Westminster Hall

Wednesday 17th April 2013 Westminster Hall

Wednesday 17 April 2013

[Mr George Howarth in the Chair]

Bus Services (Yorkshire and Humber)

Wednesday 17th April 2013 Westminster Hall

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

14:29

[Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)]

It is, as always, a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. Before I start the debate, I should apologise for being unable to stay for the entire afternoon. The debate was originally scheduled for 9.30 this morning, but owing to the funeral of Baroness Thatcher, the business of the House begins at 2.30 this afternoon, as hon. Members are aware. However, because I have had a meeting, in Parliament, with two constituents arranged since January and because those constituents had purchased their rail tickets in advance, I could not put them off, so I hope that you, Mr Howarth, the Minister, the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue), and all other colleagues present will forgive me for leaving early in what I hope they agree are exceptional circumstances.

It is a pleasure to open this debate on a subject that at first glance might seem rather complex and perhaps a little esoteric, but what we are about to debate is very far from that. In fact, it is fundamental to the future of so many people, especially young people, who are desperate for work, education or training—not just in Yorkshire and the Humber, but throughout the country. I am absolutely certain of that. Why did I choose such a seemingly long title for the debate, as on the Order Paper? I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), who has been extremely active, both in her constituency and throughout the region, in drawing attention to a matter that, unless it is resolved soon, could well make the difference between renewed economic growth and further decline. It really is that important. Like me, she felt that it was not possible to reduce the title of the debate any further, because it was essential to include all the issues that needed to be discussed.

It might be helpful to hon. Members if I first remind them of the background to bus services in England outside London. In October 1986, the late Baroness Thatcher’s Conservative Government first deregulated bus services, allowing private contractors to run registered routes commercially and in competition with one another, and to tender for registered routes that were deemed to be unprofitable and were therefore subsidised by local ratepayers, later to become council tax payers of course. Local authorities were no longer allowed to run their own not-for-profit bus services, so the famous Sheffield buses, which in the mid-’80s cost as little as 2p per journey across the city, were doomed.

Contrary to popular belief at the time, I understand that many business rate payers in the centre of Sheffield were angry, because although their rates were relatively high, the cheapness of bus fares from the outlying villages and suburbs of the great city of Sheffield meant that city centre shops were always busy and profitable for their owners. Once the subsidies stopped and the routes became commercialised, the fares went up sharply, often putting them beyond the reach of many in the city and its outlying areas. A measure that was intended to lower bus fares through competition increased them massively in some cases.

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the other impact of deregulation in cities such as Sheffield was proportionately to increase the number of cars on the road and to decrease the number of people using local public transport?

[Fabian Hamilton]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important intervention. I remember clearly that in October 1986 the route that I used to travel from my then home in Armley, Leeds, to the city centre was via the Armley gyratory—a massive roundabout and huge junction on the western side of Leeds. Up to that point in October 1986, the traffic queue was not that great at 8.30 in the morning, but I remember that, immediately following deregulation, the queues trebled. Everyone had got on the buses, but they suddenly became much more expensive. That had been predicted by the Labour Opposition and by the local authority, of which I was about to become a member.

In my city of Leeds, the former City and the former West Yorkshire bus services became a commercial company—some may recall that it was called Yorkshire Rider—and it made a small number of former public servants very wealthy as they became managers of a cash-rich commercial service mandatorily divorced from the public service that they once received a salary to operate. Other commercial operators entered the field, but were soon swallowed up by Yorkshire Rider, which did not like the competition. Eventually, of course, Yorkshire Rider itself was swallowed up by an even larger concern, so that today there is a virtual monopoly in Leeds, with First Bus operating almost all commercial bus services not just in Leeds, but in Bradford, Wakefield and the surrounding districts of West Yorkshire. What was once a public service had become a cash generator, and the travelling public, so dependent on buses, were left to pay the cost of ever-increasing fares, caused by the need to make a profit and the sharply rising fuel prices that added to the misery.

I shall spare my colleagues the history of the fiasco of the Leeds Supertram during the past 10 years. Suffice it to say that the lack of any alternative public transport to the bus network in Leeds has made buses even more critical for non-car owners. The Labour Government, however, tried to do something for bus passengers—I will refrain from calling them customers—with the concept of quality bus contracts. In government, Labour legislated to enable local authorities to reverse bus deregulation in their area by introducing a quality contract—in effect, a move to tendered bus services.

Under a quality contract, the accountable transport authority sets the fares and plans the network, while private operators bid to run the services. That model exists in London, where deregulation of the bus network never took place. A number of Labour-run integrated transport authorities are consulting on introducing quality contracts for their local bus services. This Government claim that they will not block transport authorities from pursuing quality contracts, yet they are reforming bus funding in a way that creates a financial disincentive for councils to go down that route.

Department for Transport guidelines for local transport authorities applying for funding from the new better bus area fund state that only voluntary partnerships with bus operators, not quality contracts, will be eligible for funding:

“Bus services can thrive in areas where local authorities and bus operators work together to identify and solve problems, so proposals will only be considered if supported by key bus operator(s).”

The source for that quote is the Department for Transport’s “Better Bus Area Fund: Guidance for Bidders”, published in December 2011.

Labour published a paper containing a number of proposals to reform local transport, as part of the policy review entitled “Empowering communities to improve transport”. The proposals would enable transport authorities to improve local bus services through greater regulatory powers over fares and routes, and a new statutory power for the Secretary of State for Transport to designate bus deregulation exemption zones.

My hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), the shadow Secretary of State for Transport, said in her speech to the 2011 Labour party conference:

“Devolving funding and decision making over transport is making a real difference in our cities. But in government we didn’t go far enough. That’s why our policy review has been looking at how we can devolve more transport responsibilities.”

She referred, among other things, to local and regional rail services.

How, then, does all that relate to the support necessary for young people in our region and throughout the country to be able to access jobs, training or education? Perhaps the Yorkshire Post put it best, when on 28 February this year it said:

“SPENDING on buses could give Ministers a quicker and cheaper way to help the economy than investing in ‘big ticket’ transport infrastructure, according to a new report.

The research found bus services in England’s major urban areas outside London are responsible for economic benefits worth around £2.5bn.

The report from pteg”—

the Passenger Transport Executive Group—

“which represents passenger transport executives such as Metro and SYPTE”—

the South Yorkshire passenger transport executive—

“in Yorkshire, suggests grants to bus operators generate £2.80 for every £1 spent while every £1 used to support concessionary fares generates £1.50.

It also found that the majority of the bus industry’s £5bn turnover every year is ploughed back into the areas where operators work through their supply chains and because their staff live in the area.

Pteg chairman David Brown said: ‘This report suggests that whilst there is a great deal of focus on big transport infrastructure schemes as a way of generating growth, the urban bus also deserves more attention from policy makers.

Investing more in the bus could be one of the biggest bargains there is for government in supporting big city economies, in getting the jobless back to work and in addressing some deep rooted, and ultimately costly, social challenges.’

The report was published yesterday as councillors in Barnsley raised concerns over the impact of poor transport links on the town’s economy. Councillors on the authority’s economy and skills scrutiny commission warned transport issues were harming efforts to help the long term unemployed back into work. Young people, particularly in the west of the district, were finding it ‘almost impossible’ to access apprenticeships because of poorly served bus routes, the commission found.

Commission chairman coun Dick Wraith said: ‘The council and its partners are doing everything they can to bring new jobs to Barnsley, and that hard work needs to continue.

However, we need to make sure that local people can get to the jobs that are out there, especially young people, who can lose out to older competitors who have their own transport and don’t need to rely on bus services to get them to work.’”

I thank the Yorkshire Post for that article.

Chris Waterman, of the Rural Access to Learning Group, contacted me to tell me what his group, which is concentrating on the connection between transport in rural areas and access to learning, especially for young people, is considering. He said that it is trying to promote a wide-ranging discussion at national and local level on the future development and funding of student transport in rural areas. Although many parts of our region of Yorkshire and the Humber are highly urbanised, it also has huge rural areas dotted with many villages where huge numbers of residents, especially young people, find themselves completely stranded without decent and affordable bus services.

Chris told me about a female student who started an evening course that finishes at 9 pm. She lives on a bus route, 3 miles from the college, but the service has recently been reduced and the last bus now passes her home at 8.15 pm. During the winter months, the student was understandably nervous about having to walk home in the dark and, having no access to a car, decided that she could not stay the course. I am glad to say that Chris told me that the college made an exception and funded taxi services for that student for that course at that time. Not all students are that lucky. Many will have to ditch their courses because they simply cannot get to and from college in time. RALG will produce a report on the issue, which will significantly contribute to the debate and, I hope, offer helpful solutions. I am grateful to Chris Waterman for his assistance and look forward to reading the proposals that RALG makes.

I hope that many hon. Members will contribute to the debate, so I will not take up too much more time, but important points need to be made and, to conclude, I would like to mention a few of them. First, Ministers promised that funding cuts would not lead to the loss of local bus services, yet many communities have seen significant reductions in vital services and fares have risen, on average, by double the rate of inflation. Secondly, the most vulnerable are the most affected by the loss of local bus services, with 35% of the 5.2 billion bus journeys each year in Britain made by those eligible for concessionary travel.

Thirdly, transport authorities that seek to use the legislation passed by the Labour Government to re-regulate bus services, giving them control over fares and routes, have found themselves frustrated by the bus companies and, I am afraid, a lack of support from the Government.

Fourthly, according to the Department for Transport’s own figures—the annual bus user statistics—bus fares increased by 6.5% in England from June 2011 to June 2012. That is 5.4% in London, 6.8% in metropolitan areas and 7.6% in non-metropolitan areas, in just one year. That means that bus fares have gone up, on average, by twice the rate of inflation, which is 3.2%, using the retail prices index rate. The Department’s figures suggest that fares have gone up by a third in five years.

Finally, the largest five bus operating companies in the UK, which jointly control more than 71% of the bus market, made combined operating profits in 2011-12 of more than half a billion pounds.

I hope that the debate highlights some of the key issues frustrating so many of our young people in their attempts to get work, training or education, whether they live in cities, towns or rural areas, whether in the Yorkshire and the Humber region or anywhere else in England.

14:46

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) on securing the debate.

I shall begin by speaking personally. When I first came to Sheffield as a student in the late ’80s, bus fares were 2p across town, and that was one of the deciding factors for choosing Sheffield over other places. We were outraged in 1989 when fares increased to 10p, because it put regular bus travel out of the reach for most of us. When I studied, I was lucky to have a full grant—it was before tuition fees were introduced—but the seemingly paltry increase in bus fares meant that I was forced to walk most journeys, because I could not afford to do otherwise.

A student ticket in Sheffield is now 80p. I appreciate that for many of us that does not seem like a lot of money, but students are now saddled with massive debts, so 80p is a considerable investment. As I did, many students choose not to travel by bus due to the cost, instead spending the money on other essentials. During the day, that is fine, and in fact I would probably encourage it, but at night, I am concerned. I worry about the safety of students and young people forced to walk in the dark across town or, as my hon. Friend said, a considerable distance on rural lanes because they cannot afford a bus fare or there is no bus for them to catch.

In Sheffield and most towns, walking is an option, but the situation is compounded if a young person has to travel any distance or be anywhere at a specific time. If an apprentice has to be in work at a set time for example, what are their options? Rely on friends and family for lifts; own, insure and pay exorbitant fuel costs for a car; or risk their life on a bike or scooter. Realistically, the only option is catching the bus. On £2.65 an hour, a daily commute by bus becomes a costly enterprise, and some young people I have spoken to have decided not to take up apprenticeships due to the financial burden, which horrifies me. They are turning down a future because they cannot afford the transport to get there.

In reality, is there even a bus that they can catch? Ministers promised that cuts in funding would not lead to a loss of local bus services, yet many communities have seen significant reductions in vital services. Fares have risen on average by double the rate of inflation. The Government have cut funding for local transport by 28% and direct subsidies to support local bus services by a fifth. As a consequence, local authorities have not been able to sustain the previous level of support for unprofitable but socially necessary bus services.

Research has shown that one in five local council-supported bus services were cut or reduced last year, and 41% of local authorities have reported cuts to timetables. Where services have been protected, bus companies have often increased fares to make up for the revenue lost through cuts to subsidies. It is the most vulnerable who are most affected by the loss of a local bus service, with 35% of the 5.2 billion journeys each year in Britain made by those eligible for concessionary travel. Young people have been particularly badly affected, with the loss of services and the rising prices making it harder for them to take up education or training opportunities. The pressure on funding faced by local authorities has seen concessionary travel schemes for young people, which are discretionary, withdrawn or scaled back.

In Rotherham, we are trying to tackle the injustice for young people head-on. The metropolitan borough council is actively pursuing ways to increase young user representation, so that the transport services are fit for purpose. As part of the last 11 million takeover day, when the Youth Parliament runs Rotherham council, the young people particularly wanted to address the matter of transport. Issues raised were primarily about safety and security, the reliability of services, and affordability. Recommendations were made for a more joined-up system, with concessionary tickets on all forms of public transport and better advertising of concessionary fares.

Young people in Rotherham have been invited to attend a number of upcoming boards and consultation meetings. All parties involved, including the council, South Yorkshire passenger transport executive, South Yorkshire police and the individual operators welcome young people’s input. Rotherham council has appointed young people to its transport liaison committee, and the Rotherham transport users group is actively recruiting young people, as they are the people who are aware of the specific issues facing them. In Rotherham, we are trying to make the bus companies apply the 70p fare for young people to through journeys. Currently, if someone gets off one bus and takes another to complete their trip, they are charged 70p for each part of the journey, which often makes the cost prohibitive. Such schemes need to be adopted across the country. Rotherham has shown that by including young people in the decision-making process, change can occur.

Finally, I urge the Government to consider Labour’s proposals to enable transport authorities to improve local bus services through greater regulatory powers over fares and routes, and to consider a new statutory power for the Secretary of State to designate bus deregulation exemption zones. Without those interventions, I am afraid that the future for young people looks bleak.

00:00

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth, for what I believe is the first time. It is also a pleasure to respond to the contribution made by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton). I noticed that on the Annunciator screen he was down as the Member for Midlothian—I did not know that Midlothian was in Yorkshire and Humber, but we learn something every day. My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) was eloquent in her exposition of the needs of young people, particularly in south Yorkshire, and of the need to include young people in the decision-making process on bus services, which is something to which I will return later.

For all of us here today, the question of whether to catch a bus is a matter of genuine choice, because every Member of the House of Commons has, I believe, the means to buy a car. For us, whether to use public transport can be an environmental choice. We have the luxury of that position, but for many the choice is to catch a bus or to stay put and not travel at all. The option of private transport still does not exist for many of the elderly, the young, the disabled and the unemployed, and for different reasons. For those people, the bus is essential for getting to the shops, to school, to training, to work or even to that important job interview.

In the plethora of cuts announced by the coalition Government, it is often the cuts least talked about that do the greatest damage. In 2010, the Government cut by 28% the funding to councils for local transport and removed the ring-fencing from funding passed to councils from the Department for Communities and Local Government. In addition, the bus service operators grant was cut by 20%. The combined cuts have resulted in the removal of £500 million from support for bus services. With that level of cuts, it is no surprise that many people who use bus services believe that services have deteriorated in vast swathes of the country. To make matters worse, the cost of catching a bus has increased by double the rate of inflation in the past year alone.

As things stand, and if the cuts continue, it will become harder and harder for many communities to sustain the social mix that is essential to maintaining the lifeblood of, in particular, our rural areas. If those who cannot afford private transport have to move out of their villages and hamlets, all we will have left is lifeless commuter belts. The problem exists not just in the rural south. My constituency is made up of isolated villages and towns on the edge of the two major urban areas of Barnsley and Sheffield. There is often a misunderstanding in the House about rural areas: they do not belong just to the leafy home counties, as metropolitan areas can be made up of significant expanses of rural landmass. South Yorkshire is a good example, and indeed parts of west Yorkshire still have that status. It is the poor and the young who feel the effects of worsening bus services the most, and in the context of high and rising unemployment the problem has become acute.

In my constituency, which is the second wealthiest— for want of a better word—in Sheffield, the rise in unemployment among the young has been very rapid over the past three years; indeed, I think that the figure has increased by 100%. The increase has been far higher elsewhere in south Yorkshire, particularly in areas such as Rotherham, the Dearne, Barnsley East and Barnsley Central. Unemployment is rising among the young in those places, as it is nationally, and it is not hard, therefore, to imagine the difficulties faced by youngsters in the villages in my constituency.

Young people in villages such as Silkstone, Ingbirchworth, Penistone town, Oughtibridge and High Green are increasingly feeling the pinch because of the cost of bus services—the frequency of service can also be a problem. To access most public services, and to go to work or college or to engage in training, young people in my constituency must travel either to Barnsley or Sheffield, or even perhaps Huddersfield, Wakefield or Leeds. If they have to go over the border, so to speak, into west Yorkshire, the problem becomes particularly acute because they then deal with services run by two different integrated transport authorities. A young person—a local scout leader—frequently contacts me to tell me about the problems he experiences getting to school in Wakefield from, believe it or not, Penistone.

Young people in my area face journeys of many miles on services that are often infrequent, which is not ideal for meeting their needs, and very costly. A good example of the issues faced by many young people in rural and semi-rural areas are those encountered by my ex-part-time caseworker, Alex Guest. He is an intelligent, well-qualified graduate and a great employee, but he lives in the small town of Penistone, which, although in the Barnsley metropolitan district, is 12 miles from Barnsley town centre and 20 miles from the centre of Sheffield. His appointment to the job meant that he had to travel from Penistone to my office in Stocksbridge, which is only four miles away as the crow flies. As my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East pointed out, Barnsley has done some work on the difficulties that its young people face in getting to work. Penistone was highlighted in the report it produced, and Alex is a real-life example of why that report has been so important.

The distance between Stocksbridge and Alex’s home in Penistone is only four miles, but the bus service between the two towns is so bad that he could not get to my office to begin work at the usual start time of 9 am. That is impossible on a bus. He could not start work before 10 am and had to leave by 4 pm or face not being able to get home. He could not take a job four miles away from his house with an employer in the next town—a major employer, as there is still a big steel industry there—unless the job was flexible enough to allow him to work between 10 am and 4 pm. Fortunately, I was able to offer him the flexibility to ensure that he could work his hours around the bus service. It was possible for me to do that because he was part-time, but had I offered him a full-time post, I am not sure that I could have allowed him to take up the job offer permanently.

Unfortunately for many other young people, the flexibility that I could offer Alex is not always there and the chance to work is therefore denied them, as is the chance to earn an income and to improve themselves and their skills and prospects. In Alex’s case, I could offer him only part-time work, but the job he did for me gave him the experience, confidence and knowledge to go elsewhere. He now works full-time for another MP—a traitor, I have to say—who is sitting not far away from me: she took my employee from me, but I wish him all the best in his new job. Alex Guest is now contributing and paying his way in society, but I am not sure that that would necessarily be the case if I had not been able to offer him such flexibility.

Some local authorities are doing their best to mitigate the impact of Government cuts on bus services, especially in relation to young people. Praise will be given where it is due. I know that the Minister is an advocate for public transport from our various discussions on panels and in other contexts before the general election, when the Liberal Democrats were not in coalition with the Conservatives. I will put it on the record that the Minister helped to get the Sheffield bus partnership up and running, and we are ready to pay tribute to that work. I am told that the new bus partnership in Sheffield has improved things—not massively, but it has improved the situation—but that work does not go far enough.

The South Yorkshire integrated transport authority, with the support of better bus area funding, has introduced a scheme under which apprentices aged between 16 and 24 who are claiming jobseeker’s allowance can have free travel for up to three months. Young people in the same age group who are starting work that is expected to last at least 13 weeks and who have claimed JSA for at least 13 weeks can have free travel for four weeks. It also intends to improve the service by reducing the qualification threshold, so that the service can be extended to more young apprentices.

The South Yorkshire integrated transport authority is working closely with the four youth councils in south Yorkshire, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham said. It is holding a young people’s bus summit with 40 young people next week, on 27 April, in Sheffield. The themes to be discussed, which I think she mentioned, are affordability, accessibility, availability and acceptability, which is an important and often overlooked point about bus services. That event alone demonstrates just how important bus services are for young people in south Yorkshire, an area which outsiders often forget is largely rural or semi-rural, like large parts of the rest of Yorkshire.

However, for our every success and step forward, there always seems to me to be a retreat. Part of Barnsley council’s groundbreaking and innovative approach was the Mi card, which, among other things, allowed all under-18s free travel on buses in the borough. Unfortunately, because of the council’s need to make savings, a charge of 30p per journey now applies. That means that the very good principle that we have extended to elderly people and those over 60 has been withdrawn from a section of the population that, in my view, needs it more than others, as they desperately need to find work and opportunities to extend their education and skills.

Although the schemes and efforts of south Yorkshire local authorities are welcome, they are often being put in place despite the Government, not because of them, which is the key problem. The facts, which were mentioned earlier, are that a third of bus journeys are made by people who are eligible for a concessionary fare, and two thirds of all journeys on public transport are made by bus. Those two statistics alone show us why we need frequent and affordable bus services. It is no good having a bus pass if there is no bus to catch, and it is no good having a bus if it is too expensive to catch for those of us who rely on buses. For young people, the latter point is key.

As some Members may be aware—the Minister is well aware of what has long been my position—I am a big proponent of re-regulating the buses. He was a member of the Local Transport Public Bill Committee that discussed re-regulation. The Local Transport Act 2008 went some way towards re-regulation, but the quality contracts on offer have not particularly taken root, partly because of the risks involved in integrated transport authorities wanting to take up the option, and also because of the failure of the Government to underwrite some of those risks to get beyond that first hurdle.

Re-regulation would give the rest of the country, particularly metropolitan areas such as Sheffield, Barnsley and Leeds, what London already enjoys and has never had taken away from it. However, the Government are determined that any area that pursues a quality contract should be excluded from better bus area funding. There is therefore not only an unwillingness—I do not know whether it is ideological—to support integrated transport authorities that want to develop quality contracts, but a penalty for developing one. That is wrong and has put many integrated transport authorities, such as the one serving my area, in the impossible position of having to accept the terms and condition placed on them by the Department for Transport to access any extra funding.

We need more public control and accountability in relation to our bus services, and those services need to take into consideration the people who use them and the role of reliable, frequent bus services that are environmentally friendly, have full disabled access and are clean and warm for the people using them. We all know that such services can play a big role in helping local economies to grow and improve, not least because, to return to the focus of this debate, such services are critical in getting young people where they need to be.

Above all, we need to recognise that if we fail our young people by not providing them with the bus services they need, their general opportunities through life will be curtailed. The damage done to young people who cannot access the opportunities that they need when they are 16, 17 or 18—the limitation on their mobility at that age—might have lifelong impacts. I am part of the generation who suffered in the recessions of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Many people of my generation have never fully recovered from the damage done to them by the very high levels of unemployment in areas such as south Yorkshire in the early 1980s, when opportunities in the steel and coal industries disappeared.

If we do the same to this generation of young people, I would not blame them for turning round to those of us responsible for giving them opportunities, and saying, “You failed us.” I therefore look to the coalition Government and the Minister for a response and a positive affirmation not only that young people are expected to find work and to improve their chances by attending further education and training opportunities, but that the coalition Government recognise their responsibility in making sure that young people can access those opportunities.

[Mr George Howarth (in the Chair)]

We have just over 50 minutes available, but I remind the two Front-Bench speakers that it is not obligatory to take up all that time—I can suspend the sitting if necessary.

15:09

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Howarth. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) on securing the debate. As we heard in his passionate and well-informed contributions, the Government have given young people a pretty rough ride, and not just in Yorkshire and Humberside. We hear a lot from Ministers about the importance of getting young people into work or full-time higher education, but, unfortunately, their actions seem to disprove their words.

The number of those who are not in education, employment or training has soared in recent years and is now more than 1 million. That is perhaps not surprising when we remember that the Government have trebled university tuition fees, scrapped the education maintenance allowance and taken an axe to the future jobs fund. However, there is another barrier: transport and, in particular, bus services.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) said, transport is less prominent and less talked about, but it is equally important in the equation. Indeed, for many young people, the high cost of transport is the biggest challenge of all. The UK Youth Parliament, for example, voted to make “Make Public Transport Cheaper, Better and Accessible to All” its priority campaign for 2012. The Youth Select Committee, which is made up of young people, chose transport as its first topic for inquiry. Therefore, it is not only young people in Yorkshire and Humberside who see transport as vital, but young people throughout the country.

Some older people, such as myself, might be surprised by that, but it makes perfect sense. Young people need to be able to get to their place of work or college, and to get there in a cost-efficient and pleasant way. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) about that. Without affordable bus services, young people are simply unable to take up opportunities in education, work or training in the first place.

I hope that you will forgive me, Mr Howarth, if I use an example from my constituency. A constituent came to me because she was worried about her sister, who had to make a journey of 11 miles to a sixth-form college. As a result of an increase in the bus fare, her sister had to choose between paying for a meal at lunch time or taking public transport to college—there are, of course, no free school meals in sixth-form colleges. That is not a decision any young person should be forced to make.

Young people throughout the country have seen the funding available to help with their travel costs taken away, and the bus services and routes that they so desperately need cut back. The Association of Colleges carried out a survey that found that 72% of students take a bus to college. The average journey is 9 miles, and young people cannot walk that distance there and back. The survey also found that 94% of colleges believe that the abolition of the EMA has affected students’ ability to travel to and from college. The cuts to bus services and the increases in fares are simply making matters worse.

The Campaign for Better Transport estimates that 70% of local authorities are looking to buses as an area in which to make cuts, with some councils planning to lose all their supported bus services. The situation has intensified as the 20% cut in the Government subsidy to bus operators—the bus service operators grant—takes effect on top of the 28% cut to local transport funding.

However, at the same time as thousands of people struggle with soaring bus fares, the big five bus companies —Arriva, FirstGroup, Stagecoach, National Express and Go-Ahead—are making record profits. They control more than 71% of the UK bus market and, between them, had operating profits in 2011-12 of more than half a billion pounds. That is perhaps not surprising when we consider that bus fares outside London have risen by more than twice the rate of inflation over the past year and by a third in just five years. At the same time, one in five supported services has been lost.

The bus companies need to work with the Government to deliver a concessionary fares scheme for young people aged 16 to 19 who are in education or training out of the not insubstantial profits that they are making in this heavily subsidised industry. That is the action we need to stop NEET rates spiralling out of control and to ensure that young people can continue in education and training post-16.

The cost of bus travel has increased by 24% since the industry was deregulated in 1987. The Government must accept that their reckless cuts to the UK’s public transport system are a false economy. Those cuts are clobbering young people and preventing them from getting on in life. As my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge said, we need only look at the problems that are caused when people are out of education, training or employment between the ages of 18 and 25, as well as the debt that leaves them in, which is often not recoverable, to see that the Government’s cuts are definitely a false economy. We are wasting lives and wasting potential.

The Government need to take action by introducing a concessionary fares scheme, and they need to do that immediately. They need to factor the views of young people into their plans, as we have heard is happening in Rotherham. I wish people in South Yorkshire all the best with their bus summit, which demonstrates how important this mode of transport is to them.

The Government need to talk to the UK Youth Parliament and the Youth Select Committee to hear at first hand what young people’s problems and solutions are. For many young people, as PTEG’s recent report “Moving on” said, the bus is public transport, yet young people have such a bad experience with buses that they turn their backs on the sector at the earliest opportunity. If we listen to them now, they might remain bus passengers by choice, not just by necessity. That would be the best outcome for us all.

15:16

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Norman Baker)]

I will probably not require 44 minutes to respond to the debate, Mr Howarth. I welcome this topic, and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) for how he presented it. I am sorry that he is not here, but I fully accept his reasons. He is—not everybody in the House is, although perhaps I will get myself into difficulties—an honourable Member and a man of integrity, so I have no problem with the reason that he gave for not being here for the winding-up speeches. I thank him in his absence for securing time to discuss bus travel for young people in the Yorkshire and Humber region.

As I know from my constituency and from my role as a Minister, and as has been said this afternoon, buses are a lifeline for many people, including young people. They provide access to jobs, schools, health care and social activities. Good bus services contribute to both the Government’s key transport objectives: creating growth and cutting carbon. By providing an attractive alternative to the car, we can reduce not only harmful emissions, but, at the same time, the congestion that can choke off our local economies.

Buses are of particular importance to young people, as Members have indicated. More than half of students are frequent bus users and depend on the bus to get to education or training. Buses are used more frequently by young people, with the average 17 to 20-year-old making twice as many trips as people in other age groups.

In Yorkshire and Humber, two thirds of all bus trips by 11 to 15-year-olds involve travelling to or from school. Among 16 to 19-year-olds, 36% of all bus trips are for the purpose of education. A further 20% are for commuting. Young people in Yorkshire and Humber continue to use the bus when they start working. Some 37% of all bus trips by 20 to 25-year-olds are for the overall purpose of commuting. On average, young people in the Yorkshire and Humber areas make more bus trips per year than the average young person in England, which Members may not realise. Sixteen to 19-year-olds in the region make more than 200 bus trips per year, compared with 186 for England as a whole.

I fully recognise that the cost of young people’s travel can cause difficulty for those seeking employment, education or training. That is why, at last November’s UK bus awards, I urged the bus industry to be more innovative about the fare deals and discounts that it offers young people. I want the industry to build on initiatives such as the Confederation of Passenger Transport’s “BUSFORUS” web portal, which I encouraged the confederation to produce and which was launched last autumn. That interactive travel information website is designed with, and aimed precisely at, young people.

The Government appreciates that bus fares for young people vary a great deal across the country. In many cases, that is the result of operators responding to their local market. However, I am pleased to see that travel discounts are available to young people on many bus services in the Yorkshire and Humber areas, as has been mentioned this afternoon.

We have no immediate plans to legislate to set fares for young people or to introduce a statutory young person’s travel concession, but I think that a simpler fare structure would help, and in some areas bus operators could do more to offer discounted fares to young people. People who have decided to leave education and begin work—for example, as apprentices or in training schemes—may find the cost of bus fares a barrier. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) for mentioning the offers that are available for some people coming off JSA into employment, particularly young apprentices. That is a good scheme and we are happy to endorse such schemes. Indeed, I have been promoting them through the local sustainable transport fund, as I imagine the hon. Lady knows.

It is worth pointing out, in response to the complaints of the hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) about lack of opportunities for young people, that the number of people in apprenticeships has risen by 88% since 2010. More than 1 million people have started apprenticeships since that time, so apprenticeships are a great success story for the coalition Government, and that point should not be neglected. There are of course issues that need to be dealt with sensibly, but some good things are happening and it is not fair to present a view of things as “woe, woe and thrice woe”, as I fear the hon. Lady tried to do.

Cheaper fares could make buses the mode of choice at an early age and lock in patronage for the future and help to reduce car travel. That is why, at the bus partnership forum in January, I asked the bus industry to consider offering travel discounts to all people aged 18 and under, not just those in education. A fares discount based on age seems far easier to administer than one relying on proof of education. I have encouraged the bus industry to do that because it is in its interest to identify people who want to use the bus and lock them in for future use for the rest of their lives. Potentially, they will be bus users for 50 or 60 years beyond their education time.

Interestingly enough, the legislation that regulates the bus industry, which we inherited in 2010, does not require bus operators to offer any reduced fares to young people. If Government intervened to enforce an age limit for charging an adult fare or legislated to create a national concessionary travel scheme for young people, local authorities would be obliged to reimburse bus operators for any revenue forgone; thus a financial burden would be imposed on local authorities, or, if that were reimbursed to them, there would be a further significant burden on the national taxpayer. In practice, bus fares are set at a commercial level by the operators. In general, despite the fact that there is no requirement to offer anyone below 18 a discount, operators offer free travel to under-fives and a reduced fare to those up to 15 or 16, although that varies considerably around the country.

[Angela Smith]

Does the Minister acknowledge that under the quality contracts introduced in the Local Transport Act 2008 integrated transport authorities could introduce requirements on fares, as well as on routes and frequency?

[Norman Baker]

Indeed they can, and they can get arrangements with bus companies through partnerships, as well. I shall return to quality contracts, because both the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Leeds North East raised the point.

The Department for Transport carried out a survey of travel concession authorities in 2012. Those that responded said that about 40% of operators in their areas offered commercially discounted fares up to the age of 15 and a further 30% offered discounted fares up to the age of 18. Where operators offered concessions, they were mainly discounts of between a third and half the adult single fare. About a fifth of operators cut a quarter off the adult fare. That shows what an unfair and confusing patchwork of fares is available to young people. For the lucky minority, local bus operators will give a 50% discount to those under 18, but young people with access to a local bus service run by one of the 70% of bus operators who offer no discount to 16 to 19-year-olds are in an entirely different situation.

In a deregulated market, bus operators are in competition with each other, and if they were to agree specific fares for young people, it could be deemed anti-competitive. However, in principle, there seems to be nothing to prevent several operators in an area offering discounts to young people as a percentage of the adult commercial fare, whatever that may be. It will of course vary from service to service. That approach would offer young people a deal that is not universally available. There are areas where such an informal arrangement is already in place. In Norfolk, for example, there is a voluntary agreement between several bus operators to offer a standard discount to young people.

In addition to such informal arrangements, a local authority can decide on a discretionary basis to offer concessions to young people in its area. That is solely a matter for the local authority and such an enhancement would have to be funded locally. In Yorkshire and the Humber, all the local authorities have some form of local travel assistance for young people, and I am pleased about that. The integrated transport authority areas of South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire, as well as the city of York, issue travel cards that give young people discounted bus fares on the services of several local bus operators. The most rural authorities in the region, where there are fewer bus services, subscribe to the Wheels 2 Work scheme, which allows young people to hire a bicycle or a scooter for access to training and employment. In addition, all jobcentres in the country can provide jobseekers with discretionary support for travel costs, such as support for the cost of a bus fare to attend a job interview.

Therefore, while there is some support for 16 to 19-year-olds with transport costs, it is only ever offered on a commercial or discretionary basis, whereas the national scheme for older people gives free travel at off-peak times on any local bus service in England. The “BUSFORUS” web portal created by the industry—an initiative I welcome—has only further highlighted the disparity; a look at the bus operators’ web portal suggests that they have recognised that. We must do better for young people and give them more consistent and affordable bus fares. I am making that my top bus priority between now and the next election. Discussions are being held with the bus industry and colleagues across the Government to find a solution to the mess of patchwork concessions currently available to young people.

I mentioned the bus forum earlier, and hon. Members may know that it is an arrangement for interested parties to meet once every six months, under my chairmanship, for a round table to discuss bus issues. It may be of interest that, at my instigation, there is now a representative from the UK Youth Parliament, who attends regularly. I have engaged with members of the Youth Parliament and responded to a request to give evidence to their Select Committee hearing, and on behalf of the Government, I have responded formally to the recommendations. I assure hon. Members that we engage with young people, both directly in the Department for Transport, and through the UK Youth Parliament. It is important that young people’s voices should be heard, and I am determined that that will happen in our transport discussions.

As to the use of buses to get to education, all local authorities have a statutory duty to provide home-to-school travel where they consider it necessary to secure a child’s attendance at school. Legislation does not specify what the mode of transport must be, but it is generally a bus. Where transport is considered necessary, it must be provided free of charge. Transport must be free for those pupils attending their nearest suitable school, where that is beyond the statutory walking distances of two miles for pupils below the age of eight and three miles for those aged eight and above. There is also an additional entitlement to free home-to-school transport for children from low-income families. That provides additional support for attendance to those children who are entitled to free school meals or whose parents receive the maximum working tax credit.

Local authorities must make arrangements for children who are unable to walk to school because of special educational need, disability, or mobility problems, or who cannot reasonably be expected to walk because of an unsafe route. However, there are suggestions that some local authorities have reclassified, as safe, routes that were previously designated unsafe, to save money on providing school transport. Parents can appeal to their local authority about such a decision, but that is not always an independent process. Parents can complain to the local government ombudsman about the handling of such an appeal. However, that can be a lengthy process, and in the meantime, children could be walking potentially unsafe routes to school. I would expect local authorities to use the Department for Education’s guidance, which was published last month, to implement fairer and quicker processes for appeals. That, by the way, is an example of good cross-departmental co-operation between me and the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), when he was a Minister. He took the issue seriously and drove forward that agenda in the Department for Education.

Aside from their statutory obligations, local authorities have discretion to provide transport to all other pupils, for which a charge can be made. The increase in participation age will give more choice to young people who continue with education or training beyond the age of 16. They will have a range of options, including working full time alongside their studies or undertaking an apprenticeship.

Young people in work or on a waged apprenticeship will be able to pay for, or contribute towards, their transport costs. The £180 million bursary fund for 16 to 19-year-olds, which is administered by further education establishments, has the flexibility to meet transport costs for those in genuine need of support.

Local government finance continues to be challenging, but it is still disappointing that in a few areas, local councils have responded by taking the axe to local bus services, and I deplore that. I am naturally concerned when I hear that vulnerable people with few other transport choices have lost their only bus service, or that children have reduced public transport access to the school of their choice.

A few councils have taken an almost slash-and-burn approach, while others, I am happy to say, have been more considerate and careful in the decisions they have made. It is worth noting that 80% of services are commercially run and require no subsidy from local councils, so the services that some councils have cut have been from the 20% that are supported services.

Aside from the funding that Yorkshire and Humber receives through a Department for Communities and Local Government finance settlement, it has recently been awarded £20 million for the new bus rapid transit between Sheffield and Rotherham, almost £53 million for 11 local sustainable transport fund projects and £13 million for three better bus area 2012 bids.

In February, as part of the Sheffield city deal, to which the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge referred, we announced Sheffield’s designation as the first new better bus area. Sheffield’s deal will see devolution of bus service operators grant in the area to South Yorkshire PTE together with an immediate grant of £530,000 and further annual top-ups of just under £1.6 million a year. Those grants will better target bus subsidy in Sheffield. The package includes enhanced bus frequencies to major employment and education sites and reduced bus fares across bus operators.

The Department has also initially approved just over £173 million funding for the Leeds trolleybus. The outlook for buses in the Yorkshire and Humber area is rather more positive than Opposition Members might have concluded. The funding that my Department has allocated should see a marked improvement in bus services, which will encourage more young people on to the bus.

Let me deal briefly with the points that have been raised. The hon. Member for Leeds North East moaned about deregulation in 1986 and the impact that it has had on fares. I have to say to him gently, although he is no longer in the Chamber, that his Government did of course have 13 years to reverse that deregulation and failed to do so, so I take his enthusiasm now for reversing with some degree of scepticism.

The hon. Gentleman also talked about local authorities applying for quality contracts and being excluded from the BBA top-up. However, if he reads the guidance he will find that it says:

“Where a local authority can demonstrate that it has genuinely tried to engage in partnership working with local bus operators and this has been met with unreasonable resistance, should the local authority then decide to pursue a quality contract scheme, the Department will—upon request—exceptionally consider whether top-up funding could be provided when decisions are taken about the designation of any further tranche of BBAs.”

It is not true to say, therefore, that the two schemes are mutually exclusive.

[Angela Smith]

If I recall rightly, when the Minister was a member of the Bill Committee for the Local Transport Act 2008, he was much more positive about re-regulation than perhaps he is now. The whole point of quality contracts within the context of the 2008 Act was exactly that integrated transport authorities would be given the freedom to use quality contracts without having to jump over the hurdles that the Government seem to have reintroduced.

[Norman Baker]

I do not accept that. I repeat my earlier point: the hon. Lady’s Government had 13 years to reintroduce whatever it wanted, and did not do so, despite some cajoling from my colleagues and me at the time. However, the fact of the matter is that quality contracts remain on the statute book. The 2008 Act has not been changed in any shape or form. What we have done is to reintroduce further incentives for partnership working, which we think is right. After all, partnership working is the key to success. It is unlikely that we will see more people on buses in a local area if either the local authority or the transport operators are being difficult, so their working together is an essential prerequisite.

It is not true to say, as the hon. Lady claims, that there is a penalty for developing quality contracts. The quality contract regime has not changed at all. What we have is a reward for partnership working, which is an entirely different proposition. It is not true to say, as the hon. Member for Leeds North East has said, that BBAs and quality contracts are mutually exclusive; they are not, and I have just read out the relevant piece of the guidance that demonstrates that to be the case.

The hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) talked about cuts in a way that made me feel that Armageddon had arrived. This is the fact of the matter: the overall bus mileage in England fell by just 1% between 2010-11 and 2011-12. I regret any fall in bus mileage, but 1% is not Armageddon. She might also want to know that, in 2011-12, there were 4.7 billion bus journeys in England, which is the highest figure since deregulation in 1986. Therefore, the suggestion that the bus industry is on its knees is perhaps not borne out by the statistics.

The hon. Member for Makerfield complained about the cut in bus service operators grant. I have to say again that, while I regret any cut in support for the bus industry, the fact of the matter is that we ensured that there was a soft landing by giving the bus industry around 18 months’ notice of the 20% cut. At the time—it is on the record—the industry said that it would be able to accommodate that because it had been given sufficient notice. That is in stark contrast to the lack of notice given by the Welsh Assembly Government, run by her party, which gave virtually no notice at all of changes to BSOG for operators in Wales.

The hon. Lady also complained about the profits of bus companies. As we are in a 1980s mood today in many shapes and forms, let me say that I detected a return to 1980s Labour-style theology, where profit is a dirty word and has to be removed from bus companies. That appeared to be the substance of what she was saying.

[Yvonne Fovargue]

In no way did I imply that profit is a dirty word. I merely said that some of the profit should be invested for the good of the passenger, to keep them as passengers in the future.

[Norman Baker]

The point the hon. Lady misses is this: it is in the interests of the bus companies themselves to invest for the future to generate more passenger traffic by having newer buses and a better service. That is indeed what they are doing. For example, the average age of the bus in this country is declining. We are seeing massive new investment in buses, not least of all through the Government’s green bus fund. The way to get more passengers is to provide the service that people want. Everybody in the bus industry understands that and they do it really quite well, as the figures on mileage and the number of bus journeys demonstrate very adequately.

[Angela Smith]

The Minister is being very generous with his time. May I ask him a simple question? In the 1980s, the whole bus system was regulated. London is still regulated. Why is it that what is good enough for London is not right for the rest of the country? Why cannot the rest of the country have the regulated bus service that London enjoys?

[Norman Baker]

The hon. Lady should have asked the Government in 1986 why it took that view and then her own Government why it did not reverse it in the 13 years between 1997 and 2010. However, there are advantages in both systems. Inside London, a plethora of empty buses can be seen, sometimes queuing up one behind another, which is not necessarily an efficient system. The cost of running that system is higher than it should be, so the London benefits are not as clear cut as she would have us believe.

Finally, let me pick up on the careless phrase that the hon. Member for Makerfield used when she talked about the coalition Government making “reckless” cuts to the UK transport system. I have to say to her that we are now seeing more people on the buses—4.7 billion bus journeys, which is higher than at any time since 1986. We have the biggest investment in the rail network since the Victorian era. We have 850 miles of electrification going on in the railway network, compared with 9 miles under her Government in 13 years. There are more people on the trains now than at any time since 1926. People who use public transport can be well pleased with what the Government is doing and I commend it to the House.

National Plan for Cultural Education

Wednesday 17th April 2013 Westminster Hall

16:00

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Howarth.

On 28 February 2012, the Government, in their response to Darren Henley’s excellent review of cultural education in England, identified 10 issues to be addressed immediately. The first three were a joint ministerial board; a national plan for cultural education, made together with the sponsored bodies; and work to improve the quality of cultural education in schools.

Progress seems to have been made on some items in the list—for example, the new national youth dance company—and many items, such as Saturday clubs, already existed on the day that the report and the Government’s response were published, but those initiatives are not universally available and they do not guarantee that all our young people get the rich cultural experience at school that they deserve. My purpose in initiating the debate is to demand what young people have been promised, which has not yet been delivered.

I served with the Minister on the Select Committee on Children, Schools and Families in the previous Parliament—he was one of the more sensible members of his party on that Committee—and I hope to learn from him whether there is a functioning joint ministerial board. The antecedents of that promise go back to a speech by the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport in November 2010 at the Big Link-Up. He announced that the measure would involve not only the Departments for Education and for Culture, Media and Sport, but the Department for Work and Pensions. More than two years later, does that board exist? Perhaps the Minister will tell us who the board is working with, how often it has met and, if it has met, who has attended. We were told in the response to the Henley review that the board would be established to work with the sponsored bodies to help them to deliver a vision for effective cultural education across the country, but when I talk to obvious candidates among the sponsored bodies, they report no such ministerial involvement.

The other important part of the response was a national plan for cultural education, and I initiated the debate to draw attention to the plan’s continuing absence. The promise of a national plan for cultural education had already been outlined by the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, in a well argued speech to the Yehudi Menuhin school in 2010, where he described the need to bring national coherence to the plethora of local cultural education initiatives.

The promise was repeated in a Government response signed by two Secretaries of State and described as an immediate priority, yet five weeks after the first anniversary of that announcement, we are still waiting to see it. I am optimistic that the Minister, after nearly 60 weeks, might be able to promise to the Chamber today that the national plan is imminent. Frankly, it takes only nine months to make a baby, and the national plan has now been promised for 14 months.

The promise has been repeated since it was first made, so it is not as if the Government are trying to run away from it. The then Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, the right hon. Member for South West Surrey (Mr Hunt), promised in a speech on 26 June 2012 that the national plan would be published “later this year.” That would have been in 2012, and we are now four months into 2013.

Without a governing board or a plan—the plan has still not been formally created, detailed or properly consulted on—how do the Government expect to fill the vacuum in cultural learning that has grown since 2010?

We have seen a reduction in both uptake of creative subjects and funding for people seeking to teach them. An Ipsos MORI survey commissioned by the Department for Education found that 15% of schools have withdrawn one or more arts subjects, and it was suggested that that was a consequence of the debate we had on the EBacc. People reading and listening to this debate will know that one of the consequences of the EBacc’s description, which did not include those subjects, was a real fear that the school curriculum would continue to be constricted.

I am glad that the Department rowed back from the extreme end of those proposals—that was an improvement —but the consequence of the way that debate was conducted is that fewer schools are offering those subjects. Worse, because the retreat from those subjects is higher in schools in deprived areas, the survey found that 21% of schools with a high proportion of pupils on free school meals withdrew one or more arts subjects, compared with only 8% of schools with a low proportion of pupils on free school meals.

Things are going to get worse, because the number of funded teacher training places in creative subjects has fallen dramatically. Between 2010 and 2012, the number of places fell by 38% for art and by 33% for music, compared with, for example, 6% for geography. The number of places for history remained broadly the same.

The narrowing of the curriculum at the expense of creative subjects will lead to a loss of the leaders relied on by our creative industries, which will have consequences for our economy. The United Kingdom has the largest creative sector in the European Union. According to UNESCO, the sector is, in absolute terms, the most successful exporter of cultural goods and services in the world—we are the world leader in the field—ahead of even the US. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development reports that the UK’s creative share of gross value added is 5.8%, compared with France’s 2.8% and the USA’s 3.3%. The export figures confirm the United Kingdom’s strength, but they also show that our competitors are catching up, which should be a cause for concern, yet companies in creative industries are unable to recruit the skilled staff that they require.

Arts Council England says that between 20% and 25% of employers in the UK’s creative industries are unable to recruit the staff they need who have the skills they need. The CBI knows that that is important, and it has urged the Government to push ahead with

“reforms to school ICT and ensure sufficient teacher training courses are in place to successfully roll out the new curriculum and deliver digital skills, alongside art training, that the UK’s creative industries need.”

New technology requires an emphasis on creating knowledge. We need strong academic foundations, but creative leaders need to be able to make products that deliver their ideas. If Britain does not maintain a focus on creativity in schools, we will risk our position as one of the leading creative industrial nations. James Dyson puts it well:

“Creativity is creating something that no one could have devised; something that hasn’t existed before and solves problems that haven’t been solved before. Making something work is a very creative thing to do.”

The previous Government understood that to a significant extent when they established the creative partnerships programme, which brought together artists, inventors and school pupils.

“This Much We Know”, published as a result of that programme, pointed out that educating and involving young people in the arts and culture is not just the mark of a civilised society, as research and experience in this country and abroad show that that benefits the economy and society by increasing employability, raising skill levels, improving motivation, cutting truancy, bringing the worlds of learning and business closer together, tackling social exclusion and helping young people to play a constructive role in their schools and society at large.

Some countries lead the UK in fact-based learning areas, but the UK’s international achievements set it apart from most industrial competitors. We are world leaders in the creative industries. Teaching creativity to our children will always be vital to that national success and to intellectual and industrial growth. The UK averages 19 Nobel prizes for every 10 million of its population. The USA averages 11 prizes per 10 million, and the EU just nine. We are leading the world because we combine excellent scientific education and a tradition of creativity and learning. We have done better than most competitor countries in securing new patents, although we are beginning to slip down the list.

When the Secretary of State for Education announced the Government response to the Henley report in 2012, he said—and I agree—this:

“Learning about our culture and playing an active part in the cultural life of the school and wider communities is as vital to developing our identity and self-esteem as understanding who we are through knowing our history and the origins of our society.”

When children can play such an active part, it makes a difference to what they can achieve.

The other day, I visited Mulberry school for girls, a comprehensive in Tower Hamlets that aims to develop confidence, creativity, leadership and a love of learning in young women. I saw a team from the National Theatre working with the girls in preparation to make a film of a piece they had developed with a National Theatre writer. Not every school can have access to such wonderful input, but every child deserves an opportunity to learn in that way. That is what a national plan for cultural education should guarantee. However, the direction of travel in curriculum reform is towards a narrower model of education.

In December, in response to a question that I asked, the Secretary of State said:

“The arts are mankind’s greatest achievement”,

a point that I support. However, he continued:

“Every child should be able to enjoy and appreciate great literature, music, drama and visual art.”—[Official Report, 3 December 2012; Vol. 554, c. 579.]

I do not believe that watching—not making—is all that a child needs to develop creatively. Learning to enjoy and appreciate is not sufficient; children should have the opportunity to make. The process of making is one of the most important ways to expand children’s thinking.

That is why I want to see a draft and to have a public debate and argument about a national plan for cultural education. If it is a good enough plan, it will challenge profoundly what is happening in much of education today. Ken Robinson, who has made the argument more profoundly than any other thinker, said in a speech in 2012:

“The dominant systems of education are based on three principles—or assumptions, at least—that are exactly opposite to how human lives are actually lived. Apart from that, they’re fine. First, they promote standardization and a narrow view of intelligence, when human talents are diverse and personal. Second, they promote compliance, when cultural progress and achievement depend on the cultivation of imagination and creativity. Third, they are linear and rigid, when the course of each human life, including yours, is organic and largely unpredictable.”

He summed up what I think all of us know: if education does not allow children to develop their creativity and give them a chance to understand and make things, we will continue to slide down the slope of international competitiveness in the creative industries, and we will deny our young people, particularly the most deprived, the wonderful opportunity to become creative, which ought to be given to them as an absolute entitlement within their education.

It has taken too long for a plan to be announced; I hope that the Minister will say that we shall have it immediately. I hope, too, that he can reassure me that it is not merely a “watch and hear” plan, but a “make and do” plan.

16:15

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I congratulate the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) on securing this important debate, and I acknowledge her strong advocacy over a long period for cultural education and the eloquent contribution that she has made to this debate. I am sure that she will agree that children in England—and elsewhere, but in England for the purposes of this debate—can lay claim to a rich cultural heritage. It should be our collective aim to ensure that they all have the chance to take part in it, supported by high-quality and engaging local opportunities that help to ignite the lifelong love of culture that we all want to engender in every young person.

We know that local authorities already provide extensive access to cultural activities through their investment in libraries, museums, galleries, arts centres, archives, public art and so on. Cornwall, for example, has a vibrant arts offering including 150 festivals, 300 private galleries, 10 theatre and dance companies, 72 museums and 1,000 village halls regularly used for cultural activities. There are many other examples across the country. Alongside that, the arm’s-length bodies of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport—the Arts Council England, English Heritage, the Heritage Lottery Fund and the British Film Institute, among many others—invest their grant in aid and national lottery funding in substantial educational activity.

Against that backdrop, we asked Darren Henley to conduct a review of cultural education. I understand the hon. Lady’s impatience and frustration. She has secured a debate a year on, and she wants to see the plan up and running. I am in a position to tell her that that plan will be published very soon indeed, and will set out our ambitious programmes to support the arts and recognise the huge contribution made by many charitable, philanthropic and voluntary organisations, local authorities and other arts and cultural organisations to the fantastic wealth of provision out there.

In the past 12 months, an enormous amount of work has been undertaken. The hon. Lady acknowledged in her contribution that the Government’s commitment was not a shallow one; we have set up new programmes and brokered new partnerships. It is an opportune time to reflect on progress thus far and make clear our expectations for the future. The plan will do so, and will affirm our commitment to ensuring that all pupils have access to a rich and fulfilling cultural education. That commitment is backed by £292 million in funding for cultural educational activity over the three years to 2015.

The plan will highlight the many examples of partnerships and initiatives supported by investment from schools, local authorities, voluntary organisations and bodies such as the Arts Council, and the Government also support a host of programmes designed to strengthen access and the take-up of provision, which will enhance the quality of the local and national cultural education available to schools and help to achieve greater opportunity for young people. I am afraid that the volume of those programmes does not allow me to go through the whole repertoire in the short time available for this debate, so I will draw attention to a core selection, some of which she referred to. Some are aimed at children with a special interest or promise in the arts; some are broader and focus on improving provision for all children.

In his review of cultural education in England, Darren Henley recognised that despite the magnificent talent that we are lucky to have in this country in both contemporary and classical dance, there was no centrally funded national youth dance company, so one has been set up, jointly funded and overseen by the new Arts Council England and managed by Sadler’s Wells Trust Ltd. The first annual company of talented performers aged 16 to 19 has been recruited, and its members are training and performing with the help of world-leading choreographers.

In art and design, together with Arts Council England, we are providing funding to scale up the Sorrell Foundation’s national Saturday art and design clubs. They are free and give young people aged 14 to 16 the opportunity to participate in inspiring classes every Saturday morning, with activities ranging from drawing to sculpture, printmaking, stop-frame animation and so on.

We have formed a unique partnership with the BFI, investing in the innovative BFI film academy, specifically for 16 to 19 year olds, which aims to give a diverse group of young people from all backgrounds the ability to be part of the film industry by providing them with opportunities to develop new skills and to build their career. It builds on the BFI’s existing education scheme for five to 19 year olds. We have the first fully integrated, nationally co-ordinated programme of developing young film talent ever established in the UK.

Since our response last April to Darren Henley’s review of cultural education in England, we have set up a museums and schools programme to increase the level of engagement in 10 regions of low participation. By January this year, more than 4,000 visits had been made as a result of the programme. In music, In Harmony is jointly funded by the Department for Education and the national lottery through Arts Council England. It aims to inspire and transform the lives of children through community-based orchestral music making. We continue to fund two original In Harmony projects in Lambeth and Liverpool, for three years from 2012 to 2015. In May 2012, an expansion of the scheme was agreed for four additional projects in areas of exceptional deprivation.

To celebrate and commemorate our culture and history, we are supporting the heritage schools programme. English Heritage is working with schools to help them to make effective use of their local historical environment and to bring the curriculum to life. Two thousand teachers will participate in training programmes to support their development in 190 schools. Additionally, we are planning a lasting educational legacy in remembrance of one of the most significant events in our history, the first world war. The flagship scheme announced by the Prime Minister at the Imperial War Museum at the end of last year—I was privileged to attend that event—will give thousands of schoolchildren and teachers the opportunity to visit the great war battlefields; pupils will learn first hand about the sacrifices made and the personal stories of those involved, with schools encouraged to establish commemoration projects such as collecting photographs and uncovering local stories.

To support teachers, we are funding a network of teaching school alliances that specialise in the cultural aspects of the curriculum. I am happy to provide the hon. Lady with more details, because I know she has a particular interest in that. The network will play a leading role in developing and disseminating professional development materials and resources for teachers. Those programmes are additional to the music education activity under way following the publication of “The Importance of Music: A National Plan for Music Education” in November 2011. On its publication, we announced funding for a national network of music education hubs, building on the existing music education provision and bringing together partnerships between music services, schools, education and arts organisations. A total of 123 hubs, managed by Arts Council England on our behalf, began work in September 2012 and they are already delivering innovative projects throughout the country, including access for all pupils, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, which is crucial, and they are working to augment and broaden the range of music activities on offer. That is just one example of the new partnerships that we are brokering in cultural education.

Darren Henley’s review concluded that, despite some excellent examples of collaboration between arts organisations and schools, a more systematic approach was necessary to develop a coherent and educationally sound cultural offer for young people. Some schools can be overwhelmed by the provision on offer, while some might struggle to find support that meets their needs. In response to the review’s recommendations, a strategic partnership between Arts Council England, the Heritage Lottery Fund, the British Film Institute and English Heritage has been brokered as the cultural education partnership group. The group is working to ensure that the priorities for cultural education are more than a sum of parts. It has identified three areas in which to test a shared approach, with a greater alignment of group members’ activities and resources: in the city of Bristol, in Barking and Dagenham, and in Great Yarmouth.

To reassure the hon. Lady about a joint ministerial board, a cross-Government group will start next month, with my Department and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on the board, which will be chaired jointly by the Ministers; it will oversee progress in this complex field of activity. It will bring together Ministers from both Departments and include arm’s length body delivery partners and school representatives to support and challenge the development of the national cultural education offer. I am happy to write to her with more details of exactly how the group will operate and about the involvement of the various participants.

We support the Arts Council in extending the reach of its bridge organisations, whose role is to improve the delivery of arts opportunities for children and young people by bringing together schools and cultural organisations. That encourages consistency and coherence across an often complex arts and education landscape, helping young people and local communities to benefit from the wide range of high-quality creative and artistic experience on offer. With additional investment from my Department, bridge organisations will increase engagement with schools, in particular teaching schools, and partnerships, with a wider range of cultural organisations, encompassing the arts, museums, libraries, film centres and heritage sites.

Schools clearly have an essential role to play in introducing cultural experiences to their students as part of a broad and rich curriculum. The most successful schools put culture at the heart of their curriculum. Our aim is to enable all schools to match the achievement of the best. The new national curriculum has set out the essential knowledge that all children and young people should know between the ages of five and 16. As the hon. Lady knows, we have completed the consultation, and I am sure that she made her views known. It will ensure that all pupils have the chance to read books, sing, make music, film or animation, dance, draw, design and perform, and be given opportunities to attend art galleries, museums, cultural and world cinema, theatre and concert performances. Creativity is not an optional add-on but is fundamental to our whole approach to education. If we provide teachers with the freedom to innovate and design their own curriculum, rather than being over-prescriptive, schools will be able to provide a rich and creative experience for their pupils.

The hon. Lady has emphasised on the Floor of the House and elsewhere that she wishes to ensure clear accountability for schools on how they are delivering the creative element of their education through the measures to be put in place. According to recent announcements by the Secretary of State, the new accountability measures, on which we will be consulting, are to be broadened in range; the hon. Lady welcomed that and, I think, was slightly surprised at the time that she had been so successful in persuading the Secretary of State of the right approach. Those arts subjects and creative areas of education will form part of the accountability measures that schools will have to take into consideration when deciding on what to do to provide a rich and broad curriculum.

GCSEs will be comprehensively reformed, with more challenging subject content and more rigorous assessment structures. The changes will initially apply to subjects such as English language and literature, and changes to other subjects including cultural ones will follow as soon as possible. The aim is for the new qualifications to be in place for teaching from September 2016. Increasing numbers of pupils have chosen to study vocational arts, and we have already taken steps to improve vocational qualifications. Following the Wolf review, we have ensured proper assessment and tighter quality controls on vocational courses. We have recognised, too, concerns about the EBacc and, specifically, whether the accountability system includes the right incentives to encourage and recognise achievement in arts subjects. I hope that some of the movement in recent weeks has reassured the hon. Lady that we are not trying to remove the importance of a rich cultural curriculum; in many respects, we are trying to enhance it.

We are looking at how we can improve the way in which secondary schools are held accountable, and we are consulting on proposals. The proposed changes will mean a more balanced and meaningful accountability system that includes a progress measure based on eight qualifications, as opposed to the qualifications within the EBacc. That will enable arts subjects to receive full recognition in secondary school accountability, encouraging a broad and balanced curriculum at key stage 4. The cultural education plan will reflect those developments in accountability, qualifications and the new national curriculum, and that is one reason why we have taken time over it; we should see the plan very soon.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

If the reduction in the offer of arts and creative subjects reported in the MORI survey I referred to continues, what will the Minister do about it?

[Mr Timpson]

As the hon. Lady knows, that reduction goes back over a four-year period and it is not a new problem. It needs to be looked at in the context of the increase in the vocational take-up. We need to look at that in the round and consider whether we are providing the best possible offer in every educational and vocational setting available. I am happy to convey her concerns to the Minister responsible for seeing this through as the programme develops and the plan comes online to ensure that they are taken into consideration. Clearly, we are in the early stages of any new accountability measures, but they will be a helpful way of monitoring how schools are performing in fulfilling a curriculum that takes cultural education as seriously as we all want it to be. I look forward to the hon. Lady seeing the plan very soon, and I hope that she will be satisfied that it does what she wants it to do.

Energy Generation

Wednesday 17th April 2013 Westminster Hall

16:30

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

It is a pleasure, Mr Howarth, to perform under your chairmanship for the first time. I understand that the debate in the House is winding down to a possible vote. I am well aware that this debate, which I am delighted to have secured, has attracted a lot of support across all parties. There is tremendous interest in the matter. The Energy Bill will return to the House for debate, and my concern is whether we will have sufficient opportunity to discuss the matter then. This debate is not so much an early skirmish, but an opportunity to ensure that we begin the process of opening a parliamentary dialogue on a matter that is clearly vital as we take forward an excellent Bill, on which I congratulate the Government. It includes some significant stepping stones in setting out a clear agenda for energy generation in this country to achieve energy security. I am sure many hon. Members will want to contribute to this debate on decarbonisation and lowering carbon emissions from this country’s energy sources.

The debate is timely, today of all days, partly because of last night’s vote in the European Parliament on the European trading scheme. I would be interested in the Minister’s comments on whether he believes that that enhances or makes it more difficult to advance the case for a decarbonisation agenda in the UK. I would argue that it makes it even more urgent for the UK to ensure that we press the agenda firmly.

The debate is also timely because of a matter partly related to the way in which we do business in the House. Yesterday, I was significantly frustrated that we were unable to debate or divide the House on the Government’s proposed abolition, which is shortly to be enacted, of the Agricultural Wages Board. We will have further debates on the Energy Bill and the failure to debate abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board may be an example of how, despite the issue being deeply significant to many hon. Members, including me, we were unable to debate the matter. There was no mechanism by which to divide the House to establish what support exists for that abolition, which was introduced in another place. That worries me, and to ensure that today is not our only opportunity to debate the decarbonisation agenda, will the Minister ensure that when the Energy Bill returns to the House there will be protected time in the Chamber for a proper debate and votes? That is important.

I congratulate the Government, the Minister and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change on their significant progress in advancing the case. My intention today is primarily to advance the economic case for green jobs and investment as the fundamental justification and raison d’être for advancing as quickly as possible a decarbonisation agenda in the UK. If we are to corner a growing global market, we must lead the way and ensure that future investment in the manufacture and production of green and decarbonised energy generation. The UK needs to be at the forefront.

The pinch point in the debate on decarbonisation and the setting of targets is that the industry looks in the long term against a political cycle that, by its very nature, is relatively short term—often five years at the most. I congratulate the Government on rightly looking at this vital agenda decades ahead, but the worry is that the political agenda might drive the basis on which decarbonisation targets are met.

[Mike Weatherley (Hove) (Con)]

The aim of a decarbonisation target is laudable, but does my hon. Friend agree that we should not rush forward with increased proposals for the nuclear option, which might be seen to be an easy option in the long term?

[Andrew George]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Indeed, I have raised the issue on the Floor of the House with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that, in advancing this policy, we should stick to the Government’s stated aim of ensuring no public subsidy for nuclear power. Hon. Members know that the Liberal Democrats have made it clear that their stated policy is to oppose nuclear power, but in coalition compromises and concessions must often be made. The concession on nuclear power, which is shared by both coalition parties, is that it is vital to ensure that no back-door public subsidy underwrites the future costs of nuclear power.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Hove (Mike Weatherley), with whom I do not often agree, but on nuclear, I certainly do.

Does the hon. Member for St Ives agree that, although there seems to be widespread consensus, one of the fastest, cheapest and most effective ways to reduce our emissions is through energy efficiency and conservation and that we are still not putting enough into that? There is a lot of talk about energy sources, but not enough about demand reduction and energy efficiency. Does he also agree that one way to put in more resources would be to ring-fence the taxes from, for example, a new carbon floor price or the EU emissions trading system and to invest that money in energy efficiency?

[Andrew George]

The hon. Lady makes an excellent point. This debate is primarily about the decarbonisation of energy supply; conservation and reducing energy demand is a separate debate. To be fair, the Government have established a strong case through the green deal and the establishment of the green investment bank, which will support many measures to address energy conservation. The hon. Lady makes an excellent point, but this debate is about energy generation and supply, and I do not want it to stray too far.

It is worth reminding ourselves that the Government have made a commitment to be the greenest Government ever, which does not set the bar very high. However, beyond that, as they said in the coalition agreement, they believe

“that climate change is one of the gravest threats we face”

and that

“We need to use a wide range of levers to cut carbon emissions, decarbonise the economy and support the creation of new green jobs and technologies. We will implement a full programme of measures to fulfil our joint ambitions for a low carbon and eco-friendly economy.”

The coalition agreement then sets out how the Government intend to do so, but I will not have time to go through that.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman share my frustration that it is three years since the coalition came to power, and to drive the agenda forward, we need things such as targets to create the impetus for some of the measures to be put in place and to create a situation where investors have confidence? At the moment, so much is uncertain about the future of Government energy policy. We have the Treasury driving fracking forward, a lack of targets and the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change criticising the general thrust of energy policy that is being imposed on him by the Treasury. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that certainty is important and that decarbonisation targets are an essential part of that?

[Andrew George]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. In fact, that is the nub of the debate. It has taken me 10 minutes to get to that point—perhaps I will get to it now—but it is fundamental to this debate. Investors are clear in the messages that they are sending out at present. This is not purely a green campaigning issue for non-governmental organisations. It is an area in which very substantial pension funds and other investors are looking to invest. Looking forward decades, they want certainty and confidence, and they see this as a sector where they believe that certainty can be demonstrated with a target set sooner rather than later. Not only has this part of the economy performed by generating a large number of jobs and significant growth—far higher growth than in almost all other sectors of the British economy—but it is an area in which significant investors in the British economy want investment to take place.

[Mr Tim Yeo (South Suffolk) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate, and I add my strong support for the intervention made by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). On the point that the hon. Gentleman just mentioned, one of the most significant factors is that the need for a focus on reducing the carbon intensity of electricity generation is supported not only by what one might call the usual suspects from the green world, but very strongly by the business world, including a large number of industries that have no direct interest in the issue whatever. That concern is perhaps reinforced by last night’s vote in the European Parliament, which is clearly a setback for achieving more effectiveness in the EU emissions trading system.

[Mr George Howarth (in the Chair)]

Before the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George)resumes, I realise that there is a very strong temptation in such a debate, where a lot of people wish to get in, to make an intervention, but hon. Members need to be reminded that interventions must be short and not mini-speeches.

[Andrew George]

I am grateful for your guidance on that, Mr Howarth, and I am particularly grateful to the Chairman of the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change, my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (Mr Yeo), for his telling intervention. As he rightly said, this is an issue of hard-headed financial decision-making and not one that is driven purely by eco-warriors. This matter is all about ensuring that we have a strong economy, and in terms of the hundreds of thousands of jobs that will be created through the green economy, Britain must lead the world. It has an opportunity now, but that opportunity will not exist for many years, and if we miss it, we may be dragged behind other places. We will be importing their technologies into this country, and the cost to the economy will be very significant. My hon. Friend is engaged in an excellent campaign on that issue, and I congratulate him for his contribution.

I have written to the Secretary of State, as I know many others have in recent months as the debate has developed. He kindly responded to me this week, saying that he agrees that

“a decarbonisation target for the electricity sector could increase certainty for investors in large and long term low carbon energy projects like renewables, new nuclear and Carbon Capture and Storage. That is why, last year, I worked for and achieved Government agreement to set a 2030 decarbonisation target range”—

16:44

Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.

[Mr James Gray in the Chair]

16:59

On resuming—

[Andrew George]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I was reading from a letter that I received from the Secretary of State this week in which he also justifies the option of setting a target in 2016. He refers to the other decisions that the Government need to make. I am sure that the Minister will outline those in a moment, so I shall not take up time describing them. The Secretary of State says that

“a target would not be set in isolation but in the context of considering the pathway of the whole economy towards our 2050 target, and making sure we do that in a way that minimises costs both to the economy as a whole and to bill payers.”

The problem with that is that the bulk of industry interested in energy generation and the bulk of investors interested in the future of the energy generation economy do not take the same view. I, of course, have tremendous respect for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State; he acknowledges that it is Liberal Democrat policy to set a decarbonisation target now, rather than in 2016. That target has to be the result of a compromise, and as in any coalition Government in the world, between two coalition parties, we sometimes do not get the outcome that we desire. That is why a large number of interested companies have written to the Chancellor, rather than the Secretary of State, to move the agenda forward, which indicates the target at which the debate needs to be directed.

[Mr Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that one reason why companies are doing so is that they are looking now at investments into the 2020s? They want to be sure that past 2016 there will be a target and that their investment will be secure.

[Andrew George]

Absolutely. We are talking about multi-billion-pound investors who, as the hon. Gentleman rightly says, are looking decades ahead.

The UK green economy has continued to grow, even while broader economic activity remains relatively subdued. The CBI has demonstrated that more than one third of UK economic growth last year is likely to have come from green businesses. Renewable and low-carbon energy businesses are the segment of the green economy with the most stake in the 2013 decarbonisation target. Cumulatively, they generate more than £98 billion in sales and employ more than 735,000 people—more jobs than the entire UK automotive and telecoms sectors combined.

Figures from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills demonstrate an average growth rate of 6% each year for that portion of the economy, which equates to some £7 billion of additional sales for UK plc or 6,000 new jobs each year, based on today’s figures. That growth is now placed at risk by a lack of investor certainty and confidence, which a 2030 decarbonisation target would certainly remedy and remove. Setting the target sooner, rather than later, would provide the certainty and confidence that such investors require.

I have an inkling that I am preaching to the converted, including the Minister, who has to follow the Government’s policies as a whole. The fact is that the decision has to be made across the Government as a whole. People are looking at the challenges as we go forward, and I know that he is seized of the issue. The green economy is a significant source of growth in UK plc and it needs confidence and certainty going forward. The letter of 8 October 2012 to the Chancellor from 52 leading businesses in the sector sets out a strong case. They sought a meeting with Ministers, which they have not yet secured. They say:

“Failure to act at sufficient scale and pace will undermine our prosperity; and cause us to miss out on the huge commercial opportunities associated with the global shift to a low carbon, resource efficient economy.”

Although the Energy Bill makes significant advances, for which the Government should be congratulated, the difficult compromise that they have come to needs to be teased out and debated further than we have been able to so far. I do not know how we will do it, but we should have a debate with the Department of Energy and Climate Change that includes the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Treasury. When we debate the Bill in the Commons in the coming weeks, it will be a pity that we will not have the opportunity for a full debate with all the Departments on which it will have an impact. I hope the Minister will address my earlier question on the impact of last night’s vote.

I shall add a couple of words on an exciting source of energy generation in my constituency and plug the west Cornwall wave hub, which I raised with the Minister in questions in the House on 14 March, when he gave me an encouraging response. He went to RenewableUK’s annual wave and tidal conference in February, where he told the industry:

“Now is the time for bold next steps—moving from individual projects to large-scale arrays.”

That is vital. I welcome that the Government are supporting the wave hub. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is clearly taking a significant role in the future management of the project, which has been handed on from the South West of England Regional Development Agency. It is difficult to scale up to a commercial level from the prototype machines at the demonstration project in Orkney. The Government need to provide the wave hub project with more certainty and address some of the long-term investment issues, some of which feed and bleed into the decarbonisation agenda. I hope that the Minister will visit the wave hub, talk to those involved and address the funding gap, which still exists, to bring the wave devices on to the site.

[Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)]

How does my hon. Friend respond to the statements that, in the 2050 target, the UK has the toughest legally binding emission reduction target in the world and that no other nation on the planet has a 2030 decarbonisation target?

[Andrew George]

The UK is setting the standard for the rest of the world, and the rest of the world will move in that direction in due course. It is important that there is cross-party agreement that we want to be the greenest Government ever, which is I think part of the coalition agreement that my hon. Friend signed up to. We also want to ensure that the decarbonisation targets that we set will put the UK economy at the forefront of green jobs and investment.

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)]

Just for the record, being the greenest Government ever is not part of the coalition agreement, but the personal pledge of the Prime Minister.

[Andrew George]

I am grateful to the Minister for that clarification. It is true; I looked through the coalition agreement and could not find a reference to the slogan. Nevertheless, it is a commitment of the Prime Minister on behalf of the Government that everyone who supports the Government is aware of and supports.

I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) is not here. He strongly supports the west Cornwall wave hub, which makes landfall in Hayle, a former part of my constituency. I hope that Ministers will come to look at the project and give it the additional support that it needs in terms of wave energy and floating offshore wind energy.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andrew George]

I am afraid that I will not give way, because I am coming to a close. The primary issue is that when the Energy Bill returns to the Floor of the House, I hope that the Minister will give us an opportunity to reflect properly on the economic case for the early setting of a decarbonisation target.

17:10

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George). I congratulate him on securing the debate, and even more on being absolutely true to his principles and honouring the pledge that he and a number of his colleagues made more than a year ago. It is absolutely right that he has raised the matter in this forum, where we can take some time to develop the arguments, because, as he suggests, during consideration on Report of the Energy Bill in the main Chamber it will perhaps be more difficult to go into the same detail and depth. I am, therefore, very grateful to him for introducing the debate in this way.

I pay tribute to the Government—and to the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change for his interlocutions and iterations with the Treasury—for their commitment of £7.6 billion under the levy control framework up to 2020. That is a significant achievement, which will be important for low-carbon generation in this country. It is £7.6 billion from people’s energy bills to pay for new low-carbon energy generation that will increase energy security, reduce the cost of energy bills in the long term and ensure that we meet our moral and legal obligations to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. So far, so good; I am with the Minister and with the Government.

Industry has welcomed the commitment, but has also clearly said that it is not enough. The £7.6 billion is security for only seven years. In the words of DONG energy,

“it is a case of having a cliff edge at the moment; 2020 is a big milestone”––[Official Report, Energy Public Bill Committee, 15 January 2013; c. 58, Q175.]

Andrew Buglass from the Royal Bank of Scotland told the Energy Bill Committee that the cliff edge is making it very difficult for supply chain investors to invest in the UK. Overcoming the insecurity created by the 2020 cliff edge does not require more public money, or even the promise of more money; it requires coherence, in the form of a 2030 target that proves to industry that the demand for low-carbon energy will continue to rise beyond 2020. The shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex), quoted Mr Buglass in a sitting of the Energy Bill Committee, saying that

“a 2030 target ‘is absolutely critical from the conversations I have with potential supply-chain investors because they quite rightly point out that it is very difficult for them to take investment to their board if they really only have visibility on three or four years-worth of work.’”––[Official Report, Energy Public Bill Committee, 7 February 2013; c. 570.]

It is clear that what we are facing in 2020 is a cliff edge—a milestone—and the Government, without necessarily committing considerable excess funding at this stage, somehow have to be able to give a signal to industry and investors that this is the direction of travel the Government are taking and that they can confidently lay down their investments in the knowledge that they will get a clear return.

[David Mowat]

I am listening carefully to the logic flow of the hon. Gentleman’s position. What puzzles me a little is that Germany has four times as many renewables as the UK, in spite of its much higher carbon emissions per capita and per unit of GDP. It would be a step in the right direction if we emulated Germany. Germany does not, however, have a target—how did that happen?

[Barry Gardiner]

If the hon. Gentleman reads the record of the written evidence that was given to the Energy Bill Committee, he will see that no less a figure than David Kennedy, chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change, which independently advises the Government, said that the context in Germany is different. A low-carbon trajectory has already been established there, precisely for the reasons the hon. Gentleman suggests—four times as many renewables are already in place. People in Germany are not in doubt about what their Government are going to do or about the direction of travel.

[David Mowat]

We often take Germany as an example of best in class in such matters, so it is right to make absolutely sure that on the record we have the point that Germany’s carbon emissions are 20% higher per head and 23% higher per unit of GDP than the UK’s, principally because of the amount of coal burnt, which makes the renewables activity irrelevant. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his answer.

[Barry Gardiner]

I am happy to allow the hon. Gentleman to get what he wishes on the record. He is at perfect liberty to make his own remarks later, and I trust he will do so, but I point out that Germany, by going away from nuclear generation, will see a significant rise in emissions—not only there, but in neighbouring countries. Germany has been a net exporter of low-carbon electricity to its neighbours, and that also is going and will create substantial problems for Europe as a whole in meeting its emissions reduction targets. It will also present severe problems for Europe’s response to the challenge of global warming. Ultimately, I think Germany will move through that transition, away from coal.

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

Does the hon. Gentleman not think that the exchange we are having demonstrates the fallacy of counting carbon on a production basis? Germany is a heavy exporter of manufactured goods—cars, for example. Whose carbon is it? Is it Germany’s, or that of the person who buys the car?

[Barry Gardiner]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very interesting and worthwhile point, which I perfectly understand. I am sure that if I go into consumption emissions versus production emissions, you will call me to order from the Chair, Mr Gray, but we must not pat ourselves on the back for seeing our own production emissions drop if we are still driving the very consumption model that generates the emissions elsewhere around the globe.

The Committee on Climate Change estimates that in the absence of a 2030 target, offshore wind might cost as much as £140 per megawatt-hour. With such a target, the cost, under the committee’s scenario, drops to £100. The difference between the two costs is about the presence of a competitive supply chain in the UK. We do not have one, but what we do have is at risk.

Let us remember that the Government’s proposals are not that we should set a target in 2016, but that we may not set one until at least that date. Those are two very different propositions.

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

Would my hon. Friend also care to include the provision that not only can the Government not set a target before 2016, but that there is no level at which the target might be set after 2016?

[Barry Gardiner]

My hon. Friend is, as ever, thoroughly astute on these matters. He was a tremendous champion of the decarbonisation target when the Bill was in Committee, and he speaks with great knowledge on the subject. He is absolutely right. Only last night at a dinner, I heard the Secretary of State talking as if this was a great leap forward, that this would be the only Government who had legislated for a decarbonisation target. At that point I almost spluttered into my chicken, because we have not legislated for a decarbonisation target. [Interruption.] And it was beef anyway, says my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead). What we have done is make provision so that, at the appropriate moment, it would not be impossible to legislate.

Let me return to the key point that I wish to address, because I know that other Members want to enter the debate. Although it is good to have a debate and a real exchange of views through interventions, I fear that I must press on if other Members are to be able to speak. Siemens told us that if we wait till 2016 to set a decarbonisation target for 2030, it and many of its competitors are likely to delay or cancel planned investments in the UK.

In March, six of the largest supply chain investors wrote to the Chancellor, the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change to register their strong support for the decarbonisation amendment tabled by the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr Yeo) and me, which to date is supported by 41 Members from—I am pleased to say—all parties in the House. They wrote:

“Projects can take 4-6 years from investment decision to construction and operation. We are already close to the point where lack of a post-2020 market driver will seriously undermine project pipelines. Supply chain investment decisions depend on reasonable assurance for manufacturers that a production facility to be constructed during this decade, costing hundreds of millions of pounds, will have an adequate market for its products well into the 2020s.

Postponing the 2030 target decision until 2016 creates entirely avoidable political risk. This will slow growth in the low carbon sector, handicap the UK supply chain, reduce UK R&D and produce fewer new jobs. This is not in keeping with the Government’s aspirations for the UK to be the global leader in low carbon technologies such as offshore wind and marine.”

The amendment would require a 2030 decarbonisation target for the energy sector to be set by the Secretary of State, on the advice of the Committee on Climate Change, by next spring, which would ensure that the Energy Bill sent a coherent signal to investors. By securing investment in a competitive UK supply chain, the amendment would not only reduce the cost of decarbonising our energy infrastructure, but ensure that the investments that we are committed to make produced a significant growth multiplier and contributed to the essential rebalancing of the British economy.

Recent peer-reviewed studies from the London School of Economics and Berkeley have concluded that the fiscal multiplier for productive infrastructure investment in current economic conditions is likely to be about 2.5 in the UK. The amendment would ensure that the £7.6 billion produced secure investable propositions, creating significant numbers of construction jobs and long-term high-value jobs in communities around the UK, where both are scarce.

[Caroline Lucas]

I of course completely support the hon. Gentleman’s amendment, which he is understandably justifying in terms of economics and, no doubt, political expedients. Will he, however, acknowledge that we should set the targets in line with the science, rather than with what we think is politically possible, because the target of decarbonisation by 2030 gives us only a 37% chance of remaining below 2°, and if someone said that we had only a 37% chance of not falling out of the air, I suspect that we would not get on an aeroplane? The odds are very scary.

[Barry Gardiner]

I am not a gambling man, but I understand the position of seeking to look at climate change policy as a balance of risks, and the hon. Lady is absolutely right to make that point. In truth, whatever the UK does will not make a global difference to whether we reach 2°, as I am sure she would acknowledge. The aspiration required of the UK and the global leadership that it possesses, which the hon. Member for St Ives mentioned, mean that we have to drive this if we are to play our part in achieving the global reduction. I understand the percentage figures she gave, but it is perhaps illegitimate to conclude that if we hit the 2030 target we will have only a 36% chance of achieving the 2° target. The UK cannot achieve that on its own; it demands a similar effort across the globe.

Part of the problem is that, in considering electricity market reform, the Government have been like a phlebotomist looking at the body politic. They have been obsessed with the energy flow around the system, as a phlebotomist is obsessed with the blood flow around the body, but they have failed to consider the health of the whole organism. That makes for a very poor doctor; we would not want a GP who was simply a phlebotomist.

The Government’s approach has not taken enough cognisance of how the energy sector fits in with powering our economy as a whole. A good example is the ramping down of funds available for carbon capture and storage. Coal and CCS will be vital for us. There will be significant jobs, and if we invest in and develop CCS, it will become a major part of our exports in skills and technology around the world, from which we can benefit. It is part of our wider economy, and the same is true of the renewables industry the more we invest in it and adopt the position, as the hon. Gentleman said, of being the global leader.

I am afraid that we have already lost that position, because other countries have invested far more, including what we are prepared to do in CCS. Unless we invest, we will not develop the export capacity that we need to drive our economy as a whole. We cannot simply be what Gary Smith of the GMB often refers to as the Meccano men of Europe, who simply fit together a product made elsewhere. We must have supply chains in the UK, create the jobs and invest in companies here.

[Gregory Barker]

I am sorry to intervene, but I will be pressed for time when I am winding up. The hon. Gentleman has forgotten that the Chancellor announced in the Budget the two preferred bidders for the detailed planning and design stage of our CCS competition, including the CCS project in Peterhead that was canned under the Labour Government—two projects, real progress.

[Barry Gardiner]

I do not dispute what the Minister says about the two projects that are on line, but I do not think that he will dispute what I have said about the reduction in funds available for CCS.

If we build a competitive supply chain fast enough, we can expect significant investment in the UK almost immediately, which will mean that British companies are well placed to export to a renewable energy market that the International Energy Agency predicts will be worth at least $6.4 trillion by 2035. If we do not lay the foundations for a competitive supply chain, we will see the cost of decarbonisation rise, along with our trade deficit, as we hand over the growth benefits from public investment to countries that have already taken steps to remove the policy risk from low-carbon infrastructure investment. Businesses are calling for demand security beyond 2020, which the Energy Bill could provide at no cost.

The Committee on Climate Change is the body trusted by the industry to set the right target. The Minister will know only too well the letter written by the newly appointed chair of the CCC to the Secretary of State on 25 February. He described how the Government’s plans entail a

“high degree of uncertainty about sector development beyond 2020. This will adversely impact on supply chain investment decisions and project development, undermining implementation of the Bill and raising costs for consumers.”

He went further, however, and referred to

“the need to resolve uncertainties about the direction of travel for power system development”,

specifically the “dash for gas” and the danger that it presents to low-carbon generation. I trust that the Minister will reconsider the proposals on the decarbonisation target in the Department and that we may yet see some progress.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. I intend to call the Front-Bench speakers at five minutes to 6 o’clock. There are five or six Members of Parliament who are trying to catch my eye, so, as a matter of courtesy, perhaps we could keep our remarks reasonably brief.

17:30

[Mr Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)]

I am pleased to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, and to make a short contribution to this debate.

In introducing the debate, the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) said that he was concerned that there might not be enough time to discuss this matter when the Energy Bill returns to the House on Report. One of the problems that many of us who served on the Bill Committee faced was the lack of detail in many areas. We were promised the delivery document in May, and that document might contain a great deal of information. I suspect that there will be pressure to debate many issues on Report, which makes it even more important that we discuss decarbonisation now.

As has rightly been said, the Government made late amendments to the Bill on the decarbonisation target. However, they did not require it to be set, or to be set in 2016, which, according to the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), is the earliest date it can be set. They did not even say that it should be available for 2030, which is merely the earliest date to which it should apply. In essence, there is no provision for a decarbonisation target in the Bill. Even more worryingly, when the Bill was published, the Government announced their gas strategy, which clearly envisaged a substantial number of new gas generation stations. It seems to me that the emissions performance standard in the Bill would allow for the building of new unabated gas stations, even though Ofgem has warned that bills could rise substantially until 2016 should we have a heavy reliance on gas. There could also be a reduction in energy security, so we might have to rely increasingly on imported gas.

The current carbon budget might have to be amended—not downwards but upwards—to allow for the greater emissions that are to be created. Certainly, the Committee on Climate Change has been a strong proponent of the need for a decarbonisation target and is concerned about that very issue. As the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) rightly said, the main reason for a decarbonisation target is to reduce carbon emissions; we must do that if we are going to have any chance of keeping within 2°, as she said. The Committee on Climate Change has made it clear that decarbonising power is the cheapest way of meeting our overall carbon budget. It is important that we give a clear and unequivocal message that we must continue with decarbonisation. It is remarkable that those who are calling for the target include not only those who campaign on climate change but a wide range of industries, which wish to maintain progress on climate change not for political reasons but for hard-headed business reasons. They want to be sure of the future before making very substantial investments in new green energy, and they are looking at investments into the 2020s. Long lead-in periods are involved, and decisions taken now are for massive investments that will not come on stream for many years. They need to be sure that those investments are worth while. There are mixed signals from the Government, which makes business nervous that there will not be the same commitment to renewable energy in future.

[Dan Byles]

Will the hon. Gentleman tell us exactly what mixed signals have come from the Government? We have the toughest carbon emission reductions enshrined in law in the world.

[Mr Weir]

I have just explained the mixed signals through the carbon targets, the gas strategy and the failure to set a decarbonisation target. The hon. Gentleman has argued, as Ministers did in Committee, that we have a 2050 target, which no other country has but, as the hon. Member for Brent North rightly pointed out, there is a difference from the past. There is a strong movement towards renewable energy production in Germany and especially in Denmark, which is heavily into wind. In fact, Denmark took over leadership of the wind energy industry from the UK in the 1970s, and has invested heavily in it. It is much more advanced and is clearly going down the renewable route. Professor Mitchell from Exeter university said in our evidence session:

“If you look at what has been going on just in terms of the EMR over the last two years, we have a lobby full of nuclear industry, strong movements for renewables and now a gas strategy coming out of the Treasury. It is an incredibly uncertain world for those who wish to invest, going into the long term.”––[Official Report, Energy Public Bill Committee, 15 January 2013; c. 72, Q217.]

That is the message that industry is getting. Siemens appeared before the Committee, as did Gamesa, which has said publicly that it is concerned about the matter and fears that it might affect future investment.

The Government need to make it clear that they intend to proceed with the decarbonisation of energy, as those mixed messages are causing concern. If we are to have green energy for the future, it is crucial that a supply chain is established to help us reap the economic benefits and jobs that come with it. We must not end up, as we have in the past, importing kit—turbines and whatever else—to ensure that we can meet the energy challenges.

[David Mowat]

I have not been in the Chamber from the outset, but the hon. Gentleman was the first to use the word “nuclear” in the debate. France has some of the lowest carbon emissions in Europe. Would he support an expansion of our civil nuclear programme so that we can be like France and have much lower emissions than the average in Europe?

[Mr Weir]

The hon. Gentleman obviously was not here at the beginning of the debate, because we had quite a big discussion about nuclear. He knows perfectly well that I do not support nuclear power, but that is an entirely different argument, which I will not get into at this stage, Mr Gray, as I am sure that you would rule me out of order. I will just say in passing that negotiations with EDF over Hinkley and the costs of nuclear have raised huge concerns about its affordability—never mind the other concerns that have been raised over nuclear. We have been promised details on that matter, which we will hopefully receive before we discuss the Bill on Report. Certainly, some of the things that are being reported at the moment give us huge cause for concern.

I was saying that during our debates on the Energy Bill, Ministers made the point that other countries did not have decarbonisation targets, but those countries are further ahead in creating that supply chain, which is something that we are trying to do almost from scratch. In an evidence session, David Handley of Renewable Energy Systems said:

“The value of a 2030 decarbonisation target, as we heard earlier, is in providing that greater signal to the supply chain, to the entrepreneurs who are looking to invest in new businesses and to the people who are developing projects that there is going to be this long-term market for the products that they are delivering.”—[Official Report, Energy Public Bill Committee, 15 January 2013; c. 57, Q168.]

That point was also made by DONG Energy. As the hon. Member for Brent North said, it saw 2020 as a cliff edge for investment. Given the long-term commitment required, that is a serious drawback.

Offshore wind has, I believe, a strong and vibrant future. There are plans to install up to 10 GW of capacity in Scottish waters over the next decade, including three projects off the coast of Angus in my constituency. They promise not only employment in renewables but a boost for the port of Montrose, which has good prospects for supplying and maintaining wind farms in the future.

Many more sites are being looked at for deployment in the 2020s, alongside commercial wave and tidal generation. We must ensure that we send a clear and unambiguous message that we want those developments and will continue to push the decarbonisation of our energy sector. If we fail to do so, we will not reap the economic benefits that are available in the sector. As the hon. Member for St Ives noted, much of the growth at the moment, although low, is coming from green industry. If we fail in this area, we will limit even further our prospects for growth in future.

17:39

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) on securing this debate and on bringing this important matter to Westminster Hall for our consideration at a very important time. I will keep strictly to my allotted time scale, Mr Gray, because I realise that other Members wish to contribute, I shall try to ensure that they can do so.

I recognise the importance of this critical debate and I want to try, if I can, to give the Northern Ireland perspective. At the same time, I want to put down a marker by offering some suggestions to which I hope the Minister can respond. Only last week, I had a meeting with local people in Portavogie, one of the villages in my constituency, and we discussed flooding issues. The guys from Northern Ireland Water were there and they told us that, as far as they were concerned, although people used to refer to “one in 50 years” or “one in 100 years” flooding—that was the way that people looked at it—flooding would be a regular occurrence for the next five to 10 years. Gone are the days of “one in 50 years” or “one in 100 years” flooding; floods will perhaps be an occurrence every week. I make that point because it is the reason why this debate is important—there is a change in world conditions and it is very clear how it will impact on us.

There is also the issue of cheap coal. The United States is putting a lot of cheap coal on the market, which power stations in the United Kingdom have used. However, by doing so over a period of time, power stations have increased the emissions that they produce. All those things underline the importance of this debate and the need for the decarbonisation of energy generation.

I will make a couple of quick points about wind farms. I also want to put down a marker, because while everyone is committed to green energy—ask anybody in the street or in a constituency and they will say that they are committed to green energy—when it comes to cost they sometimes draw back or have a question mark about it. We have to achieve a balance that can work for everyone. Wind farms on land can create energy, which is important, but what they can also do—if they are not sited in the correct way—is have an impact on people living near them, both visually and by creating noise. Wind farms need to be situated in the right location; perhaps the Minister can discuss that in relation to planning matters.

Wind farms have the potential to do great things, but at the same time they can be contentious. There are plans for an offshore wind farm off the coast of South Down in Northern Ireland in prime prawn and fishing areas, which will affect what fishermen can do at a time when they need to fish. The fishing industry is under pressure. The past six months have been critical for fishermen and fishing fleets in Northern Ireland. They have made no money in the past six months.

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Also well beyond the terms of our debate.

[Jim Shannon]

Absolutely—I accept that, Mr Gray. I just wanted to put a marker down about fishing.

There are alternatives that will allow us to reduce carbonisation. Willow mass is an alternative that farmers have been encouraged to consider. It is a method whereby they can reduce carbon while at the same time achieving an income. I will put down a quick marker on anaerobic digester systems. Germany has 2,500 of them, yet in the United Kingdom we have only 23. They are another alternative that allows us to reduce carbonisation.

Several hon. Members have referred to nuclear power and to the concerns expressed by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). As far as a great many people in my party and I are concerned, nuclear power is the key factor in reducing emissions to ensure that targets are met. We believe that the new generation of UK nuclear plants, beginning with Hinkley, are welcome news. What we need is an overall strategy that delivers; one that is not contentious and that does not create division; and one that has achievable targets, with everyone committed to achieving the right balance. With those comments, Mr Gray, I have finished.

17:43

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) on securing this debate.

When we served on the Joint Committee on the draft Climate Change Bill, we heard from manufacturers how much they wanted certainty. They said, “Well, whatever you decide, whatever you do, certainty is what we want. We want to have that message. We want to know exactly what we are doing.”

The decarbonisation of the power sector is vital, not only in its own right but as a contribution to decarbonisation in other sectors, such as transport, industry and buildings. If we delay setting decarbonisation targets, that will lead to an increased reliance on gas. We can all understand why we had North sea gas and why we then imported gas to take over from North sea gas, but can anybody understand why a country would wish to rely so much on imported gas now? First, importing gas contributes to greenhouse gases and the speeding-up of climate change, but secondly, following the oil crisis in the ’70s, surely we must understand the volatility of oil prices and, linked to them, gas prices. In addition, there is increased world demand and the volatility of some nations that supply gas to us. Furthermore, the versatility of gas means that when we do have it there are things that we should be using it for, such as piping it directly to industry or homes.

As for shale gas, it is highly controversial in a densely populated country such as our own, and costs will certainly escalate before it can be extracted, not to mention the carbon footprint that its extraction will leave behind. However, tacitly encouraging—

[David Mowat]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Nia Griffith]

No, the hon. Gentleman has had many chances to talk; I will give way only to someone who has not yet had a turn.

Tacitly encouraging more reliance on imported gas looks even more bizarre when we have huge potential here for renewables, particularly—

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Nia Griffith]

Indeed, I will.

[Mark Reckless]

Gas prices are linked to oil, but we have seen in the United States that the success of shale gas has detached gas prices from oil, and gas prices are now much lower. In addition, that has helped the US to reduce its carbon emissions.

[Nia Griffith]

Mr Gray, I will not digress to discuss that matter, as we want to keep—fairly strictly—to the matter of decarbonisation targets, and it is absolutely vital that we get those targets now. That is because the Government’s position is that no targets will be set until 2016 at the earliest, with no guarantee then as to what those targets might be. Targets are absolutely vital for industry, because we need absolute certainty to encourage investment in low or indeed zero-carbon technologies. We want to get ahead, rather than seeing big investment in green energy components go elsewhere.

I am secretary of the all-party group on steel and metal related industry, and we see huge opportunities for the steel industry in the production of turbines for offshore wind farms and of marine current turbines. Without targets, however, we will lose those opportunities to other countries. The steel industry in this country is facing a real crisis in demand, and certainty about decarbonisation targets now would bolster investment in renewable technologies and help that manufacturing to stay in the UK.

Research by the Institute for Public Policy Research puts paid to the myth that decarbonisation will increase fuel bills. Leaving aside all the disgraceful ways in which the big energy companies exploit the consumer as a result of weak regulation, excessive profits and now, we understand, dubious taxation practices, simply looking at the price of decarbonisation, the conclusions are that increased reliance on electricity generated from gas will cost the consumer more, and that is on conservative estimates of price rises without unpredictable events. Certainty on decarbonisation targets now would be good for the future of the planet, good for manufacturing and good for the consumer.

17:47

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

I, too, will try to be as brief as possible, because I know that other Members wish to contribute to this debate.

The hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) stated that we had some of the world’s toughest targets on climate change, but it is precisely because we have those targets that a target now for decarbonisation of the energy sector up to 2030 is vital. Essentially, that is the case that the Committee on Climate Change made on decarbonising the power sector, falling from 450 grams or so per kWh today to about 50 grams per kWh by 2030. That is because the power sector produces a large percentage of emissions, so we cannot decouple the question of decarbonisation of the power sector from overall targets. The suggestion by the Committee on Climate Change that, in order to stay in line with the overall targets that this country has set itself, the target should be about 50 grams per kWh by 2030 should be the basis for what we set as a target in the Energy Bill.

The Government tabled amendments to the Energy Bill after it was considered in Committee, stating that they “may” set a target. However, they cannot do it before 2016, and if they do so the Minister “may” set a target of—a level we know not what. In terms of building confidence for industry and knowing that we have to reach the position that I have suggested regarding the relationship of energy to overall climate change targets, that change in the Bill will be of very little comfort indeed to those people who know what they have to do as far as investment in the low-carbon economy is concerned.

I would go further than that. Between now and 2016 —we cannot set a target before then in the amendments—a number of events will occur, and I wish to ask hon. Members if they can spot the difference between two phrases. The paragraph in the energy White Paper dealing with what will happen in respect of emissions when the Government revise their view of EU emissions trajectories in 2014 says:

“The Government will review progress towards the EU emissions goal in early 2014. If at that point our domestic commitments place us on a different emissions trajectory than the EU ETS trajectory agreed by the EU, we will, as appropriate and consistent with the legal requirements of the Climate Change Act, revise up our budget to align it with the actual EU trajectory.”

That sounds good. The gas strategy, which came out shortly afterwards, states:

“We will review our progress in early 2014 and if, at that point, our domestic commitments place us on a different trajectory from the one agreed by our partners in the EU under the ETS, we will revise ... our budget as appropriate to align it with the actual EU trajectory.”

That is the problem of waiting until 2016. If, by that point, we have revised up our trajectory to deal with a gas strategy that suggests that, in at least one direction, we have more than 37 GW of new gas plant running at full tilt, rather than DECC’s previous suggestion of some 19 GW of gas—we need gas, but not that much, running at a much lower trajectory—we will irrevocably bust our climate change targets by that act alone. That is why it is important that there is a target in the Bill that locks us into a proper direction on the decarbonisation of energy and, at the same time, gives confidence in respect of future investment for those who wish to invest in that low-carbon economy.

I hope that I have done the Minister a favour by mentioning that he appears to have agreed, on behalf of his Department, to a different strategy from the one to which he is committed, and to which he thinks he is committed. I hope that, in the run-up to the end of the Energy Bill, he looks at the quote from the gas strategy—it is on page 22—and sees whether, among other things, he might agree with the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), which may be considered during the latter stages of the Bill, and excise that paragraph from the gas strategy, to make things really tidy for the future as far as our targets are concerned.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. Two minutes for Ian Swales.

17:52

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

I will cut my remarks short, Mr Gray. I was going to speak about the beneficial effects of all this for the Teesside economy and mention a number of projects, but I do not have time.

Although there is good news for the local economy, not everything in the garden is rosy. The bioethanol plant in my constituency, set up in February 2010, shut down for more than a year. Having restarted, it has recently shut again, because of Government dithering over renewable transport fuel. We do not have full clarity from the Department about a biomass power station at Teesport, which three Korean companies have formed a consortium to build. We are getting mixed messages from the Department on that.

As other hon. Members have said, we need local purchasing. A wind farm is being built offshore, literally outside my house. Although that is good news, I have seen the ships transporting all the materials coming past my house. We must act urgently to ensure that we have supply chain and local purchasing.

I heard this week for the first time that there are concerns in the north-east about the national grid capacity not being in line with the Department’s various energy generation plans. I hope that the Minister will provide clarity on that. Other hon. Members have spoken about the need for long-term certainty. That is not just about long-term targets, but about the grandfathering arrangements that the Department makes. The omens are not good. The retrospective change in combined heat and power has been bad for companies that thought they had a regime lasting until 2027.

There have been seven Energy Acts since 2003. I hope that we are getting to the end of this and that the Minister will think about standing down the policy factory, or at least part of it, that has been working for 10 years, so that we can get on with all the investment that is required.

17:54

[Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) on securing the debate. As is his habit, he gave a comprehensive account of the issues, many of which other hon. Members were seeking to add to the debate. He rightly made the point about the time pressure in respect of the Energy Bill. Members of the Bill Committee know that we need to return to a range of issues and it is important that we have adequate time on Report if we are ever to get to them. Even in this debate, a number of hon. Members have been unable to speak or have had to truncate their remarks on a fundamentally important issue.

It is always a pleasure to stand opposite the Minister, although I am slightly disappointed that the other, new, part-time Energy Minister—the third Energy Minister in six months—is not here, because his other part-time responsibility is in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and publications coming out of that Department have highlighted the important role that decarbonisation and the green, low-carbon economy needs to play in having a target and a direction for the future.

[Mark Reckless]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Tom Greatrex]

I am tempted not to, because the hon. Gentleman came into the debate late, but I will. I am more generous than I should be.

[Mark Reckless]

Some are concerned about the extent to which decarbonisation and the green agenda are pushing up electricity prices. The shadow Minister says that he is keen to have sufficient time to discuss all the issues on Report, so would he support having two days on Report?

[Tom Greatrex]

I am glad that I gave way, because the hon. Gentleman is right on that point. Significant time needs to be given to these matters, because a range of issues must be discussed, and this is just one. He has talked previously about other issues covered in aspects of the Energy Bill—not directly on this point—and I am sure that he would want to contribute. I hope that the Minister and the usual channels have heard his concern.

I have mentioned the other responsibilities of the new Energy Minister. The hon. Member for St Ives rightly focused on the business case, and the jobs and growth case, for the decarbonisation target, but there are other strong arguments. My hon. Friends the Members for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) and for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) made the climate arguments. There are also important security-of-supply arguments about why this is sensible.

The hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert), the close geographical colleague of the hon. Member for St Ives, is sitting slightly apart from the rest of the Liberal Democrat Members today, and he is the only Liberal Democrat in the Chamber who had the opportunity to ensure that this target was in the Bill. We debated the matter in the Energy Bill Committee and he and another colleague chose not to vote for his party’s policy. I hope that the number of Liberal Democrats who are here this afternoon is indicative of the fact that those who are not encumbered by ministerial or Parliamentary Private Secretary posts will support that policy when the opportunity to support the cross-party amendment comes in due course, although their party’s policy was not in the manifesto, but was agreed at their party conference in October, when the Bill was under way and under discussion in pre-legislative scrutiny.

[Andrew George]

Neither was it in the Labour party manifesto. Rather than trading points, I want to speak on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert), because he cannot speak in this debate, and say that we should ensure that this agenda is shared across all parties. It is led, as the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) knows, by a Conservative Member. Although I cannot speak for the Conservatives, there is an economic agenda in favour of decarbonisation. That needs to be emphasised at this stage and we need cross-party consensus for it.

[Tom Greatrex]

The hon. Gentleman is right to make that point, as he did in his speech and as other hon. Members have. My remark about his colleague was just to make it clear to those who were not on the Energy Bill Committee that there was an opportunity to put that target in the legislation, but sadly it was missed. That could have been done, but those with the opportunity chose not to do so. I hope that, on reflection, we will get to a better position and a better decision on Report.

Members of the Energy Bill Committee have dealt with a number of similar issues that the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) touched on. He mentioned targets, including in other countries. I am sure that he is as aware as I am of the targets in Denmark—the 2035 target for all electricity and heating production to be fossil fuel free; in Austria, in relation to low-carbon energy by 2050; and in Germany, in relation to 50% of electricity generation in 2030.

It is not strictly accurate to suggest that there are not targets elsewhere in Europe and across the world, because those countries are seized of the growth and job opportunities that come with the imperative to decarbonise the power sector. Those of us on the Energy Bill Committee heard repeatedly—others will have heard this in subsequent letters—that business is seeking clarity of purpose beyond the scope of this Government and of this Parliament and the next, towards 2030.

My hon. Friend the Member for Brent North was right to address the levy control framework, but the hon. Member for Angus (Mr Weir) was also right to mention the time it takes to make some of those decisions. There are serious, big decisions that have not yet been made, such as on the memorandums of understanding that have been signed on siting offshore wind fabrication facilities in the UK. Part of the reason why the final decision has not yet been taken on that is the fact that the global companies involved, which have to make a case to their international boards, are not convinced that they have the clarity to be able to say that there will be a market. The only way we will bring down the cost of offshore wind is by having scale, and the way to do that is through manufacturing. There are strong business threads throughout the debate.

[Ian Swales]

Does the shadow Minister agree that it is not just climate that companies are interested in? Although climate is obviously an important overall consideration, the companies want their specific arrangements to be grandfathered when they decide to invest.

[Tom Greatrex]

I agree. We are grappling with the legislation because we do not know the detail of how that will operate. Again, in Committee we received assurance from the then Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), that that will be forthcoming, but it has not yet emerged. Not only can we not scrutinise it, but the companies, to which the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) was going to refer before he had to truncate his speech, cannot.

Finally, Ministers speak about setting a decarbonisation target, as the Deputy Prime Minister did on the very afternoon that we moved amendments in Committee that the Liberal Democrats failed to support, but that is not to say that this is about setting a target. As others have said, it is about the power perhaps to set a target. The Government may set a target, but they might not. The longer this goes on, all we are doing is storing up lack of certainty, which means that the costs will not necessarily come down as fast as they might and that we cannot get the benefit of jobs and growth from the shift to the green economy that is happening—and it will have to happen in any case.

[David Mowat]

It is right that the costs need to come down, and, of course, activity will drive down the costs. There is a school of thought that says that excessive subsidies stop costs coming down, but I accept that costs need to come down. Does the shadow Minister accept that these are global industries and that global activity, not just UK activity, is what will drive down costs?

[Tom Greatrex]

There is activity in other parts of the globe, and these are global companies making global investment decisions. To get the costs down we need scale, and to get scale we need manufacturing. That manufacturing will not happen without the sense of a long-term trajectory in that part of the energy sector in this country.

I am conscious that I am about to run out of time, but I hope that we get the opportunity on Report to debate the issue fully. I am sure that the cross-party amendment will draw a degree of support from across all parties, as has been demonstrated this afternoon.

18:00

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)]

Having returned from St Paul’s, I may be feeling a little dewy-eyed and unduly romantic, but I think this was a really good debate on both sides of the Chamber. I do not agree with all the speeches and interventions, but the quality of the arguments deployed by both sides has been very high and I have listened carefully to the points made by the hon. Members for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), for Angus (Mr Weir), for Strangford (Jim Shannon), for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) and for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) and by my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Ian Swales). I have also listened carefully to the powerful and pithy interventions by my hon. Friends the Members for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles), for Warrington South (David Mowat) and for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless).

Most of all, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) on securing this debate and on opening with a tour d’horizon on the energy sector with a clear focus on decarbonisation. He is right in so many respects on the Government’s ambition and direction. In less than three years, we have put in place many of the key building blocks of a greener, cleaner energy economy of which both coalition partners can be rightly proud.

Year-on-year, offshore wind capacity was up 60% and solar PV capacity was up 500% in 2011-12. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) is chortling, but in the past six months we have added more than half a gigawatt of solar. That totally flies in the face of the Opposition’s doom-mongering and scaremongering. The Government have a record of deployment and real action of which we can be proud, but we are absolutely clear that we will always consider the interests of the consumer. We will always consider who is actually paying. We do not believe in going green at any price; we believe that there is a fair balance between value for money and achieving our vital climate goals.

[Caroline Lucas]

Will the Minister give way?

[Gregory Barker]

I am afraid that I will not give way, because I have very little time to cover all the points.

It is interesting that I do not think that I have heard anyone in this debate refer to consumers, to consumer bills or to the ability of the British taxpayer to shoulder the subsidies that are necessary to pay for this agenda. As hon. Members know, I am a great champion of greening our economy. I am one of the few Members present who played a part in the passage of the Climate Change Act 2008, which is one of the proudest moments of my parliamentary life to date. I am absolutely committed to that, but we have to reconcile the difficult challenge of cost and delivery.

The Prime Minister has been emphatic. I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives mentioned that we are the greenest Government ever. That was the Prime Minister’s pledge when he visited the Department of Energy and Climate Change on day four of the Government, and he reiterated the pledge only a matter of weeks ago to the Royal Society:

“we are in a global race and the countries that succeed in that race, the economies…that will prosper are those that are the greenest and the most energy-efficient… it is the countries that prioritise green energy that will secure the biggest share of jobs and growth.”

There is no fundamental difference between the two sides of the House in our direction, destination or determination to meet the goals that are embedded in the Climate Change Act. In fact, there is not so much between us on the decarbonisation target, either. We have tabled an amendment to the Energy Bill that will allow us to set a decarbonisation target alongside the fifth carbon budget, and I will go on to address that in detail.

My hon. Friend the Member for St Ives mentioned marine energy in his opening speech. I am extremely proud of the huge leaps forward we have made on that exciting technology over the past three years with the establishment of the UK’s first marine energy parks—first in the south-west and now in Scotland. I am extremely proud of that investment. Our commitment in the last review, despite all the pressure on public finance and energy bills, was to increase substantially the renewable obligations certificates that we are giving marine, to give it the investment punch that it needs.

My hon. Friend kindly invited me to visit Cornwall and see FaBTest. I will be there next week. I must admit that it was already in the pipeline, but he can take back the good news this weekend and tell every Cornishman good and true that the Energy Minister is coming.

[Mr Weir]

What about Cornishwomen?

[Gregory Barker]

Quite right. I stand corrected. Although I am blowing my own trumpet, the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) chided my Department for its turnover in Energy Ministers. Coming from the Labour party, that is a bit bleeding rich. Under the previous Administration, there was a revolving door on the Department. I think I am now the longest-serving Energy Minister since the previous Conservative Administration—

[Tom Greatrex]

Will the Minister give way?

[Gregory Barker]

No, I will not, I am afraid. I greatly welcome the closer alignment with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. I cheered the last Government when they created a separate Department of Energy and Climate Change. It is a good thing, but it must also be a good thing, as he pointed out, to have much closer alignment between BIS and DECC. The appointment of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon) to the important job of Energy Minister, much as it will stretch him, sends a clear signal about the central importance of the low-carbon economy to British growth and our long-term growth prospects, as the Prime Minister said and every Member who has spoken in the debate has pointed out. The CBI supports the agenda, and there is wider support for the low-carbon economy that goes way beyond certain renewable energy technologies. It offers export and other business opportunities requiring little or no subsidy, and it has a great deal of its own momentum.

We will return to the decarbonisation target when the Bill returns to the Commons on Report after the Queen’s Speech. I know that some hon. Members have argued that we should go further and set a target now, to provide greater certainty to investors. I understand that argument—I listened carefully to the contributions made in the evidence session before the Bill Committee—and I see the strong merit of the argument for a decarbonisation target. That is why we are introducing measures in the Bill to create such a target. However, we must also resist the temptation to think that life is about targets. Surely, we learned our lesson under the last Government. Simply setting targets does not deliver results. If this Government are about anything, we are about deployment, results and driving real change in real time, and our record demonstrates that we are capable of doing that.

As we set out in the carbon plan in December 2011, it is likely that, as well as decarbonising electricity generation, meeting our 2050 target will require the electrification of a significant amount of heat and transport in the UK. In turn, that will not only affect overall demand for electricity but require us to take into account when that electricity is needed. For instance, when will people want to charge electric vehicles? Heat demand changes seasonally and over the course of a single day. All those things must be taken together when we consider the best way to decarbonise electricity as part of a least-cost route to meeting our obligations under the Climate Change Act 2008.

The second reason why I believe we should wait to set a target range is that we do not need to do so now. As I have said, we have provided clear signals to investors via a range of different initiatives, legally binding targets and the action that we are taking through the electricity market reforms in the Energy Bill. They have prompted the director of the CBI to say that the Bill sends

“a strong signal to investors that the Government is serious about providing firms with the certainty they need to invest in affordable secure low-carbon energy.”

That is what we are doing.

This must be seen in the context of the Government’s wider plans. The green investment bank is now investing billions of pounds in our green economy and catalysing billions more. I appreciate that hon. Members have focused on one element, but the wider package is extremely ambitious and encouraging.

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

I am most grateful to the Minister for winding up precisely at 6.15. Can people from the last debate leave the Chamber quickly and quietly?

Police Cautions (Young People)

Wednesday 17th April 2013 Westminster Hall

18:15

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

You will be happy to know that I have prepared for this debate, Mr Gray. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time and I am pleased to have secured the debate. I am still wearing a black tie after the events of this morning, but I think that this debate involves good news. I look forward to the Minister’s winding-up speech. The debate provides an opportunity for me to discuss an issue that can blight the lives of many hard-working young people in our constituencies and seek clarification from the Minister on recent developments in Government policy.

Police cautions can have a detrimental impact on the lives and employment prospects of young people. An e-mail from one of my constituents led me to initiate the debate, and I know that many other Members have received similar correspondence. My constituent, who is now in her final year at university, received a police caution in early 2007, when she was 15 years old, for a minor shoplifting offence while part of a dominant group of girls. Her e-mail explained to me that the huge peer pressure that she felt so as to be accepted as part of that group and coercion by her then friends were key reasons for her behaviour, which she admits was poor. I am sure that many of us have some sympathy with that.

Looking back, my constituent admits that she feels utterly embarrassed by and ashamed of her actions, which were completely unrepresentative of her character. She has not acted similarly before or since. She is not a dishonest person—I have seen several character references from employers and former teachers that she has provided to back that up—and in the years since the offence she has not kept in contact with any of the people involved and has gone on to achieve success in her exams and at university.

My constituent’s ambition is to pursue a career in law, and her academic success and involvement in voluntary and extracurricular activities make such a career possible, but that dream has been jeopardised by the police caution that she received more than six years ago. The Solicitors Regulation Authority has informed her that it is more likely than not that her application will be rejected due to her caution. She is understandably devastated that she may not be able to pursue her chosen career.

As the Minister will be aware, the Justice Committee, of which I am a member—I am pleased to see our Chairman, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), here today—published a wide-ranging report on youth justice on 14 March. Among our many recommendations, one is particularly relevant to this debate. Paragraph 21 of the conclusions and recommendations reads:

“We support the reduction in rehabilitation periods introduced via the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act, which means that many young offenders’ convictions will become spent sooner. We also agree with the Minister that employers, as well as schools, colleges and universities, should consider taking young people on despite their previous offences, as many do. Nevertheless, while we recognise that for very serious offending, disclosure of convictions will continue to be in the public interest, we consider there is potential to go further in relation to more minor convictions. We therefore recommend that, in addition to keeping the youth rehabilitation periods under review, the Government considers legislating to erase out-of-court disposals and convictions from the records of very early, minor and non-persistent offenders at the age of 18, so that they cannot be disclosed to employers under the Exceptions Order to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act.”

Since 2008, more than 1 million child arrests have been made in England and Wales, about one third of which resulted in a police caution. Lest I am misunderstood —heaven forbid—by certain sections of the press or even the House, I want to be clear that I believe young people should be punished according to the rule of law, like anybody else, when they do wrong. How we respond to often low-level bad behaviour by youngsters, however, has the potential to blight the rest of their lives by further alienating them from society. Our country cannot afford and would not be right to put young people, in effect, on the scrap heap before they had ever had a chance. Those young people need support, not perpetual criminalisation, and this change would provide that.

The Justice Committee report’s recommendation aims to improve the prospects of young people who have received police cautions for minor offences and have not reoffended by wiping their records, thereby preventing cautions from being disclosed to certain potential employers during criminal record checks.

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman realise that the problem can be hugely discriminatory against youngsters in inner cities, many of whom receive cautions at an early age, blighting their lives? We are in danger of creating a perpetual underclass of people who can never escape due to minor offences for which Parliament never legislated such a disproportionate penalty.

[Steve Brine]

I very much agree. We are often talking about people who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. As a country, we are crazy to hold them down, as we do in some cases. They need support, not perpetual criminalisation.

Although not entirely down to the actions of our Committee—it would have been a swift move by the Minister if so—I am pleased that the Government plan to lay before Parliament a statutory instrument to amend the exceptions to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, so that some spent convictions and cautions do not have to be disclosed and cannot be taken into account in employment decisions. Nevertheless, that development still leaves us with several questions.

On 29 January this year, the Court of Appeal ruled that the system of Criminal Records Bureau checks constituted a breach of article 8 of the European convention on human rights and of the Human Rights Act 1998, and that requiring the disclosure of all convictions and cautions relating to recordable offences is disproportionate to the aim of protecting children and vulnerable adults. Why, therefore, did the Government feel the need to seek leave to appeal to the Supreme Court?

The statutory instrument that the Government will lay before Parliament will help my constituent and many others, so I welcome it. It is proposed that cautions and equivalents administered to a young offender will not be subject to disclosure after two years, and that a conviction received as a young offender resulting in a non-custodial sentence will not be subject to disclosure after five and a half years. May I press the Minister, however, to implement the measure as quickly as possible? How long will it be before the order is laid before the House? Will he confirm that any changes will be applied retrospectively?

Finally, my constituent highlighted two other important issues, which concern other Members as well. First, on the role of local constabularies in removing or retaining a caution on a young person’s record, my constituent contacted Hampshire constabulary in the hope that it might be able to remove the caution from her record, but she was told that nothing could be done in that regard. However, in certain circumstances, do not chief constables have the discretion to prevent the disclosure of cautions? Where does the truth lie?

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

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate and the work that he does on these issues. He is talking about certain constabularies approaching the matter in certain ways. I understand that the Government have piloted initiatives to examine dealing with cautions in a different way, as he has discussed. Has he made any assessment of how effective the pilot scheme has been so far?

[Steve Brine]

No, is the honest answer, but I am aware of the pilot, so perhaps the Minister will be kind enough to refer to it. I am grateful for that point, made by a fellow member of the Justice Committee.

Other people want to get in to speak and we want to give the Minister time to respond, so I shall draw to a close. To make the second point, there is no requirement to consent to receiving a police caution for young people. Many of them do not appreciate the impact that a criminal record will have on their life and career prospects, which means that they can be burdened with a record without fully understanding the consequences. Can more be done, therefore, to ensure that young people are aware of the consequences of receiving a caution, which is more than just a ticking off or what used to be a clip around the ear?

In summary, many of the young people who receive cautions immediately regret their actions, but they soon discover that the consequences severely jeopardise their job prospects and opportunities. Many of those youngsters come from underprivileged and unstable backgrounds, so is it not counter-productive to criminalise them further and to destroy what opportunities they might have in our society?

I welcome the steps that the Government are taking to prevent disclosure of old and minor offences to potential employers. I hope that the reforms make a significant difference to the life of many constituents, such as mine and many others.

18:24

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Damian Green)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, I think for the first time. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) not only on securing the debate, but on his admirable and in my experience unprecedented brevity in not filling up the entire time available to him. I appreciate his interest not only generally, as a member of the Justice Committee, which has indeed pronounced on the matter recently, but particularly, in the individual case that brought the issue to his attention. I will deal with that later in my speech.

On the generalities, the youth justice system is focused on early intervention and on diversion of children and young people from formal disposals where that is appropriate. In recent times, there has been an increase in the use of informal disposals by the police and an adoption of restorative justice approaches, which I strongly support. All police forces now have trained restorative justice facilitators, and an on-the-spot restorative action can often provide the best disposal when a minor, usually first-time misdemeanour is committed. Such an approach can also be beneficial to the victim, who gets immediate reparation from the young person who has committed the offence. There has been a significant reduction in the use of formal disposals by the police over recent years. Since 2001-02, there has been a 57% fall in the number of reprimands, final warnings and conditional cautions given to young people in England and Wales: 40,757 were given in 2011-12, compared with 94,836 in 2001-02.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) on his contribution. My right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (Mr Spellar) made a good intervention, which I support absolutely. People in inner city areas such as the one that I represent, and in particular minority ethnic youths in those areas, seem to have a disproportionately high chance of being stopped and searched, of getting formal cautions and therefore of being impeded in getting work in the future. Will the Minister look into the geographical breakdown of the cautions given and the operational guidance given to police forces? I, of course, support the much earlier write-off of cautions to preserve the career opportunities of all our young people.

[Damian Green]

The hon. Gentleman might be aware that we are conducting a cautions review at the moment, so feeding into that is important. As I am about to explain in detail, we are concerned to encourage the use of out-of-court disposals but to ensure that, first, the length of time for which they are active beyond the period of the commission of the offence is properly limited and that, at the same time, they provide confidence in the wider justice system and in particular a feeling among victims that appropriate reparation has been made. That is the balance to be struck.

[Mr Spellar]

The initiatives that the Minister is announcing are useful and heading in the right direction, but we might be getting away slightly from the core of the issue: misdemeanours or offences committed at a young age, whether leading to cautions or convictions and minor punishments, can blight people’s lives. We saw that, in particular, with the elections for police and crime commissioners, when a number of individuals of all political parties were prevented from standing 40 or 50 years after committing the offences. That should have highlighted the necessity of taking action, to prevent them from appearing on people’s records and their life being affected.

[Damian Green]

The right hon. Gentleman is right; that was certainly a vivid example of the long-lasting effect. I gently point out, however, that that legislation was passed by the House over the past couple of years entirely unopposed.

[Mr Spellar]

All parties made a mistake.

[Damian Green]

However, the time for which an offence should hang over a young person or anyone else is contentious, and we must be careful to strike a balance. Ensuring appropriate punishment and particularly appropriate reparation for victims, so that they have confidence in the system, form the other half of the balance that I am sure all hon. Members want to strike.

[Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)]

The Minister makes a valid point about the public’s confidence being undermined by using cautions. Does he agree that confidence might also be lost when cautions are repetitively given to offenders with a view to improving the clear-up figures?

[Damian Green]

I would be interested to know whether my hon. Friend has evidence that cautions are used to improve clear-up figures. The answer to his general point is that, yes, I agree that the repetitive use of cautions may damage confidence in the system. One reason why we are looking at the whole system of cautions is precisely to avoid such damage to confidence.

A youth caution may be given for any offence that the young offender admits when there is sufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction but it is not in the public interest to prosecute. The flexibility provided by the youth caution allows the police greater discretion to offer a disposal that is appropriate to the circumstances of the offence and offender, rather than being arbitrarily determined by previous disposals or convictions.

We have retained in the youth caution the critical elements of assessment and intervention inherent in the final warning scheme. The youth offending team will be obliged to assess and, unless considered inappropriate, to put a rehabilitation programme in place when a young person has received a second or subsequent youth caution. That reflects the current threshold of obligatory assessment following a warning and is designed to prevent a return to precisely the repeat cautioning to which my hon. Friend referred. Unlike reprimands and warnings, the youth caution does not have a fixed limit on the number that may be administered, and it may be used if a young person has previously been convicted. That allows the police to use discretion, in consultation with the youth offending team, and to avoid an unnecessary court process if that is not merited.

Introducing a flexible youth caution that can be used more than once should help young people when seeking future gainful employment despite a minor misdemeanour that is causing concern. The youth caution becomes spent immediately, so there is no requirement for the young person to disclose that they have received one, unless they are seeking employment in an occupation listed in the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975, such as working with children or other vulnerable people.

The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 revised the youth conditional caution. We reduced unnecessary bureaucracy by giving the police power to authorise youth conditional cautions without the need to seek the authorisation of a prosecutor. The police can now offer a youth conditional caution with input from a youth offending team as at present but without the need for agreement from the Crown Prosecution Service. The youth offending team’s role is now statutory to provide a check on the appropriateness of the disposal and will also allow the YOT to apply for a parenting order if necessary.

Conditional cautions require offenders to take responsibility for their actions, including agreement to conditions that require them to put things right or to seek help for their behaviour. It is important to recognise the role of the victim and to ensure that they have proper redress through such an out-of-court disposal. Since 8 April, the revised youth conditional caution has been available to all 10 to 17-year-olds throughout England and Wales. The youth conditional caution has a three-month rehabilitation period to allow for the conditions to be completed, but offers similar benefits to the youth caution in becoming spent rapidly and therefore not subject to disclosure for most purposes.

The third change to that sort of disposal in the 2012 Act was to abolish penalty notices for disorder for 10 to 17-year-olds. Penalty notices can be an effective deterrent and provide resolution of offences for adult offenders, but we believe they are less effective for young people. The principal aim of the youth justice system is to prevent offending by young people. For that age group, we believe it is more effective to use out-of-court disposals involving assessment and intervention by the local youth offending team than fixed penalties.

Other legislation that is centrally important to the matters that the debate gives rise to is the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, which has an important role in helping those who have a criminal conviction but have put criminality behind them. From the tone of the debate, it is clear that many hon. Members believe that it is important to provide individuals with the opportunity to leave behind mistakes that they made when they were young. Minor offending behaviour committed when the offender was immature should not blight their prospects. That is recognised in the fact that rehabilitation periods are generally shorter for under-eights than for adults. Most crime committed by young people is relatively minor and often results in the out-of-court disposals or fines that I am talking about. A significant proportion of the population have had a conviction at some point in their lives, but few of them pose a serious risk of harm to the public. I am sure that we all agree that it is in society’s interest that ex-offenders are given the chance to reintegrate into their communities and lead law-abiding lives.

My hon. Friend the Member for Winchester referred to a recent Court of Appeal judgment that found that both the current exceptions order to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and part V of the Police Act 1997 are unlawful. That is because they provide for blanket disclosure of all spent convictions and cautions regardless of how old or minor they may be. In response to that judgment—my hon. Friend raised this point specifically —we are amending the exceptions order. We are proposing that certain spent disposals will no longer be subject to disclosure under that order after a specified period, which will be shorter for young offenders than for adults.

Public protection and safeguarding obviously remain primary concerns, and for that reason disposals for specified sexual and violent offences and other offences relevant to safeguarding will always be subject to standard or enhanced disclosure. Any offence resulting in a custodial sentence will continue to be subject to disclosure. Those measures are necessary to maintain public protection, and I suspect that there is agreement on that on both sides of the Chamber.

For other offences, cautions and minor convictions will no longer be subject to disclosure, nor will they be able to be taken into account by an employer after a certain period. Cautions and equivalents administered to a young offender for a non-specified offence will no longer be subject to disclosure under the exceptions order after two years. Secondary legislation containing those provisions has been laid before Parliament and will be subject to the affirmative process. My hon. Friend wanted a detailed timetable, but he has been here long enough to know that such business management goes on behind closed doors.

[Steve Brine]

I have been here a while now and I cannot wait to be on another Committee. The Minister may be coming to this, but will he refer to retrospection of the order?

[Damian Green]

The changes to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 will have retrospective effect. I will come to the case of my hon. Friend’s constituent, but I can give him that general reassurance.

Employers have a key role in how criminal record information is treated, and they should have a fair and objective policy on the recruitment of ex-offenders. It is important that they should consider the circumstances and relevance of a spent, or unspent, conviction where that is disclosed. That should include taking into account the age of the person at the time, the disposal received and what the person has done in the meantime. Of course, we encourage employers to adopt that fair approach, which is critical in assisting ex-offenders in obtaining gainful employment and, therefore, helping their rehabilitation. It ought to go without saying—but it is worth mentioning—that a minor youthful indiscretion should clearly not be a barrier to employment in later life.

Turning to my hon. Friend’s constituent, I understand that she received a caution for theft aged 15 but now wishes to pursue a career as a lawyer. That is an occupation listed on the exceptions order and therefore disclosure of spent cautions and convictions can be requested and an employer can take them into account. As he said, she has been advised that her caution means that she may not be accepted to practise law. However, I am pleased to say that, from his description of the case, it appears that she will benefit from our proposed amendment to the exceptions order. As I have said, under the proposals, a caution received as a young person for a non-specified offence, which includes theft, will no longer be subject to disclosure, nor will an employer be able to take it into account, after a period of two years. I should be clear that the caution will nevertheless remain on the record, but the changes to the exceptions order will specifically address his constituent’s case. Clearly, there are circumstances in which the disclosure of all cautions and convictions may still be required, such as in subsequent court proceedings.

Returning to the use of out-of-court disposals in general, we know that it is important to consider the need to provide assurance to the public that they are being used appropriately and proportionately. We very much recognise the concern of the public and that expressed in the recent Justice Committee report about the proper use of out-of-court disposals. The Chairman of the Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), is here, and I thank the Committee for contributing to a thought process that has led to our review of simple cautions. The Ministry of Justice, the Home Office and the Attorney-General’s office will be working closely with the police and the Crown Prosecution Service, as well as taking the views of practitioners across the criminal justice system.

The review is considering a number of issues: the existing guidance and practice relating to the use of simple cautions; whether there are some offence types for which the use of simply cautions is generally inappropriate—and if so, what procedures we should adopt; the reasons why multiple cautions have been given to some criminals; the difference in the use of cautions by different police forces and whether increased scrutiny is needed to ensure that they are used consistently; and the impact on individuals of accepting a caution, including any potential impact on future employment. I take the point that was raised by a couple of hon. Members in the debate on whether the use of such disposals may have a disproportionate impact on different communities.

I should make it clear that, although the review into cautions is focused on adult simple cautioning, it will consider aspects of youth cautioning and adult conditional cautioning, where there is good reason to do so. The Justice Committee expressed concern about the provision of oversight and scrutiny of how the police are using out-of-court disposals, so I hope that the various Committee members who are here at the moment will welcome our commitment to look into the matter further.

I make it clear that the Government believe that out-of-court disposals have an important part to play in the youth justice system, because they can provide a quick and effective resolution to a crime for the victim, which a court case might not. My hon. Friend the Member for Winchester asked a specific question about the Government seeking leave to appeal to the Supreme Court. We consider that the terms of the judgment are simply too broad, but, as I have mentioned, the orders that we laid before Parliament on 26 March can be taken as our response to the judgment, and the orders will come into force when they are approved by the House.

More generally, the provisions in the LASPO Act that came into effect earlier this month have significantly simplified the youth out-of-court disposals framework, by providing clearer and simpler decision-making for practitioners, a greater understanding for the public of how the disposals fit together and the circumstances in which they are used—

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. I apologise for interrupting the Minister, but the clock dictates that I should do so. We now come to the next debate.

Department for Education Offices (Runcorn)

Wednesday 17th April 2013 Westminster Hall

18:45

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I do not intend to take all the time that would normally be taken in such debates, as the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans) has a key interest, because his constituency is affected. Therefore, I will cut down the time I have to speak.

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

That will be quite in order with me, as long as the hon. Gentleman has the permission of the Minister to do so.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Elizabeth Truss)]

indicated assent.

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

In that case, that is fine.

[Derek Twigg]

The Department for Education announced on 13 November 2012 its intention to close Castle View house in Runcorn, which is owned by the Department as a freehold property. It proposes to transfer the work to Manchester. The Runcorn site accommodates 450 staff, including 222 Department for Education staff, private sector support staff, staff from other Departments—including the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills—and staff from the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, and national health service procurement staff. Civil service jobs—originally with the Department of Employment—have been based at the site, and previously at the building next door, for more than 40 years, providing an important source of good-quality jobs in the borough of Halton.

The Department has identified the following key areas on which to test its proposal: cost and value for money, needs of the business, estates policy, the effect on staff and the wider socio-economic impact. I will address each area individually, but first, what about the overall handling of the issues by the Department for Education? There was no business case on which to justify a closure, and it was made clear to staff from the beginning that it was highly unlikely that the proposal would be changed, despite a consultation being launched later. Even when I, the hon. Member for Weaver Vale and David Parr, chief executive of Halton borough council, met the DFE permanent secretary to discuss the proposal, we came away with a view that the decision was a fait accompli.

I am sure that most independent-minded people would find it odd that there was no business case to base the proposal on. The key arguments made for closure and transfer of the work to Manchester do not remotely stand up to scrutiny, as I shall argue. It is fair to state that the staff and unions have believed for some years that there has been an agenda in the senior management to close down the Runcorn operation for reasons that we could never get to the bottom of. I think the DFE wants the closure now because it fits in with the image that it wants to project of being ahead of the game in Whitehall on how to cut costs, and, therefore, it will be held up as a template for other Departments. The problem for the Department for Education is that the change will not save the taxpayer anything.

In terms of cost and value for money, of the 12 DFE sites, Castle View house is the second least expensive. The cost per person for Castle View house is £2,545. The cost for Piccadilly Gate in Manchester—the building that it is proposed to move the jobs to—when comparing like for like is £4,583 per person. The Department suggests that the refurbishment of Castle View house would cost £500,000. A qualified property survey carried out by Halton borough council suggests that the figure would be nearer to £30,000 to £50,000, depending on whether decoration was undertaken. Castle View house is a modern building with excellent facilities and good IT infrastructure. The Department did not factor in the income from sub-tenants in the figures that it based its original closure proposals on.

I have also been informed today that the Public and Commercial Services Union met the Department on Monday in London to talk about staff relocation costs. The DFE has now accepted that it will have to support Runcorn staff with travel costs of up to £4,250 each year—a significant increase, I understand—to cover travel costs on other, longer routes than the very congested Runcorn East line.

We have not yet seen all the Department’s figures for relocation. The Manchester building that the Department is proposing to move staff to will be demolished as a result of High Speed 2, as I am sure the hon. Member for Weaver Vale will point out, incurring more cost for the taxpayer. Further, we can add to that the cost of running an empty building when a re-let is unlikely, according to Halton borough council, in the short to medium term. The DFE already has an empty site next door to Castle View house.

Let us consider the business need. The suggestion was that Manchester had a wider-ranging skills base, but that has not been evidenced or tested other than by the fact that a number of other Departments are based there. Similarly, the assertion by the DFE that Manchester would attract better staff is flawed—again, where is the evidence? The Runcorn site offers a range of skilled staff, holding degree-level and professional qualifications. The public communications unit at Runcorn offers a centre of excellence. A skills audit by the PCS of its members showed that, among the staff who responded, 139 professional qualifications were held.

It is accepted that Manchester has very good travel connections, but it is quicker to travel to London from Runcorn. There are also local lines to Liverpool, Manchester and Chester. The M56 is only a few minutes from Castle View house and also gives quick access to the M62 and the M6.

On being able to attract and retain good-quality staff at Runcorn, we have only to look back to the heyday of the Runcorn site in the 1980s and early ’90s, when nearly 1,000 staff were employed there. That is a clear indication that staff with good skills can be attracted.

I want to examine the effect on staff. It goes without saying that the morale of this loyal and hard-working work force has been badly affected by the proposal, but also by the way the Department has handled it. The closure of Castle View house will also impact more on the lowest-graded and lowest-paid staff, and those who are made redundant will find it hard to get another job, given the high unemployment in Halton.

The PCS union met departmental officials and representatives of Arriva Trains on 30 January. Arriva has confirmed that it cannot transport the required number of staff from Runcorn East station to Manchester at peak times. I understand that the Department has now accepted that and informed staff that it will explore “alternative options”. There are also few parking spaces at Runcorn East, where staff would travel from. That is a particular concern for disabled staff. A number of staff who live in Halton would have to make two bus journeys to get to the station.

On the socio-economic impacts, Halton is the 30th most deprived borough in the country and the areas that fall within the Halton Lea ward are some of the most deprived in England. Youth unemployment is particularly high in the area. There will be a wider impact on Halton through the largely retail-based employment in Halton Lea, which was known as Shopping City and which relies on the employee daytime population. Castle View house and those employed there are an important source of custom. Therefore, if employment is removed from the Halton Lea ward, wider employment in the ward will suffer. The wider impact on Halton will be worsened by the fact that a large proportion of Halton Lea’s work force live in Halton.

It is important not to forget that Halton Lea is a town centre, not just a shopping centre, and the Government have stated that they want to regenerate town centres. I hope that, when coming to a decision, the Minister will ensure that account is taken of wider Government policy on town centres.

It is important to highlight to the Minister the fact that support for retaining the DFE jobs from both the private sector and the public sector is very strong. That includes Halton borough council, the Liverpool City Region local enterprise partnership—I am pleased that my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) is present for the debate—and Halton chamber of commerce.

To summarise, Castle View house is much cheaper to run than the Manchester Piccadilly Gate building. Closing the MPG building would save the DFE more money than closing Castle View house. Closing Castle View house would be an ongoing liability for the DFE. Staff at Castle View house would find it harder to find jobs in the locality. Closing Castle View house puts in jeopardy the other 200-plus non-DFE public sector jobs based there. The socio-economic impact on Runcorn and on the viability of Halton Lea shopping centre will be serious. There are serious issues about Runcorn staff being able to travel to Manchester and about the associated costs.

If, despite what is being said today, the Minister goes ahead and closes the DFE offices in Runcorn, I intend to write to the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), to ask whether her Committee will investigate a decision that is obviously a waste of public money.

I am pleased that the hon. Member for Weaver Vale and I had the chance to meet the Secretary of State on 15 January—I am grateful to him—so that he could hear our case against closing Castle View house. I hope that the Minister will now go back and discuss with him the facts of the situation, which are unarguably weighted against the Department’s proposal to shut Castle View house.

18:54

[Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate the hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) oninitiating this important debate, which has far-reaching implications for both my constituency and his own. I thank my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and his Department for engaging with all concerned parties, including the hon. Gentleman and me, alongside the council and representatives of the PCS union.

I should like to make two key points. First, I shall address the need for savings across the Department—to position the real impact that the closure could have on the Department’s balance books. Secondly, I shall address the human and economic cost that it would have on an area that has the potential to thrive, at a time when we should be addressing unemployment issues, not adding to them.

I do not dispute the need to look for economies, and the Department for Education is no less bloated than other Departments that have ballooned in size to unsustainable proportions. However, those efficiencies need to be just that—the business case must be sound to justify the action. I am convinced that these proposals are not sound. Significantly, there are gaps in both the long and the short-term expectations of savings.

Castle View house has been portrayed as a low-quality building in need of significant redevelopment. That is simply not the case. I have visited the building on numerous occasions, and compared with the wildly varying conditions of other public sector buildings, it is in very good condition, with excellent facilities. Even if a full refurbishment were required, the cost, as set out by Halton council’s response, would be one tenth of the £500,000 suggested by the Department’s review. In reality, the building has the second-lowest overheads of all the Department’s offices and the cost per square metre is just over one quarter of that for the Manchester Piccadilly site.

It is clear that a withdrawal from the area would have a negative impact and make it less easy to re-let or sell in the near future. That is clear from a consideration of other nearby Government buildings that have previously been closed. The overhead costs of Castle View as an unused building are a staggering £382,000 a year. That would swiftly impact on the balance sheets that the Department so desperately wants to correct.

The long-term impact of the decision has also not been considered sufficiently. The High Speed 2 route, which will connect up the country, will have a major terminus in the centre of Manchester, in the location of the Department for Education’s building. Although the line will not reach the city for some time, it is obvious that the building work for such a significant station will take years and result in the vacation of the offices sooner rather than later. That will be hugely costly and would, were the Castle View staff to relocate there, cause significant instability and uncertainty once more. Closing one office in Runcorn, sending staff to Manchester Piccadilly and then moving them again makes no sense whatever. It is clear that the scrutiny that we expect from a detailed analysis is lacking, and I urge the Department to have more foresight.

I should like to draw attention to the impact that the proposal will have on Halton Lea. Although some steps have been taken to produce an action plan for relocating staff to the Manchester branch, it is clear that such a move will leave many behind. Half of Halton Lea falls within the most deprived 5% of the country; the other half is within the bottom 15% and unemployment has risen to 9.4% in the past year. When we talk about closure, we are not talking just about comfortable civil servants having a longer commute—an issue that I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister will address—but about those at the bottom of the employment scale falling out of work entirely. Service workers at the site cannot relocate, and as I have said previously, the chances of an instant re-let of the building are remote. That is not to mention that the shops and services around the area do not just benefit from but rely heavily on trade from these offices. Footfall at Halton Lea’s retail centre could drop by 20%—a drop that I am sure hon. Members will agree is too significant to ignore.

To summarise, Castle View house is the second least expensive building of the 12 Department for Education sites identified. It has excellent public transport and road links and free car parking on site. Halton Lea’s Castle View house would be difficult to re-let or sell in the short to medium term. Halton Lea is one of the most deprived wards in one of the most deprived communities in the country. Some 85% of the work force are local and it is therefore the most sustainable solution. Most of the people employed there live in the borough. Closure will only add to the borough’s socio-economic challenges. The Manchester Piccadilly site has staff from the whole of Greater Manchester.

When a proposal will change not how a Department is run but how a town will survive, we must look harder and think more clearly. I therefore respectfully urge the Secretary of State to review the plans in the same way as the former Secretaries of State did—namely, the right hon. Members for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) and for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) and the former Member for Norwich South. What is it that they saw in Castle View house that my right hon. Friend, at the moment, does not?

17:49

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Elizabeth Truss)]

I thank the hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) and my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans) for securing the debate and for their contributions. Both Members made excellent contributions, which reflected the impact on their constituencies of the future of the Department for Education offices. I am sure that they would join me in paying tribute to the excellence and professionalism of the staff in Runcorn. Indeed, the hon. Member for Halton made a point about the quality of those staff, and I absolutely agree with him.

The hon. Gentleman has always been a passionate advocate for his constituents. I understand that he was an employee of Castle View house when my Department was known as the Department for Education and Employment, so he has personal experience of working at the location and contributing to the work of the Department. I am grateful for the work he has undertaken with my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale in making representations to the Secretary of State, along with Halton local authority and the local branch of the PCS.

I will return to this, but the information that we put out in the initial consultation has been significantly amended, and the information that the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend have provided has been very helpful in enabling us to reach a proper decision. Some of what they have discussed was initial information that was our best evidence at the time. In coming to its conclusions, the Department of course listens to representations from people who represent and understand the local area.

[Derek Twigg]

Is it not a real concern that the Department developed a proposal to close down a building and transfer staff to Manchester, based on a flawed case and best-guess estimates, when a local authority and MPs were later able to put together much clearer facts than the Department itself could? Does that not make the Minister worry about her civil service information?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for making his point. It is an open consultation; the decision has not yet been made. We wanted to listen to available evidence, but we put forward the evidence available at the time. His contributions, and those of others, have helped to develop our thinking.

The Secretary of State and I have often spoken in the House about our desire to see a better education system for our children and families, and we have made great strides in achieving that aim, by expanding the academies programme, rolling out free schools and introducing a rigorous new curriculum. Key to success is the hard work and dedication of civil servants in the Department for Education, who are tireless in their efforts to improve our schools and children’s services, but there is always more work to be done. The Department for Education can continue to build on the successes. We want to be the best Department in Government, a Department in which the best and brightest want to work.

We have launched the DFE review, which reported last November and laid out how we intend to achieve our aim. The review proposes fundamental changes to our ways of working, which are designed to make the Department the best it can be. We need to hold ourselves to account to the same standards of use of public money to which we hold schools and children’s services to account. That is important. As a result of the changes, there will be difficult decisions to make. We have a smaller work force, which needs to be more flexible, effective and responsive to future needs, which means that we have to reduce our office space. We currently occupy 12 sites across the country and the review recommended that we consolidate them into just six and move to cheaper accommodation. That is the issue we are discussing today. We do, however, value the regional presence of the Department. It provides an alternative perspective on policy to that of a single London-based office. It provides accessibility for external stakeholders.

[Graham Evans]

Is my hon. Friend aware that Halton borough council has suggested several alternatives to the existing building, based on the consultation? I do not agree with this, but it says that the proposal it is not economic; it is the most expensive option. There are various alternative locations in my constituency that have been put on the table—Rutland house, Vale house, Howard house, Clifton house—so there is no shortage of public sector properties available in Halton. It does not have to be shifted out of the community of Halton Lea to Manchester Piccadilly in Greater Manchester; it could be kept within the community, as there is no shortage of alternative buildings.

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Before the Minister replies, it might be helpful for hon. Members to know that we expect a Division in the main Chamber, possibly at 7.15 pm or earlier, so we might tailor our remarks to suit that probability.

[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale for his comments, and I am aware of his proposals. We are absolutely considering all available options in the north-west in relation to our package. I understand that both speakers have acknowledged that there is essentially a choice between Runcorn and Manchester. They have put forward a good case about why Runcorn has particular issues of staff quality, employment levels and local regeneration that need to be considered in the decision-making process.

The decision to close any Government site is never easy. I understand the worry and uncertainty of staff who might be affected by the decision. It is a difficult time across the Department when there is such uncertainty. I also understand the concerns of the local community in Runcorn about the site’s future. The consultation is open, but we wanted to be honest about our initial intentions, so that people have time to make representations and preparations.

I acknowledge the points made about the economic impact on the area. Among the factors that we will take into account in our decision are wider central Government policies—for example, the town centre policy that the hon. Member for Halton mentioned—and minimising costs for the Department, which is clearly important to the achievement of value for money. I note the point that both hon. Members made about the availability of more affordable sites in the Runcorn area.

Whichever site is selected for closure, we will put in place comprehensive support for affected staff to help them through the change. All staff will have the option to transfer to work from whichever site is chosen, and we will offer assistance with excess fares. However, for those who either cannot or do not want to make such a move, we have already made a commitment to allow staff to apply for voluntary terms, and we are working with local recruitment agencies and other Government employers in the region to identify alternative employment opportunities.

I shall respond to the specific issues raised in the debate. Following the further representations about cost, vis-à-vis Manchester and the local economic situation, I confirm that they will be taken into account in the final decision. I shall ensure that I discuss the important points made in today’s debate with the permanent secretary and the Secretary of State. The decision is being deliberated on and I alert hon. Members to the fact that we expect it within the next two weeks.

We did not say that Castle View house would cost £500,000 to refurbish. We were talking about bringing it up to the same standard as Manchester Piccadilly Gate. I completely understand the point that the hon. Member for Halton made about alternative accommodation being available in the Runcorn area. We are aware that High Speed 2 could mean that Manchester Piccadilly Gate will be demolished, but that is subject to consultation, and plans suggest that demolition would not be required before 2027, which is after the lease on the Manchester Piccadilly Gate building ends. We will consider the impact of High Speed 2 as part of our deliberations.

[Derek Twigg]

I welcome the fact that the Minister will have a discussion with the permanent secretary and the Secretary of State to consider the points that we have made. I have not heard any argument from her to refute the figures that the borough council and the PCS agree on, which are different from those that the Department put forward. Does she agree that our figures are accurate or does she stand by the Department’s figures?

[Elizabeth Truss]

We are taking into account all the submissions and we will continue to receive and analyse figures before making a decision. When a decision is made, we will release the business case, which will show which figures we ultimately adhered to when making the decision. We are taking account of the points made about other office space being available. I will reflect on the figures in my conversations with the permanent secretary and the Secretary of State. We certainly want to base the final decision on the best available evidence, which may not necessarily be the evidence we presented in the initial consultation.

Question put and agreed to.

19:11

Sitting adjourned.