motions and have been engaged in discussions with the Minister and the previous Government about how we tackle the issue. The main concern is that the service is being degraded at a local level. We have done a survey of local NUJ representatives on the ground, and I will quote some of the things that have come back. From the Huddersfield Daily Examiner, the NUJ representative reported:

“Each reporter was supposed to spend half a day on their patch looking for stories. The idea was abandoned two years ago owing to staff shortages.”

The rep from Birmingham Post and Mail said:

“Staff are increasingly going for easy stories—those which can be filed and concluded as quickly and with little fuss as possible, from press releases and announcements”.

That is not the nature of the local press that we have come to admire. The rep from the Coventry Telegraph said:

“Loss of staff photographers and their replacement with freelancers and heavier reliance on reporter-supplied photos and submitted pictures likely to lead to deterioration in quality of pictures. Fewer reporters for all titles will also affect content and quality.”

A survey of NUJ members at Newsquest Essex north found that staff had worked an extra day a fortnight voluntarily. A letter to the management said:

“Editorial staff has been cut by a third in the past three years and the remaining staff have undertaken more work than ever.”

An NUJ rep from the north-west said:

“Reporters are less likely to get out of the office to see contacts and have less time on individual stories, developing and investigating them. Subs have less time to check stories, design pages and have less time spent on proofing pages.”

That is what we have witnessed, and that is the report back from the front about the seriousness of the cuts that have taken place. What is galling for staff is that in addition to the cuts, they have had pay cuts and pay freezes during the past 10 years, but at the same time some of the management wages have been astounding.

Let me give some examples. Paul Davidson, chief executive of the Newsquest newspaper group, received £598,441 in salary last year. The figures, for 2011, show that directors of Newsquest were awarded an additional £881,000 in “share-based payments”. It just goes on. Craig Dubow, head of the US parent company Gannett Company, Inc., resigned in 2011 and walked off with a £23 million golden handshake. It is not that the money is not there. What has happened over a long period is that there has been profiteering in the industry, which has resulted in the cutbacks that we are suffering now. That has put in jeopardy these community assets—that is what they are. The hon. Member for Burton is right about that. I wish they had been so designated so in the Localism Act 2011, because they are community assets that we all value.

Other activities need to be put on the record. There have been tax scams in the industry. A tax tribunal relating to Iliffe News and Media was told how that group had drawn up a tax avoidance scheme by assigning to its parent company the unregistered newspaper mastheads used by its subsidiaries, which were then charged as a lump sum payment, to downplay its successful financial position. That was exposed at a tribunal. The company lost the case. It was exposed that it sought a tax deduction for payments amounting to £51.5 million. That is an absolute scandal. In many ways, the management of the industry has brought about its own demise. That needs to be put on the record and made straight.

We now need to look to the future. Montgomery has bought out Northcliffe Media and Iliffe News and Media in what amounted, I think, to a fire sale of those assets, but the staff of those groups are seeking to ensure that there is a long-term plan for security. Unfortunately, the negotiations on the TUPE transfer are being conducted at the moment at breakneck pace and it is very difficult for the staff to obtain clear answers to the many questions that are being put about contractual terms, long-term security and, in particular, the fate of their pension entitlements. What could be seen as a good initiative could falter because of the failure to engage with other stakeholders and, in particular, with the staff via the NUJ.

We can report similar experiences elsewhere. There is the outsourcing from Media Scotland-Trinity Mirror. Two thousand jobs have gone from the Welsh media industry in the past decade. In Northern Ireland, Johnston Press has made cutbacks overall. That is the bleak picture, but we could have confidence. I share the view expressed by the hon. Member for Burton: this is not about subsidising, but about supporting and investing for the long term.

The Minister has taken a particular interest in this issue in opposition and since he has transferred into the ministerial car. As a result, I think, of one of these debates, he convened a meeting of proprietors and editors to have a discussion on getting a long-term strategy developed. I was really disappointed that only one turned up. That showed disrespect not just to the Government and the Minister but to all the other stakeholders in the industry. I would follow the path recommended by the hon. Member for Burton. I urge us to reconvene the meeting. It can be called a seminar, brainstorming session or whatever. We need to get the proprietors and editors round a table. We would want to ensure that the representatives of the employees—the NUJ—were there, as well as any others who had an interest in the matter. It would be useful to have representatives of other Departments at the table to consider what role they can play in investing in, not subsidising, the industry in the long term. We can tap into the creativity that is out there.

Let us say that we do convene the meeting and it is hosted by the Government. I hope that it would be on a cross-party basis, because that was the nature of the attempts that the previous Government made. That would not just demonstrate seriousness but show that there would be a long-term approach to the issue, whoever is in government. We need to make it clear in the debate today and other sources that if that meeting is convened, we expect the owners and proprietors to attend and to take it seriously. Otherwise, they do not just disrespect Government and the parties in this House, they also let down whole communities that rely on their local newspaper for the reporting of local news and, as the hon. Member for Burton said, for the holding to account of those in power. I therefore urge the Minister to try again. Let us try again on a cross-party basis to get people round a table to develop a longer-term strategy for the industry, which we all desperately want to succeed.

[Mr Jim Hood (in the Chair)]

Order. I will start calling the Front-Bench speakers at 3.40 pm. I have four hon. Members on my list of speakers. If hon. Members are reasonable with their time, we should be able to manage that. The next speaker is Glyn Davies.

15:06

[Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

Thank you for calling me to speak, Mr Hood. I should apologise immediately for being late and not hearing the first seven or eight minutes of the debate. I am therefore very grateful to be called. I was thinking about what I was going to say when you called me. You did so rather earlier than I expected. That probably serves me right for being—

[Mr Vaizey]

My hon. Friend will have to be spontaneous.

[Glyn Davies]

What I say is probably always spontaneous.

I wanted to make a contribution because local newspapers are incredibly important in mid-Wales, where I live. The main reason for that is the retraction of the broadcast media; clearly, there has been financial pressure on the BBC in particular. They have withdrawn from the level of coverage in mid-Wales that I think we reasonably deserve. Now, the whole democratic basis, which has been a significant part of this debate, depends on our local newspapers. It depends on the County Times, which is a key weekly paper, the Shropshire Star, the Advertiser and the Cambrian News in the west. Without those newspapers, local issues simply would not be aired at all.

I want to give a couple of examples. The biggest local impact is that of onshore wind farms, whether we agree or disagree with them as individuals. They desecrate the whole area, and without the local newspaper campaign, the issue simply would not have engaged the local community anything like as much as it has. The whole of mid-Wales is part of that massive campaign, and we depend on the local newspapers to help us deliver it.

Last week, there was another issue. The local health trust has suddenly increased the waiting time for elective surgery from 26 weeks—in Wales it is 26 weeks; in England it is 18—to 36 weeks. The local population would not know that if it were not for the local newspaper. Local newspapers are therefore crucial in delivering the information that we need.

A point that I want to make briefly, without developing it, is about the concerns of local newspapers about the impact of our discussions on Lord Justice Leveson’s report. Most of us would agree that it has very little relevance to local newspapers, but there is massive concern about what bureaucracy it might deliver to those organisations. Many local newspapers are close to the brink in their financial liability. We will have to be very careful about any great increase in the bureaucracy that is needed to comply with new rules and regulations that apply to national newspapers. Great damage could be caused in our attempt to do good.

My final point will reinforce one made by my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths), who secured the debate. It is about how we can ensure that local authorities and Government try to channel much of their spend on delivering information, which is right and proper, through local newspapers. Powys county council—I am not being critical of what it is doing—is desperately keen to have everyone know what is happening within the council. That is right and proper, but it seems to me that if it were inventive and channelled that information through the local newspaper, by engaging someone who would almost be a dedicated reporter, would be a cheaper and more effective way of engaging with people. Almost nobody looks at the stuff the council puts out; it is very professional and very good, but it does not actually deliver what people want, and the same may apply to information campaigns by the national Government. We need inventive ways of transferring that spend so that it supports local newspapers.

15:09

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths) for securing a debate on this issue, which is unusual in that there is pretty much a consensus on it across the House—clearly, there is an issue about the ongoing demise of regional and local newspapers.

Members will not be surprised to hear that I am going to start by talking about my local newspaper, the Sunderland Echo, which is one of the oldest in the country, having started in 1873. It is still a daily paper, although it no longer has three editions a day or area editions. That, in itself, is a dramatic change to the way in which the paper has operated, and that has all happened in the past 10 or 15 years.

The paper is, however, still a hugely important part of our life in Sunderland; it is the main communicator of news to the people who live in my city, informing them, keeping them up to date with what is going on and entertaining them. That is particularly true of elderly people. Although, as has been said, some elderly people have engaged with, and embraced, the internet, many have not, and many in my constituency cannot afford the facilities to do so. For those people, particularly if they are housebound, getting the local paper of a night keeps them in touch with what is happening in not only the city, but their local community. That is an important part of what the Sunderland Echo does.

Over the years, the Sunderland Echo has been at the forefront of campaigns to secure things for our city. Ten years ago, it led a campaign to secure funding to provide ongoing support for the Durham miners’ gala. The gala is one of the most famous trade union days in the country, and more than 100,000 people turn up to it in July every year. There is not a mine left in the Durham coalfield, but the gala is about history, tradition and a good day out for the people of the area. More recently, the local paper has led a campaign to secure a children’s hospice, which is now being built in my constituency.

Those are important things, but there are also the much smaller issues, such as appealing for information when there are road traffic accidents or when things go missing. The national newspapers simply would not engage in such communication, but it is important.

[Andrew Griffiths]

Does the hon. Lady agree that local newspapers are a catalyst in raising millions of pounds every year for good causes and local charities?

[Julie Elliott]

Yes, absolutely. The children’s hospice I mentioned is funded entirely from donations and is set up as a charity. The work done by local newspapers on such issues is hugely important.

The problems faced by my local paper, however, are massive. As I said, the number of editions has gone down, but we still have a daily paper, which I am keen to keep going. So many dailies have moved to being weeklies, and that is when we lose the real link with local communities, because what a weekly paper provides is very different from what a daily paper provides.

The rise of the internet has been a threat. Although I look at the news on the internet, I like to read a newspaper as well—the two are not mutually exclusive. The loss of advertising revenue has also caused massive problems, as has the loss of readership—people cannot afford to buy newspapers when their price is going up all the time. Those losses have impinged on the quality of newspapers in some areas.

Most recently, the Sunderland Echo has suffered significant job cuts. It is owned by Johnston Press, which is doing its best in difficult and challenging circumstances. However, since the summer, we have lost 13 jobs in sub-editing and design. Significantly, we have also lost the printing press. Our paper was printed in Sunderland until the beginning of November, as it had been for the entire time it had existed. Sadly, the printing has now moved to South Yorkshire, which is two and a half to three hours away by car. People might think, “Well, the paper’s still being printed,” but 83 jobs have gone, and such changes also have an impact on the quality of the newspaper. Previously, the deadline was on the morning the paper was printed, but if it takes three hours to take the paper somewhere, the deadlines go back, and the freshness of the stories declines. I totally understand the economic arguments for that rationalisation, but it undoubtedly has an impact on the paper.

Local papers are some of the most popular printed materials. Some 33 million people read local papers every week, which is a huge number. There are 1,100 regional newspapers, although that is significantly down on where we were even two or three years ago, never mind 10 years ago. Local papers are a large employer, employing 30,000 people, and that is quite apart from the value they add in terms of the people working in newsagents and other things related to newspapers.

As colleagues have said, local newspapers are a good training ground for journalists. Many quite prominent journalists on national papers started their careers in local papers.

[Andrew Griffiths]

The hon. Lady makes an important point about local newspapers. Most corner shops and newsagents are under pressure, and newsagents get 27% of their income from the sale of newspapers and magazines, but that will be lost if we lose our local newspapers.

[Julie Elliott]

Absolutely. I could not agree more. I always try to buy my local paper in my local shop, and not in supermarkets, which have a much broader range of products to sustain them.

Sunderland has a university with a large, well-respected media department. When people leave, some go straight into the national media, and we get a lot on to national training programmes, but many like to go into local news, because it is almost an apprenticeship in the art of journalism. People learn how to investigate properly and how to communicate properly with people. If they go to a national, they will get the very small stories, but in a local paper they have the opportunity to pick up anything they hear about living among the people they write for. That will all be lost if the demise of local papers continues.

We must remember that once papers go, they rarely come back, so we must do everything we can to secure what we have. Local papers are too important to our communities to lose. I cannot imagine how people in Sunderland would find the information they need to go about their daily lives if we did not have the local newspaper. We must do all we can to save papers such as the Sunderland Echo and the others that have been mentioned.

I wholeheartedly support what colleagues have said about an initiative to bring Departments together. There are things the Government can do, and statutory notices, which have been mentioned, are a hugely important part of local papers’ funding. There must be other things we and the Government can look at to try to secure the future of local newspapers. I might have a different view on subsidies from the hon. Member for Burton, but in this case, the value of something that is partly a service, rather than just a business, must sometimes be taken into account when looking at imaginative ways of doing the things that central and local government do in any case, to help keep local papers as they are.

15:18

[Simon Danczuk (Rochdale) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths) for securing this important debate, and I am more than happy to put on record that he made an excellent speech.

I had not intended to speak about my local newspaper, but I cannot help feeling that a precedent has been set. I now feel obliged to talk at some length about the Rochdale Observer and the Manchester Evening News. They are both part of Trinity Mirror group, which I would argue is one of the fairer and more balanced publishers in the United Kingdom.

The reporting on the Rochdale Observer is second to none: community news, local sport, profiling of businesses and events. Its features on the history of Rochdale are fantastic, and the excellent recipes by a local restaurateur, Andrew Nutter, are spot on; I have attempted some of them on occasion and failed miserably. There is a great variety of news, stories and features for people to enjoy, and that must be celebrated. However, the paper also brings national news to local level. It provides a review of regional and sub-regional news, but what it does best, obviously, is provide news for the town—down to district level, whether in Littleborough, Milnrow or Newhey. It provides real focus, even to street level on occasion.

Most importantly, the role that the paper plays in democracy should not be underestimated. We occasionally talk about the editor of the Rochdale Observer, Gerry Sammon, as Rochdale’s answer to Rupert Murdoch, which is a little unfair as he is much more reasonable, amiable and friendly than that—and very fair. The paper provides scrutiny of the council, MPs and other private and public organisations. It is the people’s champion in Rochdale, giving local people a voice. Like my colleagues I buy the paper every week, and always turn first to the letters pages, to see what Rochdalians have to say about the events of the day. The paper also gives support to campaigns. The hon. Member for Burton mentioned charitable work, which is important, and the Rochdale Observer does that; but it runs other campaigns too. One was about shopping locally. It was a fantastic campaign to urge Rochdalians to shop in the town centre and make the most of it.

The paper has also harnessed technology—something that has been touched on in the debate. The newspaper is published twice weekly but the website provides breaking news on an hourly basis. It also provides wider reach to people who might not pick up the newspaper. As to social media the paper has embraced Twitter exceptionally well. I follow Twitter when I am in Parliament; I follow Chris Jones, one of the local government journalists on the paper, who tweets from the full council meeting, so I can find out instantly what is going on there.

[Mr Vaizey]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman does not mind me intervening on his speech, and I welcome him to the Chamber as a new Member of Parliament. On the subject of digital media and local newspapers, is he aware that when I tried to get a link to him and his campaign priorities the Rochdale website does not take me to the page? Does he agree that he must impress on Rochdale’s Rupert Murdoch the need to maintain links to news stories about the new local MP?

[Simon Danczuk]

Absolutely. The message will have been received, I have no doubt. I will check Twitter shortly after I sit down to see whether the paper has picked up on that point.

[John McDonnell]

A ministerial instruction.

[Simon Danczuk]

That ministerial instruction is extremely helpful and I appreciate it.

I was talking about the usefulness of being able to follow Twitter and see what is going on in Rochdale council meetings; but I have another example. Deborah Linton, a journalist on the Manchester Evening News is tweeting about the autumn statement to the people of Greater Manchester—taking politics out to people so that they can follow it and see what is going on. While I am talking about journalists I will mention Jennifer Williams, who works for the Manchester Evening News, and the recent Cyril Smith scandal. She has pursued that story and written well about it on several occasions. There is still excellent journalism—even if it is under the cosh, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) pointed out.

I want to mention Leveson briefly. If the national press had followed local press standards there is no doubt that we would not be in the position we are in now. The Rochdale Observer is always quick to make amends if there are inaccuracies in reports. It completely adheres to the requirements of the Press Complaints Commission. It is unfortunate that a small number of national journalists and press organisations have brought the industry into disrepute.

The people of Rochdale are immensely proud of their Rochdale Observer. I know that the Manchester Evening News, the Rochdale Observer and Trinity Mirror are opposed to statutory regulation, but I still feel that we need some statutory stick with which to push the media to behave themselves and get their house in order.

15:25

[Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths) and agree wholeheartedly not only with what he said but with the solutions that he suggested. It is a question not of subsidy but of support and of channelling effort into local newspapers. The local press is vital to all of us. It is our means of communication with our constituents and our way of finding out what goes on in the world. We cannot have a big enough office staff to tell us everything that is going on in Grimsby or Rochdale. We need the local press, and it is central to local democracy.

It is sad, therefore, the local press being weakened. Three processes are bringing that about. The first is the closure of local newspapers. In the past seven years, 20% have closed down. Another is the fact that many have gone weekly, rather than daily. That happened, for instance, to the Halifax Courier, the Huddersfield Examiner, and the Scunthorpe Telegraph. That has been done, really, as a way of screwing up the rate of return. It is going to be a favourite tactic of David Montgomery and Local World. Journalists are fired and costs are cut, and the rate of profit goes up with a weekly paper.

Thirdly, there is the firing of journalists. It is interesting that the Northcliffe group, which in 2010 employed 3,130 people in its local papers, this year employs only 2,450. That reduction, by hundreds, in the number of journalists all over the country weakens the quality of the local press. That is the inevitable effect, because the senior journalists, who are the best paid, are the ones who are made redundant or pushed out. Juvenile staff—untrained, semi-trained or inadequately trained young journalists—are brought in and paid less. That means that photographs are not taken, and courts, councils and general local affairs are not covered.

[Eric Joyce (Falkirk) (Ind)]

It occurs to me that some large newspaper organisations, such as the Johnston Press—The Falkirk Herald, the original Johnston Press newspaper, is in my constituency—are getting rid of editors in some cases. Does he agree that that does not seem like a good idea, either?

[Austin Mitchell]

I agree absolutely. More importantly to us, and to local democracy, what is happening means that there is no inquiry into local power elites, which can be closer and more tightly knit than central power elites, which are the subject of a good deal of inquiry from the national press. Scandals are therefore not unearthed. I remind that House that it was the Bradford Telegraph and Argus in its vigorous and more campaigning younger days that unearthed the Poulson scandal and brought it to national attention—first the attention of Private Eye and then the attention of national newspapers. That was a local newspaper unearthing a local scandal, which would have gone unknown had it not been for its diligent inquiries. Those inquiries are not made any longer. The newspapers have not the staff to do them. Their coverage is all too often in the form of press releases and handouts from interested parties, pressure groups and business, rather than inquiring journalism. That will mean a less adequate democracy, less information and a less informed public. It will also mean the breakdown of training schemes such as the Northcliffe schemes.

We know why all this is happening. Adverts are being diverted on to the internet and their number is down, because of the recession. It is also because the management of the newspapers have been far too greedy. The chief executive of Newsquest is paid more that £500,000 in annual salary, when journalists are paid £21,000 on average. It is scandalous that such highly paid management are firing journalists all over the country to cut costs, which also cuts the quality of local newspapers. Newsquest staff have not had a pay rise for three of the past four years. Executive remuneration at the Johnston Press is £2.5 million, but its losses for 2011 are registered as £144 million—the management are well paid for running a major loss.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) gave the example of Yattendon Holdings, the controlling group of Iliffe News and Media. It was involved in a tax scam, which Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs eventually closed up. Anthony Morton, the Yattendon Holdings finance director, said frankly in an e-mail to the company’s accountants:

“What we would like to do is to be able to reduce reported profits in the newspaper subsidiaries, since the levels of profit become common knowledge”—

as they should—

“and could lead to union claims.”

That is absolutely scandalous.

The attempt to get a high rate of return has led to the firing of journalists and the deterioration of quality. Nothing sells local papers better than good-quality journalism and good-quality reporting of local issues and local people, but it has been cut back, and the result all over is falling circulation of local newspapers. If Local World is going to make more of its newspapers weekly, it will happen all over the country.

I must of course mention the Grimsby Telegraph—formerly the Grimsby Evening Telegraph—which has done a good job of maintaining quality in the face of the difficulties and the economies that have been forced upon it. It is now printed in Peterborough and has to be hauled to Grimsby, which means it is later with the news than it otherwise would be, but it has still done a good job of maintaining profits and local quality. It is a good example, and I hope that it will not suffer cutbacks under the new group. A more spectacular example is the Cleethorpes Chronicle, which was formed by local journalists, many of them from the Grimsby Telegraph, as a weekly paper in Cleethorpes, Grimsby’s neighbouring town. It is now profitable because it provides good information, good local journalism and good coverage of local issues in Cleethorpes— not Grimsby.

The founding of a local paper is an example of what local initiative can do. If run on a local basis, local papers can still be profitable, and they are profitable. As the hon. Member for Burton said, they are a way to encourage local initiatives and companies, and they can be financed, if necessary, through the regional growth fund as a vital part of local regeneration. We cannot develop a place and support its industries and economy without a local newspaper. I agree with all the other solutions that the hon. Gentleman put forward.

I hope that we will hear from the Minister what can be done. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington that we must try to reconvene the meeting he mentioned. We need a national meeting of the newspaper chains, with all parties represented, to devise a strategy for local newspapers in the years ahead. Something has to be done. They cannot be allowed to drift downhill in the way they have been.

15:34

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood. I extend my congratulations to the hon. Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths). I know that he has an exceptionally beautiful constituency, because once upon a time I applied to be the Labour candidate there. I am sure that we will take it back from him—notwithstanding the good speech he made this afternoon.

Many hon. Members have pointed to the great importance of local newspapers to local communities. That is partly because such newspapers hold democratic institutions—councils and health authorities—to account and report on courts. If local newspapers are not there, no one will do that vital work. It is also partly about building local identities. Notwithstanding whatever marvellous local newspapers hon. Members have, none could be better than the inestimable Teesdale Mercury. Like The Northern Echo, which has run some extremely successful campaigns—it is running campaigns against the cuts from the Department for Education as we speak—it is a fantastic local newspaper.

We have consensus over the importance and significance of local newspapers, but these are challenging times. Circulation of local newspapers has fallen in every year since 2005 and it is difficult for the newspapers to deal with the secular trends. The move to the web is obviously a major structural challenge, not only in terms of people getting their news from the web, Twitter, social media and so forth, but due to the very significant loss in advertising revenue from people advertising on websites—to my mind somewhat foolishly. If someone has a piano to sell, for example, it is much better to advertise in the local newspaper, because somebody who is near enough to come and collect it might decide to buy it.

There are secular trends and background issues, but, as my hon. Friends the Members for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) pointed out, the behaviour of some of the large newspaper chains has not helped the situation. One problem has been that they were looking for rates of return that were simply not sustainable. Twenty years ago, some local newspapers were making 30%, so the big international chains, which my hon. Friends mentioned, borrowed money from the banks to buy more newspapers. They promised the banks that those huge returns, which I shall set in context, would continue.

Last year, Johnston Press made a 12% return before tax. In any other area of economic life, 12% would be a fantastic return. Compare it to Tesco, the most successful retailer in Britain—from a profit point of view—which made 6%. The reason the newspaper industry is in a mess is because its business model requires it to keep paying masses of interest to the banks. That is why they are stripping out the assets, stripping out the quality journalism, which my hon. Friends mentioned, and getting rid of the printing presses, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) described, all of which reduces the quality.

I support hon. Members who called for a meeting to discuss the issues, because we need to look constructively at financial models that reflect economic realities. The economic reality is that they are making 12% and people want to buy their local newspaper, but the finances have been messed up—to put it as politely as possible.

I shall turn to the proposals in Lord Justice Leveson’s report. The Minister has been involved in recent negotiations between the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and the newspaper editors, so I wish to ask him a couple of questions about how the negotiations are coming along. Across the parties, we are agreed that, after the tragic treatment of the Dowlers and the McCanns and the scandals uncovered by Lord Justice Leveson, we need to move to a new system. We are agreed that we need independent self-regulation, but the Opposition have yet to persuade the Government that that should be underpinned by statute. Lord Justice Leveson has set out how that might be done.

I hope that the Minister will not suggest that the independent self-regulation he wants will be less burdensome than the statutory backing that we are looking for because, if I may say so, that would undermine the Government’s case that the independent self-regulation they are negotiating with newspaper editors will be sufficiently tough. In this discussion, let us not pretend that statutory underpinning would have a significantly different economic impact on regional newspapers. I remind hon. Members, who may not have read all 4,000 pages of the Leveson report—

[Andrew Griffiths]

Two thousand.

[Helen Goodman]

In thousands of pages, Lord Leveson has proposed that when newspapers that have joined the independent body are sued for defamation, they should first go to a simple arbitration system—that would be much less burdensome for people than going to court—and, in such cases, newspapers would have the advantage of lower costs, as would the victims who were seeking redress. Signing up to the system would therefore reduce the cost of fighting defamation cases for newspapers, which is the incentive for them to join it.

The quid pro quo that Lord Leveson has suggested is that, for the new arbitration system to be regarded as valid, the new independent self-regulator must be truly independent and must follow certain criteria. We are agreed that we do not want the new regulator to be particularly bureaucratic or burdensome. As we have heard, although such newspapers as the Teesdale Mercury are owned by individuals, others are part of large chains that have resources. We need to attend to that argument, but it is not a clincher.

It is reasonable to consider whether fines should be proportionate to turnover, rather than the Daily Mail being given the same fine as the Teesdale Mercury, which is plainly not sensible. We should look at that, as we should at having less bureaucracy. We also need to consider the possibility raised in The Observer at the weekend about whether, within the Leveson framework, local newspapers might have a different independent self-regulator. I do not know whether that is a good idea, but it should be explored in the cross-party talks.

Will the Minister agree that independent self-regulation is not a punishment? It is not about punishing people, but about setting up a stable new system that will balance the importance of a free press with the need for a proper system of redress for victims. I hope that he will also confirm that whether or not we have statutory underpinning is irrelevant to how bureaucratic the new system is, and that we are all looking to have as unbureaucratic a system as possible.

Finally, to return to previous discussions about local newspapers, I do not think we have yet heard the Government’s view on traffic notices. I am sure that the Minister will recall that utilities and local authorities are currently required to put notices about digging up the roads into local newspapers, which is a major source of income for some of them. There has been some concern about the suggestion that those notices should move to the web, meaning that that income would fall.

I again congratulate the hon. Member for Burton on securing this debate. I was pleased to hear my hon. Friends’ analysis of the situation, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s answers to my questions.

15:40

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

It is a delight to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood.

I thank all hon. Members for their participation in this important debate and my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths) for securing it. It encapsulates both the threat to and the opportunity for local newspapers that, as each hon. Member spoke, I was able to visit their local newspaper website to see what they have been up to and the quality of the local newspapers they extolled. For example, I was impressed that the Burton Mail has already reported this debate. It reported my hon. Friend’s remarks on Monday—it is a telepathic, future-gazing newspaper. I do not want to get involved in local newspaper politics, but it seems to leave the Uttoxeter Advertiser in the dust. However, its report of the Christmas lights being turned on—not by my hon. Friend, but by the mayor—recorded my hon. Friend’s attendance in suitably deferential fashion.

I shall move on to what the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) said about cross-party talks on the future of regional newspapers, but I must correct—I do not know how to put this in parliamentary terms, Mr Hood—what was a factual inaccuracy. The hon. Gentleman said that I had moved from Opposition to a ministerial car. I have never had, do not have and will never have a ministerial car, because it is important that Departments save money, and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has halved its ministerial budget.

My hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies) made a suitably spontaneous speech. I am not sure that he praised the Shropshire Star, so let me do so for him. I notice that its editorial backed him strongly on a matter of recent controversy. The hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) mentioned the Sunderland Echo, which is also a fine newspaper. Even though she has been in the House for only two and a half years, she has already racked up almost 300 entries on its website.

Although I welcomed the hon. Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) to the Chamber, I pointed out that he must engage more closely with the digital strategy of his local paper, the Rochdale Observer. Despite the “page not found” message, I at least picked up that he is making the town centre his priority. I was also pleased, in relation to another part of my brief, that Rochdale is looking to create a cultural quarter. If there is anything I can do to help him with that, I shall.

I would have praised the Grimsby Telegraph were the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) still here—I gather that he has gone to meet his grandchildren, for which he apologised to me before he left—and I would have pressed him on his campaign to save Scartho baths. Finally, I can only endorse and agree with the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) about the quality of the Teesdale Mercury.

Given all that, it will not surprise hon. Members that I will talk about The Wantage and Grove Herald. It is an interesting quality of newspapers—I am sure that all hon. Members have had the same experience—that if I talk to my Conservative activists, they tell me that The Wantage and Grove Herald is run by the Liberal Democrats, and if I talk to the Liberal Democrat activists at civic functions, they tell me that it is run by the Conservative party. The Wantage and Grove Herald is, therefore, clearly doing its job.

I want to make a serious point, as I start the main body of my speech. At a time of economic austerity—we have talked about the perfect storm for local newspapers of facing a recession at the same time that the rise of new technology is completely disrupting their business models—Newsquest, which owns The Wantage and Grove Herald and its sister paper the Oxford Mail, has invested in new plants and machinery, and now prints a range of local papers, not just its own. The editor, Simon O’Neill, who now oversees several local papers, has always been keen to stress to me at our meetings that Newsquest continues to invest in local journalism. The organisation does not have the same number of bodies on the ground that it had when I became a candidate 10 years ago, which is an interesting snapshot of the rapid change that has come upon local newspapers. None the less, it is focused on maintaining the quality of its local journalism.

Let me briefly record some of the issues that the Government as a whole have considered. We have had several debates about local newspapers in the House since I have been the Minister. We also often debate—such debates are always well attended—any threats to local media, including to local newspapers or to BBC local radio, which were on the horizon a few months ago.

One of the first acts of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government was to revise the local publicity code. Hon. Members will be aware that more than 18 months ago that code was revised by delegated legislation to reduce the number of council free sheets. That was to ensure that the free sheets, which were becoming ever more sophisticated and which were financed by council tax payers, did not compete overtly with local newspapers. I have seen the change where I live in west London, which had a powerful local council newspaper. That now comes within the local newspaper as a free sheet and therefore now supports the local newspaper.

We also changed the local media ownership rules to ensure that there was a possibility of local newspaper groups looking across platforms as technology changed to try to remove the artificial silos that kept radio, television and newspapers apart. At a time of booming media, and without the internet, such controls were perfectly understandable, but when consolidation and the need to compete with the internet became a concern for the industry, it was important to get rid of those controls.

Local television will provide new opportunities for local media coverage. I am delighted to say that we have state aid clearance today—it happened just in time for this debate—which will go up on the Department for Culture Media and Sport website as we speak.

The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland mentioned traffic notices. I note that the Department for Transport consultation closed in April, but it has, in the run-up to this debate, been unable to update us on how it will deal with the thorny issue of, on the one hand, wanting to save councils’ money and, on the other, not wanting to undermine the financial support on which local newspapers depend, because they depend to a certain extent on public notices.

I want to take up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Burton—the central thesis of his debate was that Government should co-ordinate more closely in support of local newspapers—and the point made by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington in referring to the meeting that we sought to have with local newspaper owners. I will not share the language of the hon. Gentleman, but I did note with interest that only Johnston Press took up the invitation to attend that meeting. More than 50 hon. Members also turned up, so local newspapers and local newspaper owners cannot complain about a lack of interest or support from the House of Commons and Parliament, which is an important point to make.

Some people might not have turned up at the meeting for fear of getting a bit of a bashing; they might have been bashed about their salaries because it would probably have been at chief executive level, or about job cuts. In reality, the meeting was very constructive because it enabled Johnston Press to explain its strategy and how it was accommodating the digital revolution and investing in local websites and how it wanted to continue with a print strategy, and it enabled local Members to express their views. I think, dare I say it in the privacy of this Chamber—obviously no one will be reporting this debate—that local Members of Parliament are very good sources of advice; they know their area and their constituents and they are avid readers of their local newspaper, so it is possible to get feedback.

I will certainly take up the idea of a dual invitation, and consider it over Christmas and the new year. It will bring together Ministers from relevant Departments and local newspaper companies. I will happily discuss with my hon. Friend which Departments he thinks would be worth engaging with. I hasten to say that, having worked for the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, his contacts with certain Departments are much better than mine. I am happy to convene that meeting on a cross-party basis. I try to conduct quite a lot of my work in that way because many of these issues go across the parties; we all have an interest in securing the future of local newspapers. It will be important to have a constructive discussion.

Most Members and the proprietors who attend the meeting will start with the basic principles that these are private companies making their own way in the world, but which, at the same time, have a very important role in local communities. It is, therefore, perfectly proper and valid for Ministers and Members of Parliament to come together to discuss their future and see what can be done to make a difference. It is important, though, that the future of local newspapers rests primarily with local newspapers.

My hon. Friend made an important point about Local World. Look at how local radio is adapting to the current world. It remains local but offers advertisers a national deal. A national company goes through one gateway and gets local coverage, but it does not have to deal with 30 different local radio stations. Similarly, it must be right that local newspapers, subject to competition law and other important aspects, are able to come together to make one offer to national companies which can then do a local advertising campaign but on a national basis.

Finally, I come to the issue of the Leveson report. It is certainly in the Leveson report, and echoed by the reaction of all of us to the Leveson report, that regional and local newspapers are different from the national press. My local editor has made that point time and again, saying, “Please do not tar us with the same brush.”

I welcome what the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland said about the Leveson report. It is important that we continue the cross-party talks. She raised the issue of whether fines should be based on turnover, which was an encapsulation of why it is important to have a discussion and to sort out the important details. I was not clear whether she was saying that there should a separate independent regulator for local newspapers, but I certainly echo her point that this regulator is not a punishment but a recognition that the previous system did not work. As the Prime Minister and my hon. Friend the Secretary of State have said time and again, the status quo is not an option. I certainly hear what she says about statutory underpinnings being irrelevant to whether any regulator is bureaucratic.

The Society of Editors was present at the round table meeting that was convened by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and attended by the Prime Minister, and it was certainly an important part of the debate. The national press is moving quickly. It has heard the message loud and clear. I can only say, based on reports on The Guardian website—if it is in The Guardian it must be true—that it sounds like the talks at the meeting of national editors this morning were very constructive.

The debate has certainly been timely. I notice in The Burton Mail, which has telepathic powers, that we will have a debate on this matter in the main Chamber at some point, driven by my hon. Friend the Member for Burton. The debate has encapsulated the fact that all hon. Members are passionate about their local papers. They recognise their place in the local community and in our local democracy. We want to work together with local newspapers to explore their future. The Government will consider how they can help, but I hasten to add that there is no prospect of our writing cheques for local newspapers, and that is not something that local newspapers would want in the first place. We also need to consider how local Members can feed back and engage with such newspaper groups about how they are changing and adapting to the digital environment.

BBC (Parliamentary Oversight)

Wednesday 5th December 2012 Westminster Hall

15:59

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Hood, for calling me to speak. It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship.

I am grateful to have this opportunity to bring this debate to the Chamber. It comes at a time when many people up and down the country are thinking and talking about media regulation. It also comes against a backdrop of shocking allegations, first against commercial media outlets and then against our own public service broadcaster. 2012 has been a dire year for the BBC, and the recent child abuse allegations levelled against BBC stars has been described as

“the worst crisis to hit the corporation for 50 years.”

None of us knows the full details of what has happened, and I have no desire to dwell on the allegations, but we do know that the BBC—like many nationalised institutions—lacks accountability to the public. I believe that we, as Members of Parliament, should now force the BBC to become more accountable.

When I was first elected, I wrote a series of parliamentary questions about the BBC and took them to the Table Office, only to learn that we MPs do not have the power to scrutinise the BBC. We have the right to ask about the property portfolio of the Church of England through Church Commissioners questions, but not the right to ask questions about our national state broadcaster. That must change.

I have no problem with the BBC Trust being the governing body of the BBC, but I believe that there must be some oversight by MPs. It has often been said in this House, and in wider public debate, that transparency and accountability improve public services. I believe that applies to the BBC as much as it does to any other state institution. In this debate, therefore, I am calling for several things. The first is that the director-general’s appointment should be confirmed by the House of Commons. Clearly we would have to devise a system to do that. Perhaps it could be done by a vote of the whole House, or through a special panel or committee. I am agnostic about the system, but I think the principle is vital. The director-general is an important public figure who wields huge power in this country, and it must be the duty of Parliament to ensure that the candidate is the right choice for both the BBC and the country, while the BBC has to accept that this appointment is one the most significant public sector appointments, and act accordingly.

Secondly, MPs should have the right to table parliamentary questions to the BBC and the BBC should have a duty to answer them. I do not mind if those answers are only written answers; the important thing is that we can bring in greater openness. Obviously, answering questions would have a cost associated with it, but I believe that that cost is a small price to pay for greater accountability.

Thirdly, the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport should have regular insight into the actions of both the BBC and the BBC Trust. That should be formalised into a system, rather than meetings being held on an ad hoc basis. I believe that those three proposals, implemented together, would restore public confidence in the BBC, and as a result the BBC, Parliament and the media environment would all be enhanced.

Let us make no mistake—the BBC is a vital part of British life. Yet how it works seems to be opaque, and its leadership seems to be distant. I would like to see the day when disgruntled members of the public can come to see their MP and feel that their problems can be dealt with when they ask questions about the BBC. Similarly, I want people to understand fully how the BBC works, and for people to feel engaged with the process.

[Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. He talks about the need for the BBC to be more accountable. I am currently chairman of the all-party BBC group and I am aware that the BBC, through the director-general and the chairman of the BBC Trust, already frequently appear in front of Select Committees. They also have a monthly drop-in session in Parliament. In addition, the all-party BBC group itself has meetings with the chairman of the BBC Trust, which are open to all MPs and peers to attend. How does my hon. Friend see the current systems marrying in with the systems of accountability that he has mentioned?

[David Morris]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I would like to see a meeting that takes place once a month, just to discuss the mechanisms of the BBC itself. I believe that what is already there is helpful but it is not actually accountable, and accountability is what I would like to see. I thank my hon. Friend also for all his hard work as the chairman of the all-party BBC group.

Similarly, I want people to understand fully how the BBC works and to feel engaged with the process. I should say at this stage that my proposals would not put politicians in charge of the BBC; that is the last thing that I want to see. I have no desire for Parliament to be in editorial control. In fact, I have spent a great deal of time thinking of practical measures that would bring openness and oversight without censorship and control.

I also note that my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) introduced a ten-minute rule Bill on 21 November demanding that the BBC publish all spending over £500. That is an excellent idea and I firmly believe that it should be implemented. All local authorities now publish their spending, and the cost of doing that has been minimal. Most local authorities began publishing spending details long before they were forced to by the Government, so why should the BBC wait for legislation on this issue? It should publish this information now. I am sure that if it did so, my hon. Friend would feel not that the BBC had stolen his thunder but rather that it had done the right thing without the need for legislation. Such a move would create greater transparency with little more than the stroke of a pen. Why should the BBC be afraid of the public seeing this information?

I also believe that, as part of disclosure, the BBC should publish all salaries over £100,000, giving the public the ability to debate those salaries and judge whether they represent good value for money. One example is the high salary of Mark Thompson, the former director-general. In his final year of employment with the BBC, he was paid £671,000. We are told that he was paid that amount because his job was a difficult one, and I am sure that it is. But is it five times harder than being Prime Minister, or three times more challenging than being the President of the United States? I am not convinced that it is, but in any case if all these salaries are published the public can decide. After all, this money is not the BBC’s money but taxpayers’ money, and we have a duty to let them know how it is spent.

As I said at the outset, 2012 has been a disaster for the British media. Many terrible allegations have been made. However, let us not just lament those problems; let us move on. This period of public interest is a real opportunity for change. The BBC refers to itself as “Auntie”—a lovable and dependable figure—but its trusted status cannot be boundless.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for proposing this debate and I congratulate him on securing it. Does he accept that the BBC has a great opportunity to make itself as open and transparent as so many other public bodies, which would send a strong message of good will and of doing the right thing in very difficult circumstances? Does he also agree that we need not wait either for any legislative changes or for any of the conclusions of the BBC’s internal report? As a strong friend and fan of the BBC, I must say that opening up would simply be doing the right thing.

[David Morris]

I thank my hon. Friend for expressing those sentiments. Actually, I was right at the end of my speech, and I am thankful to him for making his intervention because I could not have put what he just said more eloquently than he did. I commend him for that.

I think we all agree that the BBC has a position of trust and that it must be managed responsibly. As such, I hope that the BBC will welcome my proposals.

16:08

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

Thank you, Mr Hood, for calling me to speak. It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship for the second time today.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris) on securing this debate, and I thank him for providing the House with an opportunity to discuss—albeit briefly—parliamentary oversight of the BBC. I think that he only came in for the tail-end of the previous debate on local newspapers, in which I also spoke for the Government, so he may not get it when I say that I have not had time to look him up in his local newspaper on my tablet. However, I am sure that he would not miss an opportunity at some point to praise the work of his own local newspaper.

My hon. Friend made a valid and well judged speech, and he made it clear that there is almost universal support for the BBC in the House, and indeed in the country. However, that does not prevent anyone—particularly MPs—from bringing forward their concerns regarding the BBC, particularly about the oversight and scrutiny of the BBC and how it operates.

The BBC is a hugely important global institution, and its value to the UK not only as a content creator of the highest calibre but as a promoter of the UK’s values and culture cannot and should not be underestimated. In the context of recent events, which I will come to in a minute, it would be all too easy to forget the positive impact that the BBC has on a daily basis. For example, the BBC World Service, the world’s largest international broadcaster, provides services in 27 languages to about 180 million people worldwide, and the service’s future has been secured by its funding being incorporated within the BBC’s licence fee settlement.

[Alun Cairns]

I pay tribute to the Minister’s work in supporting and scrutinising the BBC. He has rightly highlighted the World Service’s excellent work. I see it as a positive step that funding for the service has been transferred from the Foreign Office to the BBC, but does the Minister agree that the situation is now somewhat inequitable, because when the funding was with the Foreign Office the National Audit Office had unrestricted access to the accounts but now the BBC Trust has to agree to the auditing of various elements of the service?

[Mr Vaizey]

It is important that the BBC World Service has an element of independence from Government, so the move was the right one to make. In addition, savings can be found by combining the budgets for domestic radio and the work of the World Service, for example in relation to the use of equipment and technicians. It was the right move in that it provided an effective settlement for the World Service at a time of economic austerity, but I hear my hon. Friend’s point about the National Audit Office and I will turn to that issue later—it comes up time and again.

I want to make clear this Government’s firm commitment to the long-standing principle, which is of the utmost importance, that the BBC must be independent of Government and of political intervention. The political independence of the media is a live subject both in the House and outside, so it is important to reiterate that principle. The political independence of all media is key to any healthy democracy, and the Government must always ensure that such independence is secured and, where possible, strengthened. Independence, however, does not mean that the BBC, or indeed any broadcaster, should be unaccountable for its actions. Because of the unique way in which it is funded and owned, the BBC should be accountable, and primarily to licence fee payers.

I shall put that remark in context. The BBC is a public corporation established by a royal charter and framework agreement, which sets out the role, responsibilities and governance of the BBC. Within the framework of that charter and agreement, the BBC is editorially and operationally independent of Government and, rightly, there is no provision for the Government to intervene in the BBC’s day-to-day activities.

The current BBC charter gives responsibility for the governance of the BBC to the BBC Trust. The duties of the trust, as enshrined in the charter, include representing licence fee payers, ensuring that the independence of the BBC is maintained and assessing the views of licence fee payers. We believe that those principles, alongside the others set out in the charter and agreement, provide a strong, open and transparent framework of accountability to licence fee payers.

We have recently reinforced the oversight of the BBC. During the last licence fee settlement we introduced new mechanisms to further strengthen the BBC’s financial accountability, and the National Audit Office is now empowered to conduct a value-for-money review of the BBC. We understand the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns). It is important that the National Audit Office works with the BBC, but it does have access to the BBC’s finances.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I think that many Members from across the House have welcomed the National Audit Office’s involvement, but there seems to be a disconnect between the audit that goes on at that office and the trust having a role in ensuring that there is some financial accountability. There seems to be a lack of expertise on the trust’s board with which to translate the audit information, or the understanding of it, into action.

I will give a brief example. The National Union of Journalists has, over the past week or two, pointed out that the cuts in the number of journalists and the outsourcing that have taken place have resulted in some of the BBC’s recent failings. In comparison, however, BBC management have collected £3 million in car allowances—even if they do not drive—£2 million in private health care and £4.7 million in golden goodbyes. The information provided by audit does not seem to be translated by the Trust into actions to control management expenditure.

[Mr Vaizey]

I hear what the hon. Gentleman says about the expertise of the BBC Trust. The way of dodging his point would be to say that that is a matter for the trust. It would not be right for me to interfere or to comment on appointments to the trust. The appointment process is independent and ensures that members of the trust are appointed without political interference. The chairman of the trust is appointed by the Secretary of State and the appointment is approved by the Prime Minister, but the hon. Gentleman should perhaps contact the chairman of the trust to raise his concerns and to explain why he feels that the trust is not doing enough to examine the BBC’s finances.

[Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

I worked for the BBC for nine years, so I speak from a position of experience. How does the Minister feel the chairman of the BBC Trust regarded MPs when he most recently stood before them in the Culture, Media and Sport Committee?

[Mr Vaizey]

I was not aware that my hon. Friend had worked for the BBC before entering the House of Commons. Given the qualifications of the BBC’s new director-general, who worked there and then left for an outside organisation, it seems inevitable that my hon. Friend will one day end up as director-general, once Tony Hall has served his term.

In a sense, the element of parliamentary oversight of the BBC—

[Mr Jim Hood (in the Chair)]

Order. I am sure that the Minister is just swivelling, but I am seeing too much of his back.

[Mr Vaizey]

I am so sorry, Mr Hood. I will address you.

On parliamentary accountability, it is true that the chairman of the BBC Trust and the acting director-general appeared before the Select Committee on 27 November. The previous director-general appeared on 23 October, and the director-general before that—that shows how fast things are moving—appeared on 19 June 2012. The BBC Trust appeared before the Public Accounts Committee on 22 November, and other BBC executives appeared before that Committee in July. Also, the BBC has made appearances over the past year or so before the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, the Lords Communications Committee, the Select Committee on Justice and the Administration Committee.

I think the chairman of the BBC Trust behaved in an appropriate fashion when he appeared before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee and answered its questions. He is a man of deep experience and robust views, and that Select Committee is capable of offering challenging points to him. Having known him for some time, I know he is capable of responding to those challenging points.

In addition to the BBC Trust and the new powers for the National Audit Office—again, those powers being to conduct a value-for-money review of the BBC, which is an important point of progress—the BBC is also subject to the regulatory oversight of Ofcom, which can sanction it for breaches of the broadcasting codes. That is, of course, with the exception of compliance with accuracy and impartiality, which are still matters for the trust.

Returning to parliamentary scrutiny, which is at the heart of the debate, the BBC charter sets out two mechanisms under which the appointment of the director-general can be made. It can be made by the BBC Trust, whereby the director-general shall also operate as chairman of the executive board, or by the chairman of the executive board, if that role is held by a non-executive appointed by the trust. At this time, we see little benefit of either the Government or Parliament having a role, whether through consultation or ratification, in the appointment of the director-general. Indeed, such a proposal has the potential to make the most important appointment at the BBC—a position that, as we know only too well from recent events, crucially includes the role of editor-in-chief—political, which could undermine the principles of an independent BBC.

That is not to say that Parliament should not have overview of a public institution as important as the BBC. Of course, we entirely support the right of Parliament to question the decisions made by the BBC and the trust, including in debates such as this one. In the past three months, senior BBC figures have appeared before at least two parliamentary Committees.

Finally, we recognise that it is necessary to put this debate in the context of recent events at the BBC, and most importantly of how the BBC responds to the significant loss of public confidence. We have been clear that the primary objective of the BBC Trust at this time must be to rebuild the public’s trust in the BBC, and I know that Lord Patten agrees. To that end, we have set out three things we believe the BBC Trust needs to achieve.

First, the immediate task must be to address the failings in the editorial process, particularly at “Newsnight”, in order to restore public confidence. The trust needs to act swiftly to ensure that the management and leadership issues are resolved and that the failings cannot be repeated. It is clear from what the interim director-general has said that the BBC is looking seriously at what went wrong, where responsibility lies and how to address the matter in the long term, and the Government welcome that.

Secondly, the trust must ensure that a strong and stable executive board is in place to manage the BBC. To that end, we welcome the appointment of Tony Hall as director-general of the BBC. He has a strong track record and extensive experience inside and outside the BBC, and it is important that he works hard to maintain public confidence in the corporation.

Thirdly, we must not lose sight of the inquiries into what is at the heart of these events. None of the developments in recent days should overshadow the investigations into the alleged horrendous abuse of children in institutions across our country. It is vital that the BBC responds correctly and decisively to the Pollard inquiry into the decision to drop the “Newsnight” item on Savile, and to the Smith inquiry on Savile’s abuses and the culture and practices of the BBC. We must wait until those investigations have concluded and consideration has been given to their findings. At this time, however, we see no evidence that suggests that greater oversight of the BBC by Parliament would have had any impact on recent events. Even if that case could be made, we must balance any benefits of such oversight against the impact on the BBC’s independence.

I reiterate that the chairman of the BBC Trust, regardless of how hon. Members regard his demeanour before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, did come to be questioned and examined by that Committee, as did the previous director-general.

We are all rightly proud of what a strong, independent BBC can achieve, and we should take the opportunity to preserve and strengthen those qualities for the good of all licence fee payers.

16:23

Sitting suspended.

Work Capability Reassessments

Wednesday 5th December 2012 Westminster Hall

16:30

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood. Everybody here is probably familiar with some of the issues relating to the employment and support allowance and the work capability assessment. Between the introduction of the assessment in October 2008 and August 2011, 1.15 million new claimants were assessed and 687,000 were declared fit for work. Of those, 102,500 successfully appealed their decision and were awarded ESA. That means that 9% of all ESA assessments have been overturned. When we look at assessments leading to fit-for-work decisions, the figure rises to 15%. Although the proportion of decisions overturned has started to fall, the overall number still remains extremely high.

Those figures do not include all the incapacity benefit claimants currently being migrated to ESA, a process that started last year and is due to be completed in 2014. The figures published recently cover claims only after appeals have been taken into account—they have been published on a different basis—so we have no data on how many claimants in the migration are originally declared fit for work and then appeal, and how many of those appeals are successful. Although that is not precisely the subject of this debate, I hope that the Minister will see to it that we have more comprehensive and comparable data in future.

The number of incorrect assessments and successful appeals is still high. Like many of my colleagues, I have been considering a number of different aspects of the issue. Earlier this year, I secured a debate here in Westminster Hall on the work capability assessment. On that occasion, I focused on the recommendations for new mental, intellectual and cognitive descriptors drawn up by Mencap, Mind and the National Autistic Society. Although the descriptors are certainly not the only issue that needs addressing, they could have gone a long way to improving the assessment process.

Professor Harrington approved and submitted the descriptors to the Department for Work and Pensions in spring 2011. It is frustrating that officials are only now getting down to assessing properly whether the descriptors would improve the WCA, and we will not get the results of that so-called gold standard review until next summer. There will have been more than two years of delay since the proposals were published.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I preface my remarks by thanking my hon. Friend for the work that she has done on the issue over a long period. Is her experience the same as mine? The largest number of constituents with whom I deal who have lost their benefits, and those with the most distressing cases, are those with mental health problems and those on the autistic spectrum.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. That is the case. There is a flaw in how the original test was drawn up if it is not accounting properly for those types of condition. That is why it needs to be examined.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

On that point, one of my constituents, a former careers adviser, had a breakdown that led to depression and panic attacks. He was assessed as fit for work—by a physiotherapist.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I thank my hon. Friend for contributing that example. We must look at such situations carefully.

The process of reviewing the new descriptors is finally under way—although I suspect that we will return to it in due course—so I will concentrate on appeals and the time between assessment and reassessment. One of the most common stories that I hear from constituents is that they are found fit for work, wait several months for an appeal, get ESA and are then called back for a further assessment, sometimes just weeks and often only two or three months later. That is one of the most visible flaws in how the system works.

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that not only is the waste of money enormous, given that so many are granted benefit on appeal, but that given all the cuts to citizens advice bureaux, it is difficult for people to get the right support going into a frightening tribunal situation?

[Sheila Gilmore]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. There is evidence that people who are represented are more likely to be successful than those who are unable to get representation.

That is the context for the issue of reassessment: the high volume of appeals means that people must wait long periods for a hearing and a decision. In answer to a written question last month, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) said:

“During the period 1 April to 30 June 2012 (the latest period for which data has been published) the average time taken from receipt of an ESA appeal by the SSCS Tribunal to disposal was 19 weeks”.—[Official Report, 19 November 2012; Vol. 553, c. 307W.]

However, that 19 weeks is not the average waiting time for an individual making an appeal but merely the average time it takes the Tribunals Service to process the appeal after it receives the papers. Before it even receives the papers, an appeal must be lodged with the DWP, the relevant decision maker has to perform a series of checks and the Department must prepare and submit its response.

There is no time limit for DWP to prepare its response to an appeal. In a written answer to a question from me in February this year, the then Justice Minister, the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly), indicated that between June 2010 and May 2011, the average time it took from the submission of an appeal to DWP to receipt of the papers by the Tribunals Service was 8.1 weeks. If we add that to the average of 19 weeks, we are looking at about 27 weeks. Over and above that, individuals will have submitted an application and undergone an assessment. In 2011, they had to wait seven weeks for the result of that assessment, although I know from talking to my colleagues that many people encounter much longer waits.

What does all that mean in practice? I raised an example during Prime Minister’s questions on 2 March last year. A constituent of mine had a young adult son who was severely autistic but had been found fit for work, and who appealed successfully. The process took 10 months, and he was told that he would have to be reassessed in six months. I do not think that the Prime Minister understood the question that I was asking; he gave me an answer about disability living allowance rather than employment and support allowance.

Before the Minister says, “That was then; that was 2011, and we have made so many improvements that it isn’t happening any more,” only two weeks ago, I visited a constituent whom I had not met before who told me a similar story of having applied, being refused and appealing, and who within a relatively short time had to go through another assessment.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is being generous with her time. Does she agree that it seems to be utter nonsense? There is a lack of understanding. If people have progressive illnesses or permanent conditions, they will not be any more fit for work in a few months’ time. It seems to be one of the absolute immoralities of the system that people who cannot ever work continue to be called back for reassessments.

[Sheila Gilmore]

That leads me neatly into my next point. I followed up with a written question, and the then Minister of State for the Department of Work and Pensions—now Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice—set out the official line, which is that the period between assessments is known as a prognosis time and is determined by the decision maker at the time when they decide whether someone is fit for work or should be given ESA. The clock starts ticking on the date of the original decision.

My immediate question is why someone found fit for work would be given a prognosis time in the first place. Hon. Members might think that that would not be necessary, because the assumption is that the person will be moving on to jobseeker’s allowance. The only reason that I can envisage for that is that prognosis times are, in effect, a precautionary measure in the event that if a claimant successfully appeals, as so many do, and is awarded ESA, a prognosis time is ready. But if the decision maker’s original determination that the claimant was fit for work is overturned, why should we put any faith in the corresponding determination on what the prognosis time should be? If the decision on a claimant’s being fit for work was wrong, surely one imagines that the decision on the prognosis time would be wrong.

It would make much more sense for those who are declared fit for work to be given no prognosis time and, in the event of a successful appeal, for the judges to be given a responsibility for settling the matter when making their new decision. If that is not thought possible, the prognosis times should only kick in after a successful appeal and should not start from the time of the original decision, because that is putting people on a rapid roundabout.

During the summer, my hopes were raised that the Government might have seen the contradictions in the current arrangements. In an interview for the BBC “Panorama” documentary in July 2011, the then Minister—now Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice—said,

“It’s been apparent to me in the last few months that we were calling people back too regularly and I’ve instructed the officials that operate the system to actually make sure that we leave a much more sensible gap in between the two.”

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Lady for being a champion of this cause. I have a staff member who looks after nothing else but ESA and DLA appeals, because of the volume of those coming in. That is one of my great concerns. For descriptors, they ask them, “Can you move the box from here to there?” or “Can you hold the pint of milk?” Those descriptors do not apply to blind people, to people with depression or to those with severe mobility and other issues. Does the hon. Lady feel that the Government could look upon this matter more favourably and ensure that people have a report from a general practitioner, the person who medically knows them best of all?

[Sheila Gilmore]

Without a doubt, that is one way that it could be done. The flaws of the system include whether people are able to present information, when it is accepted and how it is used.

It seemed that the former Minister at least was prepared to move in respect of people’s being called back too quickly. I put this issue to the new Minister at the Select Committee on Work and Pensions evidence session held on 21 November, but I did not get a particularly helpful response. The Minister said,

“There is the opportunity for the tribunal to make a recommendation”,

which suggests that the tribunal could do that, but he then said,

“When that recommendation is made, it is something that the decision maker should take into account. I think there is also an issue about at what point of time is the tribunal disputing DWP’s decision.”

Should they be looking at

“the point in time the decision was made, which could be nine months earlier…or is it based on what they saw on the day in the tribunal? So there is a lack of clarity there, but I think we should take a fairly clear view about when reassessments should take place, and it is an area that decision makers should work on.”

The Minister used a lot of words, but did not provide clarity about our making progress on this matter. He was far less clear than his predecessor talking on a television programme. That was disappointing. Perhaps the Minister will provide clarification when responding.

Can the judges suggest a different prognosis time? Are they given guidance as to when they should and should not set prognosis times? Do the Government collect statistical analysis of how often judges take up this option? If they are allowed to do so, they appear to exercise that ability rarely. At what point and how are decision makers brought back into the process once a fit-for-work decision has been overturned? If that happens, could a decision maker at that stage, as opposed to at appeal, suggest a new prognosis time, even if the judge has not taken up the option? What guidance is provided to decision makers in this regard and are there any statistics on it?

I shall pre-empt the Minister by acknowledging that in government my party introduced ESA and the work capability assessment. I do not raise these issues to make political points, but in a genuine attempt to get them dealt with. I have repeatedly stated that I came to this place determined to raise these issues, regardless of who won the election. I first came across many of the issues as I was campaigning for election. I was concerned about a politicised response at the last Work and Pensions oral questions, consisting too much of saying, “You introduced it,” which did not get to the crux of these issues.

It would help if the Minister provided clarity on the following points. Do decision makers set prognosis times for claimants found fit for work? If so, why are those not overturned when this happens to corresponding fit-for-work decisions? Can judges set new prognosis times when they overturn decisions? What role do decision makers have with respect to prognosis times following successful appeals?

Finally, I seek an update on the apparent instruction from the former Minister to civil servants that the time between reassessments should be reduced. A central recommendation of Professor Harrington’s first report was that the WCA should be more compassionate and empathetic, and this will only be achieved once Ministers intervene and stop people being called back for reassessments immediately after successful appeals.

16:45

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Esther McVey)]

I thank the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) for calling this debate, and thank all hon. Members who contributed so constructively. The matter is of great importance to the hon. Lady, who has raised the concerns on many occasions.

The Minister for Employment, the lead Minister responsible for the work capability assessment policy, is on Government business in Brussels today and has asked me to pass on his apologies. I will answer questions as fully as I can, but if I do not answer in as much depth as hon. Members would like, a full written response will follow.

I understand the concerns for people who are claiming and who appear to be called back for reassessment soon after a successful appeal. First, I want to make clear why it is important to call people on ESA back for reassessments at appropriate intervals. People are entitled to ESA for as long as they satisfy the entitlement conditions. To ensure that people receive benefit correctly, it is important that they are called for reassessment from time to time, to ensure that they still meet the entitlement conditions. People’s health conditions can change and we need to ensure that they remain in the correct group, for example, the work-related activity group or support group. This is a normal part of receiving ESA and is important to ensure that people continue to receive the right support. This active approach to the benefit is crucial and is having an impact.

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

The Minister talks about the need for reassessments. Can she confirm whether the Government have provided any instructions about whether face-to-face or physical assessments are needed? People being assessed at a distance—the so-called “under scrutiny” method—is a growing problem in my constituency. Can she confirm whether that is a policy, because it is certainly giving rise to a greater number of wrong assessments?

[Esther McVey]

I will come to that point a little later.

The number of working-age people on ESA and incapacity benefits as of February 2012 was 2.56 million, which is the lowest level since the introduction of IB in 1995. Early estimates to September 2012 suggest that overall the numbers on these benefits are further decreasing and for the first time the data have gone below 2.5 million.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Is the Minister aware of the research that the DWP carried out for some of the early applicants for ESA, which showed that after a year of being found fit for work, 43% were neither on an out-of-work benefit nor in employment? This fall in the number of people on benefit may be the result of their simply getting nothing and disappearing out of the system. Is she concerned by that?

[Esther McVey]

Of course, that would concern me; it would be of concern to anyone. Everybody will be followed up and duly represented and given sufficient support. However, we would have to look into those numbers. Those who are on benefit get the support they need, in contrast to previous approaches through which they were abandoned to a lifetime on benefits. Those who have been found fit for work now claim JSA, an active benefit with a proven track record of getting people into work, as the falling unemployment figures have shown.

On the cases raised this evening, it is important to note that if someone appeals against a disallowance decision, the tribunal considers the evidence, the law and the claimant’s circumstances at the time of that decision. If the appeal is upheld and the claimants are awarded ESA, they are quite rightly required to attend a further work capability assessment in the same way as any other ESA claimant—the timing of the reassessment is the issue. It is not true that the time frame set for the work capability assessment remains fixed by the original decision maker when the fit-for-work decision was made. If an appeal has been upheld, the date for the next WCA is decided afresh by a decision maker; re-referral dates chosen can be three, six, 12, 18 or 24 months later, depending on when it is considered most appropriate for claimants to have their next contact with the Department.

[Julie Hilling]

What concerns me is those people who will always have such a condition or who have a progressive condition, meaning that they will only get worse. What about them? To continue to reassess them and put them through that stress feels absolutely wrong—I cannot think of a better word—

[John McDonnell]

Cruel.

[Julie Hilling]

Cruel, yes. Why are we doing that to that group of people who will never get better?

[Esther McVey]

I completely take on board the hon. Lady’s point. Part of the decision maker’s process is that all the available information will be considered, including: any recommendations made by the tribunal; any factors the tribunal took into account in reaching its decision; the health care professional’s advice from the previous assessment; and any medical evidence submitted after the appeal was made. Other considerations will include the type of limited capability for work, whether the limited capability is likely to change for better or worse and how likely any surgery or other significant improvement is.

[Jim Shannon]

In my earlier intervention, I mentioned the possibility of medical evidence being sought before any decision. Have the Government considered direct contact with the GP so that an assessment of the person can clearly be made on a medical basis?

[Esther McVey]

As I said, all factors will be taken into account for the individual having an assessment. It is true that a small number of claimants are asked to attend a further work capability assessment as little as three months after a successful appeal, but only after careful consideration of all the available evidence by the decision maker. Our latest data show, however, that that only happens in around 5% of cases. As part of our ongoing commitment to continuous improvement, the process was reviewed, with revised guidance issued to decision makers in February 2011 to ensure that they were actively considering a suitable re-referral date, so that claimants are called back when most appropriate for them.

Following the recommendations from Professor Harrington’s year two review, a regular audit of decision-maker performance is now conducted via the quality assurance framework, whereby checks are made on a sample of ESA and IB reassessment decisions. We also conduct twice yearly calibration exercises at a national level to ensure consistent application of the quality assurance framework. More than 90% of decisions met the required standard each month between February and September 2012. Additionally, due to changes introduced in July 2012, we have improved the process for receiving feedback from the tribunals if the tribunal has overturned the original decision. Judges now have the discretion to include a recommendation of when the next WCA should take place on the tribunal’s decision notice. The decision maker will take account of that recommendation when setting the review date.

I recognise that the number of appeals that the Department receives, as well as the effect on the individuals concerned, is an emotive issue. I also acknowledge that the volume of appeals has increased significantly over recent years, but that, too, is being addressed. I want to ensure that the decision making is right first time around, which was a focus of Professor Harrington’s independent reviews of the WCA. He has made a number of recommendations to support such an approach to decision making. As a result, we have: changed how we communicate with claimants, to explain the process more clearly; put decision makers at the heart of the process; and introduced the quality assessment framework to improve the quality of decisions made. We have also introduced the personalised summary statement and regional mental function champions to improve the quality of face-to-face assessments.

If a claimant disputes a decision, however, we must be able to resolve the dispute within the DWP, whenever possible. If the dispute cannot be resolved within the DWP, we need to ensure that an effective and efficient dispute resolution procedure is in place. The DWP and Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service are working together to improve the quality of initial decision making to address the high levels of appeals while ensuring that fairness and efficiency are maintained.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Can the Minister address a specific issue? As recently as July, the former Minister appeared to accept that in spite of the changes mentioned he thought that people were being called back too quickly for reassessment. What has been done since July to deal with that?

[Esther McVey]

I thought I had dealt with that a little earlier when discussing the decision makers and how there is the right to look at when they feel it is appropriate to call someone back, whether three, six, 12, 18 or 24 months later. That obviously has to be right for all, whether the person assessed or the system as a whole. As the hon. Lady knows, we have reviewed the process not once, not twice, but three times under Professor Harrington. Each time recommendations have come back, and we have implemented them, so significant changes are under way.

As the hon. Lady mentioned at the start of the debate, we inherited the situation—the system was put in place before this Government—but we are trying to get it right, we have brought in changes and we will continue to do so until all parts of the House and, most importantly, those being assessed, feel we have got it right.

In conclusion, I echo Professor Harrington who has made it quite clear that the work capability assessment, designed as the “first positive step” towards work, is the “right concept” for assessing people who need our support. He also recognised, however, that there was a need to improve it, which is why we accepted and have largely implemented more than 40 recommendations made in his first two reviews.

Following our reforms, twice as many people go into the support group now as when ESA was introduced. The proportion of people with mental health conditions being awarded ESA has risen from 33% to 49%. I know the hon. Member for Edinburgh East asked specifically what was happening in that regard, and I hope that she can take some comfort from how clearly we are looking into the matter and at how the numbers have changed.

In response to the hon. Member for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero), who mentioned one of her constituents and a physiotherapist, the assessment looks at the function and not the condition. Physios are experts in this area and have comprehensive training, especially on mental health. They are only approved and allowed to be assessors if they have the necessary skills.

As for the critics, Professor Harrington made it clear in his third review:

“All they call for is a scrapping of the WCA but with no suggestion of what might replace it”,

and

“to recognise that things are beginning to change positively in the best interests of the individual would be helpful.”

Debates such as this improve the situation.

[John McDonnell]

Will the Minister meet some of those critics, such as Disabled People Against Cuts or Black Triangle, which has been occupying DWP offices and demanding meetings with Ministers?

[Esther McVey]

I am more than happy to meet them, although they might not wish to as I am not the Minister responsible. I will forward the invitation and I am sure, diaries permitting, that he will do so. I hope that today has been constructive and I thank the hon. Member for Edinburgh East for bringing forward the debate.

Question put and agreed to.

16:59

Sitting adjourned.