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Oral Answers to Questions
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Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
1. How many new railway stations have been opened since privatisation; and how many further stations are planned in the future.
The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Patrick McLoughlin)
Since May 1996, 56 stations in England and Wales have been opened. Local authorities, passenger transport executives, devolved bodies and Transport for London lead on the planning and promotion of stations. We are aware of about 40 stations which are being considered for opening by these bodies in England and Wales.
Mr Gray
The mayor of Bristol has recently announced ambitious plans that would include the reopening of Corsham station, a project for which many of us have campaigned for many years, ably led for much of his 31 years as a councillor by Councillor Peter Davis. Does the Secretary of State agree that if we are to get people off the roads and on to trains, we must do all that we can to make the mayor’s vision of a reopened Corsham station a reality?
Mr McLoughlin
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing to my attention the excellent work that has been done by Councillor Davis in his constituency for a very long time. I am also aware of my hon. Friend’s campaigning efforts in relation to stations in his area. He will be aware that bids are being considered under the new stations fund, and I hope to make an announcement shortly.
Mr Speaker
I have been informed that the microphones are not working. I am sure that the Minister will make himself heard.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
Why are the Government not more committed to railway infrastructure? According to the National Audit Office in the 2010 spending review, they cut planned spending on rail by £1,287 million.
Mr McLoughlin
This Government are very committed to infrastructure, as demonstrated by our investment plans for electrification and other rail projects. We have committed to doing more in five years than the Labour Government did in 13. We have a very ambitious programme. There are 808 recommendations.
Charles Hendry (Wealden) (Con)
As a result of this investment programme, my constituents can now travel from a beautiful new station in Uckfield to the increasingly impressive station at London Bridge. Will my right hon. Friend look again at the availability of diesel rolling stock, so my constituents can have the same comfort on their journeys as they have at the stations?
Mr McLoughlin
Of course I am always prepared to listen to representations made by my hon. Friend on matters such as rolling stock. The new station at Uckfield is indeed fantastic, and I am aware that there is a huge amount going on at London Bridge.
Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)
20. The stations that my constituents in south-east London would like to see opened are a Bakerloo line station at Lewisham and a docklands light railway station at Catford. Those, of course, would also require major extensions to existing lines. Will the Minister tell me what planning if any is being carried out by his Department and Transport for London about the longer-term strategic transport needs in this part of London?
Mr McLoughlin
I thank the hon. Lady for her question. I can reassure her that all these matters are being looked at closely by Boris Johnson, Transport for London and the Greater London Authority.
Kris Hopkins (Keighley) (Con)
2. What recent progress has been made on high speed rail; and if he will make a statement.
The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Patrick McLoughlin)
In January this year, I announced my initial route and station options for phase 2, from Birmingham to Leeds and Birmingham to Manchester. I intend to launch the consultation this year, earlier than previously planned. I have also set out my intention to secure the authority for departmental expenditure on HS2 phase 2 by way of a paving Bill, when parliamentary time is available.
Kris Hopkins
I am delighted that the Government have pledged to deliver HS2. Can my right hon. Friend give a further commitment to ensure that the financial benefits flowing from the pre-construction phase will be felt along the length of the line, particularly among firms in west Yorkshire, which are ready, willing and very able to assist?
Mr McLoughlin
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Last week I made a trip to the north-east talking to a number of companies. I am aware that many companies up there and in other places along the route are interested in, and prepared to be involved, in all phases of HS2. It is a beneficial project for the whole United Kingdom and I can assure my hon. Friend that we will be looking at ways to involve British business in all aspects of the HS2 programme.
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
16. The updated case for HS2 involves significant downgrading of provision and a collapse of existing services to Stoke-on-Trent so that Milton Keynes can have its high-speed service. How does this help rebalance the economy and why is my constituency being disadvantaged by HS2?
Mr McLoughlin
Two weeks ago, I met representatives from Stoke, Newcastle-under-Lyme and Stafford. I welcome all views, and we will take a final decision on the route after the full consultation. The hon. Gentleman should be a bit more enthusiastic about such things.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
If HS2 goes ahead, it will do significant damage to our Buckinghamshire constituencies and the Chilterns designated area of outstanding natural beauty. We need the best environmental protection. Will the Secretary of State undertake to consider carefully this document I have with me? It is the Buckinghamshire mitigation plan, which has been painstakingly produced and endorsed by all our councils in Buckinghamshire, our business leaders and organisations, and it is intended to form the basis of a constructive and positive outlook for HS2.
Mr McLoughlin
I had better be careful how I answer my right hon. Friend. I will study the document she has given to me and ask for it to be studied by officials in my Department. We will do all we can to minimise damage in her area.
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)
The Opposition firmly support HS2, but we want it delivered. It is therefore worrying that the Government’s mid-term review referred not to enacting, but to “carrying forward legislation”, even though the Secretary of State’s departmental plan continues to claim Royal Assent will be secured by May 2015. Will he confirm that, with all the dither and delay, botched consultations and judicial reviews, the hybrid Bill is still on track to secure Royal Assent in this Parliament?
Mr McLoughlin
This Government will have achieved far more in five years to build high-speed rail in this country than the previous Government did in 13. All I would say is that we are still on target to meet our aims by the end of this year. As to its progress once it is before Parliament, I really cannot say any more at this stage.
Maria Eagle
The Secretary of State has introduced some confusion, because we are meant to have two Bills. One is paving legislation, which we have not seen and we do not know what it does, and the second is the hybrid Bill that he said would be completed in this Parliament. He should be clear what Bills he will introduce and when. Which Bill will he introduce: a measure simply to give the impression of action or the hybrid Bill that we need if this vital scheme is ever to be built?
Mr McLoughlin
I am pleased to have the Opposition’s support in bringing HS2 to fruition. The simple point is that a paving Bill will deal with certain financial responsibilities. I am happy to discuss the details further with her. The hybrid Bill—the measure that seeks planning approval—is still on course to be introduced by the end of the year.
Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
3. What progress he has made on devolving speed limits to local authorities.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Norman Baker)
In January 2013 the Department for Transport launched new guidance for local authorities on setting local speed limits, including guidance to help them assess the full costs and benefits of proposed speed limit changes. We have also taken steps to make it easier for councils to introduce 20 mph limits and zones where they believe this is appropriate.
Michael Ellis
Many of my constituents would like to see 20 mph speed limits, particularly near schools and in sensitive areas. Will the Minister explain what is being done to adapt the localism agenda and give local authorities in Northamptonshire and elsewhere the devolved power in this respect?
Norman Baker
I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s support and that of his constituents for what the coalition Government is doing. Following on from the document “Signing the Way”, which I launched in October 2011, we have provided every English authority with a traffic sign authorisation to use speed limit repeater signs in place of physical measures in 20 mph zones, and that will reduce the costs for local authorities in Northamptonshire and elsewhere. This authorisation also enables local authorities to place advisory part-time 20 mph speed limit signs in the vicinity of schools without the need for central Government approval. Councils can also now use roundels on the road to replace some upright signs.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Many of us involved in transport safety welcome the ability to have 20 mph limits, but if they are not done in the context of targets for national performance, they will come to nothing in terms of reducing terrible road casualties, which are rising steadily in this country. Most other progressive transport safety countries have targets and they work. Why is the Minister abandoning them?
Norman Baker
If I may say so, the important thing is the measures we take to make roads safer, rather than the arbitrary targets that the hon. Gentleman seeks to introduce. The Secretary of State has made plain, since his appointment to office, the significant importance that he attaches to road safety, and that runs through the Department.
Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
A previous coalition Secretary of State suggested that an increase in 20 mph zones could be a trade-off with 80 mph limits on some of our motorways. Doing a U-turn at 80 mph would be crazy and dangerous; may I invite the Minister to do a U-turn here safely, and formally announce that the coalition will not proceed with 80 mph trials?
Norman Baker
I have heard the hon. Gentleman’s point. The matters about 80 mph are being carefully evaluated and the Secretary of State will make a statement on that in due course.
George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)
4. What steps his Department is taking to secure an operator for the Great Western rail franchise.
Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)
6. What steps his Department is taking to secure an operator for the Great Western rail franchise.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr Simon Burns)
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State recently announced that we would not continue with the paused Great Western competition. He also confirmed that the Department would enter negotiations with First Great Western to secure arrangements for a further two and a half years, to September 2015. These negotiations are now in progress.
George Eustice
My right hon. Friend will be aware that under the original tender document there was much concern in Cornwall about the potential for the number of through services to be reduced, and that there are local ambitions to expand the use of the branch lines. Can he assure the House that those services will at the very least be protected at the current levels for the next couple of years?
Mr Burns
I thank my hon. Friend for that question and I am delighted to be able to tell him that during the period of the extension we will maintain today’s number of daily through services from London to Cornwall. The Truro to Falmouth service will remain at today’s levels and will no longer have to be funded by Cornwall county council, but through the high-level output specification intervention. The option for additional services on the St Ives to Penzance branch from May 2014, subject to rolling stock availability, will be carried forward in this period.
Mr Wilson
My Reading East constituents, many of whom commute into London using the Great Western route, continually raise issues of service and cost of travel. Will my right hon. Friend assure me that the voices of the regular passengers will be listened to during the franchising process and that the interests and service needs of passengers will be fully reflected in the final franchising contract?
Mr Burns
Again, I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. As the House will know, he has done tremendous work fighting for his constituents through the work he did securing funding for the improvements to Reading station and the London-Heathrow spur for the Great Western line. I reassure him that when the Secretary of State makes his announcement in the spring about the future progress of the franchising programme, all franchises will be extremely mindful of the needs of passengers, including those on the Reading line, as we approach any successor franchise arrangements, and we are committed to working with the industry to reduce costs and to take into account the needs and requirements of passengers.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
Passengers in the Bristol area are desperate to see an improvement to services on the Great Western line, particularly with regard to the issue of overcrowding. If people have paid for a seat, they should not expect to have to stand on an almost daily basis. Can the Minister assure me that the issue of capacity will be addressed in the franchise negotiations, and that there will be extra rolling stock on the line?
Mr Burns
Yes, I would like to give some assurance to the hon. Lady. When franchises come up for the next stage of the process, we want to ensure that all passenger requirements, as well as the ability of companies to provide a first-class service to passengers, are considered fully.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
The problem is that ever since the merger of Thames trains with First Great Western to form that franchise, the interests of commuters using the Great Western line have not sufficiently been addressed. We have the most crowded trains. In Slough, the service is slower than it used to be and there are fewer fast trains. What can the Minister do in the next two and a half years to improve the service for commuters on this line?
Mr Adrian Sanders (Torbay) (LD)
Is there not now a wonderful opportunity in this impasse to make sure any future franchise will ensure that the second-largest urban conurbation in the far south-west will retain direct rail services to London?
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
5. What progress he is making on road building and new motorway junction schemes.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Stephen Hammond)
The Government are investing £3.3 billion in major schemes, with £0.9 billion announced at spending review 10 to complete the existing eight schemes, seven of which have been completed. At spending round 10, £1.4 billion was announced for 14 new schemes to start by 2015, and that is 100% on schedule. The autumn statements of 2011 and 2012 announced a further £655 million and £395 million for new schemes.
Robert Halfon
My hon. Friend will be aware that Harlow needs desperately a new junction on the M11, which will unlock 3,000 new jobs in the town. The scheme is now backed by Harlow council and Essex council, which say that it is the No. 1 priority for the region. Will the Minister meet me, the council and the local enterprise partnership to look seriously at the plans, especially as they will be funded by developer contributions?
Stephen Hammond
My hon. Friend is a well-known and renowned campaigner on behalf of his constituency, and he makes the case again today. I am sure he is working with the relevant local authority, the local enterprise partnership and the enterprise zone to drive up and ensure that the business case is complete. I am, of course, happy to meet him and discuss the proposal.
Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)
7. What assessment he has made of the effect of the closure of Clyde coastguard station.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Stephen Hammond)
Clyde maritime rescue co-ordination centre was closed on 18 December 2012. The sea and coastal areas that were formerly the responsibility of Clyde are now being covered by the centres at Stornoway and Belfast. There has been no change to front-line services. The professional coastguard officers at those centres are maintaining the provision of a search and rescue co-ordination service to the highest standards, and those are the standards that the public rightly demand and expect.
Katy Clark
The Minister will be aware that the staffing levels at Clyde fell below risk-assessed levels on a number of occasions in the lead-up to the closure. We found out this week that the staffing levels at Belfast, which has taken over its work, fell below risk-assessed levels on 28 days and 55 nights in December and January. Will the Minister agree to meet me and other interested MPs, given the genuine concerns about the safety of the west coast of Scotland, huge cuts to staffing and the loss of local knowledge?
Stephen Hammond
First, let me say that there has been no loss of local knowledge. The pairing arrangements that were put in place show that, as does the incident at Loch Fyne. There were 40 occasions in December and 43 in January when the Belfast staffing numbers were below the risk assessment level, but the hon. Lady will know that that was obviously mitigated by the ability of the Stornoway station to take that up. I am happy to meet her to discuss those matters.
Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)
As my hon. Friend knows, the main concern when the Clyde coastguard station was closed was to ensure that local knowledge was transferred to staff at Belfast and Stornoway. What monitoring has been carried out to ensure that that knowledge was transferred?
Stephen Hammond
Since the closure at Clyde, local geographical knowledge has been retained and improved, principally in the new management structure of the volunteer coastguard rescue service. Strong relationships and the working arrangements prior to the closure ensured that knowledge was transferred. Of course my hon. Friend will be aware of the new, improved mapping technology that is being put in place at the new co-ordination centres.
Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)
A number of hon. Members have raised the issue of Clyde, and I share the concerns about having the appropriate number of staff available, staff morale in the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and the application of local knowledge to saving lives under the new structure. When the Minister looks at the specific situation of Clyde, will he also look at any possible ramifications for other coastguard closures?
Stephen Hammond
I give the assurance, as I gave the hon. Lady’s Select Committee, that we will ensure that local knowledge is transferred post-closure through the pairing arrangements that are in place prior to a closure. I intend to ensure that if there are any lessons to be learned, we learn them so that that local knowledge is passed on.
Sir Alan Haselhurst (Saffron Walden) (Con)
8. When he expects to meet the new owners of Stansted Airport.
The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Patrick McLoughlin)
I have no immediate plans to meet the new owners of Stansted airport, as the sale has not yet been completed. However, I have no doubt that effective working relationships established between my Department and the airport will continue under its new owners, and I look forward to meeting the management team at an appropriate time in the future.
Sir Alan Haselhurst
What assurances can my right hon. Friend give to Manchester Airports Group, which will shortly be taking charge at Stansted, about improved train journey times from Liverpool Street to the airport, over and above the welcome but insufficient addition of the third track between Tottenham Hale and Angel Road?
Mr McLoughlin
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for the acknowledgement that the third track will make a difference to the areas he mentioned. Obviously, we are always willing to discuss with airport operators how best to improve infrastructure connections, and I will be more than happy to do that once the new ownership arrangements are finally in place.
Jim Shannon
I thank the Minister for his response about Stansted airport. Obviously the sale of any airport in the United Kingdom, for example, Belfast international airport alongside Stansted airport, would cause uncertainty to the workers. Will he confirm that the sale of any airport in the United Kingdom, be it Stansted or Belfast international, would be a matter that the Government would look after for the workers?
Mr McLoughlin
Let me address the issue of Stansted airport. I am pleased that the Stansted sale has taken place, as it brings competition into the airport system, and I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst) has supported and advocated that for some time. As for the hon. Gentleman’s point about wider airports, obviously every case has to be looked at individually by the proper authorities.
Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)
9. What progress his Department has made on funding new railway stations.
Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)
13. What progress his Department has made on funding new railway stations.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Norman Baker)
In the last two years, funding has been allocated for six new stations on the rail network in England, either from the major local transport schemes budget or the local sustainable transport fund. In addition, in July 2012 we announced a new stations fund to help local authorities implement schemes in England and Wales that are ready to proceed.
Mr Walker
I am very grateful for that reply and excited about the potential of the new stations fund. The Minister will be aware of long-standing plans for a Worcestershire parkway station and the strong support for that from our county council, residents and businesses. Will he take account of the compelling case for investment in that project and continue to encourage train operating companies to examine how they could increase passenger numbers by stopping there?
Norman Baker
I am pleased to tell my hon. Friend that we have been working closely with Worcestershire county council as it develops its plans for a new parkway station. I understand that the council has submitted a bid for funding from the new stations fund for a station on the Worcester-Oxford line. That was one of 14 bids received within the deadline and it will of course be carefully evaluated.
Simon Hart
In September 2011, the then Secretary of State confirmed that the leasehold ownership of stations would be transferred to the train operators. That will obviously make a big difference to regular train users and, in my part of the world, to tourists as well. As this is Wales tourism week, will the Minister update the House on how he is getting on with that?
Norman Baker
I welcome my hon. Friend’s support for that initiative. He might know that the Greater Anglia franchise, which commenced in February 2011, transferred the leasehold of the stations concerned to the new franchisee, Abellio. The approach was also included in the now-cancelled inter-city west coast franchise, as well as the Essex Thameside franchise competition, which is now under way. The arrangements in other franchises are being considered as part of the ongoing development work, but we certainly think that this direction of travel is worth supporting.
Mr Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
The Minister might be aware of the ceremony that was held yesterday evening to mark the completion of the construction of the station box at Woolwich on the Crossrail line, and its handover from Berkeley Homes to Crossrail. He might also be aware that agreement has not yet been reached on the detailed funding arrangements for the fit-out. Will he ensure that his Department works closely with the Greater London authority, Transport for London, Berkeley Homes and all the other relevant parties to ensure that agreement is reached quickly, so that this important station can be completed?
Norman Baker
I assure the right hon. Gentleman that that remains a priority for the Department. We are working closely with the relevant parties to which he refers with a view to reaching completion as soon as possible.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
Will the Minister clarify how much funding for new stations has been made available over recent years in the south-east of England compared with the north-west of England, and will he support increased investment in new stations, specifically in Merseyside and, even more specifically, along the Wrexham to Bidston line that passes through my constituency?
Norman Baker
I think the hon. Lady should be very pleased with the level of transport investment that the Government has committed to, particularly rail investment. In the north-west area, for example, the northern hub is being funded in its entirety. We are also seeing investment in new and reopened lines such as the Oxford-Bedford line, in redoubled lines such as the Swindon-Kemble line, and in new stations across the country—including in Teesside, Warwickshire, west Yorkshire and Coventry—six of which have already been opened. We have seen investment right across England that will proceed right through Network Rail’s current plan, and I hope that she will welcome that.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
10. What assessment he has made of quality bus contracts; and if he will make a statement.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Norman Baker)
The bus quality contract provision is one of the tools available to local transport authorities that wish to have more say over the way in which bus services are run. Two integrated transport authorities, in Tyne and Wear and West Yorkshire, have consulted informally on their plans for quality contract schemes, and I await developments with interest. In the meantime, I am concentrating on the benefits that partnership working between local authorities and bus companies can bring to bus services for passengers. On Tuesday, I announced that Sheffield would become the first better bus area and published guidance to help other places to bid for the same status.
Bill Esterson
Sir Brian Souter has said that he would rather take poison than enter a quality contract. Is it not the reality that bus operators would rather maximise their profits than look after the interests of the travelling public? Should not the priority be to improve bus services, rather than to put more money into the pockets of the bus operators?
Norman Baker
Running a company well is a way of helping bus passengers. If a company does not look after its passengers, its services will suffer as a consequence, so I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s premise. Brian Souter has contributed a great deal to the development of bus services in this country, and that fact should be widely recognised by all. The hon. Gentleman should also recognise that legislation is on the statute book, and that Brian Souter is subject to that legislation, as is everybody else in this country.
Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)
With bus fares rising at twice the rate of inflation, why have the Government rigged the rules for the better bus area funding against transport authorities that adopt a quality contract, so that they can set bus fares, as has happened in London? Instead of always caving in to the private bus companies, why does the Minister not stand up for passengers for once?
Norman Baker
Again, I do not accept the premise of the question. The Department for Transport has been championing the needs of bus passengers very firmly since this Government took office. We have introduced a whole range of new funding streams, as well as better bus areas, money for the smart card roll-out and the fourth round of the green bus fund. We have also made huge investments in bus corridors in Manchester, Bristol and elsewhere. This is all designed to help passengers, so I am afraid that the hon. Lady’s premise is simply wrong. In regard to better bus areas and quality contracts, I advise her to study the guidance that I issued earlier this week.
Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)
11. When the Government plan to announce the timetable for bids for the franchise to run rail services on the east coast main line.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr Simon Burns)
A further announcement about the franchising programme will be made in the spring by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, setting out the timetable for future franchise competitions.
Hugh Bayley
My constituents and others who need to use east coast rail services twice faced hiatus when two private operators collapsed. The public sector operator, East Coast, currently running the services contributed twice as much money to the Treasury in its last year than its predecessor National Express did in 2008-09. Before the Government announce their franchising schedule will they look at the feasibility of running a public sector franchise on the east coast for a period to compare like for like with a private franchise on the west coast to resolve the issue?
Mr Burns
However charming the hon. Gentleman is, I am afraid that he is not going to tease out of me in advance what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will announce on future timetabling in the spring this year. That would be completely inappropriate, and I know the hon. Gentleman, an experienced parliamentarian, will fully understand that.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
I welcome the plans for the new franchise on the east coast main line and hope that they will include the reinstatement of the direct service between King’s Cross and Cleethorpes. Ministers will be aware, however, that the biggest problem facing my constituents at the moment is gaining access to any service on the east coast main line due to the landslip between Scunthorpe and Doncaster. First TransPennine is looking at alternative routes for its service to Manchester, but access to London and the south is extremely difficult. Will Ministers use their influence to ensure that East Midlands Trains improves its service to Newark North Gate in the interim?
Mr Burns
I fully appreciate the problems that my hon. Friend’s and other hon. Members’ constituents face due to this unfortunate act of nature. As my hon. Friend will be aware, all is being done by all the relevant authorities and train operators to seek to minimise the disruption to passengers during this difficult time and to expedite the repair and restoration of the track. I fear that it is going to take some time because of the sheer scale of the problem. I fully take on board my hon. Friend’s point and will pass his comments to Network Rail and the rail operators to see what more can possibly be done to try to alleviate the problems.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Patrick McLoughlin)
At the end of January, I was pleased to be able to announce to the House the preferred route for phase 2 of HS2. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform Britain’s connectivity, capacity and competitiveness. Last year, we announced the creation of a £20 million new station fund to be used to open new stations in England and Wales. I launched the competition in January, and I very much hope to make an announcement by the end of March on which stations have been successful. We have also received a large number of bids for the £170 million local pinch-point funds, the applications for which closed last week. We hope to make an announcement shortly.
Mark Tami
Will the Secretary of State update the House on any talks he has had with the transport Minister in Wales about the electrification of the Wrexham-Bidston line? When does he finally hope to make progress and when can we finally have a station that serves the Deeside industrial estate?
Mr McLoughlin
I am due to meet the Minister in Wales shortly to discuss a number of issues. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman’s point will be one of the particular issues we discuss. We have made major announcements about electrification in Wales. I realise that it affects south Wales, but I hope that the hon. Gentleman will think it a move in the right direction.
Karl MᶜCartney (Lincoln) (Con)
T2. Lincoln finally has one daily direct service to London despite being promised seven up-and-down daily links at the 2010 general election. Will the Minister assure me that when the new franchise is put out to tender, my constituents will see an expansion of direct daily services and weekend services, as we are well aware of the need for our expanding city to enjoy as many rail links to the capital as other cities across our nation?
Mr McLoughlin
My hon. Friend now serves on the Select Committee, and will therefore be well able to keep an eye on these matters. We are always being asked for extra services, but I assure him that I am well aware of the case for Lincoln, especially in the light of the important celebrations that will take place next year. I will certainly consider it, and will judge it in the context of all the other opportunities that we have, and requests that we receive, for the provision of extra services.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State agree that, following the interconnection between High Speed 1 and High Speed 2, we will need a greater capacity and three trains per hour?
Mr McLoughlin
At least the right hon. Gentleman is consistent. As I have said on several occasions, I will consider what he has said and try to ensure that we provide that connectivity. There is also the question of trains running directly from Old Oak Common to the continent, which we will need to judge as we judge all other matters relating to high-speed rail.
Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)
T3. Rail passengers trying to book the cheapest fares are faced with a bewilderingly complex system. I hope that the fares and ticketing review will result in a much more simple, straightforward system. Can my hon. Friend tell me what progress is being made towards that?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Norman Baker)
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise that point. We are determined that, as a result of the fares and ticketing review, people will be able to buy the tickets for the journeys that they want at the lowest price for those journeys, rather than paying over the odds, which I am afraid they sometimes do today.
Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
Was an upgrade of the current midland main line service considered as a cheaper, faster and far less destructive alternative to the building of a new London to Leeds HS2 route? If not, why not?
Mr McLoughlin
As I announced in my statement on the subject, HS2 is also about capacity. We are upgrading the line to which the hon. Lady referred, and I hope that its electrification during the period between 2014 and 2019 will benefit her constituents.
Kris Hopkins (Keighley) (Con)
T4. There are several large haulage companies in and around my constituency. Does my hon. Friend agree that the HGV Road Users Levy Bill, which is due to receive Royal Assent, constitutes an important step towards the provision of a level playing field for British hauliers, and is long overdue?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Stephen Hammond)
I do agree with my hon. Friend. This will be the first occasion on which the United Kingdom has charged those who come from overseas for their use of our roads. The levy will help to maintain the competitive position of UK hauliers, and to maintain the UK’s roads. There was a long-standing desire in the House for the legislation to be passed, and I am delighted that we were able to secure its passage.
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
Two years ago, the UK Government announced that they would spend £50 million on the provision of new stock on the Caledonian sleeper to Scotland, and that the Scottish Government would match that with a further £50 million. It now appears that only £50 million will be made available, rather than £100 million, and that it will be spent partly on improving existing stock and partly on upgrading other railway lines in Scotland. What has happened to the funds that were promised by the UK and Scottish Governments?
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr Simon Burns)
I have considerable sympathy with the hon. Gentleman’s point. [Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) keeps quiet, she will hear my answer. It is the same answer that I gave to the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Mr Kennedy) when he raised the issue. We provided the money so that it could be invested in that service, but the Scottish Government decided, in the short term, not to invest in it. We hope that they will divert the money back to the improvements for which it was intended.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
T5. Next month EasyJet will start to provide regular scheduled services between London Gatwick and Moscow. Obviously that is welcome in that it will forge greater trade links, but the visa requirements are extremely bureaucratic and stringent, both for Russian business men visiting this country and for British business men visiting Russia. Can my right hon. Friend assure me that he will speak to the Home Secretary and the Business Secretary and try to resolve the issue?
Mr Burns
My hon. Friend has raised an important issue. As he knows, my right hon. Friends the Home Secretary and the Foreign Secretary are primarily responsible for such matters, and I will certainly discuss with Ministers in their Departments what can be done to improve the situation.
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
Following the well-documented problems with the west coast main line refranchising, a lot of concerns have been raised about Department for Transport decisions that may have left it less able to deal with refranchising as efficiently as we would all like. When will consultation begin on the refranchising of the Northern and Trans- Pennine Express franchises, both of which are extremely important to my constituents?
Mr McLoughlin
As was said earlier, I intend to make a statement about franchising in the light of the Brown inquiry findings, and I hope to make that statement soon.
Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)
T6. On Thursday 23 November I asked my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State if he had been able to make an assessment of the impact of the floods in the south-west on Plymouth’s economy. My right hon. Friend replied saying it was far too early to make such an assessment. What progress has he been able to make on this, and on fixing the railway line between Exeter and Plymouth?
Mr McLoughlin
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the way in which he properly and consistently raises this point. He attended a meeting in the House with the chief executive and other senior people from Network Rail and also from FirstGroup, which I organised. It gave my hon. Friend and other colleagues the opportunity to put these questions to them. I shall visit my hon. Friend’s constituency later this year, and we will be talking more directly about these issues.
Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)
If the Minister, the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond), refers to the text of the answer to Question 18, he will be aware of the scandal surrounding wheel-clamping and the involvement of criminal elements which led to its banning. There are now concerns that these undesirables are moving across into ticket parking control. Already 300 companies will have direct or indirect access to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency database. What steps is he taking to prevent abuse, and will abusers be denied access very quickly?
Stephen Hammond
A range of comprehensive measures is in place to prevent the abuse of the DVLA database. Parking companies cannot obtain data from the DVLA unless they are members of an appropriate accredited trade association and abide by its code of practice. In this role, the British Parking Association audits its members annually, and the DVLA also undertakes regular inspections. When necessary, the DVLA takes direct action to suspend facilities to request vehicle keeper data. In 2012, the DVLA suspended 21 parking companies from receiving that information.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
Can the Secretary of State confirm that landowners along the proposed High Speed 2 route are well within their rights to refuse access to consultants from HS2 Ltd who want to survey their properties and land? Will he assure me that the paving Bill will not be used to remove those rights from landowners and home owners, but will simply be used to regularise the expenditure on HS2, which has not yet been authorised by Parliament?
Mr McLoughlin
When we present the paving Bill, my right hon. Friend will be able to see its contents. I have not yet secured the parliamentary time to be able to present it, but I very much hope to be able to do so— I say that as I look at Members who have far more influence in this matter than I do these days. At the beginning of questions, my right hon. Friend presented to me a substantial document setting out some of the improvements she would like. In order to put them in place, we will need access to some of the land.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
On the welcome electrification of the midland main line, I am sure the Secretary of State will agree that one of the objectives is to reduce journey times, so will he confirm that the rolling stock on the newly electrified line will be the new intercity express trains that can complete the journey more quickly? The alternative is a cascade of existing rolling stock from other lines, but, because they are heavier with slower acceleration, we could find that we have longer journey times despite having spent a lot of money on electrification.
Mr McLoughlin
The hon. Gentleman and I share a close interest in this line as it serves both of our constituencies. I hear the representations he makes, but I am very pleased that we have been able to put the electrification of the line into the plan for 2014-19.
Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)
My constituents living in the east of Enfield are delighted with the support from the STAR—Stratford-Tottenham-Angel Road—investment programme, supported by the Government, which includes a third rail track, thus providing a more reliable service than the one commuters have suffered under for far too long. Will the Minister also lend his encouragement to the continuation of investment along this line, so the full London Enfield-Stansted corridor can realise its economic potential?
Norman Baker
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his support for the coalition Government’s massive investment in rail. We had a useful meeting with the Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns), about my hon. Friend’s constituency issue. To answer his specific point, we are expecting to continue investing on the Liverpool Street-Enfield-Cambridge corridor, and on all other corridors where growth is forecast. I am pleased we have been able to offer a package that makes further investment in the Enfield route possible.
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
1. What discussions the Commission has had with the Food Standards Agency on products served at catering outlets in the House of Commons.
John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)
The Commission has no direct discussions with the Food Standards Agency on products served in its outlets. However, the House’s catering service continues to be vigilant and to act in line with FSA recommendations. The catering service is also in communication with its accredited suppliers, trade associations, the trade press and an independent food safety service about any potential problems in the food supply chain.
John Thurso
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that request and can certainly give him that assurance. The recent case of some products being withdrawn happened precisely because the supplier, Brakes, made contact with us as part of that dialogue. I am delighted to say that they are all back in service, having been found to have had no problems.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for the work he and the Commission are doing in this regard. May I also request that we consider the traceability issue and use this as an opportunity to take prime beef from north Yorkshire, as that would be music to the ears of my constituents?
John Thurso
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question, but I have to say that there will be stiff competition from the prime beef from the north of Scotland.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
3. If he will introduce a procedure to inform all hon. Members when written ministerial statements deemed to be too commercially sensitive to be listed in the Order Paper are published.
The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Tom Brake)
The hon. Gentleman will be aware that all written ministerial statements issued to the House are listed on the Order Paper.
Kevin Brennan
That is not quite true, is it? A few weeks ago, a written ministerial statement about the extension of the First Great Western rail franchise was not listed in the Order Paper because it was deemed to be too market sensitive. I had an exchange with the Leader of the House about that matter at business questions. Should not some sort of guidelines be brought in to ensure that, when that occurs, Departments inform Members directly as soon as that information becomes available rather than our having to learn about it through the press or through the superior knowledge of the Leader of the House?
Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
The Government have form on not keeping the House fully informed and in an electronic age, surely it is not beyond the wit of even this Government to find a way of ensuring that Members’ rights and the rights of this House are fully recognised.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
This is an outrageous slur from the Opposition. This Government make everyone aware as soon as possible: we need only buy the newspapers or put on the television and we know in advance. Is this not an outrageous slur?
Tom Brake
I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. He will be aware that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has regularly reminded Ministers, including members of the Cabinet, that it is important that they come to the House to make ministerial statements here first.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
4. What estimate the Commission has made of the number of apprentices employed by the House service and its primary contractors and their subcontractors.
John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)
I refer my hon. Friend to the answer I gave to him in writing on 17 January, which said that both the catering service and the Parliamentary Estates Directorate were considering options for apprenticeship schemes. In addition, discussions with a number of major contractors, such as Royal Mail, suggest that they operate apprenticeship schemes within their larger businesses. The Department of Facilities is aware of three apprentices employed by a large contractor working on the parliamentary estate and the director general of facilities would be happy to discuss this further with the hon. Gentleman.
Robert Halfon
Will my hon. Friend make sure that the House of Commons does everything possible to employ more apprentices, and will he link up with the parliamentary apprentice school, which I have set up with the charity New Deal of the Mind that helps provide apprentices for MPs’ offices so that we can perhaps supply apprentices for the House of Commons Administration and around the House of Commons?
John Thurso
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that suggestion, and I am sure that we will want to act on it. I pay tribute to Mr Speaker’s scheme for internships and the other schemes of this order, all of which help to get young people into employment from diverse backgrounds throughout the House.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
May I push the hon. Gentleman? I do not want to be rude to him, but that was a bit of a pathetic response. The House employs a lot of people. We should demand of the supply chain to this House not only good pure food but that our suppliers employ a fair number of apprentices. I have often criticised the management of the House. It is not sharp enough. More apprentices, and let us have them now please.
John Thurso
The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely good point. However, there are difficulties, namely, that most of the procurement that takes place in the House is subject to regulations, particularly European contracting regulations, which mean that one may express desires, but one is not always able to impose. I assure the hon. Gentleman that the House authorities are committed to providing apprenticeships, paid internships, and encouragement for young people from all backgrounds into good employment wherever they can.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
5. What comparative assessment he has made of the annual number of sitting days of the House and that of other parliaments around the world.
The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Andrew Lansley)
Based on statistics from the Society of Clerks at the Table in the Commonwealth, United States Congress and European Parliament—an unimpeachable source—the House of Commons sits for more days and for longer than most comparable Parliaments.
Mr Hollobone
The important thing is not the number of days that a Parliament sits but how effectively that time is used. Does the Leader of House believe that the success in this House of the scheduling of debates by the Backbench Business Committee is likely to be a model copied by other Parliaments around the world?
Mr Lansley
I agree with my hon. Friend. We are unique in this place in having established a Backbench Business Committee which puts a substantial proportion of the time of the House at the disposal of Back-Bench Members without being controlled by the respective Front-Bench teams. That is terrifically important. I was struck when I visited the Scottish Parliament last week that, although there is time for Members’ debates, it is at the behest of the business managers. As a business manager, I might see advantage in that, but the House of Commons has resolved to give Back Benchers a substantial amount of time, and that is a welcome reform led by my predecessor.
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
6. What the three most frequently borrowed books are in the Library in the current Parliament.
John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
The three books most frequently borrowed from the House of Commons Library between 7 May 2010 and 14 February 2013 were “How Parliament Works” by Robert Rogers and Rhodri Walters, borrowed 44 times, Erksine May’s “A Treatise upon the Law, Privileges, Proceedings and Usage of Parliament”, edited by the Clerk of the House, borrowed 33 times, and in third place “A Journey” by Tony Blair, borrowed 31 times.
Thomas Docherty
There is no surprise that the most popular book borrowed is a well-written and informative read, but does he share my disappointment at the lack of progress on a new and updated edition? Perhaps the Commission could consider some ways of encouraging progress. I understand that the rack has fallen out of fashionable use, but perhaps a spell clerking the Administration Committee or even the Travel Office consumer panel might encourage progress?
John Thurso
I am sure that both of those posts would be warmly welcomed by all conscientious Clerks, but the serious point that the hon. Gentleman makes that colleagues are using works that are possibly in need of updating will I am sure have been heard by those who may be responsible for it.
Mr Speaker
Order. I should inform the House that the present Clerk of the House presented me with a signed copy of the sixth edition of his well-thumbed tome upon my election to the Chair. I hope that the House will feel that I have gained greatly from reading it cover to cover.
Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)
7. What progress the Commission has made on reducing the subsidy on food and drink served in the House. [Official Report, 9 May 2013, Vol. 563, c. 1-2MC.]
John Thurso
The cost of the catering service is expected to have been reduced by £1.1 million over the past three years. It stood at £5.9 million in 2010-11 and £5.1 million in 2011-12. The forecast cost for the current financial year is £4.8 million. The current aim is to reduce the cost further so that by 2015 it should be reduced by £3 million, roughly half of what it was at the start of the Parliament.
Andrew Stephenson
I welcome my hon. Friend’s answer, but recent media reports that the subsidy for Parliament’s 19 restaurants, nine bars and the coffee shop has actually increased over the past year were met with dismay from many of our constituents across the country. In addition to what he has said today about reducing the cost of the House catering facilities, I urge him to look at moving even faster on the issue to ensure that all subsidy is removed as soon as possible.
John Thurso
We are certainly seeking to reduce the cost wherever possible, but there have been changes in the way we operate that make turnover more difficult. I point out that the key gross profit, or kitchen profit, made by the House’s outlets is fully comparable to what we would expect to find in industry. It is the other costs, caused largely by our sitting arrangements and the staffing required for that, that put us over into subsidy. That is the area currently being tackled by the business improvement plan.
Sir Alan Haselhurst (Saffron Walden) (Con)
Should we not always think of the 12,000 or more passholders beyond the number of Members of Parliament, most of whom are on lower salaries, and consider that it is perfectly in order to have an element of subsidy? Those passholders include journalists who work in the House. Therefore, in trying to be prudent about bringing down the cost of the catering service, we should bear in mind that in many places of work it is quite normal to have an element of subsidy.
John Thurso
My right hon. Friend makes a valuable point. It is worth noting that the gross profit, or kitchen profit, made in the dining rooms is at the high end of the scale and extremely comparable to high street restaurants. The subsidy is needed far more in the canteens, which are enjoyed by passholders on far more modest salaries.
Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)
8. What his policy is on the time available for private Members’ Bills.
The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Tom Brake)
The time available for private Members’ Bills is set out in the Standing Orders at 13 Fridays in each Session.
Hugh Bayley
I have been a Member of the House for nearly 21 years, but my name has never been drawn in the ballot for private Members’ Bills, and those whose names are drawn rarely get their legislation through the House. Will the Deputy Leader of the House look at amending the Standing Orders to give more Back-Bench Members the opportunity to get legislation on the statute book?
Tom Brake
Whether to change the Standing Orders would, of course, be a matter for the House, but I point out to the hon. Gentleman that my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight) and his predecessor have both been successful in securing private Members’ Bills while in opposition. Indeed, in the previous Session four private Members’ Bills made it to the statute book, and they were not hand-out Bills, and in this Session three private Members’ Bills have been secured in legislation, and we expect a further three to do so.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
Does the Deputy Leader of the House agree that it is essential that all legislation, whether it stems from the Government or private Members, should be properly scrutinised and that we should not go down the route, as some people would have us do, of simply nodding through well-meaning legislation without proper or effective scrutiny?
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
9. What recent progress has been made on improvements to wi-fi on the parliamentary estate that will enable the use of internet radios in offices.
John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)
Internet radio can be accessed over the parliamentary network from computers and mobile devices. Wi-fi is already available in many Members’ offices, and the remainder will have access by the end of next month. Dedicated wi-fi internet radio devices are not supported on the parliamentary infrastructure.
Diana Johnson
When away from one’s constituency it is very important to be able to access news. I set great store by listening to BBC Humberside’s news source, but it would be very helpful to be able to access it through the system on the estate. Will that be possible at the end of next month? When are we likely to be able to access regional live TV, which is also very useful for Members in keeping in touch with what is going on in their constituencies?
John Thurso
My understanding is that wi-fi internet radio devices are not accessible via the parliamentary infrastructure because only authorised parliamentary computing devices can be connected to it. However, I have taken note of the points that the hon. Lady has made, and I concur; I would love to be able to listen to Highland and Moray Firth radio. I will therefore, if I may, take it up with the relevant officials and come back to her with a fuller reply in writing.
Business of the House
(11 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House please give us the business for next week?
The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Andrew Lansley)
The business for next week will be as follows:
Monday 4 March—Remaining stages of the Justice and Security Bill [Lords] (day 1).
Tuesday 5 March—Estimates day (2nd allotted day). There will be a debate on the budget and structure of the Ministry of Justice, followed by a debate on financing of new housing supply.
Wednesday 6 March—Estimates day (3rd allotted day). There will be a debate on universal credit, followed by a debate on regulation of medical imports in the EU and UK.
At 7 pm the House will be asked to agree all outstanding estimates. Further details will be given in the Official Report.
[The details are as follows: There will be a debate on Universal Credit, Third Report of Work and Pensions Committee 2012-13 (HC 576) Government response, February 2013 (CM 8537)].
Thursday 7 March—Proceedings on the Supply and Appropriation (Anticipations and Adjustments) Bill, followed by conclusion of remaining stages of the Justice and Security Bill [Lords].
The provisional business for the following week will include:
Monday 11 March—Second Reading of the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill.
Tuesday 12 March—Opposition day (19th allotted day). There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.
Wednesday 13 March—Remaining stages of the Crime and Courts Bill [Lords].
Thursday 14 March—Business to be nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.
I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 7 March will be:
Thursday 7 March—Debate on the Scottish Affairs Committee report on the referendum on separation for Scotland: terminating Trident—days or decades?
Ms Eagle
I thank the Leader of the House for announcing next week’s business.
Today would have been the 67th birthday of Robin Cook. He is remembered, among many things, for his formidable mind and for the reform and modernisation of the Commons that he delivered when he was Leader of the House.
I want to congratulate the Patronage Secretary, the right hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Sir George Young), who was first elected on this day in 1974. I wonder whether he agrees that there are some clear parallels between the run-up to that election and now: economic turmoil, a Conservative Government in crisis, and an Education Secretary with an eye to the main chance. There is even an NUM—a national union of Ministers to resist further cuts in their Departments. We wish them well.
It is three months since Lord Justice Leveson published his report. Does the Leader of the House agree that it is vital that we make sure that what happened to the Dowlers, the McCanns and countless other victims of press intrusion can never happen again? The debate that we had in this place before Christmas and the amendments attached to the Defamation Bill in the other place demonstrate clearly that parliamentarians from across all parties and across both Houses support the implementation of Lord Justice Leveson’s recommendations. Since the Bill has now completed all its stages in the other place, when does the Leader of the House expect it to be back in this House?
The Government have been caught out trying to privatise the NHS by stealth. The NHS competition regulations create a system of compulsory competitive tendering for all NHS services. This is in breach of direct assurances given during the passage of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, not least by the Leader of the House himself. While the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister appear happy to unleash a free market free-for-all in the NHS, the Liberal Democrat Health Minister, the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), is not. On Tuesday in Health questions, he criticised the regulations, which can neither be amended nor easily withdrawn. Given the huge level of concern, will the Leader of the House arrange for us to debate the statutory instrument on the Floor of the House and not upstairs in Committee?
“Channel 4 News” has published disturbing revelations about alleged cases of sexual harassment in the Liberal Democrats. While the party hierarchy have buried their heads in the sand, the victims are being let down. Next Friday is international women’s day, so will the Leader of the House arrange for an urgent debate in Government time on sexual harassment of women and the culture of silence that all too often surrounds it?
The Leader of the House has announced that the Second Reading of the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill is scheduled for 11 March, but the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards is not due to issue its second report until later this year, after the conclusion of the Commons Committee stage, which means that the House is expected to scrutinise a Bill that is only half written. That shows contempt for the Commons, so will the Leader of the House assure us that the Committee stage will not begin before the commission has reported?
Last week we learned that the part-time Chancellor was missing £1 billion from his 4G auction receipts. He was so desperate to fiddle the figures that, as usual, he put party politics before economics. We also learned that Britain has lost its triple A credit rating. Let us remind ourselves of what the Chancellor promised in the Conservative manifesto:
“We will safeguard Britain’s credit rating”.
He also said that it would be a benchmark against which the British public could
“judge the economic success or failure of the next government.”
This is more than just a humiliation for our downgraded Chancellor—he has failed a test he set for himself. Even now, however, he is too stubborn to admit his mistakes, so the British people are paying the price for this downgraded Chancellor’s failed economic strategy. Businesses, families and pensioners feel it every day, while in April 13,000 millionaires will get a six-figure tax cut. Will the Leader of the House arrange for the Chancellor to begin his Budget statement with an apology?
I was shocked to see the Prime Minister hugging five hoodies in Downing street last week, until I realised it was a photo op with the chart-topping group, One Direction, for Comic Relief. This week, however, band member Harry Styles has declared himself a Labour man. He apparently styles his outfits on those of Harold Wilson and Michael Foot. Harry and I know that there is only one direction in which this Government are heading and it is the wrong one. Perhaps the Prime Minister should have instead met with hip hop artist, Plan B.
Mr Lansley
I am grateful to the shadow Leader of the House, particularly for her tribute to my distinguished predecessors. Robin Cook was a notable Leader of the House for the reforms that he brought in. Indeed, I am sure, as time goes by, that the contribution of the current Patronage Secretary will be seen as such, not least because, as our discussions in business questions show, the Backbench Business Committee has improved dramatically Members’ access to the Floor of the House to debate current issues.
The hon. Lady raised a number of matters. On the principles of the Leveson report, she will know that only a few days ago the Conservative party published proposals for a royal charter to implement them. That is subject to cross-party discussions and I urge them to proceed and come to a successful conclusion. I share the view of my noble friend Lord McNally, who made it clear on Third Reading of the Defamation Bill that, while the so-called Puttnam amendment was amended further at that stage, the amendment is still unacceptable. On that basis, I hope that an agreement will be reached that will enable us to proceed with the Bill without that amendment and to deal with Leveson properly.
It is not unknown for us to debate the regulations for public procurement in the NHS. The hon. Lady will know that it is possible for Opposition business managers to seek access to such a debate through the usual channels, and I encourage her to do so. On the substance of the issue, however, she is not right. The Prime Minister was quite right yesterday and let me reiterate what he said. If we did not have these regulations, normal procurement law and competition rules would apply. The former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), knows perfectly well that the principal rules for co-operation and competition would have applied in the same way before the last election. If he and the hon. Lady look at the regulations properly, which of course I have, they will see that it is possible to proceed without a competition on a single tender basis. The regulations, for the first time, create a structure that allows for “any qualified provider”. That is exactly what was said during the passage of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 and what is stated in the Act. There is no change in policy. The regulations enable commissioners to go for whoever is best placed to improve the quality of the services, meet the needs of people who use the services and improve efficiency, including through an “any qualified provider” route rather than a competitive tendering route.
The hon. Lady asked about a debate on international women’s day. I have announced the business and it does not allow us to have such a debate on that day; the House is not sitting on 8 March and the business does not allow for such a debate on 7 March. However, there is an Opposition day on the following week and the Backbench Business Committee has always been receptive to Back-Bench Members who apply for such debates, as was demonstrated in the well-attended and well-structured debate that took place the week before last.
The hon. Lady asked about the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has made it clear that before Second Reading—not before Committee stage, as was previously intended—the Government will publish the principal draft regulations associated with the Bill. She asked about the timing of the Committee stage. She knows perfectly well that it is our intention on Second Reading to table a carry-over motion so that we can consider carefully what is the appropriate timing for the Committee stage.
I thought that the most important sign-up to a political party this week was to the Conservative party on the part of Marta Andreasen, a UK Independence party MEP. That demonstrates that across this country people are recognising that the Prime Minister’s speech on the future of our relationship with the European Union was, as she said, a “game changer”.
I apologise that we have not been able to give the hon. Lady and her colleagues time for an Opposition day debate next week as we are making progress with legislation. When she does have that opportunity the week after next, there are many matters for her to choose from: the increase in employment last year, with the fastest rate of new employment growth in the private sector since the 1980s; the reduction of more than 80% in the number of people waiting for NHS operations for more than a year and the waits that patients have to experience in Wales under a Labour Government, which the shadow Secretary of State for Health might want to debate; and, in the Home Office context, the reduction in crime figures or the reduction in net migration to this country of a third since the last election, which was announced this morning. This is a coalition Government delivering on our promises.
Sir Alan Haselhurst (Saffron Walden) (Con)
Given that one of the world’s worst-kept secrets is that Commonwealth day falls on 11 March and that Commonwealth Parliaments are being encouraged to mark that day with a debate on a Commonwealth theme, how can it be that this House is being given no opportunity to debate the Commonwealth, the proposed charter or connected matters?
Mr Lansley
I have discussed this matter with a number of colleagues and have encouraged them to approach the Backbench Business Committee. I am not aware of whether they have done so. Of course, I have announced the business for 11 March, so I do not think that we can accommodate such a debate on that day. However, a number of Parliaments are debating the Commonwealth at some time close to that day. I encourage my right hon. Friend and others to continue to approach the Backbench Business Committee on that matter.
Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)
Following the question from the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst) about Commonwealth day, the Backbench Business Committee approached the Government to ask whether they would open Westminster Hall on a Monday afternoon to facilitate such a debate, but the Government refused. In the light of that, may I ask the Leader of the House whether the Backbench Business Committee’s full allocation of time will be received from the Government before the end of the Session? By our calculations we have two provisional days booked in and nothing more on the horizon, which falls at least one day short. So far, we have 13 important and urgent Back-Bench debates that need scheduling.
Mr Lansley
As the House will know, the Standing Orders provide for Westminster Hall to be opened on a Monday only for particular purposes, and I did not think it appropriate for us to seek to depart from that in this instance. The hon. Lady asked about the time available for the Backbench Business Committee, and taking today’s debate into account it will have scheduled 25 and a half days’ debate in this Session. The Standing Orders provide for 27 days in this Session, and I am confident that we will meet and exceed that.
Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)
As the Leader of the House will know, last week I raised the urgency of holding a debate in Government time on the Francis report. I discussed the matter with the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, and she entirely agrees with me, and others, who believe it is becoming a disgrace that we are not holding a debate on that vital issue. There is also the question of Sir David Nicholson and whether he should resign. Will the Leader of the House please speak to the Prime Minister and ensure that we have that debate as a matter of urgency in Government time on the Floor of the House?
Mr Lansley
As my hon. Friend knows, it is the Government’s intention to have a debate on that issue. He will also know, however, that on 15 January he and his colleagues went to the Backbench Business Committee to ask for time for a debate, but it has not been scheduled. We must remember that as a general proposition this House resolved that the Backbench Business Committee should take responsibility for a wide range of debates, including general debates. If we start to re-import an expectation that the Government will provide time for such debates, it will by extension be impossible to allocate the same amount of time to the Backbench Business Committee. We will have a debate on the Francis report and discuss between ourselves how that is to be accomplished at the appropriate moment. I continue to make the general point of principle that the Backbench Business Committee exists in part to enable the House to debate current important issues, as it did with Hillsborough, for example.
Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)
May we have a debate in Government time on the fact that we are supposedly “all in it together”, so that we can contrast the return of the curse of fuel poverty that is affecting many of our constituents with the handover of some £10 million to the outgoing chief executive of British Gas, the £1.3 billion to shareholders, and the fact that so much is being done to make life more difficult for the people we represent?
Mr Lansley
The hon. Gentleman will know that the House supported in legislation the establishment of the green deal, which will make an enormous difference to many people. Many companies in the energy sector are providing discounts on energy bills to something approaching 2 million households, and over the winter the Government are supporting many people with winter fuel payments. In addition, the hon. Gentleman will be aware that the Energy Bill has just been considered in Committee, and when it returns to the House it will provide an opportunity to debate many of the issues surrounding fuel and energy prices, and energy poverty.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
On a day when the Royal Bank of Scotland announced a further £5 billion of losses, it is pertinent to call for a debate on the ongoing losses—currently around £20 billion —being suffered by the taxpayer as a result of the previous Government’s handling of the bank bail-outs in 2008. Mr Michael Cohrs, a member of the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee, stated recently that the previous Government probably overpaid for their stakes in RBS and Lloyds Banking Group. Interestingly, the then chairman of Lloyds Banking Group, Sir Victor Blank, subsequently made a £10,000 donation to the Labour party.
Mr Lansley
The House will have noted that I announced in the provisional business for the week after next the Second Reading of the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill, which will allow hon. Members an opportunity to debate the issues my hon. Friend raises. In addition, the shadow Chancellor, who was the City Minister responsible at the time of a banking collapse, will perhaps have the opportunity to explain and apologise to the people of this country.
Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House arrange for a statement to be made by the appropriate Minister on the scandalous treatment by Tesco of more than 400 workers in a high-unemployment area in Bolsover? Tesco is transferring those workers 170 miles down south, which is a complete contradiction of the regional policy of sending jobs up to the north. Tesco has been there for only a few years. Will the Leader of the House ensure that all the assistance that Tesco got to set up its distribution factory—all the money it received from development agencies, Europe, central Government and local government—is paid back? Does he agree that that scandalous treatment shows that Tesco stinks worse than the horsemeat it has been selling?
Mr Lansley
The commercial decisions of Tesco are not a matter for me. My hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) is in his place. I am sure that he, like the hon. Gentleman, has issues to raise regarding the decisions that Tesco has made. However, they are commercial matters for the companies concerned.
Mike Crockart (Edinburgh West) (LD)
May we have a statement from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills on what it is doing to prevent identity fraud? I have recently received complaints from a constituent that his address has been used on two separate occasions in the registration of new companies without his knowledge or permission. The Government should not be complicit in any form of identity theft.
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I will speak to my hon. Friends at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to secure a response to it. In so far as the Government have regulations and require people to be on databases, it is important that the information is valid and reliable.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
The Leader of the House has mentioned the immigration figures. He will know that today the chief inspector of the UK Border Agency has published a report showing that, last year, 300 people entered Birmingham airport without proper checks. May we have an urgent statement from the Home Secretary on how that was allowed to happen? May we also have an assurance that anyone entering this country has undergone the full border checks that are required?
Mr Lansley
The right hon. Gentleman rightly says that the chief inspector published a report on Birmingham airport. Regrettably, it included the fact that, over a number of occasions, 278 passengers came through the primary control point when the biometric chip-reading facility had been deactivated. As the report acknowledges, that is one of a number of checks that UK Border Force officers conduct to verify identity. All criminal and immigration checks remained in place and action has already been taken to ensure that that cannot happen again. All contingency staff deployed to the border were fully trained to enable them to undertake the necessary security checks.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
Before the half-term recess, we had a debate on violence against women and girls. According to the Ministry of Justice, men and boys are twice as likely to be victims of violent crime as women and girls. As you know, Mr Speaker, I am a big fan of equality—I believe you once referred to me as “a troglodyte” in one such debate in the previous Parliament. Therefore, in the interests of equality, may we have a debate on violence against men and boys?
Mr Lansley
In the interests of equality, I advise my hon. Friend to approach the Backbench Business Committee in the same way that hon. Members who secured the debate on violence against women and girls did.
Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
May I return to the Health and Social Care Act 2012? I remind the Leader of the House that the then Health Minister, the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns), assured the Bill Committee that there was no intention to impose compulsory competitive tendering. Those assurances were repeated by the Leader of the House and by Earl Howe in the other place. Will the Leader of the House arrange not only for the regulations to be debated on the Floor of the House, but for us to have a debate on ministerial standards and accountability, so that we can discuss how those assurances came to be given by Ministers when something completely different has happened in the regulations?
Mr Lansley
I will not repeat what I have said before, but I have to say to the hon. Lady that the regulations are entirely consistent with commitments and statements made by Ministers during the passage of the Health and Social Care Act 2012.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
One of my constituents was recently knocked over and killed crossing Heybridge road in Hadley in my constituency. He was nine years old. Can we have an urgent debate on the need for West Mercia police and Telford and Wrekin council to listen to the concerns of residents of both Leegomery and Hadley about speeding traffic in those residential areas?
Mr Lansley
I am sure that the House shares my hon. Friend’s regret about the tragic circumstances that he describes. We have just had Transport questions, and he will know how strongly Ministers in that Department feel about the need to improve our record on road safety, good as it may already be. Local authorities can play a part in that, and I will of course ask my hon. Friends if they can add anything to enable him to approach his local authority in that way.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
If the Leader of the House had been in another part of the House this morning, he could have heard the Children’s Commissioner tell a group of us interested in children’s issues that we have the worst outcomes for child health in Europe. With the plague of obesity and lack of exercise, and the evidence that the likelihood of any young person going to any green spaces in our country has halved in a generation, may we have an early debate on children’s access to the countryside?
Mr Lansley
I am sorry that I did not have an opportunity to hear the Children’s Commissioner: I would have appreciated doing so. It will not have escaped the hon. Gentleman’s notice that in January last year, knowing that we had poor child health statistics relative to other highly developed countries, I asked a team led by the medical director at Alder Hey and other distinguished clinicians and representatives in that area to form a taskforce, which reported last year. On that basis, the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) last week announced further measures to take that forward as part of a strategy to improve children’s health.
Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)
Given the changes to A-levels announced by the Department for Education in November 2012, can we have a Minister come to the Dispatch Box to advise on how the Government intend to prevent students who started their A-level courses in September 2012 from being adversely affected by the changes midway through their course?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend will be aware that Education Ministers will be here on Monday to answer questions. He will also know that the decision to remove the January exams was taken by Ofqual, following strong support during its regulatory consultation on A-level reform. That consultation highlighted concerns that modular exams and a high frequency of re-sit opportunities led to teaching to the test and a culture of re-sits. Removing the January exam will limit the number of re-sit opportunities and help to address those concerns, but it will impact on those students who began their course in September 2012.
Jim Sheridan (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)
Party politics aside, all our constituents and local businesses are angry at and frustrated by the contemptuous way in which the bankers and energy companies are treating us. Could we therefore have a debate on how best we could give protection to consumers in our constituencies? Our Select Committees do an excellent job in scrutinising these industries but lack any effective powers. Is that something that the Leader of the House would be prepared to consider?
Mr Lansley
I say to the hon. Gentleman—equally, party politics aside—that we are not powerless in this House. We are discussing an Energy Bill that will require energy companies to give their customers access to the lowest possible tariffs. The Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards is currently looking at the question of standards in banking and the way in which customers are treated by the banking industry. We are not powerless and the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill and the Energy Bill can be instrumental in giving consumers a better offer in relation to these industries.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
I congratulate the Government on their recent decision to stop backing World Bank and IMF loans to Argentina, because Buenos Aires has an appalling record of defaulting on international loans. Unbelievably, the country is still a member of the G20 despite its appalling economic record and how it behaves internationally. Can we have a debate on how G20 membership is decided?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend may wish to raise that issue with Foreign Office Ministers on Tuesday, but I appreciate what he has to say about World Bank loans to Argentina. The G20 is an informal organisation with no formal criteria for membership, and that has remained unchanged since it was first established. Any change to G20 membership, or the introduction of criteria for membership, would require consensus agreement by its members. Currently, there are no plans to revisit either.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
Can we have a debate on bankers’ bonuses? I understand that the Government are opposing the EU proposal to limit them without shareholder permission to the salary of the banker concerned. According to Wiktionary, a bonus is extra pay due to good performance. A bonus that is in excess of an entire salary is not extra pay due to good performance. Is it not just pure, unadulterated, sheer, naked greed?
Mr Lansley
I completely understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, but he has to recognise that, as he will have noticed from how many people have responded to the proposal agreed between the Commission and Parliament, it runs the risk of converting what properly should be a bonus into something that is consolidated into people’s salaries. That would lead to additional fixed rather than variable costs in the banking industry. We have to focus on ensuring that the industry is competitive and that bonuses are genuine, and not end up with an artificial situation that makes the industry more costly and less competitive.
Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)
The local authority in the Vale of Glamorgan has recently been considering plans to close three schools. Two are among the best in Wales, and one is one of the most improved in the area. Unfortunately, the final decision lies with the local authority. Thankfully, it has been forced by parents to back down. Can we have a debate on free schools, which empower parents to take control of the future of these establishments? Such a debate would also inform and educate people across other parts of the UK.
Mr Lansley
I am grateful to my hon. Friend—and I am sure his constituents will be too for the support he gives them in this respect. He will be frustrated that the Labour Government in Wales are not adopting reforms analogous to those being pursued in England by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education. My right hon. Friend will be at the Dispatch Box on Monday and, although it is not his ministerial responsibility, I am sure he would share with Members in this House the view that if the Welsh Labour Government followed some of the precepts of academies and free schools, it would be much to the advantage of parents and pupils.
Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)
It is 10 years since the start of the conflict in Darfur, which led to the slaughter of 300,000 Darfuris. Will the Leader of the House consider holding a debate on human rights in Sudan? Is he aware that this morning 98 politicians from the UK, United States and Australia signed an open letter to their Foreign Ministers asking for urgent leadership in the Security Council to ensure that we do not see a repeat of that violence and a man-made famine in southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states?
Mr Lansley
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point and he does it well. He will have an opportunity to raise the issue again with Foreign Office Ministers on Tuesday. He will find that my hon. Friends in the Government share his concern to ensure that we continue to keep up the pressure on Sudan to respect human rights and to maintain a level of peace in that country.
James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)
Head teachers in my constituency have told me that they have been able to use the pupil premium money to help some of the most disadvantaged pupils in their schools. Can we have a debate about the success of the pupil premium policy and ensure that schools have the freedom to make decisions on how to allocate the pupil premium budget without pressure from trade unions or local authorities trying to resist?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend shares my view that the £2.5 billion now in the pupil premium is making a dramatic difference, particularly for schools that have a responsibility to try to secure the best education for some of the most disadvantaged pupils—that is terrifically important. From having talked to head teachers, I know that of particular importance to them are the freedoms we have given them in a range of respects, especially the freedom to use those resources in the best interests of the school as a whole.
Simon Danczuk (Rochdale) (Lab)
Early on 15 February, there was a major fire in Rochdale at what was the world’s biggest asbestos factory, the now derelict Turner Brothers mill. Firefighters spent five hours battling the blaze, and concerns have been raised that no air monitoring took place. Will the Government make a statement that promises the people of Rochdale that this matter will be investigated, that the site will be secured, and that all laws to protect our environment and public health will be fully enforced?
Mr Lansley
I confess that I was not aware of the circumstances that the hon. Gentleman describes, but they are obviously very important for his constituency and beyond. I will therefore talk to colleagues at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in respect of the Environment Agency and colleagues at the Department for Work and Pensions in relation to the Health and Safety Executive to see whether they can respond to his points.
Karl MᶜCartney (Lincoln) (Con)
You may recall, Mr Speaker, that a month ago I asked the Leader of the House a question about the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. No organisation, charity or business would allow its finance department to budget for a cost per employee of about £10,000 per annum to process each individual claim. What does he think of IPSA senior management’s bullying tactics and threats, subsequent to my raising these issues, to try to silence me regarding their spiralling costs? Does he think that the chief executive should show some backbone and meet me—he has refused to do so for more than two and a half years —instead of attempting to smear the names of Members of Parliament by false innuendo and subterfuge?
Mr Speaker
Order. I appreciate the sincerity with which that point has been raised, and it is a matter of concern to the House, but I am afraid that it is not a business question. The hon. Gentleman should have requested a statement or a debate, but it absolutely was not a business question, as I have just been reminded by the Clerk Assistant. The Leader of the House may wish to say something, but Members really must play by the rules and not invent them as they go along.
Mr Lansley
I completely understand, Mr Speaker. If it is helpful to the House, I will of course be happy to meet my hon. Friend and, as a member of your Speaker’s Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, I would be glad to take forward any issues he has.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
May we have an urgent debate on the proper use of employment statistics? The Leader of the House mentioned the number of people in employment, but of course what actually matters is the employment rate. Earlier this week, the Chancellor was dismissive of my raising problems of underemployment; he referred to the number of hours worked, but it is the rate of underemployment that matters. Ministers can try to ignore the problem if they wish, but that will not convince constituents of mine who can get only a zero-hours or 10-hours contract when what they actually want is a full-time, permanent job.
Mr Lansley
I was present at the time and I am sure the Chancellor was correct in saying that the number of hours worked has increased. The key points are of course that the number of people in work is up and is now 29.73 million, and that the employment rate is 71.5%. Rather than trying to make a point in the way she does, the hon. Lady should celebrate the fact that since the election employment in the private sector has risen by over 1 million and, as a consequence, last year’s employment increase was the fastest rate of private sector growth in employment since the 1980s.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
Following on from the question from the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner), has my right hon. Friend seen my early-day motion 1116 on Tesco?
[That this House notes with huge regret and disappointment the planned closure of the Tesco distribution plant at Harlow; further notes the contribution that many Harlow workers have made to its success and the strong customer base that they have served throughout the Eastern region, as well as tens of thousands of families in Harlow town itself; accepts that Tesco has pledged that all workers will be offered positions elsewhere including the new Dagenham site; urges that pay and conditions remain the same or better for staff who have been affected; thanks the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers for its efforts on negotiating on behalf of Tesco employees; and calls on Tesco to do everything possible to look after its many hundred loyal and committed staff at the Harlow depot.]
May we have an urgent debate about workers’ pay and conditions? Hundreds of Harlow workers are losing their jobs because the Tesco distribution centre is closing. Will my right hon. Friend write to the Business Secretary to ensure that workers who are given jobs elsewhere retain their pay and conditions?
Mr Lansley
I will, of course, as my hon. Friend requests, talk to my right hon. Friend the Business Secretary, not least to ensure that we do everything we can to support workers in Harlow, Bolsover and elsewhere.
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
Media reports are suggesting that the Government are pushing ahead at great pace with the privatisation of Royal Mail. Given that the House has not debated the issue since the passing of the Postal Services Act 2011, may we have an urgent debate or a statement on the Government’s proposals for the privatisation of that much-cherished national institution?
Mr Lansley
As the hon. Gentleman suggests in his question, the House has resolved what should happen, and it is now a question of carrying that forward. He will of course have an opportunity to ask questions of Ministers in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills shortly. I do not have the date—
Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
The Government are doing excellent work on women’s issues, from equal pay audits, to women on boards domestically, to putting women and girls front and centre in international development. May I encourage calls for a debate to celebrate international women’s day and the brilliant work that this Government are doing on women’s issues?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend will have heard me say in response to the shadow Leader of the House that the House will not be sitting on 8 March, which is international women’s day, but that I hope that if he and other hon. Members across the House were to approach the Backbench Business Committee, it might find an opportunity for a debate to celebrate the many ways in which women are at the heart of the delivery of the economy and enterprise—[Hon. Members: “There is not one woman on the Government Benches!”]—and indeed of good government in this country.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Yes, it is nice to see so many women from the coalition Government parties on their Benches today!
I would like to ask the Leader of the House about the restrictions that have been placed on Hull City supporters who will be travelling to Huddersfield for the football game on 30 March. They have been told that they will have to travel by coach from Hull, and that restriction is causing a lot of problems for my constituents. May we have a debate in the House on putting in place sensible guidelines on the placing of restrictions on football matches, so that such restrictions are used only when there is clear evidence that the police need them?
Mr Lansley
I suspect that that might be an operational issue for the police, and that it should therefore be raised with the chief constable. I am not necessarily amenable to granting a debate on the specific instance that the hon. Lady has raised, but she will recall that I have previously expressed the hope that there might be an occasion on which the House could debate issues relating to football governance. Such a debate could stretch widely across the way in which football is not only governed but policed, as that would also be relevant.
I must also point out that the women Members on the Government side of the House—those from my party, at least—are busy in Eastleigh today, seeking to secure the election of a new woman Member of Parliament, Maria Hutchings.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
During this Parliament, more than 650,000 apprenticeships have been started by people under the age of 24, and over half of all apprenticeships are now taken up by women. We have seen a significant increase in the take-up of apprenticeships in the north, especially in my constituency. Please may we have a debate to explore the role that apprenticeships are playing in the rebalancing of our economy? Next month, we will celebrate national apprenticeship week, so that might prove to be helpful timing.
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to celebrate the fact that we are increasing the number of apprenticeships—1 million over two years—and that efforts under the youth contract announced by the Deputy Prime Minister are enabling us to focus on the needs of young people, through apprenticeships and the new traineeships that will enable them to access vocational opportunities.
Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
One of the features of this Parliament has been the collapse of the Government’s agenda for constitutional reform. May we have a debate on why it is considered unnecessary to have fewer thorough debates on constitutional reform in this Parliament?
Mr Lansley
I do not recognise the point that the hon. Gentleman is making. This Government are pursuing issues relating to constitutional reform. We have reformed Parliament in the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, we have changed the arrangements in this House and we are taking forward measures relating to the recall of MPs. As a Conservative, I always like the need for constitutional reform to be proven by evidence, and that is how we are proceeding.
Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)
Council-provided services in Montgomeryshire are under threat of devastation because of the legal costs of defending decisions, arrived at democratically, to refuse planning permission for wind farms. The foreign-owned energy leviathans that are taking those actions seem to have unlimited access to subsidies to pay for their costs. May we have a statement on the Government’s position on this matter, to determine how democracy might be retained in Montgomeryshire?
Mr Lansley
I recall that my hon. Friend and I have discussed the issue previously at business questions and I will, of course, go back to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. We want to make sure that there is a kind of equality of arms before the law so that people feel that they are not inhibited from getting access to planning opportunities or planning decisions simply because of the deep pockets of those seeking planning approval.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Will the Leader of the House agree to a statement or a debate on regional variations in the numbers of those diagnosed with dementia? In England and Wales the figure is some 43%, in Northern Ireland it is approximately 60% and in Belfast, the central and largest city in Northern Ireland, it is 75%. The differentials and variations are obvious. An exchange of medical expertise in diagnosis for everyone in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland would be to everyone’s advantage.
Mr Lansley
We had a debate on dementia quite recently. It is important to understand regional variations on dementia, particularly given that, as the hon. Gentleman will be aware, Northern Ireland has a good record in identifying and diagnosing dementia. To that extent, the figures he quoted are about a differential in diagnosis rather than necessarily a variation in the incidence—or, I should say, the prevalence—of dementia in different parts of the United Kingdom. It is important to understand this issue, which is why the dementia challenge is in part precisely about ensuring that we get much higher rates of dementia diagnosis across parts of England and Wales.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
Can we have an urgent Government statement, because it is grossly unfair that each week the Leader of the House turns up at business questions to be duffed over by Members on both sides of the House over the allocation of time for parliamentary business? That happens because it is the Government who allocate the time. The coalition is committed to a Business of the House Committee made up of parliamentarians of all parties, excluding Front Benchers. I cannot for the life of me understand why the Government are opposed to such a measure, as long as it is based on the Jopling principles. We are committed to having this committee by the beginning of May: when are we going to have this Business of the House Committee?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend will know that I am not opposed to a House business committee; I am supportive of it, but we need to get it right. The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee is examining the issue right now. I do not feel in the least bit—
Mr Lansley
I do not in the least feel under any kind of duress in respect of the allocation of time. I just need to remind Members from time to time that the House has resolved that a substantial part of its time—something approaching half the total number of sitting days—is made available to the Backbench Business Committee, to the Opposition, to the Liaison Committee—[Interruption.] We have to secure the business of government. From my point of view, it is absolutely transparent that a House business committee should add value to the measures that have made progress in this Parliament in giving Back Benchers access to parliamentary time, rather than detracting from them.
Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)
In connection with this question, I remind the House that my daughter is a practising medical student.
Final-year medical students face uncertainty this week over their foundation programme jobs because of application scoring errors in the new SJT—situational judgment test. This week, more than 7,000 final-year medical students who were initially delighted to receive their foundation school allocations may be concerned that those allocated jobs are now at risk. Students were informed of this by e-mail at 6.30 on Tuesday, with no apology for the error, causing some distress and anxiety. That is completely unacceptable. Will the Leader of the House request a statement from the Secretary of State?
Mr Lansley
The UK Foundation Programme Office is working urgently to resolve these problems so that there is minimum disruption to doctors and the affected hospitals, and to ensure that everyone is notified as quickly as possible about their placements for August. The error should not have happened and we are concerned about the anxiety that this has caused to students. I reiterate—and I recall making this clear when I was the Secretary of State for Health—that all eligible graduates of a UK medical school will receive a training place for August 2013.
Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)
Last Thursday I was given a guided tour of the new Visions Learning Trust university technical college at Victoria Mill in Burnley by Martin Gallagher, the college principal, and Steve Gray, the chief executive of Training 2000. The multi-million-pound college, which will open in August this year and will admit students aged between 14 and 19, is designed to appeal directly to the more vocationally minded, and is exactly what large Pendle employers such as Rolls-Royce, Weston EU and Graham Engineering said that our area needed. May we have a debate on university technical colleges, and the fantastic opportunity that they provide for young people to gain access to an education linked directly to the skills and knowledge that our local employers say that they desperately need?
Mr Lansley
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. I should like to say that we could find time for a debate soon, but we may not be able to do so, although I am sure that the issues that he has raised would be relevant to questions to the Secretaries of State for Education and for Business, Innovation and Skills.
My hon. Friend’s question had a certain resonance for me, because only last Friday I was standing on the site in Cambridge where a university technical college is to be established. It will focus on the provision of technical training for young people who will work in life sciences around Cambridge. The crucial aspect of such education is that it is directed to the needs of employers in an area, and enables young people to feel confident that the training they receive will enable them to find jobs quickly.
Point of Order: Rectification Procedure
(11 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In March 2011 I accepted an invitation to Cheltenham races from Ladbrokes, which I properly and accurately registered in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. However, I failed to refer to my entry in the register when I tabled three parliamentary questions on problem gambling, when I led an Adjournment debate on problem gambling, and during an inquiry into the Gambling Act 2005 held by the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, on which I serve and to which the chief executive of Ladbrokes gave evidence. A complaint was subsequently made to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. All other complaints made by the person concerned were dismissed.
As soon as I was made aware of the complaint, I told the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards that I believed that I should have referred to my entry on those occasions. My failure to do so was due not to a desire to conceal it—if that had been my motivation, I would not have registered my interest in the first place—but to an oversight, as I had forgotten about it. I offer that not as an excuse, Mr Speaker, because there is no excuse, but merely as an explanation. As soon I was aware of the complaint, I also apologised to the Select Committee, and offered to resign from it if any one of its members felt that I had acted improperly. I am very grateful to them all for accepting that mine had been a genuine error, and for saying that they did not believe that any impropriety had taken place.
I assure you, Mr. Speaker, that this benefit had no influence on my questions or speeches, or on the work or conclusions of the Select Committee, whose report was agreed unanimously. The Registrar for Members’ Financial Interests said in her letter:
“I should emphasise that there is no suggestion that Mr Davies’ behaviour was in fact influenced.”
Nevertheless, it was my duty to refer to my entry in the register on those occasions, and I failed to do so. It was therefore only right for me to take the earliest possible opportunity to apologise to you, Mr Speaker, and to the whole House. I hope that you and the House will accept my sincere apology for what was a genuine error.
Mr Speaker
I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that the Queen has signified her Royal Assent to the following Acts:
HGV Road User Levy Act 2013
Mental Health (Discrimination) Act 2013
European Union (Approvals) Act 2013
Scrap Metal Dealers Act 2013
Prisons (Property) Act 2013
Canterbury City Council Act 2013
Leeds City Council Act 2013
Nottingham City Council Act 2013
Reading Borough Council Act 2013
Backbench Business
(11 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Death Penalty (India)
(11 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House welcomes the national petition launched by the Kesri Lehar campaign urging the UK Government to press the Indian government to sign and ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and the UN Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which encompasses the death penalty, with the result that India would abolish the death penalty and lift this threat from Balwant Singh Rajoana and others.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for agreeing to this debate, and for having considered our representations as a matter of urgency. I am also grateful to all the many colleagues from across all parties in the House for supporting the request for a debate.
The motion replicates the Kesri Lehar—wave for justice—petition launched last year. The UN motions refer to general human rights abuses, which can be interpreted as including the death penalty. The intent of the motion is clear: it calls on the UK Government to assist in every way they can in ensuring the abolition of the death penalty in India.
Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)
I acknowledge that technical point, but the motion’s heading highlights what the Kesri Lehar campaign wants us to debate and impress upon the Indian Government: the need for the abolition of the death penalty in India. The death penalty is abhorrent to the vast majority of Members, especially as we on this side of the House are, as socialists, opposed in principle to it. We want to make the call for its abolition loud and clear through the Punjabi community—I have a very successful one in Coventry—and it will be the principal burden of my remarks, if I am called to speak.
John McDonnell
Exactly, and this follows in the tradition of Governments of all political complexions in recent years, and of the representations that have been made to the Indian Government. I am grateful to the Government for their recent activities on this matter, which I will discuss later.
This is an historic debate, but it would not be taking place today had it not been for the dedication, hard work and commitment of the Kesri Lehar campaigners, and I wish to pay tribute to them. Last year, when we received the first inkling that India was considering ending its eight-year moratorium on implementing the death penalty, members of the Punjabi community in our country, especially the Punjabi Sikhs, came together and launched the Kesri Lehar campaign. Since then, they have secured more than 100,000 signatures to their petition to abolish the death penalty and address other human rights concerns.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
A large proportion of the Sikh community in Huddersfield passionately agrees with the motion, and I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. For eight years we all hoped and thought there would be no more capital punishment in India. We should note that the record on capital punishment—on the number of people killed—is far worse in China and the United States, but this is a very important debate, and I am pleased to give my full support to it.
John McDonnell
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I hope that across the House we are all friends on this matter.
The Kesri Lehar campaign organised a mass lobby of Parliament last autumn, and it has worked with human rights organisations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Liberty, to press the Indian Government for the abolition of the death penalty. On behalf, I hope, of the whole House, I want to thank all the Kesri Lehar campaigners, many of whom have joined us in the Gallery today.
Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)
I will visit the Sikh temples in Derby on Sunday to pick up a petition to bring to this Chamber next week or the week after, or whenever Mr Deputy Speaker will allow me to. It is interesting how this issue has captured the imagination in our local areas and I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate.
John McDonnell
I am grateful for the work the hon. Lady is undertaking. When we visit the gurdwaras, it is interesting to see not only the range of men and women who support the campaign but the number of young people who have joined and led it recently.
I raised the death penalty and human rights abuses in India in this House last year, but I do so today with an even greater sense of urgency. Why? India has started to execute people again. When India secured its independence from Britain, it retained its 19th century penal code, which included the death penalty for murder. Until the 1980s, capital punishment was implemented regularly. From then on, although death sentences were pronounced by Indian courts they were increasingly not put into practice. In 1980, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty should be used in the rarest of rare cases, which led eventually to an eight-year moratorium on the death penalty being implemented within India.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson) and I have a large Punjabi community in Coventry, which is very concerned about the death penalty. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) agree that the British Government should be encouraging the Indian Government to honour and sign international treaties against the death penalty and, more importantly, to reform the police force? We have seen in the media instances of the police force not investigating serious crimes against women or not taking them seriously. Last night, I presented a petition on behalf of the Punjabi community not only in Coventry but nationally.
John McDonnell
I am grateful for the work that my hon. Friend has undertaken in this campaign over the years—his involvement is not merely recent. It is interesting that although the debate is focused on the death penalty, it has emerged that there have been extra-judicial killings, too.
Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend referred to the fact that the Indian authorities have recently started to execute people again. Clearly, that was in the context of a terrorist attack that caused many lives to be lost. The precedent has been set, however, and there is now a real danger that many people who had been given a death sentence that had not been applied, and their families, will undergo a period of great difficulty and stress. That applies to many communities in India and not just the Punjabis.
John McDonnell
Exactly. I am sure that other Members will raise the question of what is happening with the Dalits and other groups.
The eight-year moratorium lulled us into a false sense of security. Naively, many of us thought that although India retained the death penalty on the statute book the continuation of the moratorium was an indication that it would eventually be abolished once and for all. Unfortunately, that was a naive judgment and our hopes were dashed in the spring of last year when reports emerged that the Indian Government were moving to execute Balwant Singh Rajoana and, possibly, to authorise the execution of Professor Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar. That caused widespread concern among the Punjabi community in the UK, across many of our constituencies and across the world.
I want to refer to the two cases, as they have been prominently mentioned in the media and carry immense significance around the world, the Rajoana case for its historical context and the Bhullar case because it is almost now a symbol of the injustice meted out to so many Sikhs in recent decades.
Let me deal first with Balwant Singh Rajoana, a former member of the Punjabi police. He has publicly acknowledged his role in the killing of the chief Minister of the Punjab, Beant Singh, in 1995. He has refused to defend himself and refused legal representation, and he has not asked for mercy. However, Sikhs and Sikh organisations in gurdwaras have appealed for mercy on his behalf, and urged the Indian Government to appreciate the context of Balwant Singh’s actions and the feelings of the Sikhs at that time and now.
Balwant Singh was party to killing Beant Singh, the chief Minister of the Punjab. We now know that Beant Singh personally commanded the police and security forces in the killing and disappearance of possibly more than 20,000 Sikhs—men, women and children. Faced with the failure of the Indian authorities to take action against the former chief Minister for his crimes against humanity, Balwant Singh and a co-conspirator took the law into their own hands. Nobody, including Balwant Singh, claims that he is innocent of the killing, but Sikh organisations, human rights lawyers and human rights groups are urging the Indian Government to take into account the context of his actions, the scale of the human suffering that the Sikhs were enduring at the time, and the anger that young men such as Balwant Singh felt at the failure of the Indian state to bring to justice the chief Minister responsible for the atrocities against the Sikhs in the Punjab. On that basis, they plead for understanding and mercy on Balwant Singh’s behalf and that the death penalty is avoided at all costs.
If Balwant Singh Rajoana symbolises the suffering of the Sikhs in that period, Professor Bhullar symbolises the injustice meted out to Sikhs, to be frank, over the years at the hands of the Indian police and the judicial system. Professor Bhullar came to the attention of the Punjab police because he investigated the abduction and disappearance of a number of his own students. The disappearances were linked to the Punjab police. The resultant persecution of his family, with the disappearance of his own father and uncle and others, led him to flee to Germany for asylum. Tragically, the German authorities believed the assurance of the Indian Government that he would not face the death penalty, and he was returned to India.
The German courts have now ruled that that deportation was wrong. Professor Bhullar has been in prison for 18 years. He has been convicted of involvement in an attempted political assassination solely on the basis of a confession, which he retracted, with not one of more than 100 witnesses identifying him at the scene, and on a split decision of the court judges. In split decisions in India, the practice of the courts is not to impose a death penalty, but Professor Bhullar has been sentenced, held in solitary confinement for eight years and, despite his deteriorating health, his plea for mercy has been rejected. Despite a further petition to the Supreme Court, the fear is that the Indian authorities could move to execute him at any time. This is a shocking miscarriage of justice waiting to happen unless we can intervene effectively.
The fears for Balwant Singh Rajoana and Professor Bhullar prompted the launch of the Kesri Lehar campaign last year. Our fears were compounded when on 21 November India ended its moratorium on the death penalty and executed Ajmal Kasab. In December the United Nations voted for the fourth time for a resolution calling for a global moratorium on executions; 111 countries voted for the moratorium, but India voted against. That is another clear indication of its intent at that time to return to the implementation of the death penalty.
A further execution by hanging took place on 9 February this year. There is a real risk therefore that, with more than 40 people now on death row in India, with 100 more sentenced to death each year, many more executions are likely to follow unless action is taken.
Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman just mentioned the UN vote. The Prime Minister has just come back from India and the UK Government and Governments around the world have high expectations of the future for India. What message does the hon. Gentleman think it sends to the rest of the world that India voted against the moratorium at the UN?
John McDonnell
The message was clearly interpreted by our communities, our constituents and the Kesri Lehar campaigners as showing that India is now intent on the restoration of the death penalty with its full force. That is our fear. The executions that have taken place have confirmed those fears.
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate, which concerns many of our constituents throughout the country. Was not the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) also making the point that this campaign is important because India’s own standing in the world will be severely jeopardised if it proceeds in this way, and that it is in India’s own interests that the Indian Government change course?
John McDonnell
I could not concur more strongly. I shall discuss that point later in my speech.
There is also concern that India is expanding the scope of the death penalty: new laws passed in 2011 provide for the death penalty for those who are convicted of terrorist attacks on oil and gas pipelines that result in death and, in Gujarat state, for those who are found guilty of making and selling illicit liquor.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
The list of crimes that attract the death penalty in India now also includes honour killing and, more recently, rape that leads to death, but campaigners against violence against women in India have not been impressed by those additions, because they do not provide the protection that vulnerable women need but are a reaction by the Government to the horrific violence meted out to a young woman on a bus in Delhi recently.
John McDonnell
That is the specific point I was about to make. We all abhor and condemn that appalling crime, but it should not be used as an excuse to implement the death penalty.
The manner in which the Indian authorities have dealt with executions has also raised concern across the human rights community. The two recent executions were announced to the public after being carried out, which violates all international standards on the use of the death penalty and makes timely interventions and final appeals before execution almost impossible.
Amnesty International points out that the use of the death penalty in India is “riddled with systemic flaws”. According to the briefing Amnesty International provided to Members for this debate, of particular concern under anti-terror legislation is the broad definition of terrorist acts for which the death penalty can be imposed. In addition, there are: insufficient safeguards on arrest; provisions that allow confessions made to the police to be admissible as evidence; obstacles to confidential communication with counsel; insufficient independence of special courts from Executive power; insufficient safeguards for the presumption of innocence; provisions for discretionary closed trials; sweeping provisions to keep secret the identity of witnesses; and limits on the right to review by a higher tribunal.
In its briefing, Amnesty succinctly sums up why we abhor the death penalty and urges India to join those nations that have rejected its use, stating eloquently that the death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. It violates the right to life as enshrined in the universal declaration of human rights. It is arbitrary, discriminatory and can be inflicted upon the innocent. I would add that all the international evidence demonstrates that it is also ineffective as a deterrent to crime and can often result in terrible, irreversible miscarriages of justice. For all those reasons and as a friend of India—someone who has close family ties and community links with India—I urge the Indian Government to join now that community of nations that have renounced the use of the death penalty and have abolished it once and for all.
I hope today that we can speak with one voice on this issue. By doing so, we may be able to impress better on India the need for change. So many MPs have supported the campaign not only because of their own personal conviction, but because they are reflecting the views put to them by many of their constituents. Somebody from the media argued that the reason so many MPs support the debate is they have Punjabi and Sikh constituents. Well, that is undoubtedly true. MPs are simply doing their job in representing their constituents’ views—that is what we are elected to do. It is also worth understanding why so many Punjabis and Sikhs have made representations to us. First, there is of course a real fear on their part that a number of their compatriots could be executed, and on humanitarian grounds they wish to prevent that.
Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate, and on doing so at the right time. As he said, the reason all of us here support this cause is not that we are anti-India. We must kill the myth that we are anti-India or that we are interfering in India’s internal affairs. We are taking a matter of principle and fighting for the rights of the people living in India and abroad.
Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)
Will my hon. Friend give way?
John McDonnell
You, Mr Deputy Speaker, are rightly concerned about the length of time I am taking, so this is the last intervention I will take.
Mr Bailey
My hon. Friend talked about Members representing their Punjabi constituents. I have a petition with over 1,200 names on my desk, and what is significant about it is not only the number of Punjabi names, but the number of names of English origin, which I think reflects how the whole community in this country regards this policy in India. Does he agree that, if pursued, it will be damaging within not only the Indian diaspora in this country, but the indigenous and long-standing white community?
John McDonnell
I fully concur. I think that it will definitely be seen as a setback for us all.
Secondly, there is understandable concern among the Punjabi community because of the abiding sense of injustice within the community about the historic human rights abuses endured in the 1980s and 1990s, for which there has been no proper redress, and the ongoing human rights abuses experienced in recent times, such as physical abuse by the police, evidence of torture in cells and deaths in custody. That has also been experienced, as I have said, by the Dalit community and others.
Thirdly, people should also understand that the Sikh and Punjabi culture abhors the death penalty and human rights abuses. When the Sikh nation was established and the Darbar Sahib, or golden temple, was founded, the Sikh religion instilled in Punjabi culture a profound respect for life. Sikhs are always portrayed as warriors, but they were only warriors to defend their religion. During the period when there was an independent Punjabi nation, the death penalty did not feature in the law or governmental system and no one was put to death. That tradition of abhorrence of the death penalty and respect for life is reflected now in the Kesri Lehar petition calling for the abolition of the death penalty.
What can we do to bring about reform? We must first recognise that the historical relationship between India and Britain means that the UK Government are uniquely placed to urge the Indian Government to end the death penalty. Therefore, I call upon the UK Government to use every forum and every mechanism of communication established with India, formal and informal, to press the Indian Government to halt the executions now and sign up to the UN convention opposing the death penalty.
I wrote to the Prime Minister before his recent visit to India to urge him to raise the issue with the Indian Government, and I hope that today the Minister can report back on that and on the continuing pressure that successive Governments of different parties have put on the Indian Government. To add weight to the British Government’s representations, I urge them to raise the issue again with our European partners and to seek a joint representation from Europe on the subject. I urge the British Government, working with other Governments, to raise this call within the United Nations. With the UN Commission on Human Rights meeting imminently, this is an ideal time to put this back on the UN agenda.
My final words are addressed to the Indian Government. I said in the debate last July that India is the largest democracy in the world, yet it now stands alone in the developing world by still supporting the death penalty. Since then, unfortunately, it has stepped backwards and recommenced implementing the death penalty. I appeal to India, the country of so many religions and value systems that value life, the country of Gandhi and non-violence, the country that now seeks to be a world leader, and to our Indian brothers and sisters in government there to embrace humanity by ending the state killing once and for all.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
As hon. Members can see, 10 Members wish to take part, plus the Front Benchers. We will move on to the next business no later than half-past 2, so I ask for some self-restraint on time, and if that is not forthcoming a time limit will be imposed.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) on this very timely debate.
I would like to start by paying tribute to the Sikh community in Hadley in my own constituency. I have regular interaction with not only ordinary members, as it were, of the Sikh community but its senior leadership. I find that interaction and dialogue very helpful, not least in being able to rise today to support this campaign.
As we head towards the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting and other important multilateral and bilateral meetings where India sits at the table, it is timely that it should be reminded that while it is the world’s largest democracy and a growing economy that is seeing expansion in many areas, not least its military, the maturity of a democracy is judged not on how big the army, the economy or the electorate are, but on how that democracy treats its minorities. India certainly has an issue—if not in reality, in perception—about how it treats its minorities, not least Sikhs, and, indeed, other religious faiths, including the Christian Church. While the federal Government may express their concerns and underscore their commitment to religious freedom and religious freedom of speech, it is important that the states themselves do not ascribe powers to themselves that inhibit and restrict those freedoms.
I have no hesitation in supporting this campaign. I declare an interest in that I am the elected chairman of Parliamentarians for Global Action. One of the purposes of that group—I encourage all Members across the House to join if they are not a member—is to see the ratification of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. I was recently in Rome with other parliamentarians and representatives of other international bodies, not least the International Criminal Court itself in The Hague, to discuss this issue.
It is important that India recognises that while it has medium-term United Nations ambitions for a bigger seat at the big table, it needs to ensure that it abides by the UN convention against torture and other cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment or punishment. It would be a big mistake for India to think that it can continue, perhaps with more gusto, to execute prisoners without the international community ensuring that the spotlight is put on to it. When so many positive things are happening in that country—that democracy—it would be unfortunate that there should be this unhelpful and retrograde distraction for it.
I will keep my remarks very brief, Mr Deputy Speaker, in order to allow colleagues to speak. I conclude by saying that India is a close friend of the United Kingdom, and friends can be candid. As a candid friend of India, I think that, across parties, we are saying to that wonderful, beautiful and proud country that it is not in its own interests to bring back the death penalty in great numbers. There is a debate to be had about the speed with which the federal Government may move towards outlawing execution. It cannot be done overnight; it has to be done in consultation with other states and must clearly have cross-party support. That will not be an easy thing, but things worth fighting for are not always necessarily easy.
I hope that the message sent out from the House today is that this Parliament is a close friend of the Indian Parliament. I hope that our parliamentary colleagues in India will ensure that the death penalty does cease. I pay credit to the Sikh community of this country and in my own constituency.
Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)
I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate on the Kesri Lehar campaign to abolish the death penalty in India, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) on securing it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) has mentioned the warm relationship between the UK and India, which has been a sovereign independent state for 65 years. Let us be clear from the beginning that no other Government can tell the Indian Government or Parliament what to do. It is a sovereign state with its own laws, elected Parliament and judicial system. The modern relationship between the United Kingdom and India is one of equals and of mutual respect. There is a great deal of interaction on trade, education and culture, and it is in that spirit of friendship and mutual respect that this debate is being held.
Many thousands of my constituents originate from the Punjab—and from the city of Jalandhar in particular—where either they or their parents or grandparents were born. I have had the pleasure and honour of visiting India three times since being elected to this House in 2005. I have visited Jalandhar, where so many of my constituents have family roots. I helped to organise an education partnership between schools in Wolverhampton and in the Punjab. I worked with the Punjabi Wolves football supporters club to foster a friendship agreement between Wolves and JCT football club of Punjab. I have met many people in India from non-governmental organisations and from the Union Government and state governments, and have been greeted everywhere with warmth and friendship. I was honoured to be able to pay a pilgrimage to Harmandir Sahib, the Golden Temple at Amritsar and spiritual home of the Sikh community throughout the world. That is an experience that I will never forget.
Relations between our two countries are good, but we are having this debate because of the grave concerns of the large population of those of Indian origin in the UK, many thousands of whom, as I have said, I have the honour of representing. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington has said, the Kesri Lehar petition has been signed by tens of thousands of people throughout the UK. Some of the signatures were presented to No. 10 Downing street in December and I was pleased to be able to speak at that day’s lobby to express my support for the campaign to abolish the death penalty in India.
The campaign has arisen from the grave concerns of the thousands of people who have signed the petition, and those of the UK’s Indian population, particularly the Sikh community, about a number of issues in India. They are concerned about the treatment of some members of the Sikh community in India and, as my hon. Friend has said, about a lack of accountability and the lack of an investigation that holds widespread confidence into the events of 1984, when so many Sikhs were killed. They are also concerned about the death sentences passed on Sikhs. It is those issues that the Kesri Lehar campaign seeks to draw our attention to.
The Sikh community in this country is a successful community. It plays a very positive role in our national life: it works hard, respects faith and family, and contributes a great deal to the UK. I am honoured to represent many thousands of Sikhs. As my hon. Friend said, it is within the rights of our constituents and within our rights to take up issues that are of concern to them. The Sikh communities in Wolverhampton and many other parts of the country are very concerned about this issue.
Attention has been drawn to the cases of Professor Singh Bhullar and Balwant Singh Rajoana, which were outlined by my hon. Friend. Let me be clear that I do not seek to be the judge and jury in those cases or in any others; it is for the courts to determine guilt or innocence. However, I believe that there are certain principles that it is important to establish and that we can speak up for.
The first principle is that justice should be carried out in a fair and transparent way. When facts are disputed, there should be proper investigations with results that can be trusted. Too often, that is not the case. Many of my constituents do not feel that that has happened in the cases that have been raised or over the wider events of 1984. They do not believe that the various commissions that have been launched have got to the truth. The pain of the events of 30 years ago is still very real and very raw for the Sikh community in the UK.
Secondly, people should be accountable and responsible for their actions, no matter what positions of influence or power they hold in society. Thirdly, I believe that this country was right to cease the use of the death penalty many years ago and that we should seek to end its use in other countries. We should have a fundamental concern about the death penalty not only in India, but wherever it is used around the world. Amnesty International reports on its website that in 2011, some 20 states used the death penalty. That is down from about 30 states a decade before. There is progress in that a declining number of states are using the death penalty, but it is still being used too often in too many states.
India’s Supreme Court said in 1980 that the death penalty should be used only in the
“rarest of the rare cases”.
Despite that, the death sentence has been passed regularly by courts since that time. In the past decade, about 130 death sentences a year have been passed. Therefore, the campaign goes on.
I respect fully India’s sovereignty. As a friend of India, I hope that it will think again about the use of the death penalty and join the ranks of the nations that have abolished it. I hope that that happens and that it is a decision freely taken by India. If it takes that decision, it will be welcomed throughout the world.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr Hugo Swire)
I congratulate the hon. Members for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) on securing this debate. We have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) and the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden), and I look forward to hearing the contributions of other hon. Members from both sides of the House.
Let me state clearly from the outset that the Government strongly support the worldwide abolition of the death penalty. We believe that the death penalty undermines human dignity, that there is no conclusive evidence of its deterrent value, and that any miscarriage of justice leading to its imposition is both irreversible and irreparable.
It is for those reasons that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office supports projects throughout the world that campaign against the death penalty. We continue to work actively towards global abolition, in line with our strategy for the abolition of the death penalty, by raising the issue bilaterally and through the EU and the UN. I believe we are closer to achieving that goal than we have ever been. In its most recent report, Amnesty International reported that 70% of the world’s countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. As we have heard, only 21 countries carried out executions in 2011. That is the second lowest number on record, and a third less than a decade ago.
In line with that trend, the biennial UN resolution against the death penalty has attracted increasing support each year since the first resolution in 2007. In December last year it received 111 votes in favour out of 186, which was a record. The United Kingdom played an important part in that through lobbying by diplomatic missions and ministerial contacts, and that should be applauded.
The death penalty in India is a complex issue and continues to be the subject of much debate across Indian society. India has a strong democratic framework that guarantees human rights within its constitution, as well as a functioning and independent judiciary. It was disappointing, however, that India’s de facto moratorium on the death penalty, which had existed for more than eight years, ended with the hangings of Mohammed Ajmal Kasab and Mohammad Afzal Guru last November and February this year respectively. Kasab and Guru were convicted of very serious crimes—involvement in the Mumbai attacks in 2008, and the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament—and it is important to remember the impact that such acts of terrorism have on the people of India.
During my recent visit to India I visited the Taj hotel in Mumbai, one of the targets of the 2008 attacks where at least 31 people were killed. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister visited the Taj memorial and the police memorials commemorating the victims of the Mumbai attacks, and the issue was brought home to me when, exactly a week ago when I was still in India, 14 people were killed in a bomb attack in Hyderabad. Having just spent three days with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, and seen the optimism and opportunities across India, such attacks are a shocking reminder of the terrorist threat that we face. That is why we are working more closely than ever with our colleagues in the Indian Government to combat that shared threat from wherever it emanates.
Mike Gapes
I agree with the Minister’s remarks about the impact of terrorism in India and elsewhere. He referred to his visit to India with the Prime Minister but did he, the Prime Minister, or anybody else from the Government take the opportunity to discuss the death penalty during that visit?
Mr Swire
If the hon. Gentleman will bear with me, all will soon be revealed.
It remains the British Government’s long-standing policy to oppose the death penalty in all circumstances as a matter of principle, and I hope the Indian Government will re-establish a moratorium on executions in line with the global trend towards the abolition of capital punishment. When I was in Delhi last week, I reiterated the British Government’s position on the death penalty to India’s Foreign Secretary, Ranjan Mathai, the permanent under-secretary equivalent at the Ministry of External Affairs. We will also raise our concerns about the death penalty at the EU-India human rights dialogue, which we hope will take place soon.
Mr Jim Cunningham
The Minister said that he raised the death penalty with the relevant Minister, but what response did he receive?
Richard Fuller
The Minister is being very generous with his time. May I press him a little on the consequences of this issue for the UK? For example, suppose a terrorism suspect from India is in the UK. If India moves forward with executions, what will be the UK Government’s position on extradition to India?
Mr Swire
I am going to make some progress. The motion points out that the Indian Government have not ratified the United Nations convention against torture. Central to the British Government’s torture prevention policy is encouragement to countries such as India to sign, ratify and effectively implement that convention and its optional protocol. Not only does the convention define what is meant by an act of torture, it obliges countries to take measures to prevent such acts. Such measures include legislating to make torture a criminal offence, educating officials on the prohibition of torture, conducting prompt and impartial investigations where there are reasonable grounds to believe that torture has taken place, and providing redress and compensation to victims.
The optional protocol provides an important additional layer of monitoring and reporting to prevent torture from happening in any place of detention by allowing visits from national and international monitoring organisations. For those reasons, we continue to call on the Indian Government to expedite the ratification of the United Nations convention against torture and its optional protocol, and adopt robust domestic legislation to that effect. The United Kingdom made a specific recommendation on that issue during India’s universal periodic review in May last year. The EU delegation in Delhi has also hosted a number of events on the importance of ratifying the convention.
While not directly related to the abolition of the death penalty, right hon. and hon. Members will be aware that India is not a state party to the Rome statute to the International Criminal Court. India has expressed its reservations and said that it does not see ratification of the ICC as a priority. That is a strongly held view. The British Government are a strong supporter of the ICC and we actively promote universal ratification. We believe it is in all our interests to support the ICC, which can help prevent devastating and irreparable damage caused by the most serious crimes in the international community, and extend the protection it offers to citizens and state parties.
Concerns have been raised about the treatment of the Sikh community in India, and let me say how proud and privileged I felt to visit Amritsar and the golden temple with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister last week. I understand that it was the first time a Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has visited the golden temple, and spending time in the garden of remembrance at Jallianwala Bagh was a particularly moving experience for us all.
During my visit I heard about the prominent role and contribution of the Sikh community in India. The head of the Indian planning department is Sikh, and Sikhs are prominent in the security forces. Indeed, the Indian Prime Minister is a Sikh. Members across the House need no reminding of the respected and thriving Sikh community in the United Kingdom that has such a long and proud history. It is also a community that will be following today’s debate with close interest.
Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)
I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), along with other colleagues who have secured this debate. My hon. Friend and I have campaigned over the decades for the rights of the Sikh community, sometimes to the slight astonishment of some of our colleagues that we can work so well together. I was pleased to be with my hon. Friend in December when we presented a petition at Downing street, along with our hon. Friends the Members for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton), and for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra), representatives from the community and Amnesty International, which, over the years has played an honourable and prominent role in several campaigns in support of human rights in India, particularly for the Sikh community.
I join my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington in congratulating Kesri Lehar—wave for justice—on the success of the petition that has attracted considerable support. As my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour the Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) pointed out, such support is found not only among the Sikh community but much more widely, and the petition has secured considerable publicity for this worthy cause. Many of those from the community are in Westminster today to observe the debate and show their support for the campaign.
Securing 100,000 names on a petition requires a huge amount of work and a lot of organisation, and our appreciation of that effort by Kesri Lehar should be properly recorded. My constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington have substantial Sikh populations—many are second, third or even fourth generation. We should also record that, in the past year, we have lost two prominent and respected members of that community from Parliament: Marsha Singh, the MP for Bradford West, and my great friend Tarsem King—Lord King of West Bromwich—who was previously leader of my council, Sandwell, which, incidentally, is twinned with Amritsar. I pay tribute to both of them.
Within the Sikh community there is an overwhelming concern about repression in the Punjab and the rights of those living there. That feeling was particularly strong in the difficult years of the emergency following the storming of the golden temple in Operation Blue Star and the murder of Indira Ghandi. There were a host of atrocities in the Punjab at that time, widespread abuse of human rights, much loss of life, and rape and torture. Many disappeared, with their families having no idea as to their fate. The families feel that they can never have closure until they know what happened to their loved ones. We know from the history of Ireland how devastating that can be.
In May last year there was a significant increase in tension and great fear in the population in the Punjab when it was believed that Professor Bhullar and Balwant Singh Rajoana would be executed and the authorities instituted a major crackdown. The concern at the fear expressed in the Punjab manifested itself here most visibly in the sea of orange flags in the midlands showing solidarity with their fellow Sikhs. Lord King, a moderate figure who was by no means hostile to India, visited family in the Punjab at that time. I remember him describing graphically the concerns and fears of those in his community there.
More recently, that concern has resurfaced with the case of Balwant Singh and the possibility of his being hanged, especially following the regrettable end of the informal moratorium and the recent executions of Mohammad Afzal Guru and Ajmal Kasab. The Minister will know of the concern in the Kashmiri community about whether they received adequate representation at their trials.
As a former Minister with responsibility for the armed forces, aviation and Northern Ireland, let me be clear that the Opposition oppose terrorism. India and other countries on the Indian sub-continent have suffered grievously from terrorism—the Minister rightly drew attention to the atrocities in Mumbai—but executing Balwant Singh, Professor Bhullar and others would not end terrorism, but instead damage the image of India, which has been making huge progress on being considered rightly as a modern progressive state with a major role in the world.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington has rightly identified the concerns of the German courts at the decision to deport Professor Bhullar. Will the Minister in this instance expand on his reply to the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller)? My understanding is that the long-standing and consistent policy of the British Government under all parties is that we will not deport someone to another country where there is a risk of them being executed. I am offering the Minister the opportunity to clarify that for the hon. Gentleman and the House.
Mike Gapes
Is it not a fact that, when countries have the death penalty—for example, the United States—the British Government must seek an assurance that it would not apply? Otherwise, the courts in this country will never allow anybody to be extradited to countries when there is a risk of the death penalty. The Home Office has had problems over many years in getting people out of this country because of the bad human rights records of many countries around the world.
Mr Spellar
I thank my hon. Friend, the previous Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, for that clarification. That is exactly my understanding of the position, and it is useful that he has made it clear.
The Minister said that he raised his concerns with senior officials during his recent visit to India. However, will he clarify the concerns expressed to the Indian authorities by others on that visit and by the Foreign Office elsewhere? Were those concerns raised by the Prime Minister during his visit to India, which included a visit to Amritsar?
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) rightly stated, the number of countries using the death penalty has gone down. As the Minister said, 70% of countries have either formally or in effect renounced the death penalty. The commitment of countries around the world was shown clearly by the vote in the UN on a moratorium. It would be a significant step for India, as a major player on the international scene and the world’s largest democracy, not just to reinstate the moratorium formally, which would be welcome, but to abolish the death penalty. India is poised to play a major role in world affairs in the coming decades and such a move would considerably enhance its authority.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
Does the right hon. Gentleman have any knowledge of Indian public opinion on the matter? Does the Indian public want the death penalty to be abolished? Public opinion would, of course, be a major influence on the Indian Government.
Mr Spellar
I do not have the polling information immediately to hand. It is clear from the debates that took place in this country that it took us a long while to come to that decision, but no Government or party have sought to turn the clock back. The death penalty in its finality never allows for the prospect of error, and confessions can be obtained under duress or torture—that has happened in this country. People who have been released because they had been unjustly convicted would, in previous times, have been executed. That goes through to public opinion. Quite apart from other aspects of the death penalty, its finality and the inability to remedy injustices is the reason why two thirds of countries have taken the correct decision not to use it.
As has been stressed, a continuing theme of British policy under this and previous Governments has been not only to abolish the death penalty in the UK, but to campaign against it in all countries, including in the US, our great ally. My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) was right that, despite our strong relationship with the US and our huge respect for its legal system, we demand absolute assurances that the federal authorities will guarantee that the death penalty will not be applied even for offences that could attract it.
I congratulate Ministers on not only the general campaign that they have been running, but their representations on the specific cases of Balwant Singh and Professor Bhullar, and I thank the Minister for his recent letter on this, which makes clear the actions they have been taking, not just last year but more recently.
While the death penalty is hugely important and has obviously played a significant part in this debate, it is not the only issue of concern, either generally in the community or for the petitioners. I am pleased that the UK is active in encouraging the improvement of the treatment of minority communities in India. My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington has been campaigning for a long time on this issue. We understand that the British High Commission has discussed minority rights issues with the Indian National Commission for Minorities, and I hope that we are making some progress on that.
I am pleased also that the Minister made a strong case for India, along with other countries, to sign and ratify the Rome treaty setting up the International Criminal Court, which is another laudable aim of this petition. I hope that the Government will have some success in persuading those countries along that path. We also welcome previous assurances from Foreign Office Ministers that these issues have been raised in the annual India-EU human rights dialogue—the Minister mentioned that this work was undertaken not only directly, but through the EU. I hope that the Minister will be able to report progress in the future on the discussions with the Indian authorities; let us know when the next meeting for those discussions will take place; tell us what progress we are making on India’s security legislation and the reports of a significant number of cases of torture by police and security authorities; and report on what progress has been made, not only in ratifying the convention against torture, but adopting robust domestic legislation to that effect.
I shall conclude in order to allow other hon. Members to cover issues that will have been raised very strongly by their constituents. I congratulate Kesri Lehar on its campaign, which has united the community whatever people’s broader views, and gained wide public awareness of the issues that we are discussing today. I also reaffirm the united determination of this Parliament to secure justice for the Sikh community of the Punjab.
Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)
I join other hon. Members in congratulating the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) on securing this debate. I also congratulate the signatories to the Kesri Lehar petition which has been extremely influential in securing the debate.
Many hon. Members have talked about the importance of this issue to their constituents of Punjabi origin, and that is certainly true for my home town of Bedford and for Kempston, but this issue affects the whole community in the United Kingdom. We should all embrace it as a matter of importance. I draw Members’ memories back to the part of the Olympic opening ceremony that celebrated all that is great about our open, multicultural society, when Tim Berners-Lee said, “This is for everyone”, and talked about the interconnectedness of modern society. One of the things that makes our country unique and so special is that we can draw on people’s experiences from their origins around the world, and it is right that this Parliament, the mother of Parliaments, should debate this issue today.
We debate the issue in a spirit of humility, because we are talking about the legislation and rules of another sovereign country, which is—as the hon. Gentleman said in his opening speech—the world’s largest democracy. We need to be extremely respectful and humble in the representations that we make here today, but we also need to carry forward determination and conviction from our own experiences of the death penalty in the UK, and the ways in which politicians over the ages here worked, on principle and for practical reasons, to seek the abolition of the death penalty. In that there is a message for modern Indian politicians.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point about being respectful of the sovereignty of other nations, but we can also point out that, according to Professor Steven Pinker, the professor of cognitive psychology at Harvard university, western Europe is now the safest place to live in history in terms of person-on-person violence and even war and interstate violence. That is in a society with the complete absence of the death penalty. It is worth pointing that out to other places in the world to encourage them to change, rather than demanding that they change.
Richard Fuller
The hon. Gentleman makes the point perhaps more eloquently than I could. This is a matter not just of principle for many hon. Members, but a matter of practical impact. The existence of the death penalty can exacerbate situations and stimulate other criminal activity as a response.
I wish to make a couple of points that perhaps go a bit further than the petition in making representations to our friends in India. Although a moratorium is desirable, the intent should really be outright abolition, because history teaches us that moratoriums are not always an effective long-term solution. As has already been mentioned, India has had a moratorium, and it has ended—the consequences of that remain to be seen. We have also had the experience of the United States, where the Supreme Court issued what was essentially a moratorium. That went away, and before George W. Bush became President he was one of the most excited and active executioners of people under the US criminal code when he was governor of Texas. There are pressures on politicians and the judiciary when there is still the option of ending the moratorium. Modern societies need to strive to achieve abolition if we are to accomplish both the in-principle benefits and the practical benefits of the elimination of the death penalty.
Bob Stewart
If someone is executed, they can very quickly become a martyr. Martyrdom by execution is rather sad: I would prefer to see people punished by imprisonment. I hate the idea that people become martyrs, especially when they have done great wrong.
Richard Fuller
My hon. Friend obviously speaks with great experience from before he became a Member of Parliament in dealing in highly conflicting situations with people of different religious and ethnic backgrounds in Europe. Those differences can lead to extremism and the actions of governing authorities can create martyrdom situations that exacerbate divisions. Any healing democracy always wishes to heal the divisions within society. The death penalty is not a friend of that aim; it is an opponent. As we can see from the petition, there are real concerns that the existence of the death penalty in India will exacerbate the tensions within Indian society rather than achieving a better long-term solution.
The human aspect for those under threat of the death penalty must also be a considerable concern to us. It is inhumane treatment to leave a human being on death row for many years. No one should have to go through the psychological trauma of not knowing if or when their appeal may be heard and whether they may be executed. That is not a mark of a decent society.
Mr Jim Cunningham
The hon. Gentleman mentioned George Bush, and some years ago, when I was a member of the Home Affairs Committee, we visited Huntsville in Texas, where most of the staff were against the death penalty. People had been on death row for 17 or 18 years, and I agree with the hon. Gentleman that that is utterly inhumane.
Richard Fuller
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s support for that point. The hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) mentioned the recent reaction in India to the issue of rape. If there is still the possibility that the death penalty can be applied, and if its application would have political currency in certain situations or be popular at a particular moment, politicians will use that as a reason to bring it back. It may be completely ineffective, or out of step with what is needed at the time, but it is always alluring to politicians who believe that the death penalty has popular support to seize on it as a remedy. A moratorium always leaves that possibility: abolition removes it.
Mr Bailey
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that appalling episode occurred while the death penalty was in existence, and, indeed, while all indications pointed to its greater implementation? Is that not a demonstration of the ineffectiveness of the death penalty to deal with such incidents, and a reflection of a wider problem that has to be dealt with in a more sophisticated way than the crude implementation of this policy?
Richard Fuller
I refer the hon. Gentleman to what has already been said about the situation in India with regard to rape. The broader point is that there are lessons for politicians of all countries about the possible use of the death penalty in political discourse. The hard-learned lessons in this country are that we end up with a more effective and fairer criminal justice system if we abolish the death penalty. There is no stopping point along the way to abolition that will ultimately provide the security of those two outcomes: there has to be outright abolition.
Mr MacNeil
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way; he is being very kind. To back up his argument from history, again from Steven Pinker, we can draw on the example of England. Some 800 years ago, the death penalty was commonplace and there was a hangman’s hill in every village throughout the British Isles. An Englishman was 50 times more likely to be killed by a fellow Englishman in a society that had the death penalty than they are in the modern day when there is no death penalty.
Richard Fuller
That is an interesting statistic, which I am sure also pertains to Scotland.
Another point that I humbly submit for our friends in India to consider is that this issue shines a light on the general operation of the judicial system in India. Those who study the British empire—I have read only a few books on it—learn that the English judicial system is one of the gifts we gave to the world. I am sure we talk that up a lot, but there is a lot of truth in the fact that many people around the world see the British judicial system as a reliable and trusted friend when they are in conflict situations. There are issues relating to the Indian judicial system that exacerbate concerns about the existence of the death penalty. I have mentioned the implications for the mental health and well-being of people on death row. With the case load in Indian courts so backed up, what is it that says that a certain case should move forward or not? How are those decisions made? What is the due process in a system that finds itself not fully capable of dealing with its work load?
Constituents of mine who have had legal disputes in India have always made the point that they have had to go back to India to deal with them. Without putting too fine a point on it, sometimes that is because of issues to do with money in the criminal justice system. I have no idea whether that is true and certainly, of course, none of my constituents has been involved in any of that, but it is interesting that there is that question. Our friends in India, being part of a great hope for the world, need to address those issues. The petition shines a light on how the world will look on the decisions made regarding the death penalty in India as a result of those issues.
The Minister kindly responded to the question of what India moving forward with the death penalty would mean for UK relations in certain circumstances. He was right to talk about considering cases on an individual basis. However, if India became a more active proponent of the death penalty, that would have significant implications for how the UK would look at extraditing people to India. We do not want the death penalty to affect our relationship when there is so much that is positive that we want to talk about, and we do not want to have ongoing disputes on this issue. I therefore hope that the British Government would look very dimly on extraditing any person to India that might result in their being subject to the death penalty, and seek assurances that it would not be applied in any such cases.
I again thank the signatories to the petition. This issue may be of particular concern to our Sikh community, but it is a concern for all of us in this open United Kingdom and for all of us in Parliament. May we together send the message to our colleagues who sit in the Indian Parliament that on the issue of the death penalty it is often the politicians who have to lead public opinion, not the other way around? They should have the courage to halt executions immediately, and to step forward not just to reinstate a moratorium but to effect outright abolition.
Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)
I was pleased to support my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) in his application to the Backbench Business Committee for this debate. As hon. Members have said, it is very important that we in this Chamber make clear our views on the death penalty still being in use in India and around the world. We should stand up and show that we totally disapprove of that, and say that all nations should abolish the death penalty.
It is tragic that India, the largest democracy in the world, still uses the death penalty. The worst offenders are China, which is not a democracy, and Iran, which executes more people per head of population, including children, than any other nation. That is not a democracy, either. It is sad to me, and I am sure to many other hon. Members, that the United States is the leading democracy that still uses the death penalty. Our purpose today is to represent the views of the many Sikh and Punjabi citizens in our constituencies, as well as those who are not of Sikh or Indian origin, to show that we want to see India, that great nation and friend of the United Kingdom, abolish the death penalty for good. Many Members have given examples of why that should happen.
I pay tribute to those who started the Kesri Lehar—wave for justice—petition, which many hon. Members and I presented at No. 10 Downing street just before Christmas. In a way, that was the start of the process that led us to today’s debate, and we have had some superb contributions so far.
I am sure that many hon. Members recall Danny Boyle’s award-winning 2008 movie, “Slumdog Millionaire”. The opening scene shows a poor young man being tortured in a police station—an unfortunate but, according to some evidence, accurate image of what perhaps occurs in India. Many Members have already said that the death penalty is an inhuman and degrading punishment. It is irreversible and can be inflicted on the innocent. As many examples provided by hon. Members have shown, it has never deterred crime more effectively than other punishments. It should therefore be abolished in India, as it should be in all other countries. India should honour articles 3 and 5 of the universal declaration of human rights: the right to life and not to be tortured or subject to any cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington said in his opening speech.
Let us look at the background to India’s use of the death penalty. On independence in 1947, India retained the 1861 penal code, which provided the death penalty for murder. It has been estimated that between 3,000 and 4,000 executions occurred in India between 1950 and 1980. It is more difficult to understand the impact of the death penalty since the 1980s. The international community has moved further towards abolishing the death penalty. On 19 November 2012, 110 countries approved a UN General Assembly draft resolution calling for a moratorium on all executions. India was part of a tiny minority that voted to retain capital punishment, arguing for it to be used sparingly and in cases of particularly heinous crimes. On 21 November 2012, India ended its unofficial eight-year moratorium on executions when it hanged Ajmal Kasab and followed that up on 9 February 2013 by hanging Afzal Guru. Both executions occurred in secrecy, with the families being informed only after they had taken place—that would shock anybody who was not already shocked by the use of the death penalty.
Pranab Mukherjee, India’s President, has now ordered the death penalty for seven convicts in the past seven months, which is more than any other Indian President in the past 15 years. India is currently reporting one death penalty sentence every third day, according to The Times of India this month. That all happened before the recent knee-jerk reaction to the change in the law to extend the death penalty following the horrific rape and murder in Delhi on 16 December 2012, which my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) mentioned. Human rights activists in India are worried that this precedent could affect the 500 or so people now on death row in India, including political prisoners such as Professor Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar and Balwant Singh Rajoana. As of 11 February 2013, 476 convicts were on death row in India.
I wish to discuss the case of Professor Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar a bit more. Although many hon. Members have mentioned him specifically, I know from my constituents that his case is a real cause célèbre; he has been tortured and treated inhumanely in prison, all for bringing to the public’s attention his concern about the disappearance of 42 of his university students. Professor Bhullar was a lecturer at Guru Nanak Dev engineering college in Ludhiana, but he felt he had to flee India for a safer place in 1994, following threats to his life and harassment from the police for bringing this issue to the attention of the authorities and the media. As we have heard, he went to Germany, arriving on 18 December 1994. However, he was detained because the German authorities were not convinced of his claim, mainly because he had false papers on him, and he was deported, under escort, from Germany on 17 January 1995 and handed over to the Indian police at Indira Gandhi airport, New Delhi, by Lufthansa staff.
The Indian authorities gave specific assurances to the German authorities that Professor Bhullar had nothing to fear if he was returned to India and that he would not be tortured. However, as we know, he was arrested on his arrival and has now been in prison for more than 18 years, the past eight of them in solitary confinement, dealing with the daily threat of hanging. The professor’s mental health has deteriorated over the past two years and has now reached a life-threatening state. By deporting someone to a death penalty-prone country, Germany violated the European convention on human rights and remains morally obliged to do all it can now to seek the professor’s immediate release. Professor Bhullar was examined by a police-assigned medical doctor recently. Although the professor is a highly educated man, his medical examination document is co-signed by him with a thumbprint.
We know that the case against Professor Bhullar is highly dubious; it is based on information that has not been properly corroborated, with the prosecution having offered no corroboration at all. None of its 133 witnesses identified Professor Bhullar. Many witnesses actually claimed he was not the man they had seen. One prosecution witness, a rickshaw worker in Delhi, informed the court that he had no knowledge of the case but had been threatened and forced by the police to provide a false statement. Almost every legal system in the world is based on the idea of proof beyond reasonable doubt and respects procedures in order to obtain safe evidence. The Supreme Court of India seems to have departed from those things in the most important of all cases—that involving the death penalty—thus setting an unfortunate new precedent for Indian law.
I am aware that we are short of time today, and I do not want to take up too much more of the House’s time, but I am concerned that there is corruption in the Indian legal system. According to Transparency International, judicial corruption is attributable to factors in India such as
“delays in the disposal of cases, shortage of judges and complex procedures, all of which are exacerbated by a preponderance of new laws”.
However, no case of judicial corruption has ever been put on trial in India; under the Indian system, it is almost impossible to charge or impeach a judge. Another factor at work in India is the low ratio of judges per million of the population; there are as few as 12 or 13 judges per 1 million of population in India, as against figures of 107 in the United States—no surprise there—75 in Canada and 51 in the United Kingdom. The high work load in India encourages delays and adjournments on frivolous grounds. The judicial system, including judges and lawyers, has developed a vested interest in delays, as well as corruption; it promotes a collusive relationship between the different players.
I have been privileged in the past two and a half years—nearly three now—to chair the all-party group on British Sikhs. In that role, I have tried to bring to this House and to my fellow Members of Parliament some of the issues that Sikhs throughout the UK raise with me and with other MPs. These Sikhs are British citizens who form an integral part of so many constituencies and make such a huge contribution to the daily life in our constituencies. I am happy to say that in my constituency I have brought the Sikh community together with the big Jewish community that I represent, because they have so many values in common. Among those values, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington has said, is that of respect for life which precludes violence of one person against another. When one goes to a gurdwara, as many of us have done, one feels that sense of respect for one another, and the respect of men for women and of women for men; it is a very welcoming and friendly environment.
I echo the comments made by the other Members, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden), about visits to the golden temple in Amritsar. I went with my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes), the former Chair of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, on one of the Committee’s visits in 2006. Again, I felt that spirituality, sense of warmth and sense of equality as we walked around. So it was really good to see the Prime Minister of our country walking through the golden temple—through that holy place—barefoot, as people have to be, in his suit, as we had to be, and with his head covered. Although, clearly, I am not a Sikh, I was so moved by my visit that I rang one of my close friends in my constituency to tell him that I was standing there at that moment. He said to me, “God bless you for being there.”
So this debate is not about attacking our good friend, India; it is not about saying that India is a terrible place. We want India to be there with us in the group of nations that say that the inhumanity of the death penalty should be abolished. There should not be a moratorium; there should be a complete abolition. We want India to succeed. India is growing in importance in the world. India is our close friend, and many of us have close friends who are of Indian origin and who have family in India. I have visited the place three times now, so I hope that the result of this debate is that our Government will, as the Minister has said, put further pressure on the Indian Government. I hope that Members of Parliament will talk to their colleagues and friends in India, including perhaps those in the Lok Sabha, the Indian Parliament. I hope that we will talk to families we represent and that they will talk to their friends and family in India to change Indian public opinion about this important issue. I hope that India will see the sense of abolishing, once and for all, this inhuman and evil act of execution.
Mr David Ward (Bradford East) (LD)
Like everyone else, I wish to thank the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) for sponsoring and supporting this debate, which is important not only internationally, but to many people in the UK. I have busily been trying to edit my comments to avoid repeating what previous speakers have said and to save a bit of time, so what I say today will not be the only thing I have to say on this issue; it will be the bits that are left. I may avoid repetition, but there may be a few pauses in my speech as I try to make the best of what I have.
We have had an overwhelming response to the petition, with well over 100,000 signatures nationwide. Some of my constituents have travelled all the way from Bradford for this debate, and I hope they are viewing it in the Chamber. We are going to No. 10 to present the Prime Minister with an additional petition of 2,000 signatures from local people in Bradford and the surrounding area, calling for the abolition of the death penalty in India. Many people in Bradford East feel strongly about this issue, and it is important to highlight the fact that those signatories are from all walks of life. They find the death penalty abhorrent, and the issue speaks to everyone, no matter what community they are from.
There are many long-established arguments for and against the death penalty, some of which have been mentioned today. I do not intend to go through them again. We have all been well briefed for the debate by Amnesty International and other organisations, and the evidence shows that despite the comments by the Indian Supreme Court in 1983, there are nearly 500 people on death row in India today. For the record, it is important to note that we do not condone the actions of people who illegally take or endanger lives, no matter what their cause, but it is also vital to highlight the fact that the death penalty is wrong and should not be part of any judicial process in any part of the world.
A matter that has not been touched on, apart from in a passing reference by the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller), is the difficult question of a nation criticising another nation. We need to be careful not to appear holier than thou, especially when we are criticising other democracies. Yes, we have abolished the death penalty and we can therefore speak with some authority on that matter, but we must be careful none the less, because I believe that such events as the Iraq war reduced our moral authority. It had many tragic consequences, one of which was that it reduced our moral authority in the eyes of the international community. Whether we are talking about arms sales, foreign interventions or prevention of terrorism legislation, we need to be sure that we can speak with authority, and we therefore need to be careful about what we do. I was delighted to see the Prime Minister’s statement about the deeply shameful event in Amritsar in 1919, but we are still waiting for Tony Blair to make an apology for what has happened far more recently.
My key point is that we must be ever vigilant about what we do and how we behave. The message from this debate needs to go out not just as a message from a relatively small group of Back Benchers on a Thursday afternoon; it needs to be a message from the Government. If it is to have any authority, however, we must constantly watch what we are doing, to ensure that we are above reproach ourselves. When I was in the west bank recently, I challenged the forcible removal of Bedouins from the land that they had lived on for hundreds of years, but the question was thrown back at me: “What about how you treat the Travellers at Dale Farm?” We are debating this matter here in the Chamber today, but we are also being listened to by the world, and we must take care not to appear righteous when we have not earned the right to do so.
As a liberal, I believe that it is our intrinsic right and, more importantly, our fundamental duty to speak up for all people, and especially for minorities who do not have suitable champions for their cause and who face persecution, wherever in the world that might occur and no matter what entrenched views or self-interest they might be battling against. The oppressors often have powerful weapons at their disposal to stifle debate. For the whole of my political career, I have fought and campaigned against prejudice and injustice, at a local level in my constituency and internationally, and I welcome the opportunity that this debate provides today. I thank other hon. Members for turning up in such numbers today—there were more here earlier—because it is crucial that this “small-l liberal” issue should be raised.
I have touched on the necessity for India to uphold the basic human rights that are espoused in the United Nations convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. This is an important issue for my constituents, especially those in the Sikh community, who have long borne the brunt of judicial and societal discrimination in parts of India. We are fortunate to have more than 5,000 people from the Sikh community living in Bradford. They make a vital contribution to the social, religious and economic fabric of the local area, and it is appalling that those vibrant and flourishing communities are not treated with the same dignity and respect for human rights in all parts of the world as they are in Bradford.
The number of states that still have execution as part of their judicial process is thankfully now relatively small, but there are still far too many. It is an outdated and barbaric penalty, and although only a handful of states now use it, there are still too many.
Over the past few years, I have been approached by a number of constituents about the cases involving Balwant Singh Rajoana and Professor Bhullar. I know those cases well, and I am sad that those people are still on death row. I must be honest and tell the House, however, that on researching this issue more thoroughly, I was deeply shocked to discover the sheer scale of the human rights abuses that the Indian Government have not acted against, over many years. I am a member of Amnesty International, and I regularly receive the evidence that it produces. It is shocking to learn of the extensive use of forced evictions, the excessive use of force, arbitrary arrest and detention, and the fundamental lack of due process that are still prevalent in India. Amnesty states:
“Impunity for abuses and violations remained pervasive.”
The continuing existence of India’s controversial Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act gives the Indian army arbitrary powers and near-immunity from prosecution. I have been vocal in the past on the subject of Kashmir, and I was aware of the scale of human rights abuses in Indian-occupied Kashmir, but not of their prevalence in wider India, especially against members of the Sikh community.
India is the third largest economy in the world, and will be an indispensible trading partner for Britain and the EU.
John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way, and I—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. For the hon. Gentleman just to walk in and intervene in this way is discourteous to everyone else in the Chamber. I understand that he wants to make an intervention, but he must be in the Chamber for at least five minutes before he does so. I am not making a personal attack on him, but he must show good manners to everyone else.
Mr Ward
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.
India’s growing status in the world, its growing economy and its importance to Britain and the EU are no excuse for not doing anything about this matter. They provide an imperative for ensuring that the crucial link between our two countries can be used as a lever to bring about change in India. When we are seeking to improve our own economy, particularly through exports and international trade, the temptation is there, but there is a danger that we hold back for fear of offending a foreign economic power with which we feel we need to develop closer links. It would be immoral, in my view, if growing trade links were used as an excuse for holding back on deserved criticism.
It is crucial for today’s debate that pressure is placed on the Indian Government— not by a group of Back Benchers or petitioners, but by this Government—to uphold basic human rights as a fundamental policy and procedure. We need to outlaw this terrible death penalty once and for all. It is one of the most inhumane and abhorrent punishments used in today’s world—and it needs to end.
John Hemming
When I listened to my hon. Friend’s speech on television earlier, I noticed him stressing the importance of our role as a Parliament in commenting on what happens in other countries. Does he agree with me, however, that on issues such as the death penalty in India or the rule of law in Kashmir, it is right for all Parliaments to be committed to improving human rights throughout the world?
Mr Ward
That is essential. My earlier point was that if we are to make criticisms, particularly of other democracies, we need to be cleaner than clean and we need to ensure that our record is clean in all respects so that we can speak with moral authority on these crucial issues affecting so many parts of the world.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and others on securing this debate. I am proud to speak in it as the Member of Parliament who probably represents more members of the Sikh community than any of my colleagues.
Earlier today, a couple of hours ago, when I complained about Slough’s rail service to London, the Minister of State, Department for Transport, the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns), suggested that I had not made similar complaints under the last Government. He was wrong. I have been making this complaint for 15 years. I mention this because I think that his cynical attitude to politics is absolutely the opposite attitude to that of those people who have promoted the Kesri Lehar petition and have encouraged us to debate this issue here in Parliament. They believe that we can make a difference; they believe that Members of Parliament uniting across the parties can play a role in persuading the Indian Government to change their mind.
I know that representatives of the Indian Government will feel tempted to fall back into the lazy assumption—cynically, like the rail Minister—of saying “Oh, this is a former colonial power, so it would say that, wouldn’t it?” From listening to this debate, it is clear that we have been able to demonstrate that what we are saying is not just an expression of a left-over bit of British colonialism, telling India what to do, but an expression of something that every democratically elected member of any Parliament in the world has a responsibility to do—tell other countries not how to run their affairs, but how to uphold basic international human rights standards. That is what we are doing here, and it is great to hear so many powerful and passionate speeches doing precisely that.
As we have heard, the move towards the abolition of the death penalty has become stronger and stronger. Of those countries that still retain it on their statute books, 35 do not in fact use the death penalty. That is what some of us thought India was moving towards. Following the rarest of the rare pronouncements at the beginning of the ’80s and following the moratorium, we thought India would be in that group of countries and would start the journey towards abolition. We thought that until the more recent executions of Ajmal Kasab and Afzal Guru over the last two years.
We have also heard today about the cases of Balwant Singh Rajoana and Professor Bhullar. Those cases move great passions among people, and there is a great deal of concern about them. The case of Professor Bhullar is particularly concerning because the German authorities did what Britain does, has always done and, I hope, will continue to do, although the Minister was not absolutely clear about it in his remarks. By that, I mean ensuring that if someone faces extradition to a country that retains the death penalty, there is an absolute commitment not to using it in that case.
Mr Swire
I hesitate to state again what I said earlier, particularly when the hon. Lady has been a Minister in the Home Office and should be aware of it, but it is absolutely the case that for a requested extradition to a country that uses a death penalty, our policy is to seek assurances that that penalty will not be implemented. As I said, if such assurances are not forthcoming, Ministers have to decide on a case-by-case basis whether extradition should nevertheless take place.
Fiona Mactaggart
I am sure that the last sentence is absolutely right. In my experience, Ministers have decided not to proceed in every case, and I hope that this Government will continue that tradition of decision. I referred to this matter because Germany decided in that way.
Richard Fuller
If I may say so to the hon. Lady, this is precisely the point. If we wish to decide on a case-by-case basis, as the Minister rightly said, and if India goes down this current route, it will necessarily complicate our relationship with India. There will be consequences for our relationships with India unless the Indian Parliament looks at this issue very seriously again and makes the changes that Members are asking it to do.
Fiona Mactaggart
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I also wanted to make the point that Germany got that commitment, yet we know that that commitment is at risk of not being fulfilled in this case. That is something I am very concerned about. We must keep pressing on the principled issue, which is that international human rights standards are not things that can be conveniently negotiated, as they are standards that we need to be at the forefront of upholding.
Speaking as someone who has campaigned strongly on issues relating to violence against women and has asked for more effective prosecution of such cases, tougher sentences and so forth, I strongly feel that India’s response to the horrific case in Delhi has been a failure of understanding. The Government have wanted to look tough—traditionally part of the problem with the death penalty is that it makes Governments look tough—but have not brought along people who can make a real difference. I am particularly concerned that under the proposed new law, the present exemption for marital rape, whereby it is not an offence in India, is being retained. I am diverting from the real subject at issue, however, which is the use of the death penalty in India.
As I think everybody has said, every speaker in this debate regards themselves as a friend of India. Speaking as friends of India, we want the country to be able to fulfil its enormous and growing potential in the world. One thing that makes that less possible is the existence of the death penalty. We are concerned not just about it continuing, but about the way in which its deployment helps to divide communities in India, making the country less safe and less stable.
I am worried that the rights of religious, ethnic and caste minorities in India are not sufficiently well protected. The people who sent us the briefings have brought that issue to the debate because of their sense that the death penalty is being used to target dissidents or campaigners for those minorities. People like Professor Bhullar who have exposed some of these cases are being punished, as it were, pour encourager les autres.
It seems to me that we have a responsibility to say to India, “We expect you, as the largest democracy in the world, to promote the standards of democracy and human rights that we expect, and to recognise that if the death penalty is used in this way, there is a risk that you will deepen the divisions between ethnic and religious communities in country. There is a risk that you will make your country less safe and less peaceful for all who live in it.”
I believe that if India were to commit itself to abolition of the death penalty, it would build its capacity to fulfil its potential as a leader in the south for the developing world. Its economy is growing, and I think that if its reputation for respect for democracy and human rights grew at the same pace, it would play a great role in making the world safer. In respecting the rights of its Sikh, Christian, Dalit, Muslim and other residents, it would become stronger. It is in India’s interests, as well as the world’s interests, for the motion to succeed.
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
I join others in thanking the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) for initiating this valuable debate. Like the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) and every other Member who has spoken, I regard myself as a friend of India. I have been privileged to go there twice, and would have gone again this month had not a certain by-election and other distractions forced me to postpone my third visit.
India is a wonderful country. One of the things that is so great about it is that it is not only the largest democracy in the world, but a democracy that has devolved power to its states. It is also very diverse, and it is a place where many faiths, and none, are equally valid, respected, enjoyed and appreciated. It is a melting pot: in my experience, it is the only place in the world, apart from Israel and Palestine in the middle east, where so many different strands of culture, history and faith come together.
We have come here with that attitude, but some of us have come here with, also, a lifelong commitment to fighting the death penalty. I held that position and argued that case before I entered the House, and have continued to do so throughout my time here. I first joined Amnesty International when I was at university, and campaigned on cases individually. I was in Amnesty’s Southwark group before I was elected, and we made representations to Governments around the world asking them not to exercise the death penalty.
For many of us, this is part of a traditional campaign. I pay tribute to the Members who have spoken so far, and spoken extremely well. The right hon. Member for Warley (Mr Spellar) made a very effective contribution, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller). We heard an intervention from the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil), who is no longer in the Chamber, and I also greatly appreciated the contribution of my friend the hon. Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton), with whom I travelled to India a couple of years ago.
Several of my colleagues, including my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward), have signed the motion that we are discussing. For obvious reasons, some of my colleagues are not present in as large numbers as they might be, and they send their apologies. As the deputy leader of my party, I want to associate them with the motion. I should mention my right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), my hon. Friends the Members for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) and for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland), my right hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell), my hon. Friends the Members for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart), for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid), for Bristol West (Stephen Williams) and for Solihull (Lorely Burt), my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming)—who is present, and who intervened briefly earlier—my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso), and my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), who has campaigned against the death penalty for many years.
It is good that this is not the only occasion on which the issue of the death penalty has been raised this week. A number of questions about it were asked in the other place, including one from Lord Low which specifically concerned the death penalty in India and which was answered by Baroness Warsi on behalf of the Government.
I welcome my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, who has already contributed to the debate. I do not want to make a long contribution myself, but I do want to make a few comments about the logic of the case that we are making to the Indian Government—while respecting the Indian Parliament and Government, and the office of President—before asking the Minister some questions and suggesting ways in which we might proceed. I realise that the Minister will not make another speech today, but I would appreciate it if he could think about those points, and reply later to me and to my colleagues.
I understand why countries have the death penalty, I understand why countries have had the death penalty, as we did until relatively recently, and I understand the difficulty of moving from having the death penalty to not having it. Not having the death penalty looks like a sign of weakness, and may be thought to make it more likely that people will commit serious offences and “get away with them”. I understand that events such as those of the 1980s involving the golden temple, for example, have led to a culture in which it is felt that people must not be allowed to get away with activities of that kind. I understand how terrible terrorism is, in India as in this country and anywhere else, and I understand why people who are involved in and convicted of terrorism are thought to be in need of the ultimate punishment.
However, we should also reflect on the fact that, since India gained independence in 1948, the death penalty has not deterred such people. It did not prevent any of the events of the 1980s, and it did not prevent the events referred to by the Minister when he was in India only the other day. Bomb blasts, revenge killings and assassinations have continued, as they have in other countries where the death penalty operates. The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar made the telling point that Europe, where most countries do not have the death penalty, is the safest place in the world. There is no link between a lack of crime and the death penalty. Indeed, according to the most recent evidence that I have seen, in the United States of America the states with the death penalty generally do not have a lower rate of crime than those without it.
John Hemming
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the key aspect of deterrence is detecting and identifying criminals, rather than the nature of the punishment?
Simon Hughes
It is—as is ensuring that justice is done and is seen to be done, and that justice is done promptly.
A real problem for our friends in India, and for the Government of India, is that justice has often ground to a halt there. That is not just my view. The other day a bench of the Supreme Court in India spoke of how slow the processes are, and in January last year a Supreme Court bench said that people’s faith in the judiciary was dwindling at an alarming rate, posing a grave threat to constitutional and democratic governance of the country. It acknowledged serious problems such as the large number of vacancies in trial courts, the unwillingness of lawyers to become judges, and an inability to fill the highest posts. Dealing with the backlog in the courts is one of the difficulties in India, although it is not unique to that country; we have been dealing with it in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
There are matters that need to be addressed—matters that can be addressed—which could change the culture in India and give people more confidence. There is, for instance, the need to deal with corruption, which is sometimes a problem in our own country. We have just seen an officer of the Metropolitan police convicted of corrupt activities. Like other Members who have spoken, I am not trying to pretend that we are perfect. However, corruption needs to be dealt with in India and other countries where it undermines democratic values and principles and international credibility. I agree with those colleagues, including the hon. Member for Slough, who have said that if India—its Prime Minister and President—were brave enough to move to abolishing the death penalty, they could be the leaders in their part of the world. They could change the culture of other, smaller democratic countries and later, we would hope, of currently non-democratic countries such as China, so that they could all move on and we would end up not with 110 or 111 countries voting in the UN against the death penalty, but with the remaining countries understanding that there is a better way to proceed—that there is a better and fairer way to punish people.
The ultimate argument is this: not only is it not a deterrent to have the death penalty, but, as the right hon. Member for Warley said, it is a final solution which all too often through history has proved to be wrong. If an injustice is done and the convicted person has been in prison for 20 years, that is terrible but at least they can come out and enjoy the rest of their life, but if there is an injustice and the person is executed, it is too late to undo that, of course.
I want to make the specific case for people like Professor Bhullar and Balwant Singh Rajoana, as I did when I was last in India. I add my voice to those of others calling for the relatively new President of India to return to the moratorium his predecessor followed. I hope that can be a first, or interim, stage before abolition. I understand, too, that having people on death row is a dreadful and inhumane punishment, so a moratorium is not an adequate answer, and I hope that, collectively, we can help India understand the arguments for moving forward.
I have a specific proposal. Later this year there is to be a Commonwealth Heads of Government conference. It is currently scheduled to be held in Colombo, although that is controversial and has been the subject of discussion. Ministers have recently been to Sri Lanka, and our country has rightly not decided what level of representation we will give because of recent human rights issues in Sri Lanka. I assume that there will be such a conference this autumn, however, either in Sri Lanka or somewhere else, and I would like our Government to see whether we can put on its agenda the remaining issues to do with the death penalty in Commonwealth countries, and see whether that could be linked with questions of justice and the speed of justice. I ask the Minister to discuss that with his colleagues, including the Foreign Secretary.
There is a commonality of interest. I do not come to this debate because I have a huge number of Sikh constituents. In fact, I have very few constituents of Indian origin. I have no gurdwaras or temples in my constituency, but I have a large Muslim community and large Roman Catholic Irish and Latin American communities, as well as the largest African community in Britain. Although I have no constituency interest, however, I have worked a great deal with the Sikh and other minority communities in India, and the Commonwealth needs to step up to the plate and do better in making sure these issues are on the Commonwealth agenda. I would like Her Majesty’s Government to put failures of justice and the issue of the death penalty on the agenda this year.
I also ask Ministers to reflect on how we might be more effective more immediately, in the UN Human Rights Committee meeting in Geneva which will take place in the next few weeks, and on whether we might take forward further initiatives there. Sri Lanka is on its agenda, and we might be able to ensure that these death penalty issues are addressed at it, too.
It would be helpful to keep these issues at the top of the EU priority list, too, but not in an old empire way, but because it is good to seek to work with our friends in all countries of the world, as well as our friends in the Commonwealth. The Minister told us he raised these issues when he was in India with the Prime Minister and the UK delegation last week, but it would be helpful to know whether the Prime Minister raised them in his meeting with the Prime Minister of India or with other Ministers. If he did not, would he be willing to do so, because I am sure the increasingly good and frequent links between UK Ministers and Indian Ministers would allow the point to be put respectfully? I also ask Ministers to reflect on whether, irrespective of the Commonwealth conference, there might be an initiative from the UK and other Commonwealth countries asking the Indian Government to return to the moratorium while these issues are under consideration.
May I end by making one final suggestion through you, Mr Deputy Speaker? The Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and the Inter-Parliamentary Union can be influential on occasions, and you, as well as Mr Speaker and his other deputies, can be influential in that regard. There may be a case for a parliamentary initiative. Will you, Mr Deputy Speaker, speak to Mr Speaker and your colleagues about whether we and other Commonwealth Parliaments might seek to convene a gathering or conference on this matter, perhaps to be hosted here, or in India? There is an opportunity for this Parliament and the Indian Government and Parliament and the Commonwealth to be seen to be taking the initiative. I hope this debate does not merely flag up our concerns and our desire to change things; rather, I hope it is a stepping-stone to more practical interventions, so that there can be this change in the largest democracy in the world in the very near future.
Mr Ward
My right hon. Friend has been more disciplined than I was in keeping to the issue of the death penalty. I am sure he would agree, however, that even if it were to be abolished in India, many other human rights abuses are taking place in that country that also need to be addressed.
Simon Hughes
That is true, and I do not want to back away from that at all. When I visited India with my friend, the hon. Member for Leeds North East, and other parliamentary colleagues, we saw the Tibetan community in exile. Before that, I had been to Punjab and, for the first time, to Indian-occupied Kashmir—or Kashmir in India—and I had been to Amritsar and the golden temple, and had the same wonderful spiritual experience others have talked about.
There are, indeed, big human rights issues. There is a job for the International Commission of Jurists, Justice and many of us to do to try to make sure democratic Governments uphold the standards we sign up to and that they sign up to documents such as the Rome statute and the UN convention against torture, which are referred to in the motion. I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention, therefore.
There is work to be done, and this is a very serious matter. Some colleagues may wonder why some of us are here in the Chamber today, rather than in Eastleigh. I hope people understand that although by-elections are, of course, important, trying to change the way one of our best friends deals with justice is at least as important. When this debate ends, I will go and do my duty in Eastleigh.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) on securing this important debate, and wish to place on record my thanks to, and pride in, the Kesri Lehar campaign, which is based in my constituency. I congratulate it on its tireless work and grass-roots campaign for human rights for all minorities in India. I also wish to echo the sentiments of my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden), who stated that this debate is held in the context of our friendship with India and the great value we place on that relationship. This is a matter for the Indian population and the Indian Government, but it is also a matter on which we can express our views and those of our constituents.
We participate in many debates in this House, but this one is literally about life and death. I have had a long-standing personal opposition to the death penalty in all circumstances and I am proud to live in a country where it has been abolished. This is a matter of humanity and, as someone once said, it is not for the state to kill people who kill people to show that killing is wrong.
The purpose of this debate is to encourage India to take action to stop the human rights abuses facing all minorities and any of its citizens, be they Sikh, Dalits or from other communities, which are an issue of great concern to so many in the Indian diaspora in Britain and across the world. Our pride in India as a nation also encourages us to raise these concerns.
The motion requests that India sign and ratify the Rome statute of the International Criminal Court and the UN convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and address the human rights of political prisoners, an issue raised by Amnesty International. Two specific cases have rightly been mentioned: that of Professor Bhullar, about whom my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) spoke so eloquently and whose health is now a matter of great concern; and that of Balwant Singh Rajoana, about whom I shall speak further.
Kesri Lehar, as has been mentioned, means the wave of justice. I have supported the Kesri Lehar campaign since it originated a year ago, when there was a significant increase in concern in the Sikh community, the Punjab and across the world when it was believed that Balwant Singh Rajoana might be executed. Hundreds in my constituency approached me in the gurdwara, on the streets, through my mailbox and in petitions. It was incredibly moving to see a community mobilised in such a way on a cause that was a great matter of justice and to see that young and old men and women have been engaged in the campaign. Many are in Parliament today to watch the debate and many others will be watching it on channels such as Sangat TV, which has also been a great supporter of the campaign.
At that time, I wrote to the Foreign Secretary and the Indian Government to raise the concerns of many in my constituency, and to call for a stay of execution. I also raised the specific concern that the execution of Balwant Singh Rajoana could and would cause social unrest and roll back progress in the Punjab.
This is not just a theoretical question for members of the Indian diaspora; it goes closer to home. In previous periods of unrest in the Punjab, my late uncle was nearly killed, and it was only because he managed to play dead that he escaped with his life. Punjab is the home of the Sikh religion, and the Golden Temple in Amritsar, which I have also visited, is a place of pilgrimage for many and a place of magnificence and inspiration for all, whatever their faith. The stay of execution in the Rajoana case was welcome, but the campaign to abolish the death penalty and establish better human rights in India and across the world continues. Along with my hon. Friends the Members for Hayes and Harlington and for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (Mr Spellar), my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East and others, I was honoured before Christmas to help present at No. 10 Downing street the petition, signed by more than 100,000 people, that called for the issue to be debated.
The execution of Balwant Singh and others would not end terrorism or causes of concern, and would damage the image of India, which has been making great progress towards being rightly considered a modern, progressive state with a major role and great influence in the world. We know that the partnership between India and Britain is one of which we can all be proud. Two years ago, I had a life-changing experience as a participant on the Dishaa programme, which was set up by both Governments to support the next generation of leaders in Britain and India and to ensure that our future together remains strong.
India is a nation with more than 1,500 languages and dialects and is a showcase to the world in business, culture, arts and crafts. The Sikh community in India and around the world leads in business and agriculture, where it blazes a trail. The work of the Pingalwara charity in the Punjab shows the deepest compassion for those in the community with the least and those with the greatest disabilities. It is also leading the thinking about how to deal with environmental issues so that we can have a clean environment and tackle the vital questions of quality of life and the supply of water and good food for so many. The Sikh religion has at its heart the principles and values of equality that many of us hold so dear. It would be a significant step for India, as the world’s largest democracy, if it not only reinstated the moratorium but took steps to abolish the death penalty altogether. India is a world economic power that is sure to play an increasing role in world affairs over the coming decades, and such a move would considerably enhance its authority and encourage other countries to end the death penalty.
If India is to fulfil its great potential, we know that challenges lie ahead as we work together to tackle these wider human rights atrocities and help build a reformed justice system that has the confidence of all. There have been wider concerns about justice for Sikhs since 1984. More recently, the brutal and tragic rape and murder of a 23-year-old young woman on a bus in India at Christmas showed that we must tackle violence against women in India in a far greater way than before. A vigil in support of her and her family was held at a temple in my constituency and concerns were raised about the behaviour of the police, the scrutiny and transparency of the case, and police accountability. Concerns about the police in human rights cases demonstrate the need for reform in the police and justice system. In that regard, we can share many of our experiences in the UK to help India on its path to an improved justice system that has the confidence of all.
On V-day two weeks ago, men and women in India also stood up together as part of One Billion Rising, the global campaign to end violence against women and girls in which many in this House and across the country also took a stand. Days such as V-day must not be a one-day wonder for which we prepare for six months and then move on. The message must be kept alive and channelled into all aspects of domestic and international diplomacy throughout the year. Today’s debate about standing up for human rights in India is another circumstance in which we can stand up for the rights of women and children and ensure that their voice is heard.
Another great concern is the fact that in the world’s greatest democracy we have recently seen innocent people suffering and being killed in the crossfire when peacefully protesting for improved human rights. Last year, a horrific case that touched us all deeply was the death of Jaspal Singh. Jaspal was an 18-year-old Sikh college student peacefully protesting against capital punishment last March who was killed when police opened fire on a crowd of just a few hundred to make them disperse. There are concerns about the level of inquiry into how and why that tragedy happened and why others were injured. There are different ways of keeping the peace in communities and of policing, and I hope there will also be ongoing conversation between India and other nations about how areas of perceived public disturbance or concerns can be better policed.
This has been an important debate, and a sad one, because of the cases and human life issues that have been raised. I hope that the UK and other Governments can now lead a renewed effort to persuade the Indian Government and other nations to renounce capital punishment and address the outstanding concerns about human rights abuse. Part of that is having a reformed justice system that has the confidence of all. We can work with our friends in the Indian Government towards this.
I pay tribute again to the work of the Kesri Lehar campaign. As politicians, one of the most noble contributions we can make to human progress is to do what we can to see a safer world for future generations, effective justice systems in every nation, a holding to the standards of international human rights and, I hope in my lifetime, a global end to the death penalty.
Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to contribute. I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) on securing this debate about this important issue of human rights and dignity. The Kesri Lehar petition has raised an essential debate about the use and abolition of the death penalty all over the world, but particularly in India, for many reasons. I have received an abundance of letters and correspondence from my constituents, irrespective of their faith and community, a majority of whom still have strong links with India and are dismayed by its continued use of this outdated, cruel and inhumane method of punishment. Just for clarification, I have the largest Sikh electorate—21.6%—in my constituency, so I have a moral authority to speak on their behalf on this matter.
The universal declaration of human rights, adopted by India, recognises the right to live and the right to be free from subjection to cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment. By keeping the death penalty, India goes against the fundamental rights that it has agreed to. It is one of only 58 countries to retain the death penalty, and one of only 20 to have applied the death penalty in practice in recent years. It cannot be acceptable for a democracy such as India to keep practising this unfair punishment.
Fabian Hamilton
I congratulate my hon. Friend on being the representative of the largest number of Sikh residents anywhere in the United Kingdom. His constituency is well known for that. Does he agree that a petition such as the one that has been presented to me and my colleagues will add to the pressure on the Government of India, because it is signed not only by Sikh community members but by non-Sikhs? Does he agree that organisations such as the Sikh Federation (UK) can persuade people to coalesce around this cause and have an extremely loud voice in the UK for the abolition of the death penalty in India?
Mr Sharma
I fully agree with my hon. Friend.
We cannot always assume that the judicial system is faultless. Therefore, using death, an irrevocable act, as a punishment for a crime, puts the system at risk of punishing the innocent irreversibly. There have been examples in the past of wrongful executions. It was the case of Timothy John Evans that, among others, contributed to the abolition of the death penalty in this country, after a long campaign by Labour MP Sydney Silverman. Evans was falsely convicted of murdering his wife and infant daughter, sentenced to capital punishment and hanged in 1950. It was three years later that the police discovered multiple bodies in the flat of downstairs neighbour and serial killer, John Christie, and realised their mistake. Can it really be just to execute a person who, while at the time of conviction is believed guilty, might well be innocent?
It is the mark of a modern civilised society that it does not tolerate torture and admits that a death sentence is not an appropriate way to respond to criminality. As the world’s largest democracy, India should adhere to these precepts. Every human being has an inalienable right to live; sentencing a person to death goes against that principle. The state and the judicial system cannot deprive an individual of the value of their life. Taking the life of an individual is also hugely inconsistent with the values that Indian culture prides itself and is based on—fairness and equality.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu is believed to have said, “To take a life when a life has been lost is revenge, it is not justice.” I agree: justice cannot be provided with a reciprocal sentence. The justice system cannot proclaim, on the one hand, to condemn the act of killing and, on the other, exact punishment with death. This also establishes an inappropriate link between the state and violence, thus brutalising society and, to a degree, legitimising state violence. It is also abhorrent to note that there are still countries that hand capital sentences to individuals on the basis of their religious beliefs. We should not tolerate the existence of the death penalty to punish those with different spiritual values or beliefs.
I would finally like to point out that, while there has been much justified consternation and outcry over the recent executions in India itself, unfortunately a growing number of voices in India have called for those men responsible for the brutal attack and rape of the young Damini to be hanged. I have spoken many times in this Chamber about my sadness and dismay at her tragic death, and I am heartened to hear calls for justice on her behalf. However, the death penalty is in no case justice: it is simply revenge. What India needs now is to reform the law and justice system to address the many underlying issues which perpetuate this endemic cycle of violence against women and girls, not to blindly apply capital punishment to the perpetrators.
As the Kesri Lehar petition states, I encourage the Indian Government to
“sign and ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and the UN Charter against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Treatment or Punishment”.
As the world’s largest democracy and a multicultural, multi-religious and secular country, India should be a leader in the defence of human rights and fundamental rights, and abolish the death penalty, which taints its long history of peace-making.
John McDonnell
I am grateful to the hon. Members who have made such valid and thoughtful contributions today. I know that many have been dragged down to Eastleigh for the by-election to pester constituents to no effect whatever, but I am grateful to those who have come along today, because it has demonstrated that this House speaks with one voice on this matter, and that voice is the plea to India to end the current threat of the implementation of the death penalty and move towards its abolition.
The tone was struck by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) and reinforced by the hon. Members for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) and for Bedford (Richard Fuller), my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), the hon. Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward) and my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma). We are speaking as friends of India. We recognise and respect the sovereignty of India as an independent state, but our historic links give us the opportunity to speak as friends.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (Mr Spellar) and my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) explained the background and the historical human rights abuses that unfortunately have still not been addressed, and described how they are being compounded by the threat of the death penalty that now hangs over Balwant Singh Rajoana and Professor Bhullar. The Minister has explained the history of representations that we are pleased that the Government have made and continue to make. The right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley and I have offered other practical ideas and opportunities for further interventions to try to move this issue along to fruition.
We thank the Kesri Lehar campaigners who brought this issue to us and made this debate fundamentally important in the campaign to save the lives of the two individuals we have referred to, but also to end the death penalty once and for ever.
The last word in this debate should be from the family of one of the men. During the debate, a letter came in from relatives of Professor Bhullar. They say that they can only pray that people are listening and that everyone will do everything they can to stop this inhuman execution of an innocent person and a terrible miscarriage of justice. They beg the House today to please help Professor Bhullar to be saved from the death penalty and to help them immediately. That message goes out not only from that family, but from all of us. We want to ensure that no one else suffers the death penalty in India. We want a peaceful and harmonious society to be constructed, and such a society cannot be constructed on the basis of the death penalty.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House welcomes the national petition launched by the Kesri Lehar campaign urging the UK Government to press the Indian government to sign and ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and the UN Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which encompasses the death penalty, with the result that India would abolish the death penalty and lift this threat from Balwant Singh Rajoana and others.
Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Can you advise us whether you have received a request from the Secretary of State for Education to make a statement to the House to explain his outrageous comment about schools in east Durham made in a speech last night, that:
“when you go into those schools you can smell the sense of defeatism”?
That is a slur on the hard-working teachers, students and parents of the area. Why is he talking down our schools and young people? He should come to the House and apologise to the people of east Durham.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I can assure you that the Chair has not been notified by the Secretary of State that he is about to make a statement, but that is on the record and I am sure that it will have been noted.
Kurdish Genocide
(11 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House formally recognises the genocide against the people of Iraqi Kurdistan; encourages governments, the EU and UN to do likewise; believes that this will enable Kurdish people, many in the UK, to achieve justice for their considerable loss; and further believes that it would enable the UK, the home of democracy and freedom, to send out a message of support for international conventions and human rights, which is made even more pressing by the slaughter in Syria and the possible use of chemical arsenals.
You will have noticed, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I do not stand in my usual place in the Chamber. I deliberately chose to sit next to my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) today, because in this Parliament I think no one has done more than he has for the cause of the Kurdish people and recognition of the genocide—indeed, he chairs the Kurdish Genocide Task Force.
As the horrors of the holocaust pass beyond living memory, there is a danger that we drop our guard—that we believe such terrible events are safely sealed in the history books and that they could never happen again—but the truth is they already have happened again. Genocide did not end with the fall of the Third Reich in 1945. In the Srebrenica genocide in 1995, 8,000 Bosnians were murdered en masse; in the Rwandan genocide in 1994, more than 500,000 people were killed in just 100 days; and between 1960 and 1991, during the campaign of persecution unleashed by Saddam Hussein against his own people, singling out the Kurdish community, more than 1 million people “disappeared”, with most presumed dead, murdered by Government forces. Yet only the first two have been recognised officially as genocide. No international criminal tribunal has been convened to investigate the extermination of the Kurdish people, nor has there been an international campaign to bring those responsible for those atrocities to justice, and the British government have not formally stated that the actions of Saddam and his lieutenants constituted genocide. That must be put right.
To many people, the plight of the Kurds in Iraq remains unknown. The demonisation, the internment camps, the gassings, the mass graves—those are images that take us to the darkest depths of the 1940s, not the 1980s, yet Saddam Hussein and the Ba'athist regime carried out these actions. The Iraqi Kurds endured a systematic military programme of discrimination, demonisation, removal and death. So-called “men of battle age”—a definition that included tall, strong boys as young as 12—were rounded up, and thousands of women and children vanished. Strong evidence shows many were taken to internment camps, where they were executed or died from malnutrition and torture. When coalition forces entered Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction, they found instead mass graves and the thousands of bodies that they were concealing—men, women, and children, all killed for nothing other than their ethnicity, their bodies hidden from the eyes of the world.
This year is the 25th anniversary of the final act in that persecution: the Anfal campaign—literally translated, it means “the spoils of war”. That last and best known phase took place in 1988, when more than 182,000 Kurds are believed to have died—182,000 men, women and children systematically wiped out. In all, more than 2,000 Kurdish villages and towns were destroyed, including the town of Qla Dizeh, which along with its 70,000 inhabitants was literally wiped off the map. Let me put that in context: that is enough people to fill Wembley stadium twice over, or, if compared with the horrors of the September 11 attacks against the USA, 60 times the 3,000 innocents killed on that terrible day. Yet even that was not the worst of it.
On 16 March 1988, Iraqi planes bombed the town of Halabja with mustard gas and, some suspect, other nerve agents such as sarin and VX. Five thousand civilians died in incredible agony that day, and estimates suggest a further 7,000 were injured or suffered long-term illness. For years afterwards, many babies were born with deformities, and even today, if you visit Halabja as I have done, Mr Deputy Speaker, you will see mass grave sites, and the basements of bombed buildings remain contaminated.
For me the events hold a personal significance. I am proud to be the first British MP of Kurdish descent. It was the persecution of the Kurdish people that brought my family to the safe haven of Great Britain. I remember, as an eight-year-old boy, standing with my mother in Baghdad international airport watching my father attempt to flee the country, boarding a plane to the safe haven of Britain. The night before, he had been tipped off that the regime was planning to come for him. As the plane taxied towards the runway, we watched in horror as an army vehicle stopped the plane and soldiers boarded it. It was only later that we discovered that they had taken the man sat right next to my father. That was the life of a Kurdish family in Iraq—waiting for the knock on the door in the middle of the night, knowing that they could be coming for you, living in fear.
In 1988, as news of Halabja reached the Kurdish community overseas, we all waited for the media to take notice. In a box in my attic, I have some of the first photographs to get out of the region. As hon. Members can imagine, they are horrifying. Yet Saddam's spin machine had gone into overdrive—no gas had been used, they said—and the first western journalists did not visit the area until more than a week later. What confronted them was truly terrible. Writing in The Guardian, David Hirst described the scene:
“The skin of the bodies is strangely discoloured, with their eyes open and staring, where they have not disappeared into their sockets, a greyish slime oozing from their mouths and their fingers still grotesquely twisted. Death seemingly caught them almost unawares in the midst of their household chores. They had just the strength, some of them, to make it to the doorways of their homes, only to collapse there or a few feet beyond. Here a mother seems to clasp her children in a last embrace, there an old man shields an infant from he cannot have known what.”
Even after that there was still scepticism from many, yet that was just the culmination of a decade-long campaign against the Kurdish people, the final stage of the regime's attempts to wipe out the Kurdish people in Iraq. Saddam had unleashed all the resources of a modern, industrialised state on the Kurdish population of his own country. His forces used chemical weapons, concentration camps and aerial bombardment—all methods that were last seen during the second world war. If it was not genocide, one has to ask what would be?
The crime of genocide was brought into law to prosecute those put on trial at Nuremberg. The word comes from the Greek for race and the Latin for killing. The literal meaning is clear, but legally it requires the aggressor to have pre-planned the destruction of a national group. In its investigation, Human Rights Watch was clear that that was the case:
“This crime far transcended legitimate counterinsurgency and includes the murder and disappearance of tens of thousands of non-combatants due to their ethnic-national identity.”
The fact that some of the atrocities took place during the Iran-Iraq war or during a time of uprising have led some to argue that they were war crimes or crimes against humanity, but I disagree. There is no doubt that atrocities were committed in the conflict, but what occurred in Kurdistan—the mass killing of civilians, including women and children—was not a conflict; one side could not and did not fight back. And it was not random violence; it was the planned destruction of the Kurdish population.
Prior to requesting this debate, I launched an e-petition calling on the Government to recognise formally the genocide against the people of Iraqi Kurdistan, and as of this morning it had attracted nearly 28,000 signatures. At 10,000 signatures, it received a response from the Government:
“It remains the Government’s view that it is not for governments to decide whether a genocide has been committed in this case, as this is a complex legal question. Where an international judicial body finds a crime to have been a genocide, however, this will often play an important part in whether we will recognise one as such.”
However, without international pressure it is unlikely that an international judicial body would begin a prosecution in order to provide that “important part” that the Government require.
There is also the fact that many of those responsible, including Saddam himself, were tried and executed for other crimes before an international court could intervene on the question of genocide. However, in March 2010 the Iraqi Supreme Court ruled that the 1988 operations were genocide, four years after Saddam was executed for crimes against humanity. There is no doubt now that he should also have stood trial for genocide.
Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and apologise for being a couple of minutes late for the start of his speech, which caught me out. I think that he is making a very strong case. Other Parliaments, such as Norway’s, have already said that in their opinion there was genocide, so the British Government need to reconsider their position.
Nadhim Zahawi
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He is absolutely right, and I am coming to that point in my speech.
The Iraqi Supreme Court has ruled that the 1988 operations were genocide. Earlier this year the Norwegian Government, as we have just heard, recognised the Anfal campaign as genocide, stating that the judgment in Iraq, in accordance with international law, justified that decision. Sweden followed, with the Swedish Parliament stating that, based on research, statements from organisations and the 2010 judgment in Iraq, it was legally able to make that declaration. In the Netherlands, we have even seen a Dutch citizen successfully prosecuted for his part in the genocide: Frans van Anraat was tried at The Hague and charged, among other things, with selling chemicals knowing that they were to be used for genocidal purposes. Such a charge required the court to decide whether the Anfal campaign was indeed genocide. Unsurprisingly, it agreed that it was. Therefore, there exists a judicial decision in Iraq, a decision at The Hague and the decisions of other nations to support a declaration that the Kurds were subjected to genocide. The United Kingdom can act to make it clear to the world that this Government recognise the genocide committed against the Kurdish people.
Beyond the legal arguments there is another important dimension. The United Kingdom carries enormous moral weight around the world. I am proud that Britain is at the forefront of the international community when it comes to protecting human rights and standing up to regimes that threaten their people and their neighbours. That is why we must be at the forefront of this argument.
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
I stand shoulder to shoulder with the hon. Gentleman in his desire to see this recognised as genocide. In relation to the point he has just made, does he not also think that that would bolster the position of the 38 million Kurdish people living in Syria, Iran, Iraq and Turkey today? Does he also believe that, given the tremendous concern about the position of Kurdish people in Turkey at the moment, it is important that we recognise those past sins?
Nadhim Zahawi
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He is quite right. I do not think that the Kurdish people can get closure on the horrific crimes that were committed against them in Iraq, but if Parliament today recognises that what took place was genocide, they will be one step closer. We will also send a clear message to all those countries that might at some point be tempted to attack their own people because of their ethnicity to think twice. I thank him for being here and for supporting the motion.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate and on his speech, which will do a great deal to create greater understanding of the plight of Kurdish people in all countries. Will he reflect for a moment on the fact that, although what happened in 1988 was genocide and was appalling, this country, to its shame, continued to sell arms to Iraq, and indeed took part in the Baghdad arms fair less than a year later, and that the weaponry it continued to supply might well have been used in the oppression of the Kurdish people?
Nadhim Zahawi
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. As I said in my opening remarks, Saddam Hussein’s spin machine and many instruments of power were available to him, including a number of people who lobbied this Parliament and the Government very hard at the time to continue to do business with him. At this point, I must recognise John Major’s contribution to safeguarding the Kurds in ’91 when Saddam used his helicopter gunships to attack the Kurdish people after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. This country decided to put in place a no-fly zone to protect the Kurdish people and the Shi’a people in the south of Iraq, who were coming under similar attack.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. Does he see what he is asking for today as a step towards justice for the Kurdish people across various countries in the middle east, such as Turkey, which has been mentioned? As I see it, he has done the Kurdish people quite a service today if this can start the ball rolling for justice for them across the region, particularly in Turkey.
Nadhim Zahawi
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. If we recognise what took place in Iraq as genocide against the Kurdish people, we will send a clear message to all leaders in the region that they should think twice before deciding to attack their own people, as we are seeing currently in Syria. Indeed, today a conference is being held in Rome, attended by the Foreign Secretary, to try to see what more we can do to safeguard the welfare of the Syrian people.
I am truly proud that Britain is at the forefront of the international community’s efforts to protect human rights. Recognising the Kurdish persecution as genocide will send a strong message to totalitarian regimes around the world that might consider committing such acts. After all, history has shown that when a dictator thinks they will get away with it, they will commit atrocities against their own people. We need only turn our gaze to Syria to remind ourselves of that.
It is only by raising international awareness of these crimes that we will educate people against the intolerance and hatred that led to these heinous acts. It is only by proving that the perpetrators of these crimes can and will be brought to justice that we will make the dictators of this world think before they act. It is by recognising the Kurdish genocide that we can ensure that these aims are achieved and that the British nation can cement its position as a protector of liberty and human rights. I commend the motion to the House.
Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)
I refer to my entries in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
It is an honour to speak in this important debate. Over the past five years I have been involved with the all-party group on the Kurdistan region in Iraq, which I am now proud to co-chair with my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), who eloquently set out the reason for this debate. The all-party group is very active and has an excellent website with a range of views and news. Members can look at the issues relating to Kurdistan and to this debate on that website at www.appgkurdistan.org.uk.
Genocide, as my hon. Friend said, is the methodical killing of all the people from a particular national, ethnic or religious group. Today’s debate is an important milestone towards persuading this House, the wider public and the international community to recognise the attempted genocide of the Kurdish people in Iraq by Saddam Hussein. As my hon. Friend said, an estimated 1 million Iraqis have disappeared since the 1960s, all presumed murdered by the regime. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Anfal genocide operation against the Kurds, including the dreadful chemical attack on Halabja, as well as the 30th anniversary of the killing of 8,000 male members of the Barzani clan.
The scale of these atrocities is clear and not seriously challenged, but few outside the Kurdistan region understand what was involved in the mass slaughter, and fewer still understand the organisation and methods used in what has been described as “Saddam’s killing machine”. It has been referred to as a prison above ground and a mass grave beneath. The targeting of the Kurdish people living in northern Iraq was designed to remove any possibility of opposition to the vile regime. Last night, I watched again two DVDs that have been produced by the Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights about the terrible crimes committed by Saddam Hussein’s regime: “Execution of People” and “Dust Talks”. They include pictures of some of the atrocities filmed by the regime, including shootings, beatings and the severing of ears of young men who had deserted the army. They show the devastation of the way of life of the Marsh Arabs by the deliberate draining of the marshes, and of course the chemical attacks at Halabja and elsewhere.
Today we have only words to try to describe what happened, and I fear that they will fall short of portraying the full horror. These monstrous events have a contemporary relevance. Many families still do not know if a father, brother or sister is dead or not, and do not know where their body may be buried, perhaps in some undiscovered mass grave. Not knowing about the fate of a member of the family weighs heavily. The impact of the killing continues and will continue for many, many years to come.
It is important to remember just how closed and controlled a society Iraq was. There were few opportunities for contact with the outside world. After the no-fly zone was imposed over Kurdistan in 1991, people at last had the opportunity to begin to develop their own democracy and to make their own decisions, but sustained contact with the outside world really began only after the 2003 invasion. Only then did we slowly begin to understand the true scale of the horror. According to the International Commission on Missing Persons in 2006, there were 270 mass graves, each estimated to contain between 10 and 10,000 bodies. Since then, many, many more mass graves have been uncovered.
Of course, it was not just the Kurds who suffered under Saddam Hussein. The impact of 35 years of dictatorship is still very evident in all sections of the Iraqi population. I have visited Iraq a number of times and have been privileged to meet the politicians who are building their democracy. Some have shared with me their experiences of that dark time: family members killed, tortured or simply missing. The number of widows in the country is simply huge. In Kurdistan today, many children are affected with cancers caused by the chemical weapons. Others live with the effects of barbaric torture.
Ten years after the fall of the dictator, the health services are far from adequate to meet the needs of the population, but they are improving. In the UK, we have benefited from the Iraqi doctors who came here to work during the time of exile, and it is encouraging to see that many have returned and are now working to improve health services in their home country. Indeed, it was an Iraqi doctor in Sheffield who began the process which has led to significant partnerships between Sheffield Hallam university and the Iraqi Ministry of Health and Iraqi universities to provide much-needed skills for the health service. A strong partnership has also developed with the Kurdistan Regional Government.
Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)
Great support has also been given by members of the Newcastle-Gateshead medical volunteers, led by Deiary Kader, who, as well as the people from Sheffield, have been going over to Kurdistan to treat people for a number of years. Next month, they will go there for the eighth time. Over those years, thousands and thousands of people have benefited from the relationship that we have developed between our two countries.
Meg Munn
I thank my hon. Friend for bringing that partnership to the attention of the House. It is true that in the UK there are very many doctors of Iraqi and Iraqi-Kurdish origin. While they have continued to serve and provide support for our community, they are also doing such things as my hon. Friend described and doing what they can at a time when the health services in Iraq still need a great deal of investment to develop to serve an ordinary population, let alone one that has suffered the kind of trauma, torture and chemical attacks that have been suffered in Iraq, particularly in Kurdistan.
Alongside the physical impact of repression on the population, we must not underestimate the psychological effects: living with the grief of lost family members, remembering the terror of attacks and, above all, the constant fear. As a woman says in one of the DVDs I mentioned, Iraqi people had no dignity because they had to sell out their consciences to Saddam Hussein to stay alive.
Thirty-five years of dictatorship are not easily forgotten, but there have been positive moments since the 2003 invasion. We remember the TV pictures of the purple-stained fingers shown with pride when the Iraqi people were able to exercise the right to vote—something that we take for granted. They were excited about being able to take part in the first democratic elections. But of course voting is only the first act; building the institutions and democratic habits are much more difficult—all the more so when people have not been allowed to make their own decisions, and acting on their own initiative was a risky thing to do.
My involvement with the Kurdistan regional and Iraqi national parliaments has shown me just how difficult this task is, but it is a task to which many brave Iraqis are committed. To take on these tasks and build a new society is complex and demanding; it will take time, dedication and determination. We should continue to support them in this. An important way to do that is formally to recognise what happened to them. Former French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner argues that
“human rights should mean that people are protected within their own countries”.
When these rights are violated, it is the duty of the international community to honour victims and to ensure that history cannot repeat itself. If democratic Governments cannot be clear about genocide and say that such crimes must be stamped out, then who will?
Jeremy Corbyn
I thank my hon. Friend for the interesting points she is making. Does she accept that there is systematic discrimination against Kurdish people, culture and language in all the neighbouring countries—it is a product of the break-up of the Ottoman empire at the end of the first world war—and that those countries have to reckon with a multicultural, multilingual and multi-ethnic society if there is to be long-term peace in the region?
Meg Munn
Building the kind of society described by my hon. Friend, which recognises people’s rights to their own language and culture and to celebrate their background, is enormously important and very much part of this process. Although building democracy in Iraq and working with Iraqi parliamentarians is difficult, it is encouraging to see Iraqis across all political groups and backgrounds working together. The services and reconstruction committee of the Iraqi Parliament will visit us next week. It is chaired by a Kurdish-Yezidi woman and is comprised of people from different backgrounds who are working together to try to build things for the Iraqi people. I agree with much of what my hon. Friend has said.
Mr Lammy
My hon. Friend spoke eloquently of the position in France and that of the French Foreign Minister. Does she recall that just a few weeks ago three Kurdish women were shot dead in Paris? That conveys the continued concern that we should all have about Kurdish people as they go about their business in Europe. It also illustrates not only why we must recognise genocide, as has been said, but that these are a people who continue to be routinely oppressed.
Meg Munn
My right hon. Friend is right. I have particular concerns about the position of Kurdish people and, indeed, others. More than 70,000 have died in Syria and there is an ever-present fear of chemical weapons being used by that regime, which is a frightening reminder of the Halabja gas attack. As has been said, some of the effects of the 16 March 1988 attack on Halabja are still with us, including disease, birth defects and other health complications. Can we easily accept the possibility that more victims of these weapons could arise today in Iraq’s neighbouring country?
We know of the genocide perpetrated against the Jews by the Nazis during the second world war and the excellent work undertaken by organisations such as the Holocaust Educational Trust to educate new generations about the horror. Every year we have Holocaust memorial day to honour the dead and ensure that they are not forgotten. The story of the Kurdish genocide has yet to be fully told and is not yet fully understood, but the Kurdish people should not have to wait any longer for justice from the international community. Iraq has officially recognised the killings as genocide and the rest of the world must do the same.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
It is an honour to sit next to my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), whom I congratulate on securing this debate and on everything he has done on the all-party group on the Kurdistan region in Iraq, on which I have been very proud to work with him.
During my last visit to Kurdistan, I remember being in a restaurant one evening where, by chance, I sat next to one of the senior members of the Iraqi war graves commission. She told me something incredibly telling, which sums up why I am here this afternoon: “There is another Iraq buried under Iraq.” We had a huge amount of food in front of us, as is the Kurdish way, but after she said that I did not feel like eating again that evening. It summed up the mass murder and terrible crimes of Saddam Hussein. Later, along with my hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe) and others, I went to see some of the graves. The experience left a marked impression on me and it summed up why we have to recognise Saddam Hussein’s genocide of the Kurds as exactly that.
We know that the actions of the Iraqi regime from the 1960s to 2003 were a sustained campaign of genocide against the Kurdish people. We must not make the mistake of thinking that everything started with the Anfal campaign in 1988. Had it not been for “muscular enlightenment” and the military interventions of John Major and, later, Tony Blair, the final solution for the extermination of the Kurds would have been successful. Recognition of the genocide and of the Kurds is important, not just because it is morally right, but because it is a warning to tyrants around the world and helps the survivors to fight for justice in the international criminal courts.
Raphael Lemkin, the Polish lawyer who coined the word “genocide,” defined it in 1944 as
“a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.”
That is a perfect description of the campaign of persecution and murder that Saddam Hussein and his predecessors led against the Kurdish people. The Kurds were repeatedly attacked by the Iraqi military from 1960 to 1970. In March 1970, Iraq publicly announced a peace plan to the world for Kurdish autonomy, but privately it started an aggressive Arabisation programme in the oil-rich regions of Kurdistan, forcibly removing people and seizing their property. In 1974, Iraq began a new bombardment against the Kurds. In March 1975, Iraq and Iran signed the Algiers accord, cutting humanitarian supplies to Kurdistan. Over the next three years, 200,000 Kurds were forcibly deported to other parts of Iraq. During the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, the regime implemented anti-Kurdish policies—pogroms, in essence—and a civil war broke out.
Iraq was condemned, but it was never seriously punished. The result was that the genocide accelerated: first, the Kurds were demonised, then they were marginalised, then persecuted, and finally they were massacred—all the stages of genocide. Between 1986 and 1989, the Anfal campaign led to the destruction of more than 2,000 villages and towns, and the murder of more than 180,000 Kurdish civilians. There was cold-blooded use of ground offences, internment without trial, disappearances, aerial bombing, torture and rape as a weapon of war, destruction of whole villages and towns, mass deportation, firing squads and chemical attacks, including, as so movingly described by my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon, the inhuman attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988 that killed 5,000 people almost instantly. We should not forget that just before Saddam Hussein dropped the mustard gas, bombs were dropped to blow up the house windows so that none of the Kurds could escape inside the buildings and retreat from the mustard gas.
After the collapse of the Kurdish uprising in March 1991, 1.5 million Kurds became refugees. It was only then, after decades of escalating violence and genocide, that in April 1991 the United Nations Security Council passed resolution 688, demanding peace in Kurdistan and access for humanitarian agencies. Disgracefully, this was the first international resolution to mention the Kurdish people by name.
In 2004, Human Rights Watch said that
“in the last twenty-five years of Ba‘th Party rule the Iraqi government murdered or ‘disappeared’ some quarter of a million Iraqis, if not more.”
As with every other genocide, the methods of killing became ever more sophisticated—think shooting in the woods by the Nazis and then the concentration camps. My hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock will remember going to a prison called the “red house”, which was, in essence, a mini-concentration camp that had what were called “party rooms”, where women were raped and their babies and foetuses literally thrown into ovens outside. I had never seen anything like that in my life and I never want to see it again. In fact, on my second visit, I stayed outside because I did not want to see what I had seen before.
Saddam and the Ba’athists were determined to vacuum the Kurds from Iraq, partly because of Arab nationalism and partly through a desire to gain full control of the Kurdish lands and oil. If one defines genocide as scientifically planned mass murder, the Kurds suffered genocide. I know that there is always a debate about definitions, but the Anfal campaign was the murder of 182,000 people and the displacement of 1.5 million people just because they were Kurdish.
How is that any different from the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica, which has been ruled to be a genocide by the International Criminal Court? How is it different from Rwanda, where 800,000 Tutsis died in 1994, which the UN rightly recognises as a genocide? How is it different from Darfur, for which the ICC issued an arrest warrant in 2010 for the President of Sudan on genocide charges, after 300,000 people were murdered and millions displaced? The UN recognises formally that Yugoslavia and Rwanda have had genocides. Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell said that the massacres in Darfur were a genocide. Since that time, however, no other permanent member of the UN Security Council has followed suit.
I accept that the Minister will feel hemmed in by the definitions. However, to the man on the street, how are the scientific murders of Darfur, Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia any different from what happened in Kurdistan? In 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide. It legally defined the crime of genocide as:
“any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
That definition is plain and clear. It describes exactly what has happened to the Kurds in Iraq over the past 50 years. It is worth remembering, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon noted, that in December 2005, a court in The Hague ruled that the Kurdish people had faced genocide in the 1980s.
What stopped the genocide was NATO intervention or what I have termed “muscular enlightenment”. In April 1991, John Major and his western allies established proper safe havens inside Iraqi borders and a no-fly zone. It is good to see Lord Archer in this place given that he was so instrumental in making that happen. Kurdish guerrillas recaptured Irbil and founded the Kurdistan Regional Government, which was ultimately recognised by the new Iraqi constitution in 2005. By the beginning of 2006, the two Kurdish administrations of Irbil and Sulaymaniyah were unified.
Kurdistan is now one of the most moderate and democratic regions of the middle east. It disproves the argument that the middle east is not ready for democracy. People always say that the middle east is just not ready yet and that it will take hundreds of years to build democracy there, but despite what they have suffered, the people of Kurdistan have built a democracy. It is not perfect, but it is a good democracy with the rule of law, property rights, equality towards women, religious tolerance and elections—all the requirements that we understand to be the values of freedom. It is no accident that Christians across the rest of Iraq go to Kurdistan when they are being persecuted. They know that they will be treated fairly and equally there, as is right.
We must finally recognise Saddam Hussein’s actions for what they were. Recognition is morally right. It acts as a warning to other dictators around the world and will help Kurds to fight for justice in the International Criminal Court. Unlike the case of Nazi Germany, where many of those who were responsible for the holocaust were tried, little has been done to bring justice to those who caused the Kurdish genocide. It is a frightening thought, but it is said that some of the organisers of the Anfal campaign and the pilots who dropped the chemical weapons remain at large and may even be in Europe. Others are in positions of responsibility in Iraq’s military and Government. To be fair, Iraq has now officially recognised the genocide. It is the duty of the rest of the world to do the same to ensure that all the perpetrators are brought to the ICC and to help with education and remembrance so that what happened is never forgotten by future generations.
We can argue about dodgy dossiers and disagree about UN resolutions. I am sure that we will be debating whether the Iraq war was justified until the next millennium. However, one matter that is indisputable is that the removal of Saddam Hussein not only saved the Kurdish nation from being destroyed by genocide, but brought about an independent, progressive and free nation in the shape of Kurdistan.
I am a Jewish MP and have very few Kurdish constituents. Because I am Jewish, because I am steeped in learning about the holocaust and because some of my family were in Bergen-Belsen, I have come to this place believing that it is my moral duty to help other nations that have suffered from genocide. One of the worst slogans that we ever hear is, “Never again.” One never imagines that what happened in the second world war could have happened all over again only 25 years ago, but it did. The mustard gas reminds me of that all too clearly. If we want to make “Never again” more than just a slogan, we have to really mean it.
We have to ensure that the Kurdish genocide is recognised as one of the world’s greatest crimes. That is why, as I said, I am very proud to be here today. This is an historic moment for our Parliament, which has such close relations with Kurdistan, and I hope very much that we will support the motion to recognise the genocide and the evil crimes of Saddam Hussein.
Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) on securing this important debate, which, of course, has particular significance around this time. For years, I have chaired meetings in the Grand Committee Room of the House of Commons and we have commemorated Halabja year after year. Indeed, in 1988 along with Members from across the House, I took a group of women to a hospital in London where some of the survivors of the Halabja incident were recovering. There were women who had been badly burned by chemicals, and some could not speak because the chemical weapons had harmed their windpipes. I hope that those people survived, and I was glad that at least some of them had the opportunity to be brought to London for treatment.
In 1988-89 my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), who was in the Chamber earlier, attempted to protest at the Iraqi embassy about the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds. At the time, the ambassador told us that he knew nothing about it; it was all a mystery to him. He said, “Would you like to visit Baghdad?” We said, “No, we’d actually like to go and visit Kurdistan where the chemical weapons attack has taken place.” He continued to say, “I don’t know anything about it but I will get in touch with Baghdad and see what we can do.” He played a cat and mouse game with us for six months, at the end of which I sent a letter to the Financial Times saying that it was obviously just a game. However, it was not a game for us politicians who had followed the Kurds for many years. We protested in this House in 1988, 1989 and throughout.
I first became involved with the Kurds as early as 1977, before I was a politician, when many Kurds were students at Cardiff university. One, of course, was Barham Salih, and many prominent Kurds were at that university. There were also Iraqi students, and they told us what was happening in Iraq. It was difficult to get an accurate picture at that time, and it was not until the chemical weapons attack that the public in the west were made aware of the kind of weapons that Saddam Hussein was prepared to use against his own people. The charge of genocide was proved in the tribunal in Iraq, and many prominent Iraqis were tried. Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali, was subsequently sentenced to death. The charge of genocide was made against him and it was proved.
Some of us have campaigned over a long period. I chaired the Campaign Against Repression and for Democratic Rights in Iraq—CARDRI—which many Kurds and Iraqis living in London were members of at that time. We continually published records of what was happening to the Kurds and Iraqis, and what was going on in the prisons. We had good but horrific accounts of the kind of torture being used against the people of Kurdistan and Iraq. Some of the kinds of torture were horrific. Later, I opened the genocide museum in Kurdistan, and I remember relatives of those who had been killed during the Anfal campaign coming up to me. It was a memorable day—it was snowing; it was grey—and going into that museum of torture and seeing where so many Kurds had perished left a lasting impression on us all.
Women were coming towards me with photographs of their relatives who had died. They were elderly women carrying photographs wrapped in cling film, and they showed me which of their relatives had died in that torture centre in Sulaymaniyah. CARDRI collected a lot of evidence. We had photographs and witness statements, and a few years later when Indict was set up, for several years it collected evidence of Iraqi war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. I am glad to say that the evidence was used in the trials that subsequently took place in Baghdad.
Many knew, or thought we knew, what was happening in Iraq, but things were not fully explained until after 2003. I first went to Kurdistan in 1991 and returned every two or three years after that. There were constant stories of disappearances and sightings of people in prisons. Nobody knew where their loved ones were.
The Anfal campaign was horrific. I have looked again at a Human Rights Watch report published in July 1993, entitled, “Genocide in Iraq: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds”, which states:
“Allegations about enormous abuses against the Kurds by government security forces had been circulating in the West for years before the events of 1991; Kurdish rebels had spoken of 4,000 destroyed villages and an estimated 182,000 disappeared persons during 1988 alone. The…Anfal, the official military codename used by the government in its public pronouncements and internal memoranda, was well known inside Iraq, especially in the Kurdish region. As all the horrific details have emerged, this name has seared itself into popular consciousness—much as the Nazi German Holocaust did with its survivors. The parallels are apt, and often chillingly close…In…February 1990, Human Rights in Iraq, Middle East Watch reconstructed what took place from exile sources, with what in retrospect turned out to be a high degree of accuracy. Even so, some of the larger claims made by the Kurds seemed too fantastic to credit. As it transpires, this has been a humbling, learning process for all those foreigners who followed Kurdish affairs from abroad. Western reporters, relief workers, human rights organizations and other visitors to Iraqi Kurdistan have come to realize that the overall scale of the suffering inflicted on the Kurds by their government was by no means exaggerated.”
The report goes on to say that Middle East Watch
“can now demonstrate convincingly a deliberate intent on the part of the government of…Saddam Hussein to destroy, through mass murder, part of Iraq’s Kurdish minority…Two government instruments…the…1987 national census and the declaration of “prohibited areas”…were institutional foundations of this policy. These instruments were implemented against the background of nearly two decades of government-directed “Arabization”, in which mixed-race districts, or else lands that Baghdad regarded as desirable or strategically important, saw their Kurdish population diluted by Arab migrant farmers provided with ample incentives to relocate, and guarded by government troops…The logic of the Anfal, however, cannot be divorced either from the Iran-Iraq War. After 1986, both the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the two major parties, received support from the Iranian government and sometimes took part in joint military raids against Iraqi government positions”.
The report goes on to describe the link, but it does not make any difference to what Saddam Hussein did to his own people.
Many will be familiar with the attacks in Halabja in March 1988—the incident caused a brief international ripple—but they might be surprised to learn that the first use of poison gas against the Kurds by central Government occurred 11 months earlier. All told, Middle East Watch recorded 40 separate attacks on Kurdish targets, some of which involved multiple sorties over several days, between 1987 and August 1988. Each of those attacks were war crimes, involving the use of a banned weapon. The fact that non-combatants were often victims added to the offence. In the Anfal, at least 50,000 people—possibly 100,000—many of them women and children, were killed out of hand between February and September 1988. Their deaths did not come in the heat of battle: those Kurds were systematically put to death in large numbers on the orders of the central Government in Baghdad just days, sometimes weeks, after being rounded-up in villages marked for destruction, or else while fleeing from army assaults in prohibited areas.
Two experienced researchers from Human Rights Watch spent six months in northern Iraq between April and September 1992, gathering testimonial information about the Anfal. Previously, one 12-year old boy had been the only known survivor of many accounts of Kurds —men, women and children—being trucked southward to the Arab heartland of Iraq in large numbers, and then ‘disappeared’. It was assumed they had all been summarily executed, but there was no proof.
I have had to stand at the side of many mass graves in Iraq, seeing the bodies excavated, and I remember one particular occasion in Kurdistan when what was assumed to be a mass grave of peshmerga was being uncovered. The relatives stood around as the skeletons were slowly brought out. One old man standing near me recognised his son, who had been a peshmerga, from the wedding ring on his hand. Those of us who have seen mass graves elsewhere in Iraq and Kurdistan will know how terrible it is for families to stand around waiting to identify a piece of clothing or jewellery.
In al-Hilla, I watched a team of British forensic scientists help with the excavation of a mass grave, and they found babies still held in their mother’s or father’s arms. When they could not identify a body, they would put the remains in a plastic bag and put it on the top of a grave. Then people would walk around the graves looking inside the bags to see if they recognised anything. That is an appalling way to have to identify the body of a dead relative, but it is still going on in Iraq and Kurdistan, because—as someone once said to me—Iraq is one mass grave.
I would like to see that work continue, because it is important that people have some closure. At least they would know that their loved one was shot there, died there and was buried there, because a lot of people still do not know. I have seen queues down the streets outside the Free Prisoners Association with people trying to find out if there is any information on a missing person. Many people in Kurdistan and Iraq are still grieving because they have not had closure on the death of their relative.
Based on the evidence we now have, Middle East Watch and other organisations urge the international community to recognise that genocide occurred in the Kurdistan during 1988. The legal obligations to act on the basis of that information, to punish its perpetrators and prevent its recurrence, are undeniable.
As I said at the beginning, many people came to CARDRI and told us what had happened to their relatives. In the 1980s, an Iraqi mother told us about her son who was typical of so many thousands of people who have died in Iraq. He was a medical student who went out one day and never returned. Many months later, she was told to go to the mortuary and collect his body. She was led to a room where his body was to be found. She said:
“When I entered and saw what was inside, I could not believe that there were people who could do such things to other human beings. I looked around and saw nine bodies. My son was in a chair. He had blood all over him, his body was eaten away and bleeding. I looked at the others stretched out on the floor all burnt. One of them had his chest slit with a knife. Another’s body carried the marks of a hot domestic iron all over his head to his feet. Everyone was burnt in a different way. Another one had his legs cut off with an axe. His arms were also axed. One of them had his eyes gouged out and his nose and ears cut off.”
There were so many of these chilling accounts that at times over the years I found it difficult to believe. The horrors of Saddam’s Iraq will continue to shock and to stun the world.
In 1989, Saddam Hussein was still considered a valued friend by this country, and the Government of the day still sent trade missions to Baghdad. As my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North will remember, we were invited to a cultural festival in Baghdad. We protested time after time after time in this Chamber about the fact that our trade links were still in place, and we called for sanctions against Iraq.
Jeremy Corbyn
My right hon. Friend raised these issues many times in the 1980s. Does she recall a delegation that she and I went on to both the Foreign Office and the Department of Trade and Industry to suggest that we should not take part in the Baghdad arms fair in 1989? We suggested that they should suspend all arms trade with Iraq and were rebuffed by Ministers on that occasion.
Ann Clwyd
I remember that very well. It was not the only occasion we were rebuffed, because we, and many others who are long gone from this House, continued the campaign.
We should recognise that although Saddam Hussein was executed on the basis of a previous trial, the rest of the co-defendants were charged with genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Anfal campaign. As I said earlier, Ali Hassan al-Majid was convicted of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in the Anfal campaign, and sentenced to death. However, he was not executed until 2010. A number of others were sentenced to death, but not on charges of genocide. The case has been well made over a long period of time and I am very happy to support the motion. The Kurds need recognition, and we and others are in a position to recognise genocide.
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)
I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
Let us consider the following words:
“I remember 16 March as if it was yesterday, I remember the roar of military aircraft overhead, hiding in my family’s shelter with family and friends, and emerging hours later to find twisted, deformed bodies lying in the street. I remember people crushed under buildings and crying for help. And I remember the black smoke from the napalm bombs, which billowed into the sky.”
Those are the words of an Iraqi Kurdish journalist, who, like other survivors of the Halabja poison gas massacre, will be haunted by the memories of 16 March 1988 for the rest of his life. To ease their burden, we have to recognise their burden for what it is, and that is why we are here today. It is also why I want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) for all his work on highlighting the wider issue of genocide and my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) for his courage and his dedication to this issue.
This is an important debate and now, more than ever, is the time for recognition. As we approach the 25th anniversary of the events of 16 and 17 March 1988, now is the time to re-examine the issue of recognition. As we have heard, some 5,000 innocent people were brutally murdered in the most abhorrent of circumstances. For the first time in history, a Government used chemical weapons against its own people. As mustard gas and nerve agents rained down, the Kurdish people could do nothing but succumb to the brutal agony that these chemical weapons induce. As we have heard, that is but a snapshot of the Anfal genocide inflicted on the Kurdish people by Saddam Hussein and Chemical Ali between 1987 and 1989. I say “genocide” because I truly believe that is what it was. As I understand it and as we have heard explained, genocide can be defined as the gravest crime against humanity that it is possible to commit. It is the mass extermination of a particular group of people in an attempt to wipe them off the face of the earth.
In his own words, Saddam Hussein commissioned his cousin to
“solve the Kurdish problem and slaughter the saboteurs.”
In doing so, he initiated a two-year genocidal campaign that was characterised by: mass summary executions; the disappearance of many tens of thousands of non-combatants; the destruction of some 2,000 villages; and the death of tens of thousands of women, children, and elderly people held without judicial order in jail. We must as a Parliament and as a nation recognise those atrocities for what they were—genocide.
I am a member of the all-party group on the Kurdistan region in Iraq and, as such, I had the privilege of visiting the region last year. Before I continue on the topic of this debate, I want first to pay homage to Kurdistan and its people, many of whom are following this debate here today, for the great strides they have taken since the genocide. On the same day that I saw for myself one of the many mass graves that scar the land, I also saw a nation earnestly seeking to move forward. There is so much to be positive about in Kurdistan and it presents some exciting opportunities for British business. The Kurdistan region today is enjoying an unprecedented era of economic growth and an ever-improving security situation. After decades of destruction, neglect and isolation, the people in Kurdistan are beginning to develop their economy, to let free trade prosper and to promote commerce and investment. But as part of that process of looking forward, we have to help the Kurds to come to terms with their past and to deal with the full extent of what happened.
I remember that during my visit to Kurdistan I heard again and again about the atrocities, and saw at first hand the visible signs of a nation bearing a great burden. I visited the memorial museum that my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow talked about, which is now housed in a former torture centre, where many of the worst crimes were committed. As an all-party group and as a country, we are working to develop our relationship with the region, to maintain the already strong ties we have in many areas and to nurture underdeveloped ties in others. Given Kurdistan’s large diaspora—many of its people are watching today—those ties are extremely important and will only become increasingly so. Kurdistan is our ally and our friend, and it is therefore our duty to acknowledge that and to recognise the true extent of the atrocities that befell its people.
The Kurdistan Regional Government—the KRG—are calling for Iraq to join the International Criminal Court, as a way of preventing genocide from happening again, and they have asked us to join them in their call for justice. I believe that we have a moral responsibility to respond to that call, not to affirm the status of victim on the Kurdish people but to recognise what they have survived and to walk with them as they continue to surge forward economically, socially, diplomatically and culturally.
As we have heard, we would not be the first to make this acknowledgement. The Iraqi Government and Supreme Court have acknowledged acts of genocide against the Kurdish people. In 2005, The Hague established that chemical bombing in Kurdistan constituted genocide. Unfortunately, it reverted to using the term “war crimes” in a subsequent appeal. In 2008, the research institute Swiss Peace recognised the genocide. In 2013, we must do the same, and we must use our membership of the EU and the UN to pursue the matter to its fullest extent.
The Government responded to the petition submitted by my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon on the recognition of the genocide against the Kurds in Iraq by saying:
“It remains the Government’s view that it is not for governments to decide whether a genocide has been committed in this case, as this is a complex legal question.”
However, other courts have recognised the genocide. Taking into account the definition of genocide, surely it is time for our Government to revisit the matter and to rethink their position. This is a political issue on which we should be taking a lead. A widely cited index published by Monocle placed Britain as the most powerful nation on earth in soft power. We have a reputation for diplomatic excellence and for being a champion of human rights and a beacon of democracy. We owe it to our Kurdish partners to use that power to promote justice for all Kurdish people, wherever in the world they might be.
There is also a practical element involved. As I learned on my visit to Kurdistan, recognition of the genocide would assist the Kurdistan Government in their mission to uncover the 270 reported mass graves, and the many more unreported mass graves, in which between 500,000 and 1 million missing people were buried. As we have heard, the Kurdistan Mass Graves Commission has said:
“There is another Iraq under Iraq.”
That is a chilling statement, and it is one that we have to support. Recognising the genocide against the Kurds is also becoming increasingly pressing, given the ongoing slaughter in Syria and the possible use of chemical weapons there.
This is an extremely pertinent time to be reflecting on the issue, given that the House recently commemorated Holocaust memorial day. That was a day not only for remembering the holocaust but for remembering subsequent genocides that have blighted the world, such as those in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur. I would like to see Kurdistan on that list. The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust has made it clear that remembering and acknowledging are acts of reconciliation, but how can we have reconciliation without recognition? Recognition is vital if we are to ensure that such barbaric crimes do not happen again.
One survivor looked back on his experience in Halabja and said:
“I screamed. But there was no one left to hear me.”
I think we owe it to all those who lost their lives, and to all those who bear the haunting memories, to demonstrate that we are listening, that we have heard their cries for justice and that we are going to respond. I therefore call upon the Government formally to recognise the genocide against the Kurds and the people of Iraqi Kurdistan and to use their good offices to encourage other nations, the EU and the UN to do likewise. We must never forget what happened, and we must do all that we can to seek this recognition for the people of Kurdistan.
Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)
I should like to start by praising the modern-day Bard, the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), for successfully securing the debate, and those wonderful people on the Backbench Business Committee for agreeing to hold the debate today. I also pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) and my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) for the work they have done on this issue.
Three decades ago, most of us in our places today were not Members of the House and what was happening in Iraq was only part of the background to our lives—perhaps not so much for the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon because of his personal links, but most of us had other things to occupy us. The issue did not get the attention it should have had at the time. Perhaps if we had been as actively involved as we became two decades later, things might have been different. If we had had a different attitude to the Iraqi Government at that time, things might have been different and we would not be talking about the issue today.
Let me focus on the impact of what happened back then on real human beings. My interaction with Iraq started in 2003, when I was the president of Unison—the biggest trade union in Britain at the time—and a member of the general council of the TUC. Like most people in the labour movement, I was completely and utterly opposed to the invasion of Iraq. I believed that the reasons for going into Iraq were not justified, that the argument about weapons of mass destruction was not proven and that we had gone in far too early, with Hans Blix doing good work on the ground, despite the obstacles put in his way. Nothing should have happened until his work had been completed.
I remain convinced today that the leader of my party and the Prime Minister at the time decided to go into Iraq alongside the Americans for two reasons. First, he passionately believed that Saddam should be got rid of, and, secondly, he wanted to keep good relations with the Americans. I believe that the Americans went in for different reasons. They wanted to get rid of Saddam, too, but they also wanted to gain control of the oil wealth in that part of the world and, even more important for the American Republican party, they wanted to ensure that George Bush got re-elected 18 months after the invasion. I remain convinced that that was why, no matter what we did, the Americans would have gone into Iraq around the time they did, as it was a perfect way of winning the election that lay some 18 months ahead.
After the military action had finished, my role in my trade union was to ask, “What do we do now?” One benefit of Saddam’s removal was the re-emergence of a trade union movement in Iraq—a movement that, before Saddam’s reign, had been one of the most active and one of the largest from Europe to Australia but that had been suppressed. We took the decision as a trade union to do all we could to try to help people who had not been involved in real trade union activity for at least four decades to get involved in that role in the world again. We started a training scheme for trade union stewards and we brought people from Iraq—basically Kurdistan because no one could get out of the rest of Iraq—to London. This was a training scheme for a small group of trade unionists who could then go back and train the trainers.
Mr Anderson
I thank my hon. Friend, and I am very well aware of it. I shall refer later to a member of the delegation I led in 2006. She was the treasurer of NASUWT at the time, and she also chaired the TUC task group on Iraq.
That training programme was so successful that we ended up expanding it. Instead of bringing people out of Kurdistan to London, we got them out of there to Amman in Jordan, which was much easier in terms of the numbers. I was really proud when we were finally able to establish a trade union training school in Irbil in Kurdistan in early 2006.
As a newly elected MP, I was delighted to receive the backing of the trade union movement to take a delegation out to Irbil in early 2006. There were eight of us, including members from the NASUWT, the journalists’ union, Unison, local councillors and others active in supporting the Iraqi cause for many years. We went out there to see what we could do to develop trade unionism on the ground. Straight away, I was immensely struck by the attitude of the trade unionists we met. To me, they were comrades. The fact that they were from another part of the world was irrelevant to me. They were my friends, standing up for working people and trying to develop their skills so that they could look after people properly.
The first thing that those trade union members said to us was, “We need your help. We need your Government to start investing in this country, because if they do not invest we will not have work, and if we do not have work we do not have a trade union movement.” That was a very simple equation. When we asked what practical help we could give, they arranged for us to meet their labour, equality and health Ministers and the Minister responsible for matters relating to the Anfal genocide. That was the first time I had really been exposed to what had happened.
The other thing that those people said to us, very clearly, was “We thank you, as a nation, for what you did for us in 1991, and we thank you even more for what you did for us in 2003, when you liberated us.” That was a shock for me: it was a slap in the face. I had seen what happened in 2003 as an invasion. However, it was all very well for me, sitting in the comfort of Blaydon, to say that it was really, really wrong. It was not me who was being wiped off the face of the earth, it was not my parents who were being buried alive, it was not my village that was being flattened, and it was not my real life—my community—that was being devastated and destroyed. That was happening to these people. Listening to what they said did not change my view that we went into Iraq for the wrong reasons, but what became very clear to me, and has remained clear to me ever since, was that we should have done it 20 years earlier. Why on earth did we not do that? If we had, this disgraceful thing would not have happened.
What were we doing 20 years earlier? Unfortunately, we were doing the bidding of Saddam Hussein. We were, to an extent, sitting on our hands and supporting the Americans yet again while they, and the rest of the world powers, were sitting back happily watching the Iranians and the Iraqis wipe out 1 million of their own citizens, using them as pawns. If, as a by-product, we saw the Marsh Arabs being wiped off the face of the earth and the attack on the Kurds, we just had to ignore it. It was a price worth paying if Saddam was able to keep the ayatollah and his acolytes under control. Was it worth it in terms of the international situation? Well, other people will decide when it is history, but, looking back and seeing what I see now, I think that it was absolutely the wrong thing to do.
We were not just sitting back innocently. As was said earlier by my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley and my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North, we were actively engaged: we were selling arms to that regime. In fact, we were selling arms to both regimes, and it was the wrong thing to do. It may have been very grandiose in the big scheme of things, but it did nothing to help the people on the ground.
Since that first visit to Kurdistan, I have been back there, and have also been to Baghdad. On both occasions, I was hugely impressed by the generosity and warmth of the people. That is typical of people in the middle east, but it is even more noticeable in Kurdistan. They were like people from the north-east of England, who, as everyone knows, are always much warmer, more generous, more humorous and more giving. Everyone understands that, wherever they are from.
Other Members who have been to Kurdistan have mentioned the “red house”, the torture chamber in Sulaymaniyah. No one who goes there can fail to be struck by it. The first thing that struck me was what a huge building it was. It is a huge building in the main street of one of the biggest cities in that part of the world. No attempt was made to hide from the public what went on in that place. Indeed, everything that was done was documented. The holocaust was mentioned earlier; exactly the same methods were used in this case. There were documents on everyone, and all the documents were in triplicate. Wiping people from the face of the earth was seen as a normal thing to do by people who did not care about them and just wanted to replace them with their own people. It was absolutely unbelievable.
One thing stuck in my mind particularly. In 2006, as we were walking out of the “red house”, we saw five Kurdish guards in the reception area, sitting around watching television. On the television screen, live, was the trial of Saddam Hussein. I felt that that was real history in the making. For those people, it was life-changing: it would give them a chance to get their lives back. As I said earlier, for people such as me who had not wanted this country to go into Iraq, it was a huge wake-up call, making us ask what we could do. I think that what we can certainly do is promote what we are doing today.
Meg Munn
My hon. Friend is right: the regime did document these events. The most shocking aspect of the DVD I mentioned is the fact that the footage of what happened—such as people being shot—is taken by the regime. The most horrific thing I saw—I am not sure why this was more shocking than seeing somebody being killed—was a man being held by several other men while having his wrist beaten until it was broken, and at the end someone came along and moved his arm but there was no connection between the two parts. It is just brutal, and there is no excuse for our not recognising this, as the evidence is there.
Mr Anderson
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There was never any attempt to pretend this was not happening; it was just hoped that the rest of the world would not care that it was happening and would turn a blind eye, which is exactly what we in the international community all did. Today, we have a chance at least to make amends in a small way, and it is very important that we do that.
As well as visiting the “red house”, I visited some of the villages in the north-east of the country, where people saw their way of life totally terminated. Not only did the perpetrators take the men away from their homes and kill them, but what really shocked me was that many of these people were buried alive. They did not even give them the justice of putting a bullet in their brain. They put them in trenches and covered them over using bulldozers. That is how little feeling, and how much contempt, they had for these people.
I discussed with families and friends their despair. I visited what effectively had become a concentration camp in the capital, Irbil. Only young men and women were held there. They had been taken from the agricultural area, which had been the bread basket of Iraq and which is now devastated. All these young people want is to go back home. Sadly, however, if they go back home they will not know how to start getting the farms up and running again, because they have lost contact with the farming industry. Their fathers were taken away and killed 20 or 25 years ago, so they have nobody to tell them how to do things.
We visited a place in the north of the country. I spoke to a village elder, who thought I was my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown); I do not know where he got that idea from, or who was more miffed, me or Gordon. This elder explained to me how passionately he had welcomed Baroness Lynda Chalker in 1991, who had gone there in her capacity as overseas aid Minister and had built some temporary accommodation. He remembered that 17 years later, and he felt such gratitude for my country for having helped his country in that way that it made me very proud to be a Member of this House, but it also made me frustrated, as we had not kept up with the work of supporting those people as we should have done. The big question asked of us was why we had not helped them earlier. I have talked about that, and I hope today’s debate will remind us of why we should have.
I want to read out a letter I received from a very close friend of mine, Hangaw Khan. He is a trade union leader in Kurdistan, and is someone I am very proud to call a comrade. He asked me if I would go and visit his mother and father, and I said, “Certainly I will”. I did not realise there would be a three-and-a-half-hour ride up into the mountains, but it was well worth doing. They were so proud of what their son had done. When we began our campaign with colleagues from across the House, he sent a letter on behalf of his trade union executive in which he thanked us for starting the campaign and said:
“Kurdish United Workers are well aware of all the genocide which has been committed against Kurdish people in Iraq. Moreover, our (KUWU) members are made aware that the Kurdish people are still suffering significantly from the genocide effects on all their life aspects.
We really appreciate your invaluable efforts along side other different parties and groups to ask the government urgently not to ignore all the crimes against humanity which had been committed against our nation for decades and to recognise it as genocide.
In fact, having recognised this genocide against our nation will enter the history for ever and will be the proud step in the view of human beings especially the Kurdish people. Also, there is no doubt that this act consider as a voice of conscience of humanity.
Finally, let us thank you very much in the name of our burned country, the pure pink blood of our genocide martyrs, buried alive innocent women and children, burned and drowned thousands Kurdish by chemical gas. As we are part of human beings, we do hope that all of us & the governments and nations will be aware of recognising any genocide which is committed anywhere in the world.”
That was sent from the Kurdistan United Workers Union last September.
In the past 50 years, millions of lives have been wasted in Iraq. Billions of pounds have been wasted and trillions of words have been wasted. I hope that the words of Hangaw Khan are not wasted and we should listen to him today. I am convinced that the House will pass this motion, which will be a huge statement, but, to be honest, although that is important it is not as important as our Government saying that they support what we are trying to do. I ask those on both Front Benches to think about what has been said in today’s debate.
I know that there are legal issues and that people will say that they want to deal with this, but they cannot. We have seen this week the rebirth of that horrible phrase “weasel words”. I have nothing but respect for those on both Front Benches and I know that they are both committed to the work they are doing. Unless we do something other than saying well done to those who have spoken in the debate and unless we get a commitment that our Government will lead this campaign, as we should, the debate will have been meaningless. No disrespect to the intention of the people who led the debate or those who supported us in bringing it together, but we need real action.
We must also bear in mind that 25 years ago, if we had taken real action, we as a nation could have stopped this. We chose not to. Let us not repeat that mistake today.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) and others for their speeches and their contribution to this whole issue. I particularly thank the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) for his speech. As he pointed out, he is the first Kurdish Member of the British Parliament. He and I have shared platforms at Kurdish events and I have no doubt that we will do so again in the future. He made a very good case for the recognition of what was a genocide of the Kurdish people in Iraq in 1988 and I absolutely support what he said. Next month will be Newroz, the Kurdish new year, which will be celebrated across a wide range of communities both in this country and all over the region.
One hopes that we will be able to draw attention to what happened in Iraq in 1988. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) pointed out, she and I were both Members of this House at that time and we both frequently raised the issue, including in the British media. Although the lack of knowledge among much of the public is understandable because of how the media failed to report things, we must be honest that it took a long time for most of the media and the political establishment in this country to cotton on to what was happening to the Kurdish people in Iraq. To be honest, a lot of British Government policy was blindsided by their obsession with supporting Iraq against Iran in the dreadful Iran-Iraq war and Britain’s considerable economic interests in Iraq at the time, not least in oil exploration and exploitation and so on. We must have a sense of deep self-criticism about the process. If we do not have that, it does us no favours.
The news finally came out about the use of gas and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn) pointed out, how the villages were bombed first to break the glass so that the gas had the maximum effect. That was an evil piece of work in which a large number of wonderful, brilliant people lost their lives. In remembering a genocide, we must work out how it happened, how it came about and how we can prevent it from happening again.
Let me say a few words in general about Kurdistan, the Kurdish people and how we can move on. There is a complicated narrative in world history of equating nations, ethnic communities and languages with nation states, which does not always work. The end of the first world war was a seminal point for the whole region—this is germane to the history of the region. The Kurdish people had been part of and had recognition within the Ottoman empire, and operated with a Kurdish identity and language. They took at face value Woodrow Wilson’s 14 points, as did many people in the region, including Palestinian people and many others, and assumed that they would achieve nationhood as a result. The high point of Kurdish recognition was a sandwich between the treaty of Sèvres and the treaty of Lausanne. Between those treaties there was recognition of a Kurdish state. Modern Turkey was established, the western interests were more interested in a buffer against the Soviet Union and in the mandates that France and Britain achieved further south, and the Kurdish people and their wishes were obliterated. Britain did not have clean hands in this. We took part in the establishment of modern Iraq and the first aerial bombardment of people using chemical weapons was by Britain in northern Iraq in 1922 against Kurdish people. So there is a history of obliteration of the Kurdish people, their language, their culture and identity. What Saddam was doing was the ultimate in oppression of a nation or people, but the treatment of Kurdish people in other countries in the region to this day needs to be examined—in Iran, in Syria and in Turkey.
I have a substantial Kurdish population in my constituency, mainly but not all emanating from Turkey. Indeed, I have visited most parts of Kurdistan over the years. It is sad to report that we still do not have full recognition of Kurdish people in modern Turkey, or mother tongue teaching in all Turkish schools, or indeed in any Turkish schools except those where Kurdish is the first language. It is incumbent on us, if Turkey wants to be a partner in the European Union or anything else, to put a great deal of pressure on it and say, “You have to give greater recognition, linguistic rights, cultural rights and all the other things to the Kurdish people in Turkey.”
It does not particularly help when the mayor of a major city such as Diyarbakir is put on trial for producing information in the Kurdish language, which is the normal language for that part of the country. The break-up of the Ottoman empire led to that situation, and there has been this passion ever since for recognition of the Kurdish. To a huge extent, that has been achieved with the Kurdish autonomous region of Iraq. It is not totally correct to call it independent because in international legal terms it is not an independent recognised state, but in reality it is recognised as a representative place of the Kurdish people.
It is more than welcome that over the past few weeks, under pressure following hunger strikes and the dreadful assassinations in Paris a few weeks ago, the Turkish Government have openly admitted that they have to talk to Öcalan as a recognisable leader of the Kurdish people in Turkey. There is a growing sense of unity between Kurdish people within the nation states and a recognition that they have to come together. Does this mean that there is going to be a country called Kurdistan that encompasses parts of the other countries in the future? I do not know. As far as I am aware, none of the Kurdish national movements calls for an independent Kurdistan outwith national borders any longer. They all call for recognition within national borders. We have to understand, welcome and recognise that.
If you oppress people, deny them their language, deny them their cultural rights, drive them into the ground in the way minorities have been treated prior to genocides all over the world, including native Americans, Jewish people and many others in the past 150 years, you end up with the acceptance of the ultimate oppression, which is what happened in that genocide in 1988. So I support the motion that is before us today.
Many have drawn attention to the achievements, such as they are, in modern Iraq with the Kurdish Autonomous Region, and I recognise those. Indeed, I visited the region after the Gulf war in 1991. With colleagues, including my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson), I opposed the Iraq war in 2003, not because I was in any sense ever an apologist for Saddam Hussein or what he did, but because I did not believe that the motives for the war were the right ones—I believed they were more to do with American military power and military resources than anything else—and I thought an awful lot of people would die and an awful lot of money would be spent as a result of the war. Although we will never agree completely on that, I think we all agree that successive Iraqi Governments have an abominable record on their treatment of the Kurdish people. One hopes that the Kurdish Autonomous Region will be recognised universally and that it will be a place where Kurdish people can live.
When we talk of genocides and holocausts, the holocaust against Jewish people in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s is paramount in everyone’s thoughts. Attending Holocaust memorial day ceremonies is an important thing, as is young people understanding what the holocaust was about, but it is also important to understand that there have been other genocides around the world. There is no time to go through all of them or define them all now, but the European treatment of native Americans during the colonisation of north America from the 16th century onward, but particularly later on, was to all intents and purposes a genocide against those people; other examples are Cambodia and Rwanda—an abominable and appalling series of events. Taking place closer to the region we are discussing today was the Armenian massacre in 1915.
Whenever one of us tables an early-day motion recognising and associating that massacre in principle with what has happened to the Kurdish people, we attract great criticism from people in Turkey who, frankly, ought to know better, but who say that we have no right to draw attention to that. It is important that we understand the history of the abominable treatment of people because of racist attitudes and approaches, which end in the vilest abuses of human rights being condoned.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman mentioned Holocaust memorial day. Having been slightly involved in what I consider to have been a holocaust, in Bosnia, whenever I speak at or attend a Holocaust memorial day ceremony, I do not think only of the Jewish holocaust. I certainly think of Armenia, the Kurds and the Cambodians as well. I totally agree with him: when we speak of a holocaust, we must mean more than one particular nation.
Jeremy Corbyn
I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point, on which we agree.
I am proud to represent a significant number of Kurdish people in my constituency. I am proud of the contribution they make, whether they came to this country or were born here. In a month’s time, when we celebrate Newroz in Finsbury Park, that will be, as ever, a joyous celebration—hopefully this time with the greatest possible unity between Kurdish people from every part of the Kurdish area.
If we recognise a genocide, that is a big step. We are recognising something that is defined in law as an attempt to obliterate a people because of their identity, their race or their ethnicity. In doing that, we recognise that something awful happened, and we have to examine ourselves and what we as a country or one of a group of countries did or did not do at the time. But doing that helps the next generation to understand that not forgetting puts one in a position to try to influence the future and protect minorities, wherever they are in the world. Tragically, the genocides we have been discussing today were not the first, and although I hope they were the last, I am not sure that they were. It is recognition and understanding of peoples, their rights, their identity, their culture and their traditions that bring about a safer and more secure world. Achieving that is not necessarily about wars, bombs and invasions; it is much more about understanding and a recognition of people and their rights, and sharing resources not stealing them.
Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
We have had an absolutely outstanding debate. Everyone present knows that the cause of recognising the genocide in Kurdistan has noble, well-informed and eloquent torchbearers. They brought to the House speeches of great force and sincerity that made the case very eloquently indeed. Everyone who has spoken should be proud of the contribution they made. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) that I have listened closely and learned so much. I will consider what has been said extremely carefully.
I am conscious that I am the first person to speak who has not visited Kurdistan, for which I should perhaps apologise; I hope that will be remedied shortly. I have become aware, through my role on the Front Bench, of the great warmth that exists between the people of Kurdistan and the people of the United Kingdom. I have had many discussions about Kurdistan and heard many accounts of the importance of that relationship. What is striking about the strength of the relationship is that, despite the fact that there are aspects of it that bring shame on Britain, as we have heard, because previous Governments of all colours have done things we should not be proud of, the people of Kurdistan, in their current dealings and their warmth, have shown us forgiveness and respect, to their great credit, for which we should thank them very much.
I should start by congratulating the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi). One of the great advantages of this House is that people who come from different backgrounds bring their own experiences, cultures and knowledge to such subjects. He spoke eloquently, and with a power that was compelling. His personal connections are very special. He should be commended for persuading the Backbench Business Committee, which we should also thank, to allow the debate. We all know that this matter must be taken away, considered and reflected on before moving forward. By bringing it to the House’s attention, he has taken a big step in dealing with the issue and carrying it forward.
We heard an excellent speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn), who brought to the debate her experiences from visits to the region and from the links between Sheffield and Kurdistan, which are building all the time. She referred to films she has seen of the terrible events that took place, which were referred to many times. I remember very clearly watching a “Newsnight” report about the Halabja attacks in the late 1980s, shortly after the attacks took place, which shocked me profoundly. The report showed a ferocity, an inhumanity and an extraordinary inability to treat people with respect that it was difficult to believe could exist. I would be interested to see the films she referred to, because the words that we have struggled to find today to explain how dreadful the events were cannot fully reflect the acts that took place.
The hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) speaks with great passion on these issues and brought his personal experience to bear on the facts. I think that his Jewish background adds a particular, and hugely relevant, context to the debate. Earlier this year I attended an excellent Holocaust memorial day service just across the road, and I was very conscious of the constant emphasis that the Jewish community places on the fact that the holocaust is not just about them. On that day, a Rwandan survivor explained the effect of the Rwandan genocide on her, and she spoke as eloquently as the holocaust survivors. It is very important that we see this as part of a broader picture.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) has an extremely long, impressive and consistent record on human rights issues, particularly in connection with Iraq. I first got to know her in the period after I came to the House between 2001 and 2003, when she was involved in the organisation Indict, which she mentioned. Not many people were involved in that campaign at the time—it became much more evident after 2003—but she was dogged, determined and absolutely committed to the cause of bringing people to justice. She pursued that from the time I met her in 2001 and is pursuing it today. She has a very long and very proud record. The consistency that she has shown on this issue right through from the 1980s—in fact, since 1977, she told us today—until now does her great credit. She is a very busy woman, so unfortunately she is not here at the moment. I am proud to put on the record the fact that she is a friend, and she has taught me a huge amount about this issue.
The hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe) has an advantage over me in that he has visited Kurdistan. He, too, made a compelling case. It is important that the public are aware that we are visiting these places and considering these issues, which are hugely important for all of us as parliamentarians. It does great credit to all Members present that they are here to take part in this important debate.
We then heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson)—I understand him like no one else in this House does. I remember a conversation that we had outside the Chamber when he described his complicated position on Iraq and the contradiction that he sees between his views on the Iraq war in 2003 and what he has discovered from the contacts that he has had subsequently. This is not a straightforward issue; it is a difficult one. Our job is to deal with difficult issues, such as the subject of this debate.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn)—another Member with a long and proud record of campaigning on these issues—said, it is a big step for this House and any Government to say that individual sets of incidents and events constitute a genocide. As we have heard, it is a step that has been taken by other Parliaments, but not necessarily by the Governments of the countries that those Parliaments represent.
The question of whether a set of incidents can be described as genocide has a legal status established under the 1948 convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide, which defines it as
“mass killings or other acts intended to destroy a particular group of people.”
The word is used colloquially, but its definition under international law is specific. Genocide requires both the material element of the act of killing and the mental element of the intention to destroy a particular group.
Bob Stewart
I have been involved in a genocide. To add to the hon. Gentleman’s point, a poor, frightened, absolutely terrified individual facing the agony of being killed does not give a damn about whether it is called a genocide or a crime against humanity—they are frightened beyond their wits. I am sure he will agree with that. These definitions have always worried me and that is what I thought when I was in Bosnia in 1992-93.
Ian Lucas
The hon. Gentleman speaks with passion and eloquence from his own experience, which we all respect. We recognise the humanity of what he says. We need to consider how best we can together use the hope behind what we are doing today to ensure that incidents on the scale of a genocide do not happen again. That is what we need to try to achieve. We should reflect on what has been said and consider how best we can prevent genocide from ever occurring again. One genocide is sufficient. We never want to see it again.
Meg Munn
I understand the legal issues that my hon. Friend has raised and I am sure that the Minister will address them. I am concerned that the apologies that Governments now often make for things that happened many years ago are not terribly relevant, because they relate to something that somebody else did. In this instance, however, a Government could recognise genocide. That is not particularly something that this or any previous Government have done, but perhaps now is the time, on the back of this debate, for Opposition and Government parties to come together and ask whether this and future Governments should have a process to recognise genocide, because that is important.
Ian Lucas
It certainly is important that such matters are dealt with collectively. We are an international community with international institutions and, in international situations such as the one we are discussing, the appropriate approach is to work through international justice bodies to recognise when certain circumstances amount to a genocide. We then need to use our institutions to establish the facts and their implications in law. The legal implications of recognising any set of events—not just those under discussion—as a genocide are considerable. They constitute a particular crime under international law, which imposes obligations on states to prevent and punish with regard to such circumstances.
If something that has happened in the past—such as the events under discussion—is defined as genocide, the question arises of whether retrospective action can be taken. It would be helpful if the Minister clarified whether it is his understanding that a statement that an act was genocide would have a retrospective effect and allow action to be taken against anyone who is held responsible for actions that took place in the 1980s.
We heard about the considerable progress that Kurdistan has made. That has built on the relationship that exists between this country and the Kurdistan region of Iraq. I hope that this debate will add to that relationship. There is a strong group of Members of this House who have spoken eloquently today and who have great respect for Kurdistan and the Kurdish people.
We must work together to reflect on our discussions today. We must also look at what action is being taken in other countries, whether by their Parliaments or Governments, on this issue of genocide in the Kurdish region and see what is the appropriate forum to take that forward.
Mr Anderson
My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn) asked about practical things that the Opposition can do. Will the shadow Minister commit our party to entering discussions with representatives of the Kurdistan Regional Government based in this country to see whether they can help us to get evidence that would help to create a legal argument that we could present to the international community? Other countries could then say whether they think that it was genocide or not and give reasons why.
Ian Lucas
I would be pleased to meet representatives of the Kurdish Regional Government to discuss the issues that we have been debating and to see what barriers are in the way of this matter being taken forward. I would also be pleased to discuss this with the Minister to explore what further common ground there is on this issue, which is considered important by a number of Back Benchers from both our parties who have made an eloquent and compelling case.
We cannot reach conclusions today, but we have heard a compelling case. This is the start of the matter, not the end. We need to continue to discuss this in detail and to reflect on the best way to take it forward. That is best done collectively both within this country and internationally. We need to reflect on the action that other Parliaments have taken and consider what steps it would be best to take to deal with the appalling set of circumstances that the people of Kurdistan suffered in the 1980s. We must work together to ensure that their pain, suffering and grief is not shared by any other group of people in the future.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Alistair Burt)
I do not know about other hon. Members or those who are watching this debate, wherever they are around the world, but my goodness, I have found this a tough debate to listen to. As the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) said, the quality of this debate has been exceptional, as has the knowledge, compassion and honesty with which colleagues have spoken. I am pleased to be able to respond on behalf of the Government.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) for securing the debate and the Backbench Business Committee for agreeing to hold it. Over time, my hon. Friend will have to get used to being congratulated on a regular basis. I found his narrative powerful and compelling, but those of us who have heard him speak previously know there is nothing unusual in that. He has already made a name for himself in the House, and he has further cemented that today. He spoke exceptionally well and we are impressed.
The pain with which my hon. Friend described his background and the circumstances of being a refugee was graphically illustrated in a way that none of us with a more forensic sense about these things could possibly repeat or be able to share. When we occasionally debate who comes across our borders, it should constantly bring a measure of pride to this country to remember the reputation we have had for providing sanctuary to people who have fled conflict and pain that is unimaginable to most of our constituents. My hon. Friend put that point extremely well.
I will mention the contributions of most of those who have spoken in the debate and seek to weave in their remarks. I especially mention the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) and the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) who were in the House—as was I—at the times of which we speak. They took part in these events in a way that I did not, and spoke well and effectively about the things going on that, alas, we knew far too little about. Both of them spoke very graphically, and although the details of what happened provided by the right hon. Lady were painful to hear, occasionally such things need to be said to remind us that behind all the figures and the 182,000, there are individual circumstances to be described.
A few years ago I went with colleagues to Rwanda and the genocide memorial at Murambi where some 60,000 people were corralled and killed over a few days. Seeing the places where mass attacks have taken place, and mass graves such as those mentioned by the right hon. Lady, leaves an indelible impression and we cannot help but be changed by what we hear. I commend colleagues for the way they have spoken, and I hope many people get the opportunity to read the debate and consider carefully what we have said.
As many Members have said, the UK’s ties with Iraqi Kurds are significant. Historically, those ties were cemented in 1991 with the United Kingdom’s strong support, led by the then Prime Minister John Major, for protecting the Kurdish people by enforcing no-fly zones. Since then, successive UK Governments have highlighted the need to support the rights of the Kurdish people, as well as those of other minorities in Iraq. I was in that region a couple of years ago and people were looking forward to John Major coming for a commemoration to mark 20 years since the establishment of the no-fly zone and the relief of Kuwait. There was no doubt about the esteem in which Sir John was held, which as a friend it was a pleasure to see. Friends in the other place will also know full well how Sir John is regarded, and others from that time also deserve great credit for the way in which they spoke out on behalf of those who were being persecuted.
In an interesting speech, the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) confronted honestly the problems that are occasionally thrown up by the twin difficulties of foreign policy and hindsight. He is right to say that sometimes we do not know everything and make decisions as best we can at the time. He asked whether we should have done more and earlier, but I remember the 1991 Gulf war and the arguments at the time. Should forces have pressed on to Baghdad? It is easily forgotten that there was no mandate for that; there was a coalition to free Kuwait, but had a decision been taken to press on to Baghdad and remove Saddam Hussein—it became clear subsequently that that might have been the thing to do—there would have been resistance to what would have seemed an intervention too far. Interventions are so much easier in hindsight than they are at the time. The hon. Gentleman and I know that full well in relation to other issues we are dealing with at the moment.
The hon. Member for Islington North mentioned arms fairs in Baghdad and rebuffs from Ministers at the time. Were my colleagues right at that time? I can say from the Dispatch Box that they probably were not right, but what might they have done with the wisdom of hindsight and the knowledge that we have now? That is the spirit in which I confront the difficulties of hindsight and foreign policy.
As a number of hon. Members have made clear, the Iraqi regime under Saddam Hussein systematically persecuted and oppressed ethnic and religious groups. No group suffered more than Iraq’s Kurds. Saddam Hussein’s regime carried out a number of atrocities against the Kurds over a quarter of a century. As many as 100,000 Kurds were killed in the Anfal attacks, and many more were displaced. This year, we will remember the attack on Halabja in 1988 as we reach its 25th anniversary in March. Iraqi planes bombarded the town with chemical weapons, causing the deaths of 3,500 to 5,000 people, as colleagues have described in the debate.
I shall say more about the appalling crimes committed against Iraq’s Kurds and the need to ensure that no people suffer a similar fate, but, like other colleagues, I would first like to say a few words about the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq and our relationship with them. In remembering the past, it is important to recognise and put on record what has happened since those appalling crimes.
I was able to see the fruits of our relationship first hand during my recent visit to Irbil—the second time I have been able to visit the region. My friend the hon. Member for Wrexham is absolutely right that he should get there as soon as he can. It is a very good place to visit. I am sure his remarks on visiting were heard in all the right quarters. He can look forward to going and seeing the new consulate—the site for it has been identified and it is due to be built. He will be very welcome there. He just needs to let me know and we will see what can be done—[Interruption.] I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn), who piped up at that moment, for her indefatigable work on building democracy in many different places, but not least in that region. Efforts are now being made on the building blocks of democracy and the institutions that must be built—perhaps in recognition of so much that has gone wrong. As she said, and as she knows from her work for the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, an election is not democracy per se. We must ensure that there is another election and that elections are free and fair, and that institutions support elections and that power changes. Sooner or later, people will realise that power is invested not only in individuals but in institutions. In some of the places where we are working collectively, there is a way to go, but the efforts being made in the Kurdistan region of Iraq make it clear that the work is being done on fertile ground. I therefore pay tribute to her and her hon. Friends.
During my recent visit, I had the pleasure of meeting both President Barzani and Deputy Prime Minister Imad Ahmad. I toured the British-designed airport with the Minister for the Interior, Karim Sinjari, and met several other Cabinet Ministers. With Minister of Planning Dr Ali Sindi, I attended the signing of a contract to expand a major national school of government from London to an international capacity building programme with the KRG.
In October, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary announced that our consulate-general in Irbil should be maintained on a permanent footing. The KRG have generously donated land where a new UK consulate-general will be built. The Head of the Department of Foreign Relations, Falah Bakir, presented me with a letter confirming the donation during my visit.
My visit was rounded off with a tour of the 7,000-year-old citadel, Irbil’s premier tourist location, which claims to be the longest continuously occupied place in the world. I was pleased to note the involvement of British archaeologists in the ongoing programme to restore the citadel—that is another example of the UK’s long-standing ties with the Kurdistan region. Any colleagues looking for tips on being re-elected should simply go around Irbil with the governor. We paid a visit to the market, where the response to him was terrific. I wanted a piece of it to take back to Biggleswade to help me in my next election campaign. It was a genuine and spontaneous outburst of affection for the gentleman as we toured the market, and I thought, “This chap knows what he’s doing.”
Visits are not all one way. Members of the KRG frequently visit the United Kingdom. Earlier this month, President Barzani made his first official visit to Belfast, and had discussions with, among others, Northern Ireland’s First and Deputy First Ministers, as well as the Speaker of the Assembly.
Even as we rightly remember those who lost their lives 25 years ago, we should also think about how far the KRG has come. Those returning to Irbil years later see real changes, and are struck by its relative security and burgeoning economy. My hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), who made yet another impressive contribution, reflected on how those fleeing persecution as Christians from other parts of Iraq were able to find a home in Irbil and in the Kurdish region. It is a proper distinction to make. As we reflect on Christian flight across the middle east—and the persecution of any religious minority other than the majority in the locality at the time—we realise how important it is that people’s rights are recognised and protected, and that others are prepared to acknowledge them. Tragically, across the region this evening, there are many families camped out in the homes of others, seeking refuge from the conflicts that rage about them. It is not inappropriate to recognise the generosity of the KRG and the Kurdish region in this regard.
Among EU countries, the UK has the largest number of companies registered and operating within the Kurdistan region, while 61 British delegates, representing 39 companies, participated in the Irbil trade fair in October last year. My hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe) made particular reference to the importance of that trade relationship, and he was right to do so as it provides opportunities for many.
Although the oil and gas sector understandably accounts for significant UK investment in the Kurdish region, it is not the only sector where our companies are actively engaged. We know that more can be done, which is why we are strengthening our commercial team in Irbil to help British companies do business in the region.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. May I gently remind the Minister that the subject of the debate is genocide? I know that he wants to talk about other areas, but we do want to try to keep within the scope of the debate.
Alistair Burt
I will happily do so. I thought that it might be helpful to set the region in context before turning to some of the tougher parts that were described. If I may attempt to relate my remarks to Iraq in general, not forgetting the Kurdish region, we should also take a moment to remember, as the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq war approaches, those who died during the war, including 178 British service personnel, and of course many Iraqis and other nationals. That sacrifice has contributed to the relative peace of the region now and our ability to look back and evaluate the circumstances of the time.
The anniversary is also a time to reflect on Iraq’s present, and its future. During my recent visit, I saw both the challenges and the opportunities that Iraq faces. Fundamental political issues remain unresolved. Human rights standards are low, and public services, infrastructure and employment opportunities are inadequate. But Iraq has the chance to be one of the success stories of the coming decade as a stable democracy, with the patient work being done on democracy building throughout the rest of Iraq, the engagements we have with Ministers there, and the efforts they are making to confront some of the very difficult political challenges—I met a range of Ministers, including my good friend Foreign Minister Zebari, who chaired a ministerial trade council with me—and improve the future for all in Iraq. As we remember the past, and consider the challenges of the present, I hope we can also look forward to a future for Iraq that is more stable, democratic and prosperous, and that the UK can play a role in making that a reality in the years ahead.
Turning to today’s motion, I shall set out the Government’s position on whether we should recognise the terrible events of the Anfal campaign as an act of genocide. I am aware of the commendable support of my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon for the victims of Saddam’s dreadful campaign against the Kurds and his call for Saddam’s crimes to be recognised as genocide by the international community. I have heard today, as we all have, that this view is shared by many other hon. Members, some of whom could not be present today, and by many members of the public who signed a petition that was submitted to Parliament by my hon. Friend.
My hon. Friend and other Members will be aware of the Government’s position on the principle of genocide recognition—indeed, he and the hon. Member for Wrexham stated it. I am greatly sympathetic to the motion. The Government do not in any way oppose it and I have no doubt that Parliament will respond to the views expressed in the motion by my hon. Friend. It is currently the Government’s view, as we stated in responding to my hon. Friend’s e-petition, that it is not for Governments to decide whether genocide has been committed in this case, as there is a complex legal position. The hon. Member for Wrexham was quite right: it has implications for both today and yesterday. An international judicial body finding a crime to have been genocide often plays an important part in whether the United Kingdom recognises one as such. Whether or not the term “genocide” is applicable in this case, it is clear that appalling atrocities were perpetrated under Saddam Hussein against the Iraqi Kurds. His final conviction by the Iraq tribunal was for his crimes against humanity.
Meg Munn
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way, and I genuinely call him an hon. Friend in this and in many other circumstances. I understand the issues he is raising, and he will have heard the point that I made to my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas). In taking this issue seriously, will he and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office commit to campaigning on this issue and raising it with other people, including international bodies? He knows just how strongly hon. Members feel.
Alistair Burt
Let me get a little further.
So many suffered as a result of Saddam’s criminal activities, and we should remember all the victims of the regime. I reiterated that view in my foreword to the programme for the KRG’s recent conference on the issue. It is also a reminder that any use of chemical or biological weapons is abhorrent and that responsible countries consider their ongoing production, stockpiling or use to be completely unacceptable. It is our moral duty to join the international community in its efforts to prevent future atrocities. We will continue to call, at every opportunity, for all countries to respect minority rights and for the full implementation of the chemical weapons conventions.
Of course, these issues form a part of our dialogue with the Kurdistan Regional Government, in particular with the Minister for Martyrs and Anfal Affairs. In May last year, our then consul-general spoke at a ceremony alongside the Minister to mark the reburial of 730 Kurds killed in 1988 by Saddam’s forces as part of the Anfal campaign. More recently, our consul-general in Irbil discussed Saddam’s Anfal campaign with the Minister for Martyrs and Anfal Affairs in November. He will represent the UK at future ceremonies and express the UK’s remembrance of these tragic events. I had the opportunity to speak to the Minister myself when I was there recently.
The Government’s position is therefore clear, but it is not necessarily comfortable or sufficient. To the horror, no doubt, of officials, I have listened very carefully to the debate. In line with the hon. Member for Wrexham, I am sure our briefs said exactly the same thing: be very careful. There are implications and I make no bones about that. This is not a casual decision to be made at the Dispatch Box while listening to a debate with an understandable emotional undertone with all the horrors spelled out, and I am not going to do that. However, I have listened very carefully and I do not think that I would be respecting the mood of the House and the way in which this issue has been debated if I were simply to say, “Look, this is our position, which you all know very well, and that is where we are.” I do not think that that is what the hon. Member for Wrexham said either. I think we both know the implications, but I think we both recognise that we would like to go a bit further.
I have listened carefully, with whatever compassion I may possess, to the case that has been made. I do not doubt that the Foreign Secretary will read the debate with exactly the same sense. I am sure the Government will find the vote of Parliament helpful when further representations are made, as they will be.
The hon. Member for Wrexham resisted an easy hit: he could have simply responded to the motion and said, “This must be done.” Conscious of the obligations on the Opposition, he could not go that far, and neither can I. However, I take on board his view that if there is not an easy way to bring this matter to international judicial tribunals—and there may not be at the moment —we need to consider what more we might be able to do, taking into account the other things that have been said. The hon. Member for Islington North made it clear that others have similar things to consider, so we are dealing with a lot of implications.
Listening to and understanding the case gives one a sense that there might be more we collectively ought to be able to do to recognise the horror and severity of what was done, which was clearly targeted on a group of people just because of who they were. If I may, I will accept the hon. Gentleman’s offer to think collectively about how the United Kingdom might be able to take things forward. There is no change in our policy for now, and we are correct in taking that approach, but the issues that have been mentioned will be raised again, so we may have to think more about them. We will certainly have to talk to other Parliaments and Governments about how things have been done and be fully aware of the concerns. That is a reasonable way for us to respond.
If I may, I will take a couple of minutes to address one or two of the particular points that have been made. It is important that other Parliaments have recognised these events as genocide, but that is a matter of principle for them and, understandably, such decisions cannot be internationally binding. However, we will try to investigate what is behind them. As has been said, we have not been able to recognise the Iraqi criminal tribunal’s decision to see these events as genocide. The Government consider legal judgments by appropriate courts in deciding whether such atrocities should be designated as an act of genocide, but the judgment of the Iraqi criminal tribunal was that of a national tribunal.
My hon. Friends the Members for Stratford-on-Avon and for Harlow both referred to the Dutch court. We have examined this issue carefully and we are happy to look again at the Dutch court of appeal’s decision in the van Anraat case, but we understand that although the court considered the question, it concluded that there was not a genocide. We understand that Mr van Anraat was convicted for complicity in war crimes. In a sense, that is a detail; the point is made and we need to look at how these matters might be dealt with.
In conclusion, a debate such as this is particularly painful, as we all know that even as we speak someone, somewhere in the world, is being killed, not because of anything that they may have done but simply because of who they are. They are being killed on the basis of their clan, their faith or their ethnicity; above all, this is happening simply because of their otherness. The ability of people to stamp some grotesque caricature of power or superiority over others through violence and torture is an unsated appetite. All too often that is made still worse by the inability of others ever to do enough, or even to do anything, to prevent it.
We may differ on our view of how atrocities such as those visited upon Iraq’s Kurds come to be designated, but I made it clear that I share the view of all hon. Members that Iraq’s Kurds suffered a terrible and prolonged injustice under the previous Iraqi regime. Accordingly, as we approach the 25th anniversary of the appalling atrocities perpetrated against the Kurds at Halabja and elsewhere, it is important that we take a minute to reflect on the suffering caused and to reflect with some shame on that phrase “Never again”. However, we need to find, somewhere in our remembrance and recognition of the past, a more meaningful way to confront the horrors that form the raw material of the senseless killing that occurs throughout the world all too regularly.
Nadhim Zahawi
With the leave of the House, Mr Deputy Speaker, may I say that I feel like a bit of an imposter standing here today, because so many colleagues, both in this Chamber and in the other place, have done so much more for the Kurdish cause, not least the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd)? I recall that when I was a student at University college London she attended one of the Campaign Against Repression and for Democratic Rights in Iraq protests on behalf of the Kurdish and Iraqi people. That was a time that aroused my passion to do something about what was taking place in Iraq and in Kurdistan.
We heard a powerful speech from the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). Indeed, it is a real privilege to be a Member in this Chamber when such speeches are delivered, and to be able to listen to them live. He spoke eloquently about the plight of the Kurdish people all over the region, and especially about those in Turkey. I attended the AK party congress in Turkey as a representative of my own party, and it was extraordinary when Prime Minister Erdogan invited the President of the Kurdish Regional Government, Massoud Barzani, to address the congress in Kurdish, live on Turkish television. That was an extraordinary moment, but there is more to do in that country to bring peace to the Kurdish people there. I am pleased to hear that the talks with Abdullah Öcalan are proceeding with pace.
We have heard from my colleague, the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson), who sits on the Backbench Business Committee and who declared an interest because of his passion for the Kurdish people. He told the House about his work with the trade union movement, and I know that he and my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) are both passionate about trade unionism. Indeed, my hon. Friend and I visited the Kurdish United Workers union together on one of our trips to Kurdistan, and we could see how the union movement was flourishing in Irbil.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe) told the House about the psyche of the Kurdish people, saying they were a proud nation, not a nation of victims. He told us about the diaspora of Kurdish people around the world who are watching us having this debate here today. He also described how the Kurdish Regional Government were pressing the Baghdad Government to join the International Criminal Court, to ensure that such atrocities never happen again.
My partner in crime is the co-chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on the Kurdistan region in Iraq, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn). She and I led a delegation of more than 90 British businesses to Kurdistan last year. I had to be recalled to Parliament by my Whips to vote on a European matter here, but she stood in for me and proudly opened a fair with the president of Kurdistan and the then Prime Minister, Barham Salih. The hon. Lady spoke powerfully and eloquently today about the video of the Kurdish and Iraqi people selling their consciences to Saddam Hussein because they were living in fear, and about the children who were living with cancer through no fault of their own.
I spoke in my opening remarks about the town of Halabja. Survivors of the crimes that took place there are here in the Gallery today—men, women and children who lived through the terrible attacks. We owe it to them to declare those events to be what they truly were: a genocide.
One thing I will never forget is my visit with Lord Archer in 1991 to the Barzani town of Qush Tappa. When we entered the town, we were met by 8,000 women—wives, mothers, sisters and grandmothers. All wore black; all were in mourning for the disappearance of every male in the town.
Today, the Foreign Secretary is in Rome attempting to save the Syrian people from indiscriminate killing by another Ba’athist regime, that of Bashar al-Assad. What a message it would send to the world if, while our nation was seeking to protect those who were still suffering, we were also able to recognise those who have suffered already. This Parliament is approaching its 750th birthday. What a message it would send if the mother of all Parliaments were to recognise and endorse the motion. That is why I am here today to call for this motion to be passed.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House formally recognises the genocide against the people of Iraqi Kurdistan; encourages governments, the EU and UN to do likewise; believes that this will enable Kurdish people, many in the UK, to achieve justice for their considerable loss; and further believes that it would enable the UK, the home of democracy and freedom, to send out a message of support for international conventions and human rights, which is made even more pressing by the slaughter in Syria and the possible use of chemical arsenals.
Health Care (Sutton)
(11 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Paul Burstow (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)
I am grateful for this opportunity to address the House and to explain to it and to the Minister the disaster that is playing out in slow motion in the NHS in south-west London. I am talking, of course, about a programme named the “Better Services, Better Value” programme, which was launched by the south-west London primary care trust cluster two years ago. BSBV was set up to address concerns about quality and patient safety. The argument is that London should lead the way to all-consultant rotas to guarantee better care.
Taken at face value, no one could argue with that proposition. We all want great care, and we all want the safest and best care for ourselves, our families and our constituents. BSBV’s answer to this quality challenge, however, is a grandiose reconfiguration of acute care costing over £350 million. It proposes the centralisation of emergency care, maternity and paediatric care on fewer hospital sites in south-west London. The result is the loss of two A and E departments, two maternity units, three paediatric units and other associated services.
Despite quality and safety concerns being the driving force, actual quality today has been discounted. It is assumed that quality will improve, but there is no explanation or evidence to justify the assumption that those things that are not good now will necessarily become better in the future. How that can be made to happen has not been spelled out.
I have to tell the Minister that BSBV is causing huge damage to the NHS in south-west London. It is dividing medical opinion and demoralising staff in hospitals such as my own St Helier hospital. It is also distracting the NHS from the much bigger task of delivering the productivity and quality gains needed to meet the Nicholson challenge. In the wake of the Francis report, it is clear that BSBV has not considered the impact of forced reconfiguration on patient safety. That must be a risk, and it should be properly evaluated and taken into consideration.
I said that BSBV had come up with a grandiose solution. At the top of every list BSBV draws up comes my local hospital, the St Helier hospital. My constituents are being expected to travel for longer and further because of a dogma—that greater specialisation on fewer hospital sites improves outcomes. Last year, however, a paper in the Health Service Management Research journal examined the evidence to support this dogma. Anthony Harrison of the King’s Fund reviewed a large number of studies, some of which were commissioned for the Department, and concluded that there was no evidence of a causal link between volume and outcomes. BSBV, however, relies on that dogma, and tries to shame anyone who argues against it by painting opponents as being “opposed” or in a position of being prepared to support and tolerate poorer outcomes.
As I say, this view is being advanced without evidence. There is some evidence that greater specialisation may well save lives—I do not dispute that—and the reorganisation of hyper-acute stroke care and major trauma across London appears to be a case in point. Those are examples where it certainly makes a difference and they have made a difference across London. It is important, however, that we await the results of studies of how those improvements have been secured before we claim to have a full understanding of all the factors that have played a part in delivering the gains that have been realised.
Although BSBV advances its view of the benefits of centralisation, it fails to examine some of the important downsides. Shockingly, the proponents of BSBV ignore evidence demonstrating a link between mortality and miles travelled to gain access to emergency care. There is as much as a 1% increase in mortality for every extra mile travelled. They ignore evidence showing that St Helier has one of the safest maternity units in London—a unit at which mums want to have their babies. They also fail to consider the benefits of retaining A and E, maternity and paediatric services at St Helier to ensure that the NHS has the capacity to meet rising demand. Demand is rising—birth rates are rising and the number of people needing hospital services is, too.
In pursuit of this dogma, wildly optimistic assumptions are manufactured about the extent to which demand for emergency care can be shifted out of hospital or avoided altogether. Those involved assume, for example, that 10% of A and E attendances can be avoided and that up to 60% of such admissions can be shifted to urgent care, but the evidence for that is weak and is contested by emergency care experts. There is, in fact, a growing body of empirical evidence that calls into question some of the diversion schemes that have been set in place. Even the National Clinical Advisory Team’s evaluation of BSBV last summer questioned the assumptions and urged caution. NCAT says that
“experience elsewhere has shown that on implementation not all of the planned shifts in flow are met.”
It suggests that a more realistic assumption is that about 30% of A and E patients will be shifted to urgent care. More damaging still, its independent assessment warns that the data used to make the assumptions are recognised in emergency care to “lack reliability.”
Yet those flawed assumptions are at the heart of BSBV’s grand design. I think that they pose a significant risk to the safety of patients, a risk made worse because those in charge of the programme have not even worked out how to deliver the step change in out-of-hospital care on which their heroic assumptions rely. Nor have they worked out how much it might cost to deliver the changes in primary and community health care. The reports of both NCAT and the gateway review comment on that glaring gap in the BSBV case. NCAT says:
“At present attention is focused on hospital reconfiguration. There should be at least as much concern shown to the developments in primary and community care which are essential prerequisites of that hospital reorganisation.”
The same zeal for centralisation runs through the proposals for maternity services. Although St Helier’s maternity unit is performing above the average in south-west London, although more than 3,400 mums are choosing to have their babies at St Helier every year, and despite welfare and health inequality concerns about women giving birth in more remote locations, those in charge of BSBV are proposing the break-up of an excellent maternity and paediatric team. Again, the evidence calls that zeal into doubt.
I said that BSBV was a distraction from the big challenge facing the NHS—the Nicholson £20 billion challenge, which was identified by the Department of Health back in 2008. The NHS in south-west London has drawn up plans to find £394 million for quality and productivity improvements out of a budget of £2.4 billion by 2016. The money that it frees up will be used to meet rising demand and improve quality. No one disputes the fact that it will be a tough programme to deliver, and I must tell the Minister that BSBV is not helping. In fact, it delivers very little for the Nicholson challenge: just £18 million. Is all the pain that BSBV is inflicting worth it? Those involved in BSBV want to spend a projected £350 million in capital in order to realise that £18 million. I calculate that, according to BSBVs figures, it will take more than 20 years to get a payback on that capital investment. BSBV’s purpose is to tackle quality and safety concerns which we all want to be tackled, to fix consultant rotas, and to deal with other related issues. According to its own figures, that will cost between £4 million and £7 million.
Has not a “do the minimum” or “do the least harm” option been drawn up to find ways of delivering the benefits without all the costs of BSBV’s grand design? No such plan has been developed. To date, those in charge of BSBV have spent £5.5 million. They plan to spend £6 million more this year, and to spend a further £2 million every year while the programme continues. Surely there is a saving to be made there.
We have a grand design in search of a justification: a classic old-fashioned, top-down London NHS-inspired reconfiguration. The goal has been to reach decisions before the old NHS structures are abolished at the end of March, tying the hands of the new GP-led clinical commissioning groups. Yet last year, during the passage of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, it was made clear that there would be new ways of designing health care, and that things would be different. The new design was to be based on a detailed analysis of the current and future needs of the local population, an analysis that would underpin the development of local health and wellbeing strategies which, in turn, would be reflected in the commissioning plans of councils and clinical commissioning groups. The last analysis of that kind that was conducted in my area, in 2009, did not support a wholesale change in acute care, but BSBV is trying to drive a coach and horses through that. Rather than designing services that fit its postcode, it is trying to shoehorn south-west London into its template.
Because BSBV has so clearly predetermined the fate of St Helier, it has caused planning blight. It has derailed the de-merger of Epsom and St Helier hospitals by causing huge uncertainty about the future of both. BSBV has jeopardised the hard-won £219 million rebuild and refurbishment of St Helier hospital, despite the former chief executive of NHS South West London repeatedly stating that this was a fixed point. That blight could be lifted today if the Minister made it clear that it was no part of the Government’s design to allow the old institutions of the NHS—primary care trusts and strategic health authorities—to dictate how the new GP-led clinical commissioning groups act. Furthermore, can the Minister confirm that the NHS Commissioning Board is under a duty to secure the autonomy of CCGs, and that she rejects any recreation of the top-down culture and will ensure that CCGs are empowered to arrange local health care that fits and anticipates the needs of their populations?
I do not underestimate the difficulties that CCGs face in resolving how best to arrange health care services in Epsom, Merton and Sutton, but it is clear that BSBV does not offer a credible mechanism for meeting the challenges. As the principal commissioners of services at the Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust, the Sutton, Merton and Surrey Downs CCGs should be able to shape acute health services for the future. They must be able to commission those services in a way that the three local health and wellbeing boards believe to be right, unfettered by any legacies from the outgoing health commissioners.
I hope that, as the new commissioners of acute and community health services, my local CCGs will take the opportunity arising from the current delay in the BSBV programme to bring it to an end. A clean break from this flawed process will be a clear signal from the CCGs that there will be a fresh start, and that they want to engage with the Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust and the local community, local councils and MPs to map out a future for acute health services that has community and clinical support.
In conclusion, I hope that the Minister will be able to confirm the following: first, that the local clinical commissioning groups are free to scrap BSBV; secondly, that a “do minimum” option is a must-do when it comes to reconfigurations; and thirdly that the Department of Health will take a close and critical look at this old-style, top-down reconfiguration from BSBV. BSBV is based on flawed assumptions and poor data, and it is time to stop wasting money on this discredited process. We need a fresh start in south-west London, not tired, old, worn-out NHS reconfiguration of the very worst sort. I hope the Minister can help.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Anna Soubry)
I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow) for his long service and the great work he did as a Department of Health Minister and for securing this debate. He has made a number of very good and important points—although I do not agree with everything he said—and I assure him that my officials will read his speech, and if I fail to respond to any of his points now, we will write to him. He has asked a number of questions, and I may not be able to answer all of them—and strongly suspect I will not be able to give the sort of answers he would like.
My right hon. Friend is standing up for his constituents’ health services, which is absolutely right. It is right that Members come to the House and speak up on behalf of their constituents. On hospitals and health care services, at the end of the day we all want the same thing: the very best services for our constituents. Everyone is entitled to the very best health services.
As my right hon. Friend will know, it is not my role to defend or to rubbish the “Better Services, Better Value” process. He has made some very good points, but I have no doubt that it was set up for the very best of reasons. There are no proposals at this stage, but there is a huge consultation stage. I am told the underlying reason for setting up the BSBV was to ensure that everyone in south-west London and Surrey Downs has the very best health services seven days a week, 24 hours a day.
A number of hon. Members who represent the area covered by the review have rightly made representations. Some, like my right hon. Friend, have spoken in this House. He has also been to see me, as have others, including my right hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House, and the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond), is coming to see me next week. My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) and the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) spoke in the most recent debate on the future of A and E services, which was held only a few weeks ago. I shall refer to some of those speeches.
The area affected by the reconfiguration covers south-west London and the Surrey Downs. South-west London has a population of 1.4 million, the Surrey Downs have a population of 280,000 and between them they enjoy a health service that is funded to the tune of £2.8 billion a year. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam has made clear, although much of this is about saving money and meeting the Nicholson challenge —a scheme introduced under the previous Government and supported at the time by both Opposition parties, and one that continues because we recognise that those savings must be carried through—this is not about cuts. If anybody makes that case, as I have said before, they do no service to anybody or to the debate. This is not about brutal cuts but about trying to deliver the best service for people throughout the whole area seven days a week, 24 hours a day.
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, when he presented the Francis report to this place and answered various questions on it, gave an answer that we should all remember. I have used it before, but let me repeat it now. He said:
“Let me refer again…to one of the things that may need to change in our political debate. If we are really going to put quality and patient care upfront”—
which is something on which we all agree—
“we must sometimes look at the facts concerning the level of service in some hospitals and some care homes, and not always—as we have all done, me included”—
and it includes me, too—
“reach for the button that says ‘Oppose the local change”’.—[Official Report, 6 February 2013; Vol. 558, c. 288.]
I agree with those words. We are all beholden, whatever part we play in reconfiguring and reorganising health services, to ensure that we do not have an immediate knee-jerk reaction to oppose change. I am not saying that my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam has done that, but others have. Change is the right vehicle and the right driver to ensure that the people of this country get the best services.
To explain how difficult it is to make a reconfiguration, let me refer to the speech made by the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden in the recent debate on A and E services. She said:
“My local NHS says it needs to reconfigure services because it has to deliver £370 million of savings each year—a reduction of around 24%, or how much it costs each year to keep St Helier hospital going. A programme has been set up, laughingly called “Better Services, Better Value”, to decide which of four local hospitals—St Helier, St George’s, Kingston or Croydon—should lose its A and E department. That is despite the fact that, across south-west London, the number of people going to A and E is going up by 20%, and that the birth rate in our part of London continues to rise.”—[Official Report, 7 February 2013; Vol. 558, c. 515.]
That is another hon. Member who would join my right hon. Friend in opposing any changes, cuts, closures and so on at St Helier.
Paul Burstow
The Minister is responding fully to the points I have made so far, but let me demonstrate the distinction between my point and that made by the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh). She has conflated the BSBV programme, which is a reconfiguration, with the Nicholson challenge. The Nicholson challenge is being taken forward separately in south London and BSBV does not deliver on it.
Anna Soubry
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend because I was going to agree with him that the hon. Lady’s analysis was not correct. The point that I am trying to make is that she seeks to defend her hospital, as my right hon. Friend does. She does not want changes that in any way undermine her hospital, and she makes that case with some passion. It is interesting that my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central, who also took part in that debate, made a speech that completely contradicted what the hon. Lady had said.
Anna Soubry
That is a peculiar, old-fashioned procedure, but none the less valuable and enjoyable, Mr Deputy Speaker.
My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central argued in the same debate in favour of the BSBV review on the basis that, according to one of the many reports that form part of the review, Croydon Health Services NHS Trust—in other words, his hospital—should have 16 whole-time equivalent consultants, but it has 4.9; St Helier should have 12 but has 4.5; Kingston hospital NHS trust should have 16 but has 10; and St George’s should have at least 16 but has 21. That suggests that departments across south-west London, with the exception of the one at St George’s, do not have anything like the recommended level of consultant cover. He went on, as we might imagine because he, too, wants the very best for his hospital and his constituents, to make the case that BSBV would deliver exactly what he wants for his constituency.
Paul Burstow
The hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) made some important points in that debate, but he did not go on to make the key point that when we look at the figures for BSBV, we see that the cost of delivering the improvement that he and I both want is between £4 million and £7 million, yet under BSBV £350 million would be spent to do that.
Anna Soubry
All I can say is, a good point well made, and move on towards my concluding remarks.
My right hon. Friend has asked me a number of questions. If I do not reply in full, I assure him that I will in a letter. I am told that a “do minimum” option should exist. I know that he knows this, because he was a Minister in the Department of Health, but I want to remind everyone that, for this scheme or any reconfiguration scheme to go forward to full public consultation, it has to pass four tests that were clearly laid down by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley) when he was Secretary of State for Health. The four tests are support from GP commissioners, strengthened public and patient engagement, clear clinical evidence and support for patient choice.
In conclusion, I shall deal with my right hon. Friend’s three final questions. I am told that a “do minimum” option should exist. In relation to whether CCGs are free to withdraw from the process, I think it is important that I read out what I am told; I do not want ever to be accused of not saying things I have been advised on. I am told that local CCGs are already a key to BSBV. However, and perhaps more important, after 1 April CCGs will be in the driving seat and by definition BSBV would be unable to continue without their support. That would seem extremely obvious.
Paul Burstow
That is very helpful. Given that CCGs will be in the driving seat from 1 April, does that mean they can hit the ejector button and get BSBV out?
Anna Soubry
I do not know the answer to that, and of course I would not put it in those terms, but I shall make further inquiries and certainly write to my right hon. Friend so that he has a proper and full answer to that very important question, which I have no doubt many other right hon. and hon. Members would like to ask in relation to other reconfigurations, notably in the south of England.
My right hon. Friend’s other question, in effect, was: would someone at the Department of Health look at BSBV? As he knows, from 1 April the NHS Commissioning Board will have responsibility for determining whether the four tests have been met, prior to a public consultation on BSBV. The Secretary of State only becomes involved quite some way down the line. I will not—I nearly said I was going to bore you, Mr Deputy Speaker; I would not dream of doing such a thing. However, the intervention of the Secretary of State can only occur much later down the line, when the matter has been referred to him by the overview and scrutiny committee of any local authority, by way of an independent reconfiguration panel, and so on.
As I said, my right hon. Friend has raised some important points. If they have not been addressed by me, they will be by way of a letter. I congratulate him again on having secured the debate.
Question put and agreed to.
Ministerial Correction
(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Wales
(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)
Last week the Joseph Rowntree Foundation warned that Wales faces a decade of destitution as a result of policies pursued by this Government, and the Welsh Government said that £600 million is being taken out of the pockets of ordinary Welsh people. Is the Secretary of State telling the Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues what people are saying about his Government in Wales, or is he just there to cheerlead for policies that are hammering his country?
Mr Jones
If this Government were to pursue the policies advocated by the Labour party and try to fix a debt crisis simply by borrowing more, the plight of the individuals whom the hon. Gentleman mentions would be infinitely worse. So far we are providing 109,000 additional jobs for the people of Wales, and we are reducing their tax bills and doing our best to ensure that they get sustainable private sector jobs. The hon. Gentleman has no answer to that.
[Official Report, 27 February 2013, Vol. 559, c. 295-96.]
Letter of correction from David Jones:
An error has been identified in the oral answer given to the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith).
The correct answer should have been:
Mr Jones
If this Government were to pursue the policies advocated by the Labour party and try to fix a debt crisis simply by borrowing more, the plight of the individuals whom the hon. Gentleman mentions would be infinitely worse. So far we are providing 44,000 additional jobs for the people of Wales, and we are reducing their tax bills and doing our best to ensure that they get sustainable private sector jobs. The hon. Gentleman has no answer to that.
Westminster Hall
(11 years, 9 months ago)
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European Regional Development Fund
(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
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Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Ms Dorries. The all-party report on the European regional development fund was literally that, because all Committee members agreed with it. That is the way it should be. We took evidence, and on the basis of that evidence, we came to our conclusions. The attendance at this debate probably reflects the fact that all members of the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government are happy for me to speak on their behalf about the report and raise the few issues on which we took a slightly different view from those eventually indicated by the Government in their response. The Committee was unanimous in valuing the ERDF, which has clearly done excellent things in many parts of the country, particularly the poorer parts, which, for the obvious reason that that is what the ERDF is designed for, have benefited from the scheme.
One of the first things that we examined is the fact that although everyone thinks that the ERDF is good and has done good things in the areas where it has been spent, no one can actually prove it. There was certainly little hard evidence about the ERDF’s actual impact. What is better because of it? What jobs and facilities exist now that would not have been there if not for the ERDF? The Government gave us a helpful response indicating that they are now doing more work to monitor and evaluate this round of the ERDF. That should be done some time this year, and it will then feed into any proposals for spending during the next ERDF spending round. That is welcome. Does the Minister have any further information on that evaluation study? What is it likely to cover, when is it likely to report and when is it likely to be made public? I think he has promised that a copy will be sent to the Committee for our consideration. It would be helpful to have that further information.
The Committee considered the changes that had occurred. Clearly, we do not want to get into a debate— I am sure, Ms Dorries, that you will pull me up if I do—on the wider issue of the benefits or otherwise of the abolition of the regional development agencies, but it clearly changed the control of ERDF funding, the responsibility for which was given to the Department for Communities and Local Government.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
While my hon. Friend is still on the question of all-party consensus and before he strays away from it to the abolition of the RDAs, does he acknowledge that the Heseltine review, which has a good deal of support across the parties, recognises the importance of EU funds such as the ERDF as a boost to economic growth and structural change?
Mr Betts
Absolutely, and I will say a little more about it later. It is probably consistent with the European Commission’s recommendations on trying to improve how European funds are spent by pulling the various funding streams together at a European level, thus enabling simplification within the UK, and allowing that funding to be controlled and brought together with other funds at local level, including through local enterprise partnerships. That would be entirely compatible with and would boost the direction of travel for which Lord Heseltine has been arguing. That is an important and valid point.
John Healey
My hon. Friend will forgive me if he plans to move on to this, but it is critical to know how the now-secured ERDF funding will be spent and the degree of local discretion, decision-making and flexibility, particularly at the LEP level or, in our case, the Sheffield city region level. I hope that he will encourage the Minister and his colleagues in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to give us maximum localist discretion.
Mr Betts
That is absolutely right. I was going to touch on that a bit later, but I am certainly happy to do so now. It is important that the European Union has recognised that, and it is important that Departments are prepared to do so. The challenge for Ministers is getting an overview and ensuring that the totality of available funding in the ERDF budget is spent, while giving local flexibility to ensure that it is spent on the right projects and in the right ways to benefit local communities. It is always a challenge for those of us with a localist bent who want more decisions to be made at a local level to ensure that that is done so as to keep national commitments and spending budgets intact.
I come to the DCLG’s responsibility. The evidence that we had—it was clear, and I do not think that there was any dissenting evidence—showed that by and large, the switch from RDAs to DCLG, as an administrative exercise, had been well managed. However, there were one or two examples of potential delays. We asked the Government to examine those, and the response was, “We can’t find any evidence of delays.” The Committee was a bit concerned—that concern has grown—that Ministers were a little complacent in saying, “We’ve got 98% of the money committed.” By “committed”, they meant projects in the pipeline as well. It was not all contractually committed; “committed” also meant projects that were moving forward but had not been finally signed off. Historically, with the ERDF and similar budgets, to hit the target of 100% spending, it has probably been necessary to have more than 100% commitment when moving forward.
Since our report, it has come to our attention that the west midlands ERDF local management committee identified some problems with spending for which there had apparently been a commitment. The committee’s minutes for September 2012 indicate on the performance of venture capital and gap funding projects that most investment grant projects had
“made few investments at this stage and are slipping between 50% and 92% from their original profiles. There can be no confidence at this stage that forecast ERDF will be spent this year, and this will have a significant impact on priority 3 in particular”.
That problem was identified in the west midlands. Does the Minister know whether it exists in other areas? If it does, he probably should not be surprised, as a survey by the Local Government Association also found similar problems. It said that two thirds of councils responding were not confident that match funding was available for the rest of the ERDF money available. More than half had projects that had fallen through or were considered to be at risk of doing so. Clearly, there are issues.
In Sheffield, we have been trying to get Government funding for flood defences, following the serious floods of 2007. We welcome the commitment from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to find that money. When we were arguing early last year, we were told that ERDF funding would be necessary but that none was available; no one could find a penny. Miraculously, £1.75 million was available later in the year. I do not know where the money was found—it probably floated down the River Don and into the hands of civil servants.
Mr Betts
The money was clearly available; ultimately, DEFRA found the money in its budget. We did not think that ERDF funding was available, but it is widely known that civil servants ring up local authorities across the country on the QT and whisper, “Have you got any projects available? We may have a bit of ERDF slippage elsewhere that we could do with spending.” We had assurances from Ministers 12 months ago that all was well, all was committed and there were no problems. Of course if it is 98%, not everything is contractually committed. Even contracts have slippage. A year later, slippage will occur. That could have been anticipated. I am surprised that Ministers were as reassured as they appeared to be by the information at that stage.
I assume the minutes from the west midlands are replicated elsewhere. The Minister has probably not had a chance to look at those minutes or to ask for minutes from similar bodies across the country, but he may find that similar concerns have been expressed.
John Healey
My hon. Friend makes an important point about areas not spending and taking full advantage of ERDF funding. Of course, the availability of match funding is critical, but does he accept—he may have addressed this in his report—that there is an understandable caution among local authorities and local bodies given their experience in recent years of the European Commission changing its auditing benchmarks? Some projects have found that clawback is required, which has caused problems for the Department, local funders and local projects.
Mr Betts
I am well aware of such problems in Sheffield. That was not particularly drawn to our attention in evidence, but, in a slightly wider sense, we considered the problem of match funding itself.
We stepped into the slightly controversial territory of the abolition of the regional development agencies, which were clearly a major source of match funding. The funding was flexible and available at the local level, but it has now gone. Our attention was drawn to the problem caused by the absence of match funding. The ministerial response was, “There are local authorities, universities and businesses.” It may have escaped Ministers’ attention that local authorities are not overwhelmed with spare cash to find match funding. Universities are in a slightly difficult financial position, and the private sector is also cautious.
One of our concerns is not merely that there may not be enough match funding to deliver the total spend of the ERDF but that the constraints mean that the range of projects that might go ahead may be determined by the particulars of the match funding. We will not necessarily get best value, therefore, because the schemes that might give best value are not the schemes for which match funding is easily available, which is a problem that Ministers have not addressed terribly well.
I appreciate that the Minister was appointed after our report was published and that he is new to the issues. We suggested that the regional growth fund should have a ring-fenced element identified for match funding because it would give the sort of flexibility that has been lost with the abolition of the RDAs by providing a pot of money so that the best value projects might more easily obtain the needed match funding. There would then be the local flexibility mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), which the Government ought to consider. They removed such flexibility from the table and said, “It is not something we want to do, and it is not our policy.” They should have another look. The last two things Ministers would want are an underspend or money being spent on things that do not represent value. There is agreement on that, but the Committee was driving at how best to reach that position.
The Committee welcomed, as the Government did, the European Commission’s changes to common provisions regulation, which simplified the way in which different funding streams, such as the ERDF and the social fund, may be brought together to reduce the complexity for applicants. That should also give better value by allowing the local flexibility that my right hon. Friend mentioned. We welcome the push to harmonise the regional policy funds and the idea that responsibility could be devolved to bodies such as local enterprise partnerships.
The Committee is generally in line with the Government in seeing no problem with conditionality on individual projects, and it is right that those projects are properly assessed and audited, despite the problems caused by changing the goals of auditing, which my right hon. Friend mentioned. If projects do not do what they say on the tin, the money may be clawed back. Conditionality on individual schemes, and holding a bit of money back until they are proven to be spending appropriately, is right.
We agree with the Government—or the Government agree with us, because it is that way around—that conditionality on a country basis is wrong. The UK is not a member of the euro, and we are not part of the growth and stability pact. There is general agreement that, for ERDF purposes, applying conditions to the UK that are attached to that pact would not be right.
As a Committee, we believe that there is merit in transitional arrangements for regions where GDP is between 75% and 90% of the EU average. Having a cliff edge where regions below 75% get something and regions above 75% get nothing is not right. The Government, however, disagree and feel that all ERDF funding should go to the poorest areas. I declare an interest because south Yorkshire is one of the areas that has benefited from transitional arrangements, or their equivalent, in the past.
Have the Government analysed the potential effect on European funding in the UK of ruling out transitional areas altogether? That is not going to happen, because the EU is proceeding with the transitional areas, but the Government seem to be shooting themselves in the foot by denying UK regions the possibility of European funding through a transitional area designation.
John Healey
Does my hon. Friend find it remarkable that, right up to the very last moment of the recent budget negotiations, the Government were opposed to any transitional region status as part of the budget settlement? In fact, it is because of the determination of other countries to see such arrangements in place that 11 regions across the country, including the one we share in the Sheffield city region, stand to benefit. May I tempt him to go a little further by urging the Government to consider switching their attitude by embracing the fact that we have such funding for the next seven-year period? Let us ensure that we make the most of that funding.
Mr Betts
I hope that will be the case. Clearly, we are where we are, and we ought to spend the money properly. Government support would be most welcome. Did they think through their opposition to the transitional regions? Did they consider the net impact of such resistance on the UK and our economy? Their position seemed strange.
When we discuss Europe in Parliament, battle lines are increasingly drawn on a party basis, but that is not always so. The report was all-party, and it was agreed by all members of the Select Committee. We looked at the issue of ERDF funding and Britain’s contribution, which is a net contribution to the total ERDF budget. We were supportive of the United Kingdom as a relatively rich country contributing to ERDF spending in the poor regions of the EU. That was accepted and not a problem—that is part of what the EU is all about, to rebalance our total European economy and to give assistance to the poorest regions. We did look, however, at the fact that the United Kingdom gets money back from the European Union; because we are a net contributor, in effect we are paying money over to Brussels and Brussels is paying it back to us. There is a way in which that position can be improved.
We talked about repatriation and thought that the Government would be all in favour of that. The Prime Minister recently made a speech about taking certain powers back to the United Kingdom from the European Union, and our suggestion would fit in with that. Strangely, it was something that the previous Government was trying to achieve as well. No one is arguing that that would be easy to achieve, and we would probably not get a majority for it in the next spending round anyway, but we thought there was a better alternative to passing money backwards and forwards and to having a set of European rules and a set of UK rules. The British Government could make a commitment: “This sum of money we would be transferring to Brussels and having transferred back to us, so we commit over the spending period of the European Union, over the next seven years, to spend that amount of money in the UK. We commit to spend it on those regions that are identified as either below the 75% level or with the transitional region status, but we will do so in line with our own developed policies in this country.” It could be scrutinised by the EU but, essentially, we would not have to pass money backwards and forwards, or to have another level of direction from the European Union, and we would save on administration and double layers of bureaucracy. That seemed to be a remarkably sensible recommendation, and we do not understand why the Government do not get it.
We thought that the Government had a general objective to bring powers back. We can disagree about what that might involve in the round, about referendums and their timing and about all such issues, but the Committee felt that that practical measure was a sensible proposal, which would mean less bureaucracy, less transfer of funds and more decisions made locally, but with the UK Government committed to ring-fencing the money, so that it is identified and committed for seven years and committed for spending in particular areas.
John Healey
In stressing the fact that what my hon. Friend urges on this Government, the previous Government committed themselves to doing, I do not want him to gloss over an important difference. The previous Government made exactly the commitment, in arguing for that repatriation of structural funding, that he is urging this Government to do as part of the overall argument. We made the commitment that we would ensure that the amount of money due to the UK through the European structural funds would be secured and guaranteed to those areas as part of our argument to Europe about repatriating such powers and decisions.
Mr Betts
Absolutely. It was repatriation within an overall European commitment to be consistent in the amount of money we spent and the areas in which we spent it, as well as in the general purpose of that spending.
The Government response was that the Treasury cannot commit for seven years. Of course it can. The Treasury is committed to the European budget and our contribution to it over seven years. The Treasury therefore makes such a commitment anyway. Why it could not ring-fence money in the way that we recommended seemed an inadequate non-response to what we thought was a practical, sensible proposal.
I have been through the Committee’s major recommendations. There are clearly areas of agreement with the Government: the value of ERDF funding; the simplifications proposed by the Commission; and doing things more locally. There are major issues on which the Government response was not as good as we might have hoped: whether we can guarantee that the money will be spent; the availability of match funding and the distortion of spending through non-availability; the transition areas; and repatriation. Perhaps the Minister can offer some further explanation in due course on those matters.
Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries, for the first time. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) on securing the debate and on the excellent report that his Committee produced. I hope that the Government will look at the report and implement its recommendations.
The European regional development fund is clearly an increasingly important funding stream in a time of austerity, when funds from other sources are under pressure. That brings about its own issues, and local government funding cuts are making life increasingly problematic in enabling local authorities to find the match funding necessary to draw down the important ERDF funding stream. I regret to note that the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis), when he was on the “Today” programme this morning, was urging even more reductions in the years ahead, even though we have already had unprecedented funding cuts to local government. That will obviously make life even more problematic for those councils that seek to secure the funding stream through the ERDF.
I have spoken to a number of colleagues in local government, and there is some anxiety and cynicism about the possibility of an underspend. I am reassured to some extent by what I have heard in my hon. Friend’s contribution and by what I understand Ministers are saying about ensuring that the fund will be spent in total, without an underspend. That has not, however, stopped the anxiety or the cynicism expressed to me by colleagues, who are concerned that under the terms of the UK rebate any unspent European funding or a proportion of it—two thirds of it—is clawed back by the Treasury. The fear is that that might be an under-the-radar funding cut being sought by Government over and above the cuts that they have already made to local authorities around the country.
Last year, there was concern about an underspend of up to £1 billion, but I believe that that is now not likely to be the case. Nevertheless, as my hon. Friend referred to, there is significant concern about projects falling behind or being in danger of collapsing altogether, and a significant sum remains uncommitted at the moment. Two thirds of local authorities are already anxious about their ability to match-fund, so any further reductions in funding will be even more problematic. With 50% of councils falling behind with projects, there is obviously a major problem to be addressed.
For the record, although the debate is not about the abolition of the RDAs, they clearly played an important role in dealing with ERDF funding in the past. My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop) tabled a written parliamentary question last year, which was responded to by the Minister for Housing, the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk). My question is about value for money under the new regime, because in his response, he said:
“The net cost per job for the Regional Growth Fund (RGF) was £32,000 in round 1 and £34,000 in round 2. As set out in the NAO Regional Growth Fund report published on 11 May, the detailed appraisal process is in line with HM Treasury’s Green Book and reflects good practice. As set out in the NAO Regional Growth Fund report, the average cost per net additional job generated by Regional Development Agencies occurring as a result of spend between 2002 and 2007 is £28,000, with wide variation between schemes.”—[Official Report, 24 May 2012; Vol. 545, c. 896W.]
Job creation, therefore, is clearly costing up to £6,000 more per job under the new regime than pertained under the old RDA regime. That is a source of concern, particularly when finance is tight. I wonder what the Minister will say in response to that and whether there are any ways in which the Government could assist in obtaining better value for money, or at least the value for money that the previous regime achieved under the old regional development agencies.
There has been a transition of ERDF administration to the Department for Communities and Local Government, but another concern that has been expressed to me is that the teams responsible for administration are quite small, and that might lead to difficulties.
Chris Williamson
But will it be value for money if it leads to delays, and results in value-for-money comparisons of jobs created costing several thousand pounds more than under the old regime? The Minister may argue that it is a tighter ship, but if in the long run it does not provide the same value as previously, it should be looked at.
Will the Minister outline how any delays that have been reported will be tackled and what support and assistance he will give to local authorities to deal with them and iron them out. How will he address the shortfall in match funding that local authorities have articulated? The point has been made that two thirds of local authorities are concerned about the availability of match funding. On the “Today” programme this morning, the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth, called for even more reductions in funding for local government, and that will create real tension. How will the Government assist in addressing the shortfall in match funding that we are all aware of?
Will the Minister allow the regional growth fund to be used as a match-funding source, and what steps is he taking to enable novel projects to proceed? I understand that there is anxiety because novel projects may be sacrificed to facilitate the spending of available money by supporting less complicated projects that are easier to deliver. What assurances can he give on that? Finally, what is he doing to maximise the impact of ERDF funding in areas such as Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly where there are particular problems? Perhaps he will outline what steps he can take to ensure that this important fund delivers the maximum impact.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Don Foster)
It is a great pleasure, Ms Dorries, to serve under your chairmanship, and it is a great pleasure again to be in the Chamber debating with the excellent Chair of the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government. I thank him and the cross-party members of his Committee for their excellent work and this excellent and helpful report. I also thank him for his thoughtful contribution today in which he was broadly supportive of much of the Government’s work in this area. He was very supportive of ERDF funding and the work that it achieves, but he rightly asked some questions. I will pick up some of them in more detail in a moment.
I agree with the Chairman and his Committee that the research to which he referred is important, so that we are absolutely clear about what arrives as a result of ERDF funding in the creation of businesses, jobs and so on. It is really important. We have commissioned Regenerist Ltd to do that work for us. It is under way and will be completed by the summer. I give a commitment here and now that we will share its report with the Committee.
I do not want to become too bogged down in debates about the European Union and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister’s negotiations, which have delivered an extremely good deal for this country. You would call me out of order, Ms Dorries, if I did so, but the purpose of objecting to transition regions was that we believe —I suspect that the Committee Chairman shares this view—that European structural funds should be used predominantly to help the least well off, whether in this country or Europe.
We believe that making additions to the pot could have increased the cost to this country and not delivered. Having said that, because of the work that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister did so successfully in his negotiations with the EU about the funding deal, it has been possible for the transitional regions to go ahead. I will say later how we will get the best use of the next funding stream to ensure that those transitional regions, with other parts of the country, benefit to the greatest effect, taking in part the Committee’s advice.
John Healey
I am grateful to the Minister, but I think he may be trying to deflect me in cueing me for this intervention. He referred to the successful negotiations on the EU budget from the UK’s point of view, but does he recognise and will he confirm that up to the point of agreement the Government remained opposed to a transition regions category?
Mr Foster
I will confirm that. At the last minute, when we got the deal that we thought was in this country’s best interests, we were able to cease opposition to transitional regions. We now have them, and we will make effective use in those regions of the money that becomes available. We will do that in ways that were recommended in part by the Committee, and I will return to that if I can.
John Healey
I welcome that confirmation and reassurance about now wanting to get best use from those funds. That will be welcomed by the local authorities in the 11 areas that may gain. They are led by all political parties and have worked effectively together to support the case for those transition regions in future. Perhaps the Minister will assure them that they will be a central part of the discussions about how best to use ERDF money for the next seven years.
Mr Foster
In simple terms, I am very happy to give that assurance.
I am delighted to have this debate because there is a good-news story to tell about how we are making use of European funds, particularly ERDF money. All hon. Members present know that, with the European social fund, ERDF is one of the two European structural funds aimed at reducing disparities between and within member states. I want to say a little about the past as that has been touched on, a little about the present and, as questions have been asked about it, a little about the future.
All hon. Members present know that ERDF funding is an important part of our growth agenda, and during the current 2007 to 2013 funding period—hon. Members are aware that we are dealing with calendar years—it represents some £2.7 billion in England.
As the report focuses on England, it is only to England that I am referring; responsibility for the use of those funds in the devolved Administrations is not subject to our deliberations today. The funding represents £2.7 billion in England, which is matched with equivalent funding from other sources, and that is delivering jobs and businesses right across England.
Since the 1994 programme began, England has received some £8 billion from the ERDF over the three programme periods that have occurred, up to the end of this year. That has supported growth in a variety of different ways, creating jobs and supporting businesses. Just to give a flavour, the 2000 to 2006 programme supported more than 6,800 projects, created nearly 180,000 new jobs and helped more than 200,000 small and medium-sized enterprises. That is a serious contribution to growth by any standards.
A whole range of different projects have been supported. Some are large and high-profile, such as the very well known Eden Project in Cornwall and the Manchester Metrolink. Others have been much smaller and focused on the needs of communities, such as a project in Leicestershire that coaches women to help them become entrepreneurs. The ERDF has supported innovation, such as through a project in Cambridgeshire, which uses hemp to create lightweight components for industry. I could give many other examples that illustrate the different ways in which the ERDF contributes to growth.
The Government’s first priority when they came into office was to sort out some of the financial liabilities that had been left by the previous Administration. Poor management had led to a situation in which auditors from the European Union were basically imposing financial corrections on England—on our Government—totalling some £236 million for the 2000 to 2006 programme. That quarter of a billion pounds would have to have been met by the taxpayer. However, because of the excellent work done within my Department, we have now got that figure down from £236 million to just £14 million, and we are working to try and resolve that small amount as well.
So far, the 2007 to 2013 programme has delivered more than 42,000 new jobs and more than 11,800 new businesses. It is absolutely on track to achieve the target of creating more than 135,000 new jobs by the end of the period. The period of the funding stops in 2013, but the programme rolls on to 2015, by which time the money has to have been spent. The programme has already contracted with projects to deliver more than 31,000 new businesses, which is twice the number set at the beginning, in 2006.
As the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) —the Chairman of the Select Committee—rightly pointed out, we brought the management of the fund into the Department following the abolition of the regional development agencies. We introduced standardised management systems to ensure that the same procedures were followed right across England, so that we can track our liabilities much more accurately than in the past. That has resulted in some efficiencies in the resources that the Department uses to administer the programme, and ensures that the risks of ineligible expenditure are reduced. I hope that that answers the question asked by the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson). We are leaner, but fitter, and we are more efficient in delivering good value.
As the Chairman of the Committee will well remember, when the European Commission gave evidence to the Select Committee last year, it was asked how we had managed the transfer from the RDAs to the Department. As the hon. Gentleman acknowledged, the European Commission said that it had been “well managed” and considered that we had done a good job in handling the transition. I was delighted that the hon. Gentleman confirmed that, but as he said, it is not all perfect. There are concerns in some parts of the country. He gave the west midlands as an example, so I can help him by giving the most up-to-date figures—I know that he always likes to be kept up to date.
The situation in the west midlands is that we have now contracted £254 million of the allocated funding of £328 million, leaving £74 million to be contracted. So far, we have created 7,404 jobs, and we are contracted to deliver 17,704, despite the target having been only 11,550. From that information, I hope that the Committee Chairman gets the clear indication that we are confident that the west midlands is now very much on track—not only to deliver, but to deliver more than was originally targeted.
Mr Betts
I think that that was a reassurance from the Minister, but I got the point that £74 million was still not contractually committed, and presumably there are similar figures for other regions. Does the Minister have a total figure for money that is not contracted, and if it is all right in every region, why are civil servants ringing round, saying, “Can you deal with underspends from other regions?”
Mr Foster
Let me answer the hon. Gentleman’s question and another one. He also asked, “Would it not make sense to slightly overplan, in case there is some slippage?” In terms of the £74 million, I can tell him that negotiations are under way for some £83 million of contracts, so we are well on the way to using up the money and getting the match funding, which he is concerned about. However, because he has recommended it to us, and it is on his advice, we are going slightly over the top to allow for the slippage that he thinks might occur.
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will commend us for what we are doing. If he asks me whether I have got the information for all the other regions, the answer is yes. He can take his pick, and I will happily give him the answer for each and every one of them to demonstrate that, in every part of the country, we are now on target to deliver what we are committed to—and in many cases, to deliver more than we were originally expecting to achieve.
Mr Foster
I am more than happy to take account of the hon. Gentleman’s request. I will not make an absolute commitment immediately, because it may be more helpful, on advice, to defer doing so until we are further along in some of the pipeline negotiations that are well under way. In broad principle, however, I have no objection to making the information available, but I hope that he will allow me to consider the most efficient time to do so—for his benefit, as well as that of his Committee and all Members.
Mr Foster
The hon. Gentleman is getting a little uptight about something that is very simple. I hope that he would agree that I am taking a responsible position: I am saying that I am more than happy to make the information available, and I am merely adding that I will seek advice on the most propitious time to do so. New data that will give us a clearer picture may be expected tomorrow. That is all I am saying. I will make the information available as soon as possible.
John Healey
I am grateful and I do not wish to pester the Minister with interventions, but he did just say that he would give the information at the time most convenient to the Select Committee and the House. That time is now. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) rightly said, we would like the picture now and the Minister does have it. If more projects and commitments are in the pipeline, that is good—let us have an update on those at an appropriate time as well.
Mr Foster
I hear what the right hon. Gentleman says, but I have given my answer. I will consider the matter and make the information available as quickly as I can, following advice.
I have already said that I think that we are doing remarkably well. It is great that the European Commission thinks that we have handled the transition very well, and I am delighted that the Chairman of the Select Committee broadly agrees with that. I am also sure that he will join me in praising how we have arranged to be able to use ERDF funds to help us with one very important issue that will assist with growth—the roll-out of high-speed broadband. We have been working closely with my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport to ensure that that is delivered. In fact, there will be a contribution of some £165 million from the fund to help with that aim. Already, 80% of the allocation has been contracted.
I also want to touch on the future, because that is very important. All hon. Members who follow this issue with interest will know that there are several themes in the 2014 to 2020 programme. We will ensure that we make the most effective use of the funds, and one way we will be able to do that is by following the advice of the Select Committee about bringing the various pots together to provide much greater flexibility in the way they are used. The Departments responsible are working very efficiently together in planning for that.
It will, however, be important also to take on board the concern expressed by the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) about ensuring that, wherever possible, there is local determination of how the funds can be used. That is why we will be using the local enterprise partnerships as the basis for much of the work. We have agreed that they will be the building blocks of the 2014 to 2020 programme. They will be working with a wide range of other interested parties, but they will be in charge of that seven-year set of allocations. However, as I said, there will continue to be local input from a wide range of sources to ensure that local priorities are being met.
We are learning from the mistakes of the past to ensure that we do not saddle taxpayers with large new bills and that the programmes are efficiently and effectively managed in the way we have demonstrated we are now managing them. However, it seemed to me that the real excitement envisaged in the Select Committee’s report was about being able to pool the funds to ensure maximum effect.
We can envisage a scenario in which, for example, a derelict building can be brought back into use and businesses encouraged to make use of it; I am thinking of start-up businesses. People in the area can be provided with the skills necessary to get the jobs in those start-up businesses. By bringing the funds together, we can use the European funds collectively to deliver on that vision. That is what the issue is about.
I want to end by addressing one other point raised by the Chairman of the Select Committee—repatriation. He spent quite a lot of time on that. Let me just say to him that we looked at it. We discovered that it would not work and that it would involve financial penalties. But that does not mean that that is the end of the matter, because we know that the hon. Gentleman feels very strongly about it. It is clear that his right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne feels very strongly about it, and no doubt the hon. Member for Derby North, who speaks for the Opposition, feels strongly about it. That is why the Prime Minister has established a Committee that is considering the whole issue of the European Union and competences. This is one of the areas that will be considered.
There might be an opportunity for change in the light of any further information that the Select Committee, its Chairman or any other hon. Member provides that group working on this issue, but at the moment we have concluded that it is not in the best interests of the people of this country to go ahead, because it would end up costing us money and delivering far less than we are currently able to deliver.
The ERDF has been of enormous benefit. Given the bringing together of the funds, the slimmer, tighter and more efficient management organisation, the local decision making that will come through the LEPs to deliver what local people really need and the opportunity provided through the transition regions to spread the money fairly across the country to meet needs in all parts of the country, the future will be a very exciting time. We have done well so far, and there are very exciting times ahead.
Mr Betts
I thank the Minister for what in almost all respects was a very positive response to the Select Committee’s report. First, I thank him for his commitment to send to the Committee the results of the evaluation of ERDF spending, which he has already contracted to do. That will be most welcome when we get it. It is a difficult task, as we appreciated in our report, but it should be worth while, to enable spending in future rounds to be even better targeted, so we welcome that completely.
Secondly, on transitional regions, the Committee thinks that the Government were simply wrong in their initial objections, but I am pleased to hear the Minister say that transitional regions will be there for the next spending round and that the Government will fully commit to ensuring that the money is properly spent in those regions, with the full engagement, asked for by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), of the LEPs and local authorities in those regions. That is most welcome.
The Minister offered reassurance about the Government’s commitment to ensure that all the ERDF money was fully spent. Again, that is welcome, although the Minister did act as a bit of a tease. He was saying, “I’ve got all this information here. You can have any bit that you want. Just ask for it.” I then asked for it all and was told that it might come in due course when the time was right and subject to the advice of those who advise him. Well, yes, okay, we will have to leave it at that for this afternoon, but we look forward to receiving the information in the Committee and in the Library at an early date, so that we can be reassured on those matters.
I still think that some projects with the best chance of delivering value might not go ahead because of the non-availability of match funding. The Government must address that problem; we have not got to the bottom of it this afternoon.
I have two final points. We welcomed in our report the pooling of the spending pots. The Government are clearly seized of the importance of that. Using the LEPs as building blocks is very welcome. That relates to my right hon. Friend’s point about the Heseltine report. I would warmly welcome such funding or funding through the Heseltine measures being further devolved to local areas, for the LEPs and local authorities to build on, together with European and city deal money, and we might eventually move to the idea of community budgets as well. I think that the Select Committee will look at those issues.
Mr Foster
I apologise that I did not pick up the point about the Heseltine report. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will understand that, with a Budget to come in the very near future, I can only give him an assurance that that issue will be addressed at that time, when an announcement will be made. I clearly cannot say anything more about that at this stage.
Mr Betts
Again, that sounds like a helpful response, but we will wait and see. We will start to see a different landscape of European funding decisions being made flexibly, together with other pots of money, to make a real impact locally. That is a move forward that can be welcomed.
Finally, on repatriation, I am not sure where the penalties came in. It certainly was not an issue that the Government raised with us. However, it is an issue for the future. It seemed to the whole Committee to be a sensible suggestion. I hear from the Minister that, in principle, it has not been ruled out. It will be looked at in future in terms of relationships between the UK and the European Union. That is to be welcomed as well.
I thank the Minister for his response. We will await further information from him and await the reports of the review, and we might return to the issue in the Select Committee in due course.
Nuisance Phone Calls
(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Mr Havard. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for selecting this subject for debate and those Members who supported me in seeking parliamentary time, especially my hon. Friends the Members for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) and for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), who turned up to make representations before the Committee. It is also good to see my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price), who has raised this issue in the past, as well as many other colleagues.
I have been overwhelmed by the response I have received since applying for this debate. I am sure that more Members would have been present today were it not for the Eastleigh by-election, which is a subject that I might briefly return to later. More than 100 MPs responded positively to my suggestion of a debate on the subject and there has been significant interest from the national and regional newspapers and network and regional television outlets, which clearly shows that nuisance calls are a problem that needs to be resolved. The matter might sound straightforward, but it is complex and ever-changing. I referred briefly to Eastleigh, and we all need to confess, both as individuals and as political parties, to the role that we play in generating even more nuisance phone calls.
Let me explain the background to my interest in this subject. Although I have a specific interest in ICT legislation, I did not appreciate the significance of the issue until a constituent explained his predicament. A retired individual from Cowbridge in my constituency in the Vale of Glamorgan, who is regularly at home during the day, highlighted the fact that he could receive more than a dozen calls from sales and marketing companies during working hours and throughout the evening.
I initially assumed that the Telephone Preference Service would resolve the matter, but after researching the issue, I started to appreciate its complexity. Anyone who wishes to stop unsolicited calls can register with the Telephone Preference Service, which makes it against the law to call consumers who are registered on the list unless they have given prior consent to do so.
Ofcom has the responsibility for maintaining the Telephone Preference Service, which is administered under licence by the Direct Marketing Association. The Information Commissioner has the responsibility to follow up consumer complaints and take action against those companies that are breaking the law. That sounds pretty straightforward, providing that each party lives up to its obligations. However, the situation is not so straightforward. To complain about an unsolicited call, we need the caller’s telephone number. Caller display or dialling 1471 should enable a complaint to be pursued. The privacy and electronic communication regulations require the caller to identify themselves when asked, but it appears that most withhold their number, making it almost impossible to identify them unless the receiver is prepared to endure the marketing pitch, which is undesirable to many. In many circumstances, the caller will simply hang up when the receiver asks for their identity at the outset.
The situation does not stop there. Many calls are silent or abandoned, and that is because call centres use automated diallers. That technology dials more numbers than there are agents available, to maximise the time they spend speaking to consumers. It is only when the consumer answers the phone that an agent will be connected. If an agent is not available there are two options: the automated system can leave a message, which is considered to be an abandoned call, or it can drop the call without a message, which is considered to be a silent call. Both are irritating, but a silent call can be intimidating or even frightening to some constituents. That situation is compounded when the number is withheld, preventing a complaint from being made.
There are two issues here. First, many call centres do not adhere to the rules laid down by the Telephone Preference Service or the privacy and electronic communication regulations. Secondly, withheld numbers prevent a consumer from complaining. Even if a company is committed to following the PEC rules, loopholes remain. If someone is registered with the TPS, it remains legal to call them to conduct a survey as an excuse. Another way of getting around the rules is to use the “permission to call” loophole, which is where someone who may have bought a product in the past has not ticked the box to exclude their data from being passed on to “carefully selected partners”. The reality is that their data have been sold on to another company that might have some tenuous relationship with the original company. It does not even stop there.
There is also a third dimension: calls from overseas. Calls being made on behalf of UK companies should also adhere to the privacy and electronic communication regulations. There is evidence that they do not, but there is a further problem when they are not acting on behalf of UK companies.
It is little wonder that I received such a response to this debate given the number of complaints. Ofcom shows that 47% of adults experienced the silent call treatment during the last six months of 2012, which is up by a quarter on the year before. In July 2012, there were some 10,000 complaints; six months earlier the number was a third of that, which shows that the problem is increasing at a remarkable rate. A survey by Which? magazine found that 76% of respondents were still getting lots of nuisance calls despite being registered with TPS. It is safe to make the assumption that there would be even more complaints if the callers could identify the number from which they were called.
The regulatory responsibility is split and not straightforward. The Information Commissioner’s Office is responsible for enforcing companies to comply with the rules, and Ofcom has powers to deal with the silent or abandoned calls. Let me give credit to the Information Commissioner and to Ofcom. Both have made some efforts to challenge and fine those responsible for such calls. I have to stress that they were extremely slow to respond, but I welcome their late efforts none the less.
Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)
My hon. Friend is getting to the nub of the argument. There are regulators responsible for policing such activity, but as with any regulatory breach, regulators have to be fleet of foot in dealing with transgressions, or companies will just carry on with them. Would my hon. Friend like to see a much more aggressive approach on behalf of the regulators, so that action is taken sooner?
Alun Cairns
My hon. Friend shows great interest in these issues and makes an extremely valuable point. I have already mentioned that Ofcom and the Information Commissioner’s Office have been slow to respond to the problem, and as my hon. Friend highlights, the position is ever changing. Not only are telephone numbers changing but so too is technology. Although I welcome Ofcom’s five-point plan, which it would probably cite in response to the criticism coming from the Government Benches, it is not a game changer. The plan is helpful and welcome, but it will not make a significant difference to most people, particularly as it is an ever-changing situation.
I have serious concerns about the regulatory responsibility being split between two bodies. It causes confusion to the consumer and adds nothing to the prevention or resolution of the problem. Having one body—probably Ofcom—would be much more efficient. The issue of withheld numbers, however, is central. Technology improvements allowed caller ID to be introduced in 1994, and at that time a consensus developed that callers should be able to withhold numbers if they wished. Key reasons related to the need to protect people receiving calls from charitable groups, such as those supporting victims of domestic violence, and to the need for the police to contact someone without disclosing their identity. At the time, there was no major issue with nuisance calls, and it is fair to say that contact centres have now abused the protection that was intended for the greater good.
Nuisance calls could be compared to someone knocking at the door wearing a mask or a balaclava. Would we answer the door to such an unknown caller? Of course we would not. Why, then, do we allow the same thing to happen over the telephone? Ironically, door-to-door salesmen from some of the companies Ofcom has criticised must show identity cards. In recent years, some of those companies have used them as a marketing ploy to demonstrate how responsible they are. Salesmen are therefore showing ID cards when they call at the door, but nothing similar happens when they use the telephone.
Many people have been forced to ask their telephone operators to block all withheld numbers—for a fee, of course. That can leave individuals in a vulnerable position. GP practices, police stations or other essential service providers do not always display their number—possibly with good reason, possibly not—so constituents may refuse to answer the telephone.
Some innovations and new telephones can overcome part of the problem, but there needs to be a shift in policy to protect the consumer. One option is that organisations that wanted to withhold numbers would need to show they had good reason for doing so and to get Ofcom’s agreement. That, of course, should not apply to domestic users. We need to recognise that that will not always deal with certain situations, given technological developments and the ever-changing situation. Voice over internet protocol and the international calls that I mentioned are particularly problematic.
I am not a fan of legislation for the sake of legislation, so I ask UK firms to play their part voluntarily. They should not only adhere strictly to the regulations, but go further and introduce higher standards, possibly in the form of a code of conduct. It would be a good start, for example, if they agreed to stop using withheld numbers, rather than being forced to do so through legislation. Using withheld numbers is in their interests, not the consumer’s interests, so if they really want to react to consumer demands, that would be a good start.
Telephone network operators also have a part to play. They could establish a system that made it possible to identify callers using withheld numbers. That would allow complaints to be made to Ofcom or the Information Commissioner. Legislation may well prevent the caller’s number from being given to the receiver, but the network operator will often know what the number is. A simple system could be introduced to allow a consumer to make a direct complaint to Ofcom, with the telephone operator advising Ofcom what the number is. Those innovative, straightforward proposals would resolve many of the problems.
As I said, the situation is extremely complicated. I have not even got on to texting or calls to mobiles. However, my comments demonstrate the problem, which has increased partly as a result of payment protection insurance and partly as a result of the claims that have been made for many other things. Given that the data that have been published show a trebling of nuisance phone calls in one month alone last year, we can assume the figure is even higher, and it would be much higher still if the receiver of the call could complain because they had the telephone number. I am grateful for Members’ support.
Mr Iain McKenzie (Inverclyde) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Havard. I congratulate the Backbench Business Committee on bringing this debate before us. Many of us have been contacted by constituents about this subject in the past weeks, if not months.
Anger over nuisance calls is growing, and rightly so. The latest Ofcom complaints data show that complaints to the Telephone Preference Service increased 150% from July 2011 to July 2012. Many of my constituents have regularly received nuisance calls that are supposedly from within the UK. They are told there is something wrong with their computer and that the caller is qualified by Microsoft to fix it for a fee. They may also be asked for personal details, but the details some people reveal are passed on, and, lo and behold, those people then receive another call, about anything from what they do in their leisure time to their choice in shoes.
A constituent told me of a call they have received, which starts with the words, “This is an urgent message about your personal pension.” It goes on to say, “Press 5 for immediate action,” at which point, the person receiving the call can be signed up to something. The message then says, “Or press 9 to be removed from our database”, although the company will, of course, do no such thing, and the person will receive the calls over and over again. Dialling 1471 in the hope of finding out who is calling just results in hearing, “We do not have the caller’s number.”
Thousands of people up and down the country have to deal with this every day, and many of them are elderly. For many vulnerable and elderly people, nuisance calls are a menace, and one that puts them at risk of fraud—just as if a crook or pushy salesman had turned up on their doorstep offering to sell them this, that and the other. People are experiencing this every day over the phone.
A growing number of nuisance calls come from overseas, and there seems to be no way of protecting the British public from them at the moment. Many people have been victims of terrible scams and have lost money, which they can ill afford to lose at this time.
In 2010, Parliament approved an increase in the financial penalty available to Ofcom to enforce its rules on nuisance calls, from £50,000 to £2 million. Yet, there is still no real action. The Information Commissioner’s Office has fined just one company in the past 18 months. Studies show that 76% of people who have suffered from nuisance calls were still receiving unsolicited calls despite being registered with the Telephone Preference Service.
What is being done, therefore, to improve the situation? The TPS makes it clear on its website that there has been a rise in the number of unwanted calls made to people registered with it. However, it says that most of them originate from companies that deliberately ignore the law or disguise their identity.
Jackie Doyle-Price
As the hon. Gentleman mentioned, many of these nuisance calls are generated overseas, which means that the firms taking advantage of the information the calls produce are deliberately getting round the regulatory system here. Would the hon. Gentleman support what I would like to see, which is the naming and shaming of high street firms that pay overseas companies to do exactly that?
Mr McKenzie
I understand the hon. Lady’s point, and I share her concern, but I would like to go a bit further than just naming and shaming.
The TPS has no enforcement powers, but it does send its complaints to Ofcom and the Information Commissioner’s Office each month. However, despite the TPS sending more than 1,000 complaints each month, the ICO has yet to issue a fine against any company.
What does the law say, and who enforces it? Ofcom has powers under the Communications Act 2003 to deal with the persistent misuse of a communications network or service, which includes the generation of unsolicited and silent calls. The ICO enforces any breaches of the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003, which cover rules about unsolicited electronic marketing messages sent by telephone, fax, e-mail or text. Regulation 19 requires organisations making automated marketing telephone calls to have the prior consent of the person being called. That means that live marketing calls cannot be made to anyone who has indicated an objection to receiving them—for example, by registering with the TPS.
What, however, is happening in reality? Constituents have told me time and again that, despite registering with the TPS, they are still plagued by cold calls. The safeguards are therefore doing little to protect them. Ofcom has fined nine companies for making silent calls, but if the companies persist it must be because, in spite of the fines, it is worth their while. Over the 10 years for which Ofcom and the ICO have had the relevant powers they have been used only rarely against the many companies known to be breaching the requirements.
Apart from an apparent general reluctance to act, the regulators tie their own hands by the policies that they set. To give just a few examples of the complexity of those policies, Ofcom uses the persistent misuse powers only against those who it finds have failed to follow its policy that no more than 3% of calls may be abandoned. All other reported misuse, including making millions of silent calls within the 3% limit, is tolerated. The ICO requires that the direct marketing purpose of the call be explicitly declared. However, a caller collecting information about an individual for direct marketing purposes may say that they are providing public information or conducting a survey.
The maze of regulations does not help. We need one clear point of contact with the power to act and enforce the law. While there are different regulators and different Departments in charge, there will always be loopholes for the companies to abuse and exploit. I fear that legislation may be the only step that we can take to curtail nuisance calls in the long term. I call on the Minister and the Government to bring about a single, simple point of contact for any individual wishing to protect their privacy from unwanted calls, texts, faxes or e-mails.
Mr Dai Havard (in the Chair)
Order. About half a dozen hon. Members want to speak, and so that Front-Benchers will have time to contribute properly I ask that speeches be kept to about six minutes, to give everyone a reasonable chance.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Havard, and a special pleasure that this debate is stopping so many of us having to make nuisance phone calls to a small place called Eastleigh, on the south coast; otherwise we should all probably be in call centres having to do that.
The easiest and most fertile targets for nuisance phone calls are the elderly, like me. About 30% of householders in my constituency are retired home owners. They provide a happy hunting ground for fraudsters. Rob Vale and his team in trading standards at Bromley council suggest that the battle over nuisance phone callers is constant, unremitting and growing. According to Bromley trading standards, two particular scams have been perpetrated over the past two years. One is the Microsoft scam. The victim receives a phone call from someone, often with a foreign accent, who says that there is a bug in their computer. The fix requires the victim to log on to a website where their computer is then under the hoaxer’s control. A fictitious problem is then placed on the computer and the victim is told that it will cost, say, £120 for it to be fixed by a download or, indeed, that regular maintenance by the fraudsters will be needed.
The second scam involves debit or credit cards, and everyone has heard of it. Fraudsters telephone claiming to be from the police and saying that the victim’s debit or credit card has been cloned. The fictitious police ask for details of the account, normally also giving a fake police telephone number so the victim can check that they are genuine. However, they stay on the line until that phone call is made, so they keep control and continue the deception until they get the bank details.
Both the present and previous Governments have been more than aware of the problems caused by nuisance phone calls. Ofcom and the Information Commissioner’s Office as regulators have powers to act, and the maximum penalty, as we have heard, has been increased to £2 million. Ofcom set out an action plan on 8 January for improving the service to victims. Generating unsolicited telephone calls is an offence, but it remains planned and persistent. Only one company has been fined £50,000; but I think everyone present would want more fines. The problem continues.
As I understand the matter, the Information Commissioner’s Office is meant to carry out enforcement for the Telephone Preference Service and receive complaints and notification of breaches. As we have heard, there are problems when the companies involved are based abroad. It is then difficult get a grip of the situation; but there must be something that the experts can suggest. For example, no doubt the calls are being made from abroad for the a British company; somehow we must get to the British companies that are authorising the activity. What I find odd is Ofcom’s current advice to recipients of unsolicited sales and marketing calls from overseas, which is to contact the overseas company making the call. How great is that for a little old lady—or little old gentleman? I am not trying to be sexist.
A big problem arises when people have given consent in the past. I often book rail tickets, when I visit one of those constituencies that have by-elections, on the internet. When I fill in the boxes on the internet form I am always asked if I would like to receive further information. It is easy to miss that box or tick it by mistake, but once someone has done that apparently the Telephone Preference Service may not be able to help. That is sad.
I have inquired locally, and trading standards in Bromley have tried to get a grip of nuisance phone calls with various measures. When they hear of a problem, they rapidly get hold of the originators of cold calls and warn them off; they have set up a system for banks and building societies in the Bromley area to contact trading standards if elderly people begin to make unusual withdrawals or to do things that are not typical of them; they have delivered 70 talks in the past year to the elderly warning them about the dangers of nuisance and cold calls; they have sent out packs to elderly residents also warning them of the problem; and of course they use the local newspapers and radio to alert people to scams. I mentioned Rob Vale, the head of standards at Bromley, who does a very good job. He reckons that such measures have probably saved the elderly about £1 million in the past few years, which is great. Those responsible have done so well that The Municipal Journal has awarded them a commendation for their efforts. They are a model.
I am conscious of the time, and the fact that I should soon shut up. I believe that either Ofcom or the Information Commissioner’s Office should get much tougher about nuisance phone calls. After all, there is the power to do so. However, if that does not happen, we should consider setting up a nuisance calls agency as advocated by the Fair Telecoms Campaign. That, in its turn, should get a grip on the problem.
Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to speak in the debate, and I congratulate all those hon. Members who pressed for it. Several of us have been raising the issue of nuisance phone calls in various ways. I am sure that the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart) will be pleased to know that one of my constituents congratulated me on taking up the issue and mentioned his campaign in conjunction with The Sunday Post. I am sure that he will say more about that.
People are concerned about a number of issues, and a range of constituents have contacted me. An elderly couple wrote to me to ask for advice about what they could do, because they were receiving persistent calls. They said in their letter to me:
“How can we stop phone calls which we consider to verge on the disruptive and the invasive? This week, since Monday, we have received seven of these calls.”
That might not seem like a lot of calls, but for an elderly couple such as my constituents, who live in sheltered housing and who would normally receive calls from family and friends but who are suddenly receiving an influx of calls and do not know who they are from or what they are about, it can be quite concerning.
I gave that couple advice at that stage. They contacted the Telephone Preference Service and were told that that was the correct thing to do. However, part of the problem was that the calls originated from offshore and the TPS could do nothing about them. Of course, the couple were then quite concerned because it seemed as though nobody was really taking the issue seriously.
As well as the nuisance calls, of course, there are the other types of calls that have already been referred to as scams. Again, one of my constituents wrote to me to explain that a couple of years ago she was constantly phoned for a few weeks by a company that said there were problems with her computer. Eventually, after a number of those calls, she gave in; she thought that what the company said must be correct. She gave the company information, allowed it to log on to her personal computer and then it started to tell her about all the serious problems she had with her computer and began to ask her for money. Thankfully, she then realised that something was wrong. None the less, she continued to receive calls from the same company, despite making it clear that she had no wish to receive any such calls in the future. Her number was ex-directory, and she was registered with the TPS.
Another issue was raised with me recently by constituents. I hope that the Minister will consider it seriously, as he has done with the other problems that have been raised. A number of constituents have contacted me because they are concerned about what they say are companies calling them about either the green deal or some of the energy offers that are available. The problem for my constituents is that they are not immediately able to identify whether those calls are genuine calls made on behalf of—as they see it—the Government or, indeed, on behalf of a company that is seeking to persuade them to apply for Government grants before providing them with the business. There seem to be some grey areas in terms of what is marketing and what is actually selling. That is something that it would be useful to look at.
One of my constituents, who is pretty savvy about these issues, received a call telling her that she could miss out on lots of Government grants, so she told the caller that, of course, the green deal is not about grants but loans, etc. The caller then tried to continue with the call, by claiming that they were not trying to sell her anything at all. Afterwards, she googled to get the information about the company that had called her and discovered that it was indeed a company trying to sell her products. Again, she was left feeling that the protections that exist did not particularly help her.
Offshore calls are another issue that people will be familiar with. I know how difficult it is sometimes when I am calling people, or when people are calling me, for them to understand me; having a fairly broad west of Scotland accent, it can be fairly difficult for people to do so. I was on a call last week and I had to try to spell out the name of my home village of Mauchline to someone in another part of the UK, and that was pretty difficult. Again, we can imagine what the situation is like for vulnerable people or elderly people. They are concerned because they do not know what the call is about and they have been asked to give information, perhaps even details such as their date of birth and their bank information, ostensibly for market research or marketing purposes.
Alun Cairns
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for making some extremely valuable points. She mentions vulnerable and elderly people. Does she agree that people of working age, who might not be at home during the day, might not appreciate the scale of this problem because many of these calls are made in the daytime? Vulnerable people, including older people who may well be vulnerable, are disproportionately affected by these nuisance calls.
Cathy Jamieson
That is a very good point, and I think that it is why we as MPs get so many people coming to us who are in that category of vulnerable people. However, some of my constituents who are at work during the day complain that the calls are targeted for the period immediately after they return home, after the schools come out or perhaps at the traditional tea time in certain parts of my area, between 5 o’clock and half-past 6. Basically, people are saying, “We get in from work; we sit down; and the phone goes.”
Older people are advised to get caller identification, but not everyone wants to do that because they might not necessarily understand the technology or want to judge whether to answer a call. People simply want a system whereby, if they say that they do not want to receive unsolicited calls, somebody somewhere takes their request seriously, does something about it and puts in place a system that works.
I do not have much more time left, so I will finish on the point about multiple responsibility. Different agencies and organisations have different responsibilities, and people are split between contacting BT or their phone company, before they are told to contact the TPS and then perhaps Ofcom. People just give up and say, “It’s all too difficult,” and I have not even started on the number of texts that people complain about, particularly ones about payment protection insurance or PPI. Perhaps that is for another day and another debate.
Mike Crockart (Edinburgh West) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Havard, and I, too, thank the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) for securing this debate.
I should start by declaring an interest that has already been mentioned. For the past six months, I have been running a “no to nuisance calls” campaign with The Sunday Post in Scotland. In that time, we have secured about 20,000 signatures on a petition, which I presented to Downing street two weeks ago. Nevertheless, the number of signatories is still growing, and I am sure that it will grow in the aftermath of this debate.
As a brief aside, I am also in the process of forming an all-party group on nuisance calls. Many Members will already have received an invitation to join me in that group, and I ask anyone else who wants to join to contact me.
The overwhelming response that I have received to the campaign is a clear demonstration of how strongly people feel about nuisance calls, and by nuisance calls I mean unwanted live marketing calls, as well as silent calls, abandoned calls, spam texts and recorded messages. My constituents have contacted me in great numbers to share with me their stories of unscrupulous callers, as well as to complain about the companies that pester them day in, day out. Indeed, only yesterday, I discussed this issue with a colleague, whose young children now shout, “It’s PPI,” whenever they hear the phone ring. Clearly, we are a country under siege and something has to change.
I have not come to Westminster Hall today with an exact proposal about what structures should be changed, what legislation should be amended, what Department should be responsible or even what powers are missing, although I hope that the proposed all-party group will look at those issues. However, what is clear from talking to Ofcom, the Information Commissioner’s Office, BT and Ministers is that absolutely no one thinks that the present system is working. So of all the potential solutions to this problem, doing nothing is not one of them, but neither is working more collaboratively, which I fear is where the Minister is heading. Consequently, I welcome the opportunity that we have today not only to discuss the problems, but to highlight some of the work that has already been done to address them and to agree a way ahead.
I want to quote a couple of short paragraphs from those who have signed my petition. First, one signatory said:
“You just can’t get through to these people to stop hassling you. I get phone calls when I’m driving, eating, working, even in the shower.”
It is unclear whether he actually had his phone in the shower with him. He went on:
“They ring day after day and won’t take ‘get lost’ for an answer. You ask them to take you off the database and they don’t.”
Another signatory said:
“I am signed up to the TPS, but am fed up with calls from PPI firms, car warranty companies who seem to have access to my name and type of car, “Microsoft” callers...and silent calls. Time to ban these. I don’t need to claim PPI, have never had an accident, don’t need to sort out my pension or anything else they phone about.”
Those two responses are fairly typical of the comments that we have received.
Nuisance calls, spam texts and other forms of unsolicited contact are an annoyance for most people, but as has already been said, for many vulnerable and elderly people, they are also a menace, and one that puts them at risk of fraud just as much as though a crook or a pushy salesman turned up at their door. So I want one single, simple point of contact—a regulator—to take in all forms of unsolicited contact, and a single, simple point of contact for any individual who wishes to protect their privacy from unwanted calls, texts and faxes.
Ofcom has recently attempted to make it clearer to consumers how they should make a complaint if they are bothered by nuisance calls. When I heard about that, I imagined a small A5 or even A6 guide that I could keep next to my phone for when the inevitable call came, perhaps something like the document that I am holding now, which I compiled for constituents in Edinburgh West, to put on the inside of their doors in case they were confronted by unwelcome cold callers. Instead, I found this document—[Interruption.] I cannot imagine a better example of why reform is so badly needed.
There should be a simplified, single regulator with a single point of contact. The public seem to have the appetite for that. The current web of regulations allows companies constantly to find new ways to contact people who have opted out of receiving such information. The Minister has said in meetings that we need to give consumers greater clarity, so that they know who to turn to, but putting the responsibility on consumers is unacceptable when the regulations are such a maze.
Far from the situation outlined by other hon. Members, the ICO has begun to show its teeth. It issued fines for cold calling to three companies for the first time a couple of weeks ago. Last year, the first fines were issued for spam texts for a company that was part of the growing industry that texts numbers to promote PPI and personal injury claims. The ICO is doing much more, with a few initiatives in the pipeline, including working with global phone companies to agree a memorandum of understanding to allow information to be shared, as it has already done with the claims management regulator, and considering intervention points relating to personal data—all the points at which data from someone who, for example, completes a survey while shopping online are used. Working together, regulators can trace the data from the start to the end of the process. That will give a better understanding of where the intervention points are and will highlight any gaps in legislation. There is also an investigation into what changes need to be made in terms of data protection, to allow the ICO to use complaints collected by consumer groups, such as Which? and citizens advice bureaux, rather than having to collect individual complaints.
People throughout the UK are worried about nuisance and silent calls and spam texts. We have an opportunity soon, in the Communications Bill, to make significant inroads into dealing with this problem, but only if the Minister is prepared to be bold and act in consumers’ interests. I hope that we will hear from him about bold intent and not merely timid tinkering at the edges.
Mr Dai Havard (in the Chair)
Unfortunately, Mr Crockart, we will not be able to write your visual aid into the record. That is not possible, even with modern technology.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Havard. I congratulate the Backbench Business Committee on bringing this debate. It is reassuring to hear calls for stronger and more regulation from all hon. Members in the Chamber in this instance. I will not try to cover the excellent points already made by hon. Members from all parties about why we need better regulation.
I have two declarations of interest to make. I implemented calling line ID, as an electrical engineer, and I worked for Ofcom before first coming into the House. Those two areas correspond to the two brief points that I should like to make.
As an electrical engineer, I implemented calling line ID and the withholding of calling line ID for many business systems across Europe and the world. Calling line ID is a useful facility; we should not blame the technology. Having implemented it, and having written the code for it and looked at the bytes that carry information across telephone systems, I know that even when the calling line ID is withheld, the number is still present and is still sent. The hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) mentioned that it is technically possible to ensure that the numbers of those who make nuisance calls are obtained, whether through the equipment manufacturers or regulation, or a combination of both. I should like there to be an industry working group on this. The industry should be able to take relatively simple steps to ensure that the numbers of those who make these calls are recorded and are available, so that regulatory enforcement can be carried out.
I worked for Ofcom for six years before first entering Parliament. I yield to no one in my admiration for Ofcom, not even the Minister—sometimes we get quite competitive about this. Ofcom is an excellent organisation, with fine people who are highly qualified—great economists and technologists—but when it is considering what resource to spend on enforcement, it will necessarily consider the impact of the harm that it is trying to address and will look to calculate that harm in economic terms.
In this instance, Ofcom may be severely underestimating the harm that results from nuisance calls. Like many hon. Members in the Chamber, I have been contacted by constituents who suffer these calls, and I have my personal experience to go on. I registered with the TPS service, of which I was very aware, working in telecommunications, yet I receive up to 10 silent and nuisance calls every week on my fixed land line. For me, they are a nuisance and an irritation, but for those who are more vulnerable and less comfortable with technology, they can be worrying and upsetting. We may be underestimating the cost by not considering the cost to society and our economy of increasing the mistrust of technology in this regard.
We are already aware that many demographics are reluctant to go online. There are 10 million people in this country who rarely or never use the internet. Nuisance calls, together with spam and other harm, which we have considered today, increases the mistrust of technology in our society, and this represents a barrier to getting more people from particular demographics online. That is a brake on our economy. This issue can only get more important. In future, technology will become increasingly a part of our lives. We already think it is a part of our lives, and some of us already find it difficult getting away from our mobile phones and tablets, but that will increase.
It is essential that Ofcom, and the Minister and this Government, send a strong message to people throughout the country and to businesses that a person’s phone, PC or tablet is, just like their home, their castle. They should be able to be secure and unmolested. I hope that the Minister takes that message away with him.
Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) on securing this debate and thank all hon. Members for their wise contributions, which have shown considerable consensus.
The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) mentioned the need for stronger regulation, but we are looking for more regulatory activism, because there are already quite a lot of powers for regulators on the statute book. We are after more compliance and more enforcement, and we should perhaps look at the regulators’ tools. In my intervention on the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Mr McKenzie), I mentioned the regulator having the power to name and shame companies that are flouting and abusing regulations. I should like to see more naming and shaming, because significant high street names are engaging in some of these abuses.
I want to focus on the activities of ambulance-chasing lawyers and claims management companies, which are among the worst perpetrators of nuisance calls and have had a boom with PPI mis-selling. It is becoming abundantly clear that the next area of expansion is accident compensation. As Members will realise after the Mid Staffordshire report and as I know from being a member of the Public Accounts Committee, the field of health compensation is growing like Topsy. It is so cheap for companies to make randomly generated calls that that will be the emerging nuisance.
We have seen how prevalent daily hounding is by text, e-mail and telephone. Which? reports that 74% of people have been contacted in that way. As we have mentioned, it is the most vulnerable people—the people at home and not working—who are being plagued the most by this menace. Let us call it what it is: harassment. Numerous calls can be made during a day.
Sometimes consumers unwittingly find themselves entering into contracts that cause them significant financial detriment and are fleeced for payments without any service being delivered. Which? told me of an 87-year-old housebound gentleman who was quite deaf and frail. He was on the Telephone Preference Service register, had not taken out any loans for years and had no PPI, but during a call, he was persuaded to give his credit card details to a claims management company, which promptly relieved him of £250. I call that theft. The regulatory system needs to be able to take prompt and severe action against companies that engage in such activities.
In the time available to me, I want to highlight what consumers can do, given that the regulators are being a bit lily-livered about dealing with the issue. Richard Herman has fought back successfully against being plagued by such companies. The man is a complete hero of mine. He hit the headlines last year when he successfully brought a claim against PPI Claimline in the small claims court for compensation for the nuisance calls that he received.
I must advise hon. Members that the even better news is that Richard Herman has done it again. He was recently cold called about his accident. He played along with the caller, who—illegally—would not say who they were, kept plugging away and asking the question and eventually discovered that they were from a 260-person firm of solicitors called Scott Rees. Mr Herman contacted Scott Rees on the phone and advised them that he would charge them £10 a minute for any further time that he spent being contacted by the firm or its lead-generating system. Sure enough, the firm called him again, so he took great pleasure in invoicing it for £230 and received a cheque. Consumers can fight back. Good luck to Mr Herman; he has obviously found himself a nice little earner.
Mr Herman has set up a website at saynotocoldcalls.com, where he outlines a six-point plan to deal with cold callers. It is probably much more use than the advice that Ofcom gave to the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart) and a fraction of the length. Mr Herman’s first point of advice is to record the telephone call and then to play along to find out the company name, advise the company that it will be invoiced £10 a minute if it calls again, wait for it to call again and then send it an invoice and sue in small claims court if it does not pay. Thanks to Mr Herman, there is a precedent.
We would all do well to advise our constituents that that is the way forward. When cold callers get to Mr Herman, it will cost them, but he says that it would deter them more if penalties were higher. That comes back to what we have all been saying about the regulators taking more action where detriment occurs. Much more should be done in terms of spot fines to curb such behaviour. Until we start showing that we will take action against cold callers, they will continue; it is just too profitable for them not to do so.
We might need to examine the activities of companies that present direct debit instructions to banks, which leaves consumers exposed, and to consider codes of practice in that regard. Telecommunications providers that allow scammers, particularly from overseas, to use our network have a big role to play. We are aware of other abuses that involve re-routing through UK numbers, the owners of which are often presented with significant bills. I hope that the Minister will consider that bigger issue and engage with other Ministers about it.
As we have discussed, there are lots of regulatory underlaps in this area, and many different agencies are involved. That is the challenge for the Minister. As we have heard, we have a good opportunity now to tackle the issue. We have all had enough of such attacks on our privacy, and we must engage with the industry on behalf of consumers, who do not deserve this nuisance.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Havard. I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) on securing this debate. It is obvious from the exchanges so far that the present system is failing and totally unsatisfactory. It does not work in any meaningful sense. If we are to stop the plague of unwanted and unsolicited calls from which we all suffer, something must be done—and quickly.
Like colleagues, I have raised the issue in the House on numerous occasions, the last of which was 8 November, when after my question to the Leader of the House I received a response from the Minister. We all know the Minister to be effective and diligent; I sense he hears a “but” coming. I quote from his letter to me:
“I share your concern about this issue and fully understand the nuisance this causes your constituents. I agree that we need a more effective system which ensures that consumers are effectively protected against such calls.”
He goes on to say:
“I am aware that enforcement of the protections offered under PECR has not been very effective”.
That is certainly true, and from what we have heard I think that other Members would endorse it.
I do not want to be too critical of the Minister, as he has indicated that he is determined to push ahead with improvements. Indeed, he continues in his letter:
“I have pushed for improvements in this area.”
I am aware that efforts have been made, but numerous suggestions have also been made in this debate. We must limit how many times a company can call a particular answer machine to once every 24 hours. I understand that that has been knocked about and debated previously, but if it could be enforced, that would be a major step forward. I also understand that efforts have been made to clarify existing policy on issues such as calculating abandoned call rates, when an information message is to be played and what information it may or may not contain.
Ofcom has also made it clear that it is willing to tighten regulations further on answer machine detection technology, which is improving all the time, if such calls continue to cause harm. I assure Ofcom that they are continuing to cause concern, and I hope that it will act more robustly in future.
As we have heard, the Information Commissioner’s Office enforces breaches of the privacy and electronic communications regulations and of the Data Protection Act 1998 when a company uses a person’s name and number. If I read regulation 19 correctly, it requires companies making automated marketing calls to have the prior consent of the subscriber being called. Live marketing calls cannot be made to anyone who has indicated a general objection to receiving such calls or informed the caller that they do not wish to receive them.
As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) before he had to leave, there is also an issue about ticking the box on other forms and whether that counters one’s entry on the Telephone Preference Service register. Clearly, when they have registered with TPS, people think that that is job done. Many unsolicited and silent calls arise through the use of automated systems used by commercial call centres. Silent calls are of particular concern to the vulnerable and elderly. Any automated calls—those where the recipient of the call does not have the chance to speak to a real person—must be made with the consent of the recipient, and the identity of the caller must be included.
Ofcom’s revised statement of policy, of September 2008, specifically identified abandoned or silent calls as examples of persistent misuse:
“An abandoned call is where a connection is established but terminated by the caller even though the call has been answered by a consumer. Our policy is that these calls should play an information message to inform the consumer who made the call.”
What happens if that information message is not played?
As we have heard, such calls cause particular distress to the elderly and vulnerable. More than 70% of complaints received by Ofcom about silent and abandoned calls are from recipients who have received two or more silent calls a day from the same company, often over a period of days or weeks. Ofcom estimates that more than 22% of the population have experienced silent calls on their landline in the past six months.
The aim must be for a system in which our constituents do not need to complain because they can register with the Telephone Preference Service—that is it, job done, no more calls. If the calls did keep coming, there would be a clear breach of the rules and action should follow.
I have seen statistics that indicate that TPS operates with an 85% success rate; I can only assume that I, and most of my constituents, fall within the other 15%. Such calls seem to come in phases, with flurries of activity. PPI has been a particular plague in recent months, but people do not need such middlemen. If people go into their bank and fill in a claim form, the cheque will come to them in the post without having to send 10%, 20% or 50% to the middlemen.
The TPS does not affect automated diallers and recorded messages, so it recommends registering with Silent CallGard. That also confuses people. We need a much simpler system.
I am of an age at which I can remember knocks on the door from door-to-door salesmen selling anything from brushes to the “Encyclopaedia Britannica.” Nuisance calls are a modern menace equivalent to those door-to-door salesmen. Our constituents need a single point of contact with adequate resources and full powers to regulate that nuisance industry. When will that happen?
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Havard. I congratulate the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) on securing this important debate. The fact that hon. Members on both sides of the House have spoken demonstrates that he was right to press for the debate. He set out clearly the technical issues that we are facing.
I am also grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster Central (Ms Winterton), who first drew the problem to my attention. She is demonstrating her concern by sitting here and listening to the debate, which will not end in a whipped vote. What would demonstrate greater commitment than that?
Nuisance calls are a rapidly growing problem, and their number has trebled since the general election. I hope the Minister is paying attention, because this is one issue on which he cannot say, “What did you do for 13 years?” The fact is that this is a new problem for which he needs to find a new solution.
Some 47% of adults surveyed say they have received nuisance calls. The hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) is absolutely right that it is shocking that 76% of people who have signed up to TPS are still receiving nuisance calls. That shows that, even when people behave perfectly sensibly and responsibly, they are still pestered, even if they have not displayed the degree of entrepreneurialism recommended by the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price).
The seriousness of the problem was demonstrated in the speeches of my hon. Friends the Members for Inverclyde (Mr McKenzie), for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Cathy Jamieson) and for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah). The calls are not only a nuisance; they can become threatening to some people, and they can also lead to serious financial frauds and scams. That is why it is important that the Government take serious action.
The briefing from Ofcom on its work is interesting, but Ofcom, too, is asking for changes to the regulatory framework. Ofcom would like to be allowed to share information with the Information Commissioner’s Office, which highlights the problem—we need a single regulator, a single port of call. Sharing information will not be enough; we need one place where people can go with the confidence that they will receive a proper answer. What discussions has the Minister had with his colleagues in the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills on introducing one seamless operation to address this scourge of modern life?
Ofcom also mentioned the difficulty of addressing the problem of nuisance calls given its limited resources. The Minister is responsible for cutting Ofcom’s budget by 28%. When he did so, I am sure he thought it would be a cut without consequences for the general public because Ofcom is part of the Government machinery that is invisible to ordinary members of the public. In practice, such cuts have real implications, and he must think about whether Ofcom has the resources it needs to address nuisance calls.
I reiterate what other hon. Members have said: Ofcom should be the lead institution, because people have heard of Ofcom. But it is not simply a question of beefing up Ofcom; we also need a new framework based on the important principle that people are entitled to their privacy and should be in control of their own personal information.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central said, the issue is not only with nuisance calls but with people’s use of the internet and new technology in general. One of the main inhibitors when people go online is their anxiety about loss of privacy, and nuisance calls are another good example of that. The Government, who are pursuing a policy of digital by default, must energetically address that anxiety.
Members on both sides of the House agree that unwanted calls are a nuisance and that we need a fresh approach. Will the Minister say something about the forthcoming communications White Paper, which has been rather delayed, and commit to including nuisance calls in that and in new legislation? We hope to see a framework and outline for those things in the Queen’s Speech, so that we can get moving on the problems.
I hope the Minister will be able to address the following issues in the White Paper. There should be a single complaints portal and a single regulator. There should also be changes to the rules on consent. At the moment, withdrawing consent is difficult once it has been given. If a person gives consent to a firm, the firm can carry on using that consent, even if the person subsequently signs up to the TPS. The firm can also sell on those data. We must enable people to retract consent simply and straightforwardly. I would also like the Minister to explore the possibility of ensuring that third-party marketing consent expires after three months.
It would help if the Minister said a little more about the monetary penalties available. Does he believe that the ICO needs to have stronger powers to issue fines and monetary penalties? These firms have an interest in making a high number of calls. They have a financial interest in exceeding the 3% of abandoned and nuisance calls permitted under the existing regulations. As long as they have a financial interest in doing so and it is difficult to tackle the technology, they will carry on doing that, so the only way to deal with it is for a strong, powerful financial disincentive through the fines mechanism.
Finally, we need to address the technology question. I was pleased to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central, who probably knows more about the technology than anyone else in the Chamber, say that it can be done. With a number of the culture, media and sports policy issues that we have debated, the initial stance of the industry has been, “Oh, it is not technically possible to do that,” although it has then turned out to be possible.
Hon. Members have suggested that even if the telephone number of the caller cannot be released to the recipient, the recipient should be able to complain to Ofcom and refer to the call, so that Ofcom can trace it. That is sensible. Another suggestion, equally important, is that mobile phone companies should be able to provide consumers with spam-filtering technology, to help them to tackle the problem of spam text messages, which all of us have received about PPI.
This is an important issue—we agree on that—and it is a new issue, so I am not blaming the Minister for not having dealt with it earlier, because he could not be expected to have that much foresight of the situation. The problem having now arisen, however, we clearly do not have the necessary institutional and legal machinery in place, so he needs to act. I hope that he will make a commitment to act in the forthcoming communications White Paper.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)
It is a pleasure to appear under your chairmanship, Mr Havard. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) for securing this important Back-Bench debate and hon. Friends and hon. Members for their valuable contributions, including the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Mr McKenzie); my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart); the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Cathy Jamieson), whom I have met to talk about the issue; my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart), who is running a prominent campaign and whom I have also met to talk about the issue; the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), whom I meet regularly to talk about a range of issues because, as the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) rightly pointed out, she is the one in the House with the technical knowledge; my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price); my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), or previous Friend, because he clearly thinks I am doing a useless job, although he can get back into my good books by making a helpful intervention about what a marvellous job I am doing; and of course the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland. All those hon. Members made vocal contributions, which means that they are regulated by the Information Commissioner, whereas the right hon. Member for Doncaster Central (Ms Winterton) made a silent contribution by being in the Chamber to monitor proceedings, so she is technically regulated by Ofcom for the purposes of the debate, and that goes to the nub of the problem.
Without wishing to turn the debate into some kind of tit-for-tat exchange with the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland, with whom I would like to say I have a good relationship on the issues we cover together, the problem is not new, although it is becoming prominent. Let me make no bones about taking the problem seriously. I know it is a problem from my own postbag, because, of the correspondence with the Department by hon. Members, I suspect that the majority is about nuisance calls, although I have not done an actual stock-take. All hon. Members contributing to the debate have made it clear that their constituents are genuinely affected by the problem, from those finding it mildly irritating to vulnerable people who find it sinister and intimidating. We must do more to tackle it.
Let me make a small contextual point: not all marketing calls are a bad thing. In this country, we have a successful direct marketing industry which is worth £14 billion—mail as well as calls—and employs almost 400,000 people. We must therefore recognise that it is an important industry and that, in many cases, a direct call can help a consumer. To return to the main point and to the thrust and mood of the debate, however, we must do more to combat the menace of silent and unsolicited marketing calls.
As I implied at the beginning of my remarks, and many hon. Members including my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan have made the point, there is some confusion in the regulatory structure. The Information Commissioner’s Office is responsible for the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003, the result of a European directive. It is therefore responsible for live marketing calls, when someone calls people at home, and for automated recorded message calls, when a recorded person calls people at home. Ofcom has stepped into the breach—I think well—to deal with silent and abandoned calls, which are not directly regulated but are now covered by Ofcom because it has powers to deal with persistent misuse by telecoms companies. That is where Ofcom’s role exists.
In 2010, we made an important change, by increasing the fines available. I will not make a party political point because that process was already under way under the previous Government; I am sure that a different Government would also have increased the fines. A penalty of £50,000 for persistent misuse is clearly chickenfeed to a large multinational company; that has been increased, so Ofcom can now fine up to £2 million. In May 2011, we gave the Information Commissioner’s Office for the first time the power to fine, so that it can now fine companies up to £500,000 for serious breaches of the privacy and electronic communications regulations. Previously, it could only issue a fine of up to £5,000 through a magistrates court. The new powers, which came into effect about a year ago in January 2012, once the ICO had updated its statutory guidance, are being used and have resulted in substantial fines, such as the £440,000 imposed on two illegal marketeers. These are, therefore, to an extent early days for the use of the powers, although that may sound odd. I meet regularly with the ICO and with Ofcom to discuss what they are doing to work together and to use the powers. I am confident that we will see more fines.
It is worth remembering that the ICO and Ofcom are not in a position simply to be told about a breach and issue a fine the next day. They have to go through due process and they have to be sure of their facts. Although I suspect that that is frustrating, in particular for people who are watching the debate and want to see action and more fines, I am confident that there will be more fines along the way. That is quite depressing, however, in a funny way, because it shows the problem is continuing.
I too share the frustration that two regulators are involved, which is something that we want to look at in our White Paper. Now that I know that the Labour party’s position is that Ofcom should be the single regulator, I invite the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland, as well as all stakeholders and those interested, to make a response to our White Paper. We will not set out our definitive position in the White Paper, but we will set out the options. The Government being a co-ordinated and seamless machine, as we know, it is the case that the ICO is covered by the Ministry of Justice, while Ofcom is covered by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, although a young, energetic and vigorous Minister is stepping into the breach to cover both issues and to be with hon. Members in the debate today.
I meet regularly with the ICO, Ofcom and the Telephone Preference Service. One thing they have done in the light of those meetings is to improve the information available on the internet. It is now relatively straightforward to navigate the Ofcom and ICO websites. On the Ofcom website the nature of the call received is detailed, and if it falls to the other regulator a button can be clicked to go straight through to it, and vice versa. They are co-ordinating their work.
It is important to go through some of the other issues. The hon. Lady referred to a single regulator. I hear what she says about consent, and I will certainly have a closer look at that. It is clear that authorised consent must be obtained from a consumer before contacting them, but it is also clear from the debate that hon. Members have the impression that some companies are playing fast and loose with that. It is possible to impose a fine for breaching that requirement, but I will look in more detail at how consumers may seek redress.
I make it absolutely clear that companies are required to provide calling line identification when they call, and if a UK company uses an overseas call centre it will fall within the regulations. It is of course much more difficult to deal with a company that not only uses an overseas call centre, but is based overseas with no UK operation. Better technology is coming forward to identify companies that withhold their number, and I am sure that hon. Members saw in BT’s useful brief that better technology is available for phones and the services from telephone companies to prevent some calls getting through.
Mike Crockart
I welcome the steps that companies such as BT are making, but does the Minister agree that asking people to pay to protect themselves is unacceptable? The cost of a twin set of new BT phones is £70, and many people do not have £70. Are we creating a two-tier system in which those who can afford it can avoid calls, but those who cannot afford it cannot?
Mr Vaizey
BT is a private company and needs revenue to pay for the services it provides. However, I have regular meetings with it and I am happy to take the cost issue up with it. New technology always seems to be expensive initially, but the more people take advantage of it, the more likely it is to come down in price.
Mike Crockart
I apologise for intervening again. My point was not the cost, but that people should not have to go down the road of having to pay the cost. We should concentrate on regulating properly and simply, and stopping the calls in the first place.
Mr Vaizey
I agree with my hon. Friend. As I said, I have regular meetings with the ICO and Ofcom to find out what they are doing. We introduced fines, and we have increased them. We are working to co-ordinate the work of Ofcom and the ICO. These measures are important, and in the White Paper we will address in detail some of the options.
There is more we can do in the interim. As hon. Members know, legislation takes some time. As I said, I regularly meet the ICO and Ofcom, but I will extend those meetings to include stakeholders. They will include BT and other major telephone companies, as well as important stakeholders and consumer groups. As well as having the power to take action, it is right to publicise the opportunities that are available for consumers, and to work with consumer groups and telecoms companies to publicise what redress is available.
It is also important, as some hon. Members said, that we continue to hold to account companies that persistently abuse the system. For example, the ICO stated on its website that it has invited some companies to attend meetings with it to discuss their compliance with the privacy and electronic communications regulations. Those companies include Weatherseal Home Improvements, The Claims Guys, We Fight Any Claim, British Gas, Scottish Power, Anglian Windows, and TalkTalk. One or two of them are certainly improving their procedures as a result of the embarrassment of being included in that list.
Martin Vickers
To get back in the Minister’s good books, I want to say that he is summing up splendidly.
Mr Vaizey
I thank my genuine hon. Friend for his important intervention.
Time is running out, and I am aware that my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan wants to sum up. Let me make it absolutely clear that I take the problem seriously. I know from my postbag how serious it is for hon. Members and their constituents. I am aware of the difficulty of effectively having two regulators, although the ICO takes the lion’s share of responsibility across this landscape. I regularly meet the ICO and Ofcom to co-ordinate action. We have introduced fines in the past two years, so they are relatively recent. They are being used and they will be used in future, but due process must be followed. I give a commitment to the House now to have regular round-table meetings not just with the ICO and Ofcom, but with a range of stakeholders such as BT and consumer groups. Finally, we will set out our proposals for change in our White Paper.
I thank hon. Members for their contributions to the debate. I particularly thank hon. Members who are leading campaigns to deal with the issue. I regard them as allies and supporters, and I hope that they agree that we can work together on this important issue.
Alun Cairns
We have had an extremely successful debate, and I think there has been a significant shift in the Government’s position. I want to show my appreciation to the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Mr McKenzie), my hon. Friends the Members for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart) and for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) and the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), who focused on the complexity of the current position and demonstrated the cross-party theme for action.
I was particularly interested in the response of my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), who focused on the part that trading standards can play. However, that demonstrates the complexity of the matter—they are yet another body that can help. I congratulate him on his work with trading standards in his constituency, and the part that they are playing.
The hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Cathy Jamieson) focused on the vulnerability of many receivers of these calls. Elderly people are disproportionately affected because they spend more time at home. The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) has great experience of the technology available, and said that more can be done technically to identify the telephone numbers of people who withhold them.
My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) highlighted Mr Herman, who is a champion of this campaign. Without question, he has managed to get his own back on some operators—and more power to his elbow. The more we can highlight and champion him, the more confidence that will give to victims of these calls.
A common theme has been the call for a single regulator. The Minister responded positively, and indicated the direction of thinking. We need simplicity and certainty, and we must put the consumer at the front of the issue, not the companies. There is a balance to be struck because not all marketing calls are wrong. There is a part for them to play, but it must be proportionate and within the regulations.
With changing technology, Ofcom needs broader powers so that it can react to circumstances as voice over IP becomes more of an issue and technology develops in ways that we may not even be aware of at the moment. The Minister is absolutely right to say that the private sector has a part to play. I am grateful that he talked about his meetings with the ICO and Ofcom and that telephone providers and operators will come forward. It is exceptionally important to act in co-ordination.
Written Ministerial Statements
(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Advanced Manufacturing Supply Chain Initiative
(11 years, 9 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)
I would like to inform the House of the successful bids from round 2 of the advanced manufacturing supply chain initiative.
A total of 12 supply chain projects will receive approximately £73 million through AMSCI subject to due diligence, with a further £140 million being leveraged from private sector partners.
The supply chain projects cover the aerospace, automotive, chemicals, construction, electronics, materials and offshore wind sectors, and are expected to create over 11,000 new jobs and safeguard another 5,000.
With available finance of up to £125 million, the initiative was established in December 2011 to help existing UK supply chains grow and achieve world-class standards, while encouraging major new suppliers to come and manufacture here in Britain.
The initiative is part funded by the Government’s regional growth fund and is delivered in partnership with the Technology Strategy Board—the UK’s innovation agency—Birmingham city council, and Finance Birmingham on behalf of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.
The Chancellor announced additional funding of £120 million for two further AMSCI rounds in the 2012 autumn statement. The competition brief for these new rounds (AMSCI rounds 3 and 4) will be published today on the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) website: www.innovateuk.org.
Project successes in round 2 include:
“Aerospace Growth Partnership—National Aerospace Technology Exploitation Programme (NATEP)”
Lead Organisation: ADS Group Ltd
Partners: Airbus Operations, Shorts Brothers plc, Spirit Aerosystems (Europe) Ltd, GKN Aerospace Service Ltd, Rolls Royce Goodrich Engine Controls Ltd and Rolls Royce plc
Location: The programme will benefit aerospace SMEs throughout England
“TIONEER”
Lead Organisation: TIMET UK Ltd
Partners: MTC; University of Birmingham
Location: West midlands
“Construction UK Supply Chain Competitiveness and Innovation”
Lead Organisations: J.C. Bamford Excavators Ltd and Perkins Engines
Partners: 48 yellow construction sector suppliers
Location: West midlands, east midlands, east of England, north
“Niche Luxury Vehicle Cluster Supplier Capacity Building Programme”
Lead Organisation: Bentley Motors Ltd (Crewe)
Partners: Rimstock PLC, Thomas Fattorini Ltd, Pilkington Automotive Ltd, ADV Manufacturing Ltd, CAB Automotive Ltd, Borough Ltd, SCA Packaging Ltd, WCM Europe Ltd, Luxfer Gas Cylinders Ltd, Bedford Dials Ltd, Titan Motorsport and Automotive Engineering Ltd, Prodrive Automotive Technology (Europe) Ltd
Location: West midlands, east of England, north-west, south-east
“Proving Integrity of Complex Automotive Systems (PICASSOS)”
Lead Organisation: Ricardo UK Ltd
Partners: Jaguar Land Rover, Axeon, York Metrics, D-RisQ, Oxford university, Coventry university, university of Warwick and York Metrics
Location: West Midlands
“An Advanced Manufacturing Supply Chain for Aluminium Matrix Composite Components with 3D Fibre Reinforcement”
Lead Organisation: Composite Metal Technology Ltd
Partners: C&J Antch & Sons Ltd
Location: South-east, south-west, Yorkshire
“STRIVE—Simulation Tools for Rapid Innovation in Vehicle Engineering”
Lead Organisation: The Northwest Automotive Alliance
Partners: Bentley Motors, VEC (university of Liverpool), Optis, Icona, SimX
Location: North-west
“Flow Reactor Supply Chain”
Lead Organisation: AM Technology
Partner: Autico
Location: North-west, south-west
“Indigenous Sustainable Manufacturing Supply Chain for Solid State Lighting”
Lead Organisation: Zeta Controls Ltd
Partners: Plessey Semiconductors Ltd
Location: South-east, south-west,
“Supply Chain Innovation for UK Production of Large Wind Turbine Gearboxes”
Lead Organisation: David Brown Gear Systems Ltd
Partners: University of Nottingham, Holts Brothers Ltd, university of Huddersfield, Parkers Hannifin Manufacturing UK Ltd, Russlle Ductile Castings Ltd, DHL, Trac Group Ltd, Unilathe
Location: West midlands, east midlands, Yorkshire
“The Composites innovation Cluster (CiC)”
Lead Organisation: Cytec Industrial Materials Ltd
Partners: Cobham Advanced Composites Ltd, Aviation Enterprises Ltd, ARRK Europe Ltd, Sigmatex (UK) Ltd, GE Aviation Systems Ltd (trading through its Dowty Propellers Facility), NetComposites Ltd, Tilsatec (a division of Sirdar Spinning Ltd), Axon Automotive Ltd, Dyne Technology Ltd, FORMAX (UK) Ltd, Technical Fibre Products Ltd, Altair Engineering Ltd, Tods Aerospace Ltd, Gudel Lineartec (UK) Ltd, EPL Composite Solutions Ltd, Granta Design Ltd, FAR-UK Ltd, Assyst Bullmer Ltd, Surface Generation Ltd, Wanwick Manufacturing Group (WMG), Imperial College, National Composites Certification and Evaluation Facility (NCCEF), university of Hertfordshire, Royal Holloway, university of London, university of Nottingham and Cranfield university
Location: West midlands, east midlands, east of England, north-west, south-east, Yorkshire
“Development of Advanced High Temperature Bearing Steel”
Lead Organisation: Tata Steel UK Ltd
Partners: SKF, university of Cambridge, AFRC (university of Strathclyde)
Location: South-west, Yorkshire
Fire Service College
(11 years, 9 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Brandon Lewis)
In my written ministerial statement of 13 December 2012, Official Report column 42WS, I announced that Capita had been chosen as the preferred bidder for the purchase of the Fire Service College following a thorough, fair and open process. I am pleased to inform the House that the sale process has today been successfully concluded, following a full TUPE consultation with college employees and their union representatives.
The college has been sold to Capita for an enterprise value of £10 million, which will be subject to adjustments for stamp duty and to take account of the college’s financial position at completion of sale. This deal will deliver new investment to secure the future of the college, and represents a good deal for taxpayers and value for money for the public purse.
In addition to this consideration, the Department will share in any future profits from the development of college land through a claw-back provision, and will receive further revenue from the sale of a number of houses previously part of the college estate.
More importantly, Capita has also committed to a significant programme of infrastructure and transformation at the college, and is keen to ensure that training courses deliver improved value for money.
Taken together the sale of the college has the potential to deliver an estimated benefit of £30 million to the taxpayer in the first few years and at the same time secure the college’s future.
The Government have insisted on a number of conditions on the sale, including commitments not only that the college will continue in use as a national training college for fire and rescue authorities, but also that it will continue to offer wider national resilience and emergency services training and exercises, and that Government permission will be required if Capita wishes to sell the incident ground.
The Government would like to place on record their thanks to the senior management team and staff of the college for their efforts in bringing the sale to a successful conclusion. The Government also wish Capita every success in its future operation of the college.
Immigration Concession for Syrian Nationals
(11 years, 9 months ago)
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The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)
I am today announcing the renewal of concessions to the immigration rules for Syrian nationals lawfully in the UK.
In the light of the ongoing violent conflict in Syria it has been decided that the UK Border Agency (UKBA) should continue to operate some discretion to enable Syrians legally in the UK to extend their stay here.
Syrians in the UK with valid leave (or leave which has expired within the last 28 days) in specified visa categories will continue to be able to apply to extend their stay in that visa category, or switch into a different specified category from within the UK (with some restrictions) rather than being required to return home first. Those applying will still need to meet the requirements of the relevant visa category, pay the appropriate fee, and adhere to the normal conditions of that category—no access to public funds, for example. If a required document is not accessible due to the civil unrest in Syria UKBA may apply its discretion and the requirement to provide that document may be waived where appropriate.
These concessions will remain in force for one year from today. The Government continue to monitor the situation in Syria closely in order to ensure our response is appropriate and that any emerging risks are addressed.
I am placing a copy of the authorisation for this concession in the Library of the House.
Legal Aid Agency
(11 years, 9 months ago)
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The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)
I am pleased to announce that the Ministry of Justice will create the Legal Aid Agency, a new executive agency, on 1 April 2013.
The Legal Aid Agency will assume responsibility for the administration of legal aid in England and Wales from the Legal Services Commission, a non-departmental public body. On 1 April 2013 the Legal Services Commission will be abolished and the Lord Chancellor will become responsible for securing that legal aid is made available in England and Wales, in line with the provisions contained in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012. That Act also contains the legislative provisions needed to abolish the Legal Services Commission.
Today the framework document which details the governance arrangements between the Department and the Legal Aid Agency has been published. The framework document will come into force on 1 April 2013. In line with the requirements for all executive agencies, the framework document sets out the overarching framework for the governance and accountability arrangements between the Department and the agency.
The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 also requires the Lord Chancellor to designate a civil servant as the director of legal aid casework. This is a statutory office, with the function of making independent decisions on whether to grant legal aid in individual cases. The director will assume this function on 1 April 2013, following the abolition of the Legal Services Commission. I have designated Matthew Coats as the first director of legal aid casework.
The creation of the Legal Aid Agency is an important step for the Ministry of Justice in strengthening the governance arrangements and accountability for legal aid, and ensuring that there is an appropriate delivery structure in place. Legal aid is a significant area of public expenditure and it is vital that its administration is undertaken by an appropriate body.
Part 1 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 will be commenced on 1 April 2013. Part 1 sets out the new framework for legal aid in England and Wales which, as well as the abolition of the Legal Services Commission, includes reforms to the scope of civil legal aid.
Copies of the framework document and code of conduct have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses and on the Department’s website at: www.justice. gov.uk.
Northern Ireland Security Situation
(11 years, 9 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mrs Theresa Villiers)
Following the joint decision by the UK and Irish Governments to wind up the Independent Monitoring Commission in 2011, my predecessor made a commitment to provide bi-annual updates to the House on the security situation in Northern Ireland. This is my first such statement as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
Overall threat in Northern Ireland
Since the statement in July 2012, the threat level in Northern Ireland has remained at “severe”. This means that an attack remains highly likely. There were 24 national security attacks during 2012, compared with 26 attacks in 2011. So far, there have been three national security attacks in 2013. A majority of attacks have involved the use of crude, but potentially lethal, pipe-bomb devices; there were also a number of more sophisticated and serious attacks.
The cowardly murder of prison officer David Black, in November 2012, by a group referred to as the “new IRA” was a brutal reminder of the continuing threat posed by dissident republican terrorists. They continue to target police officers, soldiers and prison officers. Yet these are also attacks on the wider community causing disruption and discomfort to the daily lives of many people.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and the Security Service, along with An Garda Síochána (AGS), continue to demonstrate a robust commitment to bringing to justice those who carry out attacks. Across the island of Ireland 173 arrests and 64 charges were made during 2012. There were also 18 convictions of individuals involved in planning and participating in attacks. Many more attacks were prevented and disrupted.
During 2013, Northern Ireland has a great opportunity to showcase itself through events such as the G8 summit, world police and fire games, and Derry-Londonderry city of culture. The PSNI, the Security Service, and AGS will continue working together to ensure these events happen safely and successfully. PSNI has a wealth of experience at managing large events and will also be able to call for assistance from police services in Great Britain where necessary, particularly with regard to the G8 summit.
Threat to GB from Northern Ireland-related terrorism
In October 2012, the threat level from Northern Ireland related terrorism in GB was reduced from “substantial” to “moderate”. The Security Service reached this assessment on the basis of current intelligence, although it recognises that dissident republican terrorists continue to aspire to conduct attacks in GB. All threat levels are, of course, kept under review.
Activity of republican paramilitary groups
New IRA—In July 2012, a number of disparate groups came together to form an organisation generally referred to as the “new IRA”. This new grouping primarily consists of members of the Real IRA, Republican Action Against Drugs (which conducts brutal shootings against nationalist members of the community) and a number of unaffiliated individuals who we believe have connections to the fatal attack against Massereene barracks in 2009. This group has already demonstrated its lethal intent, claiming responsibility for the murder of David Black last November. The group also conducted an unsuccessful attack in September 2012, in which it attached a bomb to a bicycle as part of a trap to kill police in Londonderry. It has, however, also suffered setbacks. For example, on 6 December 2012 a number of individuals were arrested and charged after being found in possession of an explosively formed projectile capable of penetrating armoured vehicles.
Continuity IRA—This group is dangerous and continues to conduct attack planning. In late January, Continuity IRA (CIRA) claimed responsibility for a shooting attack against police officers in Lurgan, though nobody was injured.
Óglaigh na hÉireann (ONH) has also continued to be active over the past six months. We judge that this group is responsible for two attempted under vehicle car-bomb attacks since December 2012. Fortunately none of these were successful. Had they exploded they would almost certainly have been fatal for anyone in the vicinity, potentially including families and young children. Most recently, we believe that ONH were responsible for throwing a pipe bomb which struck a PSNI vehicle in north Belfast on 30 January.
All of these groups remain heavily involved in criminality, in particular fuel laundering and smuggling, but also drugs, robbery and extortion.
Activity of loyalist paramilitary groups
The leaderships of the main loyalist paramilitary organisations, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), remain committed to their ceasefires. While individuals associated with the UVF were involved in recent loyalist public disorder, the PSNI do not believe that this was sanctioned by the UVF leadership. Both the UDA and the UVF have endorsed calls for an end to the public disorder. Both groups do, however, remain involved in organised crime, including smuggling and other criminal activity.
During the public disorder over 140 police officers were injured. To date there have been more than 170 arrests and over 125 charges. We shall continue to do all we can to support the PSNI in policing the protests and bringing those involved in public disorder and other illegal activities to justice.
Paramilitary style shootings and assaults
Both republican and loyalist paramilitary groups continue to carry out paramilitary style assaults—so-called “punishment attacks”—by which they seek to intimidate whole communities. Within the communities affected there is, rightly, widespread revulsion against such activities.
Co-operation
I meet regularly the Northern Ireland Minister of Justice, David Ford, and the chief constable, Matt Baggott, to discuss the terrorist threat. The Government continue to offer its full support to the PSNI. We are currently examining future funding needs when the current £200 million security package that the Government agreed in 2011 expires in March 2015.
I will also be working with the Minister of Justice, the chief constable and colleagues in Whitehall to ensure the people of Northern Ireland receive the best possible protection against international crime. These include activities such as child abuse and human trafficking. The Government were extremely disappointed at the decision by the Northern Ireland Executive not to pursue a legislative consent motion for the operation of the National Crime Agency in Northern Ireland. We do, however, remain willing to consider proposals by the Executive which would amend the arrangements for the National Crime Agency to reflect Northern Ireland’s specific circumstances.
Cross-border co-operation with our colleagues in the Republic of Ireland remains excellent. AGS has made a significant number of arrests in recent months as a result of its own investigations into republican paramilitary activity. This has undoubtedly saved lives. AGS continues to work tirelessly to bring those involved in criminality and terrorism to justice. I speak frequently to the Irish Justice Minister, Alan Shatter.
I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to PSNI Constable Philippa Reynolds, who died in the service of her community on 8 February, and offer my condolences to her family. I would also like to place on record my condolence to the family of Garda Adrian Donohoe who was murdered by criminals operating across the border on 25 January. Both Constable Reynolds and Garda Donohoe died as they worked, to keep people safe in the communities they served.
Conclusion
It is clear from the violence carried out by both republican and loyalist groups that there are still people in Northern Ireland who demonstrate contempt for democracy and the rule of law. Their numbers remain small, but the threat they pose continues to be very real. While these groupings enjoy virtually no public support, sectarianism and division can fuel grievances on which they will seek to capitalise. There is a responsibility on local politicians and community leaders to work together to address sectarianism and build a shared future for everyone in Northern Ireland. For our part, this Government remain fully committed to tackling the threat from terrorism and keeping the people of Northern Ireland safe and secure.
Emergency Towing Vessels
(11 years, 9 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Scotland (Michael Moore)
Following discussions with interested parties in Scotland, the Department for Transport and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, in June 2012 I confirmed that the Government would establish a new contract for an emergency towing vessel to be held in stand-by in waters around Scotland for the duration of the current spending review period.
In parallel, discussions have continued with interested parties in the private sector on possible arrangements to complement this service. I am pleased to announce that agreement has been reached with BP and North Star Shipping to release a vessel to respond to an incident in waters around Scotland. An operational and commercial model has been brokered allowing HM Coastguard to call on the BP-chartered vessel, the Grampian Frontier, to provide support in the event of a pollution incident. North Star Shipping is working with the Maritime and Coastguard Agency to ensure that the crew and equipment are able to respond.
Now that an operational and commercial model has been identified, it is hoped that the scheme will be broadened out to include other suitable vessels identified by offshore industry around Scotland. Oil and Gas UK, who helped to broker the agreement, will work with the Maritime and Coastguard Agency to evaluate operation of the agreement and explore the possibility of other industry vessels that may be suitable to register to assist. As a signal of their commitment, BP also announced investment of up to $250,000 towards new towing equipment to upgrade its fleet of Caledonian regional support vessels, enhancing their ability to respond.
This is the first agreement of its kind in the UK and the private sector partners involved are setting a positive example to wider industry. I am grateful for efforts on the part of Oil and Gas UK, BP and North Star Shipping in facilitating this agreement and to Oil and Gas UK for its assistance with future wider industry participation.
Grand Committee
(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Arrangement of Business
(11 years, 9 months ago)
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The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester)
My Lords, I have to advise the Committee that if there is a Division in the House the Committee will adjourn for 10 minutes.
Local Authorities (Contracting Out of Tax Billing, Collection and Enforcement Functions) (Amendment) (England) Order 2013
(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Hanham
That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Local Authorities (Contracting Out of Tax Billing, Collection and Enforcement Functions) (Amendment) (England) Order.
Relevant document: 16th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Hanham)
My Lords, this order will enable local authorities to implement localised council tax support from 1 April when council tax benefit is abolished. These changes are part of the Government’s wider policy of decentralisation. The order will amend the Local Authorities (Contracting Out of Tax Billing, Collection and Enforcement Functions) Order 1996, which allows local authorities, if they choose to do so, to contract out statutory services relating to the administration of local taxes which they would normally have to provide themselves: for example, the calculation of individual council tax liabilities and the serving of demand notices.
New administrative functions will be created when localised schemes are implemented. This order will add these new functions to those that can be contracted out already. The new functions are: the issuing of council tax reduction decision letters; the payment of reductions in certain circumstances where the billing authority is of the opinion that it would be appropriate; the serving of penalty notices in connection with a reduction; the repayment of an amount paid in connection with a penalty issued in connection with reductions under local schemes that has been subsequently quashed; and the calculation and collection of premiums on long-term empty dwellings.
The Council Tax Reduction Schemes (Detection of Fraud and Enforcement) (England) Regulations 2013 deal with the detection of fraud and enforcement mechanisms relating to local authority schemes. They provide local authorities with the means of protecting their reduction schemes from attempted fraud and deterring those who may be considering making a false claim.
These regulations are being put forward for approval using powers in Sections 14A, 14B and 14C of the Local Government Finance Act 1992, which were inserted by Section 14 of the Local Government Finance Act 2012. These powers allow for the creation of criminal offences, the creation of civil penalties that may be imposed by local authorities, and regulations providing powers to require information from individuals or organisations.
These powers are broad, and noble Lords and Members in the other place rightly sought assurances from the Government during the passage of the Bill on how the Government would seek to exercise them. A statement of intent, Localising Support for Council Tax: Information Sharing and Powers to Tackle Fraud, was published in July last year and committed the Government to bringing forward proportionate and measured proposals that would not go beyond the existing powers relating to council tax benefit, while replicating only the powers that were essential in the context of reduction schemes. These regulations are the result of that commitment, and I shall explain how that has been translated into specific provisions.
Regulation 2 sets out a number of definitions, but noble Lords may wish to note how we are defining a council tax offence for the purposes of subsequent regulations. A council tax offence is defined as any criminal offence committed in making an application for, or in the award of, a council tax reduction; or an offence committed for the purpose of facilitating the commission of such an offence; or any attempt or conspiracy to commit such an offence. It does not include offences committed for wider purposes related to council tax administration and enforcement, nor for other criminal offences committed against a local authority. Noble Lords may wish to bear this context in mind when examining later regulations that deal with requiring information and the creation of offences.
Regulation 3 provides for local authorities to authorise individuals to undertake investigations into council tax offences. The provisions are equivalent to those that are currently in place for local authorities to authorise investigations into housing benefit and council tax benefit cases. However, the regulation restricts how authorised officers may exercise their powers. They may do so only,
“for the purpose of preventing, detecting and securing evidence of the commission … of a council tax offence”.
This does not allow for powers to be exercised for routine checks on individuals or, more generally, to verify the content of applications.
Regulation 4 provides that authorised officers may require a person to supply information that is needed, again for the prevention, detection and securing of evidence of council tax offences. Where the person from whom information is to be required falls within the list of persons set out under paragraph (3), information may be required only in relation to a particular person, and where there are reasonable grounds for believing that the identified person, or a family member,
“has committed, is committing or intends to commit a council tax offence”.
The classes of people who may be required to provide information are equivalent to those who may be required to provide information for welfare benefit offences, with the removal of certain groups. For instance, we are not providing for officers to require information from telecommunication providers, since such requests should instead be exercised, monitored and reported on through legal avenues under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and be subject to requirement for judicial approval and oversight.
Regulation 5 provides for electronic access to information to be provided to an authorised officer, where such arrangements can be made. Local authority investigators have similar powers to seek electronic access to information in relation to welfare benefit investigations. Under the regulations, the powers to require electronic access to information may be used only where the electronic records are likely to contain relevant information for the purpose of preventing, detecting and securing evidence of the commission of a council tax offence.
Regulation 6 provides that it will be a criminal offence intentionally to delay or obstruct an authorised officer when exercising their power to require information. It is also an offence to refuse or to fail, without reasonable excuse, to provide information or access to electronic records when required to do so. I hope noble Lords will accept that deliberately frustrating an investigation should itself be an offence. These offences are similar to those that exist in relation to delay or the obstruction of an officer in relation to a welfare benefit investigation.
Regulation 7 provides that it will be a criminal offence to make a false representation or to provide or allow to be provided information that is known to be false in order to gain a reduction.
Regulation 8 makes provision, similar to that currently in force for council tax benefit, that a failure to notify a relevant change in circumstances would be an offence. The regulation also makes it an offence knowingly to cause or to allow another person to fail to notify a change in circumstances affecting their entitlement to a reduction.
Regulation 9 deals with offences that may be committed by a body corporate and the ability to prosecute the officers themselves if the offence was due to their actions or omissions.
Regulation 10 deals with the legal timescales for prosecutions.
Regulation 11 provides that a local authority may offer to impose a penalty on a person rather than prosecute them through the courts. In the face of sufficient evidence to prosecute, the person may wish to avoid a criminal sentence and voluntarily accept a financial penalty. In return, the local authority can avoid the need to prepare a legal case and the time and resources involved. Any such agreement would be subject to a cooling-off period and may be offered only when there is sufficient evidence to institute proceedings, so that there is no question of any person with a legitimate defence being pressured or forced into accepting a penalty against their will.
Regulations 12 and 13 extend the existing system of financial penalties that local authorities may impose for council tax discounts, so that similar penalties may be imposed in relation to council tax reductions.
An authority may impose a £70 penalty on a person when they are negligent in providing information or notifying a change in circumstances that lead to them receiving a reduction beyond their entitlement. These are for non-criminal actions and are at the discretion of the local authority. If a person has been charged with an offence or issued with a penalty as an alternative to prosecution, a penalty may not be imposed. There is no question of penalties being imposed under these two regulations when a person has been charged with an offence and a prosecution subsequently fails or lacks sufficient evidence.
In conclusion, these regulations in large part reflect the provisions that are currently in place for the internal administration and enforcement of council tax benefit. If approved, they will carry out two essential functions. They will enable local authorities to deliver their local schemes, whether using internal resources, external providers or a mixture of both, as well as providing a proportionate but robust system of enforcement powers to combat attempted fraud and seek information from organisations that can assist in bringing offenders to book.
Localising council tax reduction delivers on three of the Government’s key priorities: devolving power and control over local matters from the centre; reforming the welfare system to make work pay; and reducing the deficit. It is important that we provide authorities with what they need to deliver a cost-effective council tax system and to combat attempts to defraud them and honest local taxpayers. Together, this is what these statutory instruments will do, and I commend them to the Committee.
Lord Shipley
My Lords, first, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I shall comment on this one and on the next, too, so I need speak only once.
I have a desire for a reassurance that in all the contracting out of existing functions of local authorities, whether they have been previously contracted out or may be in future, exactly the same standards will apply on matters concerning data protection and in the duties, obligations and service standards of those to whom work is contracted out. I am thinking in particular of the role of bailiffs and what standards of service they will be required to work to. There has been a discussion and things have been done about this in the past year or two, but I seek the Minister’s assurance that exactly those same standards, or perhaps even better standards, will apply in future.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for speaking before me, because it has reminded me to say that I am also a vice-president of the Local Government Association, which I may have forgotten otherwise. The points that he made are ones that I would also have wished to make, and I will not repeat them. I refer particularly to the point on bailiffs, which was very well made, and I look forward to hearing the response from the Minister. I will come back to the freedom of information point.
I thank the Minister for her explanation, as it was good to have such a detailed explanation of the instruments. It answered a couple of the questions that I have, although I have others. Obviously, we support measures that would prevent fraud, detect it and take action against it, and any system of enforcement should be effective and fair. We entirely concur with those principles. My questions are on points of clarity, because I was not 100% clear. Legislation can sometimes be opaque, and it would be helpful to have some more information.
As the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, was saying, when services are contracted out, particularly in this case, very detailed confidential financial information can be provided to a private company or organisation. I understand that under data protection legislation, the responsibility would remain with the local authority, but would the DCLG give any guidance to local authorities on how they may enforce their responsibilities to organisations to which they have contracted out those services? What redress would remain available to an individual who felt that their confidentiality had been breached in any way? Would that remain a matter for the local authority, or would responsibility lie with the company that held the information and had inadvertently or wrongly released it?
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, for their questions, which were, as I would have suspected, practical and straightforward, and I shall try to deal with them in that way.
The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, asked about data protection. It is correct that local authorities remain the responsible authority, even though they have contracted out to a private company or have made alternative arrangements. They are responsible for ensuring that the provisions of the Data Protection Act 1998 are met. That position has not changed; that is the way it is at the moment.
The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, also talked about bailiffs. The use of bailiffs has worried this House for some time. We are very clear that aggressive bailiff activity is completely unacceptable, and we are committed to bringing forward effective proposals to protect the public and ensure that they act proportionately. The proposals are to implement Part 3 of the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007, which would provide legal protection by introducing a comprehensive code that governed, among other things, when and how bailiffs can enter somebody’s premises, what goods they can and cannot seize if necessary and sell, and what fees they can charge. Aggression, force and enforced sale are more or less the complaints that we have heard all along, and we are trying to deal with them.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
Is the Minister also aware of circumstances recently when bailiffs entered people’s homes to try to remove property but the poverty was such that they could retrieve nothing to sell anyway?
Baroness Hanham
I know that that matter has been raised, but that will be covered by what we are trying to do with the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007. The noble Baroness is correct that if there is nothing there that enables a debt to be dealt with, bailiffs ought to report that to local authorities and not just go ahead. We have had a lot of discussions on bailiffs and the Government are very sympathetic to what has been said. Efforts will be made to try to restore some confidence in the bailiff service, which is not very strong at the moment.
The data protection standards will, as I have already said to the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, remain as at present, with the local authorities being responsible for them. I think the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, asked what an offence committed by a body corporate is. It is when an offence has been proved to be committed with the consent or connivance of, or attributed to any neglect on the part of, a director, manager, secretary, or other similar officer purporting to act in any capacity. The number of occasions when a body corporate may be involved in an individual’s council tax seems to me to be remarkably slim, but it is there just in case.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
No, I think not. My question was about corporate bodies in relation to the power to require information by the authorised officer. Regulation 6 is entitled, “Delay, obstruction etc of authorised officer”. It refers only to an individual, but an authorised officer can require an organisation or a body to provide information. I do not think that that is the question that the noble Baroness is answering. I am happy for her to write to me on that.
Baroness Hanham
I shall write to the noble Baroness, if she does not mind, on the people who are entitled to ask for information. I apologise for not answering her question correctly.
The proof of intention to commit an offence is not very easy, but it can be obtained or come from information that is made available, such as anonymous tip-offs, discrepancies between records that people become concerned about, reports of fraud from the DWP, and so on. It may not appear very often, but there are areas where it would be possible to demonstrate intention.
I hope that I have more or less picked up all the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith. As I say, they are essentially practical, but if I have missed any, I will come back, but as I say, I hope that I have addressed the main points.
Council Tax Reduction Schemes (Detection of Fraud and Enforcement) (England) Regulations 2013
(11 years, 9 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Baroness Hanham
That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Council Tax Reduction Schemes (Detection of Fraud and Enforcement) (England) Regulations 2013.
Relevant document: 16th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.
Gateshead and Northumberland (Boundary Change) Order 2013
(11 years, 9 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Baroness Hanham
That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Gateshead and Northumberland (Boundary Change) Order 2013.
Relevant document: 17th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Hanham)
My Lords, there are two elements under these two orders and I wonder whether I might deal with them both together. The first is the Gateshead and Northumberland (Boundary Change) Order 2013, and the other is the East Hertfordshire and Stevenage (Boundary Change) Order 2013. I will talk to them both if that is acceptable to your Lordships.
The Boundary Commission invited local authorities across the country to tell it whether there were any boundary anomalies that councils believed should be investigated. The Boundary Commission was prepared to undertake reviews only where both the affected local authorities agreed. In essence, only three cases came out of that request, and these are the final two.
These orders are very straightforward; they transfer small areas of land, and in the case of East Hertfordshire and Stevenage a few houses, from one local authority to another. The transfer between Northumberland and Gateshead is basically a case of the transfer of one house, which ratifies the position on the ground. The property and its residents are already registered with Northumberland, although at present they are not in the county. The first order simply puts that right. In both cases, the councils concerned agreed that a change is necessary and supported a boundary change.
It might help if I explained the statutory framework that allows change and the context within which boundary change is now being considered. On the statutory framework, this is the second use of the powers in the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act for boundary change. Under the legislation, a boundary change can take place between two local authorities only on the recommendation of the Boundary Commission, whose responsibility is to give advice to the Secretary of State. In doing so, it: gathers evidence, for example from the councils involved and local people; publishes and consults on draft recommendations based on this evidence; and, once it has considered the representations, makes final recommendations to the Secretary of State. When considering whether a change is desirable, the boundary commissioners bear in mind the statutory criteria that change should lead to effective and convenient local government and reflect community identities and interests.
Secondly, the context within which boundary change is being considered must ensure that local government boundaries reflect communities and that councils can deliver effective and efficient services. This has been described as,
“a keystone of effective democratic local government”.
A boundary that cuts through a property or an estate is unlikely to be convenient to the property owners, who may have to have dealings with two separate local authorities: for example for council tax, refuse collection or planning purposes. While local government will in practice generally put in place informal arrangements—or indeed make formal agreements to deal with such situations, as they have done in the case of Northumberland and Gateshead—the very fact that they need to do so can be wasteful of resources and not conducive to effective and convenient local government.
It is recognised that moving a boundary and changing the area of a local authority is a fairly large step to take, particularly when the number of residents affected is small. We would expect councils to work together to alleviate the impact of such boundaries. However, we recognise that, especially in cases where local people do not feel an affiliation to the area of their local authority, to reflect the concerns of local people it is best to take that further step and amend the boundary.
The Gateshead and Northumberland boundary review concerns a property—a bungalow and associated grounds—part of which is in Gateshead and another part of which is in Northumberland. The order realigns the boundary so that the property is transferred from the metropolitan borough of Gateshead into the county of Northumberland, as is the entirety of the gardens and grounds of it and neighbouring properties. Not unsurprisingly, very few representations were made, but the county council, the local councillor and the parish concerned are supportive.
On the East Hertfordshire and Stevenage (Boundary Change) Order 2013, as a result of the current boundary position 19 properties within three culs-de-sac are represented by East Hertfordshire District Council, while 15 are represented by Stevenage Borough Council. However, the existing boundary means that the access for all the East Hertfordshire residents in the affected properties is via Stevenage Borough. This order realigns the boundary so that all the affected properties are in Stevenage.
The commission received 20 submissions on its draft recommendations from East Hertfordshire District Council, Stevenage Borough Council, three district and county councillors, 12 residents directly affected by the boundary change, two members of the public and one other. All those who responded were unanimous in their support of the proposed boundary change. It is clear that local people consider the current boundary arrangements to be anomalous and that residents clearly relate to a Stevenage community identity.
The Boundary Commission has confirmed that the changes will provide for effective and convenient local government. In its view, there is no adverse impact on the local authority’s ability to deliver value for money. In short, the orders implement small boundary changes, and I commend them to the House.
Lord Shipley
My Lords, I support both these simple proposals, which reflect common sense. However, I am puzzled by one matter: why it has taken so long. The final recommendations were published in May 2012, based on the consultation a year ago. Why has it taken nine months for the matter to arrive now, in February of the following year? There may be explanations that I have not understood, but it strikes me as a long time when the consultation occurred almost a year ago. Any guidance or further details on the procedure being followed and the timetable to which those involved should keep would be helpful to know.
Lord Rosser
My Lords, we have no objection to the orders, which are clearly not of the greatest significance for the nation. Indeed, when I read them—and in this position one surely has to try to speak for at least two or three minutes—I thought I had been reduced to reading extracts from the Oxford English Dictionary. I feel even more that way since the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, has taken away about 90% of my contribution.
I will raise one or two points for clarification as much as anything. Paragraph 7.3 of the Explanatory Memorandum states that, from its establishment, the Boundary Commission,
“has compiled and maintained a list of boundary anomalies that have been notified to it”.
It goes on to say that the Boundary Commission,
“has sought the views of the local authorities concerned on all these anomalies”.
It says further:
“In three cases there was local agreement”.
Are there in fact lots of cases that the Boundary Commission is looking at in which there is no agreement? Obviously, one inference can be drawn from that. If there is no agreement, are we to assume, as paragraph 7.2 rather implies, that the Boundary Commission would not put any recommendations in front of the Secretary of State? In the two cases that we are considering, I think the Minister has probably already answered the question in her opening comments, but who actually initiated these two? Was it one or more of the four local authorities concerned? Was it the Boundary Commission’s own initiative? I can hardly imagine it was at the request of the Secretary of State, which is the other basis on which a review might be undertaken.
I will make exactly the same point that the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, so eloquently made as to what exactly has been going on over what appears to be the past 11 months since the consultation ended—on draft recommendations on which, we are told, there has been no significant disagreement. It would certainly be of interest to know why there has been this delay.
A further point that I should like to pursue—I am not seeking to suggest that it is a major point because clearly it is not—is that paragraph 8.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum states that the normal minimum period of consultation is six weeks. In the case of Gateshead and Northumberland it was less than six weeks. In fact, it appears to have been about four weeks, the argument being the small scale of the change. One might have some sympathy with that argument, but what exactly has been achieved by reducing the consultation from the normal minimum of six weeks to somewhere around four weeks? Looking at the timescale, I cannot see that anything at all has been achieved. I appreciate that it was a Boundary Commission decision, but does the Minister know why it was done if it has not speeded things up, or has the Secretary of State perhaps asked the Boundary Commission why it thought it necessary to reduce the period of consultation when it does not appear to have been done in order to speed up the process?
In her comments on the Gateshead and Northumberland order, the noble Baroness referred to those who had responded. However, can she be a bit more specific about how many people responded to the draft recommendations? No figures are given, but figures, including a breakdown by category, are given for the East Hertfordshire and Stevenage order. Paragraph 7.8 of the Explanatory Memorandum says that the Gateshead and Northumberland order will affect only two electors. Are the residents of Ravenside Farm, who were not exactly supportive, the two electors in Northumberland referred to in paragraph 7.8? If they are, they are apparently the only ones affected by the Gateshead and Northumberland order. They did not appear to support it and if they are the two concerned, I suppose you could say somewhat facetiously that there was 100% rejection by the electors affected. I do not want to turn this into a major point, but it would be interesting to know.
My final point is very minor. Indeed, some might think that it is more nitpicking than anything else. Paragraph 7.3 says:
“In three cases there was local agreement that the anomalies should be addressed”.
The two in front of us are two of those three. However, paragraph 8.3 indicates a measure of disagreement from the residents of Ravenside Farm, which would appear to contradict what is said in paragraph 7.3. The reply may be that there is a distinction between agreement that the anomalies be addressed, and agreement over the recommendations and how they should be addressed.
I hope the noble Baroness will be able to respond to those points. I reiterate that we support the orders. I do not wish to suggest that the points that I have raised are of fundamental importance, although it is interesting that both the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and I are extremely interested in why it has taken so long to bring these instruments forward.
Baroness Hanham
My Lords, I am lost in admiration that the noble Lords managed to find so much to raise on these rather small orders. However, I do not deny that they are more than reasonable questions, and I am very happy to try to deal with them.
The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, asked about the delay between the consultation ending and the orders being brought forward. Once the Boundary Commission had undertaken its inquiries, it then had to deliver its results to the department. The issue has been with the department since June and has been waiting for, first, the necessary parliamentary time and, secondly, the time of the officials to deal with it. That, I think, is the straightforward answer to the noble Lord’s question, although I agree that this is not a matter that should require an awful lot of effort.
The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, asked about the number of applications that have been made to the Boundary Commission. I said in my notes that the Boundary Commission sought applications widely and that there were only three in total. We have dealt with one and we are now dealing with these two. It is not anticipated that there will be any more. Given the size of this nation, the fact that there are only three tweaks probably means that the Boundary Commission gets it right most of the time.
Lord Rosser
This may sound like nitpicking, but that is not the spirit in which I am saying it. Paragraph 7.3 of the Explanatory Memorandum states that the Boundary Commission,
“has sought the views of the local authorities concerned on all these anomalies. In three cases there was local agreement”,
the inference being that there were more than three.
Baroness Hanham
There was a list of more than three, but it was only within these three that the local authorities were agreed.
Baroness Hanham
Yes. I hope that is correct. The noble Lord also asked about representations for East Hertfordshire. The responses came from three councillors, the local authorities and 14 residents, and they supported the boundary amendments. As for Gateshead and Northumberland, where there was only one property, two electors, one in the Ravenside bungalow and one in the parish, responded. The one from the Ravenside farmhouse wondered why the boundary had to be changed, and the residents of the Ravenside bungalow would live within one county boundary, with all the land they owned being within another. They had no objection, but they put forward some reasons; they were mostly complaining about the glossy brochure and the cost of this tweak.
The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, also asked about the period of consultation. It is entirely a matter for the Boundary Commission, which carries out consultations as it wishes. It has completed them now and the order means that the changes have to take place from 1 April.
The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, asked who initiated the reviews. Again, they are initiated by the Boundary Commission. As I said in my remarks, it carried out a countrywide search and come up with the list, but there was no agreement from the local authorities except from these three. I gather that there are no further reviews in the pipeline. If I have missed answering anything that either noble Lord has asked, I shall respond in writing.
East Hertfordshire and Stevenage (Boundary Change) Order 2013
(11 years, 9 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Baroness Hanham
That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the East Hertfordshire and Stevenage (Boundary Change) Order 2013
Relevant document: 17th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.
Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2013
(11 years, 9 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2013.
Relevant document: 18th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I shall also speak to the Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2013. These orders were laid before the House on 28 January 2013, and I am satisfied that they are compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.
I will start by touching briefly on the Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2013. This order provides for contracted-out defined benefits schemes to increase their members’ guaranteed minimum pensions that accrued between 1988 and 1997 by 2.2%, in line with inflation as at September 2012.
On the Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2013, I shall start with the increase in the basic state pension. One of this Government’s first acts was to restore the earnings link to the basic state pension. Indeed, we went a step further and secured a triple lock for pensioners: a commitment from the Government to increase the basic state pension each year by earnings, prices or 2.5%, whichever is the highest. This year, that third element of the triple lock will have an effect for the first time. The basic state pension will be uprated by 2.5%, a level above both earnings and prices. This means that millions of pensioners will see an above-inflation cash increase of £2.70 a week, taking the new level of the basic state pension to £110.15 a week; and that from April 2013 the basic state pension is forecast to be around 18% of average earnings, a higher share of average earnings than at any time in the past 20 years. I can confirm that additional state pensions will rise in line with inflation at 2.2% in 2013-14, which means that the total state pension increase for someone with a full basic pension and an average additional pension will be around £175 a year.
On pension credit, we have taken an important decision to ensure that the poorest pensioners are able to benefit from the effects of our triple lock. That means that rather than rising in line with earnings at 1.6%, the minimum required by legislation, the standard minimum guarantee credit in pension credit will be increased by 1.9% to ensure that the poorest pensioners benefit from the full £2.70 cash increase in the basic state pension.
Consistent with our approach last year, the resources needed to pay for that above-earnings increase to the standard minimum guarantee have been found by increasing the savings credit threshold, which means that those with higher levels of income will see less of an increase. The decisions that we have taken on pensioners reflect the Government’s belief that even in exceptional economic times it is important to protect those who are less able to increase their spending power.
However, noble Lords will also be aware that this order takes forward a number of decisions that are a lot harder to make. Some tough choices are necessary if we are to restore our public finances. The working-age welfare budget, which accounts for about £1 in every £8 that government spends, cannot be immune from these tough choices. That is why, having regard to the national economic situation, we have decided that the working-age personal allowances in jobseeker’s allowance, income support, housing benefit and employment and support allowance, along with the work-related activity component of employment and support allowance, will be uprated by 1% next year. On the same basis, this 1% uprating will also apply to statutory maternity pay, statutory paternity pay, statutory adoption pay and statutory sick pay. This will save around £200 million in 2013-14, savings that are crucial as we continue to pay down the deficit.
We do not take such decisions lightly. Wherever we have been able to do so, we have sought to protect those who have the greatest difficulty increasing their spending power. The benefits that reflect the additional costs that disabled people face will be uprated in line with inflation. These include disability living allowance, attendance allowance, the disability premiums in working-age benefits, and the support component of the employment and support allowance. This is true of the carer’s allowance and the carer premium as well, both of which will be uprated in line with inflation.
In previous debates this week I have spoken of the need to strike a balance. At a time of great economic difficulty we have had to find savings, but we have sought to balance these with key protections wherever we can. This order is also about balancing our commitment to the here and now with our commitment to the long term. We have a responsibility to the next generation to secure a stable and growing economy, and I do not believe we can achieve that without taking these difficult decisions. Of course, we have a responsibility to those who will be affected by this order today, and we take that responsibility seriously.
It is worth noting that at a time when the nation’s finances remain under real pressure, through this order the Government will be spending an extra £2.8 billion in 2013-14 as part of our drive to ensure that the people who are least able to change their incomes are protected against increases in the cost of living. Of that £2.8 billion, about £2.1 billion is for the state pension, including an above-inflation increase for the basic pension. Nearly £500 million will go to disabled people and their carers, and nearly £300 million will go to people of working age. I believe that this is the right decision for families now and in the long term, and it is on that basis that I commend these orders to the House. I beg to move.
Lord German
My Lords, I start by saying that I hope we will not have a reprise of the Second Reading debate of the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill, because there would be many arguments to espouse.
I add my welcome to the triple-lock pensions increase that has been put into this measure again, and as the Minister has indicated, using 2.5% as the third trigger—the third lock that is being used for the first time—means once again that pensioners are benefiting from an increase that is above inflation.
What is interesting from the information that has been presented to us, and from my noble friend’s introductory comments, is that from April 2013 the basic state pension will be about 18% of average earnings. I have two points to make about that. First, it is a higher percentage than at any time in the past 20 years; and, secondly, it is only 18%. Recent research conducted by the pensions industry indicates that many people approaching retirement say that they need 50% of their average earnings—that is the rough figure they say they need—and they believe that they will get 50%, which in the nature of these things is obviously not true at present. It demonstrates the importance of the new flat-rate pension and that auto-enrolment will be decisive in helping people to meet their own aspirations for retirement. However, in the interim, the pension credit increase in line with the triple lock, as opposed to average earnings, goes a little way to helping Britain’s poorest pensioners.
I turn now to the uprating by 1% of all benefits apart from those protected because of disability or age. I still find that the issue of personal allowances indicates that there is an underpinning rationale, which has not yet been fully demonstrated to me, in having the personal allowance element of the employment support allowance being the same personal allowance that applies for housing benefit and anything else. Can my noble friend the Minister first outline why those personal allowances have to be the same for each allowance? It interests me to know what the rationale is behind that.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope
My Lords, I am pleased to follow my noble friend and concur with everything that he said. I have been doing uprating statements since 1984, I think, and I am here this afternoon really because I did not want to miss one. I have the boxed set, so I would feel that I was in the wrong place if I was not here. However, and this is me in my moaning mood, in the old days when men were men and women were women these debates were really big parliamentary occasions. These are huge sums of public money that we are considering this afternoon. This is no reflection on the Government at all, because while it is a question for the whole House I do not think that if we held this debate on the Floor of the Chamber there would be many more people here. I cannot help but say that it is a shame that we do not have more concern or attention from other colleagues albeit on what I accept is a ritual.
This is a very important annual debate, but this year it is different. My noble friend explained some of the differences, and I want to explore them a little more deeply, because, both qualitatively and quantitatively, these orders are different from any I have seen before. I make it clear that the Government are absolutely entitled, under the rules of the game as I understand them, to make these reductions against an economic background that we can all see. I am obviously not going to move against these orders, particularly in the context of the uprating Bill, which is in front of the House, but we are in exceptional circumstances. There is therefore a case for the Government to say, “For the next 12 months, Britain is a poorer nation and we all have to make a contribution towards getting back on to a steady state”. My point is that I am not confident that we will get back to a steady state for a number of years. I am not an economist and I do not know, but I really believe that the paradigm has changed and that we will all be forced to face up to the circumstances. That may be supporting the Government’s case more than I am accustomed to do, as the Minister might say.
The point I want to make on the back of that is that if we are in different circumstances if I can use the analogy of discretionary housing payments and if the Government are saying that the housing benefit changes are so profound that there have to be mitigating short-term, time-limited emergency procedures to take the sting out of them for low-income families, we may be forced to think about an equivalent emergency package for low-income households if year after year we find that we do not get back to trend levels of growth. I think that in future uprating debates we are going to be forced to look very carefully not only at adjusting the levels down but in addition at ways of getting behind people who are really at the end of the financial road. They have no scope.
The Government have recognised the plight of pensioners, and the rationale for that is understandable. My noble friend mentioned it: they have limited ways of increasing their earnings. The Government’s suggestion is that working-age households always have the option of work, but I wonder how realistic that is. If we are seeing food banks develop to the extent to which I fear they may develop in future in local communities, I think as legislators we will have to reflect that rather than just assuming that we are in a steady state and that the Government can take those savings out year after year. We might all need to think about how we tackle this. Part of that might be exceptional measures for low-income households.
The evidence comes at me every day from every source. This morning, I picked up a very interesting piece of evidence from the Money Advice Trust, which is a very important institution that I watch because I am interested in the development of payday loans. There are problems about some of the administration and regulation of payday loans. The statement from the Money Advice Trust demonstrates the changes that are happening underneath us and that are affected by this uprating statement. It reports that:
“its National Debtline service took over 20,000 calls for help with payday loans in 2012 … The figure represents a 94 per cent year on year increase, and an increase of 4,200 per cent since the onset of the financial crisis in 2007”.
I know a little about payday loans. Working families take advantage of them. I am not against payday loans. Short-term unsecured credit has a role to play. I do not think it is regulated properly, but that is a different argument. These are working-age families. In my estimation, these levels of increase are not going to get any less any time soon. I recognise that something has to be done with the deficit reduction, but we may need to have a grown-up discussion about this across the parties and across Parliament to make sure that we are not ignoring what is happening in a lot of our challenged communities, particularly in the old social-rented council estates of my native Glasgow, for example, where I know that some these changes that we are introducing on top of everything else that is happening will produce levels of financial challenge for particular groups. Lone-parent families are one group that I particularly care about, and I know that colleagues know even more about that than I do.
I am concurring with this order on the basis that we need to think about other ways of providing some sort of emergency relief—hopefully only short-term—as well as what we are doing in these orders. If we do not start thinking about that now, we will suddenly find that we will be hit by levels of malnutrition and child poverty that will be found completely unacceptable by the population at large. We have to avoid that at all costs.
Finally, I apologise for this because I should have checked before I came, but I do not know what the Government Actuary has to say about the National Insurance Fund, which is appearing in not the means-tested but the contributory dimensions of these orders. Presumably, no Treasury grant is being requested, although I would be surprised if that was the case. Can we have a statement from the Minister to the effect that the department and ministerial team are comfortable with the Government Actuary’s view of the orders as they stand? That is important for the Grand Committee in its consideration of these important orders this afternoon.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her introduction to these two orders. We do not have much to raise on the first order. The GMP is a promised income for those who contracted out before 1997, so the order is a routine process, which we support.
I have just one question. The Explanatory Note refers to there being no new costs on the private or public sector as a result of these orders, but an uprating cost clearly has to be borne by someone: the pensions providers. Is that not the case?
We have covered much of the ground on the Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order, as the noble Lords, Lord German and Lord Kirkwood, have said. I do not mind having a rerun of this, although much has already been said and we still have more Committee proceedings to go, let alone Report, so I shall resist the wholesale revisiting of our debates, although if provoked I might withdraw that assurance.
The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, as ever, made an incredibly valuable contribution on where all this is heading. We all know that the deficit has to be dealt with, although we might argue with how that is being done. But we have not seen as part of an impact assessment—and it is something I would ask about—the impact of this uprating order on child poverty. What assessment, if any, have the Government made of this uprating order’s impact on things such as personal debt and poverty more generally? What do they think about the food banks, which are growing up in our country at the moment? One opened in Lewisham, but unfortunately it was on the day of the universal credit regulation, so I could not go. It is just one of just hundreds that are growing up in a country that we know could by any standards be classified as rich.
We have heard about the basic state pension and the much lauded triple lock—the highest of earnings, prices or 2.5%, in this case. We have no difficulty with the basic state pension having been a higher share of average earnings for some time, although is that not largely because average earnings are so depressed because of the state of the economy? My right honourable friend Stephen Timms in the other place dug away at the triple lock, saying that it is certainly a success in terms of rhetoric but that its practical implications have been much more limited. He knew of one that was not operated because RPI gave a better result, and in year 2 inflation was used. It was only in year 3 that the 2.5% kicked in, in excess of inflation. On the old basis of uprating by RPI in those latter two years, the award would have been higher. Perhaps the Minister can confirm that 1.5 million pensioner households are missing out compared with what would have been the position had the standard minimum guarantee been uprated by earnings and the savings credit threshold frozen.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to today’s debate. I shall get straight into responding to some of the important points raised. I note that there was broad support in the Committee for the first order. I am grateful for that, but there was one small question from the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, which I will dispense with straight away so that I can get rid of one piece of paper that I am grappling with. He asked about the costs of the Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2013 and whether they would fall on the private or public sector. No new costs will be incurred; the costs will be the ones that would usually be incurred as there is no policy change.
I move to some of the points raised in the wider debate. My noble friend Lord German talked at some length about pensions and welcomed the triple lock and its effect this year. He noted that it would now be 18% of average earnings—the highest for 20 years—but that there was evidence to suggest that some people would need more as they neared retirement age, and worryingly thought they would get it. I do not have an immediate response to that, but as he acknowledged, it is one of the reasons why it is important that we are taking steps towards the single tier and auto-enrolment. While these measures will not benefit people who are already at or about to enter pension age, we are seized of this issue and are tackling it as a longer-term issue.
While we are on the pensions issue, the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, referred to the triple lock. He was trying to question whether it was really as beneficial as we believe. I am surprised that he raised that question. It has delivered this year. As I said, it has come into effect for the first time and is above inflation and earnings. As he knows, it has been the policy of successive Governments to use the inflation figures of the previous September to determine the rates for the following year. We have done nothing other than what all Governments do, which is to use the September figures. The September figures were 2.2% inflation, and that is why we introduced the triple lock this year: so pensioners have benefited. That is a good thing and we are pleased about it.
My noble friend Lord German asked a question that he said he had asked earlier this week, when we were debating the Bill, about the consistency of personal allowances across the various benefits. That was echoed by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie. I can do no more than restate what I said when were debating this then. Personal allowances across income-related benefits for working-age people create the basis for the way our current benefits form a consistent means test across the income-related benefits. If we were to treat different benefits differently in terms of their personal allowances, there would be no clear level of income at which state support via income-related benefits is set and at which access to other help, such as prescription charges or free school meals, would be available across a wide range of services. At a time when we are trying to simplify the welfare system, it would seem strange to introduce an additional layer of complexity for those who are seeking to use the benefit system and for the way we operate it because that would attract additional costs.
My noble friend Lord German also asked about guidance and leaflets that are issued to pensioners. Benefit recipients and pensioners are notified of their new provisional rates following the announcement of those rates by the Minister for Pensions in his Oral Statement. That needs to happen over a number of months because of the volume of notifications and because we need to make an advance claim to basic state pension. It is useful for recipients to have early notification of provisional rates, and it has been the practice for some time.
The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, raised a few points that were echoed in slightly different terms by the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie. My noble friend Lord Kirkwood said that he came today because he does not like to miss uprating statements and has been to every one for the past however many years. I hope I do not disappoint him. This is my first, so I have a lot of catching up to do. He made the point that these orders are different from anything that he had seen before, but he acknowledged the economic conditions that we are in and that they are an important reason why we are in a different situation from that of previous uprating statements that he has contributed to. He asked what might happen for people who are exceptionally poor or who might over time be affected in ways that at this stage we may not be able to anticipate. The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, echoed some of that in his remarks.
I shall make a number of points on this. It is important for me to restate that some of the measures that we are taking today will have an immediate impact on people in a way that we would not want them to have, but we think that all the measures that we are taking both here in the order today and in the Bill contribute to the longer-term plan and strategy to make sure that we deliver a better economy for everyone.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
What is the Government’s assessment of the effect that the measures in this order, let alone those in the uprating Bill, will have on vulnerable people? Have the Government concluded that it will have no effect or an adverse effect? If it is as the Minister has said and the Government are mindful, as I am sure the noble Baroness is, of not pushing people into poverty, what will be the effect of this order?
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
I was about to remind noble Lords that we have carried out an impact assessment of both the order and the Bill on child poverty. That is in the public domain. However, we cannot consider only the impact of these welfare changes; other dynamic changes are being made that will have an effect on child poverty. For example, the introduction of universal credit is expected to lift up to 250,000 children out of poverty. There are varying ways of looking at its impact on child poverty. We want to make sure that it is done in the round and that it is not considered in a one-dimensional way. We are very much seized of this issue and take it seriously.
My noble friend Lord Kirkwood asked about the GAD report. GAD has said that the balance of the national insurance fund at 31 March 2014 is expected to be greater than one-sixth of the amount of benefit payments in 2013-14 and that there is no immediate need to address the fund balance. We welcome this statement. GAD has also said that there is no immediate need to do anything to address the risk of the fund falling below the one-sixth threshold. It will review the situation again in a year’s time.
There were other points that the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, made which I have not covered already. He asked about various costings. I think that he asked about statutory maternity pay and the WRAG component. I will have to write to the noble Lord with the details of that. He also asked for information on the average time that people are on ESA—the work-related activity group. Fewer than half of new ESA claimants are on the benefit for a year, but perhaps that is something else on which I could write to the noble Lord with a little more background.
The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, also asked me—I may not have had an answer through on this; sorry, I have it here—which benefits are not covered by this order but are in the Bill. I think he was asking whether there was any inconsistency. He is right that this does not include tax credits; there will be a separate order on them, which should be coming soon. I think the only other significant difference between the order and the Bill is on child benefit.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
I also asked the related question of whether there is anything that is not uprated by only 1% for a CPI amount.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
That would include child dependency increases and capital limits, but I think I will have to write with a full list on that one.
The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked about the 1.5 million pensioners who will see a loss from the savings credit measures. The pass through to the triple lock is a cost-neutral measure: 1 million people gain an average of 50 pence. They are the poorest pensioners, but as this is cost neutral some will obviously see a smaller cash increase. One-and-a-half million pension credit claimants will see this smaller cash increase, which is on average about 35 pence. We have done this to provide protection for the poorest pensioners and ensure that they see the cash increase from the triple lock. As I said at the beginning, my main point here is that this order ensures that the poorest pensioners receive the proper entitlement to that triple lock and get its full benefit. As I have said, I will respond to any outstanding questions that I have not covered in writing.
In conclusion, my main point is that this uprating order is one for the long term, but it is critical to have regard to those who will be affected by the order today, and we have done that. I have already explained that we are spending an extra £2.8 billion on uprating pensions and benefits in 2013-14, enabling us to protect key benefits and vulnerable groups, but we are also taking decisions that will matter to all families in the years to come. Those decisions will help us to secure a better economy and a better future for everyone. That is something which I hope all noble Lords can support and it is on that basis that I commend these orders to the Committee.
Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2013
(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Stowell of Beeston
That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2013.
Relevant document: 18th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.
National Employment Savings Trust (Amendment) Order 2013
(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Stowell of Beeston
That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the National Employment Savings Trust (Amendment) Order 2013.
Relevant document: 17th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
My Lords, I am pleased to introduce this instrument, which was laid before the House on 15 January. I am satisfied that it is compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.
As noble Lords know, NEST was established to support automatic enrolment. It is a trust-based, occupational pension scheme, and the NEST order and non-statutory rules act in the same way as a trust instrument. The NEST order was set in March 2010 and NEST has been operational since July 2011. Like any other pension scheme, occasionally NEST’s operating framework will need adjusting. Since 2010, there have been a number of changes to automatic enrolment legislation which impact on the order. In addition, live running of NEST has highlighted that some provisions in the order are unclear or do not operate as intended. The changes in this order were requested by the NEST trustee. They will allow NEST to focus on its key remit: to support automatic enrolment and provide clarity to employers and members who use it.
I shall now summarise the changes. To give smaller employers more time to adjust, we have extended the staging period for implementing automatic enrolment. We are therefore extending the period during which NEST has discretion to defer admitting self-enrolling members—for example, the self-employed—until 1 March 2018. This will enable NEST to focus on helping employers to meet their automatic enrolment duty.
We have removed the duty for employers to automatically enrol jobholders who are also qualifying persons as defined by the Occupational Pension Schemes (Cross-border Activities) Regulations 2005. However, NEST is not able to decline contributions from a member who, because of a change in circumstances, later becomes a qualifying person. It could be costly to accept contributions from a qualifying person. This would require NEST to ensure that it met the pension regulations of another EEA state. It is important that NEST remains a low-cost scheme for its target market, so this order allows NEST to decide whether to continue to accept contributions in respect of members who become qualifying persons or qualifying self-employed persons.
In practice, employers may want to cease participating in NEST, for example, when an employer changes pension provider. This order allows employers to terminate their participation in NEST and includes a consequential amendment to the definition of participating employer. Members admitted through employers are not required to sign terms and conditions. NEST is obliged to admit self-employed individuals to membership, but the order requires them to sign terms and conditions. We are therefore removing this requirement to bring the admittance process into line with other members.
The current description in the order of who can contribute to a member’s account is unclear. We are making an adjustment to that description to ensure contributions from third parties—for example, a member’s relative—will be accepted. We do not want to place unnecessary burdens on employers to process refunds of contributions not made through payroll, so this order allows the trustee to refund third parties or members directly.
Regarding minimum contributions, all contributions made by an employer count towards the annual contribution limit. Where a member of NEST has multiple jobs, NEST must accept minimum contributions from each employer. The quality requirement in Section 20 of the Pensions Act 2008 sets minimum contributions, which are currently 8% of earnings between roughly £5,500 and £42,500. Regulations now also allow for an alternative quality requirement, known as certification. The minimum contribution under the alternative requirement is one of 9% of basic pay, 8% of basic pay where basic pay is at least 85% of total earnings taken in aggregate, or 7% of total earnings. This order makes it clear that minimum contributions capture both the Section 20 and alternative quality requirements.
Lord German
My Lords, I have only one question in relation to the changes in this order. I suppose that I should declare an interest in that my wife works for a small charity which is seeking to become a member of NEST for its employees. However, I do not think that I really have an interest in the sense that I am relating my question to the technical change removing the requirement for the trustee to consider next of kin. Therefore, it is a general question rather than being specifically about me.
The Explanatory Memorandum talks about rules, with a small “r”, in England and Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, but further on it talks about doing something differently in accordance with Rules with a capital “R”. In terms of next of kin, what is being changed here in respect of those to whom payments should be made? Why is there a £5,000 limit on death benefits being transferred, and what Rules, with a capital “R”, will apply when the trustee looks at the question of those to whom they should pay sums of less than £5,000?
Lord McKenzie of Luton
My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing this order and I say upfront that we will be supporting it. Perhaps I may revert to an item touched upon by the noble Lord, Lord German, which I was going to raise in our previous debate concerning people’s expectations of pensions, the importance of auto-enrolment and certainly the importance of NEST as a key component of that. When the Turner commission looked at the prospect of auto-enrolment and how employer pensions were to be organised in future, I think that the criteria around contribution levels and the band of earnings to which they applied were struck so that over a working lifetime the required level of replacement earnings would be produced. I am bound to say that with what has happened to the band of earnings, contribution levels have not shifted. I have not seen an update of that calculation and I do not know whether there is one—I think that it is an adjunct to this order—but if there is, it would be interesting to see it.
I have one or two questions in respect of some of the detail. We understand why the discretionary period to allow self-enrolling members to be accommodated is necessary, but can the Minister update us on the current elongated process for enrolment? I do not have that fully in my mind. What is the position of new self-enrolling members at the end of that period? Do they have an unfettered right to enrol? Perhaps we can use this occasion, given that NEST has been up and running for a little while now, although with regard to auto-enrolment larger employers are involved first, to find out whether we have any early numbers for the employers and employees who are enrolled.
We support the lifting of the obligation dealing with cross-border obligations and the other essentially technical amendments. I have a small point on terms and conditions. The Minister said that the proposed change would mean that self-enrolment individuals, as others, do not have to agree to members’ terms and conditions, so what is the purpose of those conditions? What relevance do they have? As for multiple jobs, again we support the change that has been outlined, but what is the position on multiple jobs within the same employer group? There is a maximum of 4,400 but, if that can be exceeded and there can be multiple jobs, are there any constraints if those multiple jobs are within the same group, possibly on a specifically organised basis to circumvent the limit?
With those few small inquiries, I say again that we support the order and are pleased to see that NEST is making progress.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, for his support for this order and, indeed, for the support from my noble friend Lord German. I will try to respond to a few points, but I must say straight from the start that I will probably have to write to the noble Lord on many of his queries. This being quite a technical order with quite a lot of associated technical questions, I am afraid that I know my own limits. This one might take me beyond them, so forgive me from the start if I have to follow up in writing.
The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked me for the latest figures about membership of NEST. I have those in front of me. It has been operating since July 2011 and automatic enrolment commenced, as we know, in October last year. We estimate that by the end of staging it will have 2 million to 4 million members and 750,000 participating employers. To the end of January, NEST has more than 200 participating employers, around 45,000 members and a little over £2.2 million in assets under management.
The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked, in going back to the last debate that we had on the last order, about the percentage of average earnings that people will accrue as they enter retirement. If there is anything more that I can say on that, I will have to follow up in writing.
The noble Lord, Lord German, asked about next of kin and what is happening there. The requirement for NEST to have to consider next of kin is in line with the Administration of Estates Act 1925. In Scotland, a person is entitled to moveable estate on intestacy. These are very specific; the change allows NEST to determine who to pay survivor benefits to. The rules with a capital “R” are the NEST rules that support the order. On why the trustee’s discretion to pay survivor benefits is applicable to pots only under £5,000, the Administration of Estates Act specifies a limit on the amount of property allowed to be disposed of on death without the necessity for probate or other proof of title. That limit is currently £5,000.
The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked about the position of self-enrolling members after the staging period. They will be able to join NEST, as NEST has an obligation to accept them. He also asked about what he described as the elongated staging profile. Currently, large employers have staged and medium employers will become subject to the duty from April 2014. Smaller employers will become subject to the duty from June 2015, and all employers will be in by February 2018.
The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, also asked whether there is an update on the calculation of contribution levels. I think I am about to answer something that I promised to write to him about. In the hope that this answer will mean a shorter letter, if not another letter, the qualifying earnings band is from about £5,500 to about £42,500. A revision order has been laid in draft and will be debated shortly. The noble Lord is correct in saying that the contribution rates remain as in the 2008 Act.
Lord McKenzie of Luton
That is very helpful. I am specifically interested to see, if it is available, what that would mean if one revisited the original Turner commission’s calculation to see what, over a working life with that earnings band and those contributions levels, that would be likely to give in terms of the level of replacement income for somebody about to retire. There was a specific calculation that drove many of these parameters at that time. If there is no update, it is of no great moment, but if there is, I would be interested in seeing it.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
If there is anything available that I am able to provide, I will do so. The noble Lord also asked whether there were any constraints on minimum contributions within the same job. Where there is an upper limit on contributions into a scheme, however expressed, the scheme can still certify as long as the upper limit could not result in contributions that are less than those required by Section 20. I think I am right on that one.
Since I have run out of pieces of paper in order to try to respond to the questions that noble Lords have generously put to me today, I will conclude by saying that I am grateful for those contributions. The changes in this order are consequential, minor and technical. They are deregulatory and will ensure NEST continues to operate efficiently for employers and members who use it. NEST is critical to the success of automatic enrolment. I am grateful to noble Lords for their support today. I commend this order to the Committee.
Vocational Education
(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Lucas
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the report by City & Guilds Centre for Skills Development, How to Teach Vocational Education: A Theory of Vocational Pedagogy.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, it has been widely acknowledged that we have a problem as a nation with the quality of the teaching of vocational subjects in further education. The most recent example and proof of that has been Ofsted’s refusal to grant outstanding status to any FE college, although I believe there is one going through the process now. I am being told that it got it, which is wonderful. That news had not reached me. It would certainly be a first, and a very welcome first. So we know that we need to improve the quality of our vocational education teaching.
Vocational education is not an easy thing to teach. There are demands for a high-quality outcome. Most of these courses are intended to produce someone who will be an employee or craftsman of high quality, and we need a high-quality system and a high-quality foundation to get them there. That is why I am very pleased to be able to draw attention to this report from the City & Guilds Centre for Skills Development. I declare an interest as a member of its advisory board. By foundation, I mean not the main foundation, but one of the stones in the foundations of a high-quality vocational education system because we ought to base the way that we are teaching vocational education on a sound pedagogy, on a sound theory of how vocational education is best taught.
I find this document extremely readable and lucid. It is just a beginning. From here, it will go on to be discussed with employers and teachers. It will find its way through a process that is at educational rather than political speeds, so I suspect that it will take a year or two to get to the point where it is not just a theory of vocational pedagogy but a practice and something with some well consulted background.
By way of illustration, I draw particular attention to page 47 of the report, which looks at the structure of the outcomes that one is aiming for from a well organised vocational pedagogy. It looks at the skills that one would expect a plumber to have, starting with routine expertise. It states that, if a boiler requires an annual service, the plumber,
“is familiar with the make and model and runs through a routine process of checks to ensure the boiler is safe and working properly”.
Beyond that, the plumber requires resourcefulness because the boiler may be exhibiting some strange symptoms. You want the person who has passed out of a vocational course, once they have tried the obvious solution, to consider alternative courses, to think carefully about what they might be, to investigate and to try alternatives. One also wants the plumber to have what you might call “functional literacies” so that they can handle language and interpolate between technical language and the level of comprehension of clients, so they do not just spout jargon at customers but can explain in their language what is wrong with their boiler and what needs doing.
We want craftsmanship, which we often look for in vain. It is such a delight when one comes across a builder who really cares about what he has done, who takes joy and pleasure in a job well executed and in having done something right that will last. That is going beyond just doing the job; it is being able to do something relatively simple and routine a great number of times and still take pleasure in a job well done at the end. It is a matter, too, of business-like attitudes: to have a proper relationship with the client and know that he has often relied on your assistance; to do something little free of charge; and to build a long-term relationship. Beyond that, people need to develop wider skills and resilience to build on their qualifications to go further in their career, to have determination to refuse to give in, to know how to look for resources beyond their own immediate understanding and to consult colleagues, carry out research and look further.
When we think of what we would like the plumber who calls round to look after our boiler to be, that is a pretty good set of ambitions to have for a trained plumber, and a pretty good set of resources and qualifications for a plumber to have. Based on that, you can hope for a secure life if you choose to stay as a plumber, or if you want to go beyond it, you have learnt a lot of skills that will apply elsewhere. One could read through that list and think that it applies pretty well to a Minister and to many other professions. Indeed, one could say that it would apply pretty well to school education, although not in the context of a particular skill.
This research has led to a good place. It resonates for me as the right answer. It obviously needs polishing and working through with employers to make sure that they recognise the skill sets that they would hope to have, with teachers to make sure that what is being said is teachable and workable, and indeed, with customers. It cannot hang as a piece of research on its own but needs to be worked at and enriched over the next year or two to produce a thoroughgoing basis on which to build a very high-quality system of vocational education. I am looking for the Minister’s supportive interest and hope that she will say that this is an initiative that the Government support and to which they will continue to pay attention. I want them to keep up communications about their own thoughts on this so that it does not go wandering off in a different direction from the one with which they feel comfortable. I feel confident of receiving that, not least because I know the Minister’s background in this area. I hope that she will have sympathy with it. I beg to move.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for bringing forward this debate, which is a timely one. I declare an interest as a patron of the Institute for Learning, and as a member of the advisory committee for the City & Guilds Centre for Skills Development. It is very timely, because another committee is sitting, as I am sure the noble Lord recognises—the McLoughlin committee on adult teaching and learning in vocational subjects. In many senses, the City & Guilds report feeds into the McLoughlin committee and is seen as that, but we will get a full response from the Government when the McLoughlin committee has reported to them.
In the report now two or three years old from Alison Wolf on vocational education and training, she drew attention to the fact that we have getting on for 2.5 million young people aged 16 to 19 who are going through vocational education of one sort or another. In this country, we give a lot of attention to those who achieve GCSEs A to C, and we measure to some extent the success of our educational system by the proportion of the young people who achieve at least five and, moving forward, six GCSEs A to C, including English, maths and science. What we often fail to recognise is that something like 40% of young people, and often more, fail to achieve GCSEs and in fact follow the vocational pathway. They go on and often achieve quite highly in other respects through the vocational pathway. The Wolf report made it quite clear that these vocational programmes, if well taught, are for those young people not only a more satisfying preparation for employment and life than the GCSE and A-level route but for the country they are extremely necessary in raising productivity and meeting our skills deficit.
I put emphasis on the words, “if well taught”. The issue of the quality of teaching and learning in vocational education came to me during the making of the report that I chaired, sponsored by NIACE, the 157 Group and the Association of Colleges, in looking at the role of FE colleges and their communities. That particular report picked up in many senses the same issues as this one—namely, that FE colleges have new flexibilities. An element of deregulation has taken place, and they now have much greater flexibility to decide on their own courses. One aspect of this is the need for these colleges to be seen to serve their communities, in two senses. One is that the student body represents the community, and colleges must do the best that they can for that student body. Secondly, if they are to do the best that they can, it is important to train those young people for the jobs available in their communities. Therefore, there must be a very close liaison not only with the employers in their communities but with the other public sector bodies in their communities, such as hospitals and the police force.
It became clear, as we wrote that report and talked about the potential of colleges to provide a degree of leadership within those communities that we needed to look at a new pedagogy. The changing circumstances of further education and adult education in this world require us to look again at the whole body of teaching and what goes on there. So we need high-quality teaching and learning that moves with the times. That is why this report from the City & Guilds centre is extremely useful to have. It gives us a template on which to build and think about a new pedagogy. In itself, it does not really provide us with the pedagogy as such. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, drew attention to the diagram on page 47.
What one learns from this is that vocational education needs to be taught within the context of practical problems. It is best when it is hands-on, practical, experiential and real world. It involves feed-back, questioning and reflection, and the application of theoretical as well as practical explanations. It needs tried and tested teaching methods—learning by watching, learning by imitating, learning by practising, and trial and error in real world situations, feed-back, conversations, listening, transcribing, critical thinking, drafting and sketching.
Picking up on the need to consider the world of vocational education and training within the changing context that we face, we must also consider the role of the internet and the increasing use of distance learning and social media. One of my commissioners was very concerned about the curriculum, in which pedagogy played quite a part. Sally Dicketts, the principal of the Oxford and Cherwell Valley College said that we need a curriculum that is any time any where. This is a vital subject. OECD recently produced a report on the UK remarking, once again, on low levels of productivity. It identifies three key issues as influencing productivity: first, and above all, investment in infrastructure; secondly, investment in R&D; and, thirdly, once again, investment in education and training. The deficit lies in training in vocational areas up to level 3 and level 4. It is absolutely crucial to our future and vital for productivity and growth in the UK that three-year apprenticeships to level 3 and the skills required at HND level should be taught well.
Lord Lingfield
My Lords, I add my thanks to those of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for initiating this debate about a sector which is too often the Cinderella sector of education and on which, however, we shall rely, if our economy is to grow again, for the creation of a technically accomplished workforce for the future, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, mentioned. I pay tribute to the noble Baroness because her work in further education is much admired throughout the sector.
I, too, declare an interest as a fellow of the City & Guilds of London Institute and as chairman of the Government’s review, Professionalism in Further Education, which was published late last year. This was conducted against the background of the Government’s policy of giving as much autonomy as possible to FE institutions, be they in the public or private sectors. I give my earnest thanks to those professionals who comprised the panel that sat with me and to the many who gave evidence to us throughout that time.
It is impossible in the short time that we have to comment on all the findings of the review and how they touch on the work of the City & Guilds, which I much admire. However, one that is hugely important concerns the occasional difficulties caused by the current funding system which requires FE institutions to work with at least two agencies—the Skills Funding Agency and the Education Funding Agency. It would be preferable, in my view, for post-compulsory education to be seen as more distinct—I know that not everyone will agree—from secondary education policy and procedures.
At the moment, FE providers are often undergoing mission drift. One of the reasons is the easier availability of grant funding for courses for the under-18s as opposed to older vocational students. In my view, a review is necessary to remove these unintended distortions from the system and to look forward to a single post-compulsory funding system with an aim of giving the highest quality of vocational education to all, whatever age they may be. I firmly believe that it is right to give the managers of our FE providers as much independence as possible. They are the professionals on the spot and they deserve the authority to match their great responsibilities. Only they should set the spending priorities of their colleges and decide the age groups which they feel will most benefit from available funds, free of central bureaucratic controls and constrictions.
However, autonomous institutions have to have touchstones of quality against which they must measure themselves, and I welcome the Government’s acceptance that there should be created a royal chartered body to which colleges and other providers can apply for corporate membership. They would be admitted on criteria concerned with the high quality of their pedagogy, their governance, their financial management, their results in the qualifications that they offer to the young people and their response to the autonomy on which the Government’s policy is currently founded. Institutions admitted would thus enhance their status and perhaps earn the freedom from inspection already granted to a few—a very few, as we have heard—outstanding colleges. It seems to me essential that the credibility of such a royal chartered body and its potential to raise the professional standing of all who teach in its member institutions will be secured by eventually placing it at arm’s length from government, for it will need to be both professionally authoritative and independent. It will need to take into important account the words to me last year of a young FE lecturer. He said, “I have two interwoven careers to develop: first, I am a teacher and I want to learn the very best pedagogical techniques to let me enable my students to learn at the highest level. But, as importantly, I am an automotive engineer and I want to ensure that I keep absolutely up to date in current practices. It is no good being a good teacher if I am teaching the mechanical techniques of five years ago”. This is touched on, on page 25 of the City & Guilds report. It is hugely important and I hope that central to the mission of institutions in membership of the proposed royal chartered body will be a total commitment to the professional updating and development of their staff.
Further education, as the City & Guilds report implies, is the most diversified of our sectors and that is one of its strengths, but it also can be one of its weaknesses, for, as we have heard, it is estimated that it deals with some 3 million students each year studying for an incredible 17,000 or so vocational awards. Alas, such a plethora is rarely understood by students and particularly not by employers. Some clear rationalisation is needed and, in my view, we need the establishment of a simple set of high-quality benchmark qualifications readily understood and valued by all.
My review found some superb practice within the sector. The reforms which I have just outlined would help to spread this much further and help this country to outperform its competitors in today’s extremely difficult economic environment.
Lord Addington
My Lords, when I saw that this debate had been tabled, I initially put my name down for one reason—to have a slightly more detailed dig about the development of, for instance, those with special educational needs and their way into further education. That was as a result of my experience of dealing with the new apprenticeships and the problems there associated with dyslexia, although apparently there are problems with dyslexia in other sectors as well. However, as I started to read through the report, I was also convinced that I should put my name down to speak because of the use of the term “coaching”. I know rather more about coaching in relation to sport than I do about coaching in relation to any aspect of further education, but I appreciated that it was a new way of learning and one that I knew something about. It involves a different process of imparting and using knowledge and teaches people how to apply that knowledge.
My noble friend Lord Lucas started with examples of trying to make training appropriate. The example we use in the documentation is a plumber. You take information, you approach how it is integrated and you go back and through. My very distant noble kinsman Lord Lingfield spoke about keeping people up to date, making sure the information is ongoing and how to learn and approach others. This approach is more appropriate for people who are not really designed for being in a classroom receiving facts and figures, which surely must be one of the primary differences between further education and the schoolroom. The connection between the two and acknowledging that there are differences between them is a very positive step forward. You create a different learning process to which those who have not enjoyed school or had great success there will find themselves more open, particularly if this different approach is explained to those on entering it.
The briefing for this debate mentioned the Wolf review. I became less happy with aspects of it, particularly going back to the insistence on GCSE passes when we brought in apprenticeships under the previous Government. I remember hearing that employers want people who can pass English and maths, but they also want people who do not put in for overtime, do not have time off, do not have children who get sick and so on. They really want people who will turn up and work for nothing; they have no right to expect that. They have the right to expect somebody who will able to do the job at least competently, who has a decent approach to what is coming next and who will not be rude to clients and fellow workers. That is what they have a right to expect.
Although City & Guilds has done good work, it is one of the bodies I had disagreements with. I discovered considerable resistance to the idea that you could change the way exams are taken. It had to catch up with the fact that the rest of the education system acknowledges things such as dyslexia, dyspraxia and dyscalculia and allows people to take qualifications and different ways forward. One example of that is telling people that they cannot have differently formatted online exams for security reasons. It might be a bad thing if somebody gets hold of the answers in advance, but it is not a nuclear strike. Other examination bodies, such as universities and GCSE and A-level boards, manage this process consistently and have done so for years. How are we going to make sure that the further education sector gets itself more up to date on taking on a mass group and giving meaningful qualifications, and how you let those people in?
The groups that I am talking about should be over-represented in the general population in this process of education. Let us take dyslexia, which is the biggest group; it affects 10% of the population. The first example I saw of somebody failing in a skill that requires using your hands due to what was key skills then—it is functional skills now—was a hairdresser who had won an award but could not pass the English assessment. You can get a degree with dyslexia by using assistive software. It is available for free on the phone I have on the desk in front of me; that is how common it is. I draw attention to my interests in the fields of both technology and dyslexia, but they are both predated by my interest in this subject—or my interest in the subject predates them. I am sure that Hansard will have fun with that.
However, the further education sector has to grow up and become part of the mainstream about bringing these groups in. It has not done very well as a starting point. If we could hear from my noble friend that she can build on what she said at Question Time today about making sure that they all take on board the fact that they must bring in these people, I would be a much happier person. This was not a confrontation I looked for and it was one which I thought would be over and done with by now. I have on one occasion had a Minister of State shouting at officials, “Sort it out, it’s ridiculous”. That was nearly 18 months ago. There does not seem to be an embracing of the fact that we have a legal framework that says that those with hidden disabilities should be brought into the mainstream. They should not be left on the side.
We do not want to create a situation where more people find greater difficulty with employment because they cannot access the very basic and fundamental forms of qualification, which we need now in finding employment—or at least to change employment frequently, as we seem to have to do. Unless we can start to address this and work it in with that very welcome change towards coaching and a more flexible approach to learning and teaching, we will just create more problems. I hope that my noble friend will be able to give me a positive reply. Indeed, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Young, will give us an idea about where he thinks it should develop, because I recognise his expertise in this field as well.
Lord Young of Norwood Green
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for ensuring this debate. If nothing else, it forced me to look up “pedagogy” and find out what it meant. I thought I knew but that, being a fully paid-up member of “Pedants are us”, I had better know the precise meaning. I am also grateful to the City and Guilds Institute, for two reasons. First, the only qualifications I have are from it, so I have some reason to be grateful to it. Secondly, I am grateful for the report, although when I looked at its equilateral triangle that promised to identify the three types of vocational education I did not quite understand it, so it is back to the drawing board for me.
I was tempted to ask the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for the name of the plumber. If he was as good as that, everybody would want him. Unfortunately, not all of them measure up. I remember seeing a television programme which showed far too many of them saying, “Your boiler’s had it and you need a new one”, when it actually had quite a simple fault. Of course, a plumber these days is not just a plumber. A plumber is required to have knowledge of electronics and chemicals, plus the basic plumbing techniques, so I do not knock that.
My party’s approach to vocational education is, briefly, that we want to develop a transformational 14 to 18 education system featuring a quality technical baccalaureate at 18 for those achieving a rigorous vocational qualification, a work experience placement and achievement in English and mathematics. That is taking into account the point from the noble Lord, Lord Addington, about having different methods for those who have real problems in approaching exams in the standard way. The TechBacc would sit alongside those A-level programmes. We want more and better vocational education up to 18, with all young people undertaking some vocational learning from 14 and compulsory work experience for all 16 to 18 year-olds. I am rushing this because we have only a short time.
One of the smarter things that we did in Government was, I felt, that instead of raising the school-leaving age we raised the participation age. All Governments make mistakes, but I thought that was a good one. One of the mistakes we made was in picking a random figure and saying, “We want 50% of young people to go to university”, which somehow implied that the other 50% had failed in some way. Eventually, we realised that that was not the case and we put a lot of effort into both FE and apprenticeships, but I feel that it was a sort of catching-up process.
There are many of these reports but, looking at the Government’s response to the Wolf report—whether or not we like every aspect of it—it was a significant report. The Government identified a number of things that they felt were failures, and I agree with them. They include perverse incentives created by the performance and funding systems and encouraging the teaching of qualifications that attract the most performance points or the most funding, not the qualifications that support young people to progress. I saw evidence of that in my brief ministerial career, so I do not in any way blame it on this Government—we are all on a journey trying to improve quality. The failures also include students without a solid grounding in the basics being allowed to drop the study of English and maths. We know that they cannot do that. Many potential employers say, “If they want to progress, they’ve got to have a basic grounding in those subjects”. Therefore, we are looking to improve the quality of FE, and we know from the Ofsted review that it needs to be improved.
I was attracted to the point that the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, made about giving institutions more autonomy. However, with autonomy comes responsibility. Before he said that, I thought that I would not give them autonomy unless they came up to a certain standard. The noble Lord then went on to talk about the royal charter, which I think is a good approach.
When you go into FE colleges—and I have visited quite a few—you can see that when they work, they work really well. One college that I went to had a department dealing with painting and decorating. It worked well because the college had managed to attract a local painter and decorator who ran a highly successful business. It had initially lured him into the college on the basis that he would be coaching, but it trained him in teaching and he created a fantastically successful department. I instance that because we need all colleges to have that relationship with the business community, as the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, mentioned, as well as the local community.
In the brief time available to me, I want to touch on a couple of other things. We have a concern about the looming introduction of FE loans for all courses at level 3 and above for those aged 24 and over. There is already some evidence that that might prove to be a disincentive. We live in a society where we know that people are not going to retain one job throughout their life and that they are going to have to retrain, and that is something that the Government may need to reflect upon.
Something else identified in the Wolf report is that we can have the best further education but if it does not lead to work experience and apprenticeships then we are in trouble. It is not that the Government are not focused on apprenticeships—I pay tribute to some of the work they have done—but there is still some way to go on quality. Just quoting numbers is not enough, as a lot of the figures relate to adult apprenticeships. The area where I think we need to focus is the 16 to 18 age group, and I say that because of youth unemployment. Although the unemployment figures may be coming down, youth unemployment is still a serious problem. The number of firms employing apprentices is still pathetic. I think that only about a third of the FTSE 100 companies have apprenticeships, and the average is somewhere between 4% and 8%. I fail to understand why the Government do not insist that if you want a public procurement contract, you have to specify the training and the number of apprenticeships. I have just been invited to a Crossrail apprenticeship award event. Crossrail has 400 apprentices because we insisted on it, and the same applied to the Olympics. I do not understand why the Government will not go down that road.
We are in an ever-changing environment—the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, mentioned further education, distance learning and social media—but we are also in an era when UTCs are on the scene. One question that I used to ask when I went around schools, colleges and universities was, “How many apprentices do you, as an institution, have?”. Often I might as well have asked them how many people from their college had landed on Mars because they did not seem to understand that it is no good teaching about apprenticeships if you do not have any yourself. It is important to encourage them to recruit not just as one school or one college but together as a group. We have ATAs and group training associations, which have been identified in the government report, and every local authority ought to ensure that GTAs operate within their area working with schools, colleges and further education colleges. They are part of the solution to this problem but we have a long way to go.
As part of the Lords outreach programme, I will be speaking to some sixth-formers tomorrow. They are all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and we cannot help but think that they are about to face reality. They will be trying to enter the world of work, assuming that they do not go on to university. Even those who go on to university are now wondering whether it is the right journey. We have a huge challenge and responsibility. We cannot afford to fail to create not only apprenticeships, which are fundamentally important, but work experience. If further education colleges are able to apply their pedagogy in an environment that will produce results, they must be able to give confidence to young people that they will find work and work experience out there. Those are some of my brief reflections. This has been a very worthwhile debate, and the subject merits a much longer debate at some time in the future when we can pursue some of its complexities. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Lucas for initiating this debate. Vocational pedagogy is an issue seldom discussed in your Lordships’ House, but it is a legitimate area of concern for both the House and the country.
I declare an interest—a number of interests have been declared in this debate—in having been associated professionally for more than 20 years with City & Guilds, and it was the City & Guilds Centre for Skills Development that produced the report under debate. It is clear from reading How to Teach Vocational Education that the institute maintains its standards of expertise and insight in relation to vocational teaching and assessment. It has been tremendous this afternoon to hear people coming from all sorts of backgrounds talking with the same enthusiasm and passion for vocational education.
I can assure my noble friend Lord Lucas that the Government welcome the report and the evidence that it provides to inform the work of the Commission on Adult Vocational Teaching and Learning. The Government are not alone in this. Both the Institute for Learning and the Learning and Skills Improvement Service have also applauded the report as a valuable contribution to work on this theme. As the originator of the Good Schools Guide, my noble friend Lord Lucas is fully aware of how fundamental standards of teaching are to eventual learning outcomes. What constitutes good and effective school teaching is, rightly, a topic to which your Lordships’ attention is frequently drawn and on which this House can boast substantial expertise. However, too little attention has been paid both in government and in the education sector as a whole to the quality of the education and training offered to young people and adults after compulsory school age.
Teaching adults and teaching vocational subjects call for different skills and present different challenges from those required in school classrooms. For example, learners’ ages may vary from 14 to over 90. The experience they bring with them may be as a complete beginner in the subject, as someone working towards a first step on the career ladder or as someone who may have worked in an area for years and is looking for the certification required for career enhancement. They may also want to learn for personal satisfaction, and that, too, is worth while. The task of teaching children successfully is hard enough, but the range of variables with which teachers of adults must cope potentially extends so much more widely. They tend to be better disciplined, which I suppose is one of the advantages of teaching adults, and their motivation tends to be higher than for those still of compulsory school age.
Two key factors have a bearing on the quality of the results that vocational education produces. First, there is the standard of qualifications to which it leads and the degree of confidence that employers have in those qualifications. My noble friend Lord Lingfield mentioned the importance of benchmark qualifications and the ease of understanding quite what the qualifications represent. City & Guilds, as befits an organisation founded by the livery companies and the Corporation of the City of London, has been delivering these since 1878. In the aftermath of the Wolf review, this Government have sought more and better ways to encourage more employers to become involved in the design and delivery of vocational qualifications as a guarantee of quality and workplace relevance. The noble Lord, Lord Young, gave a telling example of the local painter invigorating a class of people who were learning that craft.
Secondly, and equally crucially, there are standards of teaching and learning. For this, we look largely to the commitment and expertise of the further education sector. I echo the views of the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, and those expressed by other noble Lords, and I pay tribute to the dedication of governors, leaders and, of course, teachers. On the comment that my noble friend Lord Lucas made about FE colleges, my understanding is that 66% of colleges are currently judged as good or better and that around 13% hold an outstanding grade, which is encouraging.
As the report makes quite clear, the sector has successfully adapted its methods to the subject in hand and to the diverse characteristics and aspirations of learners. Success depends not on new orthodoxy or dogma but on awareness and creativity. FE has responded, for example, to the way that e-learning has grown in recent years—as my noble friend Lady Sharp set out clearly—in recognition of the technology-dependent lifestyles of today, especially among the younger generation.
The previous Government took welcome steps to guarantee the quality of adult learning. I acknowledge the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Young, to the developments and progress made during that time. The coalition Government are building on that but, equally, we are trying to tackle the bureaucracy. We believe that one of the most useful sources of expertise is to be found among teachers and so, rather than impose central targets, the Government’s most effective role is to help the sector to identify and share good practice wherever it exists. We can see from the report that those directly involved in further education, individual learners and their eventual employers will all be the beneficiaries of high-quality teaching leading to high-value qualifications.
As noble Lords will know, the Government announced in December 2011 that they would establish a new Commission on Adult Vocational Teaching and Learning under the chairmanship of a distinguished college principal, Mr Frank McLoughlin CBE. My noble friend Lady Sharp made reference to this. Input to the review came from a wide range of sources, including this valuable report and, crucially, real-life observation of adults learning.
The main findings, influenced by this City & Guilds research, concluded that vocational education and training programmes should be characterised by learning with a clear line of sight to work, and that specialist vocational teachers and trainers should be at the heart of this system. To ensure that knowledge and skills are always current, strong links with employers should be maintained and further developed. In connection with this, following the review of professionalism of the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, the Government are developing new professional qualifications for the FE workforce, and the new FE guild will take that forward.
Ofsted’s new inspection regime has a greater focus on the quality of teaching and teachers—my noble friend Lady Sharp referred to this—and will report on the contributions of colleges to their communities. As to teachers with dual professionalism, which the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, highlighted, the commission sees this as a fundamental element of the future development of the FE workforce. Its recommendations advocate equal focus on developing teaching and ongoing professional skills. It has long been one of the strengths of the further education sector that the practitioners were also frequently the teachers, and that brought reality and relevance to their teaching of students.
The commission will also set out the standard for what an adult vocational learner should expect and define a range of effective pedagogical approaches that make full use of the potential of technology—because, of course, technology has made an enormous difference in life.
On the points made by my noble friend Lord Addington, I recognise his concern about the requirement for people with any form of learning disability or disadvantage to be allowed to reach their full potential without any barriers which particular forms of assessment may present. I assure him that this is constantly under review. Ofqual is in regular contact with disability interest groups, to which I pay due tribute for the expertise and passion they bring to ensure that the groups they represent are not unnecessarily disadvantaged by things which could be removed.
Ofqual is looking very closely at the different methodologies for assessment. My noble friend—I know of his particular interest in dyslexia—mentioned the different ways, such as computer aids and software applications, which can enable learners to demonstrate that they can attain the standards of the qualification, albeit by a somewhat different method of assessment. The awarding bodies and, of course, the colleges have to maintain an interest in the qualifications, when they are awarded, representing a pure standard of achievement. A great deal of work is going on—and my noble friend deserves thanks for the way in which he champions disadvantage—to try to make absolutely sure that these different methods can be brought in. Many colleges already have strategies and technologies to support learners with special needs. We expect that some of the results coming out of the commission will address this, and we will have further information to support that. The websites of the Government, of Ofqual and, indeed, of the awarding bodies are available. My noble friend mentioned particularly City & Guilds. I know that all the awarding bodies have an interest in ensuring that special educational needs are met. I am sorry that he has found difficulties dealing with that, and we hope to take forward any specific cases that he can bring forward to try to ensure that those are fully addressed.
My noble friend also mentioned the importance of coaching. The other volume that comes with this report is The Role of Coaching in Vocational Education and Training, and we know how vital that is. It is always good to have a reference back to the Olympics and Paralympics in any debate, so why not in this one?
An interim report was published last December. Consultation on the commission’s conclusions is now nearing its end, with the final report due towards the end of March. The Government will look forward to considering that report and responding to it in due course, bearing in mind, of course, the development of the FE guild. With the interest in this subject around your Lordships’ House, that response may well provide an opportunity for the House to return to this vital subject at a later stage.
In closing, I again thank my noble friend for initiating a debate on this instructive report, and I thank all noble Lords who have spoken. They have brought a wide range of expertise and enthusiasm to this subject and have made incisive and informed contributions.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Colwyn)
My Lords, that completes the Grand Committee business for this afternoon.
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Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, I wish to make a Personal Statement. On 10 December 2012, during a Report stage debate on the Crime and Courts Bill, I intervened to answer a suggestion that judges did not need protection, as reported at col. 865 of the Official Report. I had not prepared what I was going to say. I referred to death threats that I had received as a judge from dissatisfied litigants. Most unfortunately, in referring to the people who had made such threats against me, I included the unwarranted suggestion that the organisation Fathers 4 Justice was among those who had made such threats. It was not true that Fathers 4 Justice had made any death threats against me.
It was also unfortunate that two West Country newspapers reported what I had said in this House. I did not speak to either newspaper. Fathers 4 Justice got in touch with me by e-mail and I immediately withdrew the allegations and apologised unreservedly to them. I offered to write to the newspapers but Fathers 4 Justice asked for a public apology. The most convenient way to do so seemed to be by a Personal Statement to this House.
I reiterate that I withdraw any allegations of death threats against me by Fathers 4 Justice and apologise unreservedly to them.
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Baroness Cox
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the current situation in Burma, with reference to the Kachin, Shan and Rohingya ethnic national peoples.
The Senior Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Warsi)
My Lords, we welcome the direction of reforms in Burma but continue to raise concerns over human rights and ethnic reconciliation. In Kachin state we are encouraged by the recent reduction in fighting and agreement by both sides to pursue political dialogue. We continue to monitor the ceasefire and humanitarian situation in Shan state. In Rakhine state we continue to press the Burmese Government to improve coordination of humanitarian assistance, to ensure security and accountability and to address the issue of Rohingya citizenship.
Baroness Cox
My Lords, in thanking the Minister for that comprehensive reply, may I highlight the seriousness of the situation? I have just returned from Kachin state where a 17-year ceasefire was broken by the Burmese army. Fighting continues with widespread violations of human rights, including torture, killings, rape and an aerial bombardment causing 75,000 civilians to flee to camps or hide in the jungle. In Shan state, a military offensive caused hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee their homes, and the Rohingya people have been reduced to conditions of severe destitution and massive displacement.
Therefore, can the Minister give an assurance that Her Majesty’s Government, while welcoming recent reforms, will press the Burmese Government to protect and promote the rights of all ethnic national peoples?
Baroness Warsi
The noble Baroness, as always, comes to these Questions with the most up-to-date information that could possibly be obtained, and I thank her for the enormous work that she does in Burma, as well as in many other places around the world. Our policy is one of constructive engagement on human rights, and ethnic reconciliation is a central part of that. I can assure the noble Baroness and the House that we take the humanitarian challenges in Burma extremely seriously. Indeed, the Minister with responsibility for Burma, Hugo Swire, when he visited that country, travelled to Rakhine state with a view to making representations to the regional governments as well. It is a matter on which we continue to press the Burmese Government and on which our ambassador there is hugely engaged.
Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead
My Lords, when the EU common position on Burma is reviewed, as it will be in April, what position will the Government take on the EU sanctions that were suspended on the specific understanding that there would be progress on human rights and democratic reform in Burma? Is it not the case that in many respects human rights violations have significantly increased, especially with the Rohingya and Kachin, as the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, has said? Is it not the case that the Government should therefore support the reintroduction of some of the measures that were suspended, and resist efforts to lift sanctions completely unless and until there is significant progress on these issues?
Baroness Warsi
As the noble Baroness will be aware, the sanctions were suspended in April last year, and it was made clear at that stage that they would be lifted only if the Burmese Government was measured positively against the benchmarks set by the Council conclusions of earlier that year. Those benchmarks are that there should be free and fair elections, and that there needed to be progress on political prisoners and ethnic reconciliations. These matters will be discussed again in April this year but, as the noble Baroness is aware, for those sanctions to remain suspended or not to be lifted requires unanimity at the EU level. We in the United Kingdom will be pressing for those measures, those benchmarks, to be tested against the Burmese record.
Baroness Buscombe
My Lords, can the Government explain what they are doing to resolve the plight of the Rohingya?
Baroness Warsi
My noble friend raises an important question. The Rohingya have been described as some of the most wretched people because of the way in which they have been abused over many years. They are left in a situation where real questions are being raised by the Burmese Government about their citizenship. The Minister responsible for Burma, Hugo Swire, visited Rakhine and met leaders of the Rohingya community. Last week, I was in Bangladesh and became the first British Minister to visit the Rohingya refugee camp at Cox’s Bazar, in Bangladesh. We are looking at the problem from both sides of the border. Ultimately, however, the issue of citizenship of the Rohingya people is what needs to resolved. There is a history of these people being in Burma for the past 200 years. They now need to be recognised.
Baroness Berridge
My Lords, it has been a great pleasure to see the developing relationship of the UK Government, particularly the Prime Minister, not only with the Burmese Government but with Aung San Suu Kyi, who is incredibly influential in this situation. Will the Minister outline what representations the UK Government have made to Aung San Suu Kyi about the growing concern among nations that are being looked to for aid about the treatment of groups of people who have a different religions background and, particularly in relation to the Rohingya people, those who are of a different racial group from the majority population?
Baroness Warsi
I simply repeat what I said earlier. On every occasion, whether it is the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, Hugo Swire or, indeed, Francis Maude, who was there only last year, we have taken the opportunity to raise the issue of minority groups. All communities must deserve rights as Burma moves forward on its democratic journey.
Lord Alton of Liverpool
My Lords, would the Minister confirm that since 2012, around 5,000 Rohingya Muslim people have been murdered and that many thousands have disappeared? As she has rightly described, they are living in a system of 21st century apartheid, their citizenship rights having been formally stripped from the constitution. Will she urge the government authorities in Burma to revisit this question and inquire of the UN special rapporteur on religious liberty whether he would be willing to make a visit to the Rohingya people in Arakan state?
Baroness Warsi
The noble Lord makes an important point. I will be meeting the UN special rapporteur on religious freedom in the next two months. This is certainly a matter that I can raise with him. Ethnic reconciliation is a central part of all discussions that we have with the Burmese Government.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine
My Lords, going back to Kachin and the conflict there, does the Minister accept that the use of fighter jets to bomb civilian populations is a significant escalation by the Burmese army? While we welcome attempts at a ceasefire again, will the Government urge both the Chinese and Burmese Governments to, first, allow the UNHCR to look at the refugee situation and give humanitarian assistance and, secondly, press for an overall peace settlement for all three ethnic groups? This is a long overdue matter and the civil war has been going on for 60 years. It is time now for a comprehensive peace, rather than just ceasefires that break down.
Baroness Warsi
We are, of course, concerned about the acts of the Burmese Government in Kachin. I can assure my noble friend that we have played our part: we have had experts who were involved in peacebuilding in Northern Ireland visit Burma on a number of occasions to assist with the peacebuilding in Kachin. We are also one of the three members of the peace donor support group, which also assists with peacebuilding. Moreover, we allocated a further £1.5 million in December of last year, bringing our total spending on humanitarian aid in Kachin to £3.5 million. We will continue to press them, and of course, the Chinese Government.
Dyslexia: Apprenticeships
(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Addington
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress has been made in ensuring that all dyslexics have access to the assistance recommended by Ofqual when taking apprenticeship qualifications.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, a guide entitled Access Arrangements, Reasonable Adjustments and Special Consideration is published each year by the Joint Council for Qualifications. The guidance was updated this year to include improved examples of how arrangements can support the needs of dyslexic learners. Awarding organisations are responsible for defining suitable arrangements and assessment centres are responsible for their operation. Awarding organisations and centres have complaints procedures to address any specific problems as they arise.
Lord Addington
I thank my noble friend for that Answer. Does she accept that these arrangements—or at least the principle behind them—have been in place ever since I first asked about this subject? Does she also accept that when dyslexics have failed a written test, a procedure that requires a written complaint may not be the best one available for someone who is dyslexic or comes from a dyslexic family? Will the Government undertake to make sure that there is a vigorous enforcement process here and that things such as online testing papers which are not compatible with voice recognition technology, and ways of taking exams which are not taught during the classroom process, are not acceptable in the future?
Baroness Garden of Frognal
I pay tribute to my noble friend for his tireless championing of those who suffer from dyslexia. I stress that the process for any complaint is to exhaust the centre’s procedures first—and that would be a face-to-face meeting, not necessarily a written procedure—and then go to the awarding organisation. If that does not work, complaints can be raised with Ofqual. However, Ofqual has been proactive in this respect and is in active discussion with the British Dyslexia Association to try to get a sense of the scale of the problems. So far it has come up with the problem in software compatibility to which my noble friend referred, and it is working with awarding organisations to try to address that.
Lord Martin of Springburn
May I put it to the Minister that it is often the case that young men and women who have difficulty in passing written exams can go on with encouragement to become excellent journeymen and journeywomen? I hope that the Government’s apprenticeship scheme recognises the fact that not everyone can be academic and so clever in terms of reading and writing.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
The noble Lord makes a very important point. It is absolutely right that people who are practically very skilled often find that making an assessment in a written paper poses much more of a problem for them. On apprenticeships, there has been a change to functional skills that focus on applying knowledge rather than having to pass written tests, and these are widely available as part of the apprenticeship programme. The noble Lord makes a very valid point about the value of people whose skills do not lie in writing.
Baroness Brinton
My Lords, I think that it is accepted that it is essential to have the intervention of a trainer in cases where dyslexia is identified in the workplace to provide an individualised training and support plan that will give people real inclusion in the workforce. That important one-to-one interaction is the most efficient means of providing essential support and assessments. What assessment do the Government make of the number of qualified trainers available to support dyslexic apprentices in the workplace?
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My noble friend is absolutely right that one to one is often the most effective way of enabling people to reach their potential in that area. We are working with different schemes. The recent diversity in apprenticeships pilots highlighted the importance of one-to-one interactions and extra support. The National Apprenticeship Service is beginning to implement actions as a result of those pilots.
Baroness O’Cathain
My Lords, perhaps I could ask my noble friend whether any trainers are available for people in this House, either as Members or working for the House. The spectrum of dyslexia is more serious in some cases than others. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office employs trainers for the people who work there. I am sure that the Minister will not have a reply to this, but it would be very useful for us to know, because sometimes things happen in this House that are of great benefit to many people that are never communicated to them.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My noble friend makes a very important point. As she surmised, I do not have a direct answer. I feel that it would be for the House authorities and other people to look into that, but we heard what she said and will try to take forward some ideas.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, does this issue not raise a more general point about the direction of the Government, who in the exam system are moving away from an appraisal system throughout the period of learning to just a three-hour exam at the end of the process? Does the Minister agree that that will discriminate against people who have special educational needs in all sorts of forms, who would be much better assessed and appraised over a period of time than in one three-hour exam at the end of the process?
Baroness Garden of Frognal
The noble Baroness takes us rather wide of the Question, which is on apprenticeships. All the issues surrounding final assessments and examinations in schools are under discussion at the moment. On apprenticeships, there has always been a stress on practical application and seeing what people can do rather than what they can write down. Ongoing assessment and testing are part of an apprenticeship scheme all the way through.
Medical Research: International Rare Diseases Research Consortium
(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Avebury
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what support, if any, they are providing for the International Rare Diseases Research Consortium.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)
My Lords, the UK is a global leader in rare diseases research. The Government are pleased to be engaged with activities marking Rare Disease Day today. The Department of Health supports the International Rare Diseases Research Consortium. The National Institute for Health Research is a member of the consortium and has actively engaged with the work of the consortium from the outset. The Government are committed to providing faster diagnosis and better treatments for people with a rare disease. We recognise the importance of international collaboration in rare diseases research, and of its translation, in achieving this goal.
Lord Avebury
My Lords, I declare an interest as a sufferer from myelofibrosis, which is one of the 6,000-plus rare diseases that have been identified which affect 3.5 million people in the UK. May I ask my noble friend to comment on how the £100 million genome sequencing project is expected to contribute to the understanding of rare diseases? Secondly, will the rare diseases stakeholder forum that he announced yesterday consider the value to both patients and the NHS of care co-ordinators, which was emphasised by the NGO Rare Disease UK?
Earl Howe
My Lords, we have just announced the establishment of a rare diseases stakeholder forum. As my noble friend rightly mentions, it will be established shortly to bring together a wide range of stakeholders, including organisations representing those with rare diseases, to ensure that the patient voice is part of the discussion that we must have leading up the publication of the UK plan for rare diseases. The 100,000 genomes initiative, which my Department is funding, is about pump-priming—the sequencing of the genomes of 100,000 NHS patients—with the purpose of translating genomics into the NHS. This capacity will be allocated specifically to cancer, rare diseases and infectious diseases. The service design work will be completed by June and we aim to put contracts in place by April next year.
Lord Walton of Detchant
My Lords, does the Minister accept that recent research in genomic medicine has led to the progressive introduction of orphan and ultra-orphan drugs, some of which are capable of reversing partially or completely the genetic effect of many such rare diseases—not least, for example, muscular dystrophy? However, these drugs are extremely expensive and are therefore likely to be commercially unsuccessful because they help only a relatively small number of patients. Now that the Government have abolished the Advisory Group for National Specialised Services, can the Minister assure the House that, when responsibility for providing those drugs on the NHS falls to the national Commissioning Board on the advice of NICE from April this year, those rare diseases and their drugs will be given appropriate priority?
Earl Howe
My Lords, yes I can give that assurance. As the noble Lord will know, we laid regulations specifying those specialised and highly specialised conditions which the NHS Commissioning Board will be responsible for commissioning. I can also reassure him that the focus on research into rare conditions will not be lost. Indeed, I am sure that he will be aware that the National Institute for Health Research has recently specifically invited submission of research proposals into interventions for very rare diseases. The call encouraged multidisciplinary research proposals as well as study designs and approaches to recruitment of patients.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I declare my interests in the Register in the health service. Following on from the previous question, I understand that the commissioning costs of rare diseases will be met nationally by the NHS Commissioning Board. However, when patients require regular medication, which would presumably be prescribed by their GP, will funding responsibility fall on local clinical commissioning groups? If so, will they be given specified resources to fund what are often very expensive treatments?
Earl Howe
My Lords, the funding for expensive treatments will be very much the responsibility of the Commissioning Board. However, of course the noble Lord is right, because a patient with a rare disease will need to be treated along a pathway of care, some of which will be specialised and some of which will be more routine. It is therefore important that we build into our UK plan for rare diseases an awareness of that pathway so that this is a seamless process. The commissioning must be joined up between the board, clinical commissioning groups and, indeed, local authorities that provide social care.
Lord Cotter
My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for his interest in rare conditions. I declare an interest as my wife, like many others, has suffered from birth from arthrogryposis, a neuromuscular condition. She received a correct diagnosis only at the age of 52 years. Even now, in her 70s, she is struggling to receive appropriate treatment. Would the Minister consider seriously Rare Disease UK’s recommendation for designated care co-ordinators to oversee the situation to ensure consistent treatment and to provide single oversight to help patients and to avoid wasting resources and duplication within the NHS?
Earl Howe
I am grateful to my noble friend and I extend my sympathies to his wife. Unfortunately, with many very rare diseases, it often takes a great deal of time for a fully fledged diagnosis to be arrived at. I welcome the suggestion put forward by Rare Disease UK for co-ordinators and we will certainly look at that idea positively. I can tell him that the imperative to look at rare developmental disorders in children is the focus of a project that the NIHR and the Wellcome Trust are funding through the Sanger Institute in Cambridge. Scientists are analysing the genomes of 12,000 children with developmental disorders who could not be diagnosed following routine genetic evaluation. We are hopeful that that will produce some interesting results.
Lord Patel
My Lords, I declare an interest in that my university is involved in finding treatments for some rare diseases. An international collaboration has set the ambitious goal of finding treatments for 200 rare diseases by 2020. One of the important research areas has already been mentioned, which is the sequencing of the genome of patients with rare diseases. The other area, which alludes to the question asked by the noble Lord about the care of those patients, is that of finding new diagnostics so that we can diagnose those diseases early. What are we doing through the NIHR or through biomedical research centres to encourage the development of new diagnostics for those diseases?
Earl Howe
My Lords, most of the NIHR biomedical research centres are conducting research on rare diseases, including on diagnostic biomarkers, and I have a rather long list of projects which the NIHR is funding. The diagnosis of a rare disease, as the noble Lord rightly mentioned, is often key to ensuring early intervention and the correct treatment. I can tell him that my department is directing considerable resources towards that, and I would be happy to write to him with the details.
NHS: West London Hospitals
(11 years, 9 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)
My Lords, the reconfiguration of front-line health services is a matter for the local NHS. Any decisions regarding changes to services are taken locally and are subject to the four tests for service change. On 19 February, the NHS North West London Joint Committee of Primary Care Trusts decided to proceed with a “Shaping a Healthier Future” service reconfiguration programme in north-west London.
Lord Dubs
My Lords, will the Minister confirm that A&E waiting times are increasing in the areas covered by the four hospitals even before the closures have taken place? There is enormous local concern about a plan to, as it were, reduce services in a series of hospitals more savagely than anything else in the history of the NHS. In particular, the plan includes the proposed demolition of Charing Cross Hospital and its replacement by a handful of beds. Is it not the case that the Minister or the Secretary of State has the final decision and that it is quite possible for the Secretary of State to say, “No, I do not accept this. Think again.”?
Earl Howe
My Lords, we believe very firmly as a general principle that the reconfiguration of services works best when there is a partnership approach between the NHS, local government and the public. That is why we are strengthening local partnership arrangements through the health and well-being boards. To answer the noble Lord’s question, it is entirely possible for a reconfiguration decision to be referred upwards to the Secretary of State by the overview and scrutiny committee of a local authority, and in that event it is customary practice for the Secretary of State to receive independent advice from the independent reconfiguration panel. However, we have not reached that stage yet. We have agreement locally as to what these arrangements should look like and I think that we should wait to see how the plans develop.
Baroness Hussein-Ece
My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the Whittington Hospital, which serves a densely populated area of Islington and of Haringey, where there is no other hospital, suddenly announced in January without any proper consultation its major plans for reconfiguration, including changes to buildings and services? Those plans include the downgrading of the A&E department of the hospital, where I have spent many an unhappy hour with my children and other family members but receiving an excellent service, to an emergency care service. Does he think that it is appropriate to do this without proper consultation and explaining the plans to local people?
Earl Howe
My Lords, I cannot comment specifically on that particular set of proposals. However, I can say that we made it very clear nearly three years ago that reconfiguration proposals, wherever they arise, should be underpinned, as should the arising decisions, by four reconfiguration tests. Local plans must demonstrate support from GP commissioners; a strengthening in public and patient engagement, which is the issue raised primarily by my noble friend; clarity on the clinical evidence base for whatever is proposed; and support for patient choice. We expect that where proposals of this kind arise, those four tests need to be met.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, again I declare my interest in health. On that, I am puzzled because of what has happened in the case of Lewisham A&E where the clinical commissioning group itself is clearly absolutely opposed to the downgrading of that A&E service. Why has the Secretary of State determined to go ahead with those changes?
Earl Howe
Five out of the six clinical commissioning groups involved in that area were supportive of the changes. It is true that Lewisham CCG was not. However, the four tests were looked at and it was clearly determined by the trust’s special administrator that those tests had been met.
Baroness Wilkins
My Lords, will the Minister recognise that parking needs of both visitors and patients need to be fully taken into account when making this sort of decision? I declare an interest as being an only-too-frequent visitor to Charing Cross A&E over the last year. It would have been impossible to get to Chelsea and Westminster hospital where the parking is appalling, both for myself and for my visitors.
Earl Howe
I agree with the noble Baroness that this is most certainly a factor. In the case of north-west London, an independent equalities impact assessment was undertaken to check how the proposed options would affect all strata of local population under the Equality Act in particular. The assessment found that the impact on travel times by car, and indeed by blue light ambulance, would be minimal under all three of the options that were being looked at. The point that I am making is that in any context, it is important to factor in the effect on travel for all patients likely to be affected.
Lord Dubs
My Lords, I am shocked that the use of the word “reconfiguration” by the Government has brought into the English language an alternative to “cuts”. Will the Minister not accept that what is being proposed in the four hospitals in the north-west London region are savage cuts which will damage services for local people? That is the bottom line.
Baroness Masham of Ilton
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the downgrading of anything is very depressing, worst of all for patients when they want upgrading?
Earl Howe
My Lords, I think that often when plans are explained to patients, they realise that the word “downgrading” is inappropriate. For example, in north-west London, there has been a lot of unnecessary worry about urgent care centres as substitutes for A&E units. The majority of people who attend A&E can very well be treated in an urgent care centre on the same site, and patients who dial 999 will be taken by ambulance straight to the appropriate hospital. Therefore, I think there is, in some senses, a false debate going on here.
House of Lords: Membership
(11 years, 9 months ago)
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12:54 - Division on Lord Hunt of Kings Heath's amendment. - Ayes: 217 / Noes: 45 - Amendment agreed.
Lord Steel of Aikwood
That, notwithstanding the normal practice of the House, this House resolves that no introductions of new Peers shall take place until the recommendation in paragraph 67 of the First Report of the Leader’s Group on Members Leaving the House, chaired by Lord Hunt of Wirral (HL Paper 83, Session 2010–12), has been followed.
Lord Steel of Aikwood
My Lords, I want to make it clear at the beginning that it is my intention to accept the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath. I have listened carefully to Members in all parts of the House and I think it would be more constructive to have a debate on the three issues set out in that amendment than to have a rather arid discussion about the royal prerogative and introductions into the House. I hope, therefore, that in a short debate we can concentrate on the three issues that are raised in what I hope will become the amended Motion.
Of course, the three issues are the same as those set out in the Bill that we sent to the House of Commons in September of last year. I want to make it clear that it is no longer my Bill and I hope that we will hear no more references to the “Steel Bill”. I will read out what it says:
“A Bill to make provision for Peers to cease to be Members of the House of Lords by way of retirement or in the event of non-attendance or criminal conviction”.
Fortunately, my name has disappeared from the Bill. It is no longer my Bill; it is our Bill. It is a Bill that we approved unanimously back in September. It is due to appear again in the Commons tomorrow, when Eleanor Laing will again present it, but it will as usual be blocked by the government Whips. Frankly, we are so near the end of this Session that there is no realistic chance of the Bill passing.
I want to remind the House that on 6 February, in a Question raised by our former Lord Speaker, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, the noble Lord, Lord Hill, said to me:
“He, I am sure, can use his powers of persuasion with colleagues in his own party, including the Deputy Prime Minister. I know that he will try and we will then see how we get on”.—[Official Report, 6/2/13; col. 261.]
Armed with that wonderful quotation, I indeed sought to have a meeting with the Deputy Prime Minister. This proved rather difficult. We were about to go into recess; he was in Africa. I was in Kenya and Uganda throughout the Recess and one of my colleagues, who has a rather warped sense of humour, suggested, “You and Nick should have some Ugandan discussions”—as though we do not have problems enough.
Lord Steel of Aikwood
We ended up having quite a lengthy and amicable telephone call on the subject on Monday evening. But I am afraid I have to report to the House that I failed in my powers of persuasion. The nearest concession that I got from the Deputy Prime Minister was that he would have further discussion with our Leader, the noble Lord, Lord Hill, and I understand that that is going to happen. I hope very much that his powers of persuasion will prove more effective than mine. I intend to pass the ball back to him. I hope that if the House approves the amended Motion today, that will strengthen his hand in the arguments with his colleagues in the Government.
I want to draw the attention of the House to a Written Answer that appeared in Hansard, perhaps significantly, on Thursday 14 February, which was of course the day that we rose for the Recess, so very few Members will have seen this when it was published on the Friday. It was a Question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Ashcroft:
“To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they intend to offer support to the House of Lords (Cessation of Membership) Bill [HL] in the current parliamentary Session”.
The Written Answer is as follows:
“The Government do not intend to offer support to the Bill. In the absence of full reform, it is the Government’s view that there is no easy set of smaller reforms to the House of Lords. In a modern democracy it is important that those who pass legislation should be chosen by those to whom the legislation applies. So reform measures must include introducing elected Members to the House of Lords.
Also, the three core measures of the Bill would not deal with the size of the House of Lords. Provision for retirement is an extension of the non-statutory voluntary retirement scheme, already in place. Only two noble Lords have taken advantage of this so far. Members would only be required to attend once every session to sustain their membership and only future criminals would be removed from the House of Lords”.—[Official Report, 14/2/13; col. WA 176.]
We should analyse that extraordinary Written Answer. The first point is that, of course, the question of fundamental reform of the Lords will come back again, presumably at the next election and in the next Parliament.
Lord Hughes of Woodside
On a point of clarification, is it not the case that next Session we will not get a Writ of Summons? That comes only after the end of this Parliament.
Lord Steel of Aikwood
If that is right, I accept the correction, but the basic principle is correct. Members have not retired; they have simply got leave of absence. That is the point I make. It is technically correct to say that the Bill does not reduce the numbers in the House, but that is not a valid point. What it does is to give this House the statutory authority that the original report, by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, said we needed to devise a scheme of retirement. All sorts of schemes have been put about. If these were not times of austerity, we could have had a retirement or resettlement grant, or the opposite—a cut in the allowances paid to Members who have served over a certain number of years or reached a certain age. We could leave it to each of the parties and groups in the House to come to some arrangement. We could even have an age cut-off in our Standing Orders. All these are possibilities, but there is no point in debating them because we do not have the power to do any of them
All we ask of the Government is to let us have the statutory authority to bring to an end the present law, which says that, whether you like it or not, you are a Member of this House for life and that this the present situation. As for the sentence that only future criminals would be removed from the House of Lords, what does that mean? Are the Government seriously suggesting that the Bill should contain retrospective legislation? It simply does not make sense. This Written Answer was in the name of my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire. He is not just my noble friend in a technical sense, he is a very old personal friend, going back to the time before either of us was anywhere near the Palace of Westminster. I know that he is a highly intelligent man. He could not possibly have written this stuff. These phrases and assertions appear time and again in the briefing given to the Deputy Prime Minister when he appeared before the Commons Constitutional Affairs Committee and in letters that he wrote to me and to others.
Somewhere in the machinery of Whitehall, these arguments are being put about, which are unsustainable. The House should reassert what it said back in September and say bluntly to the Government, the House of Commons and the public that we are keen to see this modest housekeeping change so that we reduce our numbers and our costs; and say to the Leader of the House that we wish him all the best in trying to get these measures through to the Government. I beg to move.
Amendment to the Motion
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
To move, as an amendment to the above motion, to leave out from “that” in line 1 to the end and insert “this House affirms the recommendation in paragraph 67 of the First Report of the Leader’s Group on Members Leaving the House, chaired by Lord Hunt of Wirral (HL Paper 83, Session 2010-12), that “restraint should be exercised by all concerned in the recommendation of new appointments to the House”; and calls on Her Majesty’s Government to support proposals, in line with legislation passed by this House, to.
(a) allow members of the House to retire permanently from the House;
(b) provide for the exclusion from the House of any member who does not attend the House during a Session save where that member has leave of absence in respect of the Session in accordance with Standing Orders of the House, or where a Session is less than six months long; and
(c) provide that a member who is convicted of a serious offence and sentenced to a term of imprisonment of more than one year shall not attend the sittings of the House.”.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, in moving my amendment to the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, I mean no criticism of the noble Lord. Indeed, I—and, I am sure, all Members of the House—are grateful to him for his determination to bring this matter back to your Lordships time after time.
The substantive point, surely, of what the noble Lord has said is that we have a pressing issue today concerning the size of the House, appointments and recruitment. We need to deal with this matter now, rather than let many more years go by before we engage, as the noble Lord has said, in sensible housekeeping.
The failure of Mr Clegg’s substantive Bill on reform surely means, as the noble Lord has said, that it will be a matter of years before a substantive proposal for reform could be put into practice. Indeed, if one took the proposals of the current coalition Government and those of the previous Government, it would be 2020 even if a substantive Bill were presented and passed after the next election—both of those being subject to some uncertainty given the history of Lords reform over 100 years.
We need to make progress on incremental, sensible changes to your Lordships’ House. I detect a real consensus for some progress to be made today. We are already experiencing considerable tensions as a result of our size. We have had the proposals from the Chairman of Committees, speaking for the Privileges Committee, on reforming the system of Oral Questions because of the problem of the number of Peers wishing to ask them. Often noble Lords are not even able to get into the Chamber for Question Time, which is surely much of the focus of our daily activity.
It is disturbing that there are rumours around this place that the Government intend to appoint dozens more new Peers in the next few days or weeks. I am sure that the noble Lord the Leader of the House will point to the coalition agreement. The noble Lord, Lord Steel, has also referred to it. We were certainly not party to any such agreement before the last election. I am mindful of the paper from Meg Russell, the distinguished academic from UCL, who wrote in April 2011 that the objective of a House of Lords membership that is proportional to general election vote share is unrealistic. She said then that it would require the appointment of, at a minimum, 269 new Peers, and that this would have disastrous consequences for the operation of the Chamber, would be unpopular with the public and would be a foolish and unsustainable course to pursue. It if were continued as a principle at every subsequent general election, the size of the House would spiral ever upwards unless some mechanism for removing Members were also adopted.
I understand that there clearly is a need for fresh blood to be introduced into your Lordships’ House from time to time. I certainly also understand that if the coalition Government were finding that their core legislative proposals were not able to get through your Lordships’ House, their case for making more appointments would be stronger. However, that is not the case. The coalition is winning most of the votes that take place. My understanding is that, in this Parliament so far, the Opposition have won about 22% of the votes. That compares to the Opposition winning about 30% of the votes against the previous Government. Even from the Government’s point of view, it is difficult to see the argument that they need a huge number of new Members because of difficulties in the process of getting their legislation through.
Lord Dykes
Is the idea of large numbers coming in even not more reprehensible when a very high incidence of those would be financial donors from the business community, which is tantamount to giving bribes to political parties to become Members of this House?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, that is certainly a point of view. However, I am hoping today that the House might adopt a rather consensual view because I sense that, whether we come from one of the parties or from the non-aligned or Cross Benches, there is a genuine concern about the need to sort out issues to do with the size of the House and retirements and appointments. I will therefore desist from responding to the noble Lord’s intervention.
The Leader of the House enjoys enormous respect here and rightfully so. I ask him to take note of this debate, put aside further large-scale appointments to the House, and work with others in the House to suggest a sensible way forward that deals with the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Steel. The fact that rumours of large-scale appointments have been with us for many months suggests that the Government know it is not the right thing to do.
The sentiments behind the Motion in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, are perfectly understandable and I am most grateful for his acknowledgement that he is prepared to support my amendment. I put my amendment down because I did wonder whether it was right for the House to seek to prevent the introduction of new life Peers who had already been appointed by the Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister. As the noble Lord, Lord Steel, has such a distinguished pedigree, I did wonder what Mr Asquith would have made of his Motion, given that, with the King’s approval, Mr Asquith threatened to flood the place with new Members if the House resisted the Parliament Bill in 1911. At that time the House agreed to let it through. I wonder what Mr Asquith would have made of the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, if their Lordships had prevented the flooding of the House in that period. I am also aware that the noble Lord has received a letter from the chairman of the Appointments Commission, the noble Lord, Lord Jay of Ewelme, who is concerned that if the Motion were to be put into effect Cross-Bench appointments would not be allowed to take place.
We all agree with the sentiment behind the noble Lord’s Motion. My amendment deals with these matters in a sensible way. Above all else, this is not about politics but is an attempt to achieve consensus and to recognise that many Members of your Lordships’ House wish to see progress made. It is an indication to the Government that they need to desist from making large-scale appointments at a time when the House is already full. I beg to move.
Lord Laming
My Lords, I will be brief. Perhaps I may remind the House that I try hard to speak personally, especially on occasions such as this, and that I have no authority to speak on behalf of the Cross-Bench group. That will become all too evident very shortly.
The noble Lord, Lord Steel, has vast experience in both Houses of Parliament and indeed far beyond. Furthermore, he has an enviable record of championing changes designed to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of this House. However, as I hope the House will understand, I was extremely unhappy about the content of the Motion that he has put down on the Order Paper. I am grateful and pleased that he has accepted the amendment.
The one thing on which we can at least agree is that the membership of the House is too large. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, has made plain, this results in colleagues feeling frustrated when they are denied the opportunity to serve on committees that are dealing with matters of special interest to them and, moreover, when their important contributions to our debates are limited to three minutes or even less. There is a real issue to be faced about the membership of this House. In my view, the Motion is not helpful. I was going to speak about the report to which the Motion refers but as the noble Lord, Lord Steel, has accepted the amendment I will move on.
Only yesterday two new Cross-Bench Peers were announced. I very much hope that at the appropriate time your Lordships’ House will make those new Members extremely welcome. This House has a record of doing that and we should avoid the danger of giving the impression that we are resisting new Members. My concern is solely about tactics and timing. My fear is that the amendment will be perceived to be either irrelevant in the current situation or, at worst, provocative. I well recognise the thought that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has given to the amendment and I do not doubt for one moment the good intention behind it. However, I still fail to see how it will have a significant impact on reducing the size of this House and, in particular, the pressure on the facilities and costs. We already have a voluntary retirement scheme that has not been a great success. Any form of financial inducement to make such a scheme more popular would, in my view, especially in the current circumstances, be inappropriate. Trying also to reduce the membership of the House by excluding those who do not, for whatever reason, attend regularly could be counterintuitive in that it would run the risk of encouraging them to attend your Lordships’ House.
The frustrations frequently expressed are sincere, although I cannot help but feel that we are in danger of giving the impression that we want to resist any newcomers into our House. That would be to the disadvantage of the work of this House in revising and improving legislation for the benefit of our fellow citizens and holding the Government to account. In recognising that the House is too big, I nevertheless fear that the amendment will not have the desired effect. I hope that out of this will come something that will be a stimulus to much more detailed discussion across the House in order that we can work towards achieving consensus. That said, I will, as always, listen carefully to the debate.
Lord Cormack
My Lords, I am a great admirer of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, who has given great service to our nation and to this House. Although I agree with him that the two new Members who have been announced should be given the warmest of welcomes—we all agree with that—I regret to say that I cannot follow the logic of his other remarks. I wish to give my strong support to the initiative taken by my noble friend Lord Steel of Aikwood, to whom we are all in debt, and very much to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who has moved his amendment moderately and persuasively, and I hope in a way that will have garnered support in all parts of the House.
Lord Hughes of Woodside
I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. Since he is a great advocate of reducing the size of this House, might I commend to him the traditional trade union solution to dealing with redundancies: last in, first out?
Lord Cormack
If that became the will of the House we would all have to accept it, wouldn’t we? My old and mischievous friend from another place makes his point with his customary tact. It is now 11 years since my noble friend Lord Norton and I formed a group called the Campaign for an Effective Second Chamber. My noble friend Lord Norton, who did that group great service as our convenor throughout those years, cannot be here today because of his teaching duties at his university. We miss him and the contribution he would have made. We formed that group, over which I have had the honour to preside, because we believe that this Chamber is effective but could be much more effective. We were always committed to an appointed House rather than an elected one, but we also recognise the fact that the House as it exists can and should be improved even though many people in this House—by no means the majority, but a number of very distinguished Members—would like to move towards election. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has made that his position in the past. Nevertheless, surely we can all recognise that the House as it exists is not only capable of improvement but cries out for improvement, not only in its size but in the way in which we do business. We all owe a great deal to noble Lords such as the noble Lord, Lord Filkin, who have been working hard in this regard over recent months and years. Whatever one’s ultimate view is, surely we should not stand in the way of what the noble Lords, Lord Steel and Lord Hunt, have referred to as “housekeeping reforms”.
To the Deputy Prime Minister, who has shown an interesting flexibility of mind and memory in recent days, I say, “If you believe that the best is elected, then do not let the best be the enemy of the good”. We think that this House as it exists—and on Mr Clegg’s own admission it cannot be fundamentally changed for some years—should now be changed in the way proposed in the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. We all hold my noble friend the Leader of the House in the highest regard. I very much hope that he will take it upon himself as Leader of the House—leader of all of us—to convene a meeting to discuss ways and means of approaching the problems referred to by the noble Lords, Lord Steel and Lord Hunt. He would be doing us all a very great service if he exercised his initiative in that regard and I very much hope that he will. Of course, our expertise and experience, notwithstanding the noble Lord, Lord Hughes, must be refreshed and revived, but if many more Peers are introduced into this House without addressing the current problems we will bring this House into disrepute.
Lord Elton
Like the rest of us, my noble friend sees the expected approach of large numbers as rather like a torpedo. He is now choosing one of two paths put before your Lordships and I would like to know his explanation of that. On the face of it, the admirable amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is actually hortatory—it advises and says that something may be done—whereas the principal Motion is prescriptive and states that it shall be done. The second is not in our gift; the first is. If you want to put out a net to catch the torpedo, surely it must be the first and not the second.
Lord Cormack
I understand and sympathise with the point made by my noble friend, but the fact is that there are issues like royal prerogative that have to be taken into account. We do not want to precipitate—this was implicit in the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt—a major constitutional crisis. What we want to do is address the housekeeping issues in this House. That is a simple and reasonable aim. This is declaratory, of course it is, but, if we have a vote at the end of this debate, I hope that the House will declare that it really is concerned about these matters. We are asking the Leader to do what he can to bring some common sense to bear.
Surely it is wrong that a particular person should be the stumbling block in the face of sensible reform. Mr Clegg has many admirable qualities, but he should not be allowed to be the arbiter of our constitution. That is wrong. He introduced a Bill, which failed. I am proud to wear this morning the tie made by the 91 stout Tory rebels who frustrated that Bill in July by saying, “You cannot get this through because we will not give you the time to do so”. Mr Clegg recognised that, and he should now recognise that if he believes in parliamentary democracy, and if he believes in this House as being a fundamental part of this democracy as it is the moment, it should be as effective as it possibly can be. If we continue to appoint new Peers without addressing the issues so eloquently talked about by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, we will run the risk of making this House fall in public repute and indeed become something of a laughing stock, which it should not be. That would fly in the face of history and of what has been achieved by so many, particularly over the years since 1958 when life Peers were introduced. If this comes to a vote, I urge Members to vote in significant numbers to show that there is indeed a consensus in this House on these modest proposals.
Lord Tyler
My Lords, I want very briefly to put a couple of points to my noble friend the Leader of the House before he responds to the debate. I wonder whether he might reflect on the fact that in the previous Labour Administration, some 40% of the new recruits to this House were added to the Labour Benches, compared with 21% to the Conservative Benches and 15% to the Liberal Democratic Benches. Even more significantly, in May 2010, immediately following the general election, there were additional recruits to your Lordships’ House—28 Labour Members, 18 Conservative Members and nine Liberal Democrat Members. Will my noble friend reflect on the very interesting Pauline conversion, if I might put it like that, of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who suddenly seems to find the overpopulation of this House such a terrible problem? Apparently it was never a problem under the previous Administration, nor was it a problem even in May 2010. I am the last person to turn against a sinner who repenteth, but there is an important question to put to the opposition Benches about their change of attitude.
Would my noble friend also note that some of the Members who now object so strongly to further appointments were indeed the most vociferous when the Government came forward with a proposal to end a fully appointed House? My noble friend Lord Cormack, who is a very staunch defender of the primacy of the House of Commons, may have forgotten that the Government’s Bill received a considerable—indeed, a uniquely—sizeable majority at its Second Reading. That was an attempt to sort this problem out. It had indeed built very firmly on the proposals put forward by Mr Jack Straw, in which the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, played a very important part. Again, he seems to have changed his attitude.
I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, that this Motion as amended would still be inappropriate at this time. Having had, I accept, an expression of concern on all sides of the House about this problem, I very much hope that the Motion, even amended, is not put to a Division because I think it will have more power if it is not seen to be something that is divisible and therefore divisive in your Lordships’ House.
Lord Grocott
My Lords, I was just sitting here quietly, looking forward to the conclusion of the debate without, I hoped, a Division, but hoping that if there was a Division it would result in a resounding majority for the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, and my noble friend’s amendment. However, the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, make it impossible for me to remain in my seat because I think he suggested that the previous Labour Government paid no attention to what he now considers a very sensible proposal that the membership of this House should reflect the result of the previous general election.
I remind the noble Lord of the facts. I know that facts can sometimes ruin arguments, but the facts are as follows. He may recall that the 1997 general election resulted in a Labour majority of something over 150 in the House of Commons. I will be honest enough to say that I almost wish I had thought of this at the time. It would have been extremely tempting to argue that the membership of this House should reflect the huge majority that the Labour Party had in 1997, and on which it was re-elected, with an almost identical majority, in 2001. The noble Lord can do the maths rather than me, but there would have needed to be a colossal addition to the Labour Benches in this House to reflect that.
I ask for a little indulgence and sympathy towards my dear old party from all quarters of this House. The Labour Party eventually became the biggest party in this House in 2005: that is, eight years after we received a colossal overall majority in two successive general elections. We have been the biggest party in this House for eight years out of the 110 years of our existence as a political party. I do not think it is being greedy to say that eight years is not too bad. If the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, did argue for a huge influx of Labour Peers at that stage, it was obviously on one of those days when I did not attend the House. I simply put it to him that he ought to reflect on that.
Perhaps one other matter on which the noble Lord should reflect, in this of all weeks, is the election in Italy, a country which adheres to the constitutional principle that the second chamber should be elected and have pretty well equal powers to those of the first chamber. He should reflect for a moment on whether that is a good idea to incorporate here. While he is about it, he should reflect on whether the proportional representation system of election to the Italian Parliament provides stability and security for a Government. One or two of the noble Lord’s theories have been road tested this week and I could not forbear but to refer to them. On that note, I will sit down.
Baroness Hayman
My Lords, tempted as I am, I will not follow the reflections of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, on second chambers across the world. During my time as Lord Speaker, I developed a very good 45-minute lecture on second chambers around the world, but I suspect that the House would not appreciate hearing it today.
Like others, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Steel, for giving us the opportunity to consider this issue today and, if I may say so, even more grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, for bringing a proposition before the House that I think is in many ways more acceptable than the original one of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, given the interpretation that people could put on that and the suggestion of constitutional impropriety or of being unwelcoming to new Members. I appreciate what the noble Lord, Lord Laming, had to say on that. However, like the noble Lord, Lord Steel, I was deeply depressed when I read the Written Answer that appeared in Hansard on 15 February. While it is understandable that the Government should feel frustrated at the loss of their proposals for an elected House, those proposals were indeed lost. The reality of the situation is that we have two and a half years until the next general election and some time beyond that during which this House will continue to be an appointed House. It is constitutionally and politically irresponsible not to take at least some modest measures now to take us forward.
I am not a supporter of an elected House. I am a supporter of a rather radical reform of this House which is not encompassed in what is before us today, or the Bill before another place. However, I have to accept that that reality cannot be achieved at the moment. The elements in the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, provide a minimum basis for us to take forward some of the changes that are need in your Lordships’ House. It will not radically reduce the numbers but, having been deeply involved with these issues for some time, I believe that not having a legislative base on which to build the House’s consensus—as I hope it will develop—on retirement is a terrible impediment to going forward. One thinks of resources as being about money and people, but as a Minister I learnt that, in politics, resources are also about legislative time. Allowing retirement to be a reality—in future “life” not meaning “for life”—is enormously important.
The issue of those with criminal convictions, though very small, narrow and, of course, not retrospective—how could it ever be?—is important for this House. It is also an important basis for our own disciplinary action in future. Even this minimalist legislative change is enormously important and would give us the basis on which to go forward. The other day, I asked the Leader whether he would do the service to this House that could be done by allowing us that minimum basis. I am very encouraged by the fact that there are those who, like the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath—though unfortunately not the noble Lord, Lord Tyler—believe in an elected House but still recognise the problems and the reality of the years ahead. Noble Lords who want to participate in the business of the House sometimes cannot because they cannot be within the Chamber. That is not a proper way for us to continue. We want to welcome new Members and if we are to do so, we also have to find a way in which membership of this House can cease. It is our responsibility to try and do that. We will not achieve it overnight. There will not be immediate unanimity about the grounds for retirement and how we go forward. However, since 1999 we have had constant reasons why proposed changes were not exactly right. We have had constant reversals to proposals for incremental change on the basis that we were going to have all-singing, all-dancing proposals for election. It has got us into terrible trouble over numbers and over financial support for Members. Those who were arguing that we needed to change that system sooner were told, “Don’t worry because very soon we will have a Bill, we will have elections, we will have a salaried House”.
It is not responsible to continue to do nothing. We have to make a start somewhere and I hope very much that the House will today make that view very clear.
Lord Higgins
My Lords, I very much welcome this debate. It is important that we bring pressure on the Government to carry out the urgent changes that have been set out by the noble Lord, Lord Steel, and those on the Opposition Front Bench. I certainly welcome that. Like others, I was concerned about the Written Answer to which the noble Lord, Lord Steel, referred.
The noble Lord on the Opposition Front Bench pointed out that it will clearly be a long time before there is any likelihood of our moving towards an elected Chamber. However, there is another point. I am optimistic on that issue because it is absolutely clear, despite the rather mixed procedure on voting in the other place, that its Members now clearly understand that it is not in their interests to have an elected House of Lords with regard to the situation both at Westminster and in their constituencies. It is high time that it is recognised that this is the case and that we should not go further forward on that point.
In all events, it is important that we deal with the issue of the size of this House and the other issues mentioned in the amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, referred to the arrangements set out in the coalition agreement. Again, the coalition should recognise that that is not a sensible way of dealing with the size of this House. We do not know on either of those points what will appear in the manifestos—the reality is that manifestos are cooked up behind closed doors, with virtually no consideration at all for Members of Parliament in either House. We cannot tell, but I hope that on both matters such proposals will not be included in either of the main parties’ manifestos.
The Motion proposes that there should be no increase in the number of Members until the size of the House is determined—I do not have the exact wording. However, it is extremely important that the Government clearly set out how they envisage the programme for the House of Lords. The House is getting bigger and bigger and, presumably at some stage, its size has to be reduced. The danger then, particularly after an election, is that it increases again. The Government need to say what they think is the maximum size possible within that transitional period and what the ultimate aim ought to be. We need some guidance on the optimum size of the House.
The other points that have been debated concern the various amendments in what I am still inclined to call the Steel Bill. We should simply go ahead with them, and the block in the House of Commons ought to be removed. It is difficult to avoid the impression that a sense of pique on behalf of the Deputy Prime Minister is leading to that block. We ought to go ahead with those changes, and we can perfectly well do so way before the date of the next general election.
Finally, perhaps I may make a more controversial point. Paragraph 47 of the Hunt report suggests that provisions for retirement might be made. I realise that this is highly controversial, but once a Treasury Minister, always a Treasury Minister. If there is one crucial issue in the Government’s policy at the moment, it is to reduce the deficit. On the proposal that one should create, for example, an incentive scheme whereby a modest payment was made based on the expenses incurred in the previous full year, minus travel expenses, it would be helpful to see to what extent that might produce a significant reduction in the size of the House. At all events, it is a means of saving public expenditure, which I hope would be acceptable.
I have one final point about the position of my own Front Bench. I am told that the position normally is that they vote against things that are not government policy. That is a rather strange doctrine: many good proposals are not government policy; that is no reason to vote against them. As for the proposals in the amendment, I think it is clear that the House has already approved them in the shape of the legislation sent to the other place. To then go and vote against them seems a very strange attitude to take.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Hill of Oareford)
My Lords, I think that we have a good debate and that the outlines of the issues that the House will want to consider are already clear. The points that have been made very forcefully by a number of noble Lords have been well made; obviously I have heard everything that has been said. Although I recognise that I am new to this job, one issue on which I can be in little doubt about the opinions of this House is that which we have been debating today. Noble Lords have already been extremely generous—I might say unstinting—with the advice they have given me at every possible opportunity. I am glad to say that I have had a chance to discuss these issues with many noble Lords who have already spoken today and I will continue to do so in future, because I think that that is the right way to take the matter forward.
Coming new to the subject, I cannot have the great expertise and history that many noble Lords have on this matter. We have seen it again demonstrated by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and my noble friend Lord Tyler. These issues go back a long time. However, I do at least bring a fresh pair of eyes to some of these issues. Given that the underlying issue to which all noble Lords have referred is the size of the House, I thought that I should start by going back to look at the figures to see by how much the House has grown. This is what I found.
The House that Tony Blair inherited on taking office in 1997 had 1,067 Peers eligible to vote. Of course, that was before the removal of most of the hereditary Peers following the 1999 reform. The House that Gordon Brown inherited on taking office 10 years later in 2007 was smaller: there were 738 peers eligible to vote. As of this week, there are 761 Members of this House eligible to vote; that is 23 more than in 2007. We have had some discussion about the proportion and size of the number who have been introduced, so I looked at the numbers for the Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Labour and Cross-Bench Peers in particular. In 2007, 698 Members sat on those Benches and were eligible to vote. I accept that the equivalent figure today is higher: today it is 704, which is six more than in 2007. Those figures come from the House of Lords Library note of 27 June 2012; for this week’s figures, I consulted the online House of Lords registry.
Given that the overall number of Peers eligible to vote is not so different from five or six years ago, that brings me naturally to the important question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, about the exercise of restraint in new appointments to the House, which is referred to both in his amendment and in my noble friend Lord Steel’s Motion.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe
My Lords, would the noble Lord be kind enough to give us the details of the average attendances from 1997?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am coming on to talking about attendance and participation, which I recognise as an important issue. As far as the exercise of restraint is concerned, the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, refers to the Leader’s Group recommendation on the creation of new Members of this House. That read:
“Whilst we cannot recommend that there should be a moratorium on new appointments to the House—since, while the purpose of the House is to provide expertise, we must ensure that that expertise is refreshed and kept up to date”—
a point, I think, on which all noble Lords agree—
“we do urge that restraint should be exercised by all concerned in the recommendation of new appointments the House, until such time as debate over the size of membership is conclusively determined”.
I would argue that this recommendation has been followed and that the Prime Minister has indeed shown restraint. Since the well publicised lists of May and November 2010, a total of eight new peers have been created, six of them on the Cross Benches; 42 life peers have, sadly, died. I suggest, therefore, that the Prime Minister’s record is consistent with the recommendation from the Leader’s Group, both in terms of exercising restraint and in ensuring that expertise is refreshed and kept up to date.
I now come to the point about which I was asked. The real issue is not so much the absolute number of those entitled to vote but attendance. Surely we all agree that attendance and participation are good things that we ought to encourage. That is one of the reasons why I am extremely keen, as a new Leader, to try to find new ways to help a wider range of Members to play a greater role in this House. That is why, as an early priority, I shortly plan to put proposals to the Procedure Committee that will provide more time and opportunities for Back-Bench Members to lead debates. My intention is to build on the work of my noble friend Lord Strathclyde, who, with the support of the Liaison Committee and the House, initiated a modest expansion in our Select Committee activity to include more pre-legislative and post-legislative scrutiny as well as a greater emphasis on single-session committees. I am keen to do that in order to ensure that a wider range of Members have the opportunity to serve on our Select Committees.
Noble Lords have raised the matter of Question Time. I welcome the fact that the Procedure Committee is due to come forward with some revised proposals on how we might make it easier for a wider range of Members to table Oral Questions. There is also the question of how we might encourage more Members to come in on supplementary questions and broaden participation. I am acutely conscious of how crowded the Chamber is during Question Time, just as it is at PMQs in another place. When you spend as much time as I now have the pleasure to do in your Lordships’ House, it is clear that, at other times of the day, this House is not as crowded as it is during Question Time.
As well as talking about the need for restraint, the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, reiterated the support of this House for the proposals in the Bill introduced by my noble friend Lord Steel of Aikwood. Indeed, the House has already made its position clear. We passed the Bill without a Division and sent it to the other place last summer. It contains measures which my noble friend Lord Steel described as “housekeeping” and for which it is clear that there is widespread support in this House. I know that my noble friend is keen that the Government should take the Bill forward. As he said, he made his case directly to the Deputy Prime Minister earlier this week; he was the right person to talk to, as he is the Cabinet Minister responsible for this matter. Despite that, the Government’s position remains that we do not wish to facilitate the passage of the Bill. I understand that the Deputy Prime Minister made clear why that is the case. As my noble friend Lord Tyler said, it is because the House of Commons voted overwhelmingly last year in favour of an elected House of Lords. With that in mind, no Government could credibly support a package of measures that could be perceived as anointing an all-appointed House.
Baroness Hayman
I am grateful to the noble Lord. I find this a confusing argument. If the will of the House of Commons was so clear and unambiguous, why are we not now spending our time debating the House of Lords Reform Bill? The fact is that the House of Commons purported to will the ends but refused to will the means. If you do not will the parliamentary time, you do not will the statute. I suggest to the noble Lord the Leader that the view of the House of Commons was not quite as unambiguously in favour of an elected House as he suggested.
Lord Hill of Oareford
Clearly I take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, that there was a difference between the extremely clear view expressed—a 71% majority in favour in principle of an elected House—and what happened. As she said, when push came to shove some of the consequences of an elected House, such as the issue about the balance of powers between the two Chambers and so on, perhaps became less compelling. However, that was the situation and the Government have made it clear that they will not bring forward further legislation to reform the House in what remains of this Parliament. This position was welcomed by many in the House.
Lord Reid of Cardowan
I am keen to preserve the spirit of consensus that my noble friend Lord Hunt generated. However, with respect to the Leader of the House, who I hope will be engaging in discussions with the Government and other authorities, the question of legitimacy that he raised—that it would not be legitimate when something had been done to appear to do the opposite subsequently—must be truly addressed. Does he recognise that not only was the idea of proportionality lost in the proposals for this House but it was previously rejected under this Administration by the country in the referendum on the alternative vote system? Given that there is an apparent consistency about the legitimacy of the processes and non-contradiction, will the Leader assure us that, given the fact that proportionality has been rejected by the country in an overwhelming vote and then lost during the proposals for reform of the House of Lords, the idea of proportionality through appointment to this House will not be pursued?
Lord Hill of Oareford
On the point about proportionality, the noble Lord will know that in the coalition document, the parties set out their position—although, as I argued earlier when I referred to the exercise of restraint, progress towards that form of words has not been put into effect in the same way. I agree with him about the importance of this being a consensual debate. I do not seek to make it political.
Lord Hill of Oareford
Perhaps I may just finish this point. As things stand, it is clearly the case that the proportion of Labour Peers in this House is greater than was the case in the popular vote at the general election. It has not been the case since then, in 2010 or subsequently, that the Government have sought to redress the balance in a dramatic way. As we heard, many new Labour Peers were created. Therefore, I hope that restraint and the measured way in which the Government have proceeded with new appointments have provided the noble Lord with some reassurance. We are not saying that we rule out the measures that the Bill in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Steel, seeks to enact. We are saying that they should be considered in their proper context as part of a wider reform of the House.
If I may, I will say something briefly about the effectiveness of the measures proposed in the Bill to substantially reduce the number of Members who attend this House each day. This point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Laming. In other words, would my noble friend’s Bill tackle the problem of size that it seeks to address? There has been mention already about the non-statutory, voluntary retirement scheme that has been put in place. Two Peers have taken advantage of it. Therefore, there must be some reason for the reticence of Members in volunteering for retirement. I am not personally persuaded that making the scheme statutory would overcome that reticence. Some supporters of my noble friend’s measures suggest that some kind of payment might help overcome this reticence. I should make clear, as I have done before, that the Government do not support making taxpayers’ money available to Members of the House to encourage them to retire. That would be wrong, and it would be seen to be wrong. I am glad to hear that my view on this is shared by all groups and all parties.
On excluding infrequent attendees, I say that those Peers currently put no pressure on the Benches at Question Time. If pressure is to be reduced, the people who need to retire are those who attend, not those who do not. I agree strongly that criminals should be excluded, but, unless there is a grand conspiracy in the House of which I am currently unaware, the suggested policy would not reduce the number of those currently attending the House.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton
My Lords, as a member of the Leader’s Group under the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and as a Whip in your Lordships’ House, I would not hazard a guess as to the number of noble Lords who would take permanent leave of absence. However, I recollect, when I was in both those roles, a number of noble Lords who attended quite regularly and with great difficulty because they felt that they had been asked to come in and serve for life. I would not dream of naming them, but some are quite regular attendees because they feel honour bound to attend because they feel that, were they to cease to attend, their expertise, which some have said they feel is a little out of date, would not be replaced in the interest of not making the House too large.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I understand that point. As is normally the case with the noble Baroness, it is sharp, perceptive and fair.
I am conscious that the House would like to move forward. I will say a brief word on the Motion that was moved by my noble friend Lord Steel of Aikwood and about our powers of regulation in this area. The Leader’s Group got it right when it said that it could not recommend a moratorium on new appointments to the House. That must be correct. The Life Peerages Act 1958 gives the Queen the power to create peerages for life, with the right,
“to receive writs of summons to attend the House of Lords and sit and vote therein accordingly”.
Therefore, I agree with the way that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and my noble friend Lord Cormack approached the issue. I cannot see that our right as an individual House to self-regulate includes the power to override that Act of Parliament.
I have set out why I believe that the Motion in the name of my noble friend Lord Steel calls for much action that has already been taken, and restraint that has been exercised. I have listened to the debate and recognise clearly that Members on all sides feel very strongly about the question of size. However, I hope that the figures that I shared with the House demonstrate that some beliefs about the issue of overall size are not quite borne out by the facts.
I believe very strongly that we must do more to accommodate rising attendance and the consequent increase in demand from Members, especially newer Members, for opportunities to take part in our work. I have strong sympathy with those who are uncomfortable about Members convicted of a serious prisonable offence returning to the House. Pending primary legislation to exclude Members on those grounds, I would certainly support steps to explore measures that we ourselves might take to discourage Members in that category from taking part in the work of our House.
Those are two areas in which we can help ourselves. On the remainder, noble Lords have set out their clear views forcefully. I have attempted to set out the Government’s position. I have no doubt that our discussions, both on the Floor and elsewhere, will continue. I will certainly play my part in those. In the mean time, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Elton
My noble friend asked for restraint. Perhaps I may suggest some restraint on the part of Her Majesty’s Government. I can think of no more appropriate opportunity to put this point. I have watched the House of Commons for a great many years. I have noticed how it changes during a Parliament. At the beginning of a Parliament, the wisdom and experience of those who have served is diluted by many who come in with their head full of theories but no understanding of what the effects would be. As we have been not promised but led to expect legislation in the next Parliament, perhaps I may ask my noble friend to exercise his greatest efforts to see that reform is not undertaken in the first two years, so that those who talk about it will know about it.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I am always in favour of people knowing about the things that they are talking about. I always listen with great care to what my noble friend Lord Elton says.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I shall respond very briefly. I welcome the willingness of the Leader of the House to seek advice from Members of your Lordships’ House. He is a fresh pair of eyes and we very much look forward to working with him. I also very much support his work in trying to encourage Members who perhaps are not as active as possible to participate more in the future. Ultimately, though, I was disappointed with his response. He started to trade statistics and there always seems to be a risk in doing so. My general conclusion is that whatever Government are in power, in general and over time that governing party will tend to see an increase in the number of seats they hold in the House of Lords. I certainly agree that we need fresh blood form time to time, and I actually agree that restraint has been shown so far. As the noble Lord, Lord Elton, said, the issue is the future. The rumours which have been around this House for quite a long time now are that the Government want to make a very large number of new appointments in the next few weeks or months. Above all, I hope that the noble Lord will consider this. The plea of restraint is very much directed at those future appointments.
The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, helpfully reminded the House of my own views on Lords reform. I was hoping that my noble friends behind me might forget that, but they are right—I have consistently voted in favour of an elected House. However, the Leader of the House essentially says that because the Commons voted at Second Reading for Mr Clegg’s Bill, that means that it would be wrong to put to them proposals for incremental housekeeping. As someone who favours an elected House I strongly refute that. First of all, that Bill did not go through. Secondly, under the proposals of Mr Clegg, or indeed those of my right honourable friend Mr Straw, if a party pledged an elected House of Lords and that party came into power in 2015, the first element of elected Members would not come to your Lordships’ House before 2020. That is seven years away. For the Leader of the House to say that no useful housekeeping or incremental change can take place before that moment is a matter of regret. I think that is the implication of what he said.
I do not think that we can wait. We need to indicate to the Government that sensible change ought to happen as soon as possible and say that we very much hope that restraint will be exercised in the appointment of new Members. It is important that the House has a way of indicating its support for those intentions, so I will put this to the vote.
Lord Steel of Aikwood
My Lords, I beg to move formally the substantive Motion as amended and, in doing so, would say simply that the House has spoken very clearly, which I hope will strengthen the hand of the Leader of the House in future discussions with the Government.
Motion, as amended, agreed to.
Succession to the Crown Bill
(11 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Trefgarne
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Trefgarne will hesitate for a moment or two so that colleagues can leave the Chamber. We will then take his Amendment 1.
Lord Trefgarne
My Lords, I have never quite understood, and do not now understand, why it is thought so necessary that this Bill should be driven through with such speed. The plain fact is that the arrangements it seeks to change—I do not disagree with all of them—have been in place in some cases for many hundreds of years. Why we need not only to drive the Bill through swiftly but also to backdate one of its provisions is not immediately obvious to me. I therefore propose that, at the end of the first clause, we should provide that it should come into effect in, say, 50 years’ time, which is a very short time in relation to how long these arrangements have been in place. That would be an appropriate change to the Bill and I beg to move.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, given that we support the Bill, this amendment does sound rather like, “Please make me chaste, but not quite yet”. Some of us have waited, particularly for the first part of it, for many years and we certainly would not want to see any delay. Therefore, we hope that the amendment will not be passed.
Lord Elton
My Lords, I want to add a note of concern to that of my noble friend Lord Trefgarne by referring to the report on the Succession to the Crown Bill produced by the Constitution Committee, which holds the strong view that there is no need for haste.
The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Wallace of Tankerness)
My Lords, the effect of my noble friend’s amendment would be, as he has indicated, to delay the removal of the male gender bias in the line of succession for almost 50 years. Perhaps I may pick up the point made by my noble friend Lord Elton and his reference to the report of your Lordships’ Constitution Committee. It is fair to say that since that committee reported, there has not been any undue haste. The time made available for debate on this Bill in the other place was not even fully used up, and in your Lordships’ House we are proceeding in the normal fashion with the appropriate elapses of time between the different stages. There is certainly no intention to cut short the debate in this House.
My noble friend has asked why we are doing this now and at this speed. The position is that the Prime Ministers of 16 Commonwealth nations, of which Her Majesty is the head of state, agreed during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Conference in Perth in October 2011—that is why the date has been put into the Bill—to work together towards a common approach to amending the rules on the succession to their respective Crowns. It is fair to say that that was the product of considerable work and discussion over many years. Indeed, discussions were ongoing during the previous Administration in this country. All these countries wish to see change in two areas, the first of which is covered by this clause, and that is to end the system of male preference primogeniture, under which a younger son can displace an elder daughter in the line of succession. It is right and appropriate that this clause will remove a piece of long-standing discrimination against women that may well have been acceptable in earlier centuries, to which my noble friend referred. This provision will modernise and affirm the place of our constitutional monarchy.
At Second Reading the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, said that:
“If in the future within the line of succession a younger son were to take precedence over an older daughter, it would seem to be at least controversial and at worst discriminatory, out of date and out of touch. To make this change now, therefore, strengthens the monarchy because it avoids any risk of such deep controversy”.—[Official Report, 14/2/13; col. 802.]
That is why this is an appropriate time to make the change, because it will be done without affecting anyone who currently would have a prior claim on the throne. If, however, we wait for a situation where there may be a daughter and then a younger brother, and we tried to make the change then, it is inevitable that that would be more controversial.
Perhaps it is also worth reflecting that if the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have as their first born a son, have only sons or, indeed, have only daughters, the effect of this clause may not bite until the next generation, possibly after 2060. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, made clear, it would be controversial and possibly even destabilising to the monarchy to have this kind of debate at that point. We look forward to the birth of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s first child knowing that we can celebrate, when this Bill is passed, that whether the baby is a boy or a girl they will have an equal claim to the Throne. I therefore invite my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Trefgarne
My Lords, I hope that we will not hear too much more about the Commonwealth Heads of Government Conference where it was all said to be agreed. These matters are not agreed by ministerial diktat, however senior and distinguished the Ministers may be, but by the Parliaments of the countries concerned, and in some cases by a referendum as well. When the Heads of Government agreed all this in Perth back in 2010, it was subject to parliamentary approval in the relevant countries. That parliamentary approval has not yet been received, not least in this country. I hope very much that we will be thinking in terms of parliamentary approval rather than ministerial diktat, upon which my noble and learned friend seems to be relying.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I entirely accept what my noble friend says on the importance of the Parliaments; indeed some of the realms do not necessarily feel they need parliamentary approval, but obviously in this country we do. I am sure that he would agree that we needed prior agreement before any measures could go forward to the respective Parliaments.
Lord Trefgarne
Yes, but that is not included in this clause. That said, I do not wish to delay your Lordships on this matter. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Northbrook
“Succession to the Duchy of Cornwall not to depend on gender
In determining the succession to the Duchy of Cornwall, the gender of a person born after 28 October 2011 does not give that person, or that person’s decendants, precedence over any other person (whenever born).”
Lord Northbrook
My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 3. If His Royal Highness and the Duchess of Cambridge have a daughter, she may, thanks to the Bill, be able to become queen. However, she cannot as of right become Duchess of Cornwall or Countess of Merioneth. That seems to be an anomaly, particularly with the Prime Minister’s focus on equality. I beg to move.
Lord Lloyd of Berwick
My Lords, I support the amendment. I do so because many years ago when I was a struggling barrister, I was appointed Attorney-General to the Prince of Wales, which carried with it also being Attorney-General to the Duchy of Cornwall. Therefore, I do have some—albeit from rather long ago—experience of what the Duchy of Cornwall is and how it works.
In his reply to the Second Reading debate, the noble and learned Lord made three points, at column 830, about how the Duchy of Cornwall would be affected if this Bill becomes law, as I hope it will. I very much apologise that I was unable to be present, but I was abroad. First, he pointed out that Princess Elizabeth, when heir to the Throne, did not become the Duke of Cornwall. Secondly, he pointed out that if the Bill becomes law and the heir to the Throne is a daughter, the title would go into abeyance in the ordinary way. Thirdly, he pointed out that if the heir to the Throne is a daughter, she will not suffer financially from the title going into abeyance because of the Sovereign Grants Act 2011, to which the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, had drawn attention during the debate.
As to the first point, it is of course true that the title fell into abeyance when Princess Elizabeth was heir to the Throne. As to the third point, it is clear that the heir to the Throne will not suffer financially anyway, so to some extent we can disregard that as a relevant point. However, I question the second point, and whether there is any need for the title to go into abeyance. Why, I ask the noble and learned Lord, should it?
It seems to me that to enable the heir to the Throne to become Duke of Cornwall if female is the logical extension of the provisions of this Bill. It is within—if only just—the royal title. Obviously, there is no difficulty in a female heir to the Throne being called the Duke of Cornwall because, as we all know, the Queen is also the Duke of Lancaster. In addition to what I submit is the logical extension of this Bill, there is a practical reason why I support this amendment.
I remember very well meetings of the Duchy council, which the Prince of Wales, then a very young man, would always attend. He took a close interest in the affairs of the Duchy. One must remember that we are not talking about just a paper title but a large estate and what has become a large business in recent years. It is my belief that the Prince of Wales’s experience in chairing the Duchy council and dealing with a large estate and matters of business has served him very well in subsequent years.
That experience, which has served the present Prince of Wales well, should not be denied to a future heir to the Throne if she is a woman. In fact, one might almost say it is all the more important that she should, as heir to the Throne, have the sort of experience that the present Prince of Wales has had. I hope that that experience will become available irrespective of the gender of the heir to the Throne. This may come as a bit of a surprise to the noble and learned Lord, but perhaps he will consider the matter and take advice from the Duchy of Cornwall itself if necessary—I could perhaps give him advice—that this is a sensible extension of the Bill.
Lord Lexden
My Lords, I, too, support this amendment and will add a small footnote to what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, has just said. I understand that an amendment would be needed to the Duchy’s founding charter, drawn up in 1337, to enable a female heir to inherit. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, stressed, this is a Bill that provides for gender equality. If that principle is to be fully and completely embodied in it, action must surely be taken to revise the founding charter of the Duchy of Cornwall so that a female heir to the Crown can succeed to it.
As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, so wisely pointed out, there is a further practical consideration. If the Duchy is not held by an individual but placed in abeyance and administered by its council, there is a real risk that its affairs will not be administered with efficiency and skill. There is a strong view held by many that the absence of a Duke of Cornwall between 1936 and 1958 led to a serious decline in the running of its estates and other properties, a decline from which the present Duke, now the Prince of Wales, successfully rescued it. For these reasons, I support this amendment.
Lord Mancroft
My Lords, I, too, support my noble friend’s very important amendment. I was going to make the point that I have heard repeated again and again—which my noble friend Lord Lexden has made very strongly for me—that not only does the Duke of Cornwall need a Duchy but the Duchy needs a Duke. Estates, businesses, or whatever you may choose to call them in the modern day and age, that are run by councils, groups of trustees or boards of directors are all very well but in the case particularly of a large agricultural estate such as the Duchy or Cornwall—and there is none larger or better run—the present Duchy of Cornwall runs so well because the Duke of Cornwall has taken such an interest in it, and if there were not a Duke, regardless of that Duke’s sex, I think that would not happen. My noble friend Lord Lexden’s point is absolutely valid.
Another point that has been made, which I will repeat, is that the splitting apart of ancient titles is unsatisfactory and untidy. In dealing with important constitutional matters, although these are technicalities and perhaps of interest only to historians, politicians and noble Lords who can be bothered to spend their Thursday afternoons in your Lordships’ House, they are important matters and need to be done tidily. I do not think they are done tidily in the Bill.
Lastly, when my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace responds, will he assure the House that the Duke of Cornwall—the Prince of Wales—was consulted over this and that he is comfortable with the way in which the Bill is going forward? I do not wish my noble and learned friend the Minister to breach any confidences or step outside the correct procedures but it would give comfort to the House to know that the Government had consulted His Royal Highness and that the Duchy and the council and the Duke of Cornwall himself were comfortable with the way in which this is proceeding.
Lord Trefgarne
My Lords, I do not intend to delay your Lordships on this matter. All I will say is that a number of years ago now I had to deal with His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales in his capacity as the Duke of Cornwall in connection with the use of Dartmoor as a military training area. He dealt with it with enormous skill and understanding and we were grateful to him for that. If this amendment seeks to preserve and encourage those arrangements, I am in favour of it.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, I support this amendment, but for rather different reasons from those of some other noble Lords who have spoken. It is ironic to me that we are having a debate, quite rightly, about equality between men and women in inheriting titles. I understood from what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, said at Second Reading that if the next heir to the Throne is a lady, she could be called either the Prince of Wales or the Princess of Wales—heaven knows; I would have thought she would be a princess, but I am no expert. If she can be called the Princess of Wales, why can she not be called the Duchess of Cornwall, or the Duke of Cornwall, or whichever way we want to put it? It seems extraordinary, really.
At Second Reading, I spoke about a number of issues that I had with the current structure of the duchy: whether it is in the private or public sector; what it does with its revenue; and the ability of the Prince of Wales to approve legislation. Frankly, this is one of the few Bills that he and Her Majesty should have a view on because it affects them in their roles. However, there are an awful lot of other issues on which I have not put amendments down because I was advised that they were a bit outside the Long Title, so I shall be looking to prepare and propose a Private Member’s Bill on some of these issues in the next Session, I hope. When the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, said that he had been Attorney-General to the Duchy of Cornwall, I thought, “Fine, the Duchy is getting free legal advice from some of the best lawyers in the land”. However, it then goes to tribunals and says it is a private organisation. Well, no other private organisations get free legal advice from an attorney-general. There are many other issues to discuss on that, but I support the amendment as a logical extension to the Bill. I look forward to hearing the Government’s response.
Lord Deben
My Lords, we are dealing with anomalies here and seeking to remove them. One reason we are doing that is because it sends a very clear signal about the attitude of the state towards certain issues. That is why so many of us are such supporters of the removal of gender discrimination in this way.
I genuinely find it difficult to understand why, if we are going to do that, we have not thought through one or two other things that are also signals. The concept of the heir to the Throne having this remarkable opportunity, which history has given them, of running a significant estate and dealing with significant matters of business is something that has characterised the monarchy for a long time and has given the present heir a remarkable opportunity, which he has used to huge effect.
I do not think it right to put before the House a Bill that specifically denies a female heir that opportunity. I know what will happen. She will in effect be the Duchess of Cornwall. I have no doubt that she will be asked to take the chair. I have no doubt that all this will happen. But what I find so difficult—I rise on this point only because it is a continuing concern of mine—is that we do not understand that when you decide you are going to deal with an anomaly, you have to deal with it. You cannot say, “I am going to deal with this bit of it, but I have a particular concern that it would mean changing something that happened in 13-something”. What a good opportunity to remind people of the great length of our history and of the fact that at this moment something has changed and we want to put it right.
So far I have found the Government at their least compelling when they have found it impossible to recognise that these things hang together. I hope that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, can accept that this will not make any difference in the other countries of the Commonwealth. No one will say, “I am frightfully sorry, I cannot vote for this because I am not prepared to give the Duchy of Cornwall to a female”. Surely this is something we can sort out properly. If the argument is that this might affect the issue of primogeniture with regard to your Lordships’ House and those who were once in it, then the answer is simple: this whole Bill is about the monarchy. We are talking about the monarchy. We are not talking about anybody else. Nothing inevitably comes from this, except possibly a spirit of change. There is nothing that is a precedent.
On this occasion, could we please see that this is a sensible thing to do? Would it not be good to do a sensible thing because it is sensible, rather than to argue about it because there is another argument?
Lord James of Blackheath
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Deben has been singing from the same song sheet as my noble friend Lord Trefgarne. In effect, he is saying that this is too complicated to rush and we need more time on much more detail. We are on only the third amendment and already we are looking at a series of complexities which have not so far been considered. This Bill is riddled with the potential for unintended consequences of the type we are talking about. We need much more thought and much more time. In the two weeks since Second Reading I have had a great many communications from your Lordships, mostly disagreeing with something I said on that occasion. I have a shortlist of what the principle points are and they are not really addressed in the process today.
First is the point that no Parliament may bind its successors. One of my contentions is that the deed of rights does effectively bind its successors, as does the Act of Settlement. The question of entrenchment was not considered at all, yet it is fundamental to that issue. There is the issue of the sovereignty of Parliament and of the Crown. The Crown in Parliament is a special factor and an expression which needs to be redefined in that context. There is also the question of the limitations that the Bill seeks to avoid and thus whether the constraints which normally apply do not apply to the limitations of power. Amazingly, one of your Lordships accused me of committing “desuetude”. I do not have a clue what desuetude is, but I assure you that it has nothing to do with what has been going on in the Liberal Democrat party.
If the tabloids think they have a new story, I wish to make the point that this Tory Peer has never done desuetude in his life as far as he is aware and if he did, it was an accident and he was lured into it unawares. I found that desuetude is not recognised under British law and does not apply, so we can kick it into touch. On all the other issues, particularly the right of this House to accept the delegation of the royal prerogative, I stand firmly in my belief that we do not have the right to act accordingly and we have been ill advised and inadequately advised about our proper role and authority.
We do not have time available for all these great issues. My concern is that although we could go into them individually now or at some other time, at the rate we can process with this, we do not have enough days or months available to consider this important Bill. I am not opposed to it, but I will leave your Lordships with two thoughts. There are two awful, unintended consequences which we have not thought of. First, if we pass this Bill we have effectively done away with the need for a Scottish referendum because we have driven a coach and horses through the 1707 Act of Union. It no longer exists because you cannot pass this Bill compatibly with the separate proclamation and coronation oaths required by the 1707 Act.
Secondly—and I hate to say this—I fear that if we pass this Bill we have in effect created what will amount to the accidental and unintended abdication Bill. I cannot see how this Bill can be given Royal Assent, and without it, it cannot pass. In those circumstances, the only way it could ever be passed is during an interregnum, which can happen only with the death of a monarch or an abdication. There would then have to be an interval of several days before the proclamation of the new monarch in which this Bill could be passed. I cannot see that it could be done in any other way. We are in an area of total ignorance and floundering. We need more time and more guidance.
Lord Lang of Monkton
My Lords, I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Northbrook. In particular I endorse everything said by my noble friends Lord Lexden and Lord Mancroft. One point to make by way of modest qualification is that I understand there are a number of other dukedoms and titles held by the Prince of Wales which might also need to be changed and modified to bring them into the needs of this Bill. As long as this does not delay action on the Duchy of Cornwall, I hope that the Duchy of Lancaster and any other such duchies should be looked at quickly as well. It would be better to have one composite solution to the problem rather than a piecemeal one.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, I have a question for the noble Lord, Lord James. As far as I recall, he spoke at Second Reading about the House committing collective treason. Why has he not put down some amendments in Committee to take these arguments forward, so we do not all commit treason?
Lord James of Blackheath
My Lords, I sought guidance on this. I did not get adequate guidance to enable me to formulate a wording which I could see was appropriate. I wholly agree that it is required. Given time it can be done, but we do not have time.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Deben, says, the issue is a sensible one. I then break with the tradition of everyone else who has spoken by saying it may be a sensible issue, but the issue is about property, the ownership of an estate, about title—as reflected in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Lang—or about a business, in the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick. While it may be an important issue, it is not about the constitution of this country and therefore not really appropriate to what is an important and, in our view, welcome change in our laws of succession. That is what this Bill is really about.
It is quite possible that the founding charter governing the Duchy of Cornwall may need changing—I had not realised that it was in 1337. Interestingly, 600 years after that, from 1937 to 1952, the title fell into abeyance. Our present monarch seems to have done a fantastic job without the benefit of being the Duke of Cornwall in that period, so I am not certain that this needs to be done. If it does, it should be done by another way and not in this Bill, which is about our rules of succession. I hope that this is what your Lordships’ House will address itself to.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Northbrook for introducing this amendment, which has generated a considerable amount of debate and discussion. I understand where he and other noble Lords who contributed to the debate are coming from as they seek to remove gender bias in the descent of the Duchy of Cornwall. I will try to clarify the current situation. The title can pass only to the eldest son and heir of the monarch. Thus—as has been indicated—when she was heir presumptive to the throne, Her Majesty, as Princess Elizabeth, did not hold the title of Duke of Cornwall.
As has been said, the title and inheritance of the Duchy were created by King Edward III in 1337, and vested in the Black Prince by a charter having the authority of Parliament. My noble friend Lord Deben said that this was an opportunity seek to remove anomalies. It is fair to say that this one is perhaps even slightly more anomalous than it might appear on the surface. The mode of descent specified by the charter is unusual, and differs from that which commonly occurs in respect of hereditary titles. The monarch’s eldest son is automatically Duke of Cornwall immediately that he becomes heir apparent. However, if the monarch has a son who is the heir apparent and that son dies before the monarch, leaving a son of his own—a grandson of the monarch—the grandson would become heir apparent but would not be Duke of Cornwall because he is not the son of the monarch. It is not just a question of daughters not inheriting the title; it would be that grandsons did not, either.
With the Duchy of Cornwall we therefore have an unusual and interesting piece of English history that does not conform to the standard rules of descent for hereditary titles. However, it is exactly that: a piece of English history and not an issue that is of direct relevance to the succession to the Crown—as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, indicated—nor to the other realms of the Commonwealth. I made it clear at Second Reading that it is not the Government’s intention to deal in this legislation with UK-specific matters. This amendment very much falls into that category.
My noble friend Lord Lang referred to other titles, to which the same arguments apply. I tried during my reply at Second Reading to set out what would happen to these. I am happy to write to my noble friend to outline the cases in these situations.
Lord Trefgarne
My Lords, when the Minister writes to our noble friend Lord Lang on the various other titles, would he include an answer to the point I raised at Second Reading: whether the Princedom of Wales can be passed to a female if the sovereign of the day so decides? He was not able to give me an answer to that at Second Reading, as I recall. If he could touch on the matter in his letter to our noble friend Lord Lang, I would be greatly obliged.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I understand that the creation of the Princedom of Wales, let along the matter of it going to a daughter, is very much a matter for the personal decision of the sovereign. The current Prince of Wales did not automatically become Prince of Wales upon Her Majesty’s accession in 1952; that did not happen until 1958. It is a matter for the sovereign, and I will seek to set that out in a letter which I will copy to others who contribute to this debate.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, raised a query about the efficient running of the estate between 1936 and 1952. There have of course throughout history been stretches when there has been no Duke of Cornwall, and the Duchy continues to today. I pay tribute to the leadership which the present Duke of Cornwall has given. When I was in the other place, my constituency, Orkney and Shetland, could not have been more remote from Cornwall. Even in Orkney and Shetland, however, we were aware of the work of the Duke of Cornwall on his estate. I see my noble friend Lord Maclennan of Rogart in his place. Certainly, closer to home, I know of the work of the Duke of Rothesay in respect of the Castle of Mey estates since he inherited them from his late grandmother. Those tributes were rightly paid.
Lord Maclennan of Rogart
As a footnote, I also commend the Duke of Cornwall for the work that he has done in setting up the North Highland Initiative: three separate charitable companies to promote the well-being of the area.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
Indeed. I certainly am aware of that and the contribution that my noble friend has also played in these developments.
As was perhaps surmised by my noble friend Lord Deben, there is of course nothing to stop a female heir having an active role in the running of the Duchy, but that would be a matter for the sovereign to decide at the appropriate time. As has already been recognised, a female heir apparent will not find herself at a financial disadvantage. The Sovereign Grant Act 2011 broadly ensures that financial provision equivalent to the income from the Duchy is made for the heir apparent.
As was indicated by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, the Bill seeks to achieve three things set out in the first three clauses. It is about succession to the Crown. It is relevant to the other realms of which Her Majesty is Queen and head of state. I do not believe that this is the legislative vehicle in which to address a number of the other issues which have been raised. For these reasons I invite my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Northbrook
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate—to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, for his useful contribution on legal aspects; and to the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, for his observation that the Duchy’s founding charter would have to be changed and his comment about the serious decline in the fortunes of the Duchy when there was no Duke of Cornwall. My noble friend Lord Mancroft made a good point about whether there has been consultation with His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. I also noted the comment of the noble Lord, Lord Deben, about denying a female heir the opportunity of being Duchess of Cornwall.
I am still not entirely familiar with my noble friend Lord James of Blackheath’s meaning of “desuetude”. I took note of the comments of my noble friend Lord Lang of Monkton about other changes that might be necessary. What the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, said about a grandson not automatically inheriting was interesting. I am concerned that when you open the box and the genie of unintended consequences comes out on this Bill, all these issues need to be looked at.
There has been a lot of interest in this amendment. I will seek further discussions with the Minister before Report. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, I beg to move that the House do resume. In doing so, I draw the attention of noble Lords to the debate that follows, on which the timing is very tight. I invite noble Lords to keep to their allocated time.
Research Councils UK: Open Access Policy (S&T Report)
(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Krebs
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the third report of the Science and Technology Committee, what assessment they have made of the implications of Research Councils UK’s open access policy.
Lord Krebs
My Lords, this debate follows the publication of a short inquiry by the Science and Technology Committee into the implementation of the policy of open access. I start by thanking the members of the Select Committee for their excellent contributions to this short inquiry.
Open access is the most radical transformation in academic publishing since the first scientific journal, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, was published in 1665. As an aside, when I talk about “science” in the next few minutes, I use the word to be akin to the German “Wissenschaft”, meaning scholarship, learning and research across all disciplines including the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities.
The challenges of the transition to open access apply to all academic disciplines, although the details may vary from subject to subject. I will first explain the traditional model of scientific publishing. Researchers, having garnered results and written them up, submit a paper to a scientific journal, which has an editor who sends the paper out for peer review, decides whether or not to accept the paper for publication and, if revisions are needed, supervises those. The publisher then edits the revised paper and prints it.
The significant costs of that process are born by individuals or institutions paying subscriptions to the journal. It is a model in which the consumer rather than the producer pays for access to academic research. Some journals are purely commercial enterprises, but many are owned by learned societies that use the profits from publishing to support research, such as sponsoring studentships or conferences in their own discipline.
This traditional model has been radically changed in the past decade or so by the advent of online publishing, which presents the possibility of anyone, anywhere in the world, accessing scientific articles. Part of this disruptive change has been an increasing shift to open access, meaning that the consumer can read the literature free of charge. Perhaps the great majority of academic journals now allow readers free access but usually only after a delay following publication; this delay, or embargo, on free access enables the journals to maintain their subscription-based model and people or institutions that pay get a head start in reading the latest articles.
There is also rapid growth in a more radical form of open access, in which the producer or author of the article pays the full costs of having it refereed and published via a so-called article publishing charge or APC. The consumer therefore gets free, immediate access and there is no embargo. In the jargon of the trade, the embargo model is known as green open access while the instant access, the producer-pays model, is known as gold open access; some journals operate a hybrid system.
Recognising that this landscape is changing very rapidly, the Government commissioned a report on the topic and advice on how to proceed. The report was produced last year by a stakeholder group chaired by Dame Janet Finch, the former vice-chancellor of Keele. The Government agreed that the recommendations of the Finch report would be implemented forthwith.
That is the background; why did we carry out our inquiry? We were not questioning the move to open access. It is an inexorable trend and it is generally considered to be desirable that everybody should have access free of charge to new research results and data. We had, however, heard informally from both publishers and academics that the implementation plan following the Finch review was not proceeding adequately. In the words of one commentator, we were heading for a “car crash” on 1 April 2013, the date for the implementation of Finch recommendations. We therefore inquired, as a matter of urgency, into what was happening in order to identify the root of the problems and make appropriate recommendations and report well before 1 April. We have done that, and our report has been welcomed by all stakeholders. The bodies responsible for implementing the Government’s policy are the Research Councils UK—the RCUK—and the Higher Education Funding Council for England. They are providing funding to cover the costs to the author of publishing scientific research under the preferred gold model.
Here are some of the key issues that emerged from our inquiry about this transition. The first, and perhaps most important, relates to embargo periods. It is generally recognised that for the foreseeable future, most journals will operate a hybrid of gold and green open access even if, as the Government wish, gold is the final destination. Therefore, a crucial question for both the publishers and for academics is the length of embargo periods. For publishers, longer embargos are more likely to sustain the subscription-based model. The Government’s position has been that the starting point should be flexible, allowing for longer embargo periods but moving gradually to shorter periods. However, the research councils, through RCUK policy and guidance, require an instant change for all research funded by the councils to short embargo periods. Crucially and happily, in its evidence to our inquiry, RCUK appeared to change its position and said that it would adopt the flexible starting point that is the Government’s policy.
Can the Minister confirm that RCUK will revise its policy and guidance, as we recommend, to reflect that it will adopt a flexible position and that the research councils will explicitly refer to the “decision tree” on embargos endorsed by BIS and the Publishers Association? This tree makes it explicit that if the author does not have access to funds to pay for the APC—in the early years RCUK expects to fund about only half the APCs—longer embargo periods are acceptable. Will the Minister also confirm that the policy of the Higher Education Funding Council for England will align with that of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills?
Our inquiry also highlighted the possibility of various unintended consequences of the open access policy, as well as lack of clarity. For example, who will pay for the APCs when UK research council-funded scientists are collaborating with scientists from other countries, as happens in many of the top laboratories? Is the UK taxpayer to subsidise other countries’ scientists? This has not yet been clarified. Will there be a race to the bottom, in which journals cut corners in peer review and editing to minimise their charges to authors? Will UK scientists be allowed to publish in journals that do not comply with RCUK policies? Could charging for publishing drive scientists from other countries away from UK journals? Academic journal publishing is a significant industry with a turnover of more than £1 billion a year and 80% of that is export.
These, along with a number of other points, emphasise that the UK is entering unchartered territory. It is one of the first countries to adopt an open access policy with a stated preference for gold open access. Can the Minister therefore confirm that, as we recommend, RCUK will carefully monitor the consequences of the new policy, not only in 2014 but also at further stages during the five year implementation phase? We suggest reviews in 2016 and 2018. We also suggest that, if the unintended consequences and disadvantages turn out to be more significant than anticipated, the RCUK should modify its policy. Other noble Lords may refer to the implications for learned societies, so I will not address that issue here. Let me end with two final points.
RCUK’s consultation was clearly inadequate. We recommend, and I seek the Minister’s confirmation that this will be accepted, that BIS should undertake a review of the consultation process and ensure that lessons are learned. Finally, we were surprised to find that, although there was much talk of the benefits of open access, no analysis of these benefits has been done, either by BIS or by RCUK. Does the Minister agree that in implementing one of the most fundamental changes in academic publishing in 350 years, it would be appropriate to understand the benefits, especially in light of the considerable costs to the science base involved? Open access is a disruptive change to academic publishing. It is potentially beneficial and desirable but it must be introduced with clarity and care if it is not to have unexpected disadvantageous consequences to the UK science base.
The Earl of Selborne
The House will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, for introducing what is to many a complex subject but one, as he pointed out, which has radical implications for academic publishing. He very clearly set out some of the knotty issues which must be rapidly resolved. In this inquiry conducted by the Select Committee the process has been as valuable as the product. When we invited written evidence, we rapidly received more than 60 submissions, just about all accepting the principle of moving towards open access—not an issue, as the noble Lord has explained—but with greatly differing views on the wisdom of the present preferences and timetable of the Government and the research councils to achieve this desirable aim.
Having recognised that this is a desirable aim, we should be highly supportive of the leaders in this field; the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust have led in this respect. The MRC open access mandate has been in place since 2006 and compliance with this mandate has increased from about 24% in 2006 to almost half last year, and at the end of the transitional period proposed by the research councils of five years they hope to achieve 100% compliance.
For the areas of biomedical research with which the Medical Research Council is concerned, without doubt the gold open access model has much to favour it. That certainly is why the MRC and the other research councils have preferred the gold open access model over the green. As well as dispensing with the need for embargoes, it lends itself well to some of the quite sophisticated procedures nowadays, such as text and data mining, all of which have enormous commercial importance and importance in promoting the dissemination of knowledge.
As we have just heard, the gold model requires article processing charges—APCs—and in the case of the Wellcome Trust, the cost, which it calculated at between l% and 1.5% of its total research spend, has been met by the trust. It simply says it believes that in the field of biomedical research, the benefits flowing from open access more than justify the additional cost. It strongly supports the commitment of the research councils to provide funding via institutional block grants to meet the cost of gold open access APCs.
As the Select Committee notes, there is considerable doubt as to whether everyone who wants to publish via the gold route will be funded for the APCs. It further notes that, while the principle of favouring open access was almost universally accepted, the one-size-fits-all approach certainly was not. It is evident that the research councils now accept this and are prepared to be much more pragmatic and flexible than perhaps the original proposals seemed to imply.
The concerns of a number of organisations were particularly centred on the risk of being the first mover. While in biomedical research it is certain that the gold open access route ultimately will be followed by most other countries, it is by no means evident for other disciplines, particularly but not exclusively the humanities and social sciences. The green route, once a suitable repository is in place—many obviously now are in place—is a cheaper route. It does not rely on APCs, which at least in the early stage will have to be rationed. The very real difficulty of some researchers, such as independent scholars, in finding up-front funding for their APC is met by the green route. They have no problems. It is true that embargo periods will restrict the flow of research findings for a period but in practice we have already seen that in many cases this does not present insuperable problems for many disciplines. In other words, people are finding ways around it in so far as it represents an issue.
Subscription journals will not all wither and die. Some will be here for many more years. Therefore, having identified the direction of travel, it will be as well to recognise this and other concerns, and to ensure that in our enthusiasm for being an international leader we do not do ourselves an unnecessary disservice. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, referred to the problems for periodicals, particularly those of learned societies. These learned societies very often rely on subscription journals for promoting their charitable objectives and their discipline, including public outreach, bursaries for students and fellowships, all of which are commendable causes. However, one has to recognise that periodicals and subscription journals first and foremost are there to disseminate knowledge. Clearly, they will have to move with the times and recognise, as the noble Lord reminded us, that things have changed dramatically in academic publishing.
Nevertheless, it is important to ensure that the transition, although abrupt as it will eventually have to be in many ways, is carried out as expeditiously as possible. It is clear that for some the repository route and green open access will not be what the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills called in its written evidence to us a legitimate second-best alternative gold. However, for some it still will remain a perfectly viable option and a legitimate, long-term strategy. For that reason, I welcome the response of the research councils to our report, which recognises that this possibility should at least be tested in future months and years.
Viscount Hanworth
My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, for introducing this debate. I should begin by saying unequivocally that I am in favour of the open access to academic journals for anyone, without distinction or qualification. Having said as much, I declare that I am not in favour of the proposals of the Finch report. I shall voice my severe misgivings later.
The backdrop to these proposals is the manner in which digital technology has impacted upon the production of the journals and the manner in which their vast legacy is nowadays handled and controlled. At present, a few overpowerful commercial suppliers are dominating the markets for academic journals. They are deriving excessive profits from their position as virtual monopolists. The profitability of these enterprises can be explained by their market power and by the extraordinarily favourable way in which they acquire their principal assets, which are texts for publication. They are in possession of valuable legacies of published material stretching back in time, often by as much as a century, from which they can derive considerable rents by granting access to their electronic archives.
To my knowledge, the oldest collection of back issues is from the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, which dates back to its beginning in 1665. This collection has been digitised by JSTOR, which is a not-for-profit operation for the electronic archiving of journals that began in 1995 under the auspices of Princeton University. JSTOR represents a countervailing force, which is limiting the strength of the commercial monopolies. The principal clients of the commercial monopolies, the universities, often feel greatly aggrieved. University librarians and bursars are angered by the expense of paying for access to the legacy, which is an expense that cannot be avoided by any institution of higher education that supports research. The academic staff are angered by the manner in which the commercial journals presume upon their time and exploit their labour without offering any financial recompense.
The free services of academics consist not only in the supply of articles for publication but also in their services as editors and referees. In recent times, authors of technical papers have been rendering another valuable service; that is, typesetting the articles. Nowadays, the authors can typeset their own papers in the universally recognised languages of TeX and LaTeX, which can be converted to the publisher’s formats with few, if any, editorial or typographical intercessions.
The outcome is to relieve the authors of unnecessary drudgery and to enhance the profitability of the journals. If anyone wonders why this unpaid labour is supplied so plentifully, the answer is that the achievement of publication is essential to the advancement of an academic career. The journals, therefore, have a captive workforce. The commercial journals have been acutely aware of the threat that digital technology in the hands of its clients can pose to their enterprises and they have taken steps vigorously to protect their interests.
Their greatest fear surely is that the workforce might decide to serve its own interests by publishing rival journals that do not presume to profit financially from their labours. Such journals already are in existence and they are becoming quite numerous. In the main, they dispense entirely with printed volumes and rely on the web freely to disseminate their output. Already, many of these electronic journals have acquired a status and an esteem that is commensurate with that of many of the time-honoured journals. For that reason, they attract submissions of the highest quality.
In my perception, such journals offer a paradigm of open access. There is open access on both sides. Authors can submit their articles without paying submission fees. Access is also free to any reader. I suggest that there is nothing to prevent the national research councils from taking the unprecedented step of providing small subventions to such journals. The monopoly of commercial journals is under threat from such developments. Also, their monopoly over the legacy of journals is only partial. Many of the journals owned by learned societies have contributed their back issues to JSTOR, which, ostensibly, has impeccable charitable motives.
It is against that backdrop that we must scrutinise the recommendations of the Finch report. Before doing so, we should note that the membership of the committee that produced the report contained representatives from the big commercial academic publishers. Surely, it was they who cautioned that the development of open access should not be allowed to destabilise what, in their estimation, is most valuable in the research communications ecosystem; namely, their own position.
From the committee’s deliberations has emerged a recommendation in favour of the so-called gold option. As we know, this proposes that articles should be made available immediately and free of charge in return for a payment by an author, or by their institution, to the publisher of an article processing charge, an APC. An estimate of £1,750 per article has been mooted, which would provide a very generous income to the commercial publishers, seemingly of an assured nature. Where would this money come from? It is blithely assumed that it would be provided by research councils or by the author’s institution, using a block grant given for the purpose. This would surely deny authors access to journals unless they were in receipt of a research grant, or unless they could prevail upon their institution to support their submission. It would give those institutions powerful control over what has hitherto been regarded as the province of an essential academic freedom: the freedom of authors to submit their articles whenever and wherever they choose.
Clearly, not all journals would merit the submission fee, or APC. Journals would be divided into those that were sanctioned to receive the APC and those that were denied it. It would be difficult to start a new journal, because the APC would not be granted before it had established its reputation. The commercial suppliers of established journals would come to occupy impregnable positions, and they would become even more profitable. This is a nightmare scenario, and I hope it will never materialise. Now is the time to stop the prospect of any such eventuality. However, it is doubtful whether the UK has sufficient leverage over the international market to influence it to any great extent. I hope therefore that this will never materialise.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
My Lords, I am a member of the Science and Technology Committee and participated in this short inquiry. I would like to thank our chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, for initiating this inquiry, which I think has been extremely timely. As the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, mentioned, we have already seen some reaction, both from the research councils and from HEFCE, regarding the clarification of their own positions. They have made it clearer that they regard the process of moving to open access as a journey rather than as a one-off, rather disruptive movement.
The report of the working group chaired by Dame Janet Finch was extremely good. It emphasised to a very considerable degree this process of a journey. It noted that it would take time for the world to move towards open access. It said that there was already a very considerable momentum behind that movement, particularly in the world of science journals, but it would be a journey over time. During that period—and indeed for a very considerable time to come—some journals would be published under the gold open-access route and some published under the green open-access route. Under that route, after a period of time, the articles would be placed in a repository and would become available for open access, but with the requirement of an embargo period. Some journals would operate under a hybrid scheme, whereby you could pay upfront to access journals through open access, but the journal would also publish articles for which there was no upfront payment. Those would be put behind a paywall and would be accessible only behind that paywall.
This would mean that, at least in the short run and probably over some period of time, universities would be confronted by a situation in which their libraries would have to continue purchasing the journals concerned as not everybody would be able to use the open access system. Universities would have to pay for their own researchers to make the upfront payment—partly through the research councils or through funders such as Wellcome—if they decided on full gold open access. At the same time they would also have to pay to purchase the journals.
We should bear in mind that the UK publishes only some 6% of the world’s scientific output. Ninety-four per cent of the world’s scientific output comes from other countries. The arguments for gold open access, which in many senses is the best of all worlds—we all acknowledge that it is a very good route to go down—are somewhat similar to the arguments for free trade. If we all indulge in free trade there are very considerable benefits to everybody concerned. On the other hand, if a country moves to open up its markets without other countries also pursuing a free-trade route, then essentially its markets are open to competition but other countries retain protectionism and do not open up their markets. That is a very unsatisfactory situation. It is why the process of opening up towards free trade has been a very long one involving multinational negotiation. The rounds under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and subsequently under WTO took a very long time. Countries sat around the table and essentially traded off particular aspects.
That is not fully taking place in the world of open access. Which way journals are going and which way countries are going is rather arbitrary. As a result of this, we in Britain will be in danger if we move too fast. It is quite clear that the initiative came from BIS. The Minister for Universities and Science, David Willetts, was very anxious that we should be the first mover here and that we should to some extent use this to try to kick-start the multinational process that is moving but needs to be accelerated. There is a danger that we will open up our science to access from the rest of the world without the rest of the world opening up theirs to us.
There is a need to consider the time taken here. There is also a need to monitor what is happening and how far the rest of the world is moving. The diagram on page 13 of our report shows that most countries are very much still using the green-gold hybrid system. More countries are going down the green route than the gold route. It is not yet clear that the general move will be towards gold open access. Green open access is a very real option and it is an alternative. There is therefore a need to monitor what other countries do over the course of time and a need for some form of cost benefit analysis.
Partly because I come from a social science background, I have been extremely concerned about the position of the learned societies. They have faced difficulties in relation to the process, both in terms of time and in terms of the preference for gold open access. It is quite clear that many of these societies exist by subscription, but 80% or 90% of their subscriptions come from overseas subscribers. Regarding access to these journal articles without having to pay a subscription, in the social sciences and the humanities you very often have to wait two years for an article to be published. To have to wait another 12 months for others to access it means very little. The consequence is that for many of these learned societies the whole process of publication is not viable. This raises very important issues which need to be considered. As I say, I am delighted with the reaction we have already had from the research councils and from HEFCE. I look forward to seeing further moves in this direction.
Lord Broers
My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, on gaining this debate. I compliment him on his excellent opening speech, which so clearly explained the issues and the reasoning behind our recommendations. I also compliment Christopher Atkinson, our clerk, who once again provided highly professional support to the committee on this inquiry, which was mounted in a very short time. I join other members of the committee in supporting the recommendations of our report, especially that Research Councils UK should include reference to the five-year implementation phase in its requirements documents so that everyone is aware that it is not asking for a precipitous implementation of its rules. I also feel that the long-term aim of migrating entirely to gold access, as has been mentioned by other noble Lords, needs continually to be reviewed. I was particularly troubled by the fact that many of the most important US journals with which I am familiar, and in which I have published, such as Science and the journals of the American Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society and the IEEE, do not seem to have plans to offer gold access. It would significantly reduce the impact of some of our most important research if they were not available to our researchers in engineering and the physical sciences. I was, however, reassured by David Willetts’s statement that,
“we will be reviewing implementation in 2014 and that will give us flexibility on timing and everything else”.
I wish now, with your Lordships’ indulgence, to talk about something that is not directly a part of this report. It is the complex situation encountered when considering when and how to publish new science that contains ideas that have potential for commercial application. This was not something we considered, although the noble Lord, Lord Wade, and I asked questions of our witnesses about whether the move to open access would have any effect on patents and commercialisation. We were told that this was a separate matter. This was a correct answer in the context of this inquiry, but this matter is none the less of great importance to the UK economy. Over the past few decades there has been a steady shift of research, as opposed to development—unfortunately, we almost universally elide these two—from industry to universities, with a consequent increase in expectation about the potential commercialisation of ideas emerging from academic research. Much of our applied science and engineering research addresses science that is of interest because it has the potential of benefiting mankind through commercial development. Indeed, on examining the 36 units of assessment in the Research Excellence Framework, I identified at least 15 units in which patents might well be one of the outputs.
It is not always the case that early and wide access to research results is good for our economy. One of our witnesses, Professor Walmsley of Oxford University, referred to this issue, saying:
“Our policies internally at Oxford are to try to capture that IP in a manner that is consistent with UK law—i.e. getting the IP protected before one comes out and publishes”.
I am not aware, however, that this is widely practised and can find no advice on this issue in the description and guidance literature for the Research Excellence Framework. Patents are of course recognised output for the REF, and it is stated that all forms of research will be assessed on a fair and equal basis, but there is always a tension between the wish to publish new results and the need to wait until potentially valuable intellectual property has been protected. In fact, the incentives for academic researchers seem strongly biased towards publishing as early and as widely as possible. I am sure that any formal requirement to ensure that IP was protected before publication was approved would be controversial, as it would be regarded as a constraint on academic freedom. To counter this in industry, many leading technology companies, at least in my experience in the US, directly reward employees for their IP output to compensate them for the loss, for a time, of recognition in the wider world for their advances. I have no specific recommendations to make on this issue, but it is a topic that should be considered in depth by the funding councils, the research councils and by vice-chancellors, with the aim of improving our ability to secure the economic potential of our academic research before we share all our ideas with the entire world over the internet. There has never been a time when an increase in our ability to commercialise academic research would be of more benefit to the nation.
Lord Rees of Ludlow
My Lords, in the early days of the Royal Society, its secretary, Henry Oldenburg, started Philosophical Transactions. This was the world's first scientific journal. It is still going and was the prototype for the tens of thousands of refereed journals that exist today.
Printed academic journals were a real advance in the 1660s and have served us for 300 years, but they are now surely anachronistic: the legacies of Gutenberg and Oldenburg are not optimal in the age of Zuckerberg. Online journals offer vastly greater ease in tracking down published research and accessing all research resources. It is only with the advent of the internet that open access has become feasible.
Among academics, the open access campaign is pushing at an open door. Researchers like their work to be freely available to everyone, including those with no institutional affiliation, but achieving this goal is a bigger challenge in some disciplines than in others. My own field, physics and astronomy, is more or less there already. That is because of a well organised web archive started in the 1990s by Paul Ginsparg in the US. I look at this archive every day and far less often at actual journals. However, we still value the peer review provided by “traditional” journals and want our papers to appear in one as well—for accreditation reasons rather than for increasing the number of readers. In our field, the journals survive. Theoretical physicists have, in effect, green open access with a zero embargo period. If the paper is published, the journal version appears and remains on the archive. However, I realise that other disciplines are less lucky, with a real gap between current practice and the eventual goal. It is rather sad that, thanks to Paul Ginsparg, the educated public can read everything on superstring theory, which will not enlighten them much, but cannot freely access all comprehensible writings in the humanities.
There is a global move towards open access. Indeed, just last Friday, a paper from Dr John Holdren, President Obama’s science adviser, enjoined all government agencies to come up with proposals to implement enhanced open access to the results of all the research that they fund. However, what is not clear is whether the so-called “gold” route will be widely followed globally. Let us remember that we publish less than 10% of the world’s research. Unless other countries follow the gold route, we will be paying twice: foreign scientists will benefit from our decision but we will not get a reciprocal benefit. That is why it is important that BIS should assess the value for money and that RCUK and HEFCE should keep the situation under review in an international context.
The open access issue is in any case being overtaken by new media developments. Traditional journals, even in electronic form, are no longer the sole mode of dissemination of scientific results. Blogs and wikis are playing a growing role. It is not obvious that the traditional scientific paper or monograph will, or should, continue as the prime vehicle for communicating science and codifying the consensus.
Even the accreditation role of journals may one day be trumped. Learned societies or groups of universities could organise a refereeing or quality control system which could be grafted on to a web archive and could do this more cheaply than traditional publishers—certainly, than commercial publishers.
What needs to be communicated and accessed is no longer just written texts. Huge data sets now exist in physics, genetics, climate science and other areas. Data mining and mashing will offer new routes to discoveries. One would hope that these data can be accessed and downloaded anywhere by anyone.
Despite the widespread support for open access in academia, academia displays undue rigidity in some respects which plays into the hands of commercial publishers. Surely it is far from optimal that the career prospects of young academics depend on a single monograph or on the bibliometric scores of a few papers. It is even worse if there is an “institutionalised” pecking order of journals, with a frustrating and morale-sapping delay while young authors struggle for acceptance in a top-ranked journal. One of the most deplorable remarks that I heard recently was from a professor responding to the question, “How do you decide whether a paper is good?”, with the reply, “By the journal it’s in”.
Even if our committee’s recommendations are taken into account, implementation of the Finch report will still surely lead to a lot of petty accounting and administration in universities, where the funds made available will cover the cost of gold access for only 10% of Russell Group publications, and petty administration within RCUK and HEFCE, where someone is going to have to monitor the embargo policies and APCs of thousands of journals and deal with the issues when there are foreign co-authors, or when the journal of choice is a foreign one that does not meet our access criteria.
The move is superfluous in subjects like mine. It may have unintended downsides in the very different context of the humanities, as the British Academy in particular has been concerned about. I personally doubt that these elaborate regulations will actually allow new ideas to percolate more freely than would have happened anyway, given the pressures from authors and the rapidly changing IT scene. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, has explained, our report took the Finch committee’s recommendations as its starting point, and we should therefore welcome the positive response that it has elicited from those charged with implementing its intricacies.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, for securing this debate, and all noble Lords for the contributions that they have made. This has been a very high-quality discussion.
In previous debates of this type, I have complained that often the good work done by your Lordships’ House in terms of its committees has often been spoilt by the long delays between the publication of their reports and the time that we have been allocated in this Chamber in order to discuss them. I was therefore rather startled to read that this report was published only on 22 February 2013, less than one week ago, and I am puzzled by that. I do not expect an answer from the Minister because I am sure that it is not in his hands, but while I am obviously delighted that we are absolutely at the sharp end regarding this report and its impact—rightly so, because it is very important—it is slightly odd that it seems to have jumped the queue in front of other things that we might have been discussing. Nevertheless, we are where we are.
We have all benefited from the committee’s work in this area in terms of what we have heard today, which has raised issues that are at the very heart of the information society, and in particular has also drawn attention to the interesting tension between the business model currently used for academic publishing, particularly for journals, and the aspirations behind open access that were reflected in the Finch review.
We have also learnt during the debate that there are still some queries about whether the Finch review is the last word in this area; I do not think it is. As the noble Lord, Lord Rees, said, in some senses this must be a transitional moment because so much of what is being talked about seems to be pushing at an open door.
Nevertheless, we are left with some questions for the Government to pick up, particularly with regard to the recommendations and conclusions at the end of the report, starting on page 19, some of which need to be put to the Minister in the hope that he will respond positively—in the first place, the need to ensure the clarification of RCUK’s policies, given the work of the committee, particularly the changes to policy guidance to ensure that this is keeping them going on that. I look forward to hearing what progress has been made there.
The report recommends that there is a need to monitor international developments carefully. We know that they approach barriers right across the globe; while it is obviously moving well in this country, it will be successful only to the extent to which we are able to get progress across the other countries with open access policies. Again, are the Government doing all that they can to co-ordinate with other countries what those policies are?
Mention has been made of the pressure that the changes being discussed will place on the learned societies, which we obviously need to keep a close and careful eye on. I would be grateful if the Minister could update us on what stage the discussions have reached on that point.
As I said, this is perhaps a transitional moment but it is also a phased and developed plan and there is a need to commit to review. The recommendations in the report are for a further review in 2016 and then an end-of-stage assessment in 2018. I would be grateful if the Minister could explain what will take place to put these regulations into effect.
There are two points that the Government themselves need to take control over. The first is the full cost-benefit analysis of the open access policy, particularly given the current economic climate. This needs to be brought forward, and I would be grateful if the Minister could update us on that. The other point, particularly in relation to the history of what we have heard about today, is that there was confusion and different perceptions about what RCUK was doing in terms of its consultation process, and we would be grateful if the Minister could comment on that and what progress has been made in making sure that the lessons are learnt about that arrangement.
Lord Popat
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in today’s debate. This House always benefits from having Peers who can speak with experience about their fields of expertise, and it has been a great privilege to listen to the contributions today from those with such detailed knowledge of our research and academic sectors. I will do my best to answer all the points raised but if I do not have time to cover any specific points, I will ensure that I will write to noble Lords.
The Government’s open access policy for publicly funded published research forms part of the Government’s transparency agenda. It is important that taxpayers should have access to the research that they have funded. Innovation and economic growth stand to benefit if greater utilisation can be made of the results of this research.
The Government’s innovation and research strategy of December 2011 referred to our overarching commitment to transparency and open data. The Government are committed to ensuring that publicly funded published research should be accessible free of charge. Free and open access potentially offers significant social and economic benefits. By spreading knowledge created by the UK’s science base, we will raise the prestige and productivity of UK research and facilitate its even greater use to beneficial effect.
To expand access in such a way that the policy implications would be well understood, the Government facilitated an independent group of stakeholders chaired by Dame Janet Finch. The Finch group concluded in June 2012 that a mixed economy for open access was most appropriate, but with the policy direction set towards “gold open access”. Gold requires payment, by the researcher, of an up-front article processing charge, with the advantage of making the information freely available immediately to all users and without restriction of use. The Government’s open access policy has a strong preference for gold open access but, in keeping with the mixed economy recommended by the Finch group, also accepts “green open access”, which allows the publisher to charge the user a subscription or access fee to reach the published research during an embargo period.
My right honourable friend the Minister of State for Universities and Science recently discussed the Government’s open access policy with the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, during his Science and Technology Committee’s recent inquiry into open access. The committee’s report, published on 22 February, makes clear that it accepted that the Government are committed to the policy reflected in the Finch group’s recommendations. The committee did not challenge the conclusions of the Finch group or the Government’s open access policy. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, for his keen interest and contribution in progressing this important matter.
The Government have also written to the inquiry being held by the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee in another place. The Government have made clear that open access entails a journey, not a step change. Higher education institutions and their researchers will continue to be free to choose their research publication channel, but choice brings responsibility. They will be expected to responsibly strive to comply with RCUK’s stated open access policy—that is, preferably to use gold, or alternatively green, with embargo periods of no more than six or 12 months, for science and technology subjects and arts and humanities subjects respectively.
The policy framework for this transitional process, or journey, is as published by the Government in response to the Finch report and illustrated in the decision tree on the Publishers Association website. This illustrates how longer embargo periods of 12 to 24 months are acceptable for researchers when funds to pay the necessary article processing charges for gold open access are not available to the researcher.
Researchers will therefore be expected, when possible, to publish in journals that comply with RCUK’s policy. As I have said, however, they will remain free to choose which publication best serves their interests and requirements. This allows for a robust policy but one with the necessary degree of flexibility to address the concerns raised by the British Academy and others. The Government’s policy will accommodate the needs of different researchers and their respective disciplines.
Government’s assessment of the implications of RCUK’s open access policy has therefore considered its impact on stakeholders, including researchers and publishers alike, as represented in the Finch group. Indeed, the Government’s open access policy for publicly funded research is more responsive to the needs of all stakeholders than the equivalent policies being proposed in Europe and, as announced on 22 February 2013, by the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the United States. By making funding available through the research councils for gold open access and simultaneously allowing green as an alternative, with longer embargo periods when there is no funding available to the researcher for gold, the Government’s policy is sustainable and well balanced.
A well structured policy is important since open access is expected to strengthen direct and spillover benefits from research to stimulate economic growth. Publicly funded research can lead to important innovations. The internet and global positioning satellite technology both stem from publicly funded research. They now contribute to the global economy and enhance the quality of our lives, producing a significant return on the public investment first made.
By improving access to the results of research, open access could further enhance this process, as observed for the publicly funded human genome programme. The success of the human genome programme—in which a $3.8 billion investment drove $796 billion in economic impact and created 310,000 jobs—was partly attributed to the emphasis placed on open access. We now have an even greater opportunity, by exploiting the internet itself, to further amplify the benefits of publicly funded research. By publishing research papers in an open access way, we allow computers to search for results and, particularly for gold open access, to apply those findings without restriction. This improves the productivity of the science base.
Lord Krebs
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his very helpful response. However, will he confirm that RCUK will revise its policy and guidance statement to reflect what he has just said—namely that the research councils will follow the decision tree which has been adopted by BIS and was produced originally by the Publishers Association? The Minister said that that was the Government’s position but I want to be clear that RCUK is following that and is revising its guidelines and policy statement.
Lord Popat
I thank the noble Lord for that question. To the best of the Government’s knowledge, RCUK has accepted the decision tree. However, I will write to the noble Lord once we have the paperwork on the implementation, which I believe will be by the end of this month.
The Finch group’s recommendations achieved a balance between meeting the Government’s transparency agenda objective, preserving the integrity of the peer review process for published research and effecting change in a sustainable way. Even so, a preference for gold access was recognised by the Finch group to have a modest cost. It concluded that there could be a transitional cost of some £50 million to £60 million per annum.
The Government have accepted that the cost of publication is a legitimate cost of research. For a fixed science budget, gold access represents an opportunity cost to some in the science base for research forgone. The Government needed to understand the implication of this and their own independent economic analysis, as already submitted to another place, indicated a cost of some £50 million per annum, or 1% of the science base budget of £4.6 billion per annum.
According to the World Economic Forum, UK universities are second only to Switzerland in terms of university-industry collaboration. UK universities are effectively translating the results of research to business. We can witness how important this is when companies such as Tata make substantial inward investments in the UK’s world-class automotive industry. Companies such as Jaguar Land Rover benefit from their links to the UK’s science base, as exemplified by their collaborative research agreement with the Warwick Manufacturing Group of the noble Lord, Lord Bhattacharyya. Even so, publicly funded research is often difficult to find and expensive to access. This can defeat the original purpose of taxpayer-funded academic research. It limits understanding and innovation. The Government’s open access policy, coupled with the new Gateway to Research being developed by the research councils to directly link small businesses to research results and the people behind them, will open up a new age in the translation of research for innovation. The UK’s economy and its people—the taxpayers who fund research—will be the beneficiaries.
I will now address a number of questions raised by noble Lords. As I said earlier, the decision tree is accepted by RCUK. We accept the view expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, that it is a rapid change, with 2013 being the start of the process. However, it is a journey, not an overnight change. It is feasible to implement policy from 2013 since it is the start of the process of transition over the next five years. All research suggests that it is not disruptive change, but rather reasonable change. Within this five-year period, we will see what we can do to accommodate the concerns of the stakeholders if any difficulties arise in the transition process. Therefore, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, can rest assured that we will look into and address the concerns of the stakeholders.
The noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, mentioned a cost of £1,750. This is a broadly based average figure. He was not in favour of what he implied was a monopolistic position. However, the reality is exactly the opposite, as confirmed by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. This is very much like free trade. We are taking the lead in this matter compared with our European and American partners.
I may not have covered a number of questions raised by noble Lords but they can rest assured that I will write to them. We will make sure that this policy is implemented as smoothly as possible. Obviously, that process will be reviewed and we will definitely address stakeholders’ concerns.
The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, talked about other countries. Europe is moving to mandatory open access in the EU framework. The Americans are also now working on this subject. They want to support free access and make sure that free access publicly funded research is fully utilised and benefits the people of the United States.
I hope that I have covered some of the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and other noble Lords. I will certainly look into this again and make sure that responses are provided as quickly as possible.
Succession to the Crown Bill
(11 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
“Royal marriages: heirs of the body
(1) A marriage is a Royal Marriage for the purposes of establishing the claim of any person to succeed to the Crown as heir to the body if that Marriage is a marriage between a man and a woman.
(2) A person is disqualified from succeeding to the Crown as an heir to the body of a Royal Marriage if they are not the offspring of both parties to that Marriage.
(3) This section does not apply in any case where both Houses of Parliament pass a resolution to the effect that it shall not apply.”
Lord True
My Lords, I apologise for not having contributed at Second Reading. I had put my name down to speak but I was unavoidably delayed in coming to the House and rang to withdraw my name. However, I did listen to all the very thoughtful debate that I was able to. A core concern from noble Lords on either side of the argument was that succession to the Crown should be removed from controversy. I share that view and it is in that spirit alone that I have raised the issues in this amendment which were only momentarily touched on in another place.
I must also apologise for the lateness in tabling the amendment. This is because I have been involved in discussions with the Public Bill Office until yesterday morning about the most appropriate form of raising this matter. In some respects, the questions raised here and in Clause 2 are the same and that is whether there is an unintended risk, if certain issues are not addressed with clarity and foresight now, of future controversy over the succession and even of a disastrous unintended consequence of dividing the Queen’s various realms.
Two modern social developments lie behind this issue. The first is the techniques and ethics of the procreation of children and social attitudes towards them which have been fast-changing, still are changing and will continue to change. Secondly, at some time in the future a monarch and his or her consort may wish, where no other course is available to them, to seek to procure a child by use of a donor. That child, the first of whom would have been the heir if born naturally, would become a much loved member of the Royal Family and one whom many might wish to see as their monarch. There are clearly seeds of controversy there. The second issue is that it seems likely that the Parliament of the United Kingdom, although not those of all Her Majesty’s realms, will very shortly legislate to allow same-sex marriage. These measures, taken together, will alter for all time the concept of what a family, including, potentially, a Royal Family, could be.
I must make it clear that I take no view on same-sex marriage for the purpose of this issue. In case anyone should think there is an ulterior motive, I should make it clear that I do not believe that all the consequences of that momentous social change have been thought through and I would not have been inclined to take the step without more notice to the public and wider and more open consultation. Be that as it may, I did not want to raise the issue of the Crown, in any circumstances, in our debates on the same-sex marriage Bill, lest it be seen as an attempt to use the monarchy as a device to debate that Bill. That would be deplorable: I would not and will not take such a step. The issue is, none the less, fast upon us. As we are legislating in this Bill to change the laws on royal marriage and succession, it would be wise to reflect on the potential impact on the Bill also now before Parliament on same-sex marriage and how those two Bills might, in future, interrelate.
The governing phrase as to the conveyance of the right of succession in the Bill of Rights, which is reused in Section 1 of the Act of Settlement and is left unchanged by this legislation is that he or she be the “heir of the body” of the Electress Sophia of Hanover and her successors, being Protestants—which we will discuss later. There is surely scope for contentious argument, if not litigation, over what, in the new circumstances of the 21st century, is the definition of those ancient words “heir of the body”. That phrase does not require that the heir should be the heir of two specific bodies. Indeed, the originating Act of Settlement includes reference to the body of a monarch and a prospective monarch alone. What then if, in the context of either a different or a same-sex marriage—the question is immaterial—the sperm of a King is used to procure a child of his body on a donor woman or, even more directly, a child is born from the body of a regnant Queen by use of a donor? Some might ask whether the child is the heir of the body of that regnant Queen. This is the only method by which an heir of the body could be procured by a same-sex married monarch, and the human impulse of such a loving couple may well be to seek to procure such an heir. Will some not see that child as a legitimate heir of the monarch’s body if that marriage has been accepted by the British people? Might that child not feel that he or she has, in turn, a human right to expect to succeed to his or her mother or father?
I am grateful for the correspondence I have had with my right honourable friend the Attorney-General on this subject. It is not for me to place his opinion before the House but, in essence, I am reminded that the laws governing succession require that the descendant be the natural born child of a husband and wife, that they have been enshrined in our constitution for generations and that they have become part of our common law. Indeed so, but we are about to legislate, specifically and deliberately, to change the law of marriage in this realm. As we are often reminded, what is long enshrined in the common law of England is not necessarily proof against legal challenge, not least in the field of equalities and human rights. I would like to be assured that the common law will continue to be an adequate bulwark against division and controversy.
It has also been put to me that Section 48(7) of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 is worth noting. This Act states that nothing in the Act that relates to parenthood,
“affects the succession to any dignity or title of honour or renders any person capable of succeeding to or transmitting a right to succeed to any such dignity or title”.
It may well be that the Crown is encompassed within that definition as a dignity, and the word “dignity” does indeed occur in the 1700 Act. However, it is not so explicitly stated and certainly not in a way that is clear to tens of millions of non-lawyers who are subjects of the Crown. The public rightly see the Crown as separate, distinct, beyond and above. It is, indeed, the fount of all title or dignity of honour. It would be wise to put it beyond all doubt or challenge that the succession to the Crown is engaged by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act. Furthermore, are we certain that it is not arguable in a court, in default of a statement to the contrary, that the UK Parliament had decided, in legislating to redefine marriage, to alter the nature of marriage completely and thus that, in the context of a fully lawful same-sex royal marriage, the definition of—I return to the words—an heir of the body in the Act of Settlement might constructively be widened by the courts from the hitherto understood common law definition as it applies to the UK Crown. It might be wise to put the fact that Parliament had no such intention—if it does, indeed, have no such intention—beyond any doubt.
My right honourable friend the Attorney-General and my noble and learned friend on the Front Bench, who has been saying this again today, have argued that it would not be appropriate to go beyond what was expressly agreed by the realm Heads of Government in Perth. I accept that argument but I am not arguing that we should go beyond that: quite the reverse. I am simply suggesting that we should put in the clearest possible stops and stays to ensure that we can never, in this realm alone, be taken by legal process and challenge, rather than deliberate decision of Parliament, beyond what was agreed and where other realms might wish to go.
Our Queen is monarch of 16 realms, in not all of which is the view embodied in the legislation on marriage now before Parliament shared or likely to be shared. In Canada, gay marriage is already legal, the Australian Parliament has recently rejected it. A divergent view on the legitimacy of a royal marriage might, and a divergent view on the legitimacy of an heir would, break the union of realms. In 1837, the dominions of the Crown were irretrievably separated because of differing rules on the succession. Hanover did not allow female succession, so Queen Victoria could not rule Hanover, which passed to her uncle. It seems inherently unlikely that in the present diverse evolution of social policy in the Queen’s realms that any progeny of a same-sex marriage—even same-sex marriage itself—would be accepted in at least some of the existing kingdoms. Is it not important, therefore, that those realms, at this time of change both in the rules of succession and in the UK in the law of marriage, should all be held explicitly to a common understanding of what a royal marriage and, most importantly, an heir of the body means for the purposes of succession?
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, I will be brief. I am sure that the Minister will give good answers to the questions raised. Perhaps he may also, for my clarification, let us know about the implications for adoption in this. I am sure that it is in the noble and learned Lord’s briefing. We agree that the Bill is to change the rules of succession as regards gender and the ability to marry someone of the Catholic faith, rather than open up and perhaps decide on interesting issues. In the words of the noble Lord, Lord True, this issue is remote. We are talking about some years ahead, and perhaps we might leave the matter to our heirs and successors to decide.
Lord Trefgarne
My Lords, I share some of the concerns expressed by my noble friend Lord True. The plain fact is that the single-sex marriage legislation that is on its way through Parliament appears to be generating some unlooked-for consequences—and this issue may well be one of them. I hope that my noble and learned friend can reassure us.
Lord Elton
My Lords, I observe that this matter is outwith the terms of the Long Title. However, the Title has been postponed and it is possible to amend it, if necessary.
The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Wallace of Tankerness)
I thank my noble friend Lord True for the amendment and for the sensitive and thoughtful way in which he moved it and presented his concerns. Indeed, I seek to reassure him that the amendment is unnecessary.
Subsections (1) and (2) of the proposed new clause state the current position in respect of heirs of the body and adoption or artificial reproduction. I recognise that my noble friend indicated that he was not making any claims as to the drafting of the amendment but he said something that I have previously said—it is important that the succession is removed from controversy and there should be certainty. Subsection (3) could be an opportunity for some controversy if a case had to come before both Houses of Parliament. However, the spirit in which my noble friend moved the amendment was to try to seek some clarity on this matter.
The laws governing succession to the Crown that require that the descendant be the natural-born child of a husband and wife have been enshrined in our constitution for generations. Children who have been adopted may not succeed to the Throne, whether their new parents are of opposite sexes or the same sex. As my noble friend said, it is immaterial; indeed, even without the Bill, the issues he raised are pertinent. I repeat that children who have been adopted may not succeed to the Throne, irrespective of whether the parents are of opposite sexes or the same sex.
It was never our intention to codify all aspects of succession to the Throne in the Bill. Rather, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, indicated, the agreement reached among the realms was quite specifically limited to removing the male bias and ending a specific discrimination against Roman Catholics, and it is not appropriate that we go beyond what was expressly agreed.
Although the Adoption Act 1976 and the Family Law Reform Act 1987 refer only to the succession of titles being left unchanged by their reforms, the Lord Chancellor stated at Second Reading of the Bill that became the 1987 Act that there was no intention to alter the rules on the descent of the Crown. It is also worth noting, as my noble friend observed, that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 states that nothing in the Act,
“affects succession to any dignity or title”,
or,
“renders any person capable of succeeding to or transmitting a right to succeed to any such dignity or title”.
The Bill will maintain the position under the Adoption Act and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 referred to above. It will not change the way the Crown, or titles or dignities, descend. We also consider it to be unnecessary to define marriage for the purposes of this proposed new clause as set out in subsection (1). Only a natural-born child of a husband and wife can succeed to the Throne. That is quite clear. I have tried to keep my response brief and concise, and I hope that it provides the reassurance that my noble friend seeks and has properly raised. I invite my noble friend to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Elton
My Lords, I hope that my noble and learned friend on the Front Bench will take time to consider this matter between now and Report, and that my noble friend will also occupy that time. The answer that my noble and learned friend has given does not entirely cover everything because becoming Queen or King is rather more than receiving a dignity or title. The term used in the Bill is “possessing” the Crown, which is different from inheriting a title, and that is surely what we are concerned about.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
We will certainly reflect on this matter and I can assure my noble friend that considerable consideration has been given to it. However, I take the points that he and my noble friend Lord True made and will give further consideration to them. Nevertheless, I hope that I clearly indicated our view with regard to an “heir of the body”.
Lord Elton
I accept that that is the current position. I hope that we shall be reassured if it remains the same on Report.
Lord True
My Lords, I am grateful to those who have participated in this short debate and apologise for the length of my opening remarks. However, this is an issue of profound potential importance, not only as it affects our country but the Queen’s realms as a whole. It is inherent in the Perth agreement that we have an acquis agreed by all the realms, and no door should be left open to the crawling peg of equalities, rights and other challenge by a potential heir who is excluded from the Crown—as they feel, unfairly—against their rights by the existing deposit of the law.
I am not a lawyer, but I am concerned as an historian that the base of the law and the phrase “heir of the body” is a very ancient phrase which is buttressed only by the common law and the doubtful cover, in my view, of the clause from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act that I cited. I agree with the interpretation of my noble friend Lord Elton that that Act may be deficient in terms of providing protection for the Crown from the kind of challenge that might arise. My right honourable friend the Attorney-General made this point to me also, but I am afraid that I do not find full comfort in the remarks made by the Lord Chancellor at a time when the developments in the technology and science of birth and reproduction, and certainly the developments in the nature of the law of marriage, were far distant in the future and not necessarily conceived of. I say to the noble Baroness that this might be remote, but perhaps people thought before 1936 that certain things might be remote. It is the duty of Parliament, when legislating on something as grave as the succession to the Crown which Her Majesty holds on our behalf, to think about the future. It may, of course, be no more remote than that the child whom we all so fondly expect may be born gay.
I will return to the matter and would be grateful for further discussion with my noble and learned friend on the Front Bench to see if we cannot find a way of clarifying this. I am not going to go beyond the Perth agreement, but I think it is important that we have “awful clarity”—in the old language—on this very great matter. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Cormack
Lord Cormack
My Lords, with Clause 2 we come to the kernel of the Bill. As your Lordships will know, that clause at the moment reads:
“A person is not disqualified from succeeding to the Crown or from possessing it as a result of marrying a person of the Roman Catholic faith”.
It is a simple, unambiguous statement, but it leaves a lot of questions unanswered. These are questions of profound significance to our constitution. Therefore, I am going to suggest that we add the amendment that I have tabled, which continues that clause by saying,
“provided that agreement has been reached with the Vatican that any children of the union can be brought up as Anglicans”.
We have talked recently about clarity; my noble friend Lord True talked about it in his amendment. We have also talked about certainty. Like my noble friend Lord True, I was prevented from taking part in the Second Reading debate. I was sorry that I could not listen to much of the debate, but I was utterly committed to an event that took me away for some two or three hours—otherwise, I would have tried to air this subject then. That is why I put down an amendment which I hope is helpful to your Lordships’ House and will improve the Bill.
We have in England an established church, of which the Queen is the Supreme Governor. That is a fact and it is a constitutional fact of profound significance. I do not in any way wish to discriminate against any person of any faith, but our constitution rests on the fact that the monarch is the Supreme Governor of the established church. We have an established church; we have bishops who sit in this House and I am delighted to see the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby here this afternoon. I hope that he will be able to contribute to this debate. We have an established church, which means that every man, woman and child in England has the right to the services of that church. Every one of us in England lives in a diocese; every one of us lives in a parish and every one of us is entitled to the services of the parish priest, the diocesan bishop and to the other appointed dignitaries. Every week, those of us who are practising Anglicans pray for the Queen as our Supreme Governor.
Lord Deben
My Lords, I associate myself with the final few words of my noble friend Lord Cormack about the nature of Her Majesty and the way in which she has discharged her duties. Not only has it been remarkable but it has been so remarkable that it may have blinded us to the nature of the discussion that we are having today. In the past, the Supreme Governor of the Church of England was a Calvinist and a Lutheran. The only reason they were able so to be was that they were prepared to say, of their own volition, that although they were Calvinist or Lutheran, for this purpose they would be a member of the Church of England. I make no comment on them; I merely say that it was possible. Indeed, before the Act of Supremacy, James II was both a Catholic and Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Therefore, the idea that this is impossible is factually wrong. I start with that. I do not think that my noble friend needs to interrupt me because he will have other things about which to interrupt me when I get to them.
I say to the Minister that I accept that this is a very anomalous circumstance. I will now say something very carefully because I do not want it to sound hurtful. I mentioned the remarkable role that Her Majesty had played. There is no doubt that, as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, she has brought something to the religious life of this land that has been unique and remarkable. However, there are few theologians who can easily argue that this position has a serious theological basis today. We all know that the reason we have it is that the state decided to nationalise the church—that is what happened—in order to get its hands on money and power. It is no good ignoring that. It is not a prejudiced comment. I used to believe it when I was an Anglican, so I cannot be criticised for saying it. That is what happened. The arrangement today arises from an attempt to bring together the facts of history with the perfectly reasonable desires of religious people to make the establishment work. I am in favour of the establishment; I do not want the Church of England disestablished. I pray that, one day, the Church of England and the Catholic Church will again become one. However, I have to say that this proposal is ridiculous.
First, we will put something into the Bill which we have not done since the Act of Settlement. We will allow a foreign potentate, the Pope, to influence the way in which our future Queen or King will be decided. I am a Roman Catholic and I am proud of my allegiance to the Pope. I find this allegiance in no way contradicts my allegiance to the Queen of England. She is the Queen of England as far as I am concerned because I am English, but I realise that she is also the Queen of Britain. I defer to my noble friend. I see no contradiction between those allegiances any more than I see a contradiction with my pride of being a citizen of the European Union. These are citizenships and relationships which we can hold together. This is important as each one contributes to the strength of the other. However, will this House suggest that, for the first time, the Pope shall become a constitutional figure? I find that an impossible answer.
Secondly, in what position does this amendment put His Holiness? Must he say, “The Church’s teaching is this; canonical teaching is this; but, in order that we might do a deal with the British Crown, we will say something quite different about the heir to the Throne”? That looks to me precisely the sort of deal, a political deal, about which many reformers complained. I cannot possibly put my name to something which proceeds in that manner. Then, one has to ask His Holiness to say something most remarkable; that, despite the Church’s teaching, children of the union can be brought up as Anglicans. Therefore, the Pope says that, they get married and they say, “The Pope may say that the children can be brought up as Anglicans but we do not want that”. What, then, do we say in this constitutional arrangement? Do we say, “You better listen to the Pope. We have now brought him into the constitution so we must do so again to sort this out”?
What happens if they bring the child up as an Anglican and he does not think much of it? In fact, I was brought up as an Anglican and I was a member of the Synod of the Church of England. I became increasingly clear that the Anglican Church had moved from being part of the Catholic Church to being a sect because it had decided that it had its own rights to make its own decisions about the teachings and the doctrines of the Catholic Church. Once it did that, it seemed to me to change its position. Therefore, I ceased to be an Anglican and I became a Catholic. What happens if the Pope has said that the heir to the Throne may be brought up as an Anglican, he is brought up as an Anglican and he says to himself, “In truth, I think that the Pope is right—with the exception that he has done a deal with the British authorities. I have therefore decided that I will become a Catholic”? What do we do as a society then? Do we say, “We are frightfully sorry, you are not allowed to decide that”? That is precisely the situation which will arise under this particular amendment.
There may be many ways of dealing with this. I have my own particular way, with which I shall not bother the House as I know very well that the Government are determined not to take it seriously. It seems to me perfectly right that the Church of England should have a Supreme Governor. In normal circumstances, the Supreme Governor should be the monarch where the monarch is an Anglican. But where the monarch is not an Anglican, the monarch should nominate as Supreme Governor someone from the family who is an Anglican. That seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable way forward. It would stop us having a special arrangement for Roman Catholics in this insulting way.
We do not have an arrangement whereby the heir to the Throne can marry a Muslim as long as the Muslim authorities agree that the children are brought up as Anglicans. The Muslim authorities are in exactly the same position in terms of this issue, although I think on very little else, as His Holiness. They are not going to agree to it either. What I would say to all Members of the House is this. It is insulting to the largest church in the United Kingdom—the Catholic Church. It is insulting to isolate Catholics as if there is still something about them today—in 2013.
I want to end with a comment to my noble friend. On Sundays, Anglicans do not pray for the Queen as the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, they pray for the Queen. At exactly the same time, although in larger numbers and with greater enthusiasm, Catholics pray for the Queen. There is no distinction between our prayers. The fact of the supreme governorship does not relate to the way in which subjects pray for their Queen. The only reason I raise this is because on these occasions there is always just a little hark back towards a feeling that there is a position before the Almighty that makes the Church of England special. The Church of England has an important history and its evensong is in many ways one of the finest services produced by any church of any kind. However, let us remember that we live in a pluralist society and that much of this anomaly is something that most people cannot and do not want to understand. To introduce an amendment that would enshrine the very things that historically we have sought not to have in Britain seems to me to be preposterous.
Lord Luce
My Lords, I support the objective of the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, although I have reservations about its wording. I should say hastily that I am speaking for myself and not as a former member of the Royal Household. The House may have noticed that earlier there was a small cluster of former members of the Royal Household, but we have now widened the gaps between each other.
My view is based on the limited scope of this Bill and the assumption that we are not talking about the establishment of the church or about changing the position of the monarch being the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and thus the requirement that the Supreme Governor should join in communion with the Church of England. That, to my mind, is not the issue, rather it is much more limited to the proposal in the Bill. At Second Reading, I asked the Minister whether we could seek greater clarity on the requirement that those in the line of succession must be brought up within the Anglican faith. All I am seeking to do is to minimise misunderstandings that otherwise could arise from the passing of this Bill in connection with Clause 2.
There is a disparity between what the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, said, and what the Archbishop of Westminster said at the time of the Perth agreement in October 2011. Archbishop Rowan Williams said that,
“there needs to be a clear understanding that the heir is brought up in”,
the Church of England environment. The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster said:
“I fully recognise the importance of the position of the established church … in protecting and fostering the role of faith in our society today”.
That is a helpful message, but the two are not clearly in line, and in my view there is something of a lack of clarity in this. Of course, this is something that may never happen in our lifetime, but nevertheless it could happen. It is in order to minimise the risk of misunderstanding that I believe the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, is moving the amendment.
In my Second Reading speech I suggested that the Minister should agree to have some further discussions with the Roman Catholic leadership in this country to see whether we cannot get a clearer understanding, and I would be grateful if, when he comes to respond to the debate, he would let us know if he has anything to report at this stage.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
My Lords, I apologise for being unable to be here earlier, as I had a long-standing engagement, and also for not being able to participate in the earlier stages of this Bill. I am afraid that unusually, because I have the highest regard for my noble friend, I do not feel able to support this amendment at all.
I have some history on this matter. I believe that the provisions contained in the 18th century legislation with quite vile language about Roman Catholics should be removed from the statute book. As Secretary of State, I think I described it as the constitution’s grubby little secret. When I first came to this House, I was unwise enough to bring forward a Private Member’s Bill to deal with this issue. I was ambushed at the very first stage by my late and much missed friend, Lord St. John of Fawsley, who by use of procedure, prevented me from even being able to speak to my Bill or to introduce it again for a year. As a result, I realised that this was a much more complex issue which required considerable discussion and was not suitable for Private Members’ Bills.
It is therefore a great disappointment that this legislation has been rushed through the House of Commons as it has, without proper debate, on a timetable which we normally reserve for Bills concerned with terrorism or some immediate national interest. For the life of me, I do not see why these matters have been dealt with so quickly. In opposing this amendment, for the reasons that my noble friend Lord Deben spelled out so clearly—I will not repeat the arguments—I would like to say as a member of the Church of Scotland, although I worship in the Episcopal Church of Scotland, so I am a kind of hybrid, I find it extraordinary that the opportunity was not taken in this legislation to remove the prohibition on the monarch themselves being a Catholic.
I have a specific question for the Minister to deal with, on which my noble friend Lord Deben touched. As I understand it, the role of the monarch as head of the Church of England is not a canonical role, and therefore there is no reason, as my noble friend said, why the monarch has to be a member of the Church of England. There may be other issues that arise from that, and I appreciate that the example of James VII or James II—depending on your perspective—may not have been an entirely happy one. However, it did not end in tears because he was a Catholic and head of the Church of England; some other issues resulted in it ending in tears.
The Deputy Prime Minister has brought forward this legislation on the basis of extending equality, although it is rather ironic that we should be talking about equality in the context of the monarchy. It seems to me quite extraordinary that we have not been able to take that further step and remove the prohibition on the monarch being a Catholic. In the 18th century, there were very good reasons for having this language; it was about the security of the nation. Indeed, the very Act of Union itself occurred as a deal; the Scots were bailed out from the huge losses which had been created by the Darien scheme, and in return the Protestant succession was secured. That was what it was about. Therefore, to leave on our statute book words which cause great offence to many Catholics and non-Catholics in our country is shocking and it is sad that the Bill does not deal with it.
In support of his amendment, my noble friend Lord Cormack has suggested that some deal would be done with the Vatican. Of course, we have to have regard to our constitutional history but, as my noble friend Lord Deben pointed out, the independence of the monarchy is fundamental to our constitution. Although the Vatican is no longer a foreign power which will encourage the French or anyone else to usurp the Throne—those days are long since past—it would be totally inappropriate to have an amendment of this kind. However, I agree with my noble friend in so far as moving this amendment highlights the anomalous position of this legislation.
I should just make it clear that I would not want to see the Church of England cease to be the established church. My goodness me, secularism is rampant in our country at the moment; this is not the moment for something of that kind and I would not support it. The heir to the Throne has talked about being “Defender of Faiths”, and it is a mistake for the Church of England to appear to take a position that has the unfortunate effect of making people believe that it cannot continue to be an established church while removing that discriminatory language from our statute and constitution.
Lord Trefgarne
My Lords, I have some sympathy with the objective of my noble friend Lord Cormack’s amendment, but I have considerable doubt as to whether it will achieve what he seeks.
I rather doubt whether the Vatican would be willing to give the sort of undertaking that my noble friend suggests. It sounds as though that would be very difficult indeed for it. Whether or not our sovereign might be of some different faith, not of the Church of England and perhaps even Roman Catholic, is a wholly different but of course crucial issue. I have tabled subsequent amendments that touch upon that, although I suspect that we have discussed it pretty fully under this amendment. I think that my noble friend’s amendment will not achieve what he desires and I hope, therefore, that he will not press it.
Lord Fellowes
My Lords, I, too, much regret that I was unavoidably prevented from attending Second Reading but I hope that I may none the less speak briefly to this amendment.
First, I support the Bill wholeheartedly. Furthermore, I understand and agree with the motives behind the amendment. Both the Bill and the amendment are timely and necessary. I fear, however, that I cannot support the amendment as drafted. More clarity and public commitment from the Roman Catholic Church on the subject of the upbringing of an heir to the Throne would indeed be most welcome, but I think that that desired outcome would be more likely to be achieved by quiet negotiation than by ultimatum. The amendment has a ring of ultimatum about it, at least to me. For that reason I cannot give it my support. None the less, I hope that we can find a satisfactory form of words that carries perhaps less threat and more promise, both to the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church.
Lord James of Blackheath
The noble Lords, Lord Forsyth and Lord Deben, have both got very close to being the first Peers in this debate to mention that here we are addressing the concern of whether we can alter the Bill of Rights. Sooner or later, that issue will have to be debated in much more detail than allowed for by today’s agenda.
I have one technical question for the noble Lord, Lord Cormack: does he believe that the papacy is able to commit its successors any more than, as he no doubt believes, one Parliament can commit another?
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
My Lords, this has been a very good debate and, has just been mentioned, will inform a number of the amendments that we are due to discuss. Maybe we will be able to move a little faster as a result.
The amendment, in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Freeman and Lord Cormack, makes abolition of the Catholic marriage ban conditional on an agreement with the Vatican that children of such marriages should be brought up as Anglicans. As for preserving the Protestant succession, the amendment is unnecessary because under the present rules no Catholic will be able to succeed. As we have heard, it seems highly unlikely that the Vatican is in any position to make children of mixed marriages be brought up as Anglicans, should we require it to. In any case, we understand that this is a matter already delegated to the Catholic hierarchy in the UK.
However, as several noble Lords have suggested, this issue raises the question of whether any religious test should be preserved as one of the rules for succession. As we will hear from the noble and learned Lord, that will perhaps be a matter for another time, but I will come back to it in later amendments.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Cormack for introducing this amendment. It has generated a passionate debate and raised important issues, not least ones also reflected in our Second Reading debate about the upbringing of children should there be a mixed marriage. The noble Lord, Lord Luce, quite properly indicated that this Bill is limited in its scope and does not deal with the established church or the monarch as Supreme Governor. I know the passion with which my noble friend Lord Forsyth takes a view—which I share—on the wording of some 17th century legislation. That wording is offensive, but as the noble Lord recognised from his early attempts with a Private Member’s Bill, these matters are hugely complex and I do not believe that this Bill is the appropriate place to deal with them.
As the noble Lord, Lord Luce, indicated, at Second Reading he and the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, asked if I would meet representatives of the Catholic Church. I did so earlier this week. I can inform the House that I came away with a clear message that in the instance of mixed marriages the approach of the Roman Catholic Church is a pastoral one. It was considerably stressed to me that the Catholic Church will always look to provide guidance that supports and strengthens the unity of the partnership and the indissolubility of marriage. It is in this context that the Catholic Church expects Catholic spouses sincerely to undertake to do all they can to raise their children within the Catholic Church.
However, where it has not been possible for the child of a mixed marriage to be brought up as a Catholic, it has been drawn to my attention that the Catholic parent does not fall subject to the censure of canon law. The clear signal was that the overriding concern in Catholic pastoral guidance to couples in mixed marriages—it was drawn to my attention that there are many mixed marriages today in England and Wales—is the unity and indissolubility of the marriage. I assure the House that it is not the case that the children of all mixed Protestant and Catholic marriages must be brought up in the Catholic faith.
It is also important to note the important concept within the Catholic Church of subsidiarity. As a Presbyterian I do not pretend to understand it, but it is one that I have certainly heard associated with the Catholic Church. We perhaps debate the word in another context, but within the organisation of the Catholic Church, subsidiarity is an important concept and much decision-making is devolved to a local level, including decisions relating to mixed marriages. Quite simply, the Vatican does not get involved. My noble friend Lord Deben highlighted both the constitutional implications and significance if the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Cormack were to be carried. It would raise constitutional issues and would put the Pope in a very difficult position, one that I suspect the Vatican does not aspire to have thrust upon it. In its recent letter to Members of your Lordships’ House on this issue, the Church of England stated:
“The present prohibition…is not necessary to support the requirement that the Sovereign join in communion with the Church of England”—
that is, the prohibition on marrying a Catholic—and therefore:
“Its proposed removal is a welcome symbolic and practical measure consistent with respect for the principle of religious liberty”.
The Archbishop of Westminster, as quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Luce, welcomed the decision of the Government to give heirs to the Throne the freedom to marry a Catholic, and recognised the importance of the position of the established church in protecting and fostering the role of faith in our society today.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
What was the Government’s motivation in removing the prohibition on the heir to the Throne marrying a Catholic? Was it to enable the heir to the Throne to marry a Catholic, or was it to remove the discrimination against Catholics?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, it was both. It was to allow someone in the line of succession to the Throne to marry a Catholic and to remove that discrimination. I know that the noble Lord’s subsequent question would be, “Why don’t you remove the ultimate discrimination?”. However, as he acknowledged, from his own efforts to do something, this is a much more complex issue. He says that he does not wish to disestablish the Church of England. Many would argue that if we went down that road, it possibly would lead to the disestablishment of the Church of England. There is a proper debate to be had there, but this emphasises that that is not the purpose of this Bill. However, where an opportunity has arisen to remove at least one area of discrimination, it has properly been seized.
My noble friend Lord Deben made the point that, if this genuinely is an issue, it already exists in another context. My noble friend Lady Falkner of Margravine raised the point at Second Reading which my noble friend Lord Deben made about Islam. My noble friend Lady Falkner asked whether the perceived,
“constraints on the children of Catholics being bought up—and the Catholic Church’s perspective on that—would be different if the monarch was married to a Muslim, as is currently permissible? Muslim children are, likewise, expected to be brought up in mixed marriages as Muslims. So the anomaly exists in the case of other faiths, but perhaps not in the case of Catholics”.—[Official Report, 14/2/13; col. 805.]
That was the point that my noble friend was making. Therefore, the amendment of my noble friend Lord Cormack seeks to address one problem but does not extend to include every faith that currently exists. It is certainly not the Government’s plan that we should do so.
We will obviously return to this issue of establishment and whether the sovereign could be a Catholic in some of the later amendments. However, I readily appreciate the very human concerns. When you are dealing with affairs of state and issues of the constitution, you must remember that you are also talking about two people who want to get married. That is why it is appropriate that there is a pastoral dimension to this and that it is done at a pastoral level. I hope that, with these reassurances, my noble friend will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Cormack
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble and learned friend the Minister for his response, but not entirely convinced. We have had an interesting short debate. Some of the language used by my noble friend Lord Deben was reminiscent of the 18th century pamphlet at its best. He could be a little more careful about his use of the words “insulting” and “preposterous” merely because he does not happen to agree with the arguments advanced.
The fact is that many people in this country are concerned. Parliament has a duty to address this issue. Mentioning a foreign power in legislation is by no means unprecedented. However, I take the point of my noble friend Lord Fellowes; indeed, I made it obliquely myself in my introductory remarks when I said that I was not wedded to the words of the amendment. I wanted to have a debate on the subject. This we have had. I would be glad to talk to my noble friend Lord Fellowes and others before deciding whether to pursue this, which I may well do on Report. The issue deserves mature and thoughtful debate. It is of importance for we do not know how long. There may be no problem in the next century; there may be one within a very few years. One just does not know. However, when we are legislating in good faith for a long time—in spite of the fact that no Parliament can bind its successors; we can repeal whatever we like tomorrow—we have to do our best to make it as clear, precise and right as we possibly can. This is why my noble friend Lord True was wise to introduce his debate. We need to try to anticipate the sort of problems that may exist, if only to answer them and have them answered by Ministers and others before we move on to see the Bill on the statute book, which it assuredly will be before too much longer.
While expressing the hope of discussions with my noble and learned friend the Minister and others before Report stage, and reserving the right to introduce an amendment on Report—certainly not in the same words, but along similar lines—I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Trefgarne
Lord Trefgarne
My Lords, this amendment, together with Amendments 6 to 9, go to the very heart of the issue we have just been discussing. Together they provide for a fundamental change in the present prevention which applies to our sovereign being a member of the Roman Catholic faith. This is a huge issue. I do not think it would be right to deal with it rapidly in the course of the swift passage of this legislation. I therefore will not proceed with these amendments.
Lord Trefgarne
“(6) In the event of a person of the Roman Catholic faith succeeding to the Crown by virtue of subsection (5), the title of Defender of the Faith and the function of Supreme Governor of the Church of England shall pass to a regent qualifying with the provisions of section 3 of the Regency Act 1937.”
Lord Trefgarne
My noble friend Lord Northbrook has attached his name to the amendment. It raises a slightly different issue. It is another way of dealing with the matter touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, in his Amendment 4. It is a way of dealing with this matter by way of a regency. Your Lordships have considered and discussed this possibility on previous amendments and I ask your Lordships to consider it again now. I beg to move.
Lord Northbrook
My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Trefgarne in his amendment. I first raised the issue in my speech at Second Reading, so I claim a little credit for the idea. As my noble friend has said, it sidesteps a key problem if the heir is a Catholic and keeps a link between church and Crown.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
My Lords, I shall speak briefly to this amendment and pick up a point which my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace made in his response to the previous amendment when, with typical skill, he used something I said as an argument against me. I had said that the issue was too complex to be dealt with by a Private Member’s Bill. I was persuaded by the late Lord St John of Fawsley that this was not a matter suitable for being dealt with by a Private Member’s Bill and was best left to the Government to deal with. It is not really good enough for the Government to say that this is a very complicated area and it would mean having to deal with the whole issue of maintaining an established church and therefore we have gone for half a loaf. In my speech on the previous amendment I asked my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace to explain why it is not possible to devise a basis on which the monarch can remain head of the Church of England but not actually be of the Anglican faith. This amendment, moved by my noble friend Lord Trefgarne and supported by my noble friend Lord Northbrook, is a particular approach.
I do not think it is necessary to create a regency in order to do so. We did not have the opportunity to hear the view of the Church of England in respect of the previous amendment. Even if the Government’s position is that they will not do it in this Bill, it is disappointing that they are not able to explain what the options and difficulties are about it. My noble and learned friend did not fall into the trap when I intervened in his speech and asked him what the Government are trying to do here. Are they trying to end discrimination against Roman Catholics or are they just trying to enable the heir to the Throne to marry a Roman Catholic? I would be horrified if it is the latter. Of course, that is a good thing to do—if two people want to get married they should be able to do so—but I thought that this was part of a wider agenda of ending discrimination against Catholics. We need to understand why the Bill has not provided for that and why the idea contained in the amendment could not provide a way forward.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
These amendments go to the heart of whether the present Anglican establishment in England can or even should remain in its present form. They raise issues which it would be irresponsible to dismiss out of hand. Therefore, I suggest that all parties come together sooner rather than later to ensure that the subject remains a topic for further parliamentary consideration. That might be by way of using the existing committee structure—perhaps the Constitution Committees in both Houses might wish to take this on—or even through the facility in your Lordships’ House for setting up a committee for this very purpose. It seems to us that the spirit of change, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Deben, and the points just made by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, are too important to be left on the table. They need to be addressed, otherwise they will rancour, come back and hit us in places that we do not necessarily understand at this time.
I sense in the debates that we have had so far a willingness to engage at a level which is not possible within this Bill because of its particular purposes and focus but which would help to create a better understanding at least and possibly an opportunity for a road map for change. It would be important to take that up.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, as my noble friend Lord Trefgarne indicated in moving this amendment, this is one of the key issues raised by this Bill. Certainly, his Amendments 10 and 11 and the consequential ones to the schedules are interesting and were flagged up at Second Reading. They are an interesting way of addressing what has been seen as a dilemma: if the sovereign was to be a Roman Catholic, how could that person also be the Supreme Governor of the Church of England?
When I tried to answer my noble friend Lord Forsyth’s question as to whether the proposal was to allow the heir to the Throne to marry a Roman Catholic or to remove discrimination, I think I said that it was both, and it is. Clause 2 is of symbolic importance because it removes a discrimination which I believe does not have a place in our society today. As I think I also indicated, and as has been accepted across the Chamber, these issues with regard to the sovereign being a Roman Catholic go much wider than the person who may ascend to the Throne being married to a Roman Catholic. The Government are committed to the Church of England as the established church in England with the sovereign as its Supreme Governor. I note what the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, says about a possible further examination. Certainly, the Government have no plans to do so. Indeed, the Government suggesting to Select Committees what they may or may not do probably is not good form. But he has made his proposal and there will be others who will have heard it. It may be that a Select Committee will choose to do that but I do not think that it would be appropriate for the Government to take that initiative.
I now turn to the idea of separation of the roles of sovereign and Supreme Governor.
Lord Maclennan of Rogart
Before my noble and learned friend leaves that point, will he indicate whether the Government are ready to enable such work to be done given the compression of time that we have had in discussing these matters? Would they be prepared to permit the Bill to proceed at a pace which would allow a Select Committee, such as the Constitution Committee, to consider these matters?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I am afraid that I will have to disappoint my noble friend in my answer. I do not believe that this is the appropriate Bill for taking this forward. This Bill seeks to deliver on three particular issues and I do not believe that that would be appropriate. I do not diminish the importance of the issues. It is very obvious that some people see this Bill as a Trojan horse for disestablishment and some are frightened in the opposite direction. I do not believe that this Bill is appropriate for that. Therefore, I cannot give my noble friend the encouragement or the assurance that he seeks with regard to allowing such a discussion. I do not believe that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, was suggesting that it should be done in a timescale that would affect this Bill.
On the idea of separating the roles of sovereign and Supreme Governor of the Church of England, obviously it is self evident that that would represent a very major change to the role of the monarch in relation to the established church and undoubtedly would require extensive consultation. It is a significant diversion from the traditional role of the monarchy over recent centuries. The Government consider that the change in the law effected by Clause 2 is a valuable one but we do not believe that it is necessary for the Bill to go beyond that and to delve into the significant wider issues that this amendment raises.
The proposed amendments also open up a series of extremely difficult questions about the relationship between the sovereign and the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and indeed whether such an arrangement could support the continued established place of the Church of England. For example, how would the coronation and accession oaths be taken? The oath of accession includes a promise to maintain and preserve the Protestant religion and Presbyterian Church Government. Who would take this oath? Presumably it would not be appropriate for a regent who is a Supreme Governor of the Church of England to give any oath in respect of the Church of Scotland, and therefore would not be sovereign to make that statement. That one issue shows the host of different issues that would come up when the issue is examined in more detail.
As I have indicated, the Government have no intention of introducing any change in this matter. Given that both the Catholic Church and the Church of England have been very supportive of the changes that are actually in the Bill, I believe that we have found an appropriate balance through the legislation as drafted. I therefore invite my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.
The Earl of Erroll
Before the Minister sits down, perhaps I could help him on the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Every year, at the opening of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, the monarch promises to defend the Presbyterian Church Government in Scotland—I will not get the words exactly right. I think that she does that in a personal capacity, not as head of the Anglican Church. She promises to defend it, so there is no reason why a Catholic monarch could not still promise to defend the Presbyterian Church Government in Scotland. To confuse that with Presbyterianism in England would be different.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I apologise if I did not make myself clear. I did not mean to suggest that it was as Supreme Governor of the Church of England that she made the oath with regard to the Presbyterian Church Government in Scotland. I was in fact suggesting the opposite; it would not be appropriate for someone who was appointed as a regent—a Supreme Governor—to make that oath. I think that that would be wholly inappropriate. It raises the question of whether a monarch who was indeed a member of the Roman Catholic Church would be in a position to make any commitment regarding the maintenance of the Protestant religion and the system of Presbyterian Church Government.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My noble friend Lord Forsyth asks why. I think that it raises some very interesting issues that have not been thought through. This is why I say that we should not go down this road. I do not propose to go down this road; I suggest that there is a host of issues, and that is why we should not go down the road proposed by the amendment.
Lord Trefgarne
My Lords, the problem is that the noble and learned Lord says this opens up greatly different avenues. However, frankly, the Government ought to have thought about these avenues before they brought in the Bill.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
With all respect to my noble friend, that is the reason why the Government have not gone down this road. The Government have actually sought to do three very clear things: remove the male bias in succession; remove the current prohibition on someone in the line of succession marrying a Catholic; and repeal the prohibitions in the Royal Marriages Act 1772 and replace them with others. Those are three very precise points. I made the point that to go wider than that raises the kind of issues I highlighted. That is one reason why the Government have not gone down this road.
Lord Northbrook
My Lords, by ignoring the amendments of the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Trefgarne, it seems that the Government are just leaving everything to chance, in the case of there being a Catholic heir.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
This is not leaving it to chance. The law as it stands at the moment is quite clear that a Catholic cannot ascend the throne.
Lord True
My Lords, the problem was articulated at Second Reading, and I do not wish to extend this debate too much. The problem ultimately will be a human problem, as it was in 1936. That human problem, if it arises, will concern a child who is an heir, either the heir presumptive or a child who by some accident becomes the next in line, a popular expectant heir to the throne, who, whether from birth or by proximity to the Catholic faith when being brought up, believes that they cannot take up the duties of a monarch without the support of the church that they love. That might well be the Catholic Church.
The problem with the halfway house that we have before us is that it opens the door to such a crisis without resolving all the complexities that my noble friend quite rightly said lie at the end of that path. That human drama will be played out in the 21st century through all eyes of the media and television as almost a piece of spectacle—it was in 1936. That is the danger that many Peers sought to point out at Second Reading. I could not support the amendment of my noble friend Lord Cormack; equally, I think that the amendment of my noble friend Lord Trefgarne is flawed, because I agree with my noble and learned friend on the Front Bench that there are things that a regent could not undertake.
There is a danger in the lack of clarity inherent in this Bill, for well meaning reasons, opening a door to a place we know not where. Not all discrimination in this matter lies on the Anglican side—I speak as one who lives the most happy of mixed marriages but who is never permitted to go to the altar table to share communion with my wife. Let us go forward with caution. It is not right for the Government so readily to detach the opening of the door by the legitimisation of a marriage from a proper and serious contemplation of the potential consequences if a human drama comes to be played out when an heir believes that they can proceed only with the support of the Catholic faith, whether they professed it previously or profess it at the time when they become heir to the Throne.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, before my noble friend Lord Trefgarne replies, perhaps I may pick up on a point where I do not believe that the argument of my noble friend Lord True holds. Under the law as it stands—and there is no proposal here, nor do the Government have any proposals to change the law—the sovereign may not be, nor have been, a Roman Catholic. Therefore, the situation which my noble friend Lord True suggested, where the sovereign comes to the Throne having to agonise as to whether to renounce the Catholic religion, just would not arise, because, having been a Catholic, he or she would not be eligible to ascend to the Throne.
I entirely concur with my noble friend’s opening remarks: these are very much human matters at the end of the day. There is a human dimension to it, and that is why, in response to the earlier debate, I sought to reflect the discussions which I had with representatives of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales so that this is looked at at a pastoral, human level, which seeks to reflect the importance of the union of a partnership and the indissolubility of marriage. It is against that background that decisions should be made and advice given with regard to the upbringing of a family. I accept that there is a human dimension to this, but I should perhaps clarify that the dilemma that my noble friend was suggesting cannot occur because the position is that the sovereign must not be, or have been, a member of the Roman Catholic Church.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
My Lords, I had not appreciated this until my noble and learned friend said it: he said that not only would a Catholic not be able to ascend to the Throne but that someone who had been a Catholic but had then converted to be an Anglican could not ascend to the Throne. That has nothing whatever to do with the position of being Supreme Governor of the Church of England. That is a simple discrimination against Catholics. My noble and learned friend said, “Oh, the reason that we have made this Bill focus on just these three areas is because the issues are so complex”. It is clear that he will not accept the amendment, and I accept some of his arguments for that—but, in listening to this debate, can he not see that there are a number of issues? The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, suggested that we should have a Select Committee, or some kind of body to look at these issues, and park the Bill while that is going on. What is the rush here? What is the reason for our needing to rush forward with this legislation at this pace?
Perhaps at the end of the day, it might be concluded that it was impossible to reconcile maintaining an established Church with removing this discrimination against Catholics. However, if the Government say, “Oh well, this is just a Bill that’s dealing with these matters”, bear in mind that this legislation has to be approved by all the other Parliaments around the world. Would they not think it very odd if we came forward with this Bill now and then a short while later came forward with the other bit of it? Or is the proposition that this is just too difficult? If it is too difficult, why on earth did the Government embark on this journey in the first place?
Lord Cormack
I would like to add a word. There is a real danger that we are treating exceptionally complex matters far too simplistically. The constitution of our country, which is not written, has often been compared to a beautifully constructed watch—take away one ostensibly tiny piece of the mechanism and the whole thing falls apart. Some fairly unpleasant things were said about my amendment earlier on, but there we are; that is the rough and tumble of debate. However, I really believe that those of us who are concerned about this issue—coming from slightly different points of view, I accept—are on to something that the Government have not bothered to think through. They have said, “Oh look, this is so complex that we’ll just concentrate on these things”, which is equivalent to saying, “This watch is beautifully constructed; we’ll just look at the hands in the face and forget the bit behind”. There is merit in the interesting suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson—if I may have his attention for a moment—or at least in the Minister calling a meeting in his room for people who are concerned, and possibly in going forward to a special committee. This is not really the ideal forum for a detailed discussion of these exceptionally important and complex matters, which reach out we know not where.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I have already responded to the point from the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, and indicated that I am not in a position on behalf of the Government to commit to establishing a committee to look at these matters. It is clear that there are committees of this House and indeed of the other place that could do so. Obviously the Government would contribute to any such committee that we had invited to do this, but I do not believe that that is a pathway that is inconsistent—nor did the noble Lord suggest this—with proceeding with the relatively straightforward, although constitutionally important, issues that are in the Bill.
Lord Trefgarne
My Lords, at the end of Second Reading a week or so ago, when the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, moved to refer this Bill to a Committee of the Whole House, I suggested then to your Lordships that it would have been much better considered by a Select Committee of the House to which witnesses could have been called and had their evidence taken—perhaps even a Joint Select Committee involving Members of the other place. However, the Minister refused to agree to that; oh no, we would go to a Committee of the Whole House, as we are now doing.
If ever there was a case of unlooked-for consequences, this Bill is certainly it. There are a number of aspects of this matter that quite clearly the Government have simply not considered or, if they have, they have chosen to disregard. That is really not good enough, and we are going to have to return to this issue at the next stage for sure. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Trefgarne
“Removal of disqualification arising from individual’s religion
(1) A person is not disqualified from succeeding to the Crown or from possessing it as a result of that person not joining in communion with the Church of England as by law established; and all provisions to the contrary in the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement are accordingly superseded.
(2) Where a person who succeeds to the Crown or possesses it declares to the Privy Council that he or she is not in communion with the Church of England as by law established, the person who is next in line of succession to the Crown and who is in communion with the Church of England shall perform the functions of Supreme Governor of the Church of England in the name of and on behalf of the Sovereign.
(3) The provisions in subsections (3) to (5) of section 3 of the Regency Act 1937 apply to such a person who is Supreme Governor, with the substitution for references to the Regent of references to the Supreme Governor.”
Lord Trefgarne
I do not intend to speak to this amendment at any length. We have covered some of its detail, although by no means all of it, in recent discussions, but I would like to hear what the Minister’s response to it would be. Without wishing to detain your Lordships, therefore, I beg to move.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, the position with regard to this amendment is very similar. It is a different structure for having, as it were, a divergence between the person who is the sovereign and the person who is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Some of the difficulties and arguments which were expressed with regard to the regency are also applicable to the slightly different structure proposed in Amendment 11. I am not sure that I can elaborate on that much further as I think that the arguments are very similar.
Lord Trefgarne
I understand what my noble and learned friend is saying. However, the amendment that I now propose does not confine itself to the Roman Catholic faith, or the possibility of the sovereign or the heir to the Throne being Roman Catholic, but deals with all other possible faiths. At the moment, many legal restrictions apply to the Roman Catholic faith in this regard but none applies to Muslims, the Jewish faith or any faith other than the Anglican and Roman Catholic faiths. Therefore, that matter certainly bears additional consideration, but perhaps not today. In the meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Lang of Monkton
Lord Lang of Monkton
My Lords, from the deep and turbulent waters of Clause 2, we move to the only slightly less troubled waters of Clause 3. This amendment, which stands in my name, also has the support of the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Swynnerton, who is unavoidably prevented being here today, and of my noble friends Lord Lexden and Lord True.
This is a simple, modest and practical amendment, which seeks to increase from six to 12 the number of persons in line of succession to the Crown who would be required by the Bill to seek the consent of the monarch before marrying. The existence of that provision in the Bill is to my mind a tacit admission of the potential for turbulence created by Clause 2 and that part of Clause 3 which repeals the Royal Marriages Act 1772, the Bill pitting, as it does, a relaxation over the entry of Catholics into the royal line against the absolute ban on their reaching the Throne. There is a real tension there, which the clause as it stands makes at least some effort to modify.
The 1772 Act had the draconian effect of voiding a marriage that lacked the monarch’s consent and it had become unworkable because of its extent, but it did have the virtue of certainty, which was needed then, as now. King George III’s seven sons between them entered into nine marriages—a case of nine brides for seven brothers. Three of them were in contravention of the recently enacted Royal Marriages Act and were therefore void, thus keeping the line of succession relatively tidy, if nothing else. I wish we could say the same for the new provision, but I fear that it could lead to great untidiness. The only argument that my noble and learned friend could offer in favour of exchanging the open-ended control of the 1772 Act for a list of just six, was that when Queen Victoria was born, she was fifth in line of succession and no sovereign had come to the Throne from further out than that. However, he chose a bad example and I would like to use that example to answer his case.
The remarkable thing about Queen Victoria’s circumstances was not that she started life so far out in the line but that she did not start much further out. After all, King George III had 12 surviving children, seven of them sons, so the succession must have looked pretty secure as they grew up. Of course, only six of them would have been in what one could call the “club of six” under the clause we are now considering. Indeed, half the King’s children would have been outside it, just as a third of Queen Victoria’s children would also have been outside it. I ask the House to consider how this club of six would have worked at that time.
In 1817, two years before Victoria was born, Princess Charlotte, daughter of the Prince of Wales and second in line to the Throne, died tragically in childbirth, along with her baby, who would have been third in line. King George’s sixth son, Prince Augustus Frederick, who would have left the club of six at her birth, would now have rejoined it. At the time, only three of the Prince’s brothers were married within the terms of the Act. They were all middle-aged and had no legitimate children. It suddenly became apparent that the succession was at risk. Within a year, three more of the brothers hurried into marriage, including Prince William, Duke of Clarence and St Andrews, and his younger brother, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, who was then aged 50.
A year later, in 1819, Prince Edward’s daughter, Victoria, was born and at once become fifth in line to the throne. She would have been a member of the club of six, pushing her uncle, Prince Augustus Frederick, back out of the club. Eight months later, Prince Edward died suddenly; his daughter Victoria moved up to fourth in line and Prince Augustus Frederick would again have rejoined the club of six. Six days after that, King George III died, Princess Victoria moved up to third place and her youngest uncle, Prince Adolphus Frederick, who would have left the club of six at the age of 21, rejoined it at the age of 45. Eleven months later he was out of it again as his brother, Prince William, became father to a daughter, Princess Elizabeth. She took third position in line and his niece Victoria moved back down to fourth position. Less than three months after that, the infant Princess Elizabeth tragically died. Those below her, including Victoria, moved back up the line and Prince Adolphus Frederick—not to be confused with his brother Prince Augustus Frederick, still less with his other brother Prince Frederick Augustus—would have been back for the third time in today’s club of six. Fortunately for him, he had married in 1818 during one of his gaps in membership.
Within two years, Princess Victoria’s place in the succession had changed upwards and downwards four times. I recite all this simply to show that the line of succession to the Crown can easily involve an almost random element. The unexpected often happens, as my noble friend Lady Thatcher almost said. The highly improbable can quickly become the near certain. It also shows that the succession can move in both directions, up as well as down, and between late middle-age and infancy. Queen Victoria was 18 when she came to the throne, her predecessor was 64 and her successor was 59. Her circumstances were unlike any other before or afterwards but they demonstrate the unpredictability of the line of succession and therefore the need to provide for that when we legislate on the matter. We cannot predict what future circumstances will be, so we should leave a margin for error.
To my noble and learned friend, who attempts to justify six with the repeated argument that Princess Victoria was fifth in line at her birth, I point out that, in the terms of Clause 3, it is not her birth that is relevant or requires the sovereign’s consent but her marriage. By the time she married and would therefore have become subject to this clause, Victoria was already Queen herself. I venture to suggest that that indicates a bit of a design fault in the clause which might merit some attention.
The choice of Queen Victoria as a case to strengthen the Government’s case is, to say the least, unfortunate. Her example is, at best, irrelevant and it demolishes any rationale the Government have for confining the number in this clause to 6. As for the other explanation, that the choice of six was, as the Deputy Prime Minister admitted, arbitrary and pragmatic, that is not an argument but an apology. At Second Reading, I suggested that we should not think of the line of succession as a straight line of descent but rather in family groupings, and that is particularly so as life expectancy lengthens. All six places covered by this clause could be within the family of one son or daughter of the sovereign, which leaves other sons or daughters exposed in the event of a tragedy befalling the family of the heir apparent. The search for heirs might then need to move outwards, possibly encountering families who, for religious or other reasons, had to be leapfrogged to find heirs that fitted. A club of 12 would be more likely to avoid that. One could argue for more but I accept that 12 should be enough to put matters beyond a reasonable doubt, which six does not.
With or without my amendment, where there is a specified limit there will always be the possibility of those in the line of succession going on and off the nominated list like poor Prince Adolphus Frederick and not forgetting Prince Augustus Frederick. However, this amendment would move such comings and goings further away from the immediate line of succession and offer a better chance that the monarch’s immediate family would all be on the list, at least until they had passed the normal marrying age. I chose to table this amendment as it covered the one area of the Bill that could be improved quite easily and with little controversy. It does not frustrate the Bill’s purpose but is simply an amendment of detail. This detail does not, I gather, feature in the Perth agreement: perhaps my noble and learned friend can enlighten us on that. It could probably be quickly accepted by the Commonwealth realms without demur and it would show that this revising Chamber had done its job and not simply been a rubber stamp to a measure agreed over our heads.
It is an important change which addresses the danger of unintended consequences. As it stands, the list of six acknowledges a problem. I believe I have demonstrated that a list of six could be woefully inadequate. The amendment offers greater stability and less uncertainty in a matter where certainty is vital. I beg to move.
Lord Northbrook
My Lords, my Amendment 13 is in this group. I apologise to my noble friend Lord Lang of Monkton for moving in the opposite direction—whereby the number of persons in line to the Throne would be decreased, rather than increased—particularly after his wonderful history lesson.
I want to reduce the impact of Clause 3 on Clause 2, and I worry that the current number of six is likely to be in contravention of the European Convention on Human Rights, which, under Article 12, provides for the freedom of marriage. Amendment 14, which states that,
“Any provision of the common law requiring any person to seek the consent of Her Majesty before marrying is abolished”,
has been brought to my attention by the eminent lawyer, Graham McBain, with whom the Minister is familiar through contact with the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. This point was referred to by my noble friend Lord Carlile at Second Reading. Even before the Royal Marriages Act 1772, the sovereign had a right, and exercised it, not under statute but under the common law, to prevent marriages of other members of the Royal Family—for example, to prevent the Queen Mother from remarrying. This right, as I understand it, still applies, whereby under the common law the sovereign could enforce his or her consent to the marriages of brothers, sisters, cousins and so on. Therefore, as the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, said at Second Reading, this right should be abolished. That is the purport of my amendment.
Lord Elton
My Lords, I have tabled Amendment 13A. I apologise for tabling it so late that it had to be added to the supplementary list, which is always a bad thing to do and is particularly disgraceful for an ex-Minister who knows the strain that it puts on the Bill team. I have apologised to them already. Although my amendment is in this group, it does not belong there, and I therefore believe that I am allowed to unbundle it. I shall do so and move it briefly after this debate.
Lord Lexden
My Lords, I strongly support the amendment that my noble friend Lord Lang has explained so fully and convincingly, leaving very little further to be said. Today, we expect families to be of modest size and assume that the future will closely resemble the present. That is surely an arrogant and misconceived assumption. Historically, the monarch’s immediate family has often been extremely large in number, and the Bill ought to provide for a recurrence of a substantial number in their immediate family by extending to 12 the members of the Royal Family for whose marriages royal approval will be required.
How hard it is in any family to secure the triumph of good behaviour. It has been said of George III’s abundant offspring that that they inspired the nation about as much as a procession of Banquo’s descendants inspired Macbeth. The strength of the Crown in those days rested wholly on the character of King George III himself. We should also remember the fragility and impermanence of the world’s order. Reference was tellingly made by my noble friend Lord Lang to the position of Queen Victoria, who was fifth in line of succession at the time of her birth—a position that then oscillated considerably, as my noble friend amusingly told us. However, Queen Victoria very nearly did not inherit. A boy named Hook, out shooting sparrows, sent a shower of pellets through the window of the house in Sidmouth where the future Queen and Empress had been taken shortly after her birth. She narrowly escaped some of the pellets, tearing the sleeve of her nightgown. If the boy Hook had, by terrible mischance, removed Queen Victoria, that game of musical chairs over the succession that my noble friend described would have begun all over again.
I do not believe that six is enough. The number should be extended to 12, although, at the same time—turning to my noble friend Lord Northbrook’s amendment—a strong argument can be made for removing the need for approval altogether. The worldly Lord Melbourne put it in conversation with Queen Victoria. Referring to her disreputable uncles, he said that,
“though the Marriage Act may have been a very good thing in many ways, still it sent them, like so many wild beasts, into society, making love wherever they went and then saying they were very sorry, but they could not marry because their father would not give permission”.
Nevertheless, I do not favour the complete disappearance of the monarchical duty. Unsuitable marriages need to be prevented and 12 is the right number for the monarch’s approval.
Lord Lyell
My Lords, perhaps I may chuck a very small pebble into this debate. My noble friend Lord Lang gave the most marvellous dissertation, but I would advise your Lordships to take care to skip along to the Library to take a glance at either Burke’s or Debrett’s Peerage. Your Lordships should look, above all, at the consanguinity and the very long chance of the arm of the blood relationship. Your Lordships may not be aware that Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother was the ninth child of the Earl of Strathmore. The eighth child was the grandfather of the current Earl of Strathmore. In that bloodline, it shows that there is a very long list of candidates, which might even rival that of my noble friend Lord Lang. I do not think that six is enough and perhaps one day, my noble and learned friend will be able to explain to me what I seem to remember from my earlier studies of Scottish law, when women come into the law of succession, which may have been changed. Would my noble and learned friend, let alone my noble friend Lord Lang, please take note that six is not enough?
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
My Lords, briefly, I support my noble friend Lord Lang, who has proposed a perfectly sensible amendment. I am sure that my noble and learned friend will be able to accept it if for no other reason than that his right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister has indicated that the choice of six was purely arbitrary. My noble friend has made a strong and powerful case and what struck me most about his speech was the sheer serendipity of this matter. If this Bill had been in place—as someone in the other place pointed out during the somewhat truncated debate on the matter—the Kaiser would have ended up sharing the throne of the United Kingdom. These changes are unpredictable; the only difference I have with my noble friend Lord Lang is why he chose 12, not six.
I hope that my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness will not resort to the usual trick of saying, “Well, on the one hand, there is an amendment that says it should be fewer and on the other there is an amendment that says it should be more; I think it’s probably right that we got it somewhere in between”. I hope I have not taken his speech from him, because that would be a disgraceful response to what was a very well argued case, which demolished the basis on which the Government had reached their conclusion. If, however, my noble and learned friend finds that he cannot accept the number 12, it makes the case even stronger for having a special committee to look at these matters and consider them more carefully, so that we can get a number which actually makes sense.
Lord Trefgarne
My Lords, I would like to make a short intervention at this point; it is a serious point. We are not approving marriages: we are saying whether the people who marry can remain in line to the Throne. There are some categories of marriage that we might consider would make it inappropriate for the person concerned to remain in line to the Throne. Others have mentioned the single-sex marriage legislation that is going through Parliament. It might well be that a future sovereign would feel disinclined to approve a marriage of that kind, lawful though it might otherwise be. I put that serious proposition to the Minister. Like my noble friend Lord Lang, I favour an increase in the proposed number.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Lang, for his historical insight. As a mere contemporary historian, I think more in months than decades. However, I note that in the period I have studied, families have become rather smaller; having two or four children seems to be slightly more normal now. If it is true that the Deputy Prime Minister took six as a purely arbitrary figure, perhaps it is connected to his belief that 600 is an appropriate number for MPs in the House along the way. However, I am sure that that was not the case.
The purpose of the need for consent is to recognise the interests of the Crown, as advised by the Privy Council, and to acknowledge the public interest in the question of the potential consort to our head of state. We do not imagine that any likely heir would seek marriage with the head of state of another country with whom perhaps we have less than friendly relations, but clearly there is a public interest, and an interest to the body politic, as well as to the lovebirds concerned, in such a matter. Therefore, there is reason to consider the matter of such an intended marriage in this way, with the consent of the monarch, because we know that that means that those wider considerations will be brought to bear—I assume with due advice from Ministers. At Second Reading, my noble friend Lord Stevenson asked about the sort of advice that might be proffered in cases where consent might not be given. The Minister might like to suggest some of those scenarios, if thought has been given to them.
There is no indication that any such need for consent—perhaps the case of the late Princess Margaret disproves this—has ever caused a problem. I refer to the need for consent rather than consent being given. Of course, I am sure that if there were such cases in the past, they were kept fairly discreet.
Despite the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Lang, the figure of six appears fairly sensible. It is one more than has ever been needed, but not so large that those whose chances of succession frankly are tiny need to take the time of the monarch and his or her advisers by requiring their consent. We look forward to any further comments from the Minister.
The Earl of Erroll
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, pointed out that families tend to be smaller, but we live longer. For instance, the reigning monarch is about to become a great-grandmother. Taking an average of two to four children, which is three, when there are three children in the first generation and three sets of three children in the second generation, we have already reached our figure of 12. The next generation will go beyond 12, yet we are still looking at the first line. It would be only too easy for a disaster to happen to one line, so the noble Baroness proved the case that six is too few, and we should forget about longevity.
Lord True
My Lords, my name is on the amendment but all the arguments were made in a compelling speech by my noble friend. The remarks of my noble friend Lord Forsyth were also conclusive. Perhaps the Minister will consider the following: once the child for whom we are rushing out this legislation is born, how will the Deputy Prime Minister explain to one of the daughters of the Duke of York that she will have to seek permission but her sister will not?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Lang for this amendment, and not least for the way in which he moved it. Although it was entertaining in many respects, I fully recognise his points. I am not being disparaging—I enjoyed his speech. It was a very good speech and his points were interesting. It is important to point out that none of the people who were in and out actually ascended the Throne. I take his point, which is a pertinent one. Reference has been made on more than one occasion—in another place, too—to the issue of Princess Victoria, as she was known when she was born, being fifth in line to the Throne. There has not been a monarch since the 1772 Act who has been any further out at birth.
Perhaps my mind was working along similar lines to that of my noble friend because I also asked whether it is worth considering when the provision actually bites—which, of course, is at the point of marriage. Since the 1772 Act came on to the statute book, the person who was furthest away from the Throne at the time of consent to a marriage being sought and given was, indeed, around the same time as my noble friend was talking about: King William IV was third in line to the Throne when he married and when he sought and was given consent for his marriage under the 1772 Act. So, in the 240 years since the Act was passed, William IV has been the furthest away from the Throne at the time of his marriage. Again, I am not pretending that there is perfection in this, and I do not believe that a Select Committee could attain perfection in this either. The proposal for six therefore still allows a considerable amount of leeway—which is probably not the right word, but it is the most appropriate word that comes to mind at the moment.
It is important to remind ourselves that a balance needs to be found between mitigating against catastrophic but remote hypothetical events of a line being wiped out and the risk of impinging unnecessarily upon the lives of those who are distant from the Throne. Clearly, my noble friend Lord Lang would prefer to give greater weight to the former; my noble friend Lord Northbrook gives greater weight to the other end of the spectrum. I will not found my argument on that. As three is the farthest away from the Throne at the time of marriage, I believe that six is reasonable. This is bearing in mind that, on the other side of the coin, it can impinge unnecessarily upon the lives of those who are that much more distant from the Throne.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
My Lords, what representations have the Government had from anyone about their lives being impinged unnecessarily in this matter?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
We have not had the representations that one would expect to receive. I suspect that under the present law there are people who, understandably, do not know that, as a descendant of King George II, they are expected to get consent from the sovereign if they wish to marry. Indeed, we seek in this Bill to address the issue of those who have, as it were, unwittingly married.
The other important point perhaps addresses the point made by my noble friend about the European Convention on Human Rights. There are two issues here. First, the European Court of Human Rights has generally been very reluctant to engage in issues which go to the heart of a nation’s constitution and who should be their head of state. Secondly, unlike the 1772 Act, which made a marriage void if the consent of the Sovereign was not forthcoming, this does nothing so significant. It simply removes the person from the line of succession and the marriage will still be valid. It means only that the person who had not received consent would not take their place in the line of succession.
My noble friend Lord Lang asked where the number six arose from. Ahead of the Perth agreement my right honourable friend the Prime Minister wrote to each realm Government proposing changes to the law of succession principally with regard to the removal of male bias and the bar on the heir marrying a Catholic. At that point the realm Governments were also made aware of the issues surrounding the Royal Marriages Act and the view of this Government that it was outdated. Subsequent discussions with the realm Governments were led by New Zealand which concluded that it was in the public interest and reasonable and proportionate for those who are genuinely close to the Throne to seek consent to marry. To avoid the same problems presented by the Royal Marriages Act in attaching a monarchical consent requirement to the descendants of a specific monarch—at Second Reading I think that someone suggested that we could make it the descendants of George VI rather than George II; that was thought to store up problems for the future—the number six was proposed and agreed. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister then wrote to each of the realm Prime Ministers to confirm their consent to this provision.
I apologise that I was unable to respond to my noble friend Lord Trefgarne at Second Reading when he asked whether consent had ever actually been refused under the 1772 Act. So far as the Government are aware, there has been no instance when the sovereign’s consent to a royal marriage has been refused. My noble friend Lord Northbrook asked in relation to Amendment 14 whether the common law still applies to monarchical consent in cases such as the remarriage of a dowager queen. There is a good argument that the 1772 Act replaced all common law provisions on royal consent to marriages, but it also could be argued that because the 1772 Act applies to the descendants of George II, the common law requirement might conceivably still apply to members of the Royal Family who are not descendants of George II, for example in the remarriage of a dowager queen or a prince consort. But these instances would not affect the line of succession and it is important to recognise that what we are doing here relates only to that. The Bill is concerned with people who may become the sovereign, not with members of the wider Royal Family. It has a specific purpose.
As I say, no number will be perfect, but if one considers that, in the 240 years since the 1772 Act went on to the statute book, the furthest away in line from the Throne at the time when consent for marriage was sought was three; we are allowing for three more. I believe that the figure is a rational one and I would invite my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Lang of Monkton
My Lords, I know that my noble and learned friend has a job to do, and that is to get this Bill through intact. I have no doubt that those are the orders he has been given and that the word “Resist” is printed on every page of his brief. The fact remains, however, that he must have heard the almost unanimous voices in this Chamber expressing their support for an expansion of the number from six. My noble friend Lord Northbrook offered an alternative of either four or zero. I would live with zero, but only if the provisions that still require the sovereign to be a member of the Church of England were withdrawn. That would remove the tension that this Bill otherwise builds into the royal succession; that is, between those who are allowed to marry Catholics and those who cannot inherit the Throne unless they are members of the Church of England.
My noble friends Lord Lexden, Lord Lyell, Lord Forsyth and Lord True gave some fine additional historical examples of the sort of problem that can arise in these circumstances. My noble friend Lord Lexden mentioned in particular the history of the gun pellets through the window at Sidmouth and that house in the rainstorm during which Prince Edward contracted an illness from which he died a week later, thus precipitating Princess Victoria up the line. There was another incident, I believe, when a pony and trap bearing the princess panicked and sped off, and she very nearly died. In answer to the question put by my noble friend Lord Lexden, if she had died, my belief is that Prince Ernest Augustus, the Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale, would have inherited the Throne. He subsequently went on to become the King of Hanover where male primogeniture still predominated, when King George IV, I suppose it would have been, could not have inherited that Throne when it became vacant.
My noble and learned friend said some very kind things about what I have proposed and the arguments I advanced, but then proceeded to reject them without going further than talking about “arbitrary” and “pragmatic”. If I heard him correctly, he said that none of the historical characters I mentioned had reached the Throne. Queen Victoria reached the Throne, and he has not risen to that point.
Lord Lang of Monkton
Perhaps I may finish my argument before he denounces or deals with it. Queen Victoria would then have had to give consent to herself before she could have married Prince Albert. My noble and learned friend will argue, “Ah, but she would have been guided by Ministers”. Lord Melbourne was a pussycat who doted on Queen Victoria and he would not have said no. He had enough problems already with Lady Caroline Lamb. I shall give way to my noble and learned friend.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I apologise if my noble friend misunderstood me; I said that no one whom he mentioned, who had gone into the list of six, come out of the list and then gone back into it, had actually gone on to inherit the Throne. That was my point. Of course, Queen Victoria as Princess Victoria inherited the Throne, but I think that the idea of the sovereign giving consent to him or herself is one that has possibly arisen on other cases too. I cannot immediately think of what they were, but that is not even an anomaly; one cannot give consent to oneself.
Lord Lang of Monkton
If I burned the night oil I might be able to find an example. What my noble friend says simply underlines the fact that he did not answer the point about Queen Victoria having to give consent to her own marriage. That must be a fault in the Bill, and I ask him to consider it further before we reach Report.
My noble and learned friend concluded by saying that no number is perfect. I agree, but six is demonstrably imperfect. So much of this Bill has been shown to be ill considered and imperfect, creating anomalies and potential for long-term difficulties of a very considerable nature. When we legislate in a Bill of this kind, we are legislating not just for decades, but for centuries, and so many points have been made today that require further thought. I will withdraw the amendment, but I will consider whether I should bring it forward again on Report. I hope that my noble and learned friend will give very serious thought to what most people in this House—and, I believe, in the other place as well—consider to be an ongoing problem. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Elton
Lord Elton
My Lords, my attention was drawn to the subject of my amendment by my interest in the apparent haste in which the Bill was introduced in the other place and spirited through it in such a short time, since when our Select Committee commented on that and the Government have changed the pace of the legislation. My anxiety about this is reawakened by the resolute rejection by my noble and learned friend of even the best argued, most cogent and simple cases that have been put to him. I begin to wonder what it is that makes it so important not to change any part of the Bill.
When I was preparing for this debate, I thought that I would see whether the Bill had been amended already. I was surprised to find that it had in the House of Commons. The words which my amendment seeks to delete from line 20 are the words “from the marriage”. Until Committee on the Floor of the House of Commons took place, the subsection read:
“The effect of a person’s failure to comply with subsection (1) is that the person and the person’s descendants are disqualified from succeeding to the Crown”.
One would think that that was perfectly straightforward. These people are the people who are brought into the Bill for consideration by subsection (4), which is the subsection abolishing the provisions in the 1772 Act, and subsections (1) and (2) then proceed to substitute other provisions for a smaller number of people—we have just been debating what number.
As far as I can see, the effect of adding to the words “the person’s descendants” the words “from the marriage” would be to eliminate from the provisions of this clause the illegitimate progeny of a number of people. Therefore, when I looked in the House of Commons to look at the Minister’s arguments in favour of it, I found that in total, the whole of her argument was:
“Clause 3 is, as a Member put it earlier, one of the more arcane provisions in the Bill. The Royal Marriages Act 1772 currently requires, subject to some very limited exceptions, the descendants of George II to seek the consent of the monarch before marrying”.
So it did, but, as I have demonstrated, subsection (4) deals with that. We are now looking at those who remain, the descendants of the six—or 12 or four, whatever we finally put in—who have or have not got the consent of the monarch to marry. That, she said,
“probably affects hundreds of people”.
They must be a prolific bunch if there are going to be hundreds of them, or else we are talking about somebody else. I find that quite extraordinary. She then said that,
“we do not think that such a sweeping provision continues to serve a useful purpose today”.—[Official Report, Commons, 22/1/13; col. 273.]
Actually, I do not think that relates to the insertion of those words at all; one has to look for a different reason.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Elton for his amendment, which gives me a welcome opportunity to explain why the amendment that he is seeking to delete was inserted in Committee in the House of Commons.
The effect of the Bill as originally presented, as indeed would be the effect of my noble friend’s amendment, would be to disqualify all descendants from any marriage of a person when a marriage of that person was not consented to. For example—and in fact the other way round from what my noble friend suggested—if a person in the line of succession married with consent and had children, their spouse died and they remarried without consent and had children, the children of the first marriage, which had been consented to, could be disqualified.
The intention of subsection (4) is to disqualify from the line of succession any royal descendants from a marriage not approved by the sovereign. It would go too far also to disqualify descendants from a previous marriage for which consent had been obtained. For these reasons, the amendment to include the words “from the marriage” was tabled and accepted in another place. That is entirely consistent with the agreement that was reached with the other realms and removes a possible ambiguity. The other realms were fully informed of this drafting change before it was proposed.
We will come later to an amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Trefgarne that relates to the bringing into effect of the Bill. There is no date set. I do not want to pre-empt that amendment and that discussion, but if my noble friend Lord Elton looks at Clause 5, “Commencement and short title”, he will see that provision is made for it to come into force,
“on such day and at such time as the Lord President of the Council may by order made by statutory instrument appoint”.
The purpose of that is so these measures can all come in together on the same date and, I think, at the same time, in the 16 different realms.
Some realms are dealing with this in different ways. Some, such as New Zealand and Canada, will legislate to ensure that the changes take effect in their country. I believe that the Bill was brought into the New Zealand Parliament last week. Other realms, such as Papua New Guinea and Jamaica, have found that they do not need to legislate. The intention is that when all realms have done what is necessary regarding their arrangements, the measures will be brought into effect at the same time. There is no date set.
It has been said that the Bill was rushed through the other place. As I have said on more than one occasion, the Bill did not even take up the time allocated to it in the other place, so I am not sure what could have been done if more time was allocated. It is a simple fact that the time was not taken up.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
To argue that it did not take up the time and to try and present this as treating an important constitutional measure properly is quite unfair. The point is that all stages of this Bill were carried out over two days in the other place. The conventions have been that constitutional Bills are dealt with over a proper passage of time so that people can make points, the Government can think about them and perhaps even come back with a suggestion for change. By tradition, constitutional Bills have always been taken on the Floor of the House of Commons. To try to argue that this Bill was not rushed through the other place in an untimely manner, with many Members’ speeches protesting about the way it was handled, is a little misleading.
Lord Northbrook
Perhaps I may add to my noble friend Lord Forsyth’s comments. At least 17 amendments were put down in Committee in the other place. Only two were actually discussed. I am sorry, but to say that all the amendments put down in Committee were discussed is not the truth.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
Unlike in your Lordships’ House, where every amendment tabled can be debated, amendments are selected in the other place by the Speaker. The system is different. I will not argue which is better, but I find it worth while in your Lordships’ House that we can go through every amendment that is within scope and debate it. It helps us to undertake the scrutiny role which is appropriately ours. I hope that your Lordships feel that the time allocated to this Bill and the proper phasing of it through the different stages is appropriate. As I have already said, the realm Governments were alerted to the drafting change, were given an opportunity to comment and all expressed satisfaction with it.
Lord Lexden
I shall belatedly put my question about what my noble and learned friend was saying about the passage of the legislation in the other realms. Should one infer that if anything goes wrong in any of these realms and the legislation is not implemented, then the legislation falls everywhere and will not be implemented in this realm?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
That is certainly my understanding. That is why we have the implementation clause. Even if we pass this the intention is that the provisions will not commence until all realms have done what is necessary in each of their territories.
Lord Elton
My Lords, as this is the realm in which the Queen is perceived as being principally the head, Supreme Governor, monarch and the rest of it, presumably the legislation in the other realms and territories is, in a sense, consequential. Therefore I was a little surprised to hear that they are already putting things on their statute books while we have not finalised what we are putting on our statute book. The question I again ask is: what is the procedure? The timing, I gather, is terminus ante quem non; there is no time by which we have to get this done, so the pressure is off. The next question is: what do we use that time for and how does it impact on the other members of the Commonwealth and the territories? If we were, for instance, to adopt my noble friend Lord Lang’s eminently sensible suggestions—or, indeed, the less sensible, in my view, suggestions of my noble friend Lord Northbrook—would that require those countries which already had something on the statute book to adjust it? Or are they simply saying, “We hereby agree with whatever the United Kingdom Parliament finalises”? It is difficult to know how all this is negotiated and how that affects our dealings in the Chamber.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I will try to help. When we come to later amendments, if there is any further information I can give or anything I say needs to be corrected, I will do so. Some of the realms take the view that under their own procedures they require legislation. It is not for this Parliament to determine what happens in other countries. At Second Reading I reported that a Bill had already passed through the lower House in Canada and had been presented in the upper Chamber. As I said, a Bill was presented to the New Zealand Parliament last week.
Other realms take the lead from this Parliament and have indicated that they do not believe that they will need separate legislation. Their arrangements are such that their head of state will be the person who is the head of state of the United Kingdom. The important point in all of this is that we are passing legislation which will be used in some countries, but it has been done on the basis of an agreement that has been reached.
If the Bill were changed with substantive effect, the other realms would need to adjust their legislation where they are legislating and make sure that the same changes are given effect. That would obviously require the agreement reached between the 16 realms.
As I indicated earlier, the amendment that was moved in the other place was circulated and the other realms were given the opportunity to comment before it was brought forward. They indicated that they were fine. I do not think that it was a substantive amendment, but it was nevertheless one on which we sought to ensure that there was proper consultation and information given and an opportunity to comment. Clearly, if there were a change with substantive effect, that would require further agreement.
Lord Elton
Is it a matter of interest in Canada, for instance, whether the number six, 12 or four appears in the Bill at the point we were looking at just now? If so, what will the Canadians do about it?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I do not think that I have seen the Canadian legislation but, in as much as it is giving effect to the same agreement, I would anticipate that the number six is there. If there were to be change, as I indicated in my previous contribution, that would have to be agreed with all the other realms. I will stand corrected, and in response to my noble friend Lord Trefgarne’s subsequent amendment I can clarify that. However, my understanding is that all the realms would have to agree if there was a substantive change.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
Why did the Government choose to go about this in this rather unconventional way? Why did the Executive agree with other heads of government a process rather than asking Parliament to consider legislation and then seek agreement from the other interested states, which would also have given their parliamentarians an opportunity to be involved in the process?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I do not necessarily accept that it is unconventional. If this Parliament had decided what it wished to do and dictated the matter to the other realms—that have legitimate interest in who is their head of state—it would not have been consistent with the notion of countries such as Australia and New Zealand being independent from the United Kingdom. It was always anticipated that if there were to be a change, agreement would be reached. However, as I said in an exchange during the first amendment with my noble friend Lord Trefgarne, it was important that we sought to get agreement among all the realms and for the changes to be implemented as appropriate in each country. It would have been wrong if we had dictated what the terms should be. Considerable agreement was reached, which New Zealand was responsible for co-ordinating.
It is not as unprecedented as it sometimes sounds; we agree international treaties which Parliament is then asked to ratify. This is not exactly on the same lines but it is important to have that agreement. At the time, everyone seemed to think it was right to seek agreement and then to put the proposals before Parliament. This is a process which predates this Government and has been going on for some time.
Lord Cormack
Is my noble and learned friend saying that, because the Prime Minister has given that undertaking to international colleagues, we ratify this in every last particular? Or is he saying that we have the parliamentary process and therefore while we must adhere to the principles we can deal with the detail? There is a very big difference between the two, so which is it? Do we have the authority, as a House and as a Parliament, to alter the details, from six to 12 for instance, or do we not? If not, it is frankly an abuse of parliamentary procedure.
Lord Northbrook
As a supplementary, could I ask whether having been amended in the Commons, the Bill now has to be reapproved by the heads of government?
The Earl of Erroll
On that subject, I may be able to assist. It depends on whether they passed Acts in the parliaments to say that they would agree to whatever we do or whether they try to enact the particular provisions. It would be worth the Minister looking at how they implemented it in Canada or Australia. Did they say, “We will assent to whatever”, or did they say, “This is what we are going to do”? For simplicity, I suspect that they may have gone down the route of saying, “We will assent to whatever the UK Parliament decides”. If so, it solves the problem; though the Executive may enter into treaties on behalf of the Crown, it is for Parliament to enact the rules that govern the Executive and therefore Parliament legislates and forms the principles of these things. If this were a treaty, I would have said it was then in the power of the Executive to agree this. If it is not a treaty, it is in Parliament’s remit to decide what is done. I suggest the Minister should look at how these countries have enacted it into their local laws.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, different realms do it in different ways. To pick up the point of the noble Lord, Lord Northbrook, with regard to the amendment raised by my noble friend Lord Elton—on the same subject matter we are discussing now—it does not change the substance of the agreement but rather seeks to remove a possible ambiguity. It was circulated among the other realms, their comments were sought and they were satisfied with that.
With regard to the point made by the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, I understand different realms are dealing with this in different ways. At least one of them, I think, is saying that it approves of the law passed by the United Kingdom Parliament. Others are approving more substantive legislation, and some believe no legislation is necessary at all. It varies, but at the heart of it was an agreement on the substance—namely, the removal of male bias in terms of succession to the Throne; the removal of the barrier of the person in line of succession marrying a Roman Catholic; and the abolition of the Royal Marriages Act 1772 and its replacement with the sovereign’s consent for the first six in line. Earlier, in my response to my noble friend Lord Lang, I indicated that I do not think that that was in the original Perth agreement but was subsequently agreed. The number of six was agreed with the realms.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
I am most grateful to my noble and learned friend. Will he be kind enough to write to those of us who have an interest detailing how each of the realms concerned will deal with this matter? Would there be any merit in us trying to persuade those parliaments perhaps to accept my noble friend Lord Lang’s injunction to change from six to 12? If one of them did so, what would happen then? Would we have to go back and look at it again? How would it be resolved?
Lord Cormack
Further to that and, in a sense, even more pertinent, if this Bill should pass Report stage in this House and the other place endorses the change of six to 12, is my noble friend saying that that would invalidate this international agreement? Does this Parliament have authority in this matter or not?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Forsyth asked about being informed. Obviously, developments are in train. I will try to give him and others who have contributed information as up to date as possible. With regard to my noble friend Lord Cormack’s question, if we were to make a substantive change, before any implementation could take place, we would have to ensure that there was agreement among all the realms. On a substantive matter such as the six to 12, it would not be a happy situation to have a disjunction between the realms.
Lord Elton
My Lords, I am much obliged to my noble and learned friend. I think that my noble friend Lord Cormack’s intervention draws to my attention one of the great dangers that we are in, which I fell into myself a little earlier in these exchanges; namely, the danger of treating ourselves as the big brother who tells everyone else that they have to follow. Things have changed since then, and in these exchanges we need to deal courteously with those with whom we are associated. My intention was not to say that we were the most important realm or that this was the principal realm of the Queen, but to say that, since we were the initiators of this move, naturally we would be the ones who would hope that others would follow.
I think that I have given my noble and learned friend a good opportunity to understand some of our underlying concerns. I hope that when he comes back to the Dispatch Box on Report he will be able to give us a pretty cut-and-dried, laminated explanation of exactly how all this is working, which can go into the record. A letter would be very welcome as a preliminary, but we should have something to indicate that Parliament knows what is going on. I am most grateful for the full answers that my noble and learned friend has given to this probing amendment and I beg leave to withdraw it.
Lord Trefgarne
“(7) No consent granted or refused under this section shall be challenged in any court of the United Kingdom.”
Lord Trefgarne
My Lords, this is a probing amendment. I am anxious to know—I believe that others may be as well—whether a consent granted or refused by the sovereign in respect of a marriage to which he or she is required to give consent can be challenged in the court by means of judicial review. I should be grateful if my noble and learned friend would clarify the position.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Trefgarne for raising an issue which I think he raised at Second Reading. The effect of his amendment would be to ensure that in no instance could the sovereign’s consent or otherwise to a royal marriage be challenged in the courts. It has to be said that over the 240 years when consent has been required, it has not been tested in the courts. But in the Government’s view the decision, given that it is a decision taken by the sovereign, could not be challenged in the sovereign’s courts. We do not believe it to be necessary to provide for this in the Bill. Indeed, whether the number is six or 12, it is an unlikely event that someone so close to the Throne would contemplate such an action. My point is that the decision would be one made by the sovereign and would not be challengeable in the courts of the sovereign.
Lord True
My Lords, as I said earlier, is it not the case that in the early 1830s Augustus d'Este, the son of the Duke of Sussex by a marriage unapproved under the Royal Marriages Act 1772, did in fact posit documents in Chancery to challenge the legitimacy of the action? Furthermore, in 1843 papers were put before the Committee for Privileges of this House, and the case was heard by this House in 1844. There is certainly an historic precedent and, as I mentioned in passing, a challenge. Some of the issues that came up today are perhaps rather wider than Clause 3. To my mind, this goes to reinforce the points made by a number of noble Lords about the need for absolute clarity, and the fortification of what we are doing against potential challenge in the courts that now exists.
Lord Trefgarne
My Lords, I hope that between now and the next stage the noble and learned Lord may on reflection be able to offer a more forthright assurance than that which he has been able to give so far, if I may say so. The fact is that the process for judicial review in this country is a comparatively new one. It has only been going for the last 15 or 20 years. Therefore the fact of there being no precedent is not much of a comfort to the noble and learned Lord, if I may say so. I would be grateful if he would consider this further before the next stage and perhaps take into account the case referred to by my noble friend Lord True.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I shall certainly reflect on it further. It will not come as a surprise to my noble friend that this has already been the subject of some reflection. However, if he indeed wishes to return to this at Report, we will do so. To take up the point made by my noble friend Lord True about the Sussex peerage case, my understanding is that this case was not about whether consent had been refused unlawfully. I think the issue was that consent had not actually been sought.
Lord Trefgarne
If I may say so to my noble and learned friend, there is clearly scope for some further reflection on this matter. I will raise this at the next stage of the Bill. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Trefgarne
“(2) The other provisions of this Act shall be brought into force by statutory instrument subject to the approval of both Houses of Parliament.”
Lord Trefgarne
My Lords, under the Bill as it is presently before us, I refer to subsection (2) of Clause 5, which states that:
“The other provisions of this Act come into force on such day and at such time as the Lord President of the Council may by order made by statutory instrument appoint.”
The Lord President of the Council is of course my right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister, for whom nobody has greater respect than I do—most of the time, anyway. Is it really right that a major piece of constitutional change, such as is represented by this Bill, should be brought into force by the diktat of one sole Minister, however distinguished and however senior, without any sort of further parliamentary involvement? I really do not think that is right. I do not in any way wish to make this a personal matter, but I do not think that any Minister should have this power regarding a major, important constitutional change of this kind. I hope that on reflection my noble and learned friend will agree. Therefore, I beg to move the amendment standing in my name.
Lord Cormack
My Lords, although not entirely relevant to the amendment, it would be very helpful if when my noble and learned friend responds he could give us some indication of when we are likely to have the Report stage, because a lot of matters have been raised this afternoon—I can see my noble friend Lord Trefgarne nodding—about which many of us remain either mildly or even acutely concerned. Some of us would like to have conversations with him on some of these issues. I hope that there will be time, because the one thing that has not been made clear during today’s deliberations is the need for rushing this legislation. I hope that there will be adequate time between now and Report, and between Report and Third Reading. I fully appreciate that my noble and learned friend is not in charge of the business arrangements of the House, but if he would give us some rough idea of when we are likely to debate these matters next, I think that it would be helpful to all of us.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
My Lords, the two amendments in this group would give us an alternative way of bringing the Bill’s provisions into force. Amendment 17 slightly overlooks the point that local parliamentary approval is not necessary in all realm Parliaments as we have discussed, so it perhaps should not be taken forward at this stage. However, I am interested in Amendment 16, because it plays to some of the strands of discussion that we have had both at Second Reading and today. For instance, the Minister addressed at Second Reading the issue of whether the Bill was being fast-tracked. He said:
“I accept that the Explanatory Memorandum states that, but in fact the Government in the other place paid regard to what was said by your Lordships’ Constitution Committee”.—[Official Report, 14/2/13; col. 829.]
He went on to explain that, because the Bill has retrospective effect, there is no significant time pressure, and certainly not sufficient to warrant fast-tracking—that point has been picked up and talked about a bit today.
The Constitution Committee was therefore listened to in respect of the time allocation, but it also drew attention to the constitutional importance of the Bill—which, again, the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, has talked about. It is this point that I am interested in. There is obviously a case for moving the legislation forward in a way which minimises any possibility of getting out of sync with the other realms, and we must have regard to that, but there is another strand, which is that this is a major constitutional position. We are all, I think, agreed on that point, if we are not agreed on how much of it we need to deal with in this process.
In some ways, what is being proposed seems pretty hole-in-the-corner stuff. Would it not play to the advantages which the noble and learned Lord has been claiming for the Bill if it were given the full parliamentary approval process for secondary legislation; in other words, going through both Houses of Parliament and being agreed by both Houses? I know that it would be more onerous and would involve a little more time and effort on the part of the Minister and his officials, but it would mean that we had the evidence that all the other realms had looked at the Bill properly and considered it. We would have the detail about which ones had put forward a different or alternative version of the words—we could check whether exactly the same intent was being imported by the words being used in those local areas—and we would have the reassurance that everything had been done, with all the “t”s crossed and the “i”s dotted. It is in that sense that I suggest to the Minister that we should think about bringing in this process.
Something that is in the control of this House and this Parliament does not affect how others do it but would play back to our sensibility that this is an important Bill worthy of the detailed scrutiny that we have given it today but worthy also of the other appurtenances that go with constitutional measures.
Perhaps I may respond on behalf of the Government in terms of where we are on the process: Forthcoming Business has the Report stage of the Succession to the Crown Bill down for Wednesday 13 March.
Lord Northbrook
Perhaps I may draw the Minister’s attention to something of which I have already given him notice in respect of Amendment 17; namely, the House of Lords Library paper on the Succession to the Crown Bill. It says, in summary, that when there is constitutional change there have to be referenda in the following countries: Australia, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Grenada, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua, Barbados and St Kitts and Nevis. Could he confirm that the Library is correct on these matters and, again, how the timing might take place?
Lord Elton
My Lords, I think that that falls outside the terms of the amendment. If I could return to my noble friend’s question, surely the answer to his worry is quite simple: at the end of line 31, insert the words, “subject to approval by both Houses”.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
My Lords, I was quite struck by an argument that my noble and learned friend used in an earlier amendment when he chided me, in arguing that it was important that Parliament was able to take account of the arguments of other parliaments, and suggested that I might be presenting this Parliament as dictating—as opposed to the Executive; it is okay for Ministers to decide things over lunch, but it would be dictating if Parliament made decisions. I see that he has a point there; if we had brought this legislation through both Houses, there might be a feeling in the other realms that we had it all cut and dried.
I have been reflecting on that in a humble way, and have been so persuaded by my noble and learned friend’s argument that I think that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, has got it 100% right. If, as my noble friend Lord Elton has just suggested, we were to amend the commencement provision to require approval by both Houses after the other realms had considered these matters, then we would have an opportunity to demonstrate to all those other realms how we were taking account of the views not just of their Ministers but of their parliamentarians. This proposal is actually a clever and ingenious way of delivering what the Minister himself said was appropriate only a few moments ago.
Lord Northbrook
My Lords, my queries actually applied to Amendment 17, which I think is grouped with this one.
Lord True
My Lords, what has been said about the Deputy Prime Minister, for whom I share respect, is valid: specifying that particular Minister is a slightly questionable way of proceeding. Will my noble and learned friend confirm that it is not part of the Perth agreement that the Deputy Prime Minister should be personally responsible, so that we can look at that matter at a later stage?
To be fair to the Deputy Prime Minister, he has taken a major part in pushing this forward, and I think that that is acknowledged, but we must not be seen to be getting into a position where a young couple whose child is to be born are exploited in any way politically. We do not want grand press conferences by any particular Minister saying, “This is all happening, if this baby is a girl, because of what I have done”, and so on. I am sure that the Deputy Prime Minister would not fall into that temptation, but perhaps if Parliament, in its wisdom, slightly depersonalised the amendment on Report, as my noble friend Lord Trefgarne proposes, there might be wisdom in that.
Lord Trefgarne
My Lords, I would like to say a few words about Amendment 17, which I believe is grouped with this one. That is a slightly separate point, if I may say so. I am picking up the point that my noble friend Lord Northbrook has made, that the parliamentary approval process in many of the Commonwealth countries includes a referendum and is over and above whatever Ministers may have agreed over lunch, as my noble friend Lord Forsyth put it. The fact is that parliamentary approval is required in most, if not all, the Commonwealth countries concerned, and in some of them a referendum is also required. Presumably that cannot be done overnight, so it would be better if the Bill came into force when all the Commonwealth countries had consented to it.
We have a problem if some of the countries approve and some do not. You would not have to think too tortuously to conceive of a situation at some future point where the late sovereign’s eldest child in one country was to be their head of state and the second child, who was a boy, was head of state of another. That is clearly absurd, so we need to speak with one voice on this matter as far as the Commonwealth is concerned. It might therefore be best to wait until they have all agreed.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, this picks up on some issues that were debated earlier. I should clarify that the reason why the Bill specifies the Lord President is that the ministerial responsibility for constitutional and elections law currently rests with him. The Privy Council is also involved in constitutional matters. Indeed, credit should go to my right honourable friend the Prime Minister because I do not think that my right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister was in Perth. It was not simply a case of discussing this matter over lunch; it was more than that. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, was involved in this issue in a previous incarnation under the previous Administration.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
The noble Lord may not have been involved in any lunches but I think that he was involved in efforts at No. 10 to try to forge some of the agreements to take this matter forward. That indicates that this issue did not suddenly emerge at the Commonwealth Heads of Government conference in Perth, Australia. It was the opportune time, with the Heads of Government being present, for that agreement to be finalised, but a considerable amount of work and discussion went on ahead of that. As I have indicated, the reason why the Lord President is referred to is due to the current ministerial responsibilities.
I am not wholly unsympathetic to the idea that we might have a subsequent form of approval, but it is not common for Parliament to approve commencement orders. This is a commencement order. It is not as if it is an order that will make amendments to anything or promulgate a new set of regulations; it simply commences something which Parliament will already have approved through the proper parliamentary procedures. Indeed, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, whose reports the House sets great store by, found no fault with this provision. Given that this matter has been debated, I wonder what further steps we could take. The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, indicated that there might be an opportunity to reassure both Houses that each of the realms had done what was necessary under their own provisions. I am very sceptical about that but it does service to the arguments that have been put to consider it. We have made it clear—I must again give this reassurance—that we will commence the legislation only once we are satisfied that each realm has taken the necessary steps to give effect to the changes. There is flexibility in the commencement date to ensure that the laws across the realms are consistently applied.
My noble friend Lord Northbrook raised the question of referendums. This was also picked up by my noble friend Lord Trefgarne. My understanding is that referendums would be necessary in other realms only if they decided to amend their constitutions. We do not believe that any realm intends to do so. Officials working on this legislation do their utmost to try to keep in touch with the different realms and they have been given no indication by any realm that it intends to hold a referendum. However, as I indicated to my noble friend Lord Forsyth on an earlier amendment, I will do my best to give an update on where each realm is in terms of what process they are proposing. Perhaps in that context I could helpfully clarify the position on referendums. However, I emphasise to your Lordships’ House that it is our understanding that no realm has flagged up that it intends to have a referendum.
Lord Trefgarne
My Lords, I am happy to accept that and I am sure that my noble and learned friend means what he says. However, I had heard that different referenda were needed in the different states of Australia. I hope that he can tell me that I am wrong about that.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I repeat that I have not heard about any referendums. The Council of Australian Governments is currently considering the means by which Australia will implement the changes to the laws of succession. It is quite properly a matter for each realm to determine for itself how it should do this. I will try to update the House on these matters as best I can.
Lord Northbrook
Under Section 28 of the Constitution Act in Australia, the proposed law should be submitted in each state and territory to the electors qualified to vote for election of members in the House of Representatives.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
As I indicated, it is up to each country to do it. We are not telling each country what to do and no one is suggesting that. It will be up to each country to determine, according to their own procedures, how that should be done. The key point is the flexibility built into the commencement clause: it will not be given effect to until we are satisfied that all realms have, by whatever procedures they consider proper and necessary, reached that position.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
I need to be absolutely certain that I understand what my noble and learned friend has been saying. Is he saying that this legislation will not come into effect until it has been approved by all the realms? Is he also saying that this legislation will not come into effect unless and until all its provisions have been approved to the letter by all these realms? In other words, is he saying that if there is a difference of a minor degree between one realm and the legislation then the legislation would not be taken forward?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, as I indicated at Second Reading, the intent is that it should be simultaneous commencement in each realm and therefore, by definition, it will not be brought into effect here. Clause 5 will come into effect on the day on which the Act is passed, but that is the commencement section. Otherwise, that then gives effect to what else is there in terms of the commencement order. If there is a material difference we would clearly not be in a position to commence. I think it was my noble friend who made the point that it would not be a very satisfactory position if two generations down the line the Crown went in one direction in one realm and in another direction in another realm. That is what we are seeking to avoid, that is why there was such an effort made to reach agreement and that is why it is important that, in translating that agreement, each realm does that by whatever means it thinks is appropriate according to its own procedures. When these are all done and delivering on the agreement has been reached, the commencement order would be made to ensure that commencement started simultaneously in each realm, delivering the same things.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
I do not want to detain the House or split hairs but my noble and learned friend said, “If there is a material difference”. I would not say that my noble friend Lord Lang’s amendment, which suggested changing from six to 12, made a material difference to the import or impact of the Bill. I would say that it was a perfectly sensible, minor adjustment. However, if one of the other realms, overwhelmed by the power of the argument put by my noble friend this afternoon, decided to change it from six to 12, would that mean that commencement would not proceed?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
There is an agreement reached and it is up to each realm to implement the agreement. If that agreement is, somehow or another, not implemented in a realm, then we do not have the unanimity to permit commencement.
Lord Cormack
My noble and learned friend deserves a gold medal for patience and good, even temper. He is much admired for that, and I mean that very sincerely. Could he confirm that 13 March is, indeed, the date? Will he produce for us, before that date, a list of precisely what is required in each realm? There seems to be some disagreement: my noble friend Lord Northbrook referred to the necessity for referenda but my noble and learned friend seemed to think there was no necessity. It would be very helpful and conducive to good debate and discussion in this place if, on Report, we had a piece of paper which lists the countries, lists the process and gives the date where we are at the moment.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I apologise to my noble friend because I forgot about his point on that. The Future Business indeed indicates that Report will be on 13 March. I know that during these deliberations, I have indicated on more than one occasion a willingness to meet one or more of your Lordships. Someone from my private office is in the Box and will, no doubt, be noting that. I will certainly endeavour to ensure that purposeful meetings can take place and provide an opportunity for discussion in time for any amendments that noble Lords wish to table.
With regard to the list, I should say to my noble friend Lord Forsyth that the reason I perhaps hesitate to say how up to date we can get is that that is something I have been asking for. I understand that being bang up to date and complete is more challenging than it may seem. My officials have obviously heard this debate, and I assure the House that we will make the position as up to date as we can.
Lord Northbrook
Lord Northbrook
My Lords, we now move to the schedule to the Bill and another history lesson—the arcane matter of the Treason Act 1351, which most noble Lords will probably be surprised is still in existence.
One crime of treason that still exists is where a person owing allegiance to the Crown rapes either the King’s wife, the eldest daughter—if unmarried—or the wife of the eldest son and heir, who, in old French is,
“la compaigne leisne fitz & heir”.
In the past, such a person would be hung, drawn and quartered. Later, that was replaced by the death penalty, and now, following the abolition of the death penalty, the sentence would be life imprisonment. However, this crime has had no precedent in 660 years. Some people believe that two of Henry VIII’s wives, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, were executed under this Act. They were alleged to have had sex with others, but the word “violer” was used, and it was likely that they were not executed under this Act but under separate treason legislation at the time.
There has therefore been no precedent after 660 years, but the amendment seeks to amend the wording of the Treason Act 1351 to,
“eldest son if the heir”.
The Minister has said that the Bill is not a vehicle for UK-specific policy. However, Graham McBain, the eminent lawyer, believes that it is ridiculous to change a law that has no force anyway in the relevant Commonwealth countries. It has not been used in the UK for 660 years and my view is reinforced by a royal commission report of 1878 and a Law Commission report of 1972. The consequential amendment should therefore be deleted from the schedule. I beg to move.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, as my noble friend said, the amendment removes the consequential amendments to the Treason Act 1351, which are necessary to ensure that the Act continues to have effect, given that the eldest son may not be the heir—in other words, if there is an older daughter and heir. I understand why my noble friend wishes to see the repeal of parts of the Treason Act, and he has rightly identified that the purpose of the Bill is not to deal with UK-specific issues.
I am tempted to observe that if all parts of criminal legislation that pass through your Lordships’ House have such a deterrent effect that no one offends against it for 660 years, we would be very satisfied. However, the point is that the purpose is to bring the provisions of the Bill into effect. It is a purely consequential change. However, I take the point made by my noble friend. As he is aware, there is more recent legislation relevant to treason and I have noted that the Law Commission has treason noted as a “simplification/codification project”. It will be interesting to see what recommendations it provides, but I do not think that this is the place to have a more fundamental review of the treason legislation. If, however, this legislation is to be on our statute book, it is important that it is consistent.
Lord Northbrook
I am grateful to the Minister for his reply and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Northbrook
Lord Northbrook
My Lords, I believe that the consequential amendment in the schedule is unnecessary, as it is already contained in Section 12 of the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829. I was not sure whether that should be repealed and am a little confused in this area.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My noble friend’s amendment removes the consequential amendments to the Regency Act, which are necessary to ensure that a person who has married without consent, and therefore loses their place in the line of succession, is also disqualified from being regent. I can assure my noble friend that this consequential amendment is necessary to harmonise the legislation, but also that there is no mistake in not going further and providing for a non-Protestant regent. This takes us back to an earlier debate, because in the sovereign’s absence, the regent undertakes duties related to the sovereign’s position as Supreme Governor of the Church of England and must therefore be a Protestant. That is what underlies this: it is to ensure that there is consistency, given the provisions of this Bill. I therefore invite my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Northbrook
I am grateful to the Minister for his response, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.