House of Commons

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

Thursday 4 July 2013

The House met at half-past Nine o’clock

Prayers

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

1. What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of measures to control the number of dogs being kept within a domestic property.

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr David Heath)]

While there are no measures that control the number of dogs kept on a single property, a number of laws regulate the effects of keeping animals, which include welfare, cruelty, safety and environmental effects. Furthermore, the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill, with which the hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) is very familiar, had its Commons Second Reading on 10 June and it provides further measures to help tackle irresponsible dog owners.

[Julie Hilling]

Following the tragic death of Jade Lomas Anderson, my constituents in Atherton and across Bolton West believe that more should be done to reduce the number of dogs in houses where they create a nuisance and create fear, because of their ferociousness. Will the Minister amend the current legislation so that there are specific clauses whereby owners can be made to reduce the number of dogs if they are causing fear and potential danger?

[Mr Heath]

I am aware that the hon. Lady has tabled amendments to the Bill exactly to that purpose, and they will be considered in Committee. I do not wish to pre-empt that discussion, but she will know that our view is that the antisocial behaviour orders available in the Bill, on which guidance will be available shortly following discussions with all the appropriate authorities, will deal with the very nuisances that she seeks to remedy.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

Of course it is right that the legislation should protect postal workers and utility workers, and make provision against antisocial behaviour. But may I just tell my hon. Friend that there is actually High Court authority—a settled law—whereby if one has more than six dogs, one requires planning permission? We should not be too prescriptive here—if I want to own a number of pugs, it should not be for the state to tell me whether I should own two or four pugs, providing those pugs behave themselves properly.

[Mr Heath]

My hon. Friend has stated the position exactly. Irrespective of the number of pugs he has in his possession, the key thing is whether he is a responsible owner of those dogs, whether he has them under proper control and whether they represent a danger to himself and his neighbours.

[Mr Speaker]

It would be a bit worrying if the Second Church Estates Commissioner, of all people, were other than a responsible owner.

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

2. What assessment he has made of the effects of UK policy on the protection of endangered species worldwide.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Richard Benyon)]

The UK is an influential leader in the protection of endangered species, through our own actions as well as our input to relevant global agreements. For example, we recently helped to secure additional protection for various marine and timber species through the convention on international trade in endangered species. The UK has contributed to various assessments of global biodiversity, but it is difficult to assess the effects of one country’s policies alone.

[John Mann]

We used to be a great leader on this issue, but now we do not even properly fund wildlife crime prevention in this country, despite the change to the law that I successfully moved under the previous Government. Why do we have almost silence from this Government on protecting endangered species and promoting the issue abroad?

[Richard Benyon]

The hon. Gentleman is entirely wrong. We have funded the wildlife crime unit, which does great work, both at home and abroad; we have been a leader in global forums on dealing with international crime—for example, we have co-funded Project Wisdom, through Interpol, to tackle the illegal trade in endangered species; we are involved in a variety of different operations in Africa and other range states to protect wildlife species; and the expertise we have at home is part of a fantastic partnership between the UK Border Agency, the police and various other agencies, which other countries come to look at.

[Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)]

My hon. Friend will be aware of the key role that Chester zoo is playing in the “If They’re Gone” campaign, whereby it is leading on orangutans and it has orangutan month in August. Will he tell us about the key role the campaign is playing in promoting awareness in the UK?

[Richard Benyon]

The “If They’re Gone” campaign is one of the highlights of what this country is doing in giving leadership. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has launched the rhino part of the campaign, and the elephant part highlights the importance of making people aware of the risks that ivory poaching poses to that species. The next phase is the orangutan phase. The orangutan is an endangered species and this country is determined, through our footprint abroad and in terms of the palm oil we all use—making sure we are responsible at home and abroad—to protect that very special species.

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

The Minister mentioned rhinos and elephants and recent reports have shown that terrorists are slaughtering those animals to raise revenue for terrorism. In making their assessment, will the UK Government link up with the experts in counter-terrorism in the Foreign Office to ensure that we make as big a contribution as possible to stopping that dreadful trade?

[Richard Benyon]

The Foreign Secretary recently convened a meeting of Ministers to do in this country precisely what is happening in the United States. There has been a realisation that this is not just an environmental problem—it is about security, too. In large parts of Africa, organisations such as al-Shabaab and the Lord’s Resistance Army are helping to finance the evil they do through this trade. There is a realisation that we need a cross-government approach and that was the basis of the event that the Prince of Wales hosted at Clarence house. We will formulate that approach in a meeting later this year to ensure that we are co-ordinating things across government while pooling resources with other Governments to ensure that we are doing precisely what the hon. Gentleman suggests.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Of course, the largest area on the planet’s surface given over to the protection of endangered species is the Chagos marine protected area, which we established when we were last in government. The Pitcairn governing Council and the Bermudan Government are now asking the UK to designate marine protected areas in the south Pacific and the Sargasso sea. What technical assistance will the Minister’s Department give to ensure that those excellent proposals become a reality?

[Richard Benyon]

First, let me congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his appointment to the Front Bench; I am sure that he will adorn it with his skills. I think that he is the sixth shadow Minister in opposition to me, and he is very welcome.

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The scheme in the Chagos islands is exemplary and we want to see such schemes developed throughout the overseas territories. There are already plans to see proper marine protection around St Helena and a very exciting project in South Georgia. I want to see a necklace of marine protected areas that can be this country’s legacy from our imperial past to the future protection of marine zones.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

3. What assessment he has made of the effects of the final common agricultural policy settlement on the UK’s ability to achieve its environmental objectives and 2020 targets.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr Owen Paterson)]

The new CAP framework through pillar two provides a good basis, with a range of tools to help us, to improve the environment and our biodiversity. Farmers and other land managers already provide a range of environmental benefits. The new arrangements will allow us to enhance the effectiveness of existing schemes and consider new approaches that contribute to our “Biodiversity 2020” quantified outcomes.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Will the Secretary of State now make good on his promise of public money for public good and ensure that the new CAP is implemented in the most effective way possible by maximising the transfer of funds from pillar one to pillar two, ensuring a central role for agri-environment schemes and implementing an ambitious approach to the greening of pillar one funding?

[Mr Paterson]

I am happy to confirm my long-standing belief that we should transfer 15% from pillar one to pillar two. Our pillar two schemes do real good for the environment and 70% of our arable land uses those schemes. We also need to develop new schemes, as 30% of the new pillar one will depend on greening. We also have a guarantee, which we drove through the negotiations, that 30% of the rural development funds will be spent on the environment.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

The settlement for farmers across Britain is a tough one and they need to compete in a single market with all their continental competitors. Can we ensure that we implement our part of the single farm payment in this country in the most sympathetic way possible so that we can have effective and competitive food production?

[Mr Paterson]

My hon. Friend is right to raise that point. I have said on many occasions—I frequently repeated myself during the negotiations—that we must ensure that the way in which we impose CAP reform is simple and easy to understand. We will not make the mistakes of the previous Government, who caught us up in a horribly complex system that cost us €590 million in what the EU calls disallowances but in what I would call a fine.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

May I urge the Secretary of State to be a champion of joined-up government? The G8 settlement on social impact investment was a breath of fresh air; can it link to anything in the CAP settlement, so we can get some serious social impact investment in the rural economy?

[Mr Paterson]

As I told the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), we intend to modulate 15% into pillar two, and there are real benefits for the rural economy, the rural environment and rural society from our rural development programme for England schemes.

[Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)]

Upland farms in the UK, particularly those in England, are good at delivering environmental objectives. What will the reformed CAP do to ensure that upland farms maintain their financial viability, so they can continue to deliver those public goods?

[Mr Paterson]

I confirm again my belief that because in parts of the UK, such as upland areas, it is tough to make a living purely from food production, there is a significant role for taxpayers’ money to be spent on environmental schemes supporting the valuable work upland farmers do to protect and improve the environment, upon which sits a tourism industry worth £33 billion.

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

The “State of Nature” report produced by 25 major UK conservation organisations found that 60% of UK species reliant on farmlands are in decline. Does the Secretary of State agree that there has been concern about a shortage of funding for high nature value farming areas? What steps will he take to support farmers so that they can continue to produce high-quality food in those areas and protect threatened species as well?

[Mr Paterson]

I think the hon. Lady knows that we get real value out of our existing higher level stewardship scheme. As I made clear in previous replies, I will endorse the transfer of money from pillar one to pillar two for environmental schemes, which will bring real benefits to our biodiversity and the species about which she is concerned.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

The financial viability of smaller farmers in Warwickshire is of concern. What reassurance can the Secretary of State give my smaller farmers that transfers from pillar one to pillar two will not cause them hardship?

[Mr Paterson]

It is simple: the funds will be spent on projects related to agriculture and the rural environment and economy, and farmers both small and large will benefit from the transfer of the funds.

[Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)]

5. What assessment he has made of trends in levels of food insecurity in the UK since 2010.

[Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)]

11. What assessment he has made of trends in levels of food insecurity in the UK since 2010.

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr David Heath)]

The UK food security assessment published in 2010 is a detailed analysis of the global and domestic factors affecting UK food security, including productivity, supply, affordability and safety. The Government continue to monitor trends, but overall the assessment concludes that the UK is well placed to deal with future challenges. In 2012, officials reassessed the report and concluded that it still represents a robust analysis of food security in the UK.

[Mr Bain]

This week, The Economist’s global food security index ranked the UK 20th this year, behind Germany, France and Spain. Can the Minister confirm that food prices in this country rose by more than 4% in the year to May? In the absence of a strong plan from the Government to boost lower-cost, home-grown food, is it not the poorest who bear the largest share of the burden?

[Mr Heath]

The hon. Gentleman is mixing up food security and affordability, and the two are not exactly the same. I answered his original question about food security, on which this country is in a pretty good position. However, rising food prices are a real problem for many families across the country. The factors that affect food prices, which include commodity and oil prices and currency changes, are largely out of the control of any single country. We need to make sure that, as he says, we boost UK production as much as possible and make affordable food available on our shelves, and that is exactly what the Government are doing.

[Andy Sawford]

The 700 children in food poverty in my constituency and their parents would find the Minister’s answer that we are in “a pretty good position” incredibly complacent. I have visited the food bank in Corby, and the people there attribute the massive rise in the number of people coming to them directly to this Government’s economic and social policies. Will the Minister visit the Mustard Seed food bank in his constituency to find out why demand is rising so quickly?

[Mr Heath]

The hon. Gentleman misunderstands the meaning of the term “food security”, which was the question I was asked and gave a response to. I have said clearly that there is an issue about rising food prices and about poverty across the country, and the fact that families sometimes find it difficult to buy the food that they need. If he thinks there is a direct correlation between the number of food banks and poverty, will he explain why the number of food banks increased by more than 10 times during the previous Administration? Was that the result of the same factors or not?

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

With world population set to rise to 9 billion, we need to nearly double world food production with half as much land, energy and water. Does the Minister agree that British agriculture science and research from GM to a range of other technologies has a major part to play in helping us feed the world?

[Mr Heath]

It is absolutely right that we have the know-how in this country to exploit a wide range of technologies which could make a real difference to being able to feed the rising population not just in this country, but across the world. I hope the agri-tech strategy that we are in the process of launching will make a real difference in getting research into the right areas, making that usable in terms of applicability, and then sharing that expertise with those people who can put it into effect on the ground.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman), who asked the last question. Does the Minister agree, in addition, that the use of otherwise productive land for biofuels in particular and for solar power is a waste of perfectly useful productive agricultural land, and that we ought to minimise those things and maximise the amount that we can produce in this country?

[Mr Heath]

We have to get the balance right between land that is used for energy, which we need—let us not get away from that—and land that is best used for food production. Those decisions are often best taken at local level. Nevertheless, I am conscious of the need to make full use of good agricultural land for food production.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

The Minister’s complacency and definitional hair-splitting on the issue of food insecurity, at a time when half a million people were fed in this country by food banks will go down very badly outside this place. This week, his ministerial colleague in the other place said it was difficult to make the causal connections between the benefits squeeze and the soaring use of food banks, yet the Trussell Trust says that 45% of the people who need the help of its 300 food banks have come because of benefit delays or benefit changes. Which of those statements is true?

[Mr Heath]

I am sorry that the hon. Lady fails to understand the terms that she obviously fed to her Back Benchers to ask me about. Food security is a well understood concept. We are talking about feeding the world. We are not talking about food prices in the UK, but food prices in the UK are a very serious issue and not, I think, a matter on which to try to score political points. I am grateful to the various charities which help those who find themselves in difficulties. It is important that we support that in every way we can. I notice that the hon. Lady, with some fanfare, issued a policy review last night, “Feeding the Nation”, which supports virtually all our policies. I give her just one word of advice. If you are going to mention one of our great British cheeses, get the name right: it is single Gloucester, not single Gloucestershire.

[Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)]

6. What recent progress has been made on reform of the common agricultural policy.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr Owen Paterson)]

At the Agriculture and Fisheries Council on 26 June political agreement was reached on the CAP reform regulations. Overall the CAP package does not represent a significant reform, but we substantially improved the Commission’s original proposals and fended off attempts by others to introduce a number of regressive measures. By agreeing to the regulations now, we are able to provide certainty to farmers and paying agencies.

[Mr Robertson]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that answer and congratulate him on his work at the council. Will he enlighten the House on what those regressive measures were, because my farmers remain very concerned that they will be worse off as a result of some of the changes compared with their continental competitors?

[Mr Paterson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving me the opportunity to enlighten the House. It was extraordinary that at a very late stage in negotiations the European Parliament made moves to penalise the most efficient dairy processors and reward the least efficient. There were extraordinary moves as late as last Monday night to introduce coupled payments for tobacco, pigs, poultry and cotton. I think the UK played a part, working closely with our allies, and we saw off a number of other regressive measures, such as double funding. I hope that when the detail is worked out with the representatives of the farming unions, they will see that we stood by British farming and stopped a lot of really bad things coming through this reform.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am keen to get through another half a dozen questions, if possible, so we need to speed up.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that the best possible reform of the CAP would be to return agricultural policy to member states? Will the issue of agriculture be on the table when the Prime Minister renegotiates our relationship with Europe?

[Mr Paterson]

The hon. Gentleman knows that I am a strong supporter of being able to make more decisions on these matters in this House. It might reassure him to know that this reform means that a lot more decisions will be made locally, so there will be, in effect, an English CAP and each of the regions, which were very keen to be able to make decisions, will have power to decide on all four regulations.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

The key will be how the reform is implemented in this country. Will the Secretary of State assure the House that the active farmer will remain the main beneficiary, particularly those in the uplands, tenant farmers and commoners whose animals graze on common land?

[Mr Paterson]

Emphatically, yes: I am very happy to confirm to the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee that, as we work out the detail of the implementation of the reform in England, our drive will be to ensure that the agricultural sector gains from it. As I made clear in my comments on pillar two, we want to direct this towards rural areas in a way that benefits the rural environment and rural farmers.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

It is, of course, right that public money should be spent on public goods. At a time of severe austerity, what public good is there in spending hundreds of thousands of pounds—indeed, £1 million cheques—on large landowners who do not need the money?

[Mr Paterson]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. The fact is that we are going from 7 billion to 9 billion people. There has been complacency in this country over recent years, because there was unlimited, safe and easily accessible food to be bought abroad. We want to make sure that we have an extremely efficient, high-tech agricultural sector producing food. I take food security extremely seriously and welcome large, efficient farmers.

[Sir Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove) (LD)]

7. What progress his Department is making on the establishment of marine conservation zones.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Richard Benyon)]

We are analysing all the responses and evidence submitted following the recent consultation before making final decisions on designating the first tranche of marine conservation zones later this year.

[Sir Andrew Stunell]

I thank the Minister for that reply. He will know that the Select Committee was getting a bit frustrated about this, and the Government’s response to the Committee did not improve the situation. Does the Minister understand that there is real frustration about the slow speed at which this is going and the apparently arbitrary way in which the Government have selected the zones? Will he reassure the House that they are serious about delivering the policy?

[Richard Benyon]

I assure my right hon. Friend that I share his frustration. I inherited a system that created huge expectations but which did not match the evidence required to make these zones work. We are now seeking to make sure that they are evidence-based, affordable, fit in with what happens locally in the seas and part of a coherent package.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

Vital marine habitats off Devon and Cornwall will be lost for ever because this Government are not implementing a fully ecologically coherent network of marine conservation zones or following the time scale laid down in the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009. Will the Minister please think again and tell the Chancellor that the costs of inaction in the long run will be far greater than the costs of protecting our marine environment now?

[Richard Benyon]

The right hon. Gentleman is looking at marine conservation zones as if they are the only show in town. We have 42 special areas of conservation and 37 special protection areas around the English coast. About a quarter of our inshore waters are protected and we have more than 300 sites of special scientific interest in the intertidal zone. What we are trying to do with marine conservation zones is part of a much bigger picture of marine protection. We will be one of the leading countries in the world for marine conversation and the right hon. Gentleman should feel proud about that.

[Mrs Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)]

8. What recent progress he has made on flood insurance; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Richard Benyon)]

Last week, we announced a headline agreement with industry to guarantee affordable flood insurance for people in high-risk areas. The Association of British Insurers has assured Ministers that implementing Flood Re will have minimal impact on customers’ bills. We will be seeking the necessary powers in the Water Bill. Tackling flood risk will help to keep insurance terms affordable in the long term. We have announced record levels of capital investment of more than £2.3 billion for 2015-16 to 2020-21.

[Mrs Spelman]

I congratulate the Minister on securing that new deal for universal and affordable flood insurance, which eluded the last Labour Government and me. Will he actively encourage people who live in flood-prone areas to take up the capped premiums and not risk being uninsured?

[Richard Benyon]

My right hon. Friend should take a large slice of the credit for the deal that we have achieved. She worked hard to set in train something that the previous Government did not even look at, which is a successor to the statement of principles. I assure her that the key part of the deal is ensuring that we cap premiums, particularly for the most vulnerable, and, importantly, that we cap excess charges.

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

After the great flood, in the words of the old negro spiritual,

“God gave Noah the rainbow sign,

No more water but fire next time”.

Smethwick has certainly suffered from fire this week. Will the Minister, with other Departments, look urgently at banning sky lanterns and, with the Environment Agency, look at the licensing arrangements regarding storage at recycling sites that have large quantities of flammable material?

[Mr Speaker]

The right hon. Gentleman might wish to seek an Adjournment debate on the matter.

[Richard Benyon]

I have huge sympathy for the people of Smethwick, but this matter is nothing to do with floods or flood insurance. I assure the right hon. Gentleman that we are taking the question of Chinese lanterns very seriously indeed.

[Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

People in my constituency who have been flooded will welcome the news about flood insurance and the extension of the £50 off their water bills. Does he agree that that shows a commitment to the people of the south-west that was never shown by the previous Government?

[Richard Benyon]

I agree entirely. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for pointing out that we have addressed an intrinsic, long-term unfairness for people in the south-west. We have proved that we are doing that not just for today, but for the long term.

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

We have a proposal from this Government, not a deal. The Secretary of State said that

“this announcement means that people no longer need to live in fear of being uninsurable”.

However, all band H properties are excluded, as are so-called “genuinely uninsurable” properties and all properties built after 2009. Given that it has taken the Minister three years to get to this point, will he now admit that his proposals do not provide universal access to cover?

[Richard Benyon]

What an uncharacteristically graceless question from the hon. Gentleman. When the deal was announced from the Dispatch Box last week, there was an audible sigh of relief, not only from Government Back Benchers, but from Opposition Back Benchers. The deal has been welcomed and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman knows in his heart that it is a good deal and one that will last for the long term.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

9. What recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport on the roll-out of broadband in rural areas.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Richard Benyon)]

The Secretary of State meets regularly with his counterpart at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to discuss the roll-out of the £530 million rural broadband programme. We are determined to deliver that quickly to provide 90% of premises with superfast broadband at 24 megabits a second and elsewhere with standard broadband of at least 2 megabits a second. Further discussions will focus on the £250 million of additional broadband funding that was announced as part of the spending review.

[Chi Onwurah]

It is clear that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has been briefing against Broadband Delivery UK in recent weeks. The Minister must acknowledge that it is his Government’s decision to abandon Labour’s pledge of good broadband for all by 2012 in favour of superfast broadband for some by 2015 that has left rural businesses and residents in the digital slow lane. How does he justify the devastating impact of that on the rural economy?

[Richard Benyon]

I am sorry, but I cannot accept that. One reason why the hon. Lady is sitting on the Opposition Benches is that her party lost the rural vote, partly because it left rural Britain in a digital no-go zone. We have set out a programme that, by 2015, will see the rural economy playing its part in the rest of the economy through the extension of superfast broadband, and I think she knows it.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

I would like to report that there is good progress in rolling out superfast broadband in Gloucestershire. Does the Minister agree that that is one of the core reasons why the private sector is able to create more and more jobs?

[Richard Benyon]

I am delighted that things are moving on in Gloucestershire. Of the 44 county projects, 27 are now contracted and the remainder will be by September. We will start to see fibre being laid in huge quantities around rural Britain, and it will be as easy to run a creative industry firm in a converted farm building in my hon. Friend’s constituency as it would be in the middle of Gloucester.

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

Has the Minister carried out any assessment of the impact of digital exclusion on deprived communities such as mine, particularly for young people, who increasingly need internet connections to complete schoolwork, apply for jobs and so on?

[Richard Benyon]

We have indeed. We know, for example, from the work that PricewaterhouseCoopers has done that there is an average benefit of £365 a year to families who have proper digital access, for precisely the reasons that the hon. Gentleman gives. I was at a remote location in Northumberland national park the other day seeing a satellite solution that was providing an extraordinary benefit to the eight houses at the end of a long valley, so I am well aware of the points that he makes.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

I very much welcome the moneys that the Minister’s Department has made available to extend broadband into the hardest-to-reach places, but identifying exactly which places those are and what it will take to achieve that is no trivial exercise. Will he reserve some of the funds for councils such as Wiltshire that have submitted an expression of interest but still need to conduct the detailed survey work required?

[Richard Benyon]

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport is convening a meeting in the next few days with a number of community-led schemes that are concerned about the uncertainty over whether they will be among the final 10% hardest-to-reach areas. Over the next few weeks, we will have a much clearer view of where there are problems. We want to ensure that we iron out those problems so that people know that they are in that 10% and can then access money through the rural community broadband fund.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his Departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr Owen Paterson)]

The Department’s priorities are growing the rural economy, improving the environment and safeguarding animal and plant health. Today, I have published a draft strategy for achieving official bovine TB-free status in England over 25 years, and a copy has been placed in the Library. The strategy draws on international experience demonstrating the need to bear down on the disease in cattle and wildlife. It sets out our determination to work in partnership with the industry to develop and deploy new technologies, and we will also explore new options for governance, delivery and funding. Tackling the disease will require long-term solutions and national resolve. Our cattle industry and countryside deserve no less.

[Hugh Bayley]

Ash is a huge and important part of woodland scenery in Yorkshire, especially in upland areas, and ash dieback is increasing at an alarming rate, with more than 500 cases having been identified. The Secretary of State has reduced the staffing of the Forestry Commission by more than 500. How will he deal with something that could be a catastrophe for our woodlands without shifting staff and closing other parts of the Department?

[Mr Paterson]

The hon. Gentleman is right that the potential damage of Chalara to our rural environment is absolutely devastating. We will make our dispositions of the resources within the Department in the autumn, but I assure him that I have made plant health an absolute priority, right up with animal health. I have been to Australia and New Zealand to see what they are doing on biosecurity, and the plant taskforce has made some important recommendations, such as the risk register, which we are already implementing.

The answer for ash is to find a genetic strain. There is sadly no magic potion that we can spray on ash trees yet, although we are testing 14 of them, so a genetic strain is the real answer. For that reason, we have put out 250,000 young ash trees to see which ones are resistant.

[Simon Wright (Norwich South) (LD)]

T3. The average household loses £700 of food each year to waste. The Government have improved the date labelling of food, but will the Minister help even further by supporting prominent labelling advice on how food can best be stored at home to prolong its freshness?

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr David Heath)]

My hon. Friend is right, and through the recently announced third phase of the Courtauld commitment, the Government are working with retailers and manufacturers to design products in ways that help households reduce food waste and save money, including improved storage instructions. The Waste and Resources Action programme—WRAP—is working directly with consumers through the Love Food Hate Waste programme, to help people know how best to store different foods.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

The Government spent £25,000 on a consultation into sky lanterns which concluded that the fire risk is significant, and that they pose a risk to planes and a significant risk to the operation of coastal rescue services. With an estimated £6 million damage caused by a single sky lantern at Smethwick, and a fire that needed 200 firefighters and left only one spare fire tender to cover the whole of the west midlands, are the Government still seriously saying they will do absolutely nothing?

[Mr Heath]

The hon. Gentleman knows all about doing absolutely nothing on sky lanterns. I asked questions about sky lanterns year after year from the Opposition Benches, and within a month of taking office I commissioned a report into the potential harm they cause to farm animals. The report concluded that it was not possible to quantify the damage to animal welfare in ways that would justify a ban, but it indicated that there was a significant danger of fire. I have communicated that to my colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government, and I plan to meet them to discuss further action.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

T7. I know that the Secretary of State takes a close interest in EU affairs and how they interfere with businesses in rural areas. What steps is he taking to ease that situation?

[Mr Paterson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question because it pertains to every business in the countryside. Through the red tape challenge, DEFRA will have reviewed all its regulations that emanate from the EU by the end of the year, and as a result there will be 12,000 fewer dairy inspections per year. Since 2011, for every £1 of compliance cost, we have removed £13.

[Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

T2. News of a national pollinator strategy is welcome, but will the Minister confirm whether other relevant Departments as well as DEFRA will be involved in its development?

[Mr Heath]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for recognising the importance of the national pollinator strategy, which we hope to have in time for consultation at the end of this year. A wide range of other pollinator-friendly policies and initiatives are in place, but there are gaps we want to fill, particularly in research. That will give us the opportunity to look across Government and work with non-governmental organisations to review everything we are doing and establish our commitment to the future security of pollinators.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

T9. The single-use plastic bag tax has proven successful in Wales. It is being adopted in Ireland and will soon also be adopted in Scotland. Will the Minister update the House on the Government’s current plans regarding the introduction of a similar tax in the rest of the country?

[Mr Heath]

As my hon. Friend knows, the Government have been looking at this issue for some time and we believe there is a need to bear down on the use of plastic bags, particularly those that are non-recyclable. We are looking carefully at evidence from Wales and note the decision in Scotland. We hope to come forward with plans in due course regarding what is appropriate for the English market.

[Mr Stephen Hepburn (Jarrow) (Lab)]

T4. Now that the Government of millionaires for millionaires have waged war against the poor people of this country by driving down their incomes and pushing up the cost of fuel through the roof, what will the Minister do about food prices, which are increasing three times faster than the pay packet of the average worker?

[Mr Heath]

It will come as some surprise to my wife to learn that I am a millionaire. The hon. Gentleman mentioned fuel prices, but it was this Government who abolished the fuel price escalator, and the Labour party which put it in place.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Given the importance of the common agricultural policy to the EU, does the Minister share my frustration at the lack of Europe-wide food labelling? We heard yesterday from the all-party group for European reform that this was down to language problems, but food labelling can be done with symbols and pictures. Will he pursue this to make sure that we can trade more of our food across Europe?

[Mr Heath]

The most important thing about food labelling is to have systems that are readily understood by the consumer. One of the difficulties is that there is a huge weight of information that could be put on a packet, but putting everything on a packet does not necessarily make it more intelligible and useable for the consumer. We have to get the balance right, and talk to other member states in the EU about it as it is a European competence, but we are absolutely determined to provide proper understandable information that allows consumers to make informed choices.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

T5. Blackrod town council recently passed its second resolution to ban Chinese lanterns because of the risk to animals and the danger of fire. The Minister says that he is taking the issue seriously and that he raised it in opposition. Three years on, when will we see legislation to do something about this problem?

[Mr Heath]

The hon. Lady raises an important point that has been raised before. I am clear about the potential danger but we must act proportionately. We have done a study as far as our departmental responsibilities are concerned, which are to do with animal welfare. Other issues—for instance fire—fall into the areas of responsibility of other Departments, and I must now talk to my counterparts to take their views on it and on how we take the matter forward. But I have to say that we have done more in the past 12 months than was done in the previous 13 years.

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

The Minister is familiar with the concerns of my constituent Andrew St Joseph about the lack of involvement of landowners in decisions taken about flood defences and maintenance. Will he look into it and give me an assurance that this will no longer happen and that landowners will be consulted on the maintenance of defences?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Richard Benyon)]

I have huge respect for Mr St Joseph and his Essex Coast Organisation. If he feels that he is not being consulted, I want to make sure we address that. My understanding from the regional director and others is that they have regular meetings with him and with the Essex Coast Organisation. If my hon. Friend has other information, I will want to work closely with her to ensure we correct that.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

T6. Following the horsemeat scandals, there are still serious concerns about meat in the supply chain. When will we get a full report? In Leicester there are still concerns about halal food. What discussion has the Minister had with the Food Standards Agency on this?

[Mr Heath]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, we have commissioned a major review of food safety as it relates to contents, led by Professor Chris Elliot, which will be made available to the House and discussed. On halal food, we have held discussions with the faith organisations because it is a critical issue for them; not necessarily a Government issue, but certainly something that matters to them.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Farmers in the Kettering constituency told me recently that their greatest concern was rural crime and the theft of farm equipment. What work is the Department doing with the Home Department to address this problem?

[Richard Benyon]

Rural crime is a real concern and needs to be resolved locally, which is one reason why we have directly elected police and crime commissioners who can now be held accountable to their local electorate. But there is also a firm role for Members of this House to make sure that local police forces are making this a priority.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

T8. The Government’s rural broadband roll-out is such a disaster that I have farmers in my constituency who are expected to upload data both to the Rural Payments Agency and to HMRC online when they have no possibility of getting a connection. Will the Minister stop this demand?

[Richard Benyon]

One of the absurdities under the last Government was that they wanted things done online but farmers did not have the ability to do so. That is one reason why we have made roll-out of rural broadband so important. The hon. Lady knows that it is on the verge of being rolled out in her area, which will be of great benefit to some remote communities.

[Charles Hendry (Wealden) (Con)]

What proportion of those living in rural areas have not just slow broadband, but no affordably priced commercial broadband at all, such as the village of Isfield in my constituency? Will the Minister liaise with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to ensure that these “not spots” are given priority in the roll-out of superfast broadband?

[Richard Benyon]

Beyond 2015, the intention, with the extra money that has been allocated, is to get superfast broadband to 99% of properties. I have seen technology that gets good quality broadband to very remote communities, so I hope my hon. Friend’s constituents will soon be online and able to compete in the global economy.

The hon. Member for Banbury, representing the Church Commissioners, was asked—

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

1. What recent assessment the Church Commissioners have made of the effects of bats in churches; and if he will make a statement.

[The Second Church Estates Commissioner (Sir Tony Baldry)]

A small number of bats living in a church can be manageable, but parish churches are finding an increasing number of bats taking up residence in large roosts. There are significant costs in financial and human terms to those who worship in these churches, and to the wider community. The present situation is simply unsustainable.

[Mr Nuttall]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that reply. As a church warden, I know that many members of parochial church councils live in fear of bats taking up residence in their church buildings, because of the damage bats cause and the difficulty they have in removing them because of EU rules. Will my hon. Friend give the House some idea of what costs can be incurred by churches that have to remove a colony of bats?

[Sir Tony Baldry]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Parish churches have to raise the money for bat litigation at considerable cost to their community, and that can prevent their own mission and ministry. The sums of money can be large. For example, the church of St Hilda’s in Ellerburn in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) has spent a total of £29,000 so far, which is a significant sum for a small congregation to finance. As yet, there is no resolution in sight, but I was grateful to the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon) for indicating in a recent debate in Westminster Hall that there might be a prospect of St Hilda’s, Ellerburn at last receiving a licence from Natural England to resolve this issue.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I must say that I rise with some trepidation on this topic, given the explosive response from the Second Church Estates Commissioner to my gentle question in a Westminster Hall debate last week. Since then, I have been told that the Bat Conservation Trust and the Church Buildings Council were having productive conversations on the bats, churches and communities pilot project funded by Natural England until February this year when they stalled. Will the hon. Gentleman use his good offices to bring the two together to continue those conversations?

[Sir Tony Baldry]

My concern with the hon. Lady’s approach and the Bat Conservation Trust is that they seem to think that this is an issue that can somehow just be managed. I have to keep on saying to her that this is not an issue that can be managed. Large numbers of churches are being made unusable by large numbers of bats roosting in them. Churches are not field barns; they are places of worship. Following my debate in Westminster Hall, I had a number of letters from clergy up and down the country saying how distressing it was for them, before they could celebrate communion on Sunday, to have to clear bat faeces and bat urine off the altar and the communion table. That is not acceptable.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

May I take this opportunity to thank my hon. Friend the Second Church Estates Commissioner and the Under-Secretary for helping St Hilda’s, Ellerburn? It is a matter of urgency that the congregation can reclaim their church from the bats.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes an important point. [Laughter.] This is not a joking matter. This is serious and people have to understand that. I am grateful for the attention paid to this issue by the Under-Secretary. We are making real progress, but we need to ensure that places such as St Hilda’s, Ellerburn can continue to be places of worship and are not closed as a consequence of bat faeces and bat urine.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

2. What guidance the Church of England plans to issue to parishes and Church schools on pastoral care for same sex couples and their children.

[The Second Church Estates Commissioner (Sir Tony Baldry)]

The House of Bishops issued a pastoral statement before the Civil Partnership Act 2004 came into force in 2005. I expect that the House of Bishops will want to issue a further statement before the legislation on same-sex marriage comes into force. The House of Bishops is due to consider this December a report on sexuality, chaired by former permanent secretary Sir Joseph Pilling. The work of that group will assist the House of Bishops in its deliberations.

[Mr Bradshaw]

I am grateful for that reply, because I recently came across a case of a Christian couple in a same-sex relationship and with children in the local Church primary school to whom it was made clear by the local conservative evangelical church that they would not be welcome to worship in it. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that such intolerance and bigotry have no place whatever in the Church of England? When the Church issues guidance, it is very important that that is made quite clear to both parishes and Church schools.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

Of course I agree with the right hon. Gentleman about that. If he would like to give me the details of that case, I will most certainly take it up with the diocesan education officer. Children in Church schools come from a wide variety of family backgrounds, and teachers offer the same compassion and care for all. Each child is valued as a child of God and deserving of the very best that schools can offer. I would not expect any Church school to discriminate against any child, whatever their personal or family circumstances. If any right hon. or hon. Member comes across any instance where he feels that a Church school is in any way falling short of the standards that this House would expect, I hope they will get in touch with me.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Notwithstanding any differences we may have over the same-sex marriage legislation, does my hon. Friend agree that one immediate contribution that the Church of England could make towards improving pastoral care for same-sex couples and their children would be to recognise blessings for civil partnerships in churches?

[Sir Tony Baldry]

Those are all matters that I suspect the House of Bishops will give thought to in its considerations following the Pilling report.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Further to the important question asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), is the Second Church Estates Commissioner aware that one of the weaknesses of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill is that the rights given to children of same-sex couples are not planned to be the same as those for children of traditional couples? Will he have a word with his colleagues on the Front Bench about rectifying that?

[Sir Tony Baldry]

The hon. Lady makes an important point. Perhaps she would like to talk to me about it in greater detail afterwards. If this is an issue that needs to be resolved, it will have to be resolved in the other place, where the Bill currently lies.

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

3. What the policy of the Church Commissioners is on finding alternative uses for churches which are closed.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

Under the Mission and Pastoral Measure 2011, the Church Commissioners are responsible for settling the future of closed church buildings. For most, we are able to secure suitable alternative uses in partnership with a local diocese, but I should stress that the Church of England is not in the business of closing churches unless absolutely necessary.

[Andrew Stephenson]

Although I hope that churches will always remain principally used for worship, it was great to visit the grassroots family centre at St Philip’s church in Nelson recently and see the job club IT courses and other programmes now being run from the building by the Blackburn diocese. That stands in stark contrast to St Mary’s in the same town, for which the Church Commissioners have not had responsibility for over 20 years and which has remained boarded up since it was deconsecrated back in 1987. Does my hon. Friend agree that the St Philip’s family centre is a great example of an alternative use for a church building?

[Sir Tony Baldry]

What has happened at St Philip’s in Nelson is outstanding. I pay tribute to all who have made it happen. St Philip’s now homes a Sure Start project, a drug rehabilitation project and an Early Break project. I hope that churches and church buildings can always be at the centre of the community for wider community use.

[Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

It is also important to prevent churches used by other denominations from closing. Will the hon. Gentleman look at the situation facing St John’s, an historic building in Burslem? A different denomination wishes to continue worshipping there, but urgent action is needed to ensure that all the community groups can continue to use the church as well.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

I have sufficient difficulties sorting out the problems of the Church of England. I do not have responsibility for how other denominations open or close their churches. That will be, if anything, a matter for the local planning authority.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

4. What assessment he has made of the financial performance of the Church Commissioners in 2012; and if he will make a statement.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

For the financial year 2011-12, the commissioners achieved a total return of 9.7%. Over the last 20 years the commissioners have returned an average of 9.9%, which outstrips our personal aim of meeting the challenging target of retail prices index inflation plus 5%.

[Fiona Bruce]

Can my hon. Friend update the House on the current ethical investment policies of the Church Commissioners?

[Sir Tony Baldry]

The Church of England has very tough ethical investment policies, and we can demonstrate that the Church Commissioners have significantly outperformed the market while investing ethically, and that it is possible to invest ethically and get a genuinely good return on those investments.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

5. What support the Church Commissioners plan to give to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s initiative to promote credit unions; and if he will make a statement.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

Archbishop Justin wants to see a more flourishing community finance sector, and he has asked those responsible at Church House to explore how the Church of England can support the credit union movement. The Church Commissioners have agreed to provide support for that initiative.

[Simon Hughes]

Following the welcome summit called by the Government on payday loan companies, and given the view of many in this House that there should be a cap on the interest that such companies can charge, will my hon. Friend suggest that an all-party group goes to see Ministers in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to encourage support for the Church’s credit union initiative and to persuade the Government that we need to cap the interest on payday loans?

[Sir Tony Baldry]

I agree with my right hon. Friend. The Anglican Mutual credit union is raising capital from a number of sources to increase its capacity. I have been checking, and I think that practically every book in the Old and New Testaments exhorts against usury. In the other place, the Archbishop of Canterbury wisely stated:

“The Financial Services Act provides for a study of the consequences of a cap to be looked at and then for the cap to be brought in at an appropriate level. Caps are needed at a sensible level that does not choke off supply and send people into the hands of loan sharks…Caps are there to prevent usurious lending…We need to…cut out legal usury from our high streets.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 20 June 2013; Vol. 746, c. 485.]

I entirely agree that we need to work out how we can prevent legal usury from continuing in this country.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

May I press the hon. Gentleman on this matter? Surely what was said at the G8 about social impact investment is manna from heaven for the Church of England, because it can be used to provide an alternative for social enterprises at the heart of the community. This is not just about payday loans; fixed-odds betting is the curse of our urban communities.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

I am not entirely sure where the hon. Gentleman seeks to differ from me on this. I certainly think that we need to sort out legal usury, and I hope that my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) and I will form part of an all-party delegation to discuss with Ministers how we can cap those rates of interest that seem somewhat usurious.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

6. What recent discussions have taken place between the Church Commissioners and the Association of English Cathedrals.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

Recent discussions between the Church and the Association of English Cathedrals have covered such topics as promoting the impact of cathedrals on their locality and on national tourism, and determining how best to fund fabric repairs and maintenance.

[Hugh Bayley]

English cathedrals are among the cornerstones of English culture, of our music, of our art, of our sculpture, of our writing in the English language and even of our engineering innovation. Unlike our museums and art galleries, however, they get no regular Government funding. I know that the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey) has agreed to meet representatives of the Association of English Cathedrals. Will the hon. Gentleman tell us when that meeting will take place?

[Sir Tony Baldry]

York Minster is one of the glories of England. Maintaining our cathedrals is a huge responsibility. The hon. Gentleman was present when the Under-Secretary met cathedral deans recently. That meeting raised a number of issues, and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary agreed to meet representatives of the association. I hope that the meeting will take place shortly, and I will try to ensure that the hon. Gentleman can attend.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

8. What he learned from visiting the Kettering street pastors on 8 June 2013.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

I was greatly impressed by my visit to the street pastors in my hon. Friend’s constituency; they do outstanding work.

[Mr Hollobone]

I thank Sir Tony for his late-night visit to the Kettering street pastors. Does he agree that their work is making Kettering town centre a better place, and that the country would be a better place were it to follow Kettering’s example?

[Sir Tony Baldry]

No greater luck hath an hon. Member than to spend a Saturday night with my hon. Friends the Members for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) and for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) and their street pastors. The work that the street pastors do is genuinely impressive. Large numbers of volunteers from all denominations are concerned to ensure that those who are enjoying the night economy are well looked after and that they get home safe and sound. I pay tribute to both my hon. Friends for the support that they are giving to those initiatives.

[Mr Speaker]

I do not want to delay for long, but before the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) explodes, we must hear from him.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

The secondary reason why my hon. Friend came to the two constituencies was to judge the night life. Will he please tell us whether Wellingborough or Kettering had the better night life?

[Sir Tony Baldry]

Well, I fear that however I answer this question, I am likely to receive invitations from right hon. and hon. Members of all parties to go and sample the night life in their constituencies. I thought the way in which the night economies were managed by the police, by the street pastors and by everyone in Wellingborough and Kettering made them both attractive destinations for people to go and visit.

[Mr Speaker]

That was a diplomatic answer of the kind that one would expect from a former Minister at the Foreign Office. We are grateful to the hon. Gentleman.

Business of the House

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

22:35

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Notwithstanding the night life in Kettering, will the Leader of the House give us the business for next week?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Andrew Lansley)]

The business for next week will be:

Monday 8 July—Remaining stages of the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill (Day 1).

Tuesday 9 July—Conclusion of the remaining stages of the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill, followed by consideration in Committee of the Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill.

Wednesday 10 July—Opposition Day [5th allotted day] (1st part). There will be a debate entitled “The Effect of Government Policies on Disabled People” on an Opposition motion, followed by motion to approve a statutory instrument relating to terrorism, and the Chairman of Ways and Means has named opposed private business for consideration.

Thursday 11 July—Debate on a motion relating to parliamentary consent to arming of anti-Government forces in Syria, followed by a general debate to mark the 25th anniversary of the Piper Alpha disaster.

The subjects for both debates have been nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 12 July—Private Members’ Bills.

The provisional business for the week commencing 15 July will include:

Monday 15 July—Second Reading of the Defence Reform Bill.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 11 July and 5 September will be:

Thursday 11 July—Debate on social care reform for working age disabled people, followed by debate on large scale solar arrays.

Thursday 5 September—Debate on the sixth report of the Communities and Local Government Committee on councillors on the front line.

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the Leader of the House for announcing next week’s business. We have all been watching with concern as events in Egypt unfold. There are many British nationals in the country, so will the Leader of the House ensure that Members are regularly updated on this fast-moving situation?

The Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill returns to this place on Monday, as the right hon. Gentleman has announced. The hon. Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie) and I asked him last week whether he would provide extra time to ensure consideration of all the necessary amendments stemming from the recommendations of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards. I thus thank the right hon. Gentleman for responding by granting an extra half day, which will allow some extra time for this important Bill? Will he confirm that he will protect the additional time he has allocated so that we do not lose it to Government statements and find ourselves back where we started?

This Government have a woeful record on telling the media what is happening before they tell this House—in breach of the ministerial code. Yesterday, we reached a new low with the Defence Secretary’s spectacular failure to provide Members with crucial documents relating to his statement on Army reserves. You, Mr Speaker, have rightly admonished the Defence Secretary in the strongest possible terms, and today’s Order Paper says that there will be a clarification statement, but by the time I rose to speak, we had still not received it. Surely the Defence Secretary should now have the guts to come back and subject himself to the scrutiny of Members, who will finally have adequate information in front of them.

I pointed out a few weeks ago that the Education Secretary is at the bottom of the Government’s correspondence class, with a damning report from the Procedure Committee showing that eight out of 10 of his responses to MPs are answered late. This week, we have discovered why: he has been so busy composing an edict on the content of his departmental letters that he is not doing the day job. Apparently, he has demanded prose worthy of Jane Austen, George Orwell and, rather oddly, Matthew Parris. Does the Leader of the House agree that if the Education Secretary spent less time telling everyone else how to do their jobs and more time doing his, we would not have a shortage of a quarter of a million primary school places? Does he also agree that this is further proof that with this Government it is all about spin and never about substance?

The Back-Bench Bill to be presented by the hon. Member for Stockton South (James Wharton) is becoming a classic parliamentary farce. I hear that in order to keep Members here for the big day, the Prime Minister has been forced to invite his mutinous colleagues round for a barbecue tonight. While millionaire donors get kitchen suppers at No. 10, the poor Back Benchers are shoved out into the garden.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

It will not be a pyjama party.

[Ms Eagle]

If it is a pyjama party, perhaps Rebekah Brooks should be there.

I am told that the Prime Minister will be flipping the “posh burgers”, while the Cabinet will be dishing them out. That may sound like a rare treat, but there will be trouble if members of the Cabinet do their burgers the same as they do their policy: reconstituted, undercooked and over-garnished. I certainly would not relish them.

I note that the Tory Taliban continue to fire on all cylinders. Tomorrow they will debate the introduction of a Margaret Thatcher day, and next Friday they will debate the abolition of any protection against sexual harassment in the workplace. Their alternative Queen’s Speech is so off the wall that I cannot help wondering what they will come up with next. A Bill to disfranchise all but the landed gentry, perhaps? The repeal of the Factory Acts? A Bill to confirm that the earth is indeed flat?

It is not just the Prime Minister’s Back Benchers who are out of touch. On Tuesday, Tory welfare Minister Lord Freud denied that there was any link between the rise of food banks and the Government’s benefit chaos. Since the Government’s benefit changes, there has been a sevenfold increase in visits to food banks in Wirral. They were visited by 9,000 people this year, and in most cases the reason was the benefit changes. This is a Government who have given a tax cut to their millionaire donors while plunging a third of a million more children into poverty. May we have a debate on what they can possibly mean by their increasingly ludicrous phrase “We’re all in this together”?

This week, in an attempt to seem like a man of the people, the Prime Minister told a group of Kazakh students that he aspired to be the most high-profile member of an élite club at an élite school: Harry Potter. That outraged Potter fans everywhere, and inspired The Daily Telegraph to organise a poll which concluded that he was actually more like Draco Malfoy. The Defence Secretary cannot make a statement to the House, the Education Secretary cannot answer questions, and the Chancellor cannot organise a burger stunt. Is not the reality that the Prime Minister is presiding over a Cabinet of muggles?

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to the shadow Leader of the House for her response to the business statement. Let me begin by saying that I think all Members continue to be very disturbed by the turn of events in Cairo, and in Egypt generally. As we know, this is a very fast-moving and fluid situation. The Foreign Office has increased our consular presence in Egypt. I join my colleagues in advising British citizens to avoid non-essential travel to the country, apart from the Red Sea resorts, and to monitor, as necessary, the travel advice that is available on the Foreign Office website.

Like the Foreign Secretary and, I think, all Members on both sides of the House, I hope for restraint and calm and an end to the violence—especially given the very disturbing accounts of sexual violence—but I also believe that this provides us with a salutary lesson about the nature of democracy. What is necessary in a democracy is for people to resolve their conflicts peacefully, and to do so by means of democratic processes. I think we all agree that while that should not include military intervention, which we deplore, we expect those who are elected to govern in a constitutional framework that respects the rights of minorities and enables all people who live in a democracy to feel that they are fully represented. To answer the hon. Lady’s question directly, I know that the Foreign Secretary and other colleagues in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will take every step to ensure that the House is kept fully informed.

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s welcoming the additional time for the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill. Never let it be said that we are not a listening set of business managers. I do not think that my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie) is here, but I am grateful for his representations. We are moving towards the end of term before the summer recess. As the House knows, inevitably, a range of issues will require to be announced before the recess, but we will take steps to ensure that the time that is available for that debate is protected, so that it happens as planned.

The hon. Lady asked about yesterday’s statement by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence. Mr Speaker, you will have received a letter from him apologising for the Ministry of Defence’s failure to deliver documents relating to the statement. As the hon. Lady rightly said, the House will see a written ministerial statement from my right hon. Friend. I have the text of the written ministerial statement—

[Ms Angela Eagle]

We don’t.

[Mr Lansley]

I understand that the hon. Lady does not have the text. I will not read it all out now as it would take too long, but I will gladly share it with Members and it will be available in the Vote Office shortly.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

We needed it earlier.

[Mr Lansley]

I will read the text out if the hon. Gentleman wishes me to. Rightly, we said that we would clarify the answers given, and that is what the text does: it clarifies the issues relating to Kilmarnock, the Vale of Glamorgan and the Scottish and Northern Irish Yeomanry headquarters. Therefore, that will be available for Members. I regret that we did not share the documents in advance, provide the documents referred to on time, or give the House all the information necessary to respond to the statement. We owe the right hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Mr Murphy) and other colleagues an apology for that, and on behalf of the Government I give that apology. We will endeavour to ensure that it does not happen again.

The hon. Lady asked about responses to parliamentary questions. As she knows, I am proud of the fact that, during my time as Secretary of State, the Department of Health, a busy Department that is asked many questions, responded to questions on time in 99% or sometimes 100% of cases, a record that it has maintained following my departure. I know that the Secretary of State for Education and the permanent secretary at the Department are acutely aware of the need to raise their performance. I share with the Secretary of State the desire to ensure that, in doing so, good prose is used. My personal preference is for colleagues, when composing answers, to pay more attention to Sir Ernest Gowers than to Jane Austen, but that is just a matter of taste.

Barbeques in Downing street is not really a matter for business questions, but the hon. Lady does not seem to realise that we are united while Labour is run by Unite. That is the difference. We would love to see her at the barbeque. Perhaps she would like to come. If she does so, we can use the opportunity to see what her position is on a referendum on the future of this country in Europe. We are determined to give the people of this country that choice and to secure the best interests of this country through a negotiation of its relationship with the rest of Europe. Looking at the business before the summer recess, I hope that there will be a further opportunity for a debate in Opposition time. She might like to use that to go beyond the debate that the Opposition had on lobbying and to consider third party influence in the political system. We will bring forward a Bill relating to that issue, but the Labour party, before it deals with any motes in anyone else’s eye, must take the beam out of its own eye, which is that it is run by the trade unions. It is a party where third-party influence is rife. It is a party where 81% of its funding comes from the trade unions, and that does not just buy influence; it apparently buys the opportunity to select Labour party parliamentary candidates. That is an outrage. The legislation we introduce will not change that situation, but it is in the gift of the Labour party to do it, and the fact that it has not and that the Leader of the Opposition does not do it is a demonstration of how weak he is in his own party, as he would be in any other situation.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

May we have a debate on transparency in local government in the modern digital age, to raise in particular the concerns that council senior officers and monitoring officers, notably those in the London borough of Tower Hamlets and others, have sought deliberately to undermine recent guidance by the Secretary of State to encourage more widely available filming and broadcasting of council meetings by local residents and journalists?

[Mr Lansley]

I am interested in what my hon. Friend says, and I will certainly raise it with my hon. Friends at the Department for Communities and Local Government who, he will know, feel very strongly about the importance of such openness and transparency. Previous issues in relation to the desire of some councils—only a very few, we hope—to try to control the media in their area is in part what has led to the Local Audit and Accountability Bill that is currently in another place, but my hon. Friend raises a further important point.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

Further to what my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) said about food banks, the Trussell Trust estimates that almost 350,000 people are using them, and that figure has tripled since 2012. As the Department for Work and Pensions does not record or measure these referrals, how can the Government be sure there is no link between food bank usage and welfare cuts? May we have an urgent debate on this issue?

[Mr Lansley]

I cannot give the hon. Lady a debate on this subject, but she will have heard the answer given repeatedly at this Dispatch Box both by me at business questions and by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. The use of food banks increased tenfold under the last Government. One of the critical changes that have taken place is that before the election the Trussell Trust had been looking for food bank access to be advertised in jobcentres, but whereas that was not given by the last Government, it has been given under this Government. There is therefore greater access to food banks, which is important for people who are in need.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Last week it was my pleasure to open the East Midlands airport academy, which is working with young unemployed people to give them the skills and confidence they need to take their place in the workplace. Despite youth unemployment being down 15% last year in my constituency, we must do much more. May we have a statement on what steps the Government are taking to help reduce the scourge of youth unemployment?

[Mr Lansley]

The whole House will be glad to hear of the East Midlands airport academy, and I am sure my hon. Friend is proud of the contribution it is making and of his constituency for the job creation that is helping to reduce youth unemployment, as he described. Fortunately, we are not remotely complacent. We have seen a reduction in youth unemployment in the latest data, which are for the last quarter, and since last year, but we continue to take further action. We have put £1 billion into the Youth Contract, more apprenticeships, more work experience places, and more incentives in relation to wages to encourage employers to take on young people, and over the last year youth unemployment fell faster in this country than it did in the United States, Germany, Canada, France or Italy.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

In my constituency of Wansbeck, we have always had a healthy horse population, as they have been well looked after by careful owners, but recently we have seen an explosion in irresponsible horse ownership, with horses being tethered next to almost every available blade of grass. Will the Leader of the House grant a debate on this problem, because if it is not effectively and efficiently tackled by local authorities we will see loss of life and serious injuries to residents in Wansbeck and other parts of the country?

[Mr Lansley]

I am sure the House will agree with the hon. Gentleman that that is a most unsatisfactory situation, which might apply in other constituencies. I do not know whether he has had an opportunity to raise it with my hon. Friends at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, but if he has not I will certainly draw it to their attention and ask them to respond. I know in my own constituency and elsewhere that there can be difficulties with people bringing horses on to land and then sometimes simply abandoning them, and the responsibilities of the landowners in those circumstances can be very onerous.

[Mike Crockart (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

Accessing Government services using 0845 numbers can cost as much as 41p per minute via mobile phones. May we have a statement on what progress the Government have made on transferring this access to local-rate 0345 numbers to ensure that the Government do not directly profit from the delivery of their own services?

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The Government are aiming, as far as is possible, through the digital by default strategy, to give members of the public access to direct online channels of communication, so that they do not have to rely on telephony so much. Some departments, such as Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, have made considerable progress in moving away from 0845 numbers; I am told that 95% of its personal tax callers now use an 03 or equivalent number. I know from my experience at the Department of Health that part of the principle behind the shift from NHS Direct to the 111 telephone system, which is in principle the right thing to do, is moving away from an 0845 number to a simple, easy to remember and free 111 telephone system.

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I wonder whether the Leader of the House has had an opportunity to look at early-day motion 337, which stands in my name and those of other hon. Members, on the 125th anniversary of the Bow match women’s strike.

[That this House welcomes the first Match Women’s Festival being held in London on 6 July 2013 to mark the 125 years since the 1888 strike by 1,400 mainly women workers at the Bryant and May factory in the Bow area of East London; notes modern research by the historian Louise Raw that proves that the strike was instigated, organised and led independently by the match women themselves and then supported by others, after many years of dangerous working conditions, poverty wages and bullying by the match women’s employers; further notes that the match women’s strike in 1888 led directly to the Great Dock Strike of 1889 in the same part of London and, therefore, set in train the historic events from which the Labour Party was created in 1900; and believes that the match women’s victory was also an inspiration to the Suffragette movement and for all those campaigning for equality today, especially on issues such as violence against women.]

May we have a debate that would allow hon. Members to tell the true story of what happened to those brave women, neglected by historians for many years, and how they changed the course of history by standing up for their rights at work?

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question. I had not had, but now have, an opportunity to see early-day motion 337. I will take an opportunity, as I know many hon. Members will, to read it and perhaps to read about it. I very much welcome what she has had to say; she rightly raises important issues that we need to commemorate and always reflect upon in current circumstances.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

May we have a debate on the anomalous situation of precipitous demolitions ahead of planning applications being considered? High Trees in Eastfield road, Peterborough, a striking Victorian house, previously occupied by the Family Care charity, faces the threat of demolition as a result of a speculative application for 90 student bedsits by a mystery developer. Will the Leader of the House persuade his colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government to look again at this issue, so that we can avoid precipitous demolitions ahead of planning application consideration and, thus, protect our heritage and built environment?

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. I can imagine how he and his constituents might be alarmed by an experience of that kind. I will, of course, raise it with my colleagues at DCLG and encourage them to respond to him regarding what powers are available and how they are appropriately used. He might note that our DCLG colleagues will be here answering questions on Monday, which might give him an opportunity to raise the matter then.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

The Leader of the House spoke about the need for a debate on third-party influence. Does he feel that should include consideration of the impact of large, multi-thousand-pound donations from individuals such as John Nash, a chairman of Care UK, to Government Members?

[Mr Lansley]

I was a director in Conservative central office 20 years ago, when the Conservative party made it absolutely clear that donations to the party would not secure influence—they would not come with strings attached. In those two decades the Labour party appears to have forgotten nothing and learnt nothing. It continues to be a party dominated by its paymasters; 81% of the resources that the Labour party depends on comes from trade unions. In quarter four last year, one trade union, Unite, gave Labour £832,990 and that did not come without strings—it came with many strings attached.

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

Tourism in Cleethorpes has been badly hit in recent months following the closure of the main rail route out of the resort as a result of a landslip. The incident has highlighted the economic fragility of many seaside resorts, so will the Leader of the House find time for a debate on such matters?

[Mr Lansley]

I know that my hon. Friend has been assiduous in pursuing the issue and, in response to questions that he has asked before, I have raised it with my hon. Friends at the Department for Transport. I cannot promise a further immediate debate on rail matters—of course, some rail issues were open for discussion yesterday—but I will of course raise the issue with my hon. Friends once again on his behalf.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

When can we debate the office of police and crime commissioners, which is causing disruption, waste and unhappiness throughout the country? The concept of having two people in charge, one of whom has almost unlimited Henry VIII powers while the existing chief constables have their powers diminished and threatened, is a matter of great concern and a threat to the independence of our police.

[Mr Lansley]

I know that the hon. Gentleman has raised the issues relating to the police and crime commissioner in his part of the world with me and with the Prime Minister, and he will have heard the reply. I would say two things. First, democracy matters and, in this context, the accountability that comes with election is important in itself. I know that it is enabling people across the country to feel that to a greater extent than in the past their priorities can be directly reflected in the priority setting of police services for their area. Secondly, if he has specific issues about his constituency my hon. Friends from the Home Office will be available for questions on Monday 15 July.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

The Leader of the House will be aware of the Prime Minister’s written statement yesterday that the Department for Education has ceased to have responsibility for youth policy—ironically, at a time when the commission considering youth work, which I chair, has been inundated with evidence from academies and other schools about the importance of the links between classrooms and youth work. Given the disproportionate impact of local authority funding cuts on youth work, may we have a debate—I do not believe we have had such a debate in this place for some years—soon after the recess on the future of youth services in this country? We could then consider the progress on the Government’s Positive for Youth policy in the light of yesterday’s announcement.

[Mr Lansley]

I cannot immediately offer a debate and I know that my hon. Friend will understand that the ability to relate issues to do with young people across government and to give them a renewed focus was at the heart of the Prime Minister’s changes, as announced yesterday. I am glad that this week we had the announcement of a major extension of funding for youth sport, which will, I hope, form part of the Olympic and Paralympic legacy. That is very important. I shall raise the issues he mentions with my colleagues and as the opportunity for such a debate will probably not arise immediately in Government time, he might consider asking for such a thing in the context of priorities through the Backbench Business Committee.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

May we have a debate on the demands for a public inquiry into the allegations that the Metropolitan police sought to undermine the Macpherson inquiry? There are revelations today that a report has been referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission that a senior officer sought to gather information on someone who was about to give evidence to the inquiry and did so with the intention of undermining that individual. If that proves to be true, it seriously calls into question the way that senior officers across the country approached the Macpherson inquiry and further undermines the process of the police investigating the police. Only an independent inquiry with the right to summon people and to have them give evidence under oath will satisfy the public that the matter is truly being looked into.

[Mr Lansley]

The hon. Gentleman will recall that the Home Secretary made it very clear in the House that she has confidence that a number of inquiries that are being undertaken into the issues surrounding Stephen Lawrence’s murder continue to be independent, but that she has not taken off the table any further steps that might be needed to ensure that there is the rigour and independence required. She continues to keep the issue under review.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Back in 2008, Bradford & Bingley was expropriated by the Labour Government in a horrid and flawed decision taken by the then Prime Minister and Chancellor. Nearly 1 million shareholders and bondholders still do not know how and why their company was confiscated. Surely the Leader of the House agrees that it is time the Government and the Financial Conduct Authority made it abundantly clear what decisions were taken in the run-up to the confiscation. Will he arrange for the Chancellor to make a statement laying out exactly what decisions were taken, so we can find out once and for all why Bradford & Bingley was treated so unfairly compared with other banks in a similar situation?

[Mr Lansley]

On behalf of my hon. Friend and other Members who share his views, I will raise the matter with my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. My hon. Friend will be aware that our right hon. Friend will not himself have direct access to the papers of the previous Administration, but I will ask him what steps, not least in the context of the continuing inquiry into banking standards, it is appropriate to take to find out more about the circumstances.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Leader of the House consider having a debate as soon as possible on how we restore and achieve a renaissance of the great towns and cities, such as Huddersfield, Leeds and Manchester, in the north and midlands of our country? Does he believe that if there were a £50 billion pot to invest in those cities—a wonderful opportunity—the city leaders would spend it on fast rail to Manchester instead?

[Mr Lansley]

I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman did not acknowledge not only what has already been achieved in some of our great cities, but the importance of the city deals. To take the example of Manchester, the city deal reached there is visionary and far reaching, and if the earn-back scheme does what it is intended to do, it will provide enormous investment in the infrastructure of the city. Other cities across the country—I think Huddersfield is one of them—are bidding for a city deal. This is their opportunity to come forward with a vision for their city—it should be not top-down, but led locally—and the Government are looking to give support to those city deals.

[Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)]

Supporters of Coventry City football club, including myself, are dismayed that the club’s owners are applying to the Football League to move the club to Northampton for the next three years. The board of the Football League has to sanction the move, which I strongly urge it to oppose. Will my right hon. Friend ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport to make an urgent statement on this important matter?

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend raises an issue that I can imagine is of significant concern to his constituents and others in the area. Although it is not an immediate responsibility of the Government, this is something that I know my hon. Friends at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport dealing with the governance of football take seriously and I shall of course raise it with them. I know that they will respond to my hon. Friend, so that he can keep his constituents informed of what the circumstances are and what the Government’s view may be.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) for giving me some leeway to raise this issue.

I have now seen a copy of the written ministerial statement, which the Library received at 10.43, although it is actually a draft, so perhaps we should not be too confident about it. The WMS contains no details of the number of personnel who will lose their job or have to move, or what the requirements are for each of the bases; it does not provide any moving dates; it does not say which constituencies personnel are going to; it does not state if they are moving locally; it does not give the base locations in any of the cities; and it does not explain how Kilmarnock ended up, in handwriting, on the list. May we have a proper statement from the Ministry of Defence at the earliest opportunity—perhaps even on Monday?

[Mr Lansley]

The hon. Gentleman knows that many of the matters he raises would not have formed part of the original circulation of documents. I have made very clear our regret that the information that should have been available when the Secretary of State sat down at the end of his statement was not available at that time. The information, in so far as it was incorrect at the time it was given to him, is being corrected in the written ministerial statement, but as the hon. Gentleman rightly says, there are further questions to which he wishes to have answers. I will of course ensure that my hon. Friends at the Ministry of Defence take note of those questions and respond to him as soon as they can.

[Mr Speaker]

I should, perhaps, mention to the House that, as the Leader of the House indicated earlier, I have myself received a gracious letter of apology from the Secretary of State for Defence, a copy of which I am content to place in the Library of the House.

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

Will the Leader of the House raise with the Chancellor of the Exchequer the inequitable and unjust situation whereby a banker who wishes to sell a derivative or hedging product, such as interest rate swap agreements, has to be registered, authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, but the directors of many thousands of small and medium-sized businesses, who are classified under the FCA’s test as sophisticated enough to take responsibility for signing such an agreement, are not registered, authorised and regulated by the FCA and therefore are ineligible for the FCA’s redress scheme?

[Mr Speaker]

This is a matter of notable interest and possibly no little complexity. It is not immediately obvious to me, which may be the result of my own stupidity, that it represents a business question, but the ingenuity of the Leader of the House is legendary and I shall leave it to his interpretation.

[Mr Lansley]

I think that what my hon. Friend is looking for is a response from Ministers at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and I will try to secure that. She may find that it is none the less in order to raise some of the issues that she describes in the context of the discussion on the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill, as they are clearly relevant to that. I am pleased to say that we have now allocated a day and a half to enable such issues to be raised.

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

I am sorry to have to come back to the debacle that was yesterday’s defence statement, but we still do not have clarity. I find it astonishing that a Secretary of State, whether that is the Secretary of State for Defence or for Education—there is a similar problem there—can come to the House and give a statement with incorrect or inadequate information for Members in all parts of the House to peruse. I ask respectfully why the Leader of the House, having seen the statement this morning, even though it appears to be only a partial statement, did not make it available prior to today’s business questions. Surely that would at least have shown some willingness on the part of the Government to try to keep Members informed on this very complex matter.

[Mr Lansley]

I will continue to ensure that we make the information that is provided to the House available as quickly as we can. As I say, I had the language of the written ministerial statement shortly before I stood up, but I did not have it in a form that I could distribute to Members and I was not confident that it was in the Vote Office at that point.

[Thomas Docherty]

It was not.

[Mr Lansley]

That is why I was not confident that it was there. I am very clear that we did not meet the standard that we were looking to meet yesterday. We are determined to ensure that we make this information available, and make it available when the House has a need for it.

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

May we have a debate on the need for a change of culture in the BBC? I would have hoped that scandals over recent years and even in recent weeks would allow the BBC to be more transparent and open with its viewers and the licence fee payers. I recently tabled a freedom of information request to ask how many journalists and staff travelled with the British Lions to follow them in Australia, and the BBC refused to answer it because it falls outside the Freedom of Information Act. Is this not a bad example of how the BBC works?

[Mr Lansley]

Many Members in the House will have sympathy with what my hon. Friend says. Many Members will also remember the long struggle that took place to secure access to the BBC for the National Audit Office. When one sees, for example, the report that the NAO published recently in relation to severance agreements at the BBC, that entirely justifies the openness that resulted from its access. I am sure Members will be looking to the Public Accounts Committee’s hearings with the chairman of the BBC Trust and looking to the BBC Trust which, as regulator of the BBC, must take responsibility now for ensuring that the cultural changes that are required in the BBC are seen through.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

It cost £73,000 to help prepare three NHS chiefs for a recent Public Accounts Committee hearing. May we have a Government statement on how and why consultants were hired for 52 days in advance of a two-hour PAC hearing, and who will be called to account for this gross misuse of taxpayers’ money?

[Mr Lansley]

As far as I am aware, that should not have happened and it was an excessive use of resources for that purpose. I am sure my hon. Friends at the Department of Health and in particular its permanent secretary will want to examine precisely why that happened. [Interruption.] I think it happened after I was Health Secretary. Rather than rehearse or receive training, civil servants and others who give evidence to Select Committees would be well advised simply to think through what their responsibilities are and how they discharge them. That is the most important thing they can do and the proper preparation they should undertake.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

Aldi, Morrisons and Tesco want to build big stores in my constituency; some people are against and some are in favour. Yorkshire Water, meanwhile, wants to rip up the listed Victorian reservoir spillway at Butterley in Marsden, and nearly everybody is against that. May we have a debate on how communities can be involved, how the process can be a lot more transparent and how local views can be heard on such major planning issues?

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend raises important issues with which the House has become familiar, not least through his robust advocacy of the heritage represented by the Butterley spillway. I reiterate that my colleagues from the Department for Communities and Local Government will be available to answer questions on Monday, which my hon. Friend might find helpful. In addition, the Government are focused on securing local decision making, not least through neighbourhood plans, which, if used to their fullest extent by local communities, give some of the protection that he rightly is looking for.

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I have just benefited from a period of paternity leave following the birth of my first child, Ruby Erin—8 lb 7 oz and both mother and daughter are doing well, since you ask, Mr Speaker—as a result of a right that was extended by the previous Labour Government. Could time be made available to discuss the extension of employment rights to parents, including those who find themselves in the impossibly sad situation of losing a child immediately after birth?

[Mr Speaker]

My profuse apologies to the hon. Gentleman; I should have been listening to what he was saying.

[Mr Lansley]

I think the House will join me in congratulating the hon. Gentleman and wishing his daughter Ruby and her mother the very best in the future.

We take very seriously the availability of paternity leave and, indeed, flexible leave, which is why we included additional relevant provisions in the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013. There are issues concerning bereavement and sadly we have not legislated for additional rights in that regard, but there is a responsibility on employers to consider and look sympathetically at requests for leave in circumstances of family stress, and I hope that they will do so.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. May I just point out to the House that there are still about 20 colleagues seeking to contribute? I would like to accommodate them all, as I almost invariably do, but there is a statement to follow and then two debates under the auspices of the Backbench Business Committee, so there is intense pressure on time necessitating exemplary parliamentary brevity, which will now be shown by Mr Peter Bone.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

May we have an urgent statement from the Leader of the House about tomorrow’s business? There will be a very important debate and I praise the Government’s Chief Whip for using his power to ensure that Conservative Members will be present, but I understand that the other parties are trying to persuade their Members not to attend. What advice does the Leader of the House have so that Members can come here tomorrow and vote for Margaret Thatcher day?

[Mr Lansley]

I say to all Members, and Opposition Members in particular, that they should not come here because their Whips tell them to or absent themselves because their Whips advise them not to be here. On the contrary, the reason they should be here is to explain to their constituents whether they are in favour or not of giving the people of this country a say over our relationship with Europe.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

May we have an urgent debate about who is in charge of the Department of Health? They are like Laurel and Hardy. The Secretary of State appears to be more interested in—I am sorry, I have completely forgotten the rest of my question.

[Mr Lansley]

Suffice it to say that the Secretary of State is in charge of the Department of Health.

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

I regret to have to again ask for a debate on the plight of the young Tamil children who, at the end of the conflict a number of years ago, disappeared. They have never been found and their parents and relatives have never been told what happened to them, even though we fear that we know what happened to them. May we please have an urgent debate on that matter?

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend’s concern is entirely understandable. Ministers at the Foreign Office continue to take a close interest in Sri Lanka and to make representations to its Government on the human rights abuses of the past and, in so far as is needed, improvements in human rights now. I will ask them to respond to him with what they know about the possibility of resolving those unhappy issues.

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House use his good offices to ask the Home Secretary whether we may have a debate or, at the least, an oral statement on gun controls and firearms licensing? That is a hotly debated topic and there are issues of public safety. Ministers have indicated that they are consulting on changing the guidance. It might be opportune to have such a debate at an early opportunity.

[Mr Lansley]

I will talk to my right hon. and hon. Friends at the Home Office. I cannot promise an immediate debate or a statement, but I will see what they can do to respond to the hon. Gentleman. As I said earlier, they will be available for questions on Monday 15 July.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

Last week, a man died when he was hit by a train close to Rugby station. That was one of an increasing number of such incidents. There have been 238 in the past year, leading to distress for families, psychologically scarred train drivers and disruption for travellers. Network Rail is about to install new fencing along the west coast main line and is working with the Samaritans on suicide prevention. May we have a debate to consider what further steps may be taken on this important matter?

[Mr Lansley]

Members will know that fatalities at level crossings and on railway lines are intensely distressing. My hon. Friend may like to know that the number of trespass fatalities in 2012-13 fell below the average level of the past 10 years. Through its community safety campaigns, Network Rail is educating young people about the dangers of the railways, particularly for trespassers, and it is working with the Samaritans on initiatives to reduce the incidence of railway suicide. I will ask Ministers at the Department for Transport whether they can add to my response.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House arrange for the Home Secretary to come to the House and issue a clarification on the apparent proposal to introduce £3,000 visa bonds for visitors to this country from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. That proposal has caused much dismay in Leicester and threatens to put a strain on our economic ties with those nations.

[Mr Lansley]

The hon. Gentleman might have heard the Prime Minister make it clear on Tuesday—I think in response to a Member from Leicester—that we are working towards a pilot scheme of that kind. The Home Secretary will announce the details of that pilot scheme in due course.

[Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)]

There is unprecedented interest in the 100th Tour de France, which is currently taking place. I am sure that all Members would salute Mark Cavendish’s fifth stage victory. There is huge excitement in Yorkshire about the 101st Tour de France, which will start in Leeds and go around Yorkshire, through Sheffield and on to Cambridge and London. May we have a statement from the Government, who are working hard to make sure that it is a success, to ensure that we make the most of this thrilling opportunity next year?

[Mr Lansley]

Yes, there is great excitement, not least in my own constituency, which, as my hon. Friend says, the Tour de France will reach after the grand départ in Yorkshire. The Cabinet was briefed about it some months ago, and I thought it was an interesting and exciting proposal. I am pleased that the Government are backing it. I cannot promise a statement, but I urge my hon. Friend to be here when Ministers from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport answer questions on 5 September. That may be a timely moment to talk about further support for the Tour de France.

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

Earlier, in Environment, Food and Rural Affairs questions, I raised the lessons of the Smethwick fire for Chinese lanterns and waste storage. During that fire, the West Midlands fire service and its firefighters performed magnificently, but the service was stretched to breaking point. Indeed, I am informed that during the first night only one West Midlands fire engine was left to cover the rest of the west midlands. May we have a debate to give a Minister from the Department for Communities and Local Government the opportunity to reconsider the severe cuts to the West Midlands fire service and the other metropolitan authorities?

[Mr Lansley]

I am sure the House will share the hon. Gentleman’s recognition of the strain that that dreadful fire put on the local fire services and the magnificent way in which they responded to it. I will raise the issue that he mentions, but rather than wait for a debate, it might be better for him to be in his place on Monday when DCLG Ministers are here, so that he can raise the issue with them. I hope they will be able to give him some reassurance.

[Kris Hopkins (Keighley) (Con)]

Will the Health Secretary come to the House and give a statement on the opportunity to expand on his health tourism consultation to include an examination of the cost to the taxpayer of visitors securing repeat prescriptions that are then posted back to their home country for friends or relatives? I believe that is becoming more prevalent.

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. I cannot promise an immediate statement, not least because my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health has published a consultation this week and will no doubt wish to take account of the responses before announcing further measures. I hope that my hon. Friend and anybody else who has evidence of abuse of our NHS will bring it forward, because it is right that we respond to such abuse and take measures against it.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

I declare an interest as a patron of Gate-Safe, an unpaid position that I took up following the tragic death of two children, including one of my constituents, Karolina Golabek. There have been numerous other accidental deaths and serious injuries caused by automatic electronic gates. May we have a debate on the need to review their design and installation, and on the need for regular maintenance by properly trained and authorised manufacturers of manual and automatic gates, to prevent future such deaths?

[Mr Lansley]

Many Members listening to what the hon. Lady says will be interested to learn more. If I may, I will contact my colleagues at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in the first instance to see how they might respond to the issue that she rightly raises.

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

Following the Chancellor’s announcement in last week’s comprehensive spending review that the Government will use the LIBOR fines to fund charities such as Combat Stress, and yesterday’s announcement that the Ministry of Defence will make greater use of reservists in defending our country, may we have a debate on mental health, especially for reservists but also for regulars?

[Mr Lansley]

I cannot promise an immediate debate, but I hope that the mental health services that we provide through the NHS and in support of the armed services are not only comprehensive and effective but continually improving. We are continually seeking to improve them. My hon. Friend will recall that my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), who is now the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, produced the “Fighting Fit” report. In implementing it, we have put in place a number of measures that will deliver additional support to any service personnel or veterans who have mental health problems. I hope we will follow through on that as fully as we can.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

We expected the publication of the Foreign Office’s business and human rights strategy towards the end of last year. It has still not been published, but rumour has it that it will be before the summer recess. Will the Leader of the House ensure that it is not slipped out at the last moment, and that the House has a proper opportunity to debate it and question the Foreign Secretary on its contents?

[Mr Lansley]

I am not aware of a planned publication date, but I will inquire with my hon. Friends about what opportunities there may be to ask questions about it subsequently.

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

Shortly before the last election, the Leader of the House went with me to Rowley Regis hospital, which at the time had just lost its last two in-patient wards. While he was Secretary of State for Health, the hospital opened a new in-patient reablement unit, and it has just announced that another ward will reopen in autumn. As we celebrate the NHS’s 65th birthday, may we have a debate on the steps taken by the Government to ensure that local health services are driven by doctors in partnership with local patients?

[Mr Lansley]

I cannot promise an immediate debate, but it is timely to recognise the work done in the NHS. I remember visiting Rowley Regis hospital—if I recall correctly it is part of the Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust, which was at the forefront of clinicians taking greater ownership of the services they provide. Tomorrow is the 65th anniversary of the NHS, and universal access to comprehensive health care for all at the point of need is one of this country’s greatest assets, of which we are rightly proud.

I want personally to say to the one and a third million people who work in the NHS that we thank them and value what they do. I know, not least from personal experience on many occasions, that they want to achieve the best care for patients. That is why I put clinical leadership, with accountability for quality and excellence in outcomes and care for patients, at the heart of our NHS reforms. To be true to its mission, we need an NHS that is envied for its excellence, not just its availability. That is why the shift from a top-down target culture that covers up failure to one that is open and accountable in its outcomes will be a validation of the NHS, not a condemnation.

[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

On Tuesday, the Select Committee on Home Affairs heard evidence from the police and crime commissioner for Gwent. At that meeting, my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) asked a number of extremely perceptive questions. I was therefore surprised to read a tweet after the meeting by the Gwent PCC, who said that my hon. Friend was there as a “plant” for Gwent MPs. Such a remark is a huge discourtesy to Gwent MPs, to my superb hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd, and to a Select Committee of this House. May we have a debate on this?

[Mr Lansley]

If I may, I will just say that I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I know as a matter of simple fact that Members of this House do not go to Select Committees as a plant for anybody else; they ask questions on their own account and on behalf of the House. We should respect them for that, as should witnesses to the Committees.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

Today, the Select Committee on Education will publish its report on school governors and governance. It is a timely report, as Education Ministers are also thinking about that subject. May the House have the opportunity to consider school governance, not least to salute what is done by our governors, and also to update their role?

[Mr Lansley]

I hope that an opportunity will arise for such a debate although I cannot immediately promise that. I share with my hon. Friend the sense that giving greater freedoms and responsibility to schools to govern themselves through academy status and free schools depends not only on the professional leadership of the school, but on the support it receives from the governing body. Members of those governing bodies are to be congratulated on the support they give.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

May I press the Leader of the House further on the statement made yesterday by the Defence Secretary? Based on what we heard this morning, the draft statement leaves many questions unanswered. For instance, I do not know why Widnes TA barracks is being closed, or the consequences of that. Clearly I am opposed to that, and it is important that the Leader of the House speaks to the Secretary of State about coming to the House to answer further questions.

[Mr Lansley]

I think it would be fair for the hon. Gentleman to recognise that in addition to the White Paper yesterday, there was a written ministerial statement—albeit that it came later than it should done—that set out the order of battle, as it were, for reserve forces, which are re-shaping because of their extended role and increased numbers. There is a complex relationship between those things, and the Secretary of State could hardly attempt to explain that in detail in relation to individual locations in his statement yesterday. All Members should accept that that could not have been achieved that day in any case, and the issue needs to be examined afterwards. If Members want further detail on particular locations, they should correspond with Ministers at the Ministry of Defence to hear more about that.

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

The Prime Minister’s request in February for Professor Bruce Keogh to review the quality of care provided by NHS trusts with above average mortality rates has put 14 hospital trusts, including East Lancashire Hospitals NHS trust, under the spotlight. Following the announcement, I wrote to Sir Bruce to ask him to look specifically at the impact of the downgrading of Burnley General’s accident and emergency department in 2007 under the previous Government. The findings of the review will not be made available until 19 July, I believe—the day after the House has risen for the summer recess. May we have an early debate once the House returns to discuss the outcome of the review?

[Mr Lansley]

I must confess that I was not aware of the date on which Bruce Keogh was planning to publish his review of mortality rates at 14 hospitals, but I will of course inquire of my colleagues as to what is planned. Clearly I cannot anticipate the conclusions of the review. I remember visiting Burnley with my hon. Friend and I am very pleased that we were able subsequently to secure additional investment into Burnley to support services. It was transparent to all of us that the previous changes had left many people in Burnley and related districts very unclear as to what services were available to them, or ought to be available to them. I hope that what has been done subsequently has significantly remedied that.

[Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)]

Twenty three-year-old Tafadzwa Sarupinda and 15-year-old Tapiwanashe Sarupinda came to the UK in 2000 with their aunt, who now has British citizenship. The children do not. My predecessor wrote to the Home Secretary two years ago asking for this to be resolved. Tafadzwa says:

“I pray and cry as each year passes. My life is on hold.”

Will the Leader of the House assist me and prevail upon the Home Secretary to try to intervene and resolve this case?

[Mr Lansley]

As I hope I am able to do for all MPs, I will endeavour to secure a response to the hon. Gentleman in relation to his continuing problem with his constituent.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

This week we have learned that, over the past three years, the BBC has spent £25 million on severance packages for 150 senior executives, a quarter of whom received more than they were entitled to, while in Whitehall a permanent secretary has accepted a severance package of almost half a million pounds, £200,000 of which was in the form of a discretionary payment. My constituents in Kettering are outraged at this public sector largesse. May we have statements from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport about the abuse of licence fee-payers’ money and from the Cabinet Office about what it will do to stop mandarins getting excessive compensation payments?

[Mr Lansley]

If I may, I will not repeat myself; I am sure my hon. Friend will have heard what I said earlier about the BBC and about what the role of the Public Accounts Committee might be. I shall raise the other issue with the Minister for the Cabinet Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr Maude), or the Chief Secretary, both of whom are very concerned about the issue.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

May we have a debate on the Government’s latest plans to reform civil legal aid? Last Thursday we had an excellent debate in the Chamber on the reforms, but the issue of civil legal aid was largely missed, particularly with regard to judicial review and the Lord Chancellor’s barmy idea not to allow prisoners to access legal advice unless and only if they are opposing a parole decision.

[Mr Lansley]

The hon. Gentleman must recognise the requirement to reform legal aid; there are issues of fairness, of quantum and of the resources expended on legal aid, and there is also the need to secure savings. My right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor rightly has made it clear that those savings had to be achieved, but has listened to the representations made in the consultation. The Law Society was very clear that it was able to accommodate additional choice while understanding that the need for savings had to be met. It was very fair on the part of the Lord Chancellor to respond positively to that.

[Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)]

Please may we have a debate on tomorrow’s 65th birthday of the NHS? As the NHS changes from a target-based culture to a more open culture, and when various historic failures are coming to light, some of the achievements of the NHS, such as the removal of mixed-sex wards, improved cancer and stroke care, and the sheer hard work of those who work in it, are all in danger of being missed. If we were to have a birthday debate, we would be able to take a more rounded and celebratory view.

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I had the privilege of attending the 50th and 60th anniversary celebrations. At 65, the value that this country derives from having a national health service, with the principles that underpin it, is undiminished. As I said earlier, it is important that people in the NHS know full well that the NHS will carry that respect and valuation into the future only if it continues to put quality and outcomes at its heart. Building on recent announcements on publication of data and greater transparency on outcomes will enable clinicians and the NHS to demonstrate internationally not only that it is the most universally accessible service anywhere in the world, but that it can be among the most excellent, too.

Remploy

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

11:41

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

With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on Remploy.

Today’s announcement by Remploy means that jobs for approximately 70%—515—of the disabled employees in the remaining Remploy factories and CCTV sites could be saved through the commercial process. The sites and businesses are subject to final negotiations with preferred bidders looking to take over the businesses. Hon. Members will agree that our first concern must be Remploy employees, and they have been informed of the latest decisions by the Remploy board today. There are now 234 disabled people at risk of redundancy and they will take part in individual consultations with Remploy. All employees affected will be supported by the £8 million tailored package of support to help them move into mainstream work.

If I may remind the House, the Government announced in March 2012 that we would implement the recommendations of the Sayce review to withdraw funding from Remploy factories and redirect it to enable more disabled people to get jobs in the labour market. We have always made it clear that this is about supporting individuals in factories and disabled people across the country. As it stood, Remploy factories were losing £50 million—a sixth of the specialist disability employment budget. That money was not going to people but to failing factories, and that cannot be right. As announced in the spending review, the Government have confirmed £350 million to support disabled people to move into, remain in or progress in work.

On 6 December 2012, I tabled a written statement to inform the House that the Remploy board had commenced stage two of its commercial process. The aim was to transfer the remaining seven businesses in 18 factories and the 27 CCTV contracts, potentially affecting 1,016 employees. The Remploy board identified three businesses as potentially viable and appointed KPMG, as a professional agent, to manage the sale of the CCTV, furniture and automotive businesses. Of the 27 CCTV contracts, 17 are subject to the commercial process. KPMG, appointed by Remploy, is currently working through that process, which it hopes to complete shortly. I am pleased to be able to tell the House that eight of the remaining 10 contracts have either been taken back in-house by the local authorities or moved to alternative service providers. This means that approximately 50 employees will be, or have been, transferred to new employers. However, it is likely that the remaining two contracts will be terminated. I can also confirm that in addition to CCTV, the furniture businesses based in Port Talbot, Sheffield and Blackburn will remain in the commercial process.

I confirm that Remploy has received a number of good-quality innovative bids for its automotive business. In the next few weeks, KPMG will continue commercial discussions with a number of bidders who have expressed an interest in acquiring the whole business, which has 217 employees, including 179 disabled people based in the sites in Birmingham, Coventry and Derby. KPMG aims to have identified a preferred bidder in a matter of weeks. I will provide further written updates on progress when details become available. I can also confirm that offers have been received for the E-Cycle business, which has factories based at Porth and Heywood. I am pleased to say that the E-Cycle business will remain in the commercial process, as Remploy begins to work with the preferred bidder, with the aim of completing the business sale in mid-August.

Following independent and expert advice, Remploy has carefully considered best and final offers received for the three other businesses: Frontline textiles, Marine textiles and packaging. Remploy, together with an independent panel of experts including KPMG, has assessed the viability of these best and final offers against a series of published criteria, including the continued employment of disabled people, value for money and the sustainability of the businesses. Our priority throughout the process has been to safeguard jobs, which is why we have offered a wage subsidy of up to £6,400 for disabled employees to encourage interested parties to come forward.

Despite considerable interest in the Marine and Frontline textile businesses at Leven, Cowdenbeath, Stirling, Dundee and Clydebank, Remploy did not receive a best and final offer for these businesses as part of the commercial process. Additionally, there are no viable bids for the packaging businesses based at Norwich, Portsmouth, Burnley and Sunderland. These sites will now move to closure. In line with the Remploy redundancy procedures, all 284 employees at the packaging, Frontline and Marine textile businesses, including 234 disabled employees, will be invited to individual consultation meetings over the next 30 days to discuss the options and the support that will be available to them.

Our experience with stage 1 shows that businesses such as textiles that did not have commercial interest and closed afterwards reopened as social enterprises or new businesses. In fact, nine sites have been sold on that basis. This has resulted in employment opportunities for the original employees. For example, businesses have opened under new ownership in Bolton and Wigan, and at similar factories, which are looking to create 35 jobs for disabled people, including former Remploy employees. In addition, Remploy has already confirmed that it has received an asset bid from a social enterprise organisation for the purchase of assets of the textiles business. This may create potential job opportunities for those disabled people.

We have put in place a people help and support package for all disabled employees to provide a comprehensive range of support for all disabled individuals made redundant as a result of Remploy factory closures. This tailored support is available for individuals to access for up to 18 months after their factory closes and includes access to a personal caseworker and a personal budget to help individuals with future choices. I can confirm that the personal caseworkers have already begun engaging with employees on stage 2 Remploy sites. This has provided an important opportunity to give individuals currently at risk of redundancy the information they need about their opportunities moving forward. We will continue to do everything we can do in finding them work.

We have also built into the package a community support fund to provide grants to local voluntary sector and user-led organisations to run social job club projects to support disabled people and their families. Some 32 organisations have already been awarded funding, supporting 748 ex-Remploy employees locally. There has been welcome success during stage 1 in terms of the number of disabled former Remploy staff who have found alternative employment. We have every expectation that job outcomes from stage 2 will be similar. As at 28 June, 400 of the 1,103 disabled former Remploy workers who chose to work with us are currently in work and a further 328 are working with Work Choice to undertake other training activities.

In closing, let me confirm that the factories going forward in the commercial process are the CCTV contract, the furniture businesses in Port Talbot, Sheffield and Blackburn, the automotive sites in Birmingham, Coventry and Derby, and the E-Cycle business in Porth and Heywood. Those that will be closing are the Marine and Frontline textile businesses in Leven, Cowdenbeath, Stirling, Dundee and Clydebank, and the packaging businesses in Norwich, Portsmouth, Burnley and Sunderland. I have written to all affected MPs and parliamentarians, inviting them to a briefing session today at 4.30 pm in Room S, Portcullis House. I commend this statement to the House.

11:49

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for her statement, and for giving us advance warning of it just after 9 o’clock this morning. If there were a league table for the way in which Departments advise us of ministerial statements, hers would certainly be ahead of the Ministry of Defence.

Given the great interest in Remploy, will the Minister tell us what efforts were made to inform Members with a Remploy factory in their constituency that their factory was due to close? I understand that a letter went out at 11.40 this morning, just one minute before she stood up to make her statement—

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

What did you do when you closed Remploy factories—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order.

[Mrs McGuire]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am sorry; I might have touched a nerve.

I also wonder, given the way in which the House works, whether the Minister had given Members advance warning of her briefing at 4.30 this afternoon.

I shall turn now to the substance of the review. The Minister often cites the Sayce review, as did her predecessor, as protection for her decisions. I would remind the House, however, that the Sayce review did not recommend the speedy closure of the Remploy factories in the way that the Government have progressed it. Indeed, it recommended a phased development of the process. Once again, however, the review has been brought into play. The Government’s aim has always been to get rid of the Remploy liability in this financial year, and no matter what else was said, this was always going to be the cut-off point. That has been confirmed this morning. Of course I welcome the fact that viable bids have been received for some of the factories and that 17 of the 27 CCTV businesses are in the commercial process. I also welcome the Minister’s comment that it appears that eight of the other 10 will continue in one form or another.

The textile division based in Scotland has a long and proud tradition of making security and chemical protection wear for the Ministry of Defence, and the disappearance of the skills built up over many years will be a great loss. The textile division recently lost a major MOD contract that it was eminently capable of carrying out, given the quality and timeliness of its work. Given that the factories are under pressure of closure, will the Minister tell us whether she or any of her officials had any engagement with MOD procurement officials to encourage them to use Remploy as a supplier, given that it had carried out the work successfully over many years? It has never been properly recognised that much of the kit worn by our service personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq was made in Remploy factories. Did the Minister use her good offices to encourage the MOD to award that contract to Remploy, if necessary using article 19?

Will the Minister also explain what she meant when she said that there was an asset bid from a social enterprise company for the textile section? What opportunities does she believe that that bid will open up? Many of us on the Opposition Benches see the words “asset bid” and worry that they might really mean asset stripping. We need to know exactly what is involved.

I also want to ask the Minister to define the word “success”, which she used in the closing paragraph of her statement. She mentioned that about 1,100 former Remploy workers were choosing to work with personal caseworkers to find other jobs. In other words, they are not currently in employment. Another 400 are in work and another 300 are in training, so by my calculation, significantly less than 50% of the former Remploy workers who have already been made redundant are currently in employment. I am wondering what the Minister’s benchmark for success is.

Given that the Work programme is performing three times worse than doing nothing for disabled people—

[The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr Iain Duncan Smith)]

Rubbish.

[Mrs McGuire]

The Secretary of State keeps saying “rubbish”, but he needs to listen—[Interruption.] I did not realise that the Minister had brought along—[Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I am sure that we need to hear both sides. I was happy to hear the Minister and will certainly be happy to hear and wish to hear the shadow Minister. Interruptions are not helpful.

[Mrs McGuire]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. If the Secretary of State wants to say something, he should make his own statements and not heckle.

Given that the Work programme—[Interruption.] This is ridiculous, Mr Deputy Speaker, frankly. Given that the Work programme is not performing for disabled people, can the Minister say how the former Remploy workers are going to be supported in their quest for employment?

Finally, if the Minister looks at the areas where the Remploy closures are happening, she will find that there are unemployment rates of 7.5%, 8.2%, 8.1%, 7.4% and 7.9%—nearly double the national average—in the majority of cases. Does she really think that the closure of these factories today is an indication that she is really there to support disabled workers?

[Esther McVey]

I am led to believe that the etiquette of the House is to come here first to give a statement, which is entirely what I did. I believe, too, that this is a working parliamentary day—a full working day—so all the processes we undertook were carried out to the best possible standard. People were informed through a correct process and in the correct way. I am glad that we can put that on the record.

Moving forward, what this was all about was supporting disabled people. We had a situation in which £50 million—a sixth of the entire budget—was not supporting individuals, but going into failing factories. We cannot allow that to be case. We have therefore made sure that we support those individuals. There are 8,500 disabled people in the constituency of the right hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire), but only 29 of them, along with two non-disabled people, were employed at Remploy, making a total of 31 people. The Remploy factory in her constituency turned over £71,000 a year, but actually lost £439,000 a year.

I have faith in Remploy employment services to be able to find those people jobs. Since 2010, Remploy employment services have found a job for 109 people with the same disabilities. That is 109 in two years, while there are only 29 disabled people at this factory. Those are the statistics for the right hon. Lady’s constituency, and they are the same for many others.

I did indeed look into the MOD contracts. There are various criteria, which have to be adhered to—the cost to taxpayers, for example, and various others—and I also looked at article 19. It was put in place, which meant that Remploy factories could be considered, but article 19 also says that offers have to be viable and value for money, which was not the case.

On the asset bid, I said that no best and final offer came forward, although there were expressions of interest in the Marine and Frontline textiles businesses. An asset bid, however, has now come forward from a social enterprise, so we have faith that this can move forward. Our criteria for the bid involve, first of all, the employment of disabled people.

Let me add, to put the right hon. Lady’s mind at rest, that following the submission of assets bids during stage 1, the factories in Wigan, Wrexham, Oldham, north London, Motherwell, Bridgend, Bolton and Birkenhead have reopened.

I described as a success, and warmly welcomed, the process during stage 1 which led to 400 people obtaining jobs and 328 being involved in some form of training, because that has happened at a faster rate than has been the case following any other regular redundancy. Furthermore, nine factories have reopened.

I have read the written statement made by the right hon. Lady in November 2007, and the report of the oral statement made during the same month by the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain). At that time, everyone was looking for a way of making the factories work. The Labour Government put in more than half a billion for modernisation, but that did not work. They looked into whether an increase in public sector procurement was possible, but it proved not to be, following an overestimate of 130%.

The right hon. Lady also forgot to mention that she had closed 29 factories in 2008. In that instance, 1,637 people were not tracked, and did not benefit from an investment of £8 million and the provision of personal caseworkers. We have done all those things. I have met ex-Remploy workers. I went to Talit’s house in Oldham, and asked him what he wanted, and I met Chris from Burnley here at the House of Commons. We helped to reshape the whole package with the help of those people.

We have done a great deal, and, although there is more to do, I am proud of what we have done.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that at a time when there are 6.9 million disabled people of working age in the United Kingdom, we need to find a better way of using the budget that is available, rather than supporting loss-making factories which employ only a tiny fraction of those people?

[Esther McVey]

I entirely agree. We must proceed with care and consideration, and we must also listen to the views of disability groups, advisers and experts, all of whom say that they would like to see more disabled people in mainstream work. That is what we must do: provide proper, sustainable, full-time jobs.

[Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

Today’s announcement will not affect the Remploy factory in Aberdeen, because it has already closed, although a social enterprise has been running the textiles business very successfully, which suggests that the factory had the potential to be more successful than the Minister has suggested. However, the social enterprise was formed by the more able workers, and those who have remained unemployed are the most disabled. Do the Government think that there is still a need for sheltered workplaces in this country?

[Esther McVey]

I agree with what the hon. Lady has said about what happened in Aberdeen. People have come together, and some of the workers involved have made progress. However, the most severely disabled need to be helped into work and supported while they are there. We have therefore announced a £350 million strategy, on which we shall be working over the summer. Moreover, in July we shall be launching a two-year awareness campaign at an employment conference, bringing together employers, employees and disabled entrepreneurs

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

As the Minister knows, a social enterprise bid has been submitted for factories in Coventry, Birmingham and Derby. It has received considerable public support, including from me. It is well financed and well advised, and above all it is inclusive. Can the Minister suggest a way of ensuring that it succeeds?

[Esther McVey]

At present, that bid is still part of the commercial process. There have been several significant bids for the automotive industry. KPMG is currently working on the process with Remploy. We must ensure that the best bid is successful, so that there are jobs now and there will be jobs in the future for those disabled people.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

On Monday, I asked the Minister how many disabled people stayed in a job after 12 months. She said:

“Of the nearly 13,000 people who have started on Work Choice, a third—30%—have stayed in work.”—[Official Report, 1 July 2013; Vol. 565, c. 595.]

Given that many disabled people have been employed for 12 months, has she assessed why 70% of them are not staying in work long term?

[Esther McVey]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. We are looking at that, at what we can do and at the best way forward. That is why we have a brand new, two-year specialist disability employment strategy, which will start later in July, to see what is the best support we can give to those people.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

Could my hon. Friend confirm for people in Norwich what kind of support package they will have? She mentioned something about access to personal budgets and similar support.

[Esther McVey]

My hon. Friend asks a good question: what support do we offer and how do we provide that support? It is tailored to what the person needs, whether it is help with CVs or extra training, or support into the workplace. Therefore, it is dictated not by me but by the person who is coming forward who needs that help.

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

The Minister referred to the Wrexham site. She should claim no credit whatever in respect of Wrexham. It was she and Remploy who made the decision not to allow the business to continue there, and it has now moved to an alternative site. The factory remains closed and empty. When the Government asset-strip the Wrexham site, what will they do with the proceeds from the sale of the land?

[Esther McVey]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will be pleased to know that the Wrexham site is being sold with a view to making 10 to 20 jobs available for some of the ex-Remploy staff. That is the reality, which is far from the picture he is painting.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

The Minister will be aware that I have always been and remain opposed to the closure of the Remploy factories, but given the amnesia among those on the Opposition Benches, may I remind her that when the last Labour Government closed the Remploy factory in Bradford, they gave next to no support to the workers there and did not even monitor whether they found a job? Does she agree that that was totally unacceptable and that what is most important is that we do everything to find these people, who want and deserve to work, a job? The Government have a duty to help them as much as they can.

[Esther McVey]

My hon. Friend raises many key points, which are correct. Stages 1 and 2 were so difficult because there was no blueprint in 2008, and those people were not supported, tracked or monitored. It was shameful of Labour not to do that.

[Mr Frank Roy (Motherwell and Wishaw) (Lab)]

I do not understand why the Minister is misleading the House by saying that the Motherwell factory has opened. It absolutely has not. A year after the factory closed, many of the workers still do not have a job. There is no guarantee that when that factory is eventually opened by someone else any ex-Remploy worker will get a job there.

[Esther McVey]

I read out the names of the factories, including Bolton. It is anticipated that up to 10 employment opportunities for disabled people will result as social enterprises come forward. The hon. Gentleman is right: the factory may not be open at this moment but it is going through the process of opening, so considerable work is being done. That is why I can say that that has happened and is happening—we have been dealing with it for two years, knowing that it is happening.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that work programmes for the disabled should be efficient but, most important, they should be effective?

[Esther McVey]

My hon. Friend is correct. They have to be effective—that is what everybody wants—but the answer is more complex than that, because they have to be tailor-made and we have to look at the individual. So, yes, they must be efficient, but first and foremost they must be effective, caring and tailored to the individual.

[Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)]

But is not the truth that amid all the Minister’s spin and management-speak, she is strangling Remploy to death, and there is no prospect of the most vulnerable disabled workers in their 50s who work there all the time getting jobs in mainstream employment? By the way, her description of the 2008 programme is a total travesty. There was a £550 million subsidy for that, which she has cut savagely, and there was a programme for getting people into mainstream work, too. Also, she has given no guarantees, despite my asking the Secretary of State, and nor has the preferred bidder, who is based in Yorkshire, that the Neath Port Talbot site at Baglan will remain open. Can she give a guarantee on that now?

[Esther McVey]

I have a couple of points to make to the right hon. Gentleman. There was no spin in what I said; those were the numbers, and he is more than welcome to verify them. As for his comment about strangling, that is incorrect, too. I would say “liberating”. That is why some of the factories that closed have reopened and we are supporting them as best we can. If I were him, I would claim no credit for spending £555 million in 2008 on a modernisation process that went nowhere, or for estimates for contracts in the public sector that were grossly exaggerated—by 130%—and which never came to pass. Ours are real, they have been justified, they are monitored by an expert panel and KPMG is involved as well.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

To put today’s statement in context, is it not fair to say that over the past three years Remploy employment services has found employment for 35,000 disabled and disadvantaged people, many of whom have similar disabilities to those employed in the factories?

[Esther McVey]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. That is exactly what it has been doing. It has found people jobs in mainstream work at a fraction of the cost. It can do it, we know we can do it, and that is what we are going to do.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

As far as I am concerned, Remploy was one strand of social services to help people with disabilities and give them dignity. More specifically, however, what is the Minister going to do to help Remploy in Coventry to develop a social enterprise there? It is facing problems with the acquisition of the land. Will she meet me, along with one or two of my colleagues, to discuss that?

[Esther McVey]

I will indeed meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss that. I should add that that is one of the automotive businesses, and it has attracted considerable interest because it is a viable business. KPMG is currently working on that with Remploy, and I will table a written statement shortly about what will happen there. The hon. Gentleman is right, however, that this is about dignity and supporting disabled people, and that is what we are doing.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

Following on from the comments of the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), many of us are interested in the details of the Government’s national strategy for helping disabled people back into the world of work, whether through Jobcentre Plus, social enterprise, or supporting job clubs. My hon. Friend has talked about work that will be done in the summer, so will she give an undertaking to come back to the House when Parliament returns in September or October to update us on the national strategy, because all of us have disabled people in our constituencies who want to get back into the world of work, and we are keen to understand how we can engage with them and the Government to make sure they do so.

[Esther McVey]

I will indeed come back to the House to speak about our national employment strategy; that is only fair and correct. We have been working on it for some time. We have been analysing the Work Choice and Work programme figures and looking at other social support, such as job clubs, and we have developed for the first time ever this community support fund and opened 32 different sites across the country helping almost 750 disabled people.

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

The disabilities Minister has talked a lot about opportunities and moving forward, so is she satisfied that in Hull in the first year of the Work programme only 10 people with disabilities were found work? Is that acceptable?

[Esther McVey]

As the hon. Lady says, we are working on the Work programme and taking huge strides forward, and I am looking at the specialist disability support such as Work Choice and how to reshape it to make it even better.

[Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)]

In the last Parliament we on the Work and Pensions Committee looked at the Labour Government’s decision to close a number of Remploy factories, and I have to say that the collective amnesia of Labour Members, which was most ably demonstrated by the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain), who oversaw the closure of Remploy factories in Wales when he was Welsh Secretary, is extraordinary. The people concerned is what is important here, however, so can my hon. Friend the Minister give us a sense of the additional disabled people who could be helped into work as a result of these changes?

[Esther McVey]

My hon. Friend asks a very good question: how many more people can be helped into work, and into mainstream work? That is what we are doing. We now have £350 million to do that. We have got to look at what works, get value for money and support as many people as possible.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

First, may I echo the positive message from my right hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire) about the advance notice given? That certainly compares very favourably with the MOD. On Cowdenbeath Remploy, there will be great disappointment in my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes (Lindsay Roy), and the Minister knows the excellent work done by us and my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown). Will she meet the three of us as soon as possible to discuss what the options are for the two factories in Fife?

[Esther McVey]

I will indeed. I have met the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues as a collective group in the past, and I will certainly do so again.

[George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)]

One of the barriers to disabled people going into mainstream employment is a misconception among employers that it will somehow cause them difficulty, although the evidence shows that the employers who overcome their apprehension often find that the disabled person compensates for their disability by having much greater ability in other respects and therefore becomes a very valued member of their team. What more can be done to educate employers and persuade them to give disabled people a chance?

[Esther McVey]

My hon. Friend makes a terrific point. This is all about awareness, and it is important to understand that only 3% of people are born with disabilities but most of us will acquire one during our life, probably in our 40s and 50s, so we have to do what we can because we all have a vested interest. On my hon. Friend’s specific point, we will be holding a disability employment event in July, bringing together some of the biggest employers locally, nationally and internationally to ask them, “What are you doing, how do we spread best practice, and what can we do to support you?”

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

How many employees at Remploy in Abertillery, closed last year, have now got jobs? Unfortunately, as of December, just three out of 21 had jobs.

[Esther McVey]

The hon. Gentleman is quite right. There were 35, actually, in December who had a job, and because of that we completely reshaped the process, so now, he will be pleased to know, 400 people have a job, 328 are in training, and that is out of the 1,100 who came forward for support.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

May I thank the Minister for coming to the House and the Secretary of State for being present? May I also thank the Minister for the way this statement has been presented to the House, with the ministerial briefing that will be given to colleagues later and the fact that she took the time to write to Members who were affected by this? That is the way a statement should be handled, and she should be congratulated—and I am afraid I must say that the speech by the right hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire), who spoke for the Opposition, was one of the worst I have ever heard.

[Esther McVey]

I do not know what to say to that, but I think I might even be blushing. Thank you.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

The Government spent £248 million less than anticipated on the Work programme in 2012-13, owing to provider under- performance under payment by results. In view of the disappointing figures about the number of ex-Remploy workers who have managed to find re-employment, can this underspend be used to extend proven alternative programmes for disadvantaged jobseekers, like the Work Choice programme for disabled people and Access to Work, which helps them cope with some of the obstacles they might face in the workplace?

[Esther McVey]

I am not sure that the hon. Lady has been listening. These are not disappointing figures; they are better than those for most other redundancies—that is how fast these people are getting into employment. We have given personal support. People are going on Work Choice and getting the tailored support they need, and we are doing this for 18 months.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend recall a fantastic Marks & Start event she attended in my constituency last year, where not only were more than 1,000 newly created jobs announced, but 200 of them were reserved for people with disabilities? Does she agree that that is an excellent model of how to help those with disabilities into sustainable employment?

[Esther McVey]

I do indeed remember being at Castle Donington with my hon. Friend at the Marks & Start site. This was a distribution centre looking for 1,000 employees, many of them disabled. He, like me, will be pleased to know that it is ahead of its target and is getting more disabled people into work there.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

In terms of helping people with their future choices, will the Minister give the House a commitment that she will continue to track the fortunes of these people? Will she regularly update us on how many find themselves in full-time work and how many end up in part-time, temporary or unpaid work?

[Esther McVey]

I will indeed, and I keep abreast of the figures on a weekly basis. That figure of 400 who have got a job did not include people who were on fewer than 16 hours, so more than that number are in work on fewer hours.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend confirm that the specialist disability employment budget has been protected in the latest spending round? Consequently, it is all the more important that this money is used to help as many disabled people as possible back into work, as opposed to spending such a large sum on a small number of loss-making factories.

[Esther McVey]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Yes, that budget was protected in the spending review and we have committed to £350 million to support disabled people into work. That money has got to be best spent on people—not on failing businesses—to support them into work.

[Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)]

The loss of a further five Remploy factories in Scotland will be a devastating blow to disabled people in Scotland. Does the Minister not accept that, with the National Audit Office now conducting an inquiry into the shambles of a tendering process at the Springburn factory in my constituency, with growing evidence of asset-stripping and of confidential contracts signed on this Government’s watch between Remploy and private companies, this Government have sold the jobs of disabled people down the river?

[Esther McVey]

I ask the hon. Gentleman to be very cautious with the words he throws around the Chamber, many of which are inaccurate. He is correct to say that more information has gone to the NAO about the health care business and the commercial process that was undertaken, but the NAO will then just be considering whether it wants to take this further and look further into the programme. There has been no asset-stripping. There has been full governance and procedure in this commercial process, undertaken by an independent panel and by KPMG. Remploy is a legal entity in its own right and it is the legal steward of what goes forward. I warn the hon. Gentleman to be very careful with his accusations.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

If nothing had been done and Remploy had continued to suck up resources, what would the impact have been on other programmes to help disabled people back into mainstream work and on the inclusion agenda?

[Esther McVey]

We have to look at what disabled people want to do now, and they have said clearly that they want to be a part of mainstream society. They want to be in mainstream jobs and they are looking towards their goals and aspirations. We are helping them with that, be it as part of the alliance, as part of disabled people’s user-led organisations, as part of the role models programme or, as I said, as part of our new disability employment strategy.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Lady have any guarantees that the companies that will be taking over the Remploy businesses will continue to focus on employing disabled people in the future?

[Esther McVey]

Let us examine how the bids were looked at and what the key criteria were for being taken forward and selected as the preferred bidder. The No. 1 criterion, goal and aim was the employment of disabled people. After that came viability, sustainability and value for the taxpayer, so employing disabled people was first and foremost at the heart of these commercial processes.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Roughly what percentage of Remploy employees are disabled ex-service personnel?

[Esther McVey]

I will have to get back to my hon. Friend on that. I do not know who were ex-service personnel, because now all types of disabled people, from all different backgrounds, are working there. However, I know that our key aim is to help all disabled people into mainstream work.

Points of Order

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

12:24

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. This is about the extremely offensive remark made by the shadow Leader of the House, to whom I have given notice, about me and some other Members at business questions. She accused us of being Taliban, and at a time when the brave men and women of our armed forces are fighting these evil people, and some of us have very close personal relationships with people serving in Afghanistan, I found that to be a completely objectionable remark. I wonder whether there is any way in which it could be withdrawn.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Would the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) like to comment on that before I make a ruling?

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman has indeed given notification to my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle), who regrets that, because of the running of the day, she is unable to be here. She has been clear that this is not the first time she has used the phrase “Tory Taliban”, and she has said on many occasions that that is what is said on ConservativeHome. As far as she understands it, it is a self-proclaimed term and she means no disrespect to the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), for whom she has a great deal of affection.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

I would say that this is about using moderate language in the Chamber. Obviously, if people are offended, of course we do think about what we say in future. It is not a point of order, but it has certainly been aired a little bit.

[Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I seek your advice, because last week the chief executive of NHS England appeared before us on the Public Administration Committee. He gave a clear answer to a question that I asked, saying that he would ensure that e-mails were released to the Yorkshire and Humber health and scrutiny committee. Since then, NHS England staff have again refused to do that. How do we ensure that when people, particularly those with such an important role in the public sector, give an answer to a parliamentary Select Committee they are held to it to ensure that they do what they say they are going to do?

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, that is not a matter for myself in the Chair on the Floor of the House. The message has certainly been sent out loud and clear, and it will be recorded. I feel it is something that the Chair of the Committee may wish to take up as well.

Supply and Appropriation (Main Estimates) Bill

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 56), That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Question agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Question put forthwith, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

Backbench Business

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

NATO

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

12:28

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered NATO.

Let me begin by thanking the Backbench Business Committee for granting us time for this afternoon’s debate. I thank colleagues, particularly fellow members of the UK delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, for joining me in requesting this debate. We used to have three or four defence debates a year in this House in Government time, but when the Government allocated time to the Backbench Business Committee they gave up, among other things, those general defence debates. I am therefore grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for giving those of us with an interest in defence and security some of that time back. I hope that when members of the Committee read the report of the debate they will feel that it was worth while and that if we make applications in the future we might get similar debates, perhaps twice a year after the two annual sessions of the Assembly.

As delegates to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly—I see in the Chamber many colleagues on both sides of the House who are part of the delegation—we have a responsibility to report back to colleagues on the work of our Assembly and of NATO. On my way into the House today, an hon. Member who had seen the agenda for this afternoon simply said to me, “You are having this debate, but why do we need NATO?” It is a question that those of us who believe that there is still a need for collective security and joint action with our allies must answer convincingly, not just for fellow Members of the House who do not share our view, but for members of the public who are often sceptical about the defence and security missions with which our country is involved and increasingly want a say in defence and foreign policy matters.

NATO, in a attempt to address that question, recently adopted a new strategic concept to define its role and mission. I do not believe, however, that we can any longer be satisfied that Ministers, ambassadors and generals understand what NATO is for. We need to explain to the public—and, clearly, from this morning’s conversation with a colleague, to other Members of Parliament—why it is still relevant and necessary.

[Angus Robertson (Moray) (SNP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman and others for securing today’s debate. Will he confirm to other Members that his dealings with delegates from other NATO member states, particularly those from northern Europe, including Norway, Denmark and Iceland, show that they believe that the challenge of the Arctic and high north—in our backyard—should be taken seriously? Does it concern him that the Arctic and high north did not feature once in the last strategic defence and security review published by the Ministry of Defence and that the UK has declined to take part in NATO air policing operations operating from Keflavik in Iceland?

[Hugh Bayley]

I certainly agree that that is an extremely important issue in security, trade and environmental terms. The Arctic Council is one of the forums in which NATO member countries—the United States, Denmark and Canada—meet and discuss matters with Russia and other Scandinavian countries that border the Arctic. I do not think they would want the United Kingdom to join the Arctic Council as a full member, but we most certainly need to co-operate on these issues.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Hugh Bayley]

I will, because I know that my hon. Friend has taken a particularly strong interest in this matter within the Assembly.

[Mrs Moon]

Let me reassure Members that NATO takes the high north seriously. I have been fortunate enough twice to go as a delegate to the high north and a NATO conference was held in Tromsø two years ago to consider the issues of climate change and the defence risks to our back door, which is largely vulnerable and undefended by NATO.

[Hugh Bayley]

If we go back to the time of the cold war, we can see why it was relatively easy to explain why we needed collective security.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I do not wish to delay my hon. Friend, but I thought it important to intervene following the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) to point out that one of the sub-committees of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly will visit Greenland in September, which shows NATO’s interest. British Members of this House, including me, will participate in that visit.

[Hugh Bayley]

I am glad that my hon. Friend will be on that visit, discussing the matter with colleagues from other NATO countries. I look forward to hearing from him when he reports back.

During the cold war, it was fairly easy to explain why we had NATO and why we needed to work jointly with allies to defend ourselves. Europe was divided by an iron curtain. We in democratic states to the west wanted to preserve our freedom, our human rights, trade union rights, property rights, freedom of speech and freedom to protest while the states in the east—the USSR and its fellow travellers in satellite states—did not share those values. The Soviet Union was well armed with conventional and nuclear weapons and demonstrated that it was prepared to use those military assets to crush the Hungarian uprising in 1956, to blockade Berlin, to invade Czecho- slovakia in 1968 and to try to destroy the Solidarity movement in Poland. It was quite clear to most of the public why we needed military assets to protect ourselves and why we needed to co-operate with other countries to do so.

That was long ago. We still have foreign policy differences with Russia—for instance, over Syria.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and putting NATO in its historical context. Does he not think that with some hindsight, the 1990s, when the Warsaw pact collapsed, was a time when we should have promoted European security and co-operation rather than developing NATO as a stronger, bigger military force, and that that could have brought about a level of disarmament rather than rearmament?

[Hugh Bayley]

There has been considerable disarmament and a big peace dividend on both sides of the former iron curtain since the collapse of the Berlin wall. An attempt was made to rebuild a different relationship in Europe in which the Assembly played a large part, working with the emerging democratic movements in central Europe and in the eastern European countries to help them establish the institutions that enabled them in the fullness of time to join both NATO and the European Union. The door remains open—to countries such as Georgia, for instance. Indeed, I have had heard Russian delegates—they attend the Assembly as a confidence-building measure and because we have a joint NATO-Russia parliamentary committee—ask whether if, at some future date, Russia were to want to form an association with or to join the alliance, it would be possible for it to do so. It is important not to build new barriers between parties in Europe or between Europe and other parts of the world but to seek to build co-operation where we can.

[Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)]

In connection with the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), does not my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) think that it is a bit peculiar that Croatia, a former Soviet bloc country, entered the European Union a few days ago whereas Turkey, which has been a staunch ally of European countries for many years and is a member of NATO, still finds considerable opposition to its membership of the EU from within the EU?

[Hugh Bayley]

I must say I strongly agree with my hon. Friend, but I do not want to turn the NATO debate into a debate about the future of the EU. Turkey plays and has played an important role ever since it joined the alliance in helping to defend our freedoms in Europe, and that ought to guide the views of other EU member states when decisions are made about Turkey’s accession to the EU.

I mentioned the history, but only to show that things have moved on. Despite our foreign policy differences with Russia on certain matters, such as Syria, we co-operate on many matters. Russia provides the land bridge to convey NATO’s non-military assets to Afghanistan and will help us remove many of our assets from Afghanistan as we bring our troops home.

The question that we must answer for Members of this House who do not share our views and for the public is, “If the cold war is history, why isn’t NATO?” It is not history because we still need international co-operation and solidarity with our allies and shared and permanent structures to plan to deal with the security risks we face, to deter those risks and, when things go wrong, to manage military action.

No single NATO state, with the possible exception of the United States, has sufficient military assets to protect itself from today’s risks without the help of colleagues. Actually, I do not think the United States should be excepted, because it needs and gains international legitimacy at the UN and elsewhere when it engages in military action that is supported by its allies.

Since the end of the cold war, we have needed NATO to end conflict in the heart of Europe—in Bosnia, for example; to respond to the threat of global terrorism, which had devastating effects on the streets of New York, London, Madrid and a number of cities in east Africa and elsewhere; and to protect human rights and stop ethnic cleansing, as in Bosnia, Kosovo and Libya. We needed NATO to provide humanitarian assistance during the 2005 floods in Pakistan and, indeed, following Hurricane Katrina in the United States, when other NATO states sent humanitarian assets. We have needed NATO to counter the threat of piracy off the horn of Africa: the losses suffered at the hands of pirates now cost insurers and shipping companies many hundreds of millions of pounds less than they used to, thanks to NATO and EU coastal patrols. We also need to work collectively with our allies to deal with new and emerging threats—cyber-attack, transnational crime, people trafficking or the drugs trade. All are threats that affect the United Kingdom, but none is a threat to which we can successfully respond and against which we can protect ourselves on our own.

What does the NATO Parliamentary Assembly bring to the table? Where is our added value? After the fall of the Berlin wall, as I said in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), the Assembly sought to build bridges with democrats in the former Warsaw pact countries that wanted to move closer to the west. Indeed, the Assembly moved faster than NATO itself or the Governments of many member states to open a dialogue with those democrats.

At the end of last week, General Nick Carter, the UK soldier and deputy commander of the international security assistance force, said that peace and reconciliation talks with the Taliban should have started a decade ago, and he is right. There were people engaging with moderate leaders in the insurgency in the mid-2000s, and I met them during some of my visits to Afghanistan; but there were disputes at the time about who should do this—whether it should be the Government of Afghanistan, or perhaps the United States. I remember when two people who had been involved in talks with elements within the insurgency were expelled from Afghanistan.

Last week, lead responsibility for security passed from ISAF to the Afghan national security forces in every part of Afghanistan. As our role changes so that we no longer provide the security lead in that country, we need to learn lessons from NATO’s biggest, longest and costliest military operation. Our Parliamentary Assembly has visited Afghanistan 11 times in the past eight years, and when preparing for this debate I looked back at our reports.

In 2004, we argued that NATO, which at that time had a role in Kabul but not throughout the country, should expand its presence throughout Afghanistan. In reports in 2004, 2005 and 2006, we called for a unified command, encompassing both ISAF, the NATO mission, and the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom. Between 2005 and 2008, we published reports calling for better burden sharing between NATO member states and for caveats imposed by some of the national contributions to NATO to be lifted. As early as 2004—nine years ago—we highlighted the need to accelerate the build-up and strengthen the training of Afghan national security forces; we stressed that particularly strongly from 2006 onward.

Even in 2002—more than a decade ago—we were stressing the link between security and development assistance; and from 2006, in reports and resolutions we called for what is now described as the comprehensive approach: diplomacy, defence and development co-operation. Again as early as 2004, we identified that much aid was used inefficiently because it was not channelled through Afghan institutions, and now even 50% of US aid is channelled through the World Bank’s trust fund and the Government of Afghanistan. Interestingly, in 2006—seven years ago—we called for reconciliation talks with moderate elements in the insurgency. Since 2006, we have stressed the need to challenge the safe havens in Pakistan and we have been involving Pakistani MPs in meetings of our Assembly. I have visited Afghanistan five or six times during the period our forces have been in the country, and I have to say that many of the prescient ideas reflected in reports of our Assembly came from British commanders, British diplomats, DFID staff or British aid workers.

The Assembly is an effective forum for sharing good ideas and good practice and, where we identify good practice adopted by one country, we try to persuade others in the alliance to support similar approaches. Often, it is easier for legislators who do not have executive responsibilities to reach conclusions on these matters than it is for members of a Government. We are still, even now, debating defence budgets, following the reports we produced some years ago on burden sharing. As we know, Robert Gates, the former US Defence Secretary, in his outgoing statement, called on Europe to step up to the mark on defence spending, and it is clear to our Assembly that most countries in Europe do not spend enough on defence. Indeed, only two—Britain and Greece—spend the 2% of GDP that NATO recommends.

When I put that point to our Secretary of State, as I have a number of times, he says that, with the economic situation so fragile, now is not the right time to press Governments of other countries to increase their defence expenditure, but I believe it is necessary for security reasons, and that the way to get through the difficulty is to seek commitments that, as the economic situation improves and Governments receive a taxation dividend from growth, they will devote a proportion of it to greater defence expenditures. I do not think we have public opinion on our side for that proposition at the moment, which is another reason we need to do more to explain why we have the security structures we have in NATO and why it is necessary to maintain them and finance them properly. Both the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and NATO itself need to do more to get their case into the public domain, and I congratulate the Secretary-General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. May I gently say to the hon. Gentleman that he has been speaking for 20 minutes, and it was to be 10 to 15 minutes? I am sure that he is nearing the end now.

[Hugh Bayley]

Mr Deputy Speaker, I should not have taken so many interventions.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

You have had some extra time.

[Hugh Bayley]

I simply want to say this: we have a responsibility to make the case for defence spending in our constituencies and through debates such as this.

We need to stress also—this is the final point that I shall make—the importance of maintaining the trans-Atlantic relationship, which underpins NATO as an alliance. We share much with the United States and Canada in terms of our culture, history, family links from not just the United Kingdom but many European families, and trade links. The United States and Canada exported more to the European Union last year—$304 billion worth of goods and services—than they did to Japan, China and Korea combined, to which they exported $266 billion. EU exports in the opposite direction are more than $400 billion to the United States and Canada and $300 billion to east Asia.

We need to stress these things that we have in common. Of course the United States should focus on security concerns that it faces in the Pacific, but it should not forget the common interests it has with us in Europe, on which we need to work together.

12:50

[Mr James Arbuthnot (North East Hampshire) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) on securing this debate and I have agreed with all he said—with one exception, which I will come to —particularly about the need for NATO. The one exception was that I think there is a bit of work to be done on the need for the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. I was once a Member of what was then the North Atlantic Assembly for six months. Then I realised that for two years I had been a Defence Minister and had been completely unaware of the existence of the North Atlantic Assembly. Therefore I suggest that the NATO Parliamentary Assembly needs to do some work in order to build its profile.

It is a great pleasure to see the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Mr Swire) in his place, ready, willing and able to answer this debate. It is also a bit of a surprise, as some of us in our ignorance might have thought that NATO was a matter for defence, but there we are.

My great-great-great-great-grandfather, Captain George Duff of HMS Mars, who was committed to the deep, along with 28 of his crew, off the coast of Cadiz at the end of the battle of Trafalgar, and whose memorial is next to Nelson’s tomb in St Paul’s cathedral, would have been proud to find the French, the Spanish and the British working as closely together now as NATO allows us to do. Interestingly, at the battle of Trafalgar there were a lot of French and Spanish sailors in the British fleet, just as there were quite a number of British sailors in the French and Spanish fleets. That was not a matter of treachery—more a matter of expediency. In those days, when a ship was taken by the enemy, its sailors were given the not very difficult choice of joining the enemy crew or sleeping with the fishes. I do not want to describe Trafalgar as the beginnings of NATO, but it could be described as an early example of exchange postings.

Allied Maritime Command is the central command of all NATO maritime forces and the commander of MARCOM is the prime maritime adviser to the alliance. While the Allied Land Command is held by a US general, and the Allied Air Command by a US general— although at the moment the acting commander is French because the last US commander became chief of staff of the US air force—the Allied Maritime Command is not only based in the UK at Northwood, but is commanded by a British vice-admiral, Peter Hudson. We have an important and respected role to play in NATO.

And we play it to the full, with our crucial role in ISAF, our joint leadership in Libya, our contribution to Mali and the Balkans, and our operations in Sierra Leone and elsewhere. Some of those were not, of course, NATO operations, but even when NATO itself did not deploy, as the hon. Member for York Central said, the command structure, the training, the equipment convergence and the sheer competence of NATO were fundamental to our own command structure, training, equipment and competence. NATO is a vital resource and a valuable pool from which coalitions of the willing can be drawn.

The Defence Committee has been told that the United Kingdom is still regarded by its NATO allies as a leader, and so it should be. Unfortunately, the last strategic defence and security review spoke of “no strategic shrinkage” while shrinking the means available. That led to a perception that there is a gap between the United Kingdom’s stated policy and its delivery. The Defence Committee recently heard from Professor Lindley-French, who told us:

“The German-Netherlands Corps, which I know well, had several British officers in. About a week after we had made the statement in SDSR 2010 that we were going to reinvest in the alliance as a key element in our national influence policy, somebody in the MOD decided that they had to pull those British officers out of the German-Netherlands Corps headquarters. The Dutch and the Germans said, ‘Right, we will pull the Dutch and German officers out of the ARRC.’”—

that is, the allied rapid reaction corps—

“In a sense, what is happening is that we are declaring policy at one level, and somebody lower down the food chain is taking a spreadsheet action at another level, so we are sending conflicting signals.”

Not only the UK but NATO itself is facing unprecedented challenges. The fundamental one, as the hon. Member for York Central said, is how to maintain a strong alliance without a war, whether it is a cold or a hot war. The withdrawal of combat troops from Afghanistan will throw this matter into even starker relief than did the events of 1989. This will be exacerbated by the economic woes of the western world. How do you spend money on defence if your people are in financial pain, cannot see an external threat and are at the very best ambivalent about the use to which we have put our armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan?

[Mrs Moon]

rose—

[Mr Arbuthnot]

I give way to the hon. Lady, who plays such a valuable role on the Select Committee.

[Mrs Moon]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman and our Chairman of the Defence Committee. Is not part of the vital role of NATO in these straitened times to enable key competences to be maintained by allowing capacity sharing and allowing officers and service personnel to train, particularly in relation to platforms that have been cut in various countries?

[Mr Arbuthnot]

I agree. Capacity sharing is essential and there is a lot that we can do together. NATO at its highest levels keeps talking about pooling and sharing, but there is not much that can be pooled and shared if member countries are constantly cutting their defence capabilities, so that is a real worry and it is all caused by the financial concerns that we have.

The economic downturn has meant that the defence expenditure of most countries has declined, with the exception of countries that are definitely not in NATO, such as Russia and China, whose expenditure is increasing. Perhaps we in Europe know something about world stability that the rest of the world does not know, but in Europe, the United Kingdom is, as the hon. Member for York Central said, almost the only country which meets the NATO target of 2% of gross domestic product spent on defence. Greece does, but for increasingly irrelevant reasons of its own.

I believe that the 2% target has considerable importance which is not only symbolic. I am glad that the Secretary of State for Defence confirmed in answer to a parliamentary question last week that the UK will continue to meet this 2% target until 2015-16. I believe it is very important that it is met after that as well.

In February this year, in Oslo, the Deputy Secretary-General of NATO, General Verschbow, suggested that the 2% target might be replaced by an aspiration that no single ally needs to provide more than 50% of certain critical capabilities. I am always suspicious about aspirations, but what would the consequence of this be? In my view it would reduce the last remaining pressure on our European NATO allies to maintain their defence spending at respectable levels. It would be a negative aspiration rather than a positive one—it would say what countries did not need to do rather than what they did need to do. Sadly, our European NATO allies have no difficulty in agreeing what they do not need to do.

The only clear practical difference it would make would be that the United States would not need to commit so many of its forces to NATO. That would, at a stroke, weaken the alliance and result in reduced ambition overall. It is my clear view that it would be the wrong road to go down. I think we should stick with the 2% target and that we in the United Kingdom should find innovative ways of encouraging our allies to meet it.

The United States historically has provided the lion’s share of NATO expenditure. That country is now in the grip of sequestration over and above the originally agreed defence spending cuts. Nevertheless, our US interlocutors assured us that despite the rebalancing it is currently going through, the US still attaches importance to NATO and, within NATO, its relationship with the United Kingdom. The US looks on its allies for niche capabilities and says that it needs its friends more than ever, but when the Defence Committee visited the US a couple of months ago it made it clear that it expects other NATO nations to provide a larger share of their own defence, and well it might. The Libyan operation demonstrated that the US intention of taking a back seat whenever possible shines a stark light on the poor capabilities of its European allies in NATO. Air Marshal Harper told the Defence Committee:

“There is no question but that this operation throws into stark relief the capability gaps that exist between the non-US members of NATO and the United States.”

That is hardly surprising, because the US still spends more on defence than the whole of the rest of the world put together.

I have a dream, and it has tinges of nightmare about it. I foresee that the economy of the west will gradually get stronger, and that we shall therefore eventually be in a position to spend more on our own defence. However, before Europe decides to do that, and to create the defences that the instability of the world requires, we shall have to go through a major—perhaps catastrophic—incident that reminds our people that without strong defences we have no schools, hospitals, welfare payments or economy. Then, and perhaps only then, we shall painfully learn our lesson. Let us try to do it without having to go through too much pain.

13:02

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot), some of whose relatives died in unique and novel ways. It is also a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley), who has brought to the United Kingdom the great honour of his election as president of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. It is one thing to garner the votes of one’s constituents, but quite another to garner the votes of 28 NATO member countries for the presidency of their body.

Unlike the right hon. Member for North East Hampshire, I value being a member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. I think it provides an opportunity to look at defence from the wider European point of view and to discuss and reflect on issues in the wider world in a way that the at times UK-centric Westminster bubble does not allow us to do.

I am pleased to take part in this debate on a subject that, as the previous two speakers have said, requires greater attention. Public awareness of NATO is low and I would suggest that that is influenced by the fact that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office does not maintain a specific budget for NATO-related diplomacy campaigns. I am aware that an FCO meeting will be held in about two weeks and I look forward to seeing whether that will represent the beginning of a new way of highlighting the importance of NATO.

I think that NATO helps us consider the challenges we face today and how to address them. Like the other speakers, I start by pointing out the need for a dose of reality. The UK has rarely, if ever, gone to war on its own. In all the major conflicts of the past, we have nearly always acted in concert with others—including our Commonwealth partners—and we have drawn on support, equipment and people from other nations. It is a fantasy to think that the UK will ever again act unilaterally in deploying its armed forces. All future military operations will be conducted as part of a coalition. We no longer have the range of platforms, personnel or financial resources to go it alone. We also face an increasingly complex set of challenges, many of which do not respect international borders or the traditional rules of engagement. We need the greater thinking power of those 28 countries in NATO.

NATO is under pressure from a number of different sources, all of which make its long-term survival very important. Getting every member of NATO to make an equal contribution will never be easy—it will probably never even be possible—and debates on burden-sharing are not new, but cuts made to defence budgets across the European partnership, coupled with the budgetary pressures in the United States, pose a real threat. The dose of reality that everyone in NATO needs to take is that we can no longer rely on a 70% contribution from the US to our defence.

Leon Panetta pointed out that the example of burden-sharing in Libya made it clear that the current level of US commitment to NATO would not continue. Robert Gates was more forthright:

“If current trends in the decline of European defence capabilities are not halted and reversed, future US political leaders—those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience that it was for me—may not consider the return on America’s investment in Nato worth the cost.”

Those words should hang above the desk of every Secretary of State for Defence in NATO.

Most recently, General Odierno, a senior American commander, said:

“As the British Army continues to reduce in size we’ve had several conversations about keeping them integrated in what we’re trying to do…In a lot of ways they’re depending on us, especially in our ground capabilities into the future.”

Finally, at NATO’s 2012 Chicago summit, Dr Andrew Dorman said:

“There is a very real danger that as individual nations make cuts to their armed forces they will increasingly assume that some capabilities will be provided by others without necessarily communicating this assumption. Such a policy of risk-sharing can only really work if there is some degree of central management of the attendant risks to ensure that capability gaps do not appear across the alliance.”

He noted in the same breath that the UK Government’s decision to cut maritime control capability would be reasonable if other NATO members were able to cover the gap.

A quick survey, however, shows that we failed to take that into consideration. Norway has one maritime patrol aircraft, while Belgium and Holland have none. During a recent NATO Parliamentary Assembly visit to the Netherlands, I asked its chief of defence whether he regretted cutting their maritime patrol capability and selling it off, and he replied that he regretted it deeply. Ireland has two long-range MPAs, primarily to protect fishing. We are all, therefore, reliant on the French fleet of about 24 aircraft. We have little or nothing to protect our vital sea lanes. Pooling and sharing works only if there actually is something to pool and share.

On defence, it is constantly said that strategic thinking is not being done, that it has been left wanting in the race to cut budgets and that there is a real danger that the one forum we have to facilitate joint operations is being undermined by our failure to realise its worth. I do not think that we can rely on the much-anticipated peace dividend after our withdrawal from Afghanistan. It will cost significant sums to get troops and equipment home.

As European members of NATO wake up to the budgetary pressures in the US, we also have to face the fact that the US is pivoting towards Asia. Ministers have made it clear that they see that as presenting no threat to the US’s commitment to NATO, but it does pose such a threat. Hillary Clinton noted in the Foreign Policy journal:

“The future of politics will be decided in Asia, not Afghanistan or Iraq, and the United States will be right at the center of the action.”

President Obama, in a speech to the Australian Parliament, provided reassurance that the US defence cuts would not impact negatively on its commitment to the Asia-Pacific region:

“As we end today’s wars, I have directed my national security team to make our presence and missions in the Asia-Pacific a top priority. As a result, reductions in US defence spending will not—I repeat, will not—come at the expense of the Asia-Pacific.”

They will, however, come at the expense of Europe. By 2020, 60% of US naval assets will be in the Asia-Pacific region.

The US is responding to reality and we must do the same. The recent “Balance of Trade” study concluded that defence budgets in Asia will have increased by 35% to £325 billion by 2021, eventually overtaking the US. China has increased its defence spending by 7.8%. Russia has increased its defence spending by 16%. The UK will not launch a military operation alone again. The change of focus in the US puts pressure on NATO, making it essential that we take a central role in the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and in the forum of NATO.

New threats emerge all the time and it seems that old threats are reappearing. Russia is reasserting itself. China is developing its armed forces and its capability at great speed. The collapse of Syria has implications for the wider region. There are threats to our cyber-security. The growing militarisation of south-east Asia, with the potential for disputes in the South China sea, is underlined by the clamour to augment submarine fleets across the region. Most countries, including China, Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia, have submarines and are looking to expand their numbers. Thailand is seeking to procure its first submarines.

Meanwhile, the Asia-Pacific highway to Europe is opening up. The high north will make it possible for Russia, China, Japan and the south Pacific nations to reach our back door much faster, and we will not have the ability to monitor it and see that they are coming. The high north has 22% of the world’s undiscovered oil. With the opening up of those sea routes, we will have a growing area of vulnerability. That is heightened—I am sorry to keep going on about it—by our lack of maritime patrol capability. Those issues can be dealt with only if we work together as NATO.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I am interested in what my hon. Friend is saying about the high north and the Arctic. Does she not think that it would be better if there were serious negotiations about a nuclear weapons-free Arctic, which would have to include Russia, Canada, the USA and all the European countries, as a way of bringing about some peace, rather than accelerating our expenditure?

[Mrs Moon]

My hon. Friend hopes against reality. Norway has taken 40 years patiently and persistently to negotiate a treaty with Russia on joint responsibilities in the Arctic circle. I think that it would take slightly longer than 40 years to get all countries across the globe to agree to nuclear non-proliferation.

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making an extremely interesting and well-informed speech. Should she not also say in response to the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) that if there is an aggressor in the high north, it is Russia, which is aggressively arming and renewing its vast nuclear weapons stockpile in an attempt to dominate the high north? The idea that we should lie down meekly and let it do that unchallenged suggests that the hon. Gentleman starts from a rather naive standpoint. Russia’s fuelling of the conflict in Syria and the way in which it just walked into Georgia show how prone it is to reasonable negotiation.

[Mrs Moon]

I do not want to be as personal as that in response to my colleague. However, I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the opening up of the high north makes it imperative that we maintain a continuous at-sea deterrent. Perhaps Russia is rearming, but we must also be aware that China is moving in our direction. It has sent through an ice-enabled ship on at least two occasions recently and is agreeing mineral trading rights with Iceland, which will facilitate regular voyages into our backyard. We need to be aware of that. I am not necessarily saying that it poses a threat, but we must not ignore it and must prepare for any risk that comes our way as a result.

I want to comment briefly on the NATO training mission in Afghanistan, which has been essential in building post-conflict capability. Capabilities of different levels are available across the NATO alliance. It is important that we recognise that the end of the cold war brought back allies from the eastern European bloc that have expertise in building capacity and creating democratic capabilities that we should utilise more.

I am aware that a number of Members want to speak, but I want to comment briefly on the Government-owned contractor-operated model. I recently asked a Minister what capacity the GoCo would have to facilitate bilateral and trilateral procurement with our NATO allies. The response was a bit pathetic, because I was told that nothing would change.

The NATO Parliamentary Assembly gives us the opportunity to test such ideas with our allies face to face. We can hear their assessment of what we are doing and their understanding of why we are doing it. I look forward next week to asking the French how they would feel about negotiating the joint procurement of equipment with an agency that could potentially be owned by a third power on our behalf. Next week, along with some of my NATO Parliamentary Assembly colleagues, I will travel to the US and attend briefings at the Department for Defence, the State Department and Capitol Hill. I will raise all the issues that I have raised today at those meetings.

In conclusion, NATO provides the opportunity to share our understanding of the world, its problems, its risks and conflicts, and to build a shared understanding and response. On a personal level, having the opportunity to meet people and share our thoughts and views on defence issues is invaluable. Long may it continue. Long may NATO provide Europe with the peace and security that it is dedicated to defending jointly among its 28 members, and which it has succeeded in providing for a long time.

13:19

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

I, too, thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for a debate on NATO in the main Chamber.

My first real awareness of NATO came when I was interviewed to join the Royal Air Force in the 1980s. I was asked how many countries were in NATO and who was the Secretary-General. Of course, all Members will know that there were 16 member countries at that time and that the noble Lord Carrington was Secretary-General. NATO has now grown to 28 member nations, with former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as Secretary-General. Like previous speakers, I now serve on the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, which brings together parliamentarians from the Atlantic alliance and contains 257 delegates from the 28 nations. I serve on one of the five committees, the defence and security committee. I am proud that a UK member, the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley), is the current president of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and is well into the first year of his two-year term. Congratulations, el Presidente.

NATO’s essential core tasks and principles are summed up in the strategic concept, and I will run through them. The cornerstone of the alliance, of course, is collective defence. NATO members will always assist each other against attack in accordance with article 5 of the Washington treaty. That commitment remains firm and binding.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

May I ask my hon. Friend’s opinion of whether French Guiana, in south America, might be defended under that collective security umbrella if it were attacked by Brazil?

[Jason McCartney]

My hon. and gallant Friend makes a good point. There are a number of anomalies, such as the situation of the dependency of the Falklands Islands and the tensions between Greece and Turkey, which of course are both member nations, in Cyprus. There are certain cases, of which he gave a prime example, in which article 5 perhaps has a little leeway.

Crisis management is another core task of NATO, and it has a unique and robust set of political and military capabilities to address the full spectrum of crises before, during and after conflicts. Of course, my hon. and gallant Friend was involved in one such conflict in Bosnia.

Another task is co-operative security. The alliance engages actively to enhance international security, through partnerships and by contributing actively to arms control, non-proliferation and disarmament. Other recently added facets of NATO’s work are cyber-security, which has been much in the news in the past fortnight, energy security and the threat posed by climate change.

NATO has been at the heart, and at the head, of command and control for current and recent western military interventions and operations. In many ways, it now delivers the military aspects of the United Nations’ work. I will highlight three examples. First, as we have heard, there is the international security assistance force, the NATO-led security mission in Afghanistan that the UN Security Council established in December 2001 under resolution 1386. Secondly, there was Operation Unified Protector, the NATO operation enforcing UN Security Council resolutions 1970 and 1973, concerning the Libyan civil war. Those resolutions imposed sanctions on key members of the Gaddafi Government and authorised NATO to implement an arms embargo and a no-fly zone and to use all necessary means, short of foreign occupation, to protect Libyan civilians and civilian-populated areas.

Thirdly, there is Operation Ocean Shield, which was referred to earlier. It is NATO’s contribution to the anti-piracy campaign off the coast of the horn of Africa, following the earlier Operation Allied Protector. Naval operations began early in 2009, having been approved by the North Atlantic Council, and primarily involve warships from the UK and the United States, although vessels from many other nations are also included.

That brings me to some of the challenges facing NATO, a big one of which is duplication. The operation against Somali piracy is a good example. I have been with the NATO Parliamentary Assembly to Djibouti, which is strategically placed on the horn of Africa, and there are clear signs of overlap and mission repeat. We have not only the NATO-led mission but an EU-led operation called Operation Atalanta, also known as European Union Naval Force Somalia. There is also an independent French air base, a US army camp and a Japanese air base. Time and time again, I ask the commanding officers how much liaison there is between the different operations, and I have never got a satisfactory answer.

[Mike Gapes]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that at Northwood, in this country, there is close co-operation between the NATO and EU activities, and there is also UN discussion about anti-piracy activity. I do not think we should be quite as pessimistic as he implies.

[Jason McCartney]

I guess that the hon. Gentleman is a bit more pro-EU than I am. That is probably what is behind his comments. I will give another example of what duplication does. It can confuse command and control, and further evidence of that is the EU force headquarters being set up in Belgium, in a similar location to NATO’s headquarters on the outskirts of Brussels. That is more costly duplication of command and control.

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman should be celebrating the success of the anti-piracy operation off the coast of Somalia. I will mention unnecessary duplication in my speech, but the activities that he has mentioned are complementary, as are those of the Chinese and a number of other Asian countries. They are all operating together successfully to achieve a common goal. It is a success, not a problem as he is trying to make out.

[Jason McCartney]

I disagree with the right hon. Gentleman. He will be well aware how confusing it can be to answer to two leaders—for example, the leader of one’s party and a union. As a serviceman myself, I believe it is important to have a clear command and control structure and for people to know whom they answer to.

[Mrs Moon]

The hon. Gentleman will remember that I was also a member of the delegation to Djibouti. I specifically remember the response that we received to our questions, which was that people found it helpful to move between the two different organisations, largely because of the different rules of engagement. They said that the European rules of engagement gave greater flexibility. We should bear that in mind.

[Jason McCartney]

And of course, as the hon. Lady will remember, another interesting aspect was the Japanese air base, which I think is the only place in the world where Japanese forces are operating militarily outside their own sovereign area.

Expansion is another area of concern. Ever more former Warsaw pact countries are joining. Poland, Romania, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have already done so, and many more are waiting to join and are already acting as observers. It is sometimes asked whether even Russia will join NATO at some point. It already has observer status at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, and I have chatted to the leader of the Russian Communist party in the Duma while on a NATO briefing. Having been a serviceman in the late 1980s and ’90s, I found that very strange indeed.

What would happen if Scotland were to go independent? How long would it have to wait in the long queue to join NATO? By the way, our NATO assets, including our Trident submarines, which I have visited on the Clyde, would have to be relocated.

My final area of concern is budgets, to which many Members have referred. There is an increasing balance of capabilities within NATO. Eighteen member nations are spending less on defence from their current budgets than they were four years ago, and as others have said, only three allies have spent the target of 2% or more of GDP on defence in the past couple of years—the United Kingdom, the United States and Greece. We have already heard about the situation in Greece because of its GDP. Would an independent Scotland be able to commit 2% of its GDP to defence spending? There is pressure on the United States, which now provides 77% of allied defence spending within NATO. Just a decade ago, it was 63%. The United States’ commitment to European defence as it shifts its focus to Asia is one of the biggest uncertainties.

NATO is at the heart of western defence and overseas operations. It is changing and adapting, and it has many challenges, but we on the NATO Parliamentary Assembly will continue to scrutinise the Atlantic alliance, support it, celebrate its achievements and remember what is was set up for—keeping the peace in Europe.

13:29

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) for introducing the debate and describing the work of the Assembly, and for dipping into the history of NATO. That is a good starting point.

At the end of the second world war there was a triumph and a tragedy. The triumph was the end of the war, the defeat of Nazism, the foundation of the United Nations and the universal declaration of human rights and the UN charter. The tragedy was the descent into the cold war, the foundation of the Warsaw pact and NATO, and the decades-long nuclear arms race with costs borne by both sides and the economic problems that ensued as a result. Then there was the election of Gorbachev as President of the USSR, and his proposals for disarmament. The Reykjavik summit was unfortunately neutralised by Reagan’s proposals, and Gorbachev’s proposals for a common European home and promotion of European security and co-operation were not responded to effectively by the USA or NATO. Gorbachev eventually went and the Warsaw pact collapsed. Surely the 1990s were a time for reassessment and looking at an alternative. Why did NATO continue at that point when its cold war raison d’être had gone?

The Library briefing contains a helpful statement by J. L. Granatstein, a distinguished research fellow from the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute. In the National Post on 5 March 2013 he wrote:

“Perhaps it might have been better if NATO had wound itself up at the end of the Cold War. The alliance instead sought for a new role, a new strategic purpose, and it found it outside the boundaries of the alliance.”

He goes on to mention Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and later the Libyan adventures of NATO.

I think we should seriously consider the whole purpose of NATO. It was founded as part of the cold war and had a specific area of responsibility—the north Atlantic. It successively increased its operations out of area, and with the Lisbon treaty it does two things. First, it vastly expands its area of operation to include Afghanistan, which by no stretch of the imagination can be anything to do with the north Atlantic, any more than can the seas off Somalia or North Korea, South Korea and south Asia.

[Mr Spellar]

Does my hon. Friend accept that in a more communicated and linked-up world, threats to our security from other parts of the world can have a significant impact on our security at home? Piracy off the coast of Somalia is a real threat to trade lanes between western Europe and east Asia. Those are massive trade lanes for the continuing prosperity of the world. Is that a threat to our security, and should we respond to it?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Of course piracy off the coast of Somalia is not a good thing. Instability in Somalia is very bad, but surely one solves that problem by political support for changes in Somalia—to some extent that is happening and considerable changes are taking place. I sometimes get the feeling that NATO spent the 1990s and early 2000s looking for something to do, and that it was more than pleased to get involved in Afghanistan and present itself as the armed wing of the United Nations. It may be that the UN should have its own force, and that is a matter for consideration and debate. However, when NATO calls itself the arm of the UN, what does that say to countries that are not in or aligned to NATO, or indeed are deeply suspicious of NATO and its activities? Members who talk about NATO as being the effective arm of the UN should think carefully about the implications of what they are saying.

The costs of NATO membership are considerable—probably far greater than those of membership of the European Union, which seems to excite massive debate on the Government Benches. NATO requires 2% of our gross national product to be spent on defence, and Members complain that other countries do not meet those demands. Presumably, NATO membership requires a level of expenditure that many countries simply cannot afford, yet they are required to make that expenditure and, for the most part, to buy those arms from the United States or approved suppliers that produce NATO-issue equipment. We must think far more seriously about why we are in NATO and what it is achieving.

Let us consider Afghanistan from 2001 onwards. Yes, 9/11 was a dreadful event and an act of murder against civilians, but was it an appropriate response to invade Afghanistan? Twelve years later, 400 British soldiers, a larger number of American soldiers, and a very much larger number of Afghan civilians, and others, are dead. Drone aircraft are operating in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and there is a real threat to the civil liberties of everyone in the world from Guantanamo Bay, extraordinary rendition and anti-terror legislation. That has not made the world a safer or more secure place.

[Mike Gapes]

Does my hon. Friend accept that in 2001, an estimated 10,000 terrorists came out of training camps in Afghanistan from areas that the state had effectively handed over for al-Qaeda to operate in? Was there not a need to protect communities around the world by removing those terrorist bases from Afghanistan?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I question the figure of 10,000 and I would take my Friend back a little further. In 1979, Soviet support for the then Afghan Government provoked a massive US response and arming of the mujaheddin in Afghanistan. Massive amounts of US money went into Afghanistan from 1979 onwards and—hey presto!—the Taliban were formed with US weapons. Al-Qaeda was founded by US trainers. What goes around comes around and we should think more carefully about instant information and instant sending of vast amounts of weapons to opposition groups. The same may happen if we decide to send arms to one group in Syria. Where will those arms end up? A little bit of historical analysis might be helpful.

[Mrs Moon]

My hon. Friend is right to say that what comes around could go around. Does he also accept that some of the conflict in Afghanistan perhaps also led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, bringing freedom and democracy to swathes of people across Europe? Some of those countries are now members of NATO, having recognised the importance of joint defence in securing independence and democracy.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Of course the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was a mistake; it was just as disastrous as previous British interventions and the current NATO intervention in Afghanistan have been. It did irreparable damage to the leadership of the Soviet Union through its cost and loss of life. It was a disaster and a contributory factor—not the only one—to the break-up of the Soviet Union. Is NATO the answer to the problem? Should we not have a more assertive policy of peace and disarmament around the world, rather than the NATO policy of rearmament above what any country can realistically afford, which in turn encourages more rearmament?

I was alarmed by the whole discussion about the Arctic and the so-called threat from the north. A whole new scenario seems to be being built up, namely that China will somehow occupy the Arctic and invade us from the Arctic ocean, and therefore we must develop a new missile shield—as we already have aimed against Russia—to protect ourselves. The USA is moving more into the Asia-Pacific region. Should we be thinking more about regional peace and security measures? That has been achieved to a large extent in Africa, Latin America, and parts of central Asia. Should that not be our direction of travel, rather than one that involves large levels of armaments?

The other point I want to raise—this will not be popular with many, if any, Members in the Chamber today—concerns NATO’s preference for being the nuclear umbrella, and the holding and potential use of nuclear weapons. These are the ultimate weapons of mass destruction. There is no “limited use” of nuclear weapons. There is no limited availability of them. You either use them or you do not. If you do, it brings about the death of very large numbers of people, a nuclear winter and the destruction of the lives of millions of people. Those who argue that NATO should hold nuclear weapons must in reality be saying that they would be prepared to use them, with all the consequences that that would bring about.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, for whom I have a lot of time. On this issue, however, I disagree. Does he agree that nuclear weapons cannot be uninvented and that it is in the interests of global security that the democracies of the world join together in a common nuclear defence rather than unilateral nuclear disarmament, which would only hand greater power to countries and forces in the world that do not wish to see democracy prosper?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Of course the technology of nuclear weapons cannot be uninvented; indeed, Einstein in his later years said that if he had his time again, he would have been a clockmaker rather than making the discovery he did. He did not make it with the intention of starting nuclear war, but that was a danger that came from it. Obviously nuclear weapons cannot be uninvented, but it is possible to give them up. South Africa did so, as did Argentina, Brazil, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. There are nuclear weapons-free zones around the world. The prize surely would be a nuclear weapons-free middle east, which would require the nuclear non-proliferation treaty conference that was envisaged to include Iran and Israel to actually be held rather than endlessly procrastinated on. It will not be easy; of course not. But if we do not start somewhere, more people will get off the nuclear non-proliferation treaty trail and go elsewhere. Egypt has already left the NPT because of inaction by the nuclear powers over the middle east nuclear-free zone. Should not we be doing the same in terms of an Arctic nuclear weapons-free zone as a step towards a nuclear-free world? Everybody says they want a nuclear-free world, but at the same time are rearming, rather than going forward on it.

We are spending £34 billion a year of our money on defence and we are bound to spend at least 2 per cent. of GDP as long as we remain members of NATO, as all other countries must do. Those countries that are in the EU and NATO obviously accept both treaties. Those that are in the EU but not in NATO have a problem because of the close relationship between the EU and NATO. One can hardly say that the traditional neutral foreign policies of, for example, Sweden and Ireland can be maintained while the EU maintains this close relationship.

My plea is simply this. We live in a world where a quarter of the world’s population are hungry, if not starving. We live in a world where the environmental consequences of what we are doing are catastrophic for future generations. Yet we are spending a vast amount of money on armaments, which, in turn, encourages others to spend vast amounts of money on armaments. We have a growing arms race between NATO and Russia, despite the apparently cosy chats between members of the Russian Communist party and delegates to the NATO Assembly. I absolutely welcome those and wish they could be videoed and portrayed to the whole world. The same applies to China.

If we are to live in a world of peace in the future, it will not be achieved by spending more and more on weapons. It will be achieved by spending less on weapons and more on dealing with the problems of human misery and human insecurity. I hope that instead of developing a nuclear shield or the missile shield along the eastern flank of NATO, we will instead move towards much better relations with all the power blocs as a way of bringing about a more peaceful world.

I do not believe in the continuation of defence alliances that have within them a built-in accelerator of cost and of danger, as well as massive pressures from the arms and other industries to sell more of their goods, when the needs of the world are health, education, food and housing. Those are the issues that we should prioritise, not weapons of mass destruction. I realise that this is a minority position in the Chamber today but I am not actually alone among the wider public in holding those views.

13:44

[Stephen Gilbert (St Austell and Newquay) (LD)]

Of course the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) has outlined a minority perspective, but that shows the value of this Chamber in allowing those perspectives to be aired.

I disagreed fundamentally with the hon. Gentleman on a number of points. First, he said that NATO was looking for a role in the early 1990s and was therefore keen to latch on to Bosnia and Kosovo, whereas at the time NATO commanders were very reluctant to get involved in those conflicts. It was the international community, through institutions that I am sure the hon. Gentleman supports, that was looking for a mechanism to deliver its collective will on the ground. The only mechanism available to the international community at the time was NATO.

[Bob Stewart]

May I just confirm what my hon. Friend is saying? At the time, I was the chief of policy at Supreme Allied Commander Europe’s headquarters. It was my job to try to avoid getting involved in Bosnia and places like it, but I was given political instructions that we had to start thinking about it. What my hon. Friend says is absolutely accurate; the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) is wrong.

[Stephen Gilbert]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and I am pleased that he has been more successful in some of his more recent endeavours than he was in getting NATO to stay out of the Balkans. It was the international community looking for a vehicle to deliver its will on the ground that led to the NATO involvement in south-east Europe, which shows the benefits of an alliance that brings together collective action in support of common values.

I do not entirely share the view of the hon. Member for Islington North on Afghanistan. Hundreds of thousands of people are now going to school there in a way that they did not before. There is now a freedom for women that has not been felt recently. There is also the beginning of self-determination. NATO has helped to bring an end to a religious dictatorship there and my hope is that, as the negotiations go forward, it will continue to protect the newly won rights for people there.

I would like to pay tribute to the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) and to my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney) for securing this very important debate. My hon. Friend talked about the danger of unnecessary duplication—we may see that in some of the remarks today—but that in itself pays tribute to the work of the Parliamentary Assembly and to its British delegation, which works on a cross-party basis, putting the British national security interest first. The delegation is able to come back to this House and to the country and share a fairly coherent and joined-up criticism of NATO where there are criticisms to be made. We also play a key role in advocating the benefits of the alliance for everybody.

We all recognise that the world has changed. NATO was born into a Europe that was divided, and it formed the bedrock of our security for 60 years. The world was split between two diametrically opposed systems of government that were forged out of the second world war, the largest conflict in history. For much of its existence, NATO has been preoccupied, rightly, with conflicts between states, but as hon. Members on both sides have said, that has now shifted. It is no longer simply about interstate warfare. In Bosnia and in Kosovo, NATO has involved itself with civilians as well as states and this new role has been cemented in Afghanistan and, more recently, under the right to protect mandate delivered by the UN in Libya. That latter conflict displayed a strong example of how NATO, in accordance with international will and international agreement, was able to deliver effective military capabilities to prevent, I believe, the escalation of that conflict and to hasten the end of hostilities.

Humanitarian-led intervention is only one part of the changing landscape. There has been a paradigm shift towards focusing on international terrorism and piracy, as we have heard, and UK forces are highly active alongside NATO and EU allies in these regards. Cyber-security is also a new frontier for NATO. The unrelenting computerisation of our society and our reliance on the internet bring many opportunities for NATO Governments and citizens, but it brings significant dangers too. The scale of such infrastructure is something that no state could have anticipated in 1949. It requires a completely different approach that, through common endeavour, is better delivered within the alliance.

The power structures of the world have shifted far more rapidly than many predicted. We now live in a world where China is the world’s second largest economy, and it looks set to overtake the United States this century. This, coupled with the relative demise of the Russian economy and the break-up of the Soviet Union, has seen the attention of the United States shift firmly to the Pacific. That poses fundamental questions for NATO, an organisation that remains embedded in the regional geopolitics of Europe and the Atlantic.

The US remains by far the largest contributor of money and matériel for NATO. In 2011, the US spent 4.8% of its GDP on defence. Germany, Italy and France failed to contribute even 2% of their respective GDP. Like many hon. Members, I think it is deeply unfair that our European NATO allies expect the US and the UK to bankroll European defence. It is right to expect our allies in NATO to contribute fairly to the upkeep of NATO forces, and I call on Ministers not to be shy in their discourse with our European counterparts. Calling for member states to contribute fairly is one part of ensuring that the organisation remains effective. For NATO to be effective, we do not just need a willingness to deploy military force when necessary, but for our European allies to be willing to fund that resource, so we have the ability to deploy when the time is right.

On procurement, we can and should do things differently. There are many ways to work more closely with our European allies. We must ensure that the sum total of a country’s specific specialised contribution exceeds its individual parts. By procuring equipment and weapon systems together, we can create the flexibility essential to meeting the array of challenges in the 21st century. For example, it is wasteful to buy planes that cannot land on another country’s aircraft carriers, to have to supply different types of bullets for different countries, or to have radio systems that cannot be integrated or talk to each other. We must ensure that our armed forces can operate as effectively as possible with troops from other countries. That underscores the point made by the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) about how unlikely it is for this country to go to war by itself. The more likely scenario is that we will always be acting as part of a coalition, so it is important to make that coalition effective—very basic stuff that NATO continues to get wrong.

Let us be clear: Britain should always be able to retain control over the deployment of its forces. We must do so wisely and with appreciation of the consequences of engaging our men and women in armed conflict. However, the EU can play a role in developing institutions and structures that allow humanitarian access and peacekeeping missions in partnership with NATO where possible. As I and other hon. Members have said, the gaze of the United States is now firmly on the Pacific. Having EU structures, where appropriate and necessary, to help plug the gaps left by the Americans, who are now more concerned with Beijing than Berlin, will be in the UK’s national interest. Deeper EU defence co-operation makes economic sense for the same reasons that it does within NATO. We are stronger together, and if we are smart, it will not be an additional burden to the taxpayer.

[Mr Jenkin]

Will my hon. Friend explain why it is necessary for the EU to duplicate what European nations can already do on a military and politically co-operative basis through NATO? Does he agree that it is essential not to waste resources by duplicating NATO structures that already exist?

[Stephen Gilbert]

I share the hon. Gentleman’s concerns. It is clear that we need to reduce duplication both within the EU and between the EU and NATO. There will, however, be certain fundamental operational ways in which a resource on a European basis can best plug a gap that NATO does not move into. I suggest that these things are best looked at on a case-by-case basis.

[Mr Jenkin]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Stephen Gilbert]

No, I will not.

It is my view, and that of the Liberal Democrats, that NATO should remain the bedrock of our international defence obligations. It should be properly and fairly funded, but it must adapt for the 21st century.

13:55

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert), who, like me, is a member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. I want to pick up on a reference he made—it has come up in other contributions too—to Kosovo.

During the Whit recess, I went with a NATO Parliamentary Assembly delegation to Serbia and Kosovo. We went by road from Belgrade through north Mitrovica and south Mitrovica down to Pristina. We visited a Serbian orthodox monastery in Kosovo, which is now in an area overwhelmingly populated by Kosovo Albanians, rather than Kosovo Serbs. One interesting development is that in Belgrade, Mitrovica and Pristina everybody unanimously praised the work of KFOR, the NATO-led force doing the vital job of providing stability and protection to the minority Serbian communities and religious places in Kosovo, as well as acting to prevent conflict in north Mitrovica.

KFOR divided Kosovo into five areas of operations, and its commanding officer is German. The most difficult area covers north Mitrovica, in which approximately 80,000 Serbs live. Many do not accept that they live in Kosovo—they still identify with Belgrade. Significantly, the KFOR commander for this area does not come from a NATO country—he is from the neutral country of Switzerland. Through its structure, infrastructure and continuity, NATO enables partner countries and others to participate and play important roles in NATO structures.

There is a similar situation in Afghanistan, with an alliance of 28 countries—or 43 countries, I am not sure what the actual figure is now—that participate in international operations. NATO has played an essential part in providing the framework for that to happen. Similarly, EU co-operation is happening in different places. Wearing my Foreign Affairs Committee hat, I was in Mali last month. I was pleased to meet and talk to the EU’s training mission, led by French officers who are doing a fantastic job, which includes 46 British forces personnel. Interestingly, for the first time British officers will be in charge of Irish soldiers, from the Royal Irish Regiment. The two flags will be working together for the first time since the 1930s. That is a symbol of international co-operation. That work is done under an EU initiative, so that Ireland, Sweden and other EU countries that are not in NATO can nevertheless contribute and work with NATO countries. Often, the assets and resources of NATO are used in that way to enhance our European defence and security.

[Hugh Bayley]

rose—

[Mike Gapes]

I give way to the president of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

[Hugh Bayley]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about the new military co-operation between Britain and the Irish Republic. When I was in Mali, just a week or two before him, I saw a training unit led by a British major and, from the Irish Republic, an Irish captain. However, my hon. Friend made a slip of the tongue: he referred to the Royal Irish Regiment, but of course those forces were from the Republic of Ireland.

[Mike Gapes]

I am grateful for that intervention.

Let me turn to some of the other issues that have been raised. An important point was made about the internet and cyber-warfare. NATO has a facility in Estonia—I have visited it with the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs and I know that the NATO Parliamentary Assembly has also visited it—to bring together best practice for dealing with cyber-warfare. As we have seen from the media headlines in the last few days, we will face significant challenges, not just from states but, I suspect, over the coming decades from private interests and private companies spying and stealing data and commercially sensitive material. We also know of reports—I am not in a position to say whether they are true—that the Iranian nuclear weapons programme was seriously set back because of the activities of some countries and the so-called Stuxnet, and there are other areas where these matters are also of great importance.

International security is enhanced by co-operation, not just in hardware and personnel but in intelligence and security sharing. We need to be honest: these are not issues that can be dealt with by simplistic headlines in The Guardian or any other newspaper. They have to be looked at seriously. There needs to be international co-operation to deal with threats to our security, which might come not from terrorist bombs but from somebody sabotaging a banking system or undermining the supply of electricity or water to our major cities by making a minor change to a software programme, albeit one with potentially disastrous consequences. We need to look at those issues. I believe that NATO has a role in that respect.

My final point relates to the United States, which has already been referred to several times. We have heard about the so-called pivot towards Asia, President Obama’s strategy of leading from behind and all the other concerns that we have as Europeans. The NATO Parliamentary Assembly provides one of the few forums for members of the US House of Representatives and the Canadian Parliament to come to meetings at which we can have regular discussions with them. Sadly, given the nature of the insane political system in the United States and two-year elections to the House of Representatives, it is difficult for its members to get abroad very often, because they have to spend all their time raising election campaign money or fighting re-elections, normally in their primaries.

The NATO Parliamentary Assembly is important, because it means that there is a group of Americans from the Republicans and the Democrats who have had contact with and learnt about European politics. In the same way, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly provides a way for people from European countries to understand the politics of other countries better. The current President of Turkey, Abdullah Gul, was a member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly for many years. I am sure that that was important, given that he comes from the AK party, which comes out of an Islamist tradition. He has clearly learnt a great deal and built confidence and understanding with other European parliamentarians and those from across the Atlantic.

The forum that is provided, the specialist committees and the reports that the NATO Parliamentary Assembly publishes provide members of Parliaments in different countries with vital information that they would not always get from their own Ministries of Defence—I am glad that the Minister is in his place to hear this. In the more than 10 years that I have been attending meetings of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, I have found that the access we get to high-level meetings and the information we get in those meetings is often far superior to the level of information I used to get as a member of the Select Committee on Defence or the Foreign Affairs Committee. That is not something to be proud of.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Can my hon. Friend say—I am genuinely interested in this—what degree of influence over NATO policy and strategy the Parliamentary Assembly has?

[Mike Gapes]

Without straying too far from what I was going to say, I can say that the NATO Parliamentary Assembly produces reports which are published online and are published in draft form before final versions are produced. Every year the NATO Secretary-General produces a response to the points made. It is a bit like the relationship between Select Committees and the Government. Recommendations are made, reports are published and then the NATO bureaucracy—the Secretary-General, on behalf of NATO as an institution—responds to the assembly’s recommendations. The Secretary-General and other senior NATO figures come before our meetings. We hold them to account, whether at the February session in Brussels or the autumn meeting, which rotates among different countries.

There is therefore a level of connection and accountability, although NATO is not a democratic parliamentary structure. It works through a consensus arrangement between the different member Governments. In a sense, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly is far less democratic than other bodies—there is no qualifying majority voting, like in the European Union—while the European Parliament has a lot more powers. Nevertheless, the work we do as parliamentarians, representing our national Parliaments but also understanding and working in co-operation with others, is vital. Under my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley), the president of the assembly, I believe we will have a much higher profile in future.

13:59

[Sir John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) on securing this debate. He has fulfilled his responsibilities as president of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in an exemplary manner, to the credit of Members in all parts of this House.

All three of the major military contributors to NATO have in the last few weeks made a significant policy change on the supply of equipment to Syria. All three have said that they are now ready to supply lethal military equipment to Syria. I want to bring before the House what I believe is a critically important case study before those countries, and possibly other NATO countries, decide in specific detail whether they will supply military equipment to Syria and, if so, what types.

Over the last few days, I have been analysing what was supplied to Gaddafi’s Libya in the five years prior to the outbreak of the Arab spring. The UK was one of the NATO suppliers, and was far from the only one. Non-NATO countries were supplying arms as well, and contributing to the substantial Libya-Gaddafi arms stockpiles. That five-year period ran from the beginning of 2006 until the end of 2010, which was of course the eve of the Arab spring.

I shall give the House a brief snapshot of the arms export licences that were approved by the previous Government here. They covered items including components for assault rifles, armoured personnel carriers, command and control vehicles, military utility vehicles, military communications equipment, cryptographic equipment, electronic warfare equipment, artillery computers, and components for surface-to-air missile launching equipment. The decision to issue an export licence for that last item— components for surface-to-air missile launching equipment—was made here in London, in blissful but understandable ignorance of the fact that within a few months NATO aircraft, including those from this country, would be overflying Libya to establish the no-fly zone.

Then came the change of Government in May 2010. In the subsequent seven months leading up to the outbreak of the Arab spring in 2011, the present coalition Government continued the policy of the previous Government. Indeed, I believe that they somewhat enlarged it. The export licences that were granted to Libya’s Gaddafi regime covered items including small arms ammunition, semi-automatic pistols, sniper rifles, assault rifles, machine guns, military communications equipment, cryptographic equipment, military cargo vehicles and, once again, components for surface-to-air missile launching equipment.

I raise this case study because the key issue for NATO in relation to supplying arms to Syria is to determine what has happened to the Libya-Gaddafi arms stockpile. To help us to answer that question, we are indebted to one key public source: the report presented to the United Nations Security Council by the panel of experts charged with reporting to the Security Council on the implementation of Security Council resolution 1973. I believe that that report should be made compulsory reading for all Ministers considering whether NATO countries should supply weapons to Syria and, if so, what weapons they should be.

I wish to place before the House a few key sentences from that recently published report. The panel of experts states that

“the proliferation of weapons from Libya has continued at a worrying rate and has spread into new territory: West Africa, the Levant and, potentially, even the Horn of Africa. Since the uprising and the resulting collapse of the security apparatus, including the loss of national control over weapons stockpiles and the absence of any border controls, Libya has over the past two years become a significant and attractive source of weaponry in the region. Illicit flows from the country are fuelling existing conflicts in Africa and the Levant and enriching the arsenals of a range of non-State actors, including terrorist groups.”

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I compliment the right hon. Gentleman on his excellent speech. Does he agree that, once those weapons have leeched out of Libya, there is no way of retrieving or controlling them, and no way of knowing where they will end up? This happened in Afghanistan in the past, and it could well happen in Syria.

[Sir John Stanley]

The hon. Gentleman will not be surprised to learn that he has anticipated a point I am about to raise.

I raised the future of the Libya-Gaddafi arms stockpile with the director-general of the Royal United Services Institute, Professor Michael Clarke, when he gave oral evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee last week. His answers were extremely illuminating. In reply to my first question to him, he said:

“The arsenals that existed in Libya, as we all know, were extensive, and there has been almost no control over those weapons stocks. The new Government has proved virtually incapable of preventing those weapons stocks draining away.”

He went on to make this key point:

“Weapons never go out of commission; they just go somewhere else. Almost all weapons find a new home once a war is over.”

On Syria, he said:

“There is a lot of evidence that Libyan weapons are now circulating pretty freely in the Levant, and that seems to be where they will have the most destabilising effect.”

The huge geographical dispersal of the Libyan stockpile is happening not only because of the breakdown of security in Libya following the end of the Gaddafi regime but because, in the middle east and in north Africa, all through Saharan Africa and down to west Africa, arms are seen in a different way from in NATO countries. In NATO countries, the value of weapons relates to their military capabilities. We ask how capable a weapon is, how much firepower it has, how accurate it is, and so on. In that part of the world, however, there is a different approach to weapons. It is not merely a matter of their military utility. They are tradeable items.

I put that point to Professor Clarke:

“Would you conclude from that, as some people have, that the very act of supplying weapons in those circumstances means that you are basically supplying weapons into a commercial market? The moment the weapons leave your possession—whether it is weapons or ammunition—they become commodities to be sold at the highest price.”

He replied:

“I would agree with that. There is no such thing as an end-user guarantee on anything other than the most sophisticated of weaponry. Everything below the level of major aerial, maritime and ground-based combat systems—the really high-tech stuff that we produce—that is classed as small arms, light weaponry or even medium-range weaponry, is on the market once it is sold to anybody.”

A key question for NATO is whether our decision takers will take account of the very different way in which arms are seen in that part of the world. Arms are seen not merely as weapons but as money-making opportunities. Arms are bazaar items; they are there to be bought and sold at a profit if at all possible.

In conclusion, I say to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence, to my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and, most particularly, to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister: before deciding whether to supply particular lethal weapons and equipment to Syria, take note of what happened to the Libyan stockpile. They should ask themselves the questions, “Where are the British weapons that went into that stockpile; which countries are they now in; and in whose hands are they now in?” Most of all, they should ask themselves, “If Britain is going to supply military equipment to Syria, what is the risk of putting petrol on the fire?”

14:20

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

If I may say so, it is a privilege to follow such a powerful speech about the spread of weapons. The whole House respects my hon. Friend’s extraordinary devotion to his work on arms control for the Quadripartite Committee. He approaches his subject with a passion and knowledge that is probably unrivalled in either House of Parliament.

If I may, however, I would like to respond, perhaps impertinently, to my hon. Friend’s implied rebuke to the Government for their helping to persuade the European Union to lift the arms embargo on the supply of weapons to the Syrian National Council—the least unrespectable part, if I may put it that way, of the Syrian opposition, which we would want to be properly represented in the peace negotiation or peace settlement that we are all striving to achieve. I support the Government in seeking to redress the extraordinary imbalance affecting the more reasonable forces involved in this extraordinarily bloody and complex conflict.

NATO should be agonising over this whole issue because it will have to pick up the pieces of a spreading war and conflagration that almost inevitably will occur unless the United States, Russia and the other major powers in the region—including, perhaps, even Iran—start to sit around a table and work out how to contain the conflict.

We were right to question whether there might be a case for sending arms into Syria to try to redress the imbalance, because the regime is already using a massive stockpile of weapons. Russian-trained pilots are flying Russian aircraft, dropping Russian munitions and firing Russian shells out of Russian guns at civilians all over Syria. I find it very difficult to tolerate the idea that the Russians should be able to do whatever they want in their bloody way in that country, while the west sits idly by doing nothing. It is not just the Russians, as extremist Sunni factions, too, are being armed by Qatari and Saudi interests, which are pouring weapons into the Syrian conflagration.

The danger is not that our sitting back and doing nothing will mean that nothing happens or that the pre-2010 stasis will reassert itself as Assad reasserts his power. The danger is that this conflagration will grow and grow and grow. I therefore think the Government are right to try to redress the political balance and to tempt the Americans into entering this crisis—otherwise, NATO will finish up having to pick up the pieces in a very much more active and perhaps unfortunate way than we would wish.

That brings us back to our subject, Madam Deputy Speaker—I hear you heaving a sigh of relief—which is the question, “What is NATO in our modern age?” I thought that my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot), the Chairman of the Defence Select Committee, was right when he said that NATO has become a coalition of the willing—an organisation or a military alliance from which a coalition of the willing can be drawn. I do not rebuke the Minister for representing the Government at this debate because NATO is a political alliance that represents the foreign policy of this country, albeit backed by national military capability, pledged in co-operation to support the objectives of that political alliance.

Why is NATO still needed? I hope that I have just exposed one possible reason—to prevent war and to contain conflict. The reason NATO seems to be redundant and out of date to so many of our citizens today is that it has been so successful—the most successful military alliance in modern history—at containing, deterring and preventing conflict so that our continent feels perhaps deceptively safe from foreign conflict. NATO not only won the cold war, but keeps the peace. People should not forget the adage “If you want peace, prepare for war”, as that is what NATO is about.

Deterrence is the watchword—preventing wars rather than fighting them. That is why we spend money on defence—not to use the military capability in hot conflict, but so that we do not have to use the capability at all. Its use is pacific. That is one of the reasons the nuclear deterrent lies at the heart of NATO military doctrine. It is the relationship between the future of NATO and the continuation of our own nuclear deterrent that I shall explore briefly this afternoon.

There are three NATO nuclear powers: France, Britain and the United States. What threatens the future of NATO today is not just apathy or the parsimony of its member Governments’ defence budgets, and neither is it ignorance about its vital role. NATO is not going to be abolished suddenly. Nobody is going to make a decision at some NATO summit that NATO has had its day and will be wound up. The great danger is that NATO withers. I put it to the House that, with the war fatigue following Iraq and Afghanistan and the lack of appetite for NATO to play its deterrent peacekeeping and stabilisation role across the world, NATO is already withering. The collapse of key components of NATO is another danger, as is the uncertainty and the question mark that still exists over the continuation of our own nuclear deterrent. In fact, that is a threat to the continuation of NATO.

With the greatest respect to those who advocate European Union alternatives or supplements to NATO, I say that without NATO European defence is sunk. NATO has been doing European defence and security and it is doing European defence and security: there is no substitute or alternative to NATO.

We have left a question mark about the vital part of NATO’s capability. Our nuclear deterrent is pledged to the defence of NATO and our NATO allies. The Government have conducted a study into possible alternatives to the Trident nuclear deterrent. Now is not the time to go into great detail about that, except to say that we understand that it has exposed the truth: that there is no viable or cheaper alternative to our nuclear deterrent. Trident is the only viable nuclear deterrent on offer to the United Kingdom.

[Mr Spellar]

Can the hon. Gentleman—who is probably better informed than Opposition Front Benchers on this—give us any idea of when he expects the outcome of the study to be published so that we can have that informed debate?

[Mr Jenkin]

I am ahead of the right hon. Gentleman, and ahead of the official Opposition. I have tabled a question to the Prime Minister, and I am waiting for his written reply. I cannot tell the House any more than that, although my hon. Friend the Minister might be able to do so.

We know that there is no alternative to Trident, because we have been briefed to that effect, so why does this uncertainty still hang over our deterrent? The answer is that there is now talk of our no longer needing continuous at-sea deterrence. It is being said that we could have, or could risk having, a part-time deterrent by having fewer than the four submarines that are essential to the guaranteeing of continuous at-sea deterrence.

I need hardly explain to the House why that idea simply does not bear scrutiny. At a time of crisis, putting a nuclear submarine to sea to stand guard over our country is a very public act, because submarines go to sea on the surface. The submarine would be exposed to possible enemy pre-emptive attack, and our foreign policy would be exposed to accusations of escalation and inflammatory acts at a time when sensitive international negotiations were taking place. A continuous at-sea deterrent that is not at sea 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, is not a viable deterrent. It would be vulnerable to attack and vulnerable to misinterpretation, and at a moment of crisis we would hardly ever dare to put it to sea. I cannot imagine why it takes intelligent people so long to work out that if we are not going to order four submarines, we might as well not order any.

I regret to say that that uncertainty is being sustained by our Liberal Democrat coalition partners. The implication must be that they want the issue to be a bargaining chip in the negotiations of a future coalition. As my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) has repeatedly pointed out, if they have a choice between coalition partners at the next general election and one of the parties offers unilateral nuclear disarmament—which is what this amounts to—that is the party that they will choose.

The hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert) is shaking his head. If I am wrong and the Liberal Democrats are now committed to the renewal of the Trident deterrent with four submarines, I invite the hon. Gentleman to put me right.

[Stephen Gilbert]

Like the hon. Gentleman, we are all eagerly awaiting the publication of the report that is being prepared by the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister. When we have seen that report, we can have a debate on the basis of some facts.

[Mr Jenkin]

I do, indeed, eagerly await the report’s publication. I wonder what the delay can be.

I do not think that the report turned out to be quite what the Liberal Democrats wanted, although many of us had been saying that submarine-launched Cruise missiles, land-based systems or new air-launched weapons would be not only impossibly expensive, but probably illegal under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. However, I am glad that they have learnt that much. Perhaps they will now learn something else.

Because that uncertainty rests over our deterrent, it rests over the whole of Europe’s deterrence system. We should not imagine for a moment that it would be easy for a French Government, equally afflicted by austerity and public pressures, to sustain their deterrent if we were going to wind ours down. We should not believe for a second that the United States would remain as committed to NATO and the transatlantic alliance if it became apparent that the European powers were no longer prepared to shoulder their burden of nuclear responsibility in the defence of our own continent. We should not think for a minute that the United Kingdom’s relationship with the United States could stay the same if we threw the gift of the Trident nuclear deterrent back in its face after the US had gone to such lengths to share the costs, development and risks of the system that we both deploy.

The hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) rightly referred to the importance of continued co-operation between our conventional forces. It is true that we engage in extensive military co-operation. The airborne forces based in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell) need to be integrated with the American military command when necessary, so that we have a role in supplementing American forces. The Americans can do so much less unless they have international support, and we are always their first port of call in that regard. It is our influence over American policy that gives us our leverage. That is why, when there is a really big international crisis, the American President does not call the French, the Germans, the Japanese, the Indians or the Chinese. It is always the British Prime Minister whom the American President calls first.

Many people are aware of the importance of the intelligence-sharing relationship between the Americans and GCHQ, which demonstrates an extraordinary degree of trust, but it is not widely known how integrated our nuclear forces are. We send our submarines to the United States, and the Americans subject them to readiness-at-sea trials. The Americans train our crews for NATO operations, and, indeed, we train theirs. We certify their crews for readiness at sea. The relationship between our two nuclear submarine fleets is deeply symbiotic. It is burden-sharing in the real sense of the term. If we were not to maintain continuous at-sea deterrence, we would deliver a mortal blow to the US-UK relationship, to our ability to contribute to global security, and to NATO.

Let me make two more points, which will serve as a coda. Last week the Public Administration Committee published a report, “Engaging the public in National Strategy”, which explains how “deliberative” polling can be used more effectively to help us to understand what motivates our voters, what aspirations they have, and what sort of country the British people want ours to be. Members of the public were asked a number of questions, one of which concerned nuclear forces. It became clear that most people in the United Kingdom would order the four submarines: 57% said that they would rather do that than give up our nuclear weapons altogether, which is what the alternative amounts to.

Let me say finally that the great danger—the wild card—is Scotland. The Scottish people must make their own decision about their independence, but even if they vote for it, if they want Scotland to continue to be a member of NATO, they had better accept that the British nuclear deterrent will remain at Faslane. It would be impossibly expensive to move it, and were they to insist on scrapping it, they would deliver a fatal blow to the affordability of our nuclear deterrent. If it were brought down to some other part of the United Kingdom over a short period and stationed there—if a deep-water port were found where all the weapons systems and weapons storage and protection facilities would be welcome—not only would Scotland be giving up the largest employer on its own west coast, but it would be wrecking NATO. The fact that Scotland has taken a stronger anti-nuclear stance than any other NATO member—refusing, unlike any other NATO member, not just to admit visiting nuclear forces but to allow any nuclear forces to be stationed on its soil, even in a crisis—means that it would never be allowed to join NATO.

14:39

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I am going to return to the theme that the vice-president of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly started us on: why NATO? By the end of next year, we will be out of combat in Afghanistan. Clearly, there will be a period of readjustment for western armed forces. The British Army is being reduced by 20%. The other armed forces—the Air Force and the Navy—are being reduced by a similar amount. The Americans are already declaring that sequestration will take $50 billion a year out of their $550 billion budget, which is a lot. Therefore, fundamentally, there will be big changes.

When NATO started in 1949, General Lord Ismay said that its purpose was

“to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”

Obviously, the situation has changed a lot. The Warsaw pact was formed in 1955 as a reaction to NATO. We could not have had NATO without German rearmament.

I and other members in the House spent most of our military careers preparing for what we loosely called the third world war, hoping it would not happen. Thank goodness it did not happen on the north German plain. When the Berlin wall fell, everything changed and NATO had to change. As I have explained to the House on previous occasions, after I came back from Bosnia, in my last two years in the Army, I was a member of the planning team at Supreme Allied Commander Europe. We most definitely were not seeking a new role outside Europe; it was largely thrust upon us. Therefore, doubts remain about NATO and its solidarity. I agree that we must keep banging on about NATO’s target of spending 2% of GDP on defence. We must keep it. The problem is that some people, particularly in France, suggest that the alliance is

“an alliance of the unable and unwilling”.

A French academic said that. I put it to the House that NATO has a good future.

Twenty years ago, who would have thought that Russia would be resurgent? Russian military spending is now increasing by three quarters of a billion dollars; it will have increased by 53% by 2015. Russia still possesses more than 1 million troops and it has 20 million in the reserve. However, the Russians have big problems. Russian military prosecutors recently said that about a fifth of the budget had been embezzled, so they are trying to sort that out. However, look at the Russian navy. We have talked about the high north. That navy has been transformed in the last eight years: 45% of the ships in the Russian navy will be replaced by 2015. By 2007, Russia was building as many ships every year as the Soviets did at the height of their power.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) made an excellent speech on the nuclear deterrent. The Russians certainly think in terms of flexible response. They envisage using tactical nuclear weapons in their exercises; a recent exercise that they undertook in the Baltic states suggested exactly that. Part of their war-fighting ability is to use nuclear weapons. That is one of the reasons that we must retain our nuclear deterrent.

[Mr Jenkin]

Not only do the Russians exercise that capability, but they talk about it, have not renounced first use and have said that they would use their nuclear weapons in a conventional conflict against their neighbours.

[Bob Stewart]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. He puts it better than I could write it.

In China, Xi Jinping has consolidated his power. He talks of fighting to win wars. There has been a 10.7% increase in the Chinese military budget. The strategic forces of China now have 3,000 miles of tunnels. They have 850 nuclear warheads ready to launch. They are almost at strategic parity with the United States. They are also building globally deployable forces, which are now edging into the Mediterranean, as we have heard, and coming through the high Arctic. They are challenging western strategic military superiority.

Something else is new, and we have touched on it in the debate: cyber-warfare. The Defence Committee has just completed a report on that. It is a new form of war. It is invidious and evolving at unimaginable speed, with serious consequences. Cyber-space is an aspect of asymmetric warfare. It is very difficult to identify sometimes where these attacks are coming from. State actors such as China, North Korea, Iran and Syria are devoting resources to it. Hacking can be more deadly than the gun. The targets are government, industry and the military. There is great concern in the west about how disruptive cyber-attacks can be. For example, on 23 April, in seconds, the United States stock market dropped 1%, losing $136.5 billion, because of a false tweet put into the system, possibly from Syria.

The United States is changing some of the focus of its direction. Its strategy now, as the Defence Committee heard when we were in the US, is to concentrate on trying to avoid war much more. The Americans do not want any war that is not short term. They are looking at Asia. Sequestration will cost an enormous amount in military terms. The Americans consider that Russia is not a great threat at the moment—although its military spending is increasing, as I have mentioned—but that China is and it is growing in power. However, as one American academic put it to the Committee, “Going to war with China would be like going to war with your bank if you are an American.” Thankfully, since 2001, there have been huge improvements in US intervention power: there has been a two thirds increase in its intervention power capability.

The lesson of European, and world, history is that surprise is normal. The unexpected should always be expected, so we should expect to be surprised. Therefore, whatever we do within NATO, we must try to work in such a way that our armed forces can deal with as many envisaged eventualities as possible while also expecting that we will still be surprised. NATO gives us more combat power, by collaboration with others.

I am about to conclude Mr Deputy Speaker—I think you might be looking at your watch. The problem is that our potential enemies remain our potential enemies. Symmetric warfare between states is not dead. We may think it is. We have not had a war for 70 years, when Europe historically had six or seven each century, and thus the public ask, “Why do we have to spend money on defence?” The problem is that that has not gone away and we may well be surprised.

Defence is an insurance policy, therefore. We want to deter the possibility of war. We do not want to use nuclear weapons. The point of possessing nuclear weapons is to avoid using them by avoiding threats. The aim is to help our country be left alone and not be attacked, and, in NATO terms, the aim is to avoid all NATO countries being attacked.

I believe very strongly that we must remain part of NATO as I believe it has a big future. I disagree with those who say its purpose, in Lord Ismay’s definition, is gone. No, NATO is required because it helps us, as a medium-sized nation, to combine with other nations—the French, the Germans, the Spanish and other nations that are not members of NATO—and form a coalition of the willing to deal with problems in the world.

We must have the resilience to adapt, to deter and to deal with the unexpected, and we should try to do that as cheaply as possible of course. The days of huge military budgets are over; they are long gone. The best way is for us to collaborate and work with like-minded states, and NATO is most certainly the best means to that end.

14:51

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Members who have secured this debate, especially my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley), a long-standing colleague and the president of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. May I also say, Mr Deputy Speaker, how pleased I am to be participating once again in a defence debate, although, like the right hon. Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot), I am slightly puzzled as to why the Minister for the Armed Forces is not responding? Sometimes the working of the minds of Government business managers baffles even me.

The debate also takes me back to the first defence team of the incoming Labour Government, with Lord Robertson, Lord Reid and our late and much-missed friend and defence stalwart who died recently, Lord Gilbert. I am proud to have been part of such a formidable team.

I was very pleased and encouraged by the nature of the debate, which demonstrated the bipartisan support for Britain’s defence in NATO and our own armed forces. It is right, therefore, to stress the bipartisan support for NATO by all Governments of both political parties since the war, which has also reflected the solid support of the British people. Members on both sides of the House have spoken in that spirit in the main, recognising, I am sure, that it was Attlee and Bevin whose foresight founded NATO and also, incidentally, commissioned Britain’s first nuclear weapons programme.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

NATO was originally a political grouping and then became military after the Berlin blockade, and particularly after the Korean war. The right hon. Gentleman is right to mention that the Labour Foreign Secretary of 1948 prepared the basis for the Western European Union, however. It has now gone, but it was an important part of the history of political and military co-operation in Europe.

[Mr Spellar]

The hon. Gentleman will also find that the North Atlantic treaty, including article 5, was signed in 1948 and that Ernie Bevin was the prime instigator of that. The hon. Gentleman is right that there were a limited number of countries and that other countries came in later, but that demonstrates the foresight of that Government, who saw the nature of the threat and recognised Britain’s responsibility to play our part in addressing it—and, as I have said, who saw the need to commission Britain’s first nuclear weapons programme.

We should also recognise and celebrate the fact that NATO has been one of the most successful military alliances in history, if not the most successful, especially if judged by the attainment of the objectives in restraining and containing an aggressive and virulent Soviet threat until the ultimate, and, in George Kennan’s prediction, inevitable—even if it was rather protracted—implosion of that empire. NATO protected the free world and western Europe, and also provided a beacon of hope for the liberation, with minimal bloodshed ultimately, of eastern Europe.

That does not mean that we should unthinkingly continue an organisation that has served us well in the past, but we must give serious consideration to adapting such an effective organisation to deal with emerging challenges and threats. I was very much taken by the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) about the ability, through NATO, to undertake strategic thinking. The success of that policy of NATO inevitably and legitimately raised questions about the role of defence and collective security through NATO at the end of the cold war. My hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) touched on that period during his contribution. I have to say, and I think that there would be some agreement on this among some Government Members, that the then Conservative Government, under their policy programme “Options for Change”, too readily reached for the so-called peace dividend, cut too far and too fast, and badly undermined our capability. They did not comprehend the stark warning from Senator Pat Moynihan that the world was still a dangerous place and that the end of the cold war represented perhaps less threat but also less peace.

[Mr Arbuthnot]

I remember, because I was then a Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Ministry of Defence, that the Labour party was begging us to cut further and faster at that time.

[Mr Spellar]

The Labour defence team I mentioned recognised fully how the impact of the cuts the Conservative Government had put through under “Options for Change” had caused huge problems, particularly on the manning side. Huge disruption was caused to manning levels, recruitment and training.

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr Hugo Swire)]

Would the right hon. Gentleman say that that created more of a problem or less of a problem than the £35 billion black hole that his Government left this Government to sort out?

[Mr Spellar]

Interestingly, Government Members have got back to their default answer to every question being the so-called black hole, as these days Unite and Len McCluskey are normally the cause of all the problems. This is a ridiculous way for Government Members to continue, because many Conservative Members at the time of “Options for Change”—those who were involved very much on the military side—were concerned at the cuts that were taking place. They did recognise that they were not planned, that the Treasury was taking too much out of defence and that that was to the detriment of defence.

Unfortunately, the current Administration seem to be repeating that error with their policy of drastic retrenchment in our military capability. That is damaging not only in itself—we will have a debate on that—but in the message it sends to Washington, because there is a proper debate in Washington about the balance of military expenditure and its deployment. We need to get that into perspective, because it is undoubtedly true that, as President Obama says, America is still the indispensible power. We should recognise that US defence spending is twice as much as that of the other NATO countries combined, including Canada and Turkey. Furthermore, as we all know, the US spends its money, particularly in the equipment programme, more efficiently.

There have been exaggerated concerns about a US pivot towards the Pacific, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend mentioned. The move from an estimated 60% focus on the Atlantic and 40% focus on the Pacific to a 50:50 balance is a shift, but 50% of the US defence budget is still more than that of the rest of NATO put together; the US is still a formidably effective and overwhelming presence. Our real concern should therefore be voices on Capitol Hill, as people there may become weary of what they would see as carping criticisms from Europe. They may question whether, after the end of the cold war, the US still has that obligation to show such a commitment to European defence unless European countries, including ourselves, show a similar level of commitment.

Hon. Members have mentioned Secretary Gates’s comments about the need for Europe to pull its weight in NATO. Otherwise, he said, NATO will have little future. He has called for the European nations to step up to the bar.

We are either all in this together, committed to playing our full parts, or we are not an alliance that will last. We should also recognise that our public are becoming wary and weary and that there is public reticence about international military expedition. Mixed and impatient European public opinion on Libya demonstrated that, and I would say to the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley) that if he looks in Hansard he will see that at the time of the Libya situation, I was raising questions in this House about the fate of surface-to-air missiles—an issue that had been raised with me at a very senior level by concerned officials in the Russian administration; they had sold them to Libya in the first place, but they were concerned about their location.

We need to recognise that there is a danger that multilateralist proactive action will be hampered by public scepticism and reserve arising from the experience of recent conflicts and that that will be a problem in all our countries. I recognise that the percentage of GDP spent on defence by the UK is greater than that of other European nations whose defence spending, as a number of Members have mentioned, is at a level that is unsustainable if we are to continue to have an effective European component in the alliance. Those are significant issues with which Ministers and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly will have to continue to deal.

I say to the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney), regarding his remarks about Somalia, that I think it is unfortunate for us to start to pose NATO against the EU in that context. Somalia is a particularly bad example to pick. There is no uncertainty in the mind of a serving rating or officer about the chain of command—the person who is giving him the orders is above him in the chain of command. In fact, Somalia has been enormously effective in dealing with piracy—not one ship has been captured by the pirates this year and there has been a dramatic drop in piracy and in the number of people being held—and in integrating the international efforts of countries with different traditions, and perhaps even different objectives, but with a combined objective of trying to keep the sea lanes open and to protect seafarers, vessels and cargos. Those operations have been well synchronised between the various parties. It shows that where there is a properly organised European component that can play a useful part and is an encouragement to countries of the EU to step up their contribution to defence within that framework, rather than a cause for criticism.

[Jason McCartney]

Would the right hon. Gentleman be happy to know that there is an EU mission staffed with 80 people in Djibouti, duplicating the effort provided by our embassy, the French embassy and the German embassy? Or is he happy yet again to spend yet more money on more bureaucracy?

[Mr Spellar]

Again, the answer to everything is Europe. If efficiencies are needed, that is worth considering—and they would be welcome—but I notice that the hon. Gentleman in no way denied that this was an effective operation. There might be some surplus people, and let us have a look at that, but the integration of the NATO operation and Operation Atalanta has been very successful. We should be celebrating that, because other piracy problems are emerging in other parts of the world that will need to be dealt with and the United States will be neither able nor willing to participate in all of them. Issues might well arise in west Africa partly because of terrorism but partly because of the serious rise in the influence of organised crime.

[Jason McCartney]

Of course it is a successful mission in Somalia; there are so many people there doing so many things. Another example of the overlap came when we went to Northwood for a briefing: we had a briefing from the NATO admiral—a three-star—and had to have exactly the same briefing an hour later from an EU admiral. Too many three-stars and top brass—come on!

[Mr Spellar]

No doubt in the second world war, the hon. Gentleman would have complained if he had to meet both Montgomery and Eisenhower. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) has only just walked into the Chamber, but he seems to have a lot to say.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I think I know when people came in, but not to worry about that. I am more concerned about the fact that you have been speaking for 15 minutes and only have a minute left, Mr Spellar.

[Mr Spellar]

I have been giving way, Mr Deputy Speaker.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Giving way does not extend the debate, and we have given a lot of extensions. There are 15 minutes for each Front Bencher. I am very lenient and can allow a minute or two, but not much more.

[Mr Spellar]

In that case, Mr Deputy Speaker, I shall move on to two other areas I think we need to consider in the context of NATO. One is security, the work of GCHQ and operations in cyberspace.

For Britain, more than for any other alliance country, our relationship with NATO is intrinsically bound up with our defence and security relationship with the United States. That is clear to those who serve in the Parliamentary Assembly and other right hon. and hon. Members who take defence and security matters seriously. Our relationship with the United States is unique and indispensable, not only in the hard power defence of our liberties and interests, but in the developing struggle against international terrorism and organised crime—especially the trafficking of people, narcotics and weapons, as my hon. Friend the Member for York Central said—and in the sphere of cyberspace, through our security services and GCHQ.

Unfortunately, albeit for understandable reasons, success against those threats cannot be widely publicised, but the pooling of technology resources and intellectual analytical capacity, and indeed the courage of individuals who often have to operate in very dangerous environments, is a joint endeavour. We owe a great debt to all those involved in that work and should acknowledge it more widely, and I am pleased to do so here today.

Military and security cohesion is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the ongoing health of the alliance. Other elements of the transatlantic relationship also need to be refreshed, which is why the talks on the transatlantic trade and investment partnership are so encouraging. As ever, there will be a host of complications and vested interests to overcome, but if the participants can keep their eye on the main prize, it will be considerable. Achieving greater integration of the north Atlantic market, with five of the G8 countries and approaching half the world’s GDP, would not only provide a vital economic boost, but further consolidate our political and security relationships.

NATO, founded by the great post-war Government of Attlee and Bevan, has served this country and the free world well. It faces challenges, and we should be prepared to meet them. We should remember that some of those who argue NATO’s irrelevance today are those who, at the height of the cold war, were most opposed to NATO. Collective defence and collective security have served us well throughout my lifetime. May they continue to do so into the future.

15:08

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr Hugo Swire)]

I thank the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) and my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney) for requesting this debate, which has highlighted NATO’s continued importance to the UK’s interests. I pay tribute to their work and that of other right hon. and hon. Members who serve in the NATO Parliamentary Assembly—an institution that, as we have heard today, provides an important link between NATO and the public in its member countries.

I join all those who have congratulated the hon. Member for York Central on being elected president of the Parliamentary Assembly by parliamentarians from NATO parliamentary delegations in November. He has visited Afghanistan more than half a dozen times, so I also pay tribute to his unwavering support for our armed forces.

Since it was established in 1949, NATO has been fundamental to transformations in regional security: consolidating the post-war transatlantic link; preventing the re-emergence of conflicts that had dogged Europe for the preceding 50 years; contributing to the fall of communism and the gradual democratisation of the former Soviet bloc; and leading operations in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Libya. Purely through its existence, NATO serves as a potent deterrent to those who would wish us harm. It remains the best tool we have for tackling certain threats to our national security further afield.

NATO is at a crucial juncture. The end of combat operations in Afghanistan will change the nature of daily life for the alliance. The continued pressure on defence budgets and the US rebalance towards Asia further change the strategic context in which NATO operates. Yet the threats and challenges that face us in the 21st century make NATO more, not less, important: continued instability in the middle east, north Africa and the Sahel; the growing risk of nuclear proliferation; and increased threats from failed and failing states, from both state and non-state actors. Against this complex backdrop, it is all the more important that NATO is fit for purpose in political and military terms.

Despite concern over the US’s rebalance towards Asia, the United States has been clear that it remains committed to transatlantic defence, but we need to ensure that Europe is seen to be carrying its fair share of the burden of that defence. The hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert) and others raised the issue of the Government pressing our European allies to meet the target of 2% of GDP defence spending. As my right hon. Friend the Defence Secretary said at his most recent meeting with NATO colleagues, we will continue to press them to do that, while doing what we can to protect defence investment and maximise its impact in the shorter term. I agree with the hon. Member for York Central that we need to explain to allies and our own public why this spending is important.

We will also continue to press to make the NATO defence planning process as robust, transparent and rigorous as possible, and for all Europeans to organise our collective capabilities in a more cohesive, coherent and prioritised way. Small multinational frameworks such as that which we have achieved with France through the Lancaster House treaties may be the best way of doing this.

The United Kingdom remains committed to filling 100% of our allocated slots in the NATO command structure. At the organisational level, we need to ensure that NATO remains open to change and able to build on its experience, that it is reform-minded and continuously reforming, that it is fully accountable and that its activities and procedures are transparent and fully in line with best practice, which will underpin its future credibility. The UK has been leading efforts to ensure that NATO remains lean and effective, evolving as the security environment changes so that it stays relevant and responsive, and we will continue to do so with energy.

Afghanistan will remain an important focus for the alliance after the end of combat operations. ISAF’s transfer of security responsibility to the Afghans is on track for completion by the end of 2014. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has said, we can be proud of what we have done in Afghanistan, but along with other members of the international community, our work is far from over. Post-2014, the UK will take the coalition lead at the new Afghan national army officer academy and look to operate in NATO’s train, advise and assist mission, Resolute Support. This is in addition to the £70 million that the UK has committed to funding the Afghan national security forces.

It will be crucial to the alliance’s future credibility that it is able to maintain an open door to those European democracies which meet the standard and wish to join. The United Kingdom remains firmly committed to the prospective membership of Georgia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro, once they are ready to join. The hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) asked about Kosovo. KFOR continues to maintain freedom of movement and a safe and secure environment in Kosovo, in line with United Nations Security Council resolution 1244. As he will know, the UK fully supports the continued NATO presence in Kosovo as long as conditions require. Supreme Allied Commander Europe has advised that strategic patience is the order of the day and we share that view.

NATO’s ability to work with partners will be crucial. A number of right hon. and hon. Members touched on this during the debate. Partners considerably augment NATO’s capabilities—for example, providing 10% of the air campaign in Operation Unified Protector in Libya in 2011. Partnerships also boost NATO’s political weight: partners see mutual benefit in working with the alliance and it is an incentive to do defence better. The UK will continue to lead the way in giving focus and momentum to NATO’s partnerships.

Considerable attention has been drawn to NATO’s relationship with one partner in particular—Russia. I fully agree with those who have highlighted concern over Russia’s political direction in recent months and years, but it is vital that we continue to engage with Russia. It is already a key security partner in areas such as counter-terrorism and maritime security. We should continue to look for common ground where it exists in order that we can more constructively discuss the issues on which we do not agree. That is the approach we will continue to take, both bilaterally and within NATO.

The middle east is a region of obvious strategic importance, as demonstrated by current developments in Egypt. It is absolutely right that NATO continues to monitor and discuss developments in the region, including considering their impact on the alliance and whether it can contribute to security there. That is why we support the current careful deliberations in NATO on whether it might provide some assistance to the Libyan Government. It is also why we believe it is right for the North Atlantic Council to discuss the situation in Syria, including with NATO’s partners in the region, such as Jordan and Morocco.

Various Members, including the hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson), who is no longer in his place, the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon), who serves on the Defence Committee, and the hon. Member for Ilford South, who serves on the Foreign Affairs Committee, asked a number of questions about the high north. The Arctic is not currently a region of high tension and the Arctic Council has proved to be successful at maintaining inclusivity in the region. Although some regional actors may look to NATO to deter selected activities and act as a guarantor of security, the Secretary-General recently stated that NATO currently has no intention of raising its presence and activities in the high north.

Members will have noted with interest the strong support given by the hon. Member for Bridgend and my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) for maintaining a continuous at-sea deterrent. Deliberations are underway and we will just have to wait and see the results of the review. I was interested by the statistic that 57% of those consulted in a recent poll would rather order four more Trident submarines.

The high north is not neglected by the Government. The Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), visited the headquarters in Bodo in May, where he met senior military personnel and discussed threats and challenges in the high north, not least those resulting from climate change.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Swire]

I was just about to address the points raised by the hon. Gentleman. He mentioned the peace dividend following the collapse of the Soviet bloc. As he knows, NATO is a collective security alliance and deterrence remains one the alliance’s fundamental security tasks. The fundamental purpose of the nuclear forces of the allies is political—to preserve peace and prevent coercion and any kind of war. He will know that NATO has reduced the types and numbers of its sub-strategic nuclear forces by more than 85%. Moreover, the alliance has declared its reduced reliance on nuclear weapons and has ruled out their use except in the most extreme cases of self-defence. The circumstances in which any use of nuclear weapons might have to be contemplated by allies are extremely remote.

The hon. Member for York Central asked about the state of NATO-Russia relations. NATO and Russia have been co-operating through the NATO-Russia Council for 10 years. The alliance, including the UK, remains committed to the NATO-Russia relationship. We have seen much in the way of good, practical co-operation on a number of mutual security challenges, including Afghanistan, counter-narcotics, transit routes and helicopter maintenance, as well as work against piracy.

My right hon. Friend the Chairman of the Defence Committee gave us a little vignette of his ancestor ending up in Davy Jones’s locker and described how one of the first multinational taskforces was at the battle of Trafalgar. He went on to describe NATO as a vital resource from which a coalition of the willing could be formed. That probably encapsulates this debate as well as anything else should any headlines emanate from it.

My right hon. Friend also discussed value for money, which is incredibly important. The United Kingdom emphasises the importance of resource management and rigorous prioritisation of military requirements. Our national position is that NATO budgets should operate within the framework of zero nominal growth, but approved budgets will require the consensus of all 28 member nations. Within agreed common funding ceilings, NATO prioritises all military requirements. As my right hon. Friend will know, there is an ongoing debate within NATO regarding the limited use of common funding as an enabler for NATO forces in 2020. The United Kingdom consistently urges realism and applies a rigorous standard to all NATO expenditure.

The hon. Member for Bridgend and other Members talked about the implications of the US pivot. The US has been clear that the rebalancing towards Asia should not be seen as a threat to the transatlantic relationship. Security threats and challenges evolve; so should the response. The US is increasingly a security partner to Europe, rather than the provider of security for Europe. The unbreakable bond between north America and Europe remains the bedrock of our security. The US has demonstrated its commitment to NATO, including through practical investments, such as the bases for NATO’s ballistic missile defence. It is worth repeating that even after the withdrawal of US army personnel from Europe, their numbers remain higher in Europe than anywhere else outside America. There are about 70,000 US personnel in Europe.

The question of whether Scotland would remain a member of NATO were it to vote to leave the United Kingdom next year has been raised. The SNP Minister for Transport and Veterans, Keith Brown, this week admitted for the first time ever, before the Defence Committee, that Scotland’s membership of the defence alliance would not be “automatic”. It most certainly would not, and nor would its membership of the EU, the UN Security Council, the OECD and almost every other international forum that it enjoys being a member of through being part of the United Kingdom.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley) made a very good speech about Syria, which my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) also referred to. I say clearly again that the United Kingdom has made no decision to arm the Syrian opposition. Our priority remains finding a political solution and establishing a transitional Government. We are providing advice, non-lethal equipment and technical assistance to the moderate opposition, whom we recognise as the sole legitimate representatives of the Syrian people.

In closing, I come back to my earlier argument. The uncertainties of the 21st century make an alliance such as NATO more, not less, important. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex said, NATO remains the world’s most successful military alliance, based on a shared set of democratic values. The Government fully intend to maintain that success and to build on it.

15:22

[Hugh Bayley]

I cannot respond to all the wonderful, well-informed, thoughtful and powerful contributions that colleagues have made to this debate.

I will respond briefly to the exchange between the hon. Members for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert) and for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) about NATO’s initial reluctance to get involved in the former Yugoslavia. In the early ’90s, before I was a member of the Parliamentary Assembly, I was part of a cross-party delegation to NATO along with Max Madden, who would have been close politically to my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), and the late Michael Colvin, who was a mainstream Conservative. We went to ask how practical it would be in military terms to intervene. Everybody at NATO said that it was utterly out of the question, until we got to meet the chairman of the military committee, Sir Richard Vincent. He said that it would have to be done sooner or later, and the longer we waited, the more difficult the military options would be.

I welcome the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North. He is very much in a minority in the Chamber, but he speaks for many people in the general public whom we have to convince. The Chairman of the Defence Committee, who made an extremely good speech, said that he disagreed with me on one point. He said that the NATO Parliamentary Assembly is not doing enough to make the case for the Assembly or for NATO itself. I would agree with him about that. Perhaps we have made a start today in this debate.

This has been an exceptionally good debate. It is my intention to go back to the Backbench Business Committee and request debates twice a year after the spring and autumn plenary sessions of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. If they are as good as this debate, they will be worth while and will help to explain why we are a member of the alliance and what the Parliamentary Assembly does.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered NATO.

Corporate Structures and Financial Crime

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

15:24

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the use of corporate structures in the UK and money laundering, tax evasion and other financial crime.

It gives me pleasure to introduce the debate and to thank the many Members from all parties who proposed it to the Backbench Business Committee, which we also thank for granting us the time for it. Perhaps in anticipation of it, earlier this week the Financial Conduct Authority made by far its strongest ever comment, including those of its predecessor organisation the Financial Services Authority, about the banks and so on. As a relevant introduction to the debate, let me quote Tracey McDermott, head of enforcement at the FSA, who this week said that banks’ trade finance businesses

“remained particularly vulnerable to abuse by criminals and terrorists, and that in some cases the shipments being funded by lenders were just ‘fresh air’.”

Martin Wheatley, the new chief executive of the FCA, warned that organised criminal gangs “filtered, cleaned and rebottled” £10 billion in the UK every year using banks and other financial services.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[John Mann]

I will finish my introduction first, because banks are just one aspect of the problem and I want to focus on all aspects in my brief comments.

The problem is that we have opaque structures that mean that people can avoid tax and participate in illegal activities such as smuggling and money laundering. The amount of unregistered money involved is estimated by some analysts worldwide as being in excess of £20 trillion. A third of that is estimated to be directly linked with the European Union, and a third with UK Crown dependencies.

I will illustrate how the problem works. An individual sets up a firm in a country that keeps the names of directors a secret, then links that firm with another firm in a respectable place such as the United Kingdom, where the details of who owns a company do not have to be registered if it is owned by another company. They then set up nominees to be directors of the opaque firm, register with the corporate registry in the initial country, open a bank account for the original firm and funnel money through the firm in the legitimate area to the original firm in the opaque country.

There are many examples of that, and all areas of our national life, such as football, now seem to be covered by such structures. Whether it is illegal or legal, it is a major problem for transparency. We as legislators should be particularly concerned about any illegal aspects, and the banks have been at the forefront of those, as we have seen with the problems of money laundering. HSBC funded Iran with transactions involving £19.4 billion through shell companies over seven years, through the Channel Islands and the Cayman Islands. That broke sanctions but was incredibly hard to trace, because it happened through opaque shell companies

In the case of crime, in one year alone the same company funnelled £7 billion through the Mexican Zetas drug cartel, the biggest and most violent criminal agency anywhere in the world. Again, it did so through shell operations. Various mafias have also been involved.

The BBC’s “Panorama” exposed rather efficiently a woman called Lana Zamba, a Russian-born Cypriot yoga teacher, who was the director of a firm called Nomirex and 23 other UK-based firms. Records showed that those firms were inactive between 2007 and 2009, but “Panorama” demonstrated that £350 million had passed through them in that time.

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for his energy in securing today’s debate. In the cases he outlines, does he agree that the complexity of modern global banking should not be used as an excuse for ignorance by those charged with the stewardship of the banks, and that we should put in place regulatory—and if necessary criminal—sanctions to ensure that responsibility cannot be evaded on the basis of professed ignorance? Responsibility for running large global complex organisations must be taken by those in charge.

[John Mann]

My right hon. Friend makes a valid and relevant point about criminal sanctions. The banks’ uniqueness is that they are the channel for funds. Because things are recorded in this technological age, it is straightforward for banks to investigate themselves and see what is going on, so the plea of ignorance by those at the top is inexcusable.

What my right hon. Friend and I are saying, and what I interpret the Financial Services Authority to be saying, is that responsibility must be taken at the top. Pleading ignorance is simply not good enough. We are talking not about small, missed operations but about huge major operations that funnel vast amounts of money. It is easy for banks to identify and track such operations, yet they choose not to do so. There seems to be a particular problem of huge reputational risk to the City of London because banks based in the UK have been those most often caught out. However, I have produced a document that demonstrates that this is not simply a UK problem. In recent years, every one of the top 50 banks in the world has had this problem and experienced prosecutions or ongoing investigations into prosecutions.

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing a debate on this subject. Does he agree that a board member should be made explicitly responsibly for each bank’s compliance? Anti-money laundering and due diligence provisions should be used effectively by the authorities to apply existing rules and ensure that people even go to jail if they have committed such crimes.

[John Mann]

The hon. Lady makes a valuable point about the importance of compliance and how that must take place at senior level. Everyone at senior level in a bank must take responsibility and be held accountable for the structures within it.

This is not simply a banking problem. Money laundering and some aspects of criminality are the biggest problems in terms of the volume of money involved, but there is also an issue of percentages and actuality of individual companies. Banks are not setting up opaque structures to create criminality; they are turning a blind eye while their structures facilitate criminality. Others are using weaknesses in corporate structure to create criminality.

Of the half a million companies that struck themselves off the UK corporate register in 2010, 40% had never filled in accounts with Companies House, and 33% had paid no corporation tax that year. If large numbers of companies are not submitting accounts and returns to Companies House, we have a fundamental problem. Our problem in dealing with this issue is demonstrated, rather ironically, if we look at the two Front Benches. The hon. Members present are excellently and diligently representing their parties, but one notes that they come from different Departments. That is part of the problem when it comes to Companies House, and I hope the Minister will clarify—we hope on behalf of the Government —who is responsible for Companies House and who should be holding it to account in Parliament.

Companies House is underfunded, under-resourced and perhaps under-specialised, and such opaqueness in our country has grown dramatically, allowing the creation of opaque corporate entities. That encourages criminality and discourages transparency for the general public, decision makers in Parliament and others.

On the impact of such actions, valid estimates indicate that Africa is losing twice as much in tax it cannot collect because of opaque corporate structures as it gets in development aid. In other words, if we cracked this problem, the amount of development aid required from the west to Africa would diminish dramatically because the tax base itself would be generating income, which is, of course, a key component of a vibrant democracy.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I have never understood why successive British Governments have not tightened up in this area. I understand that there needs to be international agreement, but at least in America there would be some accountability; we only have to look at Lehman Brothers and others to see that. I do not understand why we allow tax havens not too far from these shores to exist.

[John Mann]

Let me come on to that. In Davos in 2010, the Prime Minister said that he wished to “shine a light” on corporate ownership. In the Lough Erne declaration, the calls were for more transparency, more international co-operation and stopping firms shifting profits to avoid tax.

What needs to be done by Government in these areas? On transparency, it is essential that the Government follow up their G8 commitment and create a UK register of beneficial owners, making things transparent and traceable and deterring people from using this country for illegal purposes. All major countries—not least those in the G8 and the EU—need to collaborate. I note that Italy is already suggesting that it will not collaborate, and we need to tackle those countries that are suggesting that they will not co-operate even with the modest proposals emanating from the G8.

We need effective enforcement with, as we have heard, clear sanctions for law breaking; we need criminal sanctions; we need the collecting of fines. On the corporate structure, I suggest that raising the cost of setting up a company from the current £15 and hypoth—[Interruption]—and using that money explicitly and exclusively to ensure better regulation and policing. Hon. Members know which word I mean but I will not try to spit it out; we might be here for the rest of the afternoon. Hypothecating is the word. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]

Firms that have not filed up-to-date tax returns need much greater sanction for not doing so. The fact that so many choose not to do so and get away with it is a fundamental and major weakness. This is where this House needs to put its beady eye on what is going on at Companies House. Is it properly resourced? Are its powers great enough? Is it doing the job properly? I would suggest that out of those, at least two must be at issue; perhaps all three. We must get on top of this in the near future.

The question of tax liabilities and of how much liability and responsibility are needed for directors in relation to the law needs to be reconsidered. As a specific micro-proposal that I think could have a huge impact, it should be illegal for anyone to set up a bank account outside this country without informing HMRC and Companies House first. In other words, if people are using British corporate structure, we should stop letting them set up overseas operation without anybody knowing what is going on.

We need legislation relating to the Crown dependencies. I have made this point on many occasions and I will make it again briefly now. It is unacceptable that our taxpayers provide defence and legal structures for those countries when they have an opaqueness that, whatever tax system and regime they end up having, does not allow anyone to know what is going on. The football industry in this country provides a good example. In vast numbers of football clubs nobody, including the spectators and those who are owed money when the clubs go bust, has a clue who owns what bit and where and how. These major institutions are an example of how deep the problem has become and how we have failed to deal with it. We need to look to our regulations, such as those being introduced on banking, and think about how they can be applied to UK dependencies. Leaving them as they are is simply unacceptable, and it is becoming increasingly counter-productive for this country.

[Tessa Munt]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way again. I wanted to draw it to his attention that the power has been used several times by the UK already to make the dependencies comply with other parts of regulation, so we could just require them to do what they should do. I would give as examples the banning of the death penalty, the rules on acceptance of homosexuality, and, on a slightly minor level, an acceptance that they should ban pirate radio.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. The hon. Lady knows, because it is repeatedly pointed out to her by occupants of the Chair, that interventions must be brief. That was another very long intervention. I think she has made her point. While I am on my feet, may I also say to the hon. Gentleman that he has been speaking for quite a long time? This is a short debate and a lot of people want to get in, including, funnily enough, the hon. Member for Wells (Tessa Munt).

[John Mann]

Madam Deputy Speaker, my speech was already at an end, save for the final sentence. I did not wish to hog the debate with illustrations and proposals. I wanted to set some of the terms of the debate and implore those on both Front Benches to come forward with effective proposals, because this is a major issue for the UK economy and for our democracy.

15:42

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

This is probably the first time in my parliamentary career that I find myself almost entirely in agreement with the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann). I think it is right to say—I am sure my hon. Friend the Minister will confirm this—that so too does the Prime Minister. He has stated that he thinks beneficial ownership information should be in the public domain. The head of tax at the CBI has also stated that he thinks that information should be public, saying that it is a “no brainer”. The International Banking Federation has said that this needs to be done, and it supports public registries as a way of making anti-money laundering and “know your customer” requirements both less expensive and more effective.

I wanted to intervene on the hon. Member for Bassetlaw to make a point about money laundering, which now punishes lots of innocent people. One of the biggest supporters of international development in countries like Somaliland or Somalia, are remittances, but they need systems to make them work. Barclays bank, which has facilitated remittances, is now suspending that facility. It is not that it thinks the people receiving the money in Hargeisa or Mogadishu are abusing it; it is concerned that it can no longer properly police who pays the money in because of money laundering. Therefore, large numbers of people living in grinding poverty around the world will now be denied access to an important part of their development funding because of the actions of those who have been engaged in criminal money laundering for a long time.

Anyone who becomes a company director—the Register of Members’ Financial Interests shows that I am a director of a number of companies—must register at Companies House. That includes registering all the other companies of which they are a director and their home address. All sorts of public information is involved, which can be found not only by shareholders but by the general public, the media and non-governmental organisations. The information is totally accessible. There is absolutely no valid reason why that should not apply to corporate structures across the world. It is absolutely right that we should be at the forefront of that.

I also agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Tessa Munt) about the overseas territories. Some 20 years ago, I was a junior Minister in the Foreign Office under Douglas Hurd—now Lord Hurd—as Secretary of State. We undertook a review of the contingent liabilities for the dependent territories, as they then were. There are considerable contingent liabilities, as we saw with the Falkland Islands and elsewhere. Those territories look to us to offer them protection, but as my hon. Friend pointed out in an intervention, there is a quid pro quo. The quid pro quo should be that if they wish to remain overseas territories and benefit from the Crown, the Union flag and all that protection, we should be able to expect their banking systems and company registries to comply with accepted international norms of transparency and accountability.

I am conscious that a number of people want to take part in this debate. What has been put forward this afternoon is substantially a no-brainer. When my hon. Friend the Exchequer Secretary replies to the debate, I hope he will make it clear that what has been put forward has the full support of the Government, as I am sure it does. As the hon. Member for Bassetlaw made clear, the challenge for us will be ensuring that other G8 countries support us. However, there is absolutely no reason why we should not take a global lead on this—and be proud to take a lead—while the UK has the presidency of the G8.

15:44

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in this debate and am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) for persuading the Backbench Business Committee to hold it. I am extremely concerned, as are all hon. Members, about the morality of cheating in the tax system and, as my hon. Friend said, the economic distortions it creates.

Ordinary small and medium-sized enterprises cannot cheat in that way, and the collapse in the high street is being exacerbated by the tax advantages enjoyed by the internet companies that facilitate online shopping. Indeed, the international internet companies are among the most significant offenders when it comes to tax avoidance. Their business model is built on an apparently free offer to consumers, but the services are paid for by advertising, which is targeted through the collection of personal data from consumers based on the cookie system. I have secured a separate debate in a fortnight’s time on the internet companies’ use of personal data. Today I wish to say something about their business model and its implications.

A Public Accounts Committee report found that between 2006 and 2011, Google paid the equivalent of $16 million in income tax in this country on revenues estimated at $18 billion. It claimed that advertising sales were being made in Ireland, when in fact the two contracting parties were in the UK.

Facebook, another US-based company, has 33 million users in the UK, with 25 million people visiting the site each day. Its revenues from advertising are estimated at around £170 million a year, but last year it reported sales of only £20.4 million. Using that figure for its sales, it reported a pre-tax loss of £13.9 million in 2011, enabling it to pay just £238,000 in tax last year. The position with Twitter is even worse, if that is possible to imagine. It did not even submit any accounts last year.

I want to set the behaviour of those companies, in relation to their corporate structures and tax performances, in the context of the cost to society and the public purse that they are creating. Everyone agrees that online child abuse is a serious crime. We in Parliament, the public and the industry are committed to its eradication. The Internet Watch Foundation is a fantastic organisation that takes down sites that carry child abuse images. It is a membership organisation for the industry, so we were all shocked to hear of the very small contributions that the industrialists were making to its work. Until a month ago, Google was donating £20,000 to the Internet Watch Foundation. In recent weeks, it has upped its contribution to £250,000 a year for four years, and the other media organisations have collectively offered a further £250,000 a year for the same period. I learned this week that Facebook makes a contribution of only £10,000 a year.

The problem with that is that the Internet Watch Foundation is hugely strapped for cash and unable to deal with all the alerts it receives. It is worried, because a survey that it undertook has suggested that, although 1.5 million people have seen child abuse images, only 40,000 reports have been made to the organisation. It is calling on the public to report more, in the interests of child protection, but it requires more resources to enable it to respond. Furthermore, once members of the public start to respond, they are not going to be able to distinguish between the different categories of image—illegal, obscene and indecent—and they will report everything that disgusts them.

We have a similar situation with the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre—CEOP—which is the part of the police force that deals with these issues. It believes that 60,000 people in this country are downloading child abuse images, yet its resources are so limited that it was able to secure only 1,570 convictions last year. At the same time, the companies that distribute that material are not paying the taxes that would help properly to resource the police. I have met representatives of those companies and written to Ministers about these issues. I am still waiting for a reply from Ministers.

Returning to the business model that Facebook uses to generate its revenues, I want to explain a further connection between the two kinds of crime. A whistleblower recently informed us that advertisements were appearing alongside the indecent images of children. They were advertising the services of a large number of household-name companies, including PayPal, John Lewis, Procter & Gamble, EE, Hewlett Packard, Betfred, Bing, Johnson & Johnson, Google, BSkyB and Western Union. Facebook has now agreed to do a manual sweep to remove the advertisements from the sites, because the advertisers do not want to finance them and do not want to be seen to finance them. It would be helpful if we had public statements from those companies on their views on that, and on whether they are happy to have so much advertising being channelled to other organisations that are not paying their proper taxes.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

I might have misheard her, but it sounded to me as if the hon. Lady was making serious allegations about John Lewis. Will she please reconfirm them for the benefit of Government Members?

[Helen Goodman]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Before the hon. Lady returns to her point, I am sure she is going to tell us how what she is talking about connects with financial crime. We are discussing corporate structures, tax evasion, money laundering and financial crime. The crime she was describing was serious, but she said there was a link between it and financial crime, and I would quite like to hear what it is.

[Helen Goodman]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Let me respond to the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke). The companies that I listed have been inadvertently caught up in financing in this particular way, but the question for them is whether they have made it clear, publicly, that they do not wish to be financing the distribution.

In response to your point, Madam Deputy Speaker, the problem is that we have a system through which money is hoovered up in one way and can then be used to finance any other kind of crime—the crimes that I have described, but also those mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw. What we do not have from these organisations is any proper accountability that would allow us to get to the bottom of the issues and tackle them properly. It is extremely problematic that we do not have international agreements about how to deal with these internet companies when it comes to their taxes and their other behaviour. Although it is true that tax avoidance is a scourge and tax evasion is a crime, the industry’s use of these sites helps to promote other kinds of crime. I believe that there is a serious cultural issue about these companies that must be addressed.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way again. I have used privilege in this place to name and shame financial wickedness and, indeed, industrial scale tax avoidance. I have always done so, however, in an attempt to provide evidence. The hon. Lady has made some serious allegations in respect of which I am concerned she has not provided us with any evidence.

[Helen Goodman]

The hon. Gentleman may not be aware that a whistleblower showed me a large number of pages on which I saw some of these advertisements. The point I am trying to make to him is that the companies are inadvertently drawn into this through the targeting and retargeting of advertisements. Their money is being used to finance the internet companies according to the business model that operates, so if they do not want to be involved, they must take steps to avoid doing so.

To offer the hon. Member for Dover some comfort, Marks & Spencer, for example, took the view that it really wanted action to be taken—and it took it publicly, which had a tremendous impact on Facebook and on what Facebook was doing. The other companies have not yet come out as clearly as Marks & Spencer did.

I had better not speak for too long. This is an important debate, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw for opening it up. I am very concerned, however, about what the debate is uncovering.

15:58

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

As I said earlier, I thank the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) for bringing this issue to everyone’s attention and for providing an opportunity for us to debate it this afternoon. He has already raised the effect that anonymous shell companies have on facilitating the corruption that keeps many poor countries poor. Hidden company ownership may be a particular problem. I welcome the efforts of the Prime Minister during his G8 presidency, particularly his calling on the EU and the G8 to work together to break through the walls of corporate secrecy and to ensure much more transparency.

Any move that can clean this whole business up will have a major impact on the world’s efforts to tackle poverty. If we are to commit regularly to having a substantial percentage—0.7%—of moneys being put into aid, we need to make sure that the money is used effectively and that there is a clean-up. It has been noted that a third of the world’s poorest 1 billion people live in resource-rich countries, but as a result of weak governance and widespread corruption, finances do not always reach Government accounts. In fact, many of those resource-rich countries have been looted by the very politicians who are meant to be running them and developing their economies.

It is primarily companies that are used to move dirty money. The World Bank reviewed 213 large cases of corruption between 1980 and 2010, more than 70% of which were found to have relied on anonymous shell companies. Companies registered in the United States topped the list, but the United Kingdom and its Crown dependencies and overseas territories came second.

It seems to be terribly easy to set up anonymous companies and trusts. It is very cheap to create complex corporate structures, and the practice of using “nominees” does not help at all. I hope that the Minister will emphasise the need to put beneficial share ownership into the public domain. A “many eyes” procedure would ensure that company ownership was subjected to continuous tests. I agree with the hon. Member for Bassetlaw that we should not just leave it to HMRC. Beneficial owners are individuals—living people, real-life human beings. We are not talking about yet another company and yet another trust.

The financial action task force, the intergovernmental body that sets global anti-money laundering standards and makes recommendations, has said that the system does not work, and that it is much too easy to avoid due diligence. In many countries, company service providers are all too willing to flout the law. A large number of the world’s major economies are ineffective in preventing companies from being misused by money launderers. Six of the G8 countries and 18 of the 27 European Union member states are listed as being “not compliant” or only “partially compliant” with the new recommendations on beneficial ownership.

Many countries do not require banks, lawyers or company service providers to identify beneficial owners of corporate clients. The penalty in the United Kingdom and the United States for having a fake identity in the form of a passport is up to 10 years in prison, yet anyone who is willing to pay a small amount—I think it is £200 or £300—can create a fake ID through a company and then use the company to hide behind, and the penalties for that are very small.

One way of preventing abuse of anonymous companies is for countries to require all information about beneficial owners, the names of all people behind trusts and foundations, to be put into the public domain. It is essential for such information to be public, rather than being accessible only to the police and other law enforcement agencies. There is no interrelationship between most of these countries, and they cannot carry out the necessary tests. If only HMRC or the police can gain access to our information when fraud is suspected, it will not be possible for us to check other countries’ systems, or for them to check ours.

It is cheap to put beneficial ownership into the public domain. It has been suggested that 99% of companies that are registered in this country are family companies or micro, small or medium-sized businesses. There is a clear relationship between the ownership of companies and individuals. Only 1% of companies registered in this country have a complex financial structure.

We have said that banks could be charged with greater duties to ensure that they are more compliant and rigorous in exercising their duties to ensure that money laundering does not take place, but they have a conflict in that they stand to make very big profits in accepting the business of rich and dodgy customers. Our anti-money laundering laws sound fairly stringent, but, as has been said already, they bear down heavily on smaller companies and it is the big, professional organisations that are trying to launder money through the system on a major scale and that can do that quite easily.

There is little personal responsibility from individual bankers—HSBC is a strong example. In 2012, it agreed to pay a record $1.9 billion fine levied by the US authorities after admitting that its anti-money laundering systems had failed; it laundered hundreds of millions of dollars at least for drugs cartels, terrorists and pariah states such as Mexico. The Senate sub-committee that carried out the investigation described HSBC’s cultures as “'pervasively polluted”.

During that time, over 47,000 people died in Mexico at the hands of drug traffickers, so it is important that we deal swiftly and effectively with such companies. The penalties could be toughened greatly. As I said earlier, we should make individual people on the board responsible for looking after that part of the business. However, I accept the point made by the hon. Member for Bassetlaw that every bank executive should be responsible and made liable for the damage that they cause and that there should be a rigorous system of penalties, which should include the option of imprisonment.

I do not want to go on too much longer. The most important point is that bringing in a public register of beneficial ownership will not involve a huge amount of red tape. The point has been made already that a number of individuals are clear that it would be easy for this country to make such a move. I cannot stress enough how important it is to small businesses to ensure that everyone gets a fair deal, that taxes are paid and that there is absolute clarity when money passes back and forth across the world.

16:07

[Mr Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) not only for obtaining the debate and for making another strong speech on the subject, but in particular for his relentless campaigning on the issue of financial crime in all its forms, including money laundering, tax avoidance and evasion. That is what I want to concentrate on.

As the hon. Member for Wells (Tessa Munt) said, at the G8 summit, the Prime Minister made a great media blitz of his supposed crackdown on corporate tax avoidance. He tried to get UK-controlled tax havens to sign up to an OECD agreement on providing tax information. He also tried to secure a worldwide standard on automatic tax information transfer, to get the G8 countries to reveal the identity of shell companies and to help developing countries to get their rightful entitlement to tax. All those are extremely worthy objectives and no one in the House would demur from any of them, but all he achieved—it is achievement, rather than aspiration, that matters when one is Prime Minister—was a bland statement in favour of the principle of tax information transfer, without any actual means of enforcement.

The Prime Minister defended that feeble result by claiming that little can be done without international agreement and that it takes time to build that, but that is not true. Of course the best result would be an internationally agreed set of rules, but even in the absence of that there is a great deal that Britain can and should do. First, as a number of Members have said, the UK controls 10 Crown dependencies and overseas territories, which collectively embrace over one fifth, I think, of all the world’s tax havens. Most of them have signed up in principle—[Interruption.] Well, we shall see, but they have certainly signed up to the proposal for tax information exchange, and it is now within the purview of the British Government to enforce that proposal, if there is any reneging or backsliding, by the simple expedient of refusing to recognise any financial transactions emanating from those areas if there is any failure to secure full compliance.

That will generate a great deal of resistance, not least from the tax havens themselves, but also I suspect particularly from the big UK banks, which are the main users of these tax haven facilities. Since the Tory party continues to get more than half of its income every year from the banks—[Interruption.] There is no need to roll the eyes or shake the head, as that is an important fact, so facing down the banks on this important issue will test the Government’s resolve.

I therefore want to ask the Minister the following question, which I hope he will answer: will he assure the House that the Government will enforce these tax information exchanges with the tax havens they control? I agree he cannot do that without international agreement in the other havens, but he can control these ones. Alternatively, are we simply going to find that the Prime Minister’s fine words, which we all agree about, will just fade away in a puff of smoke after he has had his PR day in the sun?

What makes the Chancellor’s remonstrations about tax avoidance being immoral seem perverse is that he himself has now emerged as the arch proponent of tax avoidance. He is changing the controlled foreign company rules from 1 January next year to allow any multinational company with a subsidiary in a tax haven—and as the Minister knows very well, 98% of those companies do have a subsidiary in a tax haven—to reduce their corporation tax liability from 23% to a mere 5.5%. Given the boast of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor about cracking down hard on corporation tax avoidance, that is breathtaking hypocrisy. The message is, “Don’t worry about artificial tax avoidance. You needn’t do anything about that, because I am going to serve it up to you on a plate.”

Then the Government went even further. They have put forward the pro-tax avoidance proposal of the patent box, a wheeze whereby any patented process applying to any part of an enterprise, however trivial or minor, not only secures a reduction in corporation tax to 10%, but applies to the entire enterprise. Frankly, the more the Government go on in this way, pushing corporation tax almost to zero, the more tax avoidance fiddles become redundant, because the Government are doing it for them. Perhaps that is the Government’s aim.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Meacher]

The hon. Gentleman was a tax lawyer, I think. He is also a very mischievous Member of this House, but I will still give way to him.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his kind remarks about me. It is all very well for him to have a go at this Government, but he will recall that under his Government revenues from corporation tax rose by 6% while revenues from income tax, paid by ordinary folk in this country, rose by getting on for 100%. Does he think his own Government did such a great job?

[Mr Meacher]

I do not think that the previous Government did a great job. They did an appalling job on corporation tax, and the hon. Gentleman might be pleased to know that I said so at the time and I have always taken that view. The hon. Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams) raised the issue of capital gains tax with me when I was last speaking, and I think that that tax should be at the same level as income tax. Corporation tax is another matter, of course, but it should be well above the levels the Government are now proposing.

The Government can and should restructure the whole approach on tax avoidance by switching the onus of proof away from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and on to the potential perpetrators. That is exactly what my General Anti Tax-Avoidance Principle Bill was intended to do. It would have made it clear that any scheme whose primary purpose was to avoid tax, rather than being any genuine economic transaction, would be invalid in law and struck down. In order to discourage perpetrators of this attempt to bend the will of Parliament, there would be a sizeable penalty for attempting to subvert that will. My Bill had only a 10-minute showing on the Floor of the House, thanks to Tory filibustering of the prior Bill on that day, so perhaps I might take this opportunity to ask the Minister: does he accept the general anti-tax-avoidance principle? If he does not, what are his reasons for rejecting it? I think he will say that the Government are putting up their alternative—the so-called GAAR or general anti-abuse rule—but that really does not meet the ticket. I wish to say why, and I hope that he will listen to why the Government’s GAAR is really no alternative.

The GAAR is based on a report by Graham Aaronson, who was always a representative of the tax-avoidance industry and never of the tax-compliance will of Parliament. I accept that the GAAR will have some effect, because it outlaws egregiously aggressive and abusive tax avoidance, but of course the implication of that is that it legitimises rather less extravagant tax avoidance.

[The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Mr David Gauke)]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Meacher]

Perhaps we should have some debate about that.

[Mr Gauke]

Let me put the right hon. Gentleman’s mind at rest on this by saying that the GAAR does not do that. We accept that the GAAR is directed at egregious tax avoidance. It is an additional tool, but there will still be targeted anti-avoidance rules and other measures that the Government take. I want to make it very clear that we are not saying that if something falls outside the GAAR, there is no problem with it.

[Mr Meacher]

I am glad to hear it, but the Minister and his Government will have to prove that in the outcomes that we see over the months ahead. He makes an important point, but there is a perception that if we opt for a rule that is limited to dealing with the worst kind of tax avoidance, it suggests that the rest is rather less important in the Government’s mind; I cannot see the point of having a GAAR if one is also going to “include” other abusive tax procedures, about which there is equal concern. I am sure that debate is coming along, but I am glad that he said what he did and we shall certainly hold him to it. The GAAR could actually make things worse and, even at this late stage, I ask the Government seriously to reconsider whether they should not take over my Bill.

The Government could and should recognise that their strategy to deter tax avoidance, which has been in use for many years, including under the previous Government, via the disclosure of tax avoidance schemes—DOTAS—is of limited value and is inadequate on its own. It requires those who are designing and trying to sell these schemes to inform HMRC in advance about each new scheme they introduce. I understand that something over 100 new schemes have been disclosed in each of the past four years under the DOTAS proposals. That shows the industrial scale—I think that was the word that the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) himself used—of tax avoidance going on in the City.

DOTAS still leaves two problems. First, it can take HMRC many years to defeat any of the schemes if it goes to the courts and, secondly, some of those promoting such schemes will go to great lengths to avoid disclosure. Even if they are detected and taken to court, the penalty is often something derisory like £5,000 or so. Those involved in such schemes have every incentive to fail to comply with what the Government are seeking.

HMRC’s working definition of tax avoidance, which is often seen as a rather nebulous concept, is, rather sensibly,

“using the tax law to get a tax advantage that Parliament never intended”.

I think that is extremely sensible, so why can it not be cast in statute? Why can it not be laid down as the principle by which the Government and HMRC will test such schemes? That would see off the tax avoidance industry far more effectively than the soft touch of DOTAS. We are coming to the same view on tax avoidance as we did on the banks, and unless persons as opposed to organisations are held responsible—if need be, in extreme cases, by criminal sanctions—very little will happen. If a person were subject to a penalty that was a multiple of the tax charge—perhaps two or three times the charge, depending on the blatancy and gravity of the offence—for seeking to pervert the will of Parliament, that would act as a serious deterrent.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Meacher]

I think that others might wish to speak, but I am sure that I will carry on the conversation with the hon. Gentleman outside and on other occasions.

Finally, corporation tax is, as everyone recognises, so riddled with loopholes as a result of the evolution of the international economy and corporation structures over the past 30 to 40 years that it urgently needs wholesale restructuring. The drive towards territorial taxation must be abandoned and replaced by unitary taxation by which multinationals are taxed according to where their genuine economic activity occurred and not where they pretend it occurred to collect the huge windfalls of transfer pricing.

Surely the most appropriate corporation tax base is either free cash flow or economic rent—the amount, in other words, a business earns in excess of its cost of capital. There are several ways of doing that: removing interest deductibility, introducing an allowance for the cost of corporate equity or shifting the tax base towards tax flow and away from accounting profit.

I have tried to offer several positive proposals. I realise that it is possible to make a lot of pejorative remarks, which are probably just, about the performance of this Government and the previous Government in tackling the problem, but I have tried to be as positive as I can. Unless the Government adopt at least some of the proposals, their claims to have serious intentions about cracking down on today’s enormous cancer of corporate tax avoidance will be seen as the pretence that, sadly, I sometimes think it is.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I remind the two remaining Members who wish to speak that we are running out of time. So that we can hear the Front-Bench speakers, may I ask them each to take a maximum of six minutes? I will not put a limit on the clock, as they are both experienced Members who can judge it for themselves to enable us to hear the wind-ups.

16:24

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

Thank you for your guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker.

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher). I am glad to be doing so on a day when he has been very positive. I would hate to follow him on a day when he was being negative—it would be like having a dementor circling the room. It is always a pleasure to see him in this House, though, especially when he has so many to choose from.

I wanted to take part in the debate to do two things. First, I wanted to set out that the vast majority of businesses established in our country do the right thing by tax and the right thing by corporate structure. They really do work hard to stay within the rules, and they, like everyone else, are shocked when they see other corporate structures not doing the same.

Secondly, I wanted to congratulate and support the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann). It comes as a bit of a shock to me to say that, but I know that he has worked hard on this subject. I do not agree with him on everything, but he does raise a number of valid points; he states them and debates them well and they need to have a good airing. I look forward to continuing the dialogue with him.

Before I got involved in this political charabanc, I was a small business man. I much preferred running a small business and being able to do something positive to sometimes sitting through debates and ultimately achieving nothing. We remain a nation of small businesses and we should encourage them, so I believe it is important that we allow small businesses to set up and establish themselves quickly and cheaply. I therefore disagreed with the hon. Gentleman when he talked about making it more expensive and complicated to set up a company.

Only a year or so ago, I set up a company, and it was a delight to be able to do so online and quickly. There are a few hoops to jump through—one has to prove one’s identity, for example—but I thought the right checks and balances were in place. If we want to create wealth in this country, as we all do because that is where our taxation comes from, enabling businesses to be set up quickly is a good thing. I hope that the hon. Gentleman forgives me for disagreeing with him on that point.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb), I am a member of the Public Accounts Committee. We have been going through report after report on a series of corporate structures that were set up in a slightly interesting way to avoid paying tax, but to do so legitimately. We have been able to show where tax has not been paid or where people think tax should be paid, but it is only a thought, only a process. The companies that have come before us have all been able to say to us, “We do exactly the right thing both by the law in this country and by international law.” If we are serious about tackling this problem, we need to engage on an international stage. That is why I welcome very much the Prime Minister’s words and deeds at the G8 summit and what I expect will happen in future.

The right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) mentioned the complexity of modern-day banking. In fact, now that banks are so interlinked, there is an odd sort of transparency about banking transactions. Banks can make themselves as complicated as they like, but with modern technology and the internet—something the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) was moaning about—comes a degree of transparency that, should we wish it, could clear up a number of issues behind the scenes. Again, however, that would have to be negotiated on an international basis.

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that transparency about ownership, particularly the ultimate beneficial owner, of a company should be welcomed? For many years, the identity of the real owners of some football clubs, such as Coventry City and, previously, Leeds United, was hidden in dummy companies registered offshore.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I agree. Coventry City is a perfect example. It announced today that it is moving in with Northampton Town, a club that is local to me. I am sure fans would love to know what went on behind the corporate structure there.

I have one wish, which is to ensure that we get some sort of transparency behind these corporate structures. Members will know that I am a big campaigner against onshore wind farms. Many of the developers have an unbelievably complex corporate structure that sucks money—subsidy, actually—out of this country and away to far-flung lands through a number of countries and a number of companies.

There is a job to be done. I welcome this debate, I congratulate the hon. Member for Bassetlaw on securing it, and I look forward to working with him and others in the House to get the right job done.

16:30

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) and I associate myself with his remarks about my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann), who is an assiduous campaigner on this and so many other issues.

My small contribution will be about the way in which proceeds of crime have found their way into the financial sector, and I will seek assurances from the Minister that the Government are doing everything they can to deal with the issue of proceeds of crime within our financial structures. Some £675 million is owed by 178 criminals who were each ordered to pay back £1 million or more after their conviction. Prosecutors are unable to force repayment by 45 offenders whose debts to the taxpayer total £225 million. Clearly, the law as currently written and the existing structures are not sufficiently able to deal with the way in which these proceeds are kept by the Mr Bigs who, having committed horrendous crimes, are able to continue with their life after prison and are not asked to pay back what they owe.

I am glad that the Government are proposing changes to the law. I recently had a letter from both the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and the Director of Public Prosecutions about a wish to examine default sentences, changing the definition of “confiscation” in the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, amending the Bail Act 1976 to prevent absconding—once somebody is out of prison, there is no way in which they can be made to pay this money—implementing the EU Council framework decisions on the execution of orders freezing property or evidence, and making sure that agencies work together so that if someone has committed an offence, they do not rush out of the country because the Passport Office has given them a passport.

On money laundering, as the House knows, 85% of drugs profits are earned by distributors in the United States or Europe. The current estimate is that global drugs profits are £380 billion, the majority of which enters the financial system. Antonio Maria Costa, the former head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, has said:

“I cannot think of one bank in the world that has not been penetrated by mafia money.”

Banks with British bases, such as Coutts and HSBC, have been found guilty of money laundering.

As the Home Affairs Committee said recently, until these companies hear the rattling of handcuffs in their boardrooms, they will not take seriously the issue of drugs money within our financial systems. Indeed, we recommended new legislation to extend the personal criminal liability of those who hold the most senior positions in banks and are found to have been involved in money laundering. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw said, it is hoped that the new Financial Conduct Authority will be much tougher than the Financial Services Authority, which in our view did not do enough to deal with the issue.

Yesterday the Home Secretary reclassified khat as a class C drug because she believes that sales of it have entered our financial systems and fund Islamic extremist groups such as al-Shabaab. In January the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs said there was “insufficient evidence” that khat caused health problems. The panel found “no evidence” that khat, made from the leaves and shoots of a shrub cultivated in the horn of Africa and the Arabian peninsula, was directly linked with serious or organised crime. The problem is that once these drugs are banned, they go underground and the drugs barons are able to launder even more money.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

The hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) has raised the issue of Coventry football club. I do not want to go too far down that road, except to say that the parent company should be investigated. It set up two sub-companies, one of which went into administration and was then given by the administrator to the other company. It is a ludicrous situation for the people of Coventry to find themselves in: the fans are up in arms, they do not know where they are going to play next season and all sorts of threats are being made.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Before the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) responds to that point, I remind Mr Cunningham that the courtesies of the House indicate that he should not enter a debate at the end and immediately intervene, because he has not been present at any stage during the debate.

[Mr Cunningham]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

We will not discuss this now, but I am sure Mr Cunningham will remember it for the future.

[Keith Vaz]

I thought that my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) was going to tell me that the directors of Coventry City were chewing khat. I did not realise that he wanted to make another point.

In conclusion, I say to the Minister: let us look at the proceeds of crime and the way in which financial structures protect them, and let us use effective action through the structures of Government and the financial agencies to try to make sure that the Mr Bigs pay back the money they have stolen.

16:35

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

In beginning this debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) pointed out that the responsibilities of the two Front Benchers relate to different Departments. The reason why I am speaking on behalf of the Opposition is that it is our view that too many of the matters under discussion are crimes, should be crimes, should be prosecuted and are not being prosecuted at the moment. My presence underlines the emphasis that the Opposition put on that.

We welcome the fact that tax evasion was on the agenda at the G8 and the Prime Minister is right that we need to pierce the corporate veil. Lack of transparency enables criminals to hide behind shell companies and launder the proceeds of crime. In our view, however, the Prime Minister left the heavy lobbying until too late and the international commitment to breaking down corporate secrecy was weak. In fact, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher) has said, it was feeble. The G8 members only agreed to consider national registries of the beneficial ownership of companies, which, to be frank, is very little commitment at all.

What is the Government’s commitment to that registry? Will it be public? The hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) has said that the Prime Minister is on record as saying that he wants it to be public, but what does that mean? Will it be rigorous?

Every legal entity is ultimately controlled by a natural person—somebody who lives and breathes and who can go to jail if they do things wrong. Will there be a requirement that the information registered on beneficial ownership always includes a natural person? What penalties will there be for failing to supply the required information? Will there be an obligation to record the owner of bearer shares where the owner is not registered and the issuing firm does not track subsequent transfers of ownership? Will there be an obligation for companies that use nominee directors to reveal on whose behalf those directors are working?

We are told that the Government are reviewing all of this, but it seems to me that there is plenty of wiggle room. Will there be an obligation on the part of the registry to carry out due diligence on the information it receives? In practical terms, will Companies House have the resources to do that? Past studies have revealed that Companies House has not even had sufficient resources to routinely check company directors against a list of disqualified persons.

Will Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs have the resources to investigate? HMRC currently faces £2 billion of funding cuts this Parliament, leading to a further 10,000 job cuts. Will the Crown Prosecution Service, also cut by more than 27%, have the resources to prosecute? Will the Government strengthen the regulation of corporate service providers that set up sham companies and straw-men directors? We do not know. Will we be told, and if so, when?

What we do know is that a future Labour Government will bring an end to the era of tax smoke and mirrors. As the shadow Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), and the shadow Exchequer Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), have set out in Labour’s policy review on corporate tax, the Government should ensure that HMRC has the power, resources and capacity it needs. They should also explore how their general anti-abuse rule can be strengthened. The Government should also deliver internationally agreed reporting rules so that large multinational companies have to publish the key pieces of information that people need to assess the amount of tax they pay.

We also need to look at the channels through which the laundered money goes. Of the 17 banks analysed by the FCA, half were found not to have proper processes to prevent money laundering. Four of those were UK banks. I was disappointed that the FCA did not name those banks and have written to it asking it to do so.

Many Members have referred to last year’s US Senate report, which found that HSBC had been used to launder the money of Mexican drug lords. It called HSBC a conduit for

“drug kingpins and rogue nations”.

The US Department of Justice fined HSBC £1.25 billion for money laundering. I am not aware that the UK authorities have taken any action on that, beyond requiring an improved monitoring regime. Of course, the chairman of HSBC at the time became the Minister for Trade and Investment in this Government and continued to be so until recently.

Whether it is LIBOR rigging, money laundering or sanctions evasion, the UK has been slow to investigate British banks. When it has punished them, the fines have been dwarfed by those imposed by the US. For example, Barclays was fined £101 million in the US for LIBOR rigging, whereas the Financial Services Authority in the UK fined it £60 million and the Serious Fraud Office is still investigating. The SFO prosecuted only 20 cases last year and convicted 14 individuals. In the past two years there has not been a single corporate prosecution.

[Keith Vaz]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent point, which reflects what was said in the recent Home Affairs Committee report. However, there is an issue with the absence of personal liability, not just corporate liability. It is individuals who made the decisions.

[Emily Thornberry]

I am getting to that. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend.

Is it any wonder that KPMG has just reported that in the UK, fraud cases totalling more than £500 million were recorded in the first half of 2013, which is up by more than a quarter on the previous year?

We need a change of culture in our law enforcement agencies. We must equip them with the tools and resources that they need to get on the front foot. Under English law, companies are criminally liable only if it can be proved that a director was personally involved in the wrongdoing. That is an extremely high threshold—a problem to which the hon. Member for Wells (Tessa Munt) referred.

There is a good case for holding companies vicariously liable for their employees’ economic crimes, unless they can demonstrate that they had adequate compliance procedures. The last Labour Government did that in relation to bribery with the Bribery Act 2010. We want to build on that, but this Government want to water it down. They say, for some reason, that rules against bribery are red tape. That stopping people bribing one another can be seen as red tape is beyond belief.

If we change the law on corporate responsibility, we may see an increase in the number of companies that are prosecuted, so we must have a penalty structure that is worthy of receiving them. The highest fraud fine to result from an SFO prosecution is £2.2 million. The highest fine clinched by the US Department of Justice is larger than $3 billion. Why do we not introduce a system in which sentences are based on a percentage of the company’s turnover over the past three years?

Although the SFO’s problems are not entirely down to under-resourcing, resources are important because these crimes are expensive to investigate. Last year, the SFO’s budget was £34 million, compared with £40 million in 2009-10. In 2014-15, it will fall to only £30 million. It is so short of money that it has to go cap in hand to the Treasury whenever it wants to take over a major prosecution. That at least gives the impression that the Chancellor has a secret veto on whether fraud investigations take place.

The US approach of topping up the funds of fraud prosecutors is much more appealing. Where possible, confiscated assets are returned to the victims. The proceeds from the many cases in which the victims cannot be traced are poured into a central fund. Each year, teams of prosecutors bid for a portion of that fund for asset tracing and law enforcement investigations. We have the beginnings of such a system in the UK. We could extend that and put large fines or at least part of them into the pool as well. In these austere times, we need to explore such alternative means of funding.

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is eloquently describing the failure of the tripartite regulatory regime that her Government put in place. She is correct that the fines in the UK are a fraction of those in the US. A further failure is that the fines have rewarded other banks. This Government have ensured that the fines that are paid do not reduce the levy so that banks no longer profit from the wrongdoing of other banks. That was the regime that her Government put in place.

[Emily Thornberry]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, but in the time I have available, I would like to look to the future and consider the best method that we have for solving the current problems. I am happy to talk to him at some length outside the debate, because I am committed to the issue and will be interested to hear his point of view.

It seems to me that one good way in which the assets in question can be used, instead of lowering the levy, is to put them into a pool that prosecutors can use in future. That would help to pump up what we are doing. That seems to be a way forward, and I am putting it before the House today to get some sensible responses.

[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Emily Thornberry]

Unfortunately I am running out of time, but I would like to hear from the hon. and learned Gentleman briefly.

[Sir Edward Garnier]

The hon. Lady urged us to look to the future. Does she agree that one thing that we need to consider with reasonable urgency is an alteration in how corporate criminal liability is described in law? At the moment, we have the Victorian “directing mind” principle, which is not really appropriate for vast international companies. Does she agree that we need to Americanise the system—

[Helen Goodman]

She’s just said that. If you’d been here, you’d have heard it.

[Sir Edward Garnier]

It is always so lovely to hear the hon. Lady, but I am actually addressing the shadow Attorney-General.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Before the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) responds, I point out again that interventions made by people who have only just arrived in the Chamber, not having been present at any point during the debate, do not show the best courtesy to the House. I hope that all Members will bear that in mind.

[Sir Edward Garnier]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. If I have caused any offence, I apologise. The reason I addressed the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) was that she and I have a joint interest in the matter. I am sure she did not take offence.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Thank you, Sir Edward, but you are continuing the debate. Your point is on the record, but we are now eating into the Minister’s time. I understand that he does not mind, so I call Emily Thornberry to conclude her speech.

[Emily Thornberry]

I am grateful to the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) and appreciate his expertise in the matter, but I actually did say that immediately before he came into the Chamber. I am glad that there is now cross-party agreement, and I urge him to ensure that his party’s Front Benchers adopt my ideas. Now is the time to move on in relation to fraud, and I believe that companies should be held liable for the fraudulent activity of individuals, building on the Bribery Act. That is a way forward, and if we can agree on it, then great—let’s do it.

If the Government are committed to a crackdown on crime, why have they left it to Labour to amend the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill, which will come before the House again on Monday? Why have they not tabled amendments? We understood that the Prime Minister was committed to introducing a crime of reckless management of a financial institution, so why have the Government not tabled such an amendment? Why do we need to do it? It seems odd. We are concerned that, although the Prime Minister is happy to make pledges when everyone is watching, he hopes that when nobody is noticing he can carry on and do nothing.

It seems to us that an offence of reckless banking needs to do more than deliver symbolic sacrifices after the event. We need managers to be held liable if they turn a blind eye to those who are committing crime. They should have a responsibility to monitor what happens. No single person brings a bank to its knees and no single person should be responsible for UBS, Société Générale or Barings, whatever some may want us to believe. There are further people who are also responsible, and we need to ensure that the law allows for other people to be prosecuted. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the Government’s record on basic economic crime such as the failure to ensure that people are paid the minimum wage. In the past three years, only two bosses have been prosecuted for that, and workplace inspections have halved in the past 12 months. It seems to us that it is about time the Government started taking seriously economic crime of all types, including people not being paid a basic wage.

16:48

[The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Mr David Gauke)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) on securing the debate. It has been wide-ranging, but I will focus my remarks, at least to begin with, on the issue that he focused on most, which was company misuse. If I have time, I will address other issues that were raised, such as tax avoidance, although to be fair we had a debate on that a week ago.

I am pleased to address company misuse because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) rightly pointed out, the Prime Minister has demonstrated leadership on this issue on the international stage. The Government are committed to tackling illicit activity and the misuse of corporate vehicles to facilitate such activity, and we are well aware of the impact such things have on the UK and the global economy. Such misuse is made possible because companies can be used to hide who is really in control and who is the beneficial owner. Hidden beneficial ownership to facilitate criminal activity is a long-standing issue, and international standards have proved difficult to implement effectively for many jurisdictions. For that reason, the Prime Minister put tackling that issue at the heart of the UK’s G8 agenda. I am sorry that one or two right hon. and hon. Members have been less than generous in recognising that.

[Stephen Williams (Bristol West) (LD)]

At Lough Erne it was agreed that each of the G8 countries would come forward with a national action plan for implementing the agreements made there, which for the UK will hopefully include the Crown dependencies. Have the Crown dependencies come forward with their draft plans, and do they include commitments to publish registers of beneficial ownership?

[Mr Gauke]

It is perhaps worth saying a word or two about the Crown dependencies because they have received criticism during the course of the debate. There is nothing illegal about an international structure, especially in a globally integrated economy, but what must stop is the use of offshore structures to hide assets and income illegally, and to evade taxes. The overseas territories and Crown dependencies have all committed to automatically sharing information to fight tax evasion, and to producing national action plans to set out how they will improve beneficial ownership transparency. The Crown dependencies have already published their plans, and the overseas territories have committed to do so by the end of the year. This is a significant step forward in transparency, and we will continue to work closely with the overseas territories and Crown dependencies to ensure that the action to which they commit is robust and ensures the effectiveness of their systems. It would be a pity for this debate to give the impression that we do not acknowledge the significant progress made in recent months.

Returning to the G8, there was collective action to improve transparency of beneficial ownership and make it easier for law enforcement and tax administrations to fight company misuse. The G8 have committed to a set of common principles, and each member has committed to publish a national action plan. The US, France, Italy, Japan, Canada and the UK, as well as the Crown dependencies, have published their plans already, and Germany and Russia have committed to do so before the end of the year, along with the overseas territories.

The G8 action plan means a number of things for the UK. First, we will legislate to ensure that all companies know who owns and controls them. Companies will be required to obtain and hold information on their beneficial ownership—a requirement that will make it harder for criminals to hide their identity, and easier for law enforcement bodies to trace company misuse. Secondly, we will require that information to be held centrally at Companies House and made available, at a minimum, to law enforcement and tax authorities. Again, that will enable law enforcement and tax administrations to track down beneficial ownership information much more quickly. It will also help us develop better working relations with our international counterparts, by responding to their requests more quickly during cross-border investigations. To address the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Tessa Munt), it is important that law enforcement agencies and tax authorities co-operate on such matters.

We will also consider whether that information should be made publicly accessible. Although there would be significant advantages to such an act, such as enabling greater scrutiny of the accuracy of the information and allowing investors and others to understand better with whom they are doing business, there would also be legitimate concerns about individual confidentiality and whether the information would always be used in the right way. The case of companies involved in animal testing raises an interesting point. Hon. Members may be interested to know that we have committed to consult on this issue.

Thirdly, we will be looking at what measures can be taken to mitigate the misuse of nominee—or sham—directors and bearer shares. The fact that both are currently allowed to exist is inconsistent with our desire to know who really owns and controls UK companies, so the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills will be issuing a public discussion paper on these precise issues shortly, setting out a number of options for reform.

I turn now to the issue of Companies House, which was raised by the hon. Member for Bassetlaw. The House will be aware that the core function of Companies House is to receive company information and make it available to the public, and a key part of this is ensuring that accounts and annual returns are delivered for every company. Compliance rates for those documents—97.9% for annual returns and 99% for accounts—are the best they have ever been and are amongst the best in the world, but we will continue to consider additional means to ensure that companies comply with all their statutory filing requirements.

For example, in response to calls for more transparency about the extent of company subsidiaries in tax havens, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills has asked Companies House to check the accounts of all FTSE 350 companies for the disclosure of overseas subsidiaries information. Hon. Members may be interested to know that Companies House will publish the findings on this at the end of July.

On HMRC, there are legal remedies to stop taxes being avoided or evaded through dissolving companies without payment that HMRC makes regular use of. As an example, HMRC frequently requests restoration of companies to the register and then liquidates them, an act that allows liquidators to pursue directors for misfeasance and other wrongdoing. As a Government, we have reinvested in HMRC significant sums to deal with tax avoidance as a whole.

We are short of time and I am unable to address issues such as the general anti-abuse rule and the wider issue of tax transparency, but I am grateful for the opportunity to set out the Government’s commitment to dealing with opaque company structures that facilitate financial crime. It is thanks to the Government that this was put on the agenda for the G8 and that countries around the world are setting out action plans to deal with beneficial ownership. It is why there is a much greater exchange of information between jurisdictions now than we have seen before. We have a proud record in this area and I am grateful for the opportunity to make that clear.

16:58

[John Mann]

We have had a useful debate with, I think, 16 contributions, interventions and speeches. I was a little taken aback by the number of plaudits from Government Members, but I will perhaps take up the offer from the hon. Members for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) and for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry), who spoke by proxy for other Oxfordshire Government Members. We could perhaps form a little group to take such issues forward: a friendly society, perhaps. We could call it Unite and we could all join.

The responses from those on the Front Benches were different, but there were important points from both. With vast numbers of companies not submitting returns, as they should, to Companies House; with situations such as those at Leeds United and Coventry City football clubs, where people do not who owns them, including those who work at and pay for those clubs; and with the biggest criminal gang in the world laundering vast amounts of money through a British bank, there is clearly a major issue that has not been addressed but needs to be addressed. There are different arguments and ideas on how to take this matter forward. It is important for Parliament to keep it on the agenda and hold the Government to account. I also think—

17:00

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 9(3)).

Business without Debate

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

Sittings in Westminster Hall (e-petitions)

Ordered,

That this House:

(1) notes the recommendations of the Procedure Committee contained in paragraph 7 of its Sixth Report of Session 2012-13, Debates on Government e-Petitions in Westminster Hall (HC 1094), on the extension of the current pilot for debating e-petitions in Westminster Hall and agrees to extend the changes to Standing Orders No. 10, No. 14 and No. 152J to the end of the current Parliament;

(2) approves the recommendation in paragraph 8 of the Report relating to the wording of the motion to be debated and that Standing Order No. 10(5)(a) be amended accordingly as follows:

In line 37, leave out ‘from [petitioners]’.—(Anne Milton.)

Petitions

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

Christians in Pakistan

17:00

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

It is my great privilege to bring before the House a petition from the residents of Nelson, Lancashire and others. It was gathered together by the Nelson Asian Christian Fellowship.

The petition states:

The Petition of residents of Nelson, Lancashire, and others,

Declares that they condemn the attacks that took place in March 2013 that targeted Christians in Lahore, Pakistan, where two churches and 178 homes were burnt, and regrets the actions of the local authorities in the city who failed to protect the buildings from attack.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government of Pakistan to remove any laws that discriminate against minorities, abolish the blasphemy laws, release Asia Bibi, and to provide protection and security when such incidents occur in future.

And the Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

[P001191]

Hawthorns Skate and BMX Park Desborough, Northamptonshire

17:01

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I have the great privilege to present a petition signed by 810 of my constituents in support of the Hawthorns skate and BMX park in Desborough in my constituency, which has been collected by Belinda Humfrey, one of my most distinguished constituents, to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled.

The petition states:

The Petition of supporters of the Hawthorns Skate and BMX Park Desborough, Northamptonshire,

Declares that the Petitioners support the campaign to save the Hawthorne Skate and BMX Park in Desborough, Northamptonshire, which is a large park, with ten varied wooden ramps built to national competition standard, which was first established in 1999 and which has since benefitted from National Lottery funding and has been maintained, repaired and rebuilt by the voluntary efforts of the local community; further that it has been used by thousands of local boys and girls, and now faces the threat of closure by Kettering Borough Council, which owns the land on which the park is sited and which wishes to build residential properties on the park site and the eight acres of neighbouring green space, which were established for leisure and sports use in 1974 and which the Petitioners believe are unsuitable for housing development because they are located by a nature reserve.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Department of Communities and Local Government to encourage Kettering Borough Council to review the planned closure of the Hawthorns Skate and BMX Park.

And the Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

[P001193]

Stafford Hospital

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Anne Milton.)

17:04

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for this opportunity for a debate on Stafford hospital.

On 31 July, the administrators of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust will present their proposals for the future of health services at Stafford and Cannock hospitals. They, as well as Monitor, to which they report, and the Government, have a tremendous opportunity to show the way forward for the NHS as a whole, which celebrates 65 years this week. This trust special administration is the first under the Health and Social Care Act 2012 and is a chance to show how emergency, acute and maternity services can continue to be provided affordably, locally, safely and to the highest standards. We are also talking about the administration of a trust that has been the subject of intense scrutiny since the revelation of appalling standards of care in some parts of Stafford hospital in the period to 2009. Since then the improvement has been marked, as the Care Quality Commission has evidenced, although there is no complacency about that on our part.

When tens of thousands of people marched through Stafford on 20 April this year to a rally that I had the honour to address, along with the Bishop of Stafford, we were showing just how much we value the services provided at Stafford and Cannock. We were also expressing our concerns about the future—a future that the contingency planning team’s report, which came out earlier this year, said was unlikely to include the provision of most acute, emergency and maternity services in Stafford, even though our maternity services have some of the best outcomes in the country. When the trust special administrators produce their report, I hope they will provide us with complete access to the data on which they worked, as well as the assumptions made—something that did not happen with the contingency planning team.

We were also making it clear that we cannot see how other, neighbouring hospital trusts, which are already under so much pressure, could cope with substantial numbers of additional patients who would have to come for treatment, travelling considerable distances on routes that are not well served by public transport.

[Gavin Williamson (South Staffordshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that if we do not keep a strong core of services in Stafford and at Cannock, the consequence for other trusts could be a deterioration in the care they can give patients, which would be highly detrimental for patient care right across Staffordshire?

[Jeremy Lefroy]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Many people, including those with more experience of these matters than I have, have said the same.

The coincidence of the publication of the Francis report—which was commissioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley), whom I am glad to see in his place—and Monitor’s contingency planning team report into the future of services at Stafford and Cannock was, I have to say, unfortunate. Both organisations were running to independent timetables, but the coincidence gave rise to the incorrect impression that the proposed downgrading of services at Stafford was somehow the direct consequence of the failures in care until 2009. Let us be absolutely clear: it is not. In fact, the financial problems of the trust are long standing. It should never have been granted foundation trust status by Monitor back in 2008.

However, the impression that exposing poor care somehow resulted in threats to services had a double effect. First, blame was completely unjustifiably put on those who spoke out. Secondly, the impression was given that if people speak out in future anywhere else, local services might be at risk. The result is that Stafford has experienced ups and downs in the last few months. They include the wonderful coming together of a community of all ages and a group supporting the services at the hospital working across the political divide. Sadly, however, we have also seen cases of threatening behaviour against Julie Bailey and members of Cure the NHS, who courageously brought the serious problems at Stafford to light. I will not mince my words: it has been heartbreaking to hear people—good people, with the welfare of the community at heart—on opposite sides of an argument that should never have happened.

At the same time, hundreds of people in the community have put in a huge amount of time and effort to support Stafford hospital. I want to mention some by name. They include Sue Hawkins, Cheryl Porter, Karen Howell, Brian Henderson, Diana Smith, James Cantrill, Chris Thomas, James Nixon, Councillors Mike Heenan, Rowan Draper and Ann Edgeller, and Ken Lownds—who has put in a huge amount of expert work—together with my hon. Friends the Members for Stone (Mr Cash), for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley) and for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson).

But I wish to focus on the future, and I am going to concentrate on Stafford hospital although Cannock, too, is vital. Stafford is one of the many small district general hospitals up and down the country that play a vital part in our emergency and acute infrastructure. The number of acute beds has fallen substantially in the past 20 years, including in Staffordshire. The new PFI-funded hospital that opened recently in Stoke has 250 fewer beds than its predecessor, although it is none the less a wonderful hospital. We all welcome the fact that the length of hospital stays has fallen sharply, to an average of less than four days, but a report from the Royal College of Physicians published last year pointed out that there is little room for further reduction. Indeed, as the population begins to age, the average length of stay might start to creep up again.

The only way to manage acute beds, even at the current capacity, is to ensure that people do not have to be admitted in the first place. I am sure that we all want to see that happen, but it will depend on expanded community provision and the better integration of health and social care. That will happen, but it is not happening yet. Even when it does, my firm belief is that although it might halt the increase in demand for acute services, it will not reduce it at this time of a rising and ageing population. The Government are listening to experts who say that we need substantially increased rail capacity by 2035, so I am sure that they will also listen to the experts who say that we cannot cut any further the local and regional capacity for emergency, acute and maternity care. I say to Monitor and to the Government that Stafford is ready to be a national leader in such integration, with patients and the provision of the highest quality of care put first. However, that demands time and co-operation.

The first element of co-operation involves a larger acute trust. In the case of Stafford, the obvious partner is the University Hospital of North Staffordshire in Stoke. Working with UHNS as one team will bring advantages to both hospitals and both communities. For Stafford, the chance to become part of a university hospital will be an exciting prospect. We already welcome third, fourth and fifth-year medical students from Keele university medical school, and they report that they value the experience of working in a busy district general hospital. For the clinical staff at Stafford and at Stoke, the chance to work as a much bigger team across two sites would bring greater opportunities for them to develop their skills and experience. Frankly, for Stafford, it would also ensure that there was much less chance of a return to the complacent culture of the past that the Francis report identified as a major problem in parts of the hospital. For Stoke, which is already under considerable pressure as a result of the reduction in beds and has had to reopen up to 100 old ones, coming together with Stafford would offer welcome additional capacity. It would also create a larger catchment area, which would make some specialties that are currently marginal at Stoke much more viable.

But this would not be easy, as UHNS also has a substantial deficit and a PFI cost that is frankly unsustainable. I urge the Government to do everything within their power to cut the cost of UHNS’s PFI so that the 750,000 and more people who would rely on a combined major acute trust—whether in Stoke, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Leek Stafford, Cannock or further afield—can continue to have access to services delivered as locally as possible.

[Mr Aidan Burley (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this timely debate as we await the final report from Monitor at the end of this month. We must oppose any serious downgrading of Stafford hospital, but the other hospital that was poorly managed by the former Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust was Cannock Chase hospital, which has been mismanaged to the point that 50% of its hospital buildings are currently lying empty. There is therefore a threat to its future. Does my hon. Friend agree that any solution provided in the report at the end of the month must involve Cannock hospital being fully utilised, and Stafford hospital not being downgraded?

[Jeremy Lefroy]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, and I congratulate him on the huge amount of work that he has put into ensuring that Cannock Chase hospital can be better utilised.

The second part of co-operation involves community services. Instead of seeing acute hospitals as buildings into which people disappear and then re-emerge at some point, let us make them a full partner in community services. In fact, they should be a hub for those services. Stafford, Stoke and Cannock can be groundbreakers in this, and set an example to the rest of the country. In Stafford, we long for the chance to show the country that we provide the highest standards of care, and that we will never again let patients be treated in the shocking way that many experienced in the past.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way, and I commend him for bringing this issue to the Floor of the House. Does he agree that we have a national health service, and that any loss of services at Stafford could send out ripples that would affect services at Burton-on-Trent—also in Staffordshire, and also a hospital under some financial pressure that services a large proportion of the medical needs of my constituents in North West Leicestershire?

[Jeremy Lefroy]

As usual, my hon. Friend makes a powerful point—that this debate is not just about a relatively small district general hospital, because it will have ripple effects. We have a pretty efficient national health service, but it does run on tight margins, so that if we take one acute hospital out, it could have effects right across the whole region. Local clinical commissioning groups have a vital part to play, and I want to pay tribute to the good work they are doing in developing community services in Stafford.

The third element of co-operation comes from Monitor itself. Under the Health and Social Care Act 2012, Monitor now has responsibility for setting tariffs, including those for emergency and acute services. It would be rather strange if Monitor were to continue the programme introduced in 2009 of constant 4% year-on-year real cuts in tariffs, and then be forced to pick up the pieces of acute foundation trusts around the country that fall into deficit as a result of the tariff cuts it has made. Monitor has the chance to challenge the assumption that acute services can continue to squeeze out annual efficiencies—in some cases, and not just in Stafford—of up to 7% a year, while elective services enjoy a relative feast.

Monitor has the opportunity to ensure that the necessary changes to the provision of acute services are done in such a way that will allow acute services to continue to be provided locally. Monitor itself could become an excellent example of joined-up government, and in doing so carry out its legal requirement under section 62 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 to promote the

“provision of health care services which…is economic, efficient and effective, and…maintains or improves the quality of the services.”

Finally, the national Government have a vital role to play in co-operation.

[Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

I am most apologetic about arriving late to this debate and not having the opportunity to hear the opening part of the hon. Gentleman’s speech. To find a long-term solution for health care in Mid Staffordshire and in North Staffordshire, it is vital that the Minister refers in his reply to the best way of ensuring that the emergency services and all the other services that people want can be retained. That can be achieved only if we have a proper collaboration between the University hospital of North Staffordshire, which must be at the front of—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Had the hon. Lady been here from the beginning, she would have heard what the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) said about that. Her intervention was rather long, and we are running out of time.

[Jeremy Lefroy]

I would like to place on record my thanks to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) for her co-operation on this issue. She has really been of great help.

As I was saying, the national Government have a vital role to play in co-operation. Well distributed emergency and acute care is part of our national health infrastructure; it cannot be left entirely to local or even regional bodies to determine what is provided. My constituency and those of my hon. Friends the Members for Stone, for Cannock Chase and for South Staffordshire host the M6, the M6 toll road and both routes of the west coast main line and are also scheduled to host HS2. Stafford’s critical care unit provides a value supplement to the larger ones in Stoke, Wolverhampton and Walsall, in case they are under great pressure. There is a strong argument for such vital infrastructure to be funded nationally rather than being dependent on local CCGs, which, in the case of those in South Staffordshire, the Government have recognised receive considerably less than their fair funding share.

The administration of Mid Staffordshire is a great chance for Monitor, through the administrators, to show that it is listening to and acting on the concerns of my constituents about the need for vital emergency, acute and maternity services to remain at Stafford. This provides, too, an excellent opportunity for the Government to show first how they have responded to the Francis report by putting patients first, and secondly how the 2012 Act is not, as some would have it, about fragmentation and privatisation, but about co-operation and quality of care for the patients who must be at the heart of the NHS.

17:19

[Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) for his tireless work in relation to Stafford hospital. I myself campaigned vigorously and successfully for a public inquiry, and was able to give evidence to it. However, the Government have still not arranged a debate on the Francis report, although it was published many months ago, in February. That is completely unacceptable. I know that the Secretary of State for Health wants a debate, so, for heavens sake, will the Government get on with it? Will they have their discussions, so that we can debate the matter and establish the root causes of what went wrong?

If the discussions do not produce the results which, as my hon. Friend said, are absolutely necessary, the national health service itself will not be able to live up to what people have claimed that it can produce. It could stand or fall on the basis of the results of those discussions. As we know from the media, many people are questioning the workings of the national health service, and with some justification. If the Government get this right, the health service as a whole will benefit enormously. I urge them to act.

Let me also say that the Prime Minister himself has expressed his concern about the treatment given to Julie Bailey, and we are following that up with the police.

Finally, I ask the Government and the Minister to make certain that Stafford hospital is given an opportunity not only to prove itself, but to prove that the national health service can work properly.

17:21

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)]

It is a great pleasure to reply to the debate. Let me begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy), and expressing my great admiration for the work that he has done so tirelessly during his time in the House. He has been a tremendous advocate for all his constituents, for the hard-working staff at the trust who are doing their best in very difficult circumstances, for all the people who have rightly spoken out about earlier problems at the trust, and for the patients. He is an example to us all of what a hard-working and dedicated constituency Member should be.

I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash), who has been raising this matter tirelessly for many years. It is a tribute to the efforts of both my hon. Friends that we have got to where we are today.

I can reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Stone that the findings of the Mid Staffordshire inquiry are at the forefront of the Government’s mind. As he will recall, our response to the Francis report set in train a number of important pieces of work. First, we asked Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director of NHS England, to look into 14 hospitals where there had been two years of higher than standardised mortality ratio indicators. That work is now reaching fruition. Following a report as damning as the Francis report, which looked into the culture of the NHS, we thought it right to investigate other hospitals that could give rise to concern, and we now think it right to examine the findings of Sir Bruce Keogh’s report before we report back to the House. We also set in train Camilla Cavendish’s review of nursing and Don Berwick’s inquiry into a minimum-harm and no-harm culture in the NHS. All those inquiries have formed part of our response to the Francis inquiry, and they have all been independent of Government. We shall have the reports in the next few weeks, and we shall then be able to arrange the more considered debate on the Floor of the House for which my hon. Friend has rightly called.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford was right to highlight the fact that the health care challenges in more rural areas, where travelling distances are longer, are by definition different from the health care challenges in urban areas. He was also right to highlight the fact that, throughout the NHS, in Stafford and elsewhere, we face the challenge, in both human and financial terms, of better looking after an ageing population and better providing dignity in elderly care.

My hon. Friend was right to highlight the fact that we need to support people such as Julie Bailey, who was treated appallingly in the light of her great courage and conviction. We must support people inside and outside the NHS who have the courage to speak up when there are concerns. We have made that clear in our initial response to the Francis inquiry report. That is why we have set up a whistleblowing hotline and are tackling the cultural issues in the NHS. We will support staff who want to raise concerns, so they can do so free of fear and intimidation. That is absolutely the right thing to do.

It is admirable that local people have continued to come out in full support of their hospital through the Support Stafford Hospital campaign. That was demonstrated by the 50,000 people who marched through Stafford with my hon. Friend in April and by other local events such as the Night of Light event in May. I am sure that we all agree that it is vital that the trust special administrator, currently in place at the trust, develops the right proposals for the future of services at the hospital to provide high-quality, affordable and sustainable services. I will return to that later.

The NHS is about to celebrate its 65th anniversary and its 65th year has perhaps been its most challenging. In that year, we have perhaps questioned some of the things that we held dear. I work in the NHS, I believe in it and I believe that our NHS should be and is one of the very best health services in the world, but when things have gone so badly wrong it is right that we learn lessons from what has happened, that we ensure that we put them right and that we support staff when they raise concerns. It is right that we drill into how to ensure that we listen to staff in learning how to put things right in local hospitals. We must also ensure that we create a culture in which trust managers always listen to what front-line staff tell them. In my experience, when things go wrong in front-line patient care, it is often because there is a disconnect between management and front-line staff. That is why the Government, through the Health and Social Care Act 2012, are embedding in the NHS a culture of clinical leadership, which will benefit patients massively.

On the future of Stafford hospital and the issues raised in the debate, the events that took place led Monitor to intervene and, over the past few years, there has been a whole health economy approach to improving services at the trust. That has led us to where we are today. Monitor, as the regulator of foundation trusts, appointed a TSA at the trust in April 2013 to determine the future provision of services at the trust. As we know, that process is ongoing.

I should be clear that, while the TSA is developing its proposals, I cannot discuss that in much detail. Nor is it known what the TSA is likely to propose. It is right that that process is free of political interference. However, what I would expect, and I am sure that my hon. Friend would agree, is that the TSA fully engages with key stakeholders during that process, including clinical commissioning groups, local health care providers, local authorities and local MPs, which I have been assured is the case. The TSA is legally bound to consult on its proposals and I would expect that any proposals meet the four tests for any service change and reconfiguration, which were set by the former Secretary of State for Health, now the Leader of the House of Commons.

[Joan Walley]

Can the Minister assure me that, following publication of the report by the trust special administrator, as well as the people and communities in Stafford, the people and communities in North Staffordshire will be consulted? There are wider concerns about how any further collaboration will affect health care, which has to be improved in North Staffordshire as well as in Stafford.

[Dr Poulter]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. As I highlighted earlier, it is absolutely right that the TSA will look at the whole health and care sector in Staffordshire, and of course the implications of any potential change for neighbouring hospitals. That is implicit in the work that the TSA is doing. This is, of course, not an issue I can dictate from the Dispatch Box or the Secretary of State determines. It is for the TSA to decide what its own work is, and it is important that that is done without political interference, so the right decision for local patients in Stafford and surrounding areas can be reached. I am sure the hon. Lady will agree about that.

I appreciate the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford that acute services should remain at Stafford hospital. However, the TSA is independent of Monitor and therefore it would not be appropriate for Monitor—or, indeed, Ministers or the Department of Health—to seek to influence this process. My hon. Friend is aware that, at the request of the TSA, Monitor granted an extension to the period in which it can develop its proposals and the consultation period. I understand that the TSA is expected to consult on its proposals between August and October 2013, and I am sure my hon. Friend and his constituents will play an active role in that, and that the views expressed in the House today will be listened to as a part of the deliberations of the TSA and in the consultation process that follows.

I appreciate my hon. Friend and his constituents will experience uncertainty while the TSA develops its proposals. However, the TSA is engaging widely with the broader health economy as these proposals are developed and I understand that includes speaking with my hon. Friend and the Stafford Hospital Working Group. I would, therefore, encourage my hon. Friend to continue this dialogue with the TSA to ensure that his views and those of his constituents are fully taken into account as proposals for the future of Stafford hospital emerge.

I pay tribute to the work of my hon. Friend and my hon. Friend the Member for Stone, because if it were not for their work, we would not be where we are today and the people of Stafford and Staffordshire would be much more poorly represented. Their record speaks for itself and they have our full support in the work they are doing as advocates for their constituents. I look forward to continuing to support them in my role as a Minister, and the Government stand ready to support Stafford hospital.

Question put and agreed to.

17:32

House adjourned.

Westminster Hall

Thursday 4th July 2013 Westminster Hall

Thursday 4 July 2013

[Mr Dai Havard in the Chair]

Post-2015 Development Goals

Thursday 4th July 2013 Westminster Hall

[Relevant documents: Post-2015 Development Goals, Eighth Report of the International Development Committee, Session 2012-13, HC 657, and the Government response, Session 2012-13, HC 1065.]

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

13:30

[Sir Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)]

As you know, Mr Havard, we are having two debates this afternoon: this one, and then one on the Department for International Development’s engagement in Pakistan. They will be approximately equal in length, depending on hon. Members’ contributions.

The Select Committee on International Development took the view that it was important that we engage in the process of the post-2015 development goals, and we took evidence from a fairly wide variety of sources. We reflected first on the achievement of the millennium development goals for 2015, and thereafter on what we needed to take forward. When the MDGs were set up in 2001, they were rather slow in gathering momentum. Some people suggested that they were hatched in a basement of the United Nations, which is probably slightly unfair, but they certainly were not the product of wide consultation. Nevertheless, over time, the MDGs became a definite focus of development policy for the UK and many others. It is interesting that in its annual report, for example, our own DFID would put against the country programmes a series of traffic lights indicating how well a country was doing in relation to those goals. In time, a lot of developing countries took ownership of their responsibility for securing development goals.

However, we must also reflect that the goals were somewhat mixed in their intentions and expression, and slightly different in substance. Although they were helpful in driving the agenda, we clearly were not going to hit them, and many countries—particularly the weakest ones; the ones that the UK is most engaged in—are off course for achieving them. It would be unacceptable to arrive at 2015 and say, “Well, that was an interesting exercise. Here are the overall performance indicators of who got how far towards them,” and have that be the end of it. We recognised that we had to ensure that the job was not left unfinished and that we moved forward. The UN then appointed a high-level panel with our own Prime Minister as a co-chair, which reported a few weeks ago.

The first thing that we were concerned to address, whatever the new process did, was much wider ownership of it through thorough consultation and engagement. I think that we can honestly say that the process has been much more inclusive than the original one. However, we also wanted it to address some of the shortcomings of the original goals, such as the fact that a goal of halving absolute poverty by 2015 could leave the other half of people in absolute poverty. Also, if absolute poverty is $2 a day, it is much easier to raise somebody to that level from $1.90 than from $1, so there is a tendency to concentrate on lifting those people just below the margin. Ironically, that means that the poorest of the poor could be left further behind. That did not always happen, but it could be the consequence, and we were anxious to ensure that such unintended consequences were not incorporated into the next round of goals.

It is also important to recall that there are huge inequalities. The question of how well we have done globally on achieving various MDGs can disguise the fact that some countries are nowhere near, whereas countries such as China and India have made the biggest progress and account for the highest proportion of the success. Even within countries, it may be possible to show that targets have been broadly met, yet some communities may have fallen completely behind. Again, we were anxious to ensure that things were much more inclusive in the future and that the disparities within communities were addressed. We also thought that, ultimately, having a livelihood—perhaps a job, but some means of earning a living—is the best way out of poverty, and that that needed to be incorporated into the goals.

In that context, we were pleased that the high-level panel was appointed, and we were extremely pleased that our Prime Minister was given such a prominent role within it. That was testimony to the UK Government’s commitment to development; we will deliver 0.7% of gross national income this year, unlike many countries. The quality and focus of what we do is also highly respected. It is essential that we acknowledge that that has been achieved through strong cross-party support, and this is an achievement of which our country can be justifiably proud.

I make a side comment on the justification for that decision for those who choose to criticise it. Any of us who engage in countries where poverty is severe and endemic understand completely that however difficult our problems in the United Kingdom, they in no way compare with the absolute poverty that exists in parts of sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia. We should be absolutely clear that as long as we have the capacity to work in partnership to help to lift those people out of absolute poverty, we should be unashamed in our commitment to doing so.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

Is it not true that if we can help countries to lift themselves out of poverty, particularly through developing businesses that will pay tax as part of the formal sector, we can also benefit from trade opportunities, particularly in countries such as those in Africa?

[Sir Malcolm Bruce]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. In countries that have lifted themselves out of absolute poverty, whatever role aid has played—one likes to think that delivering health and education infrastructure contributes to that—ultimately it was their own economic uplift, taking people with it, that turned those countries around, although that has not solved all their problems. China still has 200 million people living in absolute poverty, while India has 400 million, but they have lifted huge numbers of people out of poverty, which is a fantastic achievement that has more to do with the dynamics of those countries’ economies than with aid, although I contend that aid certainly helped them achieve that, particularly when it was targeted and focused.

Good and valuable as the 2015 MDGs have been, they left many people behind, and in many cases, they did not deliver a clear and identifiable qualitative benefit. For example, the process of enrolling children in primary education says nothing about whether they actually learn anything, and we often found that enrolment did not lead to completion. Even when it did, the quality of the education was so poor in some cases that it was questionable whether much benefit was achieved. Nevertheless, having that driver meant that something was done that would not otherwise have happened. There was variation, because in some cases the quality of education did make a material difference and the children stuck at it.

We were anxious to contribute to the debate about what we should do next. We wanted to say first that we could not arrive at 2015 without moving forward to what happens next, and that the process had to be conducted in such a way that there was ownership around the globe right from the outset. Goals had to be drawn up together, not imposed from above.

Since we published our report, the high-level panel has reported, and I hope that it is appropriate for me to comment on the panel’s report because I hope that it reflects our contribution a little. It is a long report that includes a lot of information, but two specific aspects are the five “transformative shifts” and the 12 proposed goals, which have sub-goals attached. To be absolutely clear, the high-level panel has not sought to finish the job. Its objective was to set the framework and push out ideas about what the principles should be, and the second part of the process will turn that into clear, quantifiable, realistic goals that can take us forward for the next 15 years.

I welcome the five shifts, the first of which is to leave no one behind, which addresses one of the fundamental failings of the 2015 MDGs. The second shift—putting sustainable development at the core of things—which we also recommended, is absolutely essential. The dilemma is that we live in a rich part of the world—a very rich part of the world compared with where the poorest people live—but people in poorer parts of the world aspire to the kind of living standards that we enjoy. If they are to do that in the same way that we did, we are short of the resources of two planets.

We cannot turn around and say to those people, “Thank you very much. We are very rich, and we are sorry, but there are too many of you and you are too far behind. You can no longer have that aspiration.” That would be intolerable—indeed, it would not be accepted—so what we have to say is, “How do we work together to enable you to aspire towards our level of living standards in ways that are compatible with sustaining life on the planet?” It is therefore welcome that sustainable development is involved in one of the five transformative shifts.

A further shift, which is relevant to my hon. Friend’s intervention, is transforming economies for jobs and inclusive growth, because ultimately that is fundamental to sustainable poverty elimination. Another shift is to build peace, and effective, open and accountable institutions for all. That is not just a pious declaration, because we know that the greatest poverty persists where there is conflict or in post-conflict situations. Ending conflict and moving people out of conflict are absolutely essential if we are to eliminate absolute poverty. The final shift is to forge a new global partnership, which I think means that every country should sign up to the new agenda, including those in the developed world, so that this is not an “us and them” scenario, but a global compact.

From those shifts, the high-level panel has proposed an outline of 12 goals, the first of which is to end poverty. The second is to empower girls and women, and achieve gender equality. As I have said on many platforms, I believe that that is one of the core necessities for poverty reduction and development. In too many poor countries, the exclusion of women, and indeed how they are treated, holds back their entire society. In my Committee’s recent report on violence against women and girls, we make the point that if women are treated as chattels, if they are beaten and mutilated and if they are denied rights to livelihood, legal representation and land, the whole society is denied the benefits of a proper partnership for growth and development. We feel strongly that that is an absolutely central issue.

The third goal is to provide quality education and lifelong learning in recognition of the fact that when primary and secondary systems have failed, people have to be given opportunities as adults. We must ensure that we deliver quality education. The fourth goal is to ensure healthy lives and basic health provision, while the fifth is to ensure food security and good nutrition. Again, a report that the Committee has just published identifies the changing patterns of what is needed if we are not just to feed the world, but to feed the world nutritiously. Too often we find that whole generations are stunted and blighted for life because of their poor diet.

The sixth goal—to achieve universal access to water and sanitation—is a huge challenge, but absolutely essential, while the seventh, which is to secure sustainable energy, has the potential for a great deal of global co-operation. I have already mentioned the aim of the eighth goal, which is to create jobs, sustainable livelihoods and equitable growth. The ninth goal is to manage natural resource assets sustainably, the 10th is to ensure good governance and effective institutions, and the 11th is to ensure stable and peaceful societies. The 12th goal is to create a global enabling environment and catalyse long-term finance. Those goals are just suggestions, because the point is that the process has to continue.

The Committee welcomes the fact that the high-level panel read our report. I am not suggesting that all members of the panel read it, but quite a few of them did. We know that for certain because two participants—or three, if the Prime Minister’s appearance before the Liaison Committee can be counted—gave evidence to us. I certainly hope that the Prime Minister and his advisers read the report, and I am sure that Michael Anderson, the distinguished and experienced civil servant who leads for us on these issues, has done so. We are pleased that a lot of the issues on which we tried to focus appear to have been taken forward, and we will continue to feed into the process.

There is a danger that setting an objective to eliminate absolute poverty by 2030 would lead to the conclusion that, if we succeed in doing that, it is job done, meaning that aid and development are no longer required. Raising people out of poverty means that they have an income equivalent to $2 a day, which is hardly a dream of untold wealth—we are talking about people who are still extremely poor.

As an aside, because it is exercising the Committee in another inquiry, it is said that countries graduate from low income to middle income at about $1,200 or $1,300 per capita a year, but countries such as the UK are approaching income of $40,000 per capita a year. I am not sure that I would regard a country in which the per capita income is $1,500 or $2,000 a year as anything like a rich country, or one that can solve absolute poverty in its own territory without co-operation and partnership with outside agencies. It seems to me that we can continue to provide such assistance for as long as the need persists.

I am pleased to have had a couple of opportunities to talk to the president of the World Bank, Dr Kim, who has made two things clear: we really must work to try to eliminate absolute poverty; and we should recognise that we need to raise the game beyond that and look to improving living standards way above the basic minimum that defines absolute poverty. He is clear that that means that we must engage with those middle-income countries that may be out of the bottom level of poverty but still have huge pockets of very severe poverty that require global shared responsibility and cannot just be left to be dealt with by the country’s own resources. I am speaking with countries such as India in mind. I think that our Committee will return to that matter over the next few months, and I hope that we will make further recommendations on how the Government should change their relationship with India and countries of a comparable ilk.

I am glad to have had the opportunity to present the Committee’s report to the Chamber, and I hope that we have made a useful contribution on where we think the focus should be. We absolutely support the case for ensuring that we have replacement development goals as soon as possible after 2015—in other words, by no later than 2016—and that those goals are sufficiently developed and refined so as to avoid the pitfalls of the first goals. The goals should enable us to deliver a clear strategy to address the fundamental problems of poverty and hardship over 15 years.

My only plea is regarding whether even 12 goals represents too many. We certainly do not want to have so many targets that people can pick and choose, or lose sight of them. One of the reasons why I like the five fundamental shifts is because, right at the core, they cover several fundamental issues on which we all agree, while the details are slightly more negotiable. In that context, the broad approach of the high-level panel is highly welcome, and we very much look forward to seeing how the process works.

[Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)]

At the beginning of my right hon. Friend’s speech, I think he said that there has been a lack of progress in a number of the countries with which the UK is most engaged. Will he give us a few details on why that might be the case?

[Sir Malcolm Bruce]

It is somewhat due to our decision to concentrate a high proportion of our bilateral aid programmes on countries that have emerged from conflict. The objective analysis shows that countries that have recently been in conflict, or are still in conflict, have the highest rates of poverty and the greatest resistance to poverty reduction, partly because they have dysfunctional Governments, corruption and a lack of law and order. I stress that that does not lead to the conclusion that it is too difficult to go there. We have taken a conscious decision of saying, “It is very difficult, but we will go there. It will be harder, but we believe that our engagement will ultimately help them to get out of this bind.” For example, Professor Paul Collier makes the point that the effects of preventing a war are difficult to quantify. He is clear, however, that the consequences for poverty and hardship of failing to prevent a war will be phenomenal and set back a country for a whole generation, so it is a reverse process.

We have gone to the most difficult places with a view to helping them to get out of conflict situations and to build up their capacity to function. That is difficult, however, because we are talking about countries such as Yemen, Somalia, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan and Afghanistan—those are the countries on our list. I make no apology about saying that it is right that we are there and it is good that we address those problems. We are making progress, but we have to be honest with people, because things are a darn sight more difficult in such countries. We could much more easily spend all our aid in India and China, where we know it would have transformative results, but that would leave the others out of the equation, and that is what we must not do and it is what the post-MDG settlement must not do. Instead, we must say that no one should be in absolute poverty by the end of the next phase in 2030.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Dai Havard (in the Chair)]

I call Ms Bruce, because you are a member of the Select Committee, I believe.

13:50

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I am indeed, Mr Havard. Thank you for calling me, and I thank our Chairman, my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce), who referred to cross-party work on the issue, which is exemplified on our Committee.

[Mr Dai Havard (in the Chair)]

I wonder whether the Bruce clan are supporting each other.

[Fiona Bruce]

My support for my Chairman is purely professional. My right hon. Friend touched on the importance of job creation, which the Committee considered a crucial development challenge. Employment was included in the original MDG framework, but it was perhaps not sufficiently prominent and it failed to capture the public’s imagination in a way that people in the poorest and most vulnerable circumstances in developing countries say that it should have done. For them, it is an absolute priority: once they have food, water and, interestingly enough, roads, they really want jobs. They want roads so that they can get access to market.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

I apologise for arriving in the Chamber a bit late. On the subject of roads, does my hon. Friend agree that one of the most important things that the Department for International Development is doing in places such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo is supporting rural road infrastructure? As we saw in, I think, 2011, a road was built to a place that had been cut off for 20 years. Rather than it taking five days for people to get to market, only 60 km of new road meant that they could do so in two hours, which enabled them to bring their produce in, sell it and enjoy their livelihoods.

[Fiona Bruce]

That is an excellent example of the importance of roads. Another relates to Ethiopia, which the Committee also visited. Roads have been built into areas that were originally little more than bush, and, as a result, a health centre and a school can then be built. There is a degree of “villagisation”, whereby families who had perhaps been eking out a living separately in the bush can come together, form a community and support one another. My hon. Friend is absolutely right: roads are essential.

Jobs, too, are essential. Africa is a young continent, but one where, unless we focus on job creation, we will face an increasing employment challenge for youngsters aged up to 25, as the generations, which are now often in school, develop from childhood. One challenge is that we have focused so much—quite rightly—on primary education: there are now probably millions of children with some form of primary education, but with very limited opportunities for secondary and, certainly, tertiary education.

As we develop the new goals, we must consider how we can provide high-quality, targeted tertiary education, vocational skills and professional training, so that we can ensure that there are the business leaders, the technical skills and the young people to run with the vision of developing industries in their communities. If we do not get those skills and do not focus on developing them, we will miss a massive opportunity to help the people in those communities—young people with massive aspirations—to help themselves.

We should consider how to transport some of our skills and strategic understanding of how to develop business and build technical skills. We have to harness those things and consider also how we can harness the energies of people who have perhaps not thought of being involved in development work before. I cite my personal experience of doing business training in Rwanda; I hope to do the same this summer in Burundi.

I do not have a medical or teaching background, but I have a business background, so I went to do some business training. That showed me that every individual who is interested in supporting the developing world has something to offer—people might be interested in going out there to help to support countries that are, as our Chairman said, far less well off than ours. In further education and business development, we need to consider how people who might have taken early retirement but want to give something back can have the opportunity to do so.

I digress slightly, but may I mention the global poverty action fund? We need to re-examine whether it is focused correctly. A minimum of £250,000 is a huge amount of money—for example, an aspiring group of people in this country seeking to help to build a medical or teaching centre may not need to raise such a sum—so will the Minister look at that again? Furthermore, the fund is open for applications for an extremely limited time, often only several weeks—I believe that the current window closes on 9 July, after only a few weeks—but we want to encourage people who might have run businesses in this country to consider applying to the fund to see how they can share skills.

Returning to jobs as a means to end aid dependency, one thing that we need to do is ensure that local authorities in developing countries can maximise any opportunities for inward investment from countries throughout the world. The BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China—are looking to invest in Africa, and we must ensure that, when new factories and developments are built, the indigenous population and their local authorities have an opportunity to benefit. Local councils should be able to negotiate with contractors, developers and industrialists to ensure that the local community benefits properly. Those are sophisticated skills, but the UK can support them and we need to ensure that the new MDGs are focused on them.

We also need to consider a more holistic approach to job creation, ensuring that there is a suitable environment for business development in those countries. Thus, water is necessary not only for the development of individual, family and village life, but for businesses. Water and sanitation are critical, and unless people have access to sanitation they cannot run a decent business. Land title is essential, as is access to finance and the ability to run a business strategically. There is a huge opportunity for us to examine how local authorities in those countries can work with local business people, so that we in turn can support them and maximise the opportunities for local job creation.

We must look at the issue holistically. We start young people here considering jobs and job opportunities between the ages of 12 and 14, before they start to study for their GCSEs, and we need to do the same for children in Africa and other countries, and consider secondary and early-years education to see what education, skills and training can be invested in those young people to link directly into job opportunities in their countries and local communities. We need an holistic approach to job creation and the reduction of aid dependency through new jobs in the developing world.

14:00

[Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)]

It is a pleasure, Mr Havard, to serve under your chairmanship. I want to declare a non-declarable interest. I am chairman of the all-party group on Ethiopia, which keeps me very busy and is extremely rewarding. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce) and congratulate him on how he introduced the debate. I pay tribute to him and the Select Committee on their report. I am not a member of the Committee, but I chair the Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs so I know how much work goes into inquiries and putting reports together. Select Committee reports are often influential and I have absolutely no doubt that this one will be.

It is probably fair to say that when I was elected to this place 16 years ago, international development, overseas aid or whatever it was called at the time had a profile largely because of the work of Baroness Chalker, who was Linda Chalker at the time. It is also fair to say that it has taken off during the past 16 years and its profile has increased. I am happy to pay tribute to the work carried out by Tony Blair in that respect, and by Clare Short, who worked with him and with whom I recently shared a platform .

It is a pleasure that the Government, under the Prime Minister’s particular leadership, have taken forward the international development agenda and, as my right hon. Friend said, taken on co-chairmanship of the new panel that is responsible for delivering achievement of the millennium development goals beyond 2015. The issue is talked about throughout the world. It has its own place in Parliaments and is extremely important. The G8 always discusses the matter and I am pleased that it has been recognised as one of the most important issues in the world today. I would put it up there with the environment as the two most important issues facing the world today.

I am pleased that the Government have at last moved us to a figure of 0.7% of GDP on aid, although I am the first to say that it is outcomes rather than what one spends that matters. I have in the past been a little sceptical about setting targets, and the Conservative party went into the last election saying that it would get rid of many targets. They can be manipulated, as my right hon. Friend said—he did not use the word “manipulate”—and may take us down a path that is easy but does not achieve much.

I approve of the setting of millennium development goals because that focuses the Government and the world on what we should start to achieve. The 0.7% figure is a target that we have achieved, but we must measure properly. As my right hon. Friend highlighted, it is easy to make important the things that we can measure while forgetting things that are not easy to measure, but are more important.

No one who has been to Africa—that is the area I focus on most—and seen how people live there can come back and complain about the fact that we are trying to help those people and those countries. It is devastating to see the effect of starvation, disease, poverty and, linked to them, lack of education and health care. People tell me that pensioners in this country suffer fuel poverty—indeed they do and they need help—but our country is rich enough to do both things. A lot of Government spending is wasted, and we could channel more money into helping people such as our own pensioners who often live in fuel poverty, while also helping people who live in third-world countries.

There was an example of that just last week. We spend £11 billion or £11.5 billion in aid, but in one day last week the potential cost of HS2 went up by almost that amount. That is what I mean when I talk about being able to help our own people who need it and people abroad who are dying of diseases and malnutrition. A world of plenty that throws food away as we do should be ashamed of that, and I am pleased that we are, at last, tackling the problem as seriously as we should.

I support emergency aid and relief, and I have seen examples of such provision being necessary in Ethiopia, where, every year, about 6 million people rely on food donations.

[Sir Malcolm Bruce]

I commend my hon. Friend on his work as chair of the all-party group on Ethiopia. Does he accept that the crisis that brought the world’s attention to starvation was in Ethiopia more than 25 years ago, and that in more recent years it has had the resources as a result of partnership to tackle its own food problems, partly by building roads and partly through better planning? That is a demonstrable manifestation of how aid works. It works well when Governments have the will and partners have the resources to put it together to make it happen.

[Mr Robertson]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. I was talking to Bob Geldof at the Irish embassy a while ago and when he asked me what got me interested in Ethiopia I said, “You did.” He did an enormous and unbelievable amount of work and if any one person put the issue on the agenda it was him. I should have mentioned him earlier. Some people say that that work set Ethiopia back because it is a wonderful place for tourists to visit but they will not do so because of the poverty—there is probably something in that—but we cannot ignore what goes on there and that people were starving to death. Although things have moved on considerably in Ethiopia, each and every year about 6 million people there still do not have food security and are dependent on assistance. I am certainly in favour of emergency relief and of development aid, which is important in helping countries develop infrastructure, irrigation systems and other things that will help them move towards self-sufficiency over a period of time.

My right hon. Friend is also right to talk about trade and employment, which will enable people to become better off. Over the last few years, each time I have gone to Ethiopia I have noticed renewed confidence in its economy and in business, which appear to have moved on a little since each previous visit. That is encouraging, but I do not want to overstate the situation and an awful lot remains to be done. To move forward properly, Ethiopia must free up its telecoms business, its banking and financial services sector and the ownership of land. An awful lot needs to be done, but there is progress.

Many countries need confidence in democracy and the private sector to enable them to move forward a little quicker, but many of them have brief histories. Ethiopia has a long history of about 2,000 years that we know about, but it does not have a long history of democracy and that is how we must view it in some ways. Everything is relative. We still get elections wrong in this country, even today, so we should not be too judgmental about other countries.

In response to my intervention, my right hon. Friend put his finger on the difficult problem of measuring and chasing certain aspects of progress. Often the poorest people—those who are most desperate—live in the sort of countries that it is difficult to get aid to in one form or another, and where it is difficult to help them towards development, with Somalia being the most obvious example. However, we have to work and do our best—almost by going under the radar—to get aid, assistance and help to people who we do not know or have contact with, but who are the most desperate of all. Doing so is difficult, but anything worth doing is never easy. I hope that we will continue trying to help such people and continue trying to work with countries in Africa and the heads of those countries, as we are doing, to take them towards peace. Again, as my Friend the right hon. Member for Gordon said, we cannot measure this, but I hope we can help them to avoid conflict in the first place. That is far better than going in to sort it out, which is not always possible.

I do not want to speak for much longer; I know that another debate is coming up. Again, I congratulate the Members involved on compiling the report. To me, this area is one of the main reasons that I entered politics in the first place. I will be in the House tomorrow, supporting the European Union (Referendum) Bill, and I am a complete free marketeer. I am considered to sit on the right wing of the Conservative party, even though such terms are nonsense, because most people would follow me in what I will say and do tomorrow. However, when it comes to international development, we have a moral duty to do what needs to be done. In addition, we should not forget that the better off we can make countries throughout the world, the more secure that makes this country, and the more opportunities it gives us in this country. From a purely selfish point of view, there is a benefit to what we are doing. To my mind, however, that is not the main reason for doing it; the main reason is that it is humane, and it is the right thing to do.

[Mr Dai Havard (in the Chair)]

Points for effort, Mr Robertson—HS2 and the European referendum all in one speech. Amazing.

14:11

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Havard. You will be glad to hear that I will not speak about HS2—not this week anyway. It is also a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson), and to be in the same room as him and the Minister of State, Department for International Development, my right hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr Duncan). They will not remember this, but I certainly do: they were the two Members of Parliament who interviewed me for the candidates’ list about 12 years ago. They may regret their decision, but I do not.

This is an incredibly important debate, and it is a pleasure that the Minister with responsibility for the millennium development goals and post-2015 MDGs will respond. The goals represent one of the best things to come out of the United Nations and the world community in the past 30 or 40 years. They are probably the most significant thing since the declaration, back in 1970 or 1971 after the Pearson report, that developed countries should aim to give 0.5% of GNI as development assistance. I am glad to say that this country will achieve that for the first time this year.

The MDGs have been important because they have been accessible and achievable. Not all have been achieved, and certainly not in all countries, but many of them have been achieved in some of the countries to which they apply. Without going through them all, I want to mention the drastic falls that we have seen, for instance, in malaria, in deaths from malaria, and in maternal and child mortality.

It is important that the post-2015 MDGs build on the success of the MDGs. They should not pretend to be hugely different, and they should learn from areas in which there was not quite so much success.

I shall concentrate on four issues. The first is young people and, particularly, job creation, although my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) spoke eloquently about that, so I shall not spend too long on the subject. It is estimated that 150 million people are unemployed in the world outside the developed countries, and 60 million of those are young. Women are particularly affected, and some 1.49 billion people are in vulnerable employment. I suggest that those are underestimates, frankly, but they are the figures that we have. It is vital that the new post-2015 MDGs take that situation fully into account.

Although there was an MDG concentrating on that issue, it was probably the least successful one. Over the past 10 or 15 years, vast numbers of people have been pulled out of poverty in countries such as China, but that has not been seen as much in other countries that suffer from acute poverty. The main reason was the lack of job creation, which is why we have to concentrate on that. It is all very well to say that some of those countries will now have great opportunities, because mineral wealth or oil and gas are being discovered, but those industries do not create huge numbers of jobs. The key is that revenue from that natural wealth is put into real investment that creates jobs. Agriculture in particular, and especially small-scale agriculture, has a huge role in creating jobs.

Before I talk about the World Bank, I must declare an interest, as I have just been elected chairman of the parliamentary network on the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) was once the chairman of that network, and he played a great role in setting it up a few years ago. The World Bank has two goals: first, to eliminate absolute poverty by 2030—by which it means people on $1.25 a day or less—and, secondly, to concentrate on the bottom 40% of the income range. That is vital, because this is all about reducing income inequality while increasing the incomes of those who need the most. That is where employment and job creation comes in and, in that area, we must take account of the role and potential of young people. As Nik Hartley, the chief executive of Restless Development, said:

“We should take the lead in ensuring young people are not bit players but central to the leadership of and governance of the new development framework. They will be the job creators or the unemployed, the new democratic leaders or drivers of revolution and rebellion”.

The task of the present generation is to meet development challenges without compromising the interests of future generations.

My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton mentioned many drivers of job creation, such as land title and access to finance. It is good that DFID is heavily involved in both those areas. I have mentioned this issue before in the House, but I will do so again today, because through an excellent programme in Rwanda, which I believe is coming to an end, DFID financed the creation of title deeds into pretty much every single part of the country. There are 10 million individual plots at a cost of about £40 million. It is one of the best development projects I have seen funded by DFID—in fact, it is one of the best of all, so I congratulate the Department. I encourage it to look at other countries in which that particular programme could be rolled out. I am glad to say that the software used was created in the UK and that the implementation was done by a company from the United Kingdom. I know that DFID takes access to finance very seriously and is involved in work on that in many countries throughout the world.

My second point is about maintaining the gains. I am chair of the all-party group on malaria and neglected tropical diseases, and we are delighted at the progress that has been made on tackling malaria. Over a decade, the number of deaths has come down from about 1 million a year to probably no more than 600,000 a year through the mass introduction and distribution of long-lasting, insecticide-treated bed nets, through rapid diagnostic tests, and, of course, through the latest drugs that are based on combination therapies with artemisinin.

However, malaria can rapidly come back if we do not continue to control it, as we are doing, for instance, with indoor residual spray. We saw in Zanzibar in the 1960s that malaria had almost been eliminated, but the foot was taken off the pedal, so within 10 or 20 years, it was a scourge again right across the islands of Unguja and Pemba. We have seen that in other countries as well, including, even more recently, in Zambia, where malaria staged a bit of a comeback two or three years ago. It is therefore vital that we continue programmes tackling malaria, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and neglected tropical diseases. In the case of neglected tropical diseases, the mass drug distribution programmes that have been so successful have been financed by a public-private partnership between the pharmaceutical companies, which have provided the drugs free of charge, and aid agencies, such as DFID together with the Gates Foundation.

That brings me on to my third subject—health systems. We often, and rightly, want to tackle individual diseases, be that polio, pneumonia, malaria, HIV/AIDS or TB, but this is actually often about tackling many of those things together through health systems. On a recent visit to Tanzania, I was delighted to see that rather than there being a silo mentality on individual diseases, that country, with support from DFID through the London school of hygiene and tropical medicine and the Liverpool school of tropical medicine, was taking the approach of working on things together—as a system—to tackle these diseases at once.

Finally, I would like to talk about the environment and environmental sustainability. I understand that there was a great deal of discussion about whether to have separate environmental goals and developmental goals. We in the Committee believed that it was not possible to separate the two. We cannot go for tackling the problems of development but ignore the environment or put it in another box, as the two go together.

[Fiona Bruce]

I am very much enjoying my hon. Friend’s speech, which I know comes from a great deal of first-hand knowledge. I can offer an example of first-hand understanding of where development has affected a local environment very seriously: the introduction of large-scale fishing in Lake Victoria in Tanzania. The introduction of the Nile perch, and factory farming of the fish in Lake Victoria, has resulted in the eradication of smaller fish that all the families living around the shores of the lake ate—and survived on. That has created a difficult sustainability challenge for the whole area.

[Jeremy Lefroy]

I am most grateful for that intervention, because that point is absolutely true. While we are on the subject of fish, there has also been a problem in recent years of very large trawlers of European Union origin—I will not mention the particular country—coming down the east coast of Africa and, under arrangements agreed by the European Union at the highest level, hoovering up large quantities of fish, but without much benefit going to the individual countries off whose shores they are fishing.

In tackling these vital environmental challenges, we must not overburden developing countries with global environmental issues that they had no real part in causing in the first place. To a large extent, it is up to us to take the lead on that, so I am glad to say that the UK Government are doing so.

It is vital that the four areas that I have set out—there are many others, which I am sure the Minister and the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) will address—are covered by the post-2015 MDGs. They are: job creation, particularly for young people; ensuring that we preserve the gains that have been so painstakingly achieved in the past decade and a half; ensuring the environmental sustainability of those gains, so that we do not achieve short-term gains that cannot be maintained in the long term because they are simply not environmentally sustainable; and the development of health systems. This week, we are proud of the 65th anniversary of our national health service, which has led to great improvements in public and general health in this country. That is the kind of system that we should want to provide such gains in health in developing countries.

14:24

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Havard. I thank the Chair of the International Development Committee, the right hon. Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce), for opening the debate and for making, as ever, a powerful speech on the need for our continued commitment to tackling poverty and inequality in developing countries. I welcome his comments on the contribution of successive Governments, particularly the previous Labour Government, and thank him for his contribution and for working with us on this very important issue.

The millennium development goals, when they were established, provided huge momentum in addressing some of the most pressing challenges facing developing countries. Admirable progress has been made. Examples of that are the significant reductions in extreme poverty and infant mortality; access to primary education for children; improvements in the living conditions of slum dwellers; and major advances in the fight against disease, including HIV and others. Although we are often restless about the fact that more progress has not been made, it is important to take stock and recognise that the starting point was not a great one. We should be proud of those achievements that have been made, but we should remain restless about the setbacks. That is the context in which the Select Committee report has been written—it is vital.

The critical gap in what we are doing—the area where we fall behind—is inequalities between and within countries, which are growing, particularly following the financial crisis, as budgets come under pressure. The brunt of that has been borne, and the pressure has been faced, by some of the most vulnerable people, particularly women and those living in conflict-affected areas, as hon. Members mentioned.

We must ensure that the post-2015 goals respond to the challenges in developing countries that we can observe and predict—those that are already occurring, but which we believe will grow in the decades to come. As the report asserts, the new framework should be ambitious and be aimed at eliminating extreme poverty, but I hope that the high-level panel will also have, as has been referenced already, a strong focus on tackling inequality. As the right hon. Member for Gordon said, we cannot accept that tackling extreme poverty is good enough. In the 21st century, we cannot live in a world where it is acceptable for people to live on just over a few dollars a day or where a few thousand dollars per capita a year gives a country middle-income status.

I therefore hope that the Prime Minister, with the support of his Ministers and coalition partners, will be ambitious and bold in his role, showing international leadership, which is desperately needed at a time of growing challenges and conflicts in many parts of the world, including middle-income countries.

Lessons need to be learned from what we could have done differently in the past. In particular, we need to understand the drivers of conflict, such as injustice and inequality, but also the failure—referred to by the hon. Members for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson), for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) and for Congleton (Fiona Bruce)—to respond to the aspirations of young people who want jobs. They also want skills and not only primary education, but tertiary education, to enable them to make their own contribution to their countries.

We should consider what has happened in the Arab spring. Furthermore, the United Nations Development Programme has pointed out that if there had been more understanding and closer measurement of inequality, we might have been better placed to predict that some of those other, earlier conflicts were likely to arise. I hope that we can learn some of the lessons from that.

[Jeremy Lefroy]

I fully agree with everything that the hon. Lady is saying. Does she agree that it is vital that the post-2015 goals refer to a major role for secondary and tertiary education? The original MDGs concentrated, rightly, on primary education, but we need to move beyond that.

[Rushanara Ali]

I agree. Of the MDGs, the education goal has the best prospect of being achieved, so it is important that we continue the push to lift people out of poverty and also into secondary and tertiary education, as well as primary. As the hon. Gentleman knows, our previous Prime Minister—I will not name him, because everyone knows who he is due to his great contribution to the MDG agenda—has been leading the way on the global campaign for education.

The hon. Gentleman’s point about tertiary and secondary education and skills is critical. We could learn a lot ourselves about investing in young people’s skills, as well as in developing countries. Innovations are coming from developing countries, and we could learn a thing or two from the successes, which could not have happened without investment and the support of our taxpayers over 15 to 20 years. It is critical to continue to help countries and focus on education. In the end, economic development will be driven by decent education and decent opportunities, not to mention other indicators such as health care and so on.

I want to highlight some of the achievements, of which we as a country can be proud, produced by the investment over a couple of decades: 3 million people have been lifted out of poverty. Britain has led the way on debt relief, and people, particularly those in Jubilee 2000, campaigned to ensure that Labour Government had the impetus and the backing to make it happen. Campaigners, international and domestic NGOs, UK community organisations and faith-based organisations are critical not only in applying pressure to our Government and other Governments to ensure that they do not lose sight of what is at stake in failing to continue to work towards achieving the MDGs, but in ensuring that the next round of discussions, as right hon. and hon. Members have mentioned, builds on what we have achieved, and that where there have been setbacks, lessons are learned.

Critically, developing countries should be partners in coming up with goals over the next period, so that they are at the heart of the decision-making process and do not feel that goals are being imposed on them. They and their populations have a far better understanding of how to tackle poverty and reduce inequality. We must be humble in recognising the many national NGOs in developing countries across the world, whether we are talking about the role of technology and innovation in tackling development and health challenges in South Africa, or the role of microfinance, led by Professor Yunus, Fazle Abed and many others, in India, Bangladesh and other countries.

There are innovators and great thinkers and doers in developing countries, who need to be in the driving seat of helping to set the future goals. International leadership is needed not only from western leaders, but from the leaders of developing countries and the emerging economies that increasingly call the shots on some major issues. They can and must play a vital role in tackling poverty and inequality, and in dealing with the major challenge of climate change, which could undermine the achievements of which we are proud, not to mention set back the progress we seek to make through future investments.

I shall briefly focus on some of the challenges we face. The key challenge has been well documented in this and previous reports. We need to think about the fact that there will be more poverty in middle-income countries than in developing countries. The high-level panel needs to put that at the heart of the debate about where we go in future. Any attempt to tackle the challenges of poverty must come up with an approach, a narrative and a response that find a way to get to the poorest in the growing economies of middle-income countries such as India, China and Indonesia, as well as Africa, which is also growing economically.

[Sir Malcolm Bruce]

I wholly endorse what the hon. Lady has just said. The International Development Committee is conducting an inquiry on precisely how we can alter the mechanisms by which we deliver. Although it is right to focus on the poorest people in the poorest countries, we should not leave behind equally poor people in less poor countries. That probably requires some change in the DFID model from what we have been doing perfectly correctly over the past 15 years.

[Rushanara Ali]

I look forward to the next instalment from the Committee, the right hon. Gentleman and his team. We need to settle the question of how we respond to some of the domestic criticisms on giving aid to big emerging economies, such as India, where hundreds of millions of people still face deep poverty. Many other nations are in that position. We need a political response and an approach that explains why such aid matters. We must also look at how the international community brings in nations that are doing well, such as India and China, to be genuine partners in development, so that we can contribute together to tackle poverty in middle-income countries. Only then will we be able to address the political criticisms and critiques that we face in our country—that also happens in other countries—and settle the question of how we should respond to the challenges.

If we do not address poverty in middle-income countries, we will set ourselves up for future problems—and even very wealthy countries have recently faced conflict. It is far better to anticipate difficulties and consider how we might respond as part of the development agenda process, so I hope the Minister will shed more light on her ideas about how we might do that.

In the remaining time, I shall focus on economic growth and development. Right hon. and hon. Members have mentioned the importance of employment, economic growth and the role of the private sector. Opposition Members very much support building self-sufficiency and creating opportunities for people to become independent and be able to look after themselves, which is at the heart of what people want. We need to ensure that the allocation of DFID resources through private sector programmes is transparent and properly monitored, just as we would expect with NGOs, and that public money is not used in an ideological manner. We must look at where the impact is, whether the outcomes are those that we sought—creating opportunity, jobs and economic development—and whether the programmes are pro-poor.

[Fiona Bruce]

The hon. Lady is right to raise that pertinent point. The Committee is examining different ways to advance funds—not purely through grants, but perhaps repayable loans or joint investments—in ways that ensure that an appropriate return for our taxpayers, which can then be reinvested, is gleaned from the funds invested.

[Rushanara Ali]

I thank the hon. Lady for her comments, and I hope that the Committee will interrogate the CDC about its role in de-risking investment opportunities for companies, because that is one reason it was set up. Too often, people have been concerned that it replicates what the private sector can do and does not act as much of a catalyst to enable innovative finance to go into those countries. I hope, therefore, that that will be looked into, as well as some of the private sector funds that DFID has recently set up. The Opposition want any investments that are made to create genuine economic opportunities and taxpayers’ money to be properly spent.

I have two other points to make. The first is about the impact of conflict on women in particular, and on children. We see all too well that that is another major issue that risks setting back any progress made on development. For example, in the Burmese state of Rakhine, which I visited recently, progress is being made, but the treatment of certain minorities and of women in those groups is setting back progress. We need to ensure that human rights and women’s empowerment are at the heart of development, and I welcome the references made to that by the high-level panel and by the Committee.

Secondly, we need to recognise that world demographics are rapidly changing. Increasing populations, and a growing middle class in India, China, Indonesia and many other countries, present major opportunities, but also pose major challenges due to the pressures on natural resources. As is pointed out in the report, the high-level panel discussion must integrate sustainable development goals into the post-millennium development goals framework. Segmented, siloed approaches will not do for the next phase of what we are trying to achieve and for what we need the international community to work towards addressing.

I have a series of questions to pose to the Minister. In focusing on what happens with the post-2015 goals, what will the Government do to drive home the message of economic opportunity through job creation, apprenticeships and tertiary education?

The Minister will be aware that a major additional support for developing countries is remittance income, which eclipses development aid from the whole world put together. Recent changes, led from the US, are affecting the UK, with banking facilities to remittance companies and money transfer companies being removed by Barclays bank. Therefore, hundreds of billions of pounds are at risk of not getting to developing countries, and the cost of sending that money might increase. In countries such as Somalia, which is a post-conflict state, family members are not getting money into their loved ones’ pockets. We are talking about very poor people who do not receive development aid, and I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response on that point.

The UK Government need to work with the US Government, and the high-level panel ought to look at additional income sources going into developing countries. If the route by which the income gets to its destination is damaged, an even greater challenge is posed to international development budgets, in addition to the tasks at hand of reducing poverty, improving health incomes and tackling educational inequalities. What is the Minister going to do about that issue, which will affect hundreds of thousands of people just in the UK, never mind in other countries? I would be happy to brief her after the debate, if she would like that.

I shall conclude, because I am conscious that we have another debate coming up. I very much hope that the post-2015 development goals have an ambitious focus on working with developing countries, NGOs, and local organisations and populations, both here and in developing countries. The Opposition believe that we must put social justice, tackling inequality, and promoting human rights and labour standards at the heart of the post-2015 goals. If we do not do that, the international community should not be surprised, for example, that in countries such as Bangladesh we witness more than 1,100 people unnecessarily losing their lives in industrial accidents that could have been prevented had labour standards and human rights standards been properly applied. The high-level panel and the international community must ensure that human rights, labour standards and women’s rights are at the heart of everything that is proposed, alongside the economic and social goals.

I hope that our Government—DFID Ministers working with other Ministers and the Prime Minister—will include the rights framework in those proposals, as well as social justice and inclusive pro-poor economic growth. That would address the points that have been made about creating opportunities and building self-sufficiency and independence in people’s lives, so that over time our assistance will be less necessary. Our assistance will always be necessary when there are humanitarian challenges, but development assistance will be less needed over time if we get our act together and ensure that we genuinely help to lift people out of poverty, and give them the opportunity to generate income, set up businesses and create a way of life that builds self-sufficiency.

That is what people in countries where we provide assistance want. We, as taxpayers, want to ensure that we do not put on our televisions and see images of poverty and inequality—year in, year out. We want results. I hope that is what will be focused on, building on the MDGs and the contributions already made to developing countries by the international community.

14:39

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (Lynne Featherstone)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Havard.

I once again thank the International Development Committee for its report, to which the Government replied on 14 March. I congratulate the Committee on securing a debate on this important topic, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce) on an excellent pre-emptor to the high-level panel discussions. We have heard many excellent contributions from Members this afternoon, and I will try to get through as many points as I can, but my time is somewhat limited.

Since the International Development Committee’s report and the Government’s response, we have seen the high-level panel’s report on post-2015 development. I hope that all those who have seen the report will join me in saying that the Prime Minister and the panel have set the bar high for the next two years of discussion. They have laid out a truly ambitious vision for eradicating extreme poverty within a generation, tackling the difficult but necessary issues head on.

I want to take a moment to talk about the high-level panel’s report, because I believe, and the Government believe, that the vision it sets out for what the new agenda might look like marks a step change. I hope that the International Development Committee is pleased that many of its recommendations are reflected in the report.

The five transformative shifts that drive the new development framework are key. First and foremost is the commitment to leave no one behind, which goes to the heart of the issue that many Members raised, and to keep faith with the original promise of the millennium development goals and finish the job by eradicating extreme poverty in a generation.

A number of Members raised issues of equity and equality, and there is a commitment to ensuring that every single goal is achieved for everyone, in every social and income group, regardless of gender, ethnicity, disability, where someone lives, what religion they practise, or whether they are in extreme poverty. That is a radical departure from the previous MDGs, and is the shift that will make the most significant difference, because countries will not score unless they have done hard work for the hardest to reach, the most marginalised, the most difficult and the poorest extremes.

Secondly, the panel called for sustainable development to be at the core of the new framework. Several Members have raised the issue of integrating the millennium development goals with the sustainable development goals. Although the streams are separate—the open working group is working on the sustainable development goals—that second transformative shift will put sustainable development clearly at the core of the new framework.

That recognises the fundamental link between the environmental, social and economic pillars of sustainable development. For example, we can deliver food security for all only if there is an efficient and sustainable use of natural resources. It is absolutely clear that we need to bring together the review of the millennium development goals and the Rio+20 follow-up to deliver a single development framework, as the Committee recommended in its report.

Thirdly, we need to transform economies to provide jobs and inclusive growth, which was mentioned by several hon. Members. Clearly, we need to lift people out of poverty through economic development and growth, to unleash the dynamism that gives everyone economic opportunities, and to harness investment and the private sector as the drivers of development. As has been said, we need inclusive and pro-poor growth, and it is important that those things are interwoven. The hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) raised some concerns about the involvement of organisations and companies, such as CDC or ones in the private sector. It is vital that all who work in or profit from such organisations, share those profits and ensure that everyone benefits from such growth.

Fourthly, although this has been less mentioned in the debate, we need to build peace and to build effective, open and accountable institutions for all. As the Prime Minister has said,

“Freedom from fear, conflict and violence is the most fundamental human right”.

Human rights have been mentioned in the debate. Without accountable Governments, safety, freedom of speech, free political choice, the rule of law and all the elements of good governance and peace, how can we eradicate poverty?

[Fiona Bruce]

Will the Minister give way?

[Lynne Featherstone]

I am really short of time, but I will briefly give way.

[Fiona Bruce]

We often forget that freedom of belief—freedom of thought and belief, to hold a religion or not to hold any religion—goes alongside freedom of speech. That is not always remembered, but it should be.

[Lynne Featherstone]

Well, it is remembered by the Government. We hold that dear, and we work closely not just with people in terms of respecting their religions in their countries, but with our own faith groups and faith NGOs throughout the world. We cannot really do development, if we do not work in partnership with the faiths of the countries in which we work. That is the only way forward.

The issues of women, and of women in conflict, have been raised. In relation to providing peace and stability, DFID—the UK Government—have put women and girls right at the heart of all our development work. With respect to lifting families out of poverty, if a woman is empowered with education, has children later, has some power over her own life and has economic empowerment, her children and the community will be better off. As the international champion in the fight against violence against women and girls, our fight is obviously against violence against women—how can we have development when half the population basically cannot go outside their own door?—but there are also campaigns on female genital mutilation, which is a symbol of women’s oppression.

Finally, the panel has called for a new global partnership and has set out the principles of that new partnership and the spirit of co-operation needed between Governments, civil society, businesses, international agencies and people living in poverty themselves to make the post-2015 vision a reality. We have all learned that there is no one answer and that no one body or person can deliver across all the areas that are needed in this world, which we will achieve only through genuine and sincere partnership.

One big jump made by the high-level panel report is its use of illustrative examples of how the transformative shifts could be made into goals themselves. I am obviously biased: I am very keen on the stand-alone gender goal, which I think is imperative. However, there could be goals on poverty, hunger, education, equality, jobs, economic growth, good governance, peace and stability. Hon. Members have spoken compellingly about the importance of all those issues, and I hope they are happy with the concrete, measurable and compelling goals and targets that have been suggested.

The report was a remarkable piece of work. I did not expect it to be as good and succinct as it is. This is the beginning of the process, and the next two years will demand a huge amount of work if we are to bring that seminal piece of work to a concrete conclusion that we can all deliver. As has been said, the early MDGs were phenomenal drivers for good, but they did not always achieve what they set out to do. Like other Members, I have visited schools, including one in Zambia that has 100% attendance, but a 96% failure rate. We have learned from the first MDGs, so I am very hopeful that we will do better with the post-2015 ones.

I want to highlight three of the Committee’s recommendations that are particularly important. The first is on the rights of women, which I have already touched on. The more times that that can be raised by more bodies, the more capital it will gain until we reach universal agreement that part of, if not all, the answer is the empowerment of women. The second recommendation is that the post-2015 development agenda reflects the needs of the poorest, about which I could not agree more. As has been said, we need to listen to the voices of the poorest, and that is what the high-level panel did. For the first time, from surveys such as the My World survey, and mobiles, the internet and old-fashioned clipboards and pencils, schoolgirls in Rwanda and urban workers in Brazil have all been heard. The third recommendation highlighted the importance of keeping up the hard work, and I absolutely concur with it.

[Mr James Gray in the Chair]

I want to touch on some of the points raised in the debate. I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon that we should take the MDGs as a starting point for the post-2015 goals. He highlighted the important lesson that halving poverty sometimes has the perverse incentive whereby we do not try to reach the very poorest. It is because that is important that the high-level panel has called for disaggregated data for all groups to ensure that the most vulnerable people are not left behind.

My right hon. Friend raised the issue of fragile states. He rightly identified the real issue that countries emerging from, or still in, conflict can be left behind in relation to development. The high-level panel report recognised that conflict plays a critical role in relation to security. It has addressed that through the stand-alone illustrative goal of ensuring stable and peaceful societies, for which targets in the framework include those on violent deaths, access to justice and the behaviour of security forces. The Government will work hard to ensure that that important recommendation is reflected in the final framework.

Several hon. Members raised the issue of young people and mentioned the burgeoning number of young people in some countries. The panel has called for a jobs target with a specific indicator for youth employment.

Secondary and tertiary education has also been raised. We have found from the evidence that the most benefit for economic development comes through primary and lower secondary education, but as countries develop, people need to stay in secondary and tertiary education and, even more importantly, to have jobs at the end, so that those who have been through tertiary education are not left with nothing and with nowhere to go, except to leave those countries that so greatly need them.

Everyone has praised the 0.7% level, about which there is cross-party consensus. My hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) spoke about his experience in Ethiopia. I have felt the same when I have been there. Each time I go, I see that it has opened itself to the world a little more. I also admire its control over its own development, because it has its own best interests at heart. As I have said, growth should be inclusive and pro-poor.

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) when he spoke about strengthening health systems. In the nine months that I have been in post, I have found that if Government public health systems are not there and everyone—whether an NGO, a non-state actor or whoever—does their separate bit, however well-intentioned, it is very piecemeal. It is only with the stability of a national health system, as it were, that services can be combined, as I have seen in the very poor state of Marsabit, where the Government of Kenya have done so in relation to nutrition programmes, vaccination programmes, transition of HIV, and so on.

I am running out of time, but I want to thank my hon. Friend for his kind words about DFID’s work on titles in Rwanda. Land ownership and land titling is hugely important.

Lastly, let me reassure the House that the Government’s commitment to this vital agenda will go on. The agenda, which will shape the UK’s work on development in the coming decades, will continue over the next two years of discussions and negotiations. Thank you, Mr Gray, for the opportunity to speak on this important topic. I thank all Members who have spoken.

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. Before we move on to the next debate on Pakistan, it is perfectly in order for the right hon. Member for Gordon to wind up this debate.

15:00

[Sir Malcolm Bruce]

I will be very brief indeed. I thank everybody who has contributed; it has been a good debate. I wish that more people had taken part, because this is a very important issue. I am grateful to the shadow Minister for her constructive and inclusive comments, and that is the way we have to work on this particular agenda. She is right to say that we must explain to those critics in this country why what we are doing is in our national interest as well as—in the words of the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson)—our moral responsibility. The high-level panel has made an extremely good start, but there is obviously a process that continues from here.

I say to the Prime Minister what I said to him in the Liaison Committee and in our own evidence that I hope he will maintain ownership of this process, even though the work of the high-level panel has finished. It is absolutely right that he was a co-chair, but we urge him to continue to take an interest in the matter, because his interest will help to drive it to the right conclusions. I thank everyone who has participated, and I thank the Minister for her comments. I can assure the Chamber that we as a Committee will continue, I hope, to feed in useful suggestions based on the evidence that we receive.

Pakistan

Thursday 4th July 2013 Westminster Hall

[Relevant documents: Tenth Report of the International Development Committee, Session 2012-13, HC 725, and the Government response, Session 2012-13, HC 325.]

15:01

[Sir Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)]

I think it is fair to say that the International Development Committee was a little bit more controversial in some of our comments and recommendations on Pakistan than we were on post-2015 development goals. The Committee wants to make it clear that we have absolutely no hesitation in asserting the fact that the relationship between Britain and Pakistan is fundamental and indissoluble. It is absolutely essential to both countries as a force of history and a current reality. We have more than 1 million people of Pakistani origin living in the United Kingdom, and we have a shared interest in ensuring that Pakistan is a successful country that manages to overcome the challenges that it faces. Secondly, we want to make it clear that, more than anything else, we believe that the United Kingdom should stand with the poorest people of Pakistan and that our objective is to engage in helping them to achieve a better quality of life. That might mean that we will be a candid friend of Pakistan rather than a sycophantic one.

The population of Pakistan is projected to rise from 180 million to 205 million by 2020, and the simple challenge that the country faces is that population growth is faster than economic growth. One does not have to be a top mathematician to calculate that as the population rises, unless something fundamental changes, the numbers of people in poverty will increase. That is one of the more depressing analyses for our development and aid programme across our bilateral partners.

In that context, the Government have a perfectly understandable ambition to raise the aid programme—the bilateral funding to Pakistan—from £267 million to £446 million by the end of this Parliament. We completely understand that, but we have some grave reservations about doing it if nothing changes, and that was an essential aspect of our report.

Obviously, we looked at the areas in which the Department for International Development was engaged, which were predominantly health, education and governance. In all cases, they were the right areas on which to be focused. Will the Minister update us on some of the specific points regarding those areas about which we raised concerns?

There is a big programme of commitment to improve maternal help, which we support, and it is absolutely essential that that is delivered. Two health support mechanisms are in place. One, the lady health workers, is longer established, while the other, to which DFID has given substantial support, is community midwives. A practical thing we discovered was that where those mechanisms should be complementary and working together, they were operating dysfunctionally as two separate institutions. One reason for that was how people were paid. As we understand it, lady health workers get a flat salary to provide help on maternal health, child health and general health issues, which is what our own community nurses do. Community midwives, on the other hand, are specifically there to support women through childbirth. They are paid a much smaller flat rate plus so much per delivery, so that has created two classes of health workers in the same area.

We actually saw a particularly good example of co-operation between a lady health worker and a community midwife, but that had more to do with the fact that they were sisters-in-law than that the system itself was working fundamentally as we would like. I do not know whether the Minister can give us any information about whether that situation has been addressed and improved. I want to make it clear that they are both good basic concepts, but how they were functioning was not serving the interests of the people as well as might have been the case.

Obviously, the biggest part of the Government’s programme is support for education, especially, but not exclusively, in Punjab. It is worth reporting that when we were meeting the then Prime Minister, he spontaneously raised the issue of Malala, who was sadly shot and is now living in this country, before any member of the Committee raised it with him. That incident was an indication to us, and a wake-up call among people in Pakistan, that there really had to be clarity about the right of girls to have an education and the Government’s full-square backing for that principle. None the less, it was satisfying to hear that statement from the Prime Minister, but it does not remove the fact that the challenges are very real. As we know, Malala’s colleague who was shot at the same time has now come to the UK because she says that her ability to pursue her education in Pakistan has been totally compromised.

The scheme in Punjab that we looked at, which has been developed by Michael Barber, is doing extremely good work and is working closely with the Chief Minister, Shahbaz Sharif, the brother of the new Prime Minister. The good news is that he is staying in post, because there was some concern that if he moved, that might compromise the relationship. Good relationships that deliver good results are clearly totally satisfactory. The problem is that if the relationship breaks down, there is not the infrastructure to fall back on, so one hopes that that good relationship will continue.

A number of things have been said to us about that programme suggesting some aspects are good, but some questionable. The fundamental objective is to ensure that teachers are appointed on merit, that they turn up and teach, and that their pupils also have an attendance record. Michael Barber has acknowledged that that is the sum total of what has been achieved at this stage, which means that the quality of the education still has a way to go. At one particular school we visited, we were shown a demonstration lesson. When we sat down at the back of the class and flicked through the exercise book, we found that the pages before and after that particular lesson were blank. The lesson had been a show piece; the fundamentals were not there. Clearly, that is a real concern.

Indeed, we have had a follow-up visit from one of our witnesses, Dr Matthew Nelson of the school of oriental and African studies, and he raised further points of concern. He does not deny that appointing teachers on merit is the right objective or that the Chief Minister and his officials entirely buy into it, but he says that there is plenty of evidence that merit is available to be bought, and is being bought on a large scale. He says that it is a good idea to appoint people on merit rather than because they have a political connection, and that is absolutely right. The point he makes, however, is that exam marks, which are the test of merit, are subject to endemic corruption; effectively, people can buy exam results and present themselves as having merit when they have absolutely no capacity to be a competent teacher. I will not read them out, but Dr Nelson gives examples of how the process works.

That is obviously a concern, but we recognise that the approach taken by Michael Barber and the commitment of the Chief Minister are real and are having results, although the two of them are probably facing more challenges than they would like. If the Minister can address those challenges now, that would be good; if not, perhaps he can write to us saying what proposals are being taken forward. We should certainly not abandon the programme, but we must make sure that it works effectively and delivers the right results.

The Committee’s concern was not so much that DFID was not tackling the right issues or not approaching things in the right way—I have indicated some of the challenges that need to be overcome—but that an awful lot of development assistance has not achieved substantial results. One slightly disturbing thing we were told was that the education programme being pursued by DFID was quite similar to one pursued by the United States Agency for International Development some years ago. When that programme finished, the benefits fell away completely, and we obviously hope that DFID will find a way of ensuring that that does not happen again.

In our report, the Committee says:

“In the past, donor money has not been spent effectively in Pakistan for a variety of reasons. Corruption is rife in a social order based on patronage and kinship networks. Pakistan’s rich do not pay taxes and exhibit little interest in improving conditions and opportunities for Pakistan’s poor.”

That was the most striking and controversial element of our report, but I certainly stand by it, as I think all members of the Committee do. However, we compiled and published our report during the election in Pakistan—the previous Government had demitted office, and a caretaker Government were in place—and a new Government have now come into office. We therefore hope that they will take these issues as both a challenge and an opportunity to show they mean to take action.

Taxes are not just a matter of morality and justice—I will come back to that—but essential to Pakistan’s survival. If Pakistan cannot raise its tax base from below 10%, it will not be able to support its people by providing the basic services they not only have the right to expect, but absolutely need. No aid programme from outside can make up that shortfall; if Pakistan does not find the resources from within its own, admittedly weak, economy, it will not be able to sustain services—certainly not with the population growth it faces.

The British Government, aid partners and the IMF must look Pakistan’s rulers in the eye and ask them bluntly and frankly why they do not pay taxes in their own country and when they will start doing so. It is completely intolerable that British taxpayers should be funding health and education in Pakistan when the richest people there contribute absolutely nothing towards those services and do not use them, because they buy private education and private health. That is not only a moral issue, but a fundamental issue of financial survival for Pakistan.

This is the first time in the country’s history that a Government have completed their term and a new democratic Government have been elected to step up and accept their responsibilities. Therefore, unless there is clear evidence of a commitment on the part of Pakistan’s leadership to contribute to their own development agenda, the British Government should not nearly double our aid—there is no suggestion that we should cut it—and make Pakistan the biggest single recipient.

I have seen a series of e-mails. In the past few weeks, the IMF has been engaged in Pakistan. The country is looking for further funding, despite the fact that there is a substantial amount—$10 billion or $12 billion—of surplus deposits in Pakistani banks, which is about equivalent to the loan Pakistan is looking for from the IMF. In other words, there is some sovereign resource available in Pakistan. Again, we are not suggesting that the IMF should not engage, but it should make it absolutely clear that increasing the tax contribution is part and parcel of the package of agreements. I understand that IMF officials have maintained a fairly resolute stance, but I am slightly concerned to hear that the Pakistani Government’s response has been to journey to Saudi Arabia to see whether they can get funding from that source so that they do not have to meet the IMF’s conditions.

That is a sensitive issue, but it must be confronted. It is made somewhat more difficult by what was, on the face of it, not a bad change in the Pakistani Government’s approach to government. The 18th amendment to the constitution devolved the delivery of services to the four provincial governments. I am a believer in devolution, and it is probably better to have local government delivering more services, because it is accountable to the distinctive provinces of Pakistan. However, if the money is not raised at either level, devolution is an abdication of responsibility; it is basically giving the provinces responsibility without the means to deliver services. If a formula is not developed to ensure that the money flows, one can imagine what the consequences are likely to be.

There is a significant number of members of the Pakistani diaspora in the UK, so we thought it was important to engage with them. I completely recognise that their perspective of the country they or their parents came from tends to be slightly different from that of the people who live there. However, they also have a clear interest, and many make regular visits and have many connections and family ties. The people we met were outspoken in saying that they could play a much more useful role in ensuring that aid and development spending reached the people it was meant to. Most of them will work with only a limited number of partners they feel they can trust. If anything, members of the diaspora are more outspoken critics of Pakistan than donors or others because, as they say, they see what is happening.

The essence of all this is that Pakistan’s stability is crucial to Pakistan, to the region and to Britain’s substantial interests there. At a time when we are gradually disengaging from Afghanistan militarily, although not in terms of development assistance, we do not need Pakistan to become a bigger problem than Afghanistan. We need to hold on to our shared interest.

Pakistan must face the reality that unless something changes, India’s GDP per capita is likely to move way ahead its own, and even Afghanistan might move into a better position. We must therefore maintain our engagement—that is not negotiable. The Committee approves fundamentally of the priorities that the British Government have set, but Ministers must try harder to ensure that they get the outcomes they want on health and education. They should be robust in ensuring that our further commitment and increased engagement is matched by an increase in the tax base.

In a sense, we are giving the elite of Pakistan a moral eyeballing and telling them to demonstrate their willingness to participate in the process. The outgoing Parliament voted by an overwhelming majority that it did not believe its Members should pay taxes. I wonder what the British public would think if we passed such a motion here. It is done with a completely innocent face, but the people in question are much richer than any of us—or certainly than most of us—and they stand as political leaders, seeking to lead their country presumably to a better place. I cannot think of any politicians who stand in democratic elections and do not offer at least a vision and prospects. However, for that to happen, they must play their part and be partners with the people—particularly the poor people—of Pakistan.

I want to make one qualification to what I have said, which I think that the Minister will understand. The small number of people in Pakistan who do pay their taxes should not be screwed with an increase so that the people at the other end of the scale need not pay. Nothing should be done, either, to increase the burden on the poorest of the poor. The target is clearly the wealthy elite, who have a contribution to make and must make it.

I do not apologise for dwelling on those issues, because they represent a watershed in our relationship with Pakistan. I want the country to succeed and its people to have the prospects that they want for themselves. I am happy to have met many Pakistanis here and in Pakistan who share that vision, but also share the frustration that for decades they have been stuck in a situation in which their world does not improve, and in which, because of corruption and a lack of commitment and financial base, they do not get the growth, poverty reduction and development that they need and deserve. I am thrilled that the British Government understand the commitment, but I hope that they will agree with the Committee that to get results we need a robust relationship.

15:21

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, and to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce), who as usual has given the speech that we would all want to give, but cannot. I have found the past three years as a member of the Committee, under his chairmanship, to be a delight. I had not been to Pakistan before our visit, and my right hon. Friend led the group expertly; such things are particularly important when one is going to a country such as Pakistan for the first time. We all got back in one piece and in reasonable good humour, which I gather may not always have happened on such visits in the past.

The visit, as well as being my first, was an eye-opener to the tremendous country that Pakistan is. It is the sixth most populous country in the world, with a population of 180 million—it could go well over 200 million by 2020—nearly 40% of whom are aged 10 to 29. Of course, Pakistan has huge challenges, which it is trying to meet, and we must review its condition in the light of them. One is terrorism. Tens of thousands of ordinary Pakistanis have died in terrorist attacks in the past 10 or 15 years. Members of the International Development Committee must always remember when we visit such countries—I am sure that this applies to the Minister too—that although we may be working with the country’s Government or its members of Parliament, we are working for the people who, day in, day out, suffer terrible problems such as terrorism and the challenges of low income. I remind the House that as many as one in three Pakistanis live on 30p a day, or less; one in 11 children in Pakistan die before their fifth birthday; and half of all the country’s adults—two thirds of its women—are illiterate, with 12 million children out of school. Those are the people for whom the UK’s international development programme is designed. It is true that members of Parliament in Pakistan do not pay their taxes, but ultimately our role under the International Development Act 2002 is to tackle poverty through international development. I am glad to say that that is fundamentally what DFID does through its programmes in Pakistan. We saw some excellent work.

I want first to dwell on positive areas of international development work in Pakistan. Most of that, of course, is carried out by Pakistani citizens; we just support them in that work. It is often forgotten what huge humanitarian challenges Pakistan has faced in the past decade. In 2005 the Kashmir earthquake affected approximately 3.5 million people. In 2008-09, internal displacement affected approximately 3 million people, and the 2010 floods affected 20 million—a third of the population of Britain. Imagine if even that proportion—say, a tenth—of our population, which would be 6 million people, were affected by floods. How would we cope? We find it a struggle to cope with snow on the railway tracks. They had to cope with 20 million people affected by floods. In 2011, as an afterthought, 9 million were also affected by floods, and in 2012, the year when we visited, monsoon floods meant that 3 million people needed external support. Often people grow almost weary of hearing such figures, yet the Pakistan Government at national and regional level must deal with such challenges year in, year out. Ultimately it is the Pakistani people who must deal with them, and I am in awe of how they do so.

Secondly, I want to give what I might call a little vignette—although it would not be a vignette to the people who suffered from the problem in question. The Chief Minister of Punjab, Shahbaz Sharif, who has been re-elected, impressed us with his grasp of matters. We heard that he had personally undertaken 17 Ministries himself, perhaps showing a lack of confidence in his colleagues. He clearly has tremendous energy and abilities. In 2011, the year before we were in Pakistan, there was an outbreak of dengue fever, which killed 300 people in Lahore alone. He was determined that that should not happen again, and initiated a substantial public health programme, getting rid of standing water to remove the breeding grounds of the flies that carry dengue fever. As a result, in 2012, when there was an outbreak, no one died, as far as we know—if they did, the number was very small. A challenge was met and tackled.

Thirdly, I was encouraged—with the caveats that my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon mentioned—about education. Sir Michael Barber, as I believe the Prime Minister mentioned in the House of Commons on Tuesday following his visit to Pakistan, has done excellent work in the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa education programmes. We visited a new school, a little like one of our new free schools, which was set up on the voucher system supported by DFID, I am glad to say. The children who attended that school were almost exclusively the children of workers at a nearby brick factory. Indeed, some of them had worked at the brick factory before coming to the school. An enterprising, wonderful Pakistani woman set up the school using the voucher system and was enabling a couple of hundred children to be educated, albeit at a basic level, at low cost in the community, instead of having to provide labour—often, I am afraid, indentured labour—at the local brick factory. That was possibly the most encouraging thing I saw on our visit to Pakistan, and the work of DFID enabled it to happen.

There was therefore a lot to be encouraged about, and to give confidence in the future. However, my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon has also mentioned the things that give us cause for concern. The first is the very low level of tax revenue, at less than 10% of GDP, and the failure of the wealthiest to pay their share—or, even, anything—towards public services. As my right hon. Friend said, they do not use those services, but that is not an excuse. There is also financial mismanagement. We heard about the amount of money that the Pakistan Government have in various funds and bank accounts. Apparently they have not yet adopted the policy of consolidating funds in a few accounts or one account, as is normal in public financial management. As a result, there was not as much grip on the public finances as there might have been. Can the Minister say whether that issue, and indeed the issue of tax revenues, has been raised with the Pakistani Government?

Then, of course, there is the issue of corruption, which comes up time and again. It is something that is very difficult to deal with and to speak of. I hope that the newly elected Government of Pakistan will tackle corruption, because corruption is anathema to development. If a country has a corrupt Government, it will not develop. It might get some form of development, but that development will be wasted, it will be inefficient and the country will not get the kind of development that it needs to bring all its people out of poverty.

In conclusion, our report on Pakistan was an opportunity—certainly for me—to see for the first time a country that faces huge challenges but that also has huge opportunities, and one in which Britain has a vital interest. That interest is not just a strategic one, but much, much more than that. It is a human interest, not only because of the Pakistani diaspora who make such a wonderful contribution to our country—there are well over a million of them in the UK—but because of the 180 million Pakistanis, and rising, who are looking to their Government and to those other Governments, such as the UK’s, who support their Government, to give them the chance to fulfil their talent and to seize the opportunities that a country such as Pakistan must rightfully seize.

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

While the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) collects his thoughts, I will point out that he has given his apologies in advance to me, having been stuck in the main Chamber proposing his own debate. We have plenty of time, so, rather unusually and despite the fact that he was not here in Westminster Hall for the early part of the debate, I call him to speak.

15:31

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

I am most grateful to you, Mr Gray, for calling me to speak.

I will not trouble the Members here in Westminster Hall with a long peroration about the wise and thoughtful main recommendations made in the report, which I know the Chairman of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce), and other members of the Committee will have spoken about. However, there are two particular issues that, as a member of the Committee who participated in the visit to Pakistan—I have moved on from a debate in the main Chamber about another part of the world—I feel very strongly about and that I am glad to have the opportunity to raise.

It is quite clear to me why the UK has such an important development partnership with Pakistan; it is because of our history and because of the need for us to work with the Government of Pakistan to resolve security problems that threaten both Pakistan and neighbouring countries. Integral to that development process is empowering women to get an education, play a full role in society and have their human rights defended.

Shortly before we went to Pakistan, we heard about the dreadful shooting in that country of Malala, a schoolgirl who was shot simply because she had the effrontery to wish to have an education. That event stunned people around the world and, interestingly, changed attitudes in Pakistan considerably. I went with some other members of the Committee—a sub-group—on a field visit to Haripur in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where we went to a school. It was a Government girls’ secondary school, where the girls re-enacted a piece of drama, asserting, as a consequence of Malala’s shooting, the right of girls, like boys, to have an education, enter the labour force and have professional standing. It was extremely moving. When I talked to parents and teachers after the performance—there is a parent-teacher association at the school—they were very clear about the fact that the shooting of Malala had to change the nature of politics and society in Pakistan.

Following that visit, it struck me that, although the UK is a major aid donor, we do not always listen enough to the voices of women in the countries where we are working. It also struck me that, at the very least in respect of Pakistan, we ought to establish an advisory panel of women to work with our Department for International Development office to ensure that all our programmes address the women’s dimension of the issues that they aim to address, whether it be education or health care.

When we were in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, we also met representatives of a number of Pakistani non-governmental organisations, including a quite inspirational woman, Maryam Bibi, who leads a women’s self-help organisation called Khwendo Kor. I have known Maryam Bibi for a number of years. She did a postgraduate degree at York university and then returned to the tribal areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where women’s rights are often threatened. She has done some remarkable things, such as establishing schools for girls and then standing up to men who threatened to kill her for doing so. She has a very persuasive manner. When we met her on this visit, she told us that she had been running a campaign to try to persuade Pakistani society in these conservative tribal areas to recognise that women should have rights of inheritance. She did that not by demanding those rights as a woman, but by seeking to find male community leaders who would make the argument. She had been talking for many weeks with a mullah, who appeared intellectually persuaded that women should have a right to inherit, but was unwilling to make a statement to that effect in Friday prayers, which was what she was urging him to do. That went on for many weeks and then, eventually, he made the statement. Maryam Bibi asked him what had finally changed his attitude, and he said, “Well, you persuaded me early on, but it took a long time for me to get my will changed, so that my wife could inherit.” He did not want to call on others to do something that he had not done himself.

Maryam is an extraordinary woman. I hope that she is the sort of person that DFID would consider using as an adviser. It is not for me to determine whom DFID selects, but it would be a mistake to think that we can get to the heart of the problems that Pakistani women face without Pakistani women advising us—not only on what the problems are, but on how to tackle them. I hope very much that the Government will consider that.

The second issue in Pakistan that I want to discuss, which struck me like a bolt out of the blue, was the gross—indeed, grotesque—violation of human rights that comes from debt bondage. One of our field trips, involving the whole Committee on this occasion, was to a low-cost private school. Doubtless, there will have been discussion earlier in the debate about the role that those institutions play.

After meeting the head teacher and some of the other teachers as we visited the classrooms, we had the opportunity to meet some parents. Those parents were brick kiln workers. They were very, very low paid and looked down upon by various members of society, and were living on the margins of a city in an area where the state had not deigned to provide a school, which was why a small private initiative had been set up to provide an education of sorts for their children. A state school would not have done any good anyway, because the children also had to work in the brick kiln. Consequently, the private school was arranged so that the children could come rather earlier in the morning than they would to a state school and so they could leave after lunch to do their share of labour in the brick kiln.

Those women told me that every one of them—every one of those parents—was indebted to the brick kiln owner and that debts ranged from 100,000 rupees to 300,000 rupees. Sometimes, they had taken out loans for things such as weddings, but more often because of injury and because they needed medical treatment. The typical earnings for people working in the brick kiln were 350 rupees per week per family—for husband, wife and two children. Those people owed perhaps up to two years’ wages. Such a debt for people on such a low, subsistence income is one they will never repay. Indeed, one woman told me that she had inherited her debt from her husband when he died.

Once someone gets into that kind of debt, there is no escape. Those people are illiterate, so even if they wanted to challenge the brick kiln owner over their debt, they would not have the skills to do so. One huge value of providing education for their children is perhaps that, in the next generation, it will be less possible for usurious moneylenders to pull the wool over those people’s eyes.

We raised that problem with the Chief Minister of Punjab. He told us that the law prevents debt bondage. His adviser, Zakia Shahnawaz, said that the intention was to introduce a Bill to establish a minimum wage of 600 rupees and to reinforce the law that ended bonded labour. I hope that that happens; it is desperately needed. If each wife and husband each earned 600 rupees a week, the children would perhaps not need to work in the brick kilns as well and could go to school in the normal way like other children. The debts of those people should be written off. Such debts should not exist in any civilised society anywhere in the world, but for that to happen we need not just UN resolutions and outrage expressed in this Palace of Westminster, but practical action to work with such people—the poorest of the poor and the lowest of the low—to give them the ability to go to court to challenge what is being done to them, crushing them and their children.

Although the issue exists not only in Pakistan, I would like a start to be made there with our Government putting together a programme of work to provide a citizens advice service to enable people such as those I have talked about to gain their freedom, which is their birthright, but which they are denied.

15:43

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. Once again, I congratulate the right hon. Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce), the Chair of the International Development Committee, and his team. May I say how moving I found the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley)? Such speeches and the work of the Committee say it all about why we need to continue to speak up for the most vulnerable people in the world and those who are powerless to act. It is a credit to hon. Members on both sides of the House who are passionate advocates of the development, aid and support that go to people in countries such as Pakistan that we continue our resolute support for those nations.

As we all know, and the Select Committee report highlights this, Pakistan is making progress, especially on the political side. It has successfully transitioned from one democratically elected Government to another. Of course there are challenges, but that is still to be welcomed. Now is a unique opportunity to see continued progress and to work with Pakistan to ensure that economic and social development, and the need for stability, are at the forefront of all our minds and interests.

As the report highlights, and as the right hon. Member for Gordon and other hon. Members have said, according to the World Bank, Pakistan saw a decline in poverty levels between 2008 and 2010 from just under 35% to 17.2%, which is obviously welcome. That represents progress, but there are still major concerns. The testimony of my hon. Friend the Member for York Central about the effects on the very poor, particularly women, sums it up. Some 12 million children are still out of school, which is the second highest population in the world. Pakistan also has one of the lowest levels of female participation in the labour market. Some 12,000 women die during pregnancy or childbirth each year, which is completely scandalous in a country that could be doing more.

The right hon. Member for Gordon talked out the failure of the wealthiest in Pakistan to make a contribution through taxation to build their own nation, and that issue needs to be raised constantly. Addressing it should, rightly, be a challenge to those people as we challenge ourselves to continue to support countries such as Pakistan. There is mutual responsibility.

As hon. Members are well aware, Pakistan also faces environmental challenges. Humanitarian disasters in 2005, in Kashmir, and in 2010 have cost billions, displaced some 20 million people and undermined economic growth. We need to build resilience through our efforts to ensure that there is proper adaptation and preparation so that any such future disasters will not cause as much chaos and disruption.

The report makes a good point about the demographic challenge. There are threats from security challenges arising from counter-terrorism and the long conflict in neighbouring Afghanistan. There are major questions about what will happen following withdrawal from Afghanistan, and about its relationship with Pakistan.

I welcome the points in the report about the role of the British Pakistani community. As we all know, the community has more than 1 million people who can channel significant influence and resources to their country of origin through trade and investment, and who have insights and knowledge that could be shared by our Government to play a more constructive and positive role than they have been allowed to do. Similar practices could happen with other communities in the UK.

As I said in the previous debate, such communities make a massive contribution through remittances. In the case of Pakistan, £627 million was sent in 2010 alone. That significant amount of assistance goes directly to families to supplement the very small amount of money that they have, even with international aid efforts. We must ensure that any change to what banks do does not undermine that effort, because that would force millions of people in countries such as Pakistan into poverty.

The challenges for Pakistan on corruption and tax collection have been well described. The Opposition feel strongly that we must look into building strong mechanisms through budget support. Support for tax authorities will be critical. I hope that the Minister will respond to some of the points made about specific measures to build a sustainable process for taxation and revenue, and to prevent avoidance and evasion. Our efforts must be conditional on effective governance, as that is what our taxpayers expect from us.

We talked a lot in the previous debate about the need to improve health and education, and Pakistan is a case in point. As hon. Members including my hon. Friend the Member for York Central mentioned, the major challenge for a country such as Pakistan is protecting the needs of women and minorities. Pakistan’s human rights challenge is massive. The treatment of particular groups, notably women, and incidents such as the high-profile case of Malala Yousafzai, who sought her basic right to an education, are unacceptable. They also do not speak for Pakistan’s proud history as a nation. Women played a formative role in the anti-colonial movements of 1947 and subsequently, and Pakistan has human rights lawyers—strong feminists and powerful women—who are working hard to ensure that their country is not hijacked by a small minority of extremists. We must shore up those women and the male human rights activists who are speaking up for all the population of their country, including minorities such as Christians and Hindus.

The British Pakistani community has a critical role to play in supporting Pakistan and working with our Government to ensure that Pakistan can be a beacon of economic and social development, and that it can stand up for human rights, democracy and the things that people fought for when seeking independence from colonial rule. People in Pakistan, like those in the rest of south Asia, have a proud history that needs to be tapped into. I believe that Britain, with its unique yet often troubling historical role, has a part to play by being a critical friend and supporter of Pakistan as it progresses towards further development.

[Jeremy Lefroy]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Rushanara Ali]

I know that the Minister wants us to press on, but I will, quickly.

[Jeremy Lefroy]

I am most grateful and I shall be brief. The hon. Lady makes an extremely powerful point about the importance of protecting minorities. I come from Huguenot stock, and at one point the Huguenots were minorities in this country. She will know about the huge contribution that minorities make to a country’s economic development, and that a country that does not cherish its minorities is shooting itself in the foot.

[Rushanara Ali]

I could not agree more. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that my constituency is the home of the Huguenot population that came to Britain, which has a proud history. Perhaps he will go to the Huguenot festival—or perhaps he has. I am pleased to have discovered that connection.

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about the role of minorities. The British Pakistani community and minorities make a vital contribution to this country. We have our own challenges, as we saw with the backlash following the terrible murder of Drummer Lee Rigby.

We must constantly work to protect minorities in this country, Pakistan and other parts of the world, and that is why we must ensure that in the post-millennium development goals discussions on the high-level panel, we all place human rights, and the rights of women and minorities, at the heart of debates about the future of development. If we do not, all our efforts and attempts to invest will be undermined.

I hope that the Government take this issue seriously. I worry that they do not always feel at ease with the language of empowerment and rights. I hope that when the testimonies are heard and explored, and considered alongside the risks to development when there is not a proper rights and empowerment agenda—a genuine one, as opposed to rhetoric—people will make a stronger case for putting human rights at the heart of the development agenda, rather than treating it as an add-on. I have faith that the Minister will push his Prime Minister to do so in his role in the high-level panel. The hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) made the case clearly that the issue of minority rights affects all societies, especially societies coping with massive development, economic and security challenges.

I conclude with two additional points. Pakistan is the country with the fourth highest number of deaths of children under five. Additionally, in the UN’s report on the global gender gap, Pakistan ranks 133rd out of 135, so it is very much at the bottom, although there is no reason why it should be there. Pakistan has incredible people, and especially women, who could be in the driving seat to advance the cause against those issues that affect women so badly and hold its society back.

We support the report and tireless work of the members of the International Development Committee. Its timely report comes at an opportune moment, given the new Government in Pakistan. As aid budgets increase, we must ensure that our investment in Pakistan genuinely supports those in need, helps to build people’s resilience, protects them from exploitation and abuse, and creates hope and opportunity in a country that could be at the heart of economic and social development in Asia.

Given the huge markets and economic opportunities in China, India, Indonesia and across the region, and the economic growth to which we can only aspire, Pakistan has a unique opportunity to advance and to lift millions of people out of poverty, but that requires leadership, support from us and the international community, and a genuine focus on tackling corruption and the other issues raised in the report. It also involves ensuring that the public interest is put at the heart of Pakistan’s development, not the interest of an elite minority, some of whom do not even bother to pay their taxes.

15:59

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Mr Alan Duncan)]

DFID warmly welcomes the Committee’s report on Pakistan. It has made some helpful recommendations, and I am pleased to say that, as our reply makes clear, we agree with pretty much all of them.

As the Committee recognises, the need for our development support is clear. Pakistan is the sixth most populous country in the world, with an estimated population of 180 million, and it is growing fast. The population is likely to increase by half as much again by 2050. One in three Pakistanis live on 30p a day or less, and as the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) has just made clear, one in 11 children die before their fifth birthday. Half of all adults and two thirds of women are illiterate, and 12 million children are out of school. Internal instability and sectarian violence have seen more than 30,000 Pakistani civilians killed since 2001, with many more left injured.

Those enormous challenges are not entirely insurmountable, and there is some reason to be optimistic for the future. Pakistan has just witnessed historic elections, which mark the first time a democratically elected civilian Government in Pakistan have served their full term and then handed over to another through credible elections. In the face of sustained extremist violence, the people sent a clear message that they expected change. They wanted improved security, better services, more jobs and better economic prospects. Both federal and provincial government have made ambitious commitments to deliver against those expectations.

The UK’s development programme is well placed to help. Since the Government made the decision to increase support to Pakistan in 2010, UK aid has helped 1.9 million children in school, provided cash transfers to more than 2.5 million people and provided life-saving support to millions of people during the devastating floods in 2010 and 2011. Ultimately, though, only the Government of Pakistan have the responsibility and wherewithal to solve Pakistan’s problems.

As the Committee set out, our development support must be dependent on policy reform that fosters increased economic and social development. That is why UK development programmes with the Government of Pakistan proceed only on the condition: that the Government of Pakistan provide the bulk of the funding and commit to increase their spending; that they deliver on agreed results and reforms; and that UK public money is protected from corruption. Those benchmarks are at the heart of all our joint programmes with both the federal and provincial government.

I think that approach is working. Through our education programme, we have helped the government of Punjab appoint 81,000 new teachers based on their ability to teach, not on their connections. Measures to increase both student and teacher attendance have led to 1 million more children and 35,000 more teachers attending school every day. We have helped the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province adopt new budgeting procedures, which have reduced the cost of building a classroom by more than 40%. I appreciate what the right hon. Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce) says about merit, attendance and standards overall. If he would like more information on the detail of what we are doing, we would of course be very pleased to oblige.

At national level, we have helped to generate significant increases and improvements in the Government’s income support programme, which is a financial safety net for the poorest and most vulnerable. The new Government have announced a 25% increase in the programme’s budget, which is a commitment of almost £500 million in the coming year. The risk of corruption has also been reduced—thus trying to ensure that the programme reaches those who need it most. Over the coming months, we will hold formal talks with the new federal and provincial governments as soon as we can to agree joint priorities. Central to those discussions will be economic reform, particularly on tax.

The Committee urged us to do all we can to encourage an increase in tax revenue, which is exactly what we are doing. We agree that, without more revenue, the Pakistani Government cannot meet the needs of their growing population. We have had initial discussions with the new Government on tax issues at both ministerial and official level, and we are clear on what needs to happen. Pakistan has one of the lowest tax takes in the world, which has to change.

Early signs from the new Government are positive. In their recent budget, they committed to increase their tax-to-GDP ratio, which is currently less than 10%, to 15% by 2018, and they took some initial steps towards that. I assure hon. Members that our Prime Minister raised that matter forcefully during his visit to Pakistan last week. We are already providing advice on how they can deliver that commitment, and we will continue to push for early, bold action, starting from the top. The richest must pay their fair share. Our Prime Minister had positive conversations with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on that issue during his visit, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development has also raised it in her early discussions.

As the Committee recommended, we are actively engaged with the IMF and other international finance institutions to ensure that any future IMF support is predicated on meaningful economic reforms, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) said, must include a firm grip on public finances. As negotiations with the IMF proceed, we are exploring how best the UK can provide assistance alongside other international partners. That includes considering the possibility of offering Pakistan expertise and advice from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, but we are clear that co-ordinated action through an IMF programme, rather than individual donors setting their own reform conditions, offers the best long-term prospect for securing reform.

It is absolutely essential that the new Government take steps to address corruption, because corruption limits economic growth and erodes confidence in the state. Our governance work already focuses on such corruption. In Punjab, for example, we are supporting the Government to curb low-level corruption by officials, and to improve service delivery as a result. Every day, 30,000 people are providing feedback on government services, via their mobile phones for instance, and action is being taken against those accused of corruption. We look forward to discussing what more we can do with the new Government as they develop their own priorities in that area.

Central to addressing corruption is effective governance that ensures the rule of law and empowers citizens—what our Prime Minister calls the “golden thread.” The Committee suggests that that is lacking in governance work, and I want to make it clear that it runs through our portfolio. Our new sub-national governance programmes will operate across two provinces and benefit more than 7.5 million people, thereby improving the ability of government to deliver key services, including security and justice. Now the new Government are in place, we will review our approach with them to identify opportunities where more can be done.

We are supporting civil society to ensure it is able to hold the Government to account and to demand change, most recently through our support for the elections, which helped to increase voter turnout significantly and to provide election monitoring. As the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) mentioned, supporting women will also remain, and must remain, a fundamental element of our work. Pakistan is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman. To improve our efforts, we will take up the Committee’s recommendation to establish a gender advisory group, and will look to include Pakistan in the wider girls and women advisory group being established by DFID.

The right hon. Member for Gordon mentioned the health sector. In recent years, service provision has changed significantly through the devolution of responsibilities from federal to provincial government, as both the Committee and the Independent Commission for Aid Impact have noted. In response to that change, we have significantly redesigned our support for health. Let me assure the House that the redesign has addressed the concerns expressed by ICAI and the Committee, and has taken on board the lessons from the previous federal approach. DFID’s new provincial health and nutrition programme supports local governments to manage both community midwives and lady health workers, so ensuring that their remits are complementary. Our funding will also only be provided when there is clear evidence that results are being achieved. In a period of substantial political change, we will continue to review and adapt our programmes, in the light of the new Government’s priorities and the reforms that they implement.

I have taken on board the impassioned plea made by the hon. Member for York Central for the need to address the scourge of debt bondage among Pakistan’s helpless and ultra-impoverished people. Similarly, I have taken on board the important comment made by the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow about empowerment, especially of women and girls—something that is always incorporated from the start in our programmes, not only in Pakistan but elsewhere.

To summarise, at last count DFID and the Government agreed with 16 out of the 17 recommendations made by the Committee, and we only partially disagreed with the 17th. We also agree that UK development support must be predicated on the commitment of the Pakistani authorities to implement policy changes that will foster economic and social development. I am pleased to see that the new federal and provincial governments have already made positive commitments to deliver economic, tax and social sector reforms. They have a real opportunity to set Pakistan on a path towards stability and prosperity. We will continue to do all we can to ensure that they take decisions that will lead to a brighter future for their people.

16:11

[Sir Malcolm Bruce]

I thank the Minister for a succinct and positive response to the debate, which shed a clear light on the Government’s determination to take the opportunity to turn things around. It is important that the new, democratically elected Government—the first to secure the transition—have the responsibility and an opportunity to make the changes. My only caution is that, while I welcome their commitment to increase the tax take to 15%, such commitments have been made in the past and not delivered. We clearly need positive measures for that to happen.

I completely agree with the Minister that the most effective way to achieve things is through donor co-ordination, because all the donors working together and singing from the same hymn sheet is more likely to get a co-ordinated response. I welcome what he said about bringing together lady health workers and community midwives, which seems to be something that could be done, so it is great to hear that it is being done. We can do it ourselves as well, but I hope that the Minister will convey to Sir Michael Barber that he is doing an excellent job of work, although there are some concerns about merit meaning what it says—perhaps something could be done about that.

Overall, we want to share with the people of Pakistan an absolutely joint commitment saying that they deserve a future that is a lot better than the recent past. We have to ensure that the aid community can find the partners—partners in Pakistan—to achieve that. As the Minister rightly says, without a functioning partner outside agencies ultimately cannot deliver. The reason why we put the caveat that we did in the report is that, willing as we may be to support the poor people of Pakistan, the effort will only work if their leaders want it to work and are prepared to work with us. I am, however, encouraged by what the Minister has had to say. I hope that the next few months in particular will see some positive progress in that direction.

Question put and agreed to.

16:13

Sitting adjourned.

Written Statements

Thursday 4th July 2013 Written Statements

Thursday 4 July 2013

Security Vetting Appeals Panel (Triennial Review)

Thursday 4th July 2013 Written Statements

[The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)]

I am today announcing the triennial review of the Security Vetting Appeals Panel (SVAP). Triennial reviews of non-departmental public bodies (NDPBs) are part of the Government’s commitment to ensuring that NDPBs continue to have regular independent challenge on their remit and governance arrangements.

The review will be undertaken by an independent external reviewer, Sir Alex Allan.

The review will challenge the continuing need for the function of the panel and its form. If it is agreed that it should remain as an NDPB, the review will consider its control and governance arrangements to ensure that it is operating in line with the recognised principles of good corporate governance.

The aim will be to complete the review in September.

Employee-ownership Sector

Thursday 4th July 2013 Written Statements

[The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Danny Alexander)]

At Budget 2013, the Government announced that they would provide £50 million annually from 2014-15 to support the employee-ownership sector.

The Government are today publishing a consultation document setting out proposals for two new tax reliefs to encourage, promote and support indirect employee-ownership structures. One of the reliefs is for capital gains tax on the sale of a controlling interest in a business into an indirect employee-ownership structure. The second is an exemption, up to a certain threshold, from income tax and employer and employee national insurance contributions on a bonus or equivalent payment paid to employees of an indirectly employee-owned structure.

The document outlines the Government’s intentions for these new reliefs and asks questions about the proposals on which the Government invite comments.

The Government intend to legislate for these tax reliefs in Finance Bill 2014.

The document is available at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/supporting-the-employee-ownership-sector.

Red Tape Challenge

Thursday 4th July 2013 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Don Foster)]

Further to the statement made by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), the Minister with responsibility for planning on, 31 January 2013, Official Report, columns 52-53WS, I would like to inform the House about the further consideration that has been given to the proposal to enable local authorities to provide building control services across local authority boundaries. This arose as part of my Department’s housing and construction theme for the red tape challenge when some local authorities indicated that they would like to provide building control services across boundaries to provide additional choice and consistency to small businesses.

The outcome is that we consider that local authorities in England may use the general power of competence provisions in the Localism Act 2011 to carry out such services outside of their local authority boundaries if they become approved inspectors. This opportunity should improve competition in the building control sector and help drive up standards. We will make local authorities aware of the provision in the Act to do this.

To become an approved inspector local authorities will need to set up a trading company which can then apply to the construction industry council for approval as an approved inspector. Local authority companies would only be able to act as approved inspectors in England outside of their local authority boundaries.

We will be providing further guidance to local authorities considering taking up this opportunity.

Leveson Update

Thursday 4th July 2013 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Maria Miller)]

On 18 March 2013, we reached agreement about how we could deliver a new system of independent and robust self-regulation for the press as recommended in the report of Lord Justice Leveson. I want to update the House on developments since then.

The cross-party agreement, which continues to have cross-party support, included a royal charter to set up a verification body for a new independent press regulator; elements of legislation needed to secure the incentives for newspapers to participate; and a “no change” provision that protects the charter from future political interference. We have delivered those incentives through the provisions included in the Crime and Courts Act 2013 and the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013.

On 30 April 2013, the Press Standards Board of Finance (PressBoF) formally petitioned the Privy Council Office with an alternative draft royal charter. When any petition for a royal charter is received by the Privy Council Office (PCO) it asks for an initial view from relevant Government Departments. This guides whether the royal charter should go forward for Privy Council consideration. On this occasion, Government have also taken advice from Counsel to ensure the procedure they follow is robust.

I will be requesting that the petition is added to the list of Privy Council business.

Cross-party discussions on the royal charter concluded on 18 March and a copy of that charter was deposited in the Libraries of both Houses. Work has continued to prepare the charter published on 18 March for formal submission to the Privy Council. Following the vote in the Scottish Parliament on 30 April, discussions have been held with the Scottish Government about the technical changes necessary to ensure its application in Scotland. The Commissioner for Public Appointments, who carries specific responsibilities under the charter, has also been consulted. Finally, a legal technical review of the charter has been undertaken as part of an overall assurance process. I will be publishing an updated version of the cross-party charter in due course.

We continue to support implementing the system of tough, independent self-regulation that Lord Justice Leveson recommended that protects a free press and delivers for the public and, especially those who are victims of press abuse. The press are making progress on setting up their self-regulator, which is an integral part of the process outlined by the Leveson report.

Ofsted Annual Report (Armed Forces Initial Training)

Thursday 4th July 2013 Written Statements

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Mr Mark Francois)]

Today Ofsted publishes its fifth report on welfare and duty of care in armed forces initial training, copies of which I have placed in the Library of the House. Following visits to 10 armed forces initial training establishments between October 2012 and February 2013, Ofsted reports that recruits and trainees feel safe and that their welfare needs are largely being met.

While all the locations visited by Ofsted are judged as “adequate” or better, including those which are judged as outstanding, there is still room for improvement and Ofsted has made a number of recommendations that will enable establishments to reduce wastage rates and improve procedures to share best practice in welfare and duty of care and for teaching and learning across their activities.

The armed forces are determined to ensure that the initial training environment is supportive of the needs of those new to the service and the particular focus of the Ofsted inspection provides additional detail on which to reflect and review the effectiveness of our training regimes.

Reserve Basing Statement Clarification

Thursday 4th July 2013 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Philip Hammond)]

Further to my announcement of 3 July about Reserves Forces and my associated written ministerial statement, Official Report, column 49WS, about “Army Reserve (Structure and Basing)” I wish to clarify three points:

Kilmarnock is an existing Defence site and was included in the baseline of current Army Reserve sites in calculating the numbers of sites referred to in my statement. It will, in future, be occupied as an Army Reserve site. Arguably, we could have included it as a “new” site and reduced the baseline by one. The outcome is the same; that Scotland will have 46 Army Reserve sites in the future.

With regard to my answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns), 3 July 2013, Official Report, column 944, I can confirm that there will be a Royal Naval Reserve presence at Barry and in Cardiff.

Finally for clarity, in relation to my response to the hon. Member for Dudley North, (Ian Austin), 3 July 2013, Official Report, column 939, regarding the Royal Mercian and Lancastrian Yeomanry, I can advise the House that, in addition to the regimental headquarters, to be known as the Scottish and North Irish Yeomanry, there will also be a new headquarters squadron formed in Edinburgh; it is proposed that this is named HQ (Lothians and Border Horse) Squadron.

Funding of Political Parties

Thursday 4th July 2013 Written Statements

[The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Nick Clegg)]

Following the publication of the 13th report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life (CSPL) in November 2011, I convened discussions between the three main political parties to discuss possible reforms to party funding.

Representatives met seven times during 2012 and 2013. Discussions were based on the principles identified by the CSPL, including reform of donations and spending, how to deal with affiliate bodies and the efficiency and balance of existing state funding.

I am disappointed that, as on previous occasions, there has been no agreement between the three parties on beginning party funding reform.

Although it is now clear that reforms cannot go forward in this Parliament, I hope that the principles explored can inform further discussions on this topic and that the parties will then return to this issue after the next election.

The Government have decided to proceed with sensible and necessary improvements to the controls on third parties which campaign at general elections to ensure that they are fully transparent and not allowed to distort the political process. These proposals will go ahead as part of a package of measures in a Bill which will include provisions for a lobbying register. We will introduce the Bill before the summer recess.

Bovine Tuberculosis

Thursday 4th July 2013 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr Owen Paterson)]

Bovine tuberculosis (bTB) is the most pressing animal health problem in the United Kingdom. The crisis facing our cattle farmers, their families and their communities cannot be overstated. Bovine tuberculosis is a devastating disease which threatens our cattle industry and presents a risk to other livestock, wildlife species such as badgers, domestic pets and humans.

This was once a disease isolated to small pockets of the country. It has now spread extensively through the west of England and Wales. The number of new herd breakdowns has doubled every nine years and in the last decade we have slaughtered 305,000 cattle across Great Britain. In 2012 in England alone, over 5.5 million bTB tests were performed leading to the slaughter of 28,000 cattle with the disease costing the taxpayer nearly £100 million. In the last 10 years bTB has cost the taxpayer £500 million. It is estimated that this will rise to £1 billion over the next decade if the disease is left unchecked.

The Government are today publishing a consultation on a draft strategy for achieving official freedom from bTB in England. The strategy, which has been developed by the Animal Health and Welfare Board for England and the Bovine TB Eradication Advisory Group for England, draws upon successful approaches to eradicate bTB around the world, including Australia, New Zealand, Michigan in the Unites States of America and the Republic of Ireland. These demonstrate the importance of applying stringent cattle control measures in combination with tackling any significant reservoir of infection in wildlife, whether it is water buffalo, brush-tailed possums, white-tailed deer, or badgers. An additional factor which has contributed to their success is the fact that their programmes are either led by industry or delivered by Government and industry, with both parties contributing to the cost.

The strategy builds upon the measures applied currently including testing of cattle and other animals, additional controls in affected herds, and controls to address the reservoir of infection in badgers. The Government are proposing to work in partnership with the industry to develop risk-based packages using all available tools to protect low-risk areas of England, stop the geographical spread of bTB and bear down on the disease in endemic areas.

As well as using available tools the Government will continue to develop new ones. I have already achieved a major success in securing a concrete road map from the European Commission on the deployment of cattle vaccination. I am committed to meeting the minimum time scale but that is at least 10 years away. The Government will also continue to invest in the development of an oral badger vaccine and in new diagnostic tests for tuberculosis in cattle and badgers, which could pave the way for alternative approaches.

The final element is a consideration of options for governance, delivery and funding of the strategy. The New Zealand approach in particular, demonstrates the success of industry-led eradication strategies co-financed by industry and Government.

Tackling bTB will require long-term solutions and considerable national resolve. The strategy will deliver my ambition to reverse the rising trend in the worst affected areas of the country well before the end of this decade, achieve official freedom from bTB for parts of England on the same time scale and thereafter progressively rid the whole of England of bTB over 25 years. Our cattle industry and countryside deserve no less.

Strengthening Corporate Accountability

Thursday 4th July 2013 Written Statements

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Norman Lamb)]

I am announcing today the publication of the consultation on strengthening corporate accountability in health and social care.

“Transforming care: A national response to Winterbourne View hospital”, published in December 2012, identified weaknesses in the system of accountability where leaders of health and care organisations are not held to account for the delivery of poor-quality care services or for allowing a culture where neglect and abuse are rife. The report committed the Department of Health and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to look at existing powers and options to improve corporate accountability for safety and quality in providers of health and adult social care registered with CQC and to bring forward proposals for consultation in spring 2013.

The consultation document sets out proposals to introduce a new registration requirement covering the fitness of directors of boards and to improve the way that existing sanctions are used to prosecute providers for failings in the quality and safety of care. “A new start: a consultation on changes to the way CQC regulates, inspects and monitors care” published on 17 June also sets out further details on these issues. The consultation will inform the new draft regulations which will be set out by the Department in the autumn and which we propose to lay before Parliament at the end of 2013.

The consultation will run until 6 September 2013 and applies to England only. “Strengthening corporate accountability in health and social care: A consultation” has been placed in the Library of the House. Copies are available to hon. Members from the Vote Office and to noble Lords from the Printed Paper Office. It is also available at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications?departments%5B%5D=department-of-health.

Armed Forces Family Migration

Thursday 4th July 2013 Written Statements

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

This statement informs the House of changes to the immigration rules affecting members of Her Majesty’s forces and their families, which will be laid before Parliament in September to come into force on 1 December 2013. Full details are included in a statement of intent which I have published today. Copies are available in the Library of the House and on the Home Office website.

Changes to the immigration rules affecting non-European economic area (non-EEA) nationality family members of British citizens and persons settled here were implemented on 9 July 2012 as part of the Government’s overall programme of reform of immigration routes. Those changes aimed to ensure that non-EEA family members seeking to live in the UK will not become a burden on the taxpayer and will be able to integrate effectively in British society.

Under temporary transitional arrangements, non-EEA family members of British citizens serving in Her Majesty’s forces were exempted from the family immigration rules changes pending a review of the rules affecting all non-EEA dependants of Her Majesty’s forces personnel, including family members of Foreign and Commonwealth citizens serving in Her Majesty’s forces. That review has now taken place and has produced a single set of rules covering the non-EEA family members of British service personnel and also the families of Foreign and Commonwealth citizens serving in Her Majesty’s forces, including Gurkhas discharged since 1 July 1997. The new rules will cover the dependants of service personnel currently dealt with under parts 7 and 8 of the immigration rules. They are intended to align the treatment of non-EEA family members of service personnel with the general approach to family immigration. At the same time they aim, so far as possible and appropriate, to treat all non-EEA dependants of service personnel in the same way, irrespective of the immigration status of the sponsor. And finally, they make special arrangements, in certain respects, to cater for the situations brought about by overseas postings which are a feature of service life.

With effect from 1 December 2013, the following rules will apply to armed forces families:

Service personnel who wish to sponsor their non-EEA dependants to enter or stay in the UK must meet a minimum income threshold of £18,600 for a partner, £22,400 for a partner and child and £2,400 for each additional child.

A basic English language requirement will also apply to all non-EEA partners seeking to enter or stay in the UK. This will be in line with the current such language requirement which applies to the partners of civilians and of serving British personnel.

Non-EEA partners of British and of Foreign and Commonwealth citizens serving in Her Majesty’s forces will serve a five-year probationary period before being eligible to apply for settlement.

To qualify for settlement, non-EEA partners and children between the ages of 18 and 65 will have to demonstrate a knowledge of language and life in the UK. This will involve passing the “Life in the UK” test and holding an intermediate level English language speaking and listening qualification. This is a new, more robust, requirement which is being introduced across the immigration system from 28 October 2013—as set out in the Home Office statement of intent on “Knowledge of Language and Life in the UK for Settlement and Naturalisation” published on 8 April 2013 and available at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment data/file/182545/statement-of-intent-koll.pdf.

Dependants of serving British citizens, most of whom are already subject to a knowledge of language and life in the UK requirement, will switch to the new requirement from 28 October. Dependants of Foreign and Commonwealth citizens serving in Her Majesty’s forces, who are not currently subject to the requirement, will be required to meet it from 1 December.

The new armed forces family rules take full account of the principles set out in the armed forces covenant, which states that service personnel and their families should face no disadvantage as a result of service. Accordingly, the new rules will incorporate the following provisions specifically designed to accommodate overseas postings:

Applications may be made from overseas for all categories of leave under the armed forces rules.

The duration of a settlement visa under the armed forces rules will be extended to five years to enable a dependant to apply for settlement without having to renew their initial visa. This will remove the financial disadvantage currently faced by those who are overseas where application fees are more expensive than in the UK.

Time spent overseas on an accompanied posting will be regarded as time spent in the UK for the purpose of calculating the residence required for settlement.

The new rules will also remove some further anomalies and practical obstacles inherent in the current rules. Where a serving Foreign and Commonwealth member of Her Majesty’s forces naturalises as a British citizen, their family will be able to continue to progress to settlement; they will no longer need to switch immigration route because their sponsor’s immigration status has changed. Bereaved non-EEA partners of Foreign and Commonwealth citizens serving in Her Majesty’s forces will be treated in the same way as bereaved partners of British personnel and will be able to apply for settlement immediately if the sponsor dies in service, even if the death is not directly attributable to service. And alongside the new rules, we will deliver faster grants of settlement for service personnel on discharge, count reservist time on deployment towards residency requirements in the applicant’s substantive immigration status, and introduce an armed forces specific application form to facilitate identification and processing of applications from the armed forces community.

Transitional arrangements will apply to family members who already hold valid leave as a dependant of a service person, and to those who submit an application before 1 December 2013. These are set out in full in the statement of intent.

Taken together, these measures form a balanced set of provisions which reflect our overall approach to delivering a robust and sustainable immigration system, while taking account of the particular circumstances of the armed forces community.

Drug Paraphernalia

Thursday 4th July 2013 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)]

The Government have accepted the advice of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) to allow for the lawful provision of foil by drug treatment providers subject to the strict condition that it is part of structured efforts to get people into treatment and off drugs.

The Government’s 2010 Drug Strategy, “Reducing demand, restricting supply, building recovery: supporting people to live a drug-free life” is ambitious in its aims and takes a balanced approach. At its core is recovery—enabling individuals to live free from drug dependency, enabling them to rebuild their lives and address the criminality and health issues associated with drug abuse.

The available evidence shows that the provision of foil can encourage people to take their first steps into treatment, reducing the immediate harm and facilitating the onward journey towards recovery and abstinence. By lawfully providing foil under strict conditions, we also tackle the significant health risks associated with injecting behaviours, including the transmission of dangerous blood-borne viruses.

The Government will introduce legislation to ensure foil is only offered by drug treatment providers as part of structured efforts to get individuals into treatment, on the road to recovery and of drugs. We will also put in place mechanisms to carefully monitor and evaluate take-up, implementation and adherence to the conditionality over the next year.

Identity and Passport Service

Thursday 4th July 2013 Written Statements

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

The Identity and Passport Service—now renamed Her Majesty’s Passport Office—annual report and accounts 2012-13 has been laid before the House today and copies are available in the Vote Office.

UK Border Agency

Thursday 4th July 2013 Written Statements

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

The UK Border Agency annual report and accounts 2012-13 has been laid before the House today. Copies will be made available in the Vote Office.

Coroners and Justice Act 2009

Thursday 4th July 2013 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mrs Helen Grant)]

Today I have published the Government’s response to the consultation on our plans for implementation of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, including new coroner rules and regulations and new statutory guidance for bereaved families. While we received a range of views on the consultation, there was broad consensus on most of the key issues.

We have made some changes to the detail of our original proposals to reflect the comments we received and I will lay in Parliament today the final versions of the rules and regulations that will underpin our reforms to the coroner system. We intend to bring the changes into force on 25 July.

The aims of the 2009 Act are to put the needs of bereaved people at the heart of the coroner system; for coroner services to be locally delivered but within a new framework of national standards; and to enable a more efficient system of investigations and inquests. I am confident that our reforms will enable these aims to be met.

The first Chief Coroner of England and Wales, His Honour Judge Peter Thornton QC, with whom we have been working very closely in developing our proposals, will now oversee implementation of the reforms.

Copies of the consultation response paper have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses, in the Vote Office and in the Printed Paper Office. The document is also available online, at: http://consult.justice.gov.uk/digital-communications/coroner-reforms.

Motorcycle Test Review

Thursday 4th July 2013 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Stephen Hammond)]

Following research into the safety and feasibility of a single event on-road motorcycle test, I am today announcing the conclusion of the motorcycle test review.

The test review was commissioned to consider alternative ways of providing a single event practical motorcycle test that can be carried out on the road in a way that would maintain riding standards, protect safety and increase accessibility of the test for candidates, while meeting the requirements of the European legislation.

The test is currently carried out in two separate modules. Module 1 is undertaken off-road on a purpose-built manoeuvring area and tests the higher speed and slow manoeuvres. Module 2 is the practical on-road ride.

The research, which ended in March 2013, used test-ready learners to complete the proposed on-road manoeuvres and the existing module 1 manoeuvres under mock test conditions. Direct comparisons were made between the on-road and module 1 test.

The research concluded that an on-road test:

would result in a substantial increase in the number of incidents during tests;

increased the duration of the test, which would result in higher costs for both candidates and the Driving Standards Agency;

resulted in significantly more faults than the off-road test; and

was likely to encounter technical difficulties in identifying suitable sites with appropriate signage, and suitable speed measurement equipment.

I have therefore concluded that a single event on-road motorcycle test would not be in the interests of motorcycle test candidates or their trainers and examiners and have decided to conclude the motorcycle test review.

The research findings have been published today on the gov.uk website.

This does not mean that the review has been in vain. It has provided a welcome opportunity for the Department of Transport and the Driving Standards Agency to work with stakeholders to look at how the module 1 test could be improved. The Driving Standards Agency made changes to the module 1 test by reordering the manoeuvres and introducing greater flexibility in the way that riders speed is assessed. These changes were welcomed by both examiners and trainers and have resulted in fewer incidents, particularly during the hazard-avoidance exercise.

Since the review started, the Driving Standards Agency has implemented a range of improvements for stakeholders and customers taking tests in Great Britain. Test provision has been increased by opening three additional sites for module 1 tests and introducing module 2 tests at an additional eight driving test centres. More motorcycle examiners have been made available following a successful recruitment campaign; and improvements to the booking system has resulted in more test bookings being made available at times and dates that provide better access for motorcycle trainers and candidates.

The Government will continue to seek out new ways of improving motorcycle training and tackling motorcycle casualties, so that motorcycle incidents continue to fall.

Workplace Defined-contribution Pension Schemes

Thursday 4th July 2013 Written Statements

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)]

I am pleased to announce that today the Government will publish a call for evidence into quality standards in workplace defined-contribution pension schemes.

Automatic enrolment will lead to 6 million to 9 million people newly saving or saving more, primarily in defined-contribution pension schemes. Coupled with the introduction of a system of automatic transfers between workplace pension schemes, it is more important than ever that workplace pensions deliver a good experience for all their members.

While most schemes offer a good deal to savers, I am concerned there may be some—now or in the future—that do not deliver the standards that should be expected. Unlike other financial products, people who are automatically enrolled or automatically transferred into a workplace pension will not have made an active choice about which scheme to join. In addition, the long-term nature of pensions means it may not be clear how good an outcome a scheme will deliver for members until they have paid into it for many years. It is therefore particularly important that sufficient protections are in place to ensure that schemes are run in a way that is beneficial for members. The Government want to ensure that every defined-contribution scheme used for workplace saving delivers value for money and meets some essential minimum legislative standards.

Charges are one important aspect of this. On 1 July I laid draft regulations to prevent the use of consultancy charges in automatic enrolment schemes. The Government also plan to publish a consultation on charges this autumn, following the Office of Fair Trading’s investigation into the workplace defined-contribution pensions market. This consultation will set out proposals on charges, including for introducing a charge cap.

The Pensions Bill currently before Parliament includes provision to specify minimum legislative standards for workplace money-purchase schemes, as part of the Government’s proposed system of automatic transfers. Responses to the call for evidence will form an important part of the development of a set of minimum standards that all such schemes will have to meet. In particular, we are seeking evidence and views on scheme governance, default strategies, administration and record keeping, and scale as these are the areas we are considering for minimum legislative standards.

I will place a copy of the call for evidence in the Libraries of both Houses. The call for evidence will also be available on the gov.uk website later today at the following address: https://www.gov.uk/government/ publications.

Grand Committee

Thursday 4th July 2013 Grand Committee

Thursday, 4 July 2013.

Energy Bill

Thursday 4th July 2013 Grand Committee

Committee (2nd Day)

14:00

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Viscount Simon)]

My Lords, if there is a Division in the Chamber while we are sitting, the Committee will adjourn as soon as the Division Bells are rung and resume after 10 minutes.

Clause 3 : Further duties of the Secretary of State

Amendments 22 and 23 not moved.

Amendment 24

Moved by

[Baroness Verma]

24: Clause 3, page 3, line 6, after “consult” insert “the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment,”

Amendment 24 agreed.

Amendment 25 not moved.

Amendment 26

Moved by

[Baroness Verma]

26: Clause 3, page 3, line 14, leave out “Great Britain” and insert “the United Kingdom”

Amendment 26 agreed.

Amendment 27

Moved by

[Baroness Worthington]

27: Clause 3, page 3, line 19, at end insert—
“(c) further actions the Secretary of State will take to reduce carbon intensity if it has increased since the last statement.”

[Baroness Worthington]

My Lords, first, I should like to thank the Minister for her very timely and quick turn-around of the letter that we have just received. It was incredibly helpful and I hope we can carry on in that spirit; it was very much appreciated.

Amendment 27 creates an additional duty in respect of the statement on the carbon intensity of electricity generation that is required under Clause 3(3). Currently, the Bill requires that an annual statement must be made once an order has been made and that that should include a summary of the means by which the carbon intensity was calculated for that year and a declaration of whether the carbon intensity has decreased or increased since the previous statement. Amendment 27 adds an additional requirement to the statement, requiring that it contains details of the actions the Secretary of State will take if intensity has increased since the previous statement.

As I have previously mentioned, carbon intensity of electricity fell dramatically in the 1990s but has since levelled off and in 2012 sharply increased. This was due to a change in the merit order thanks to high gas prices and low coal prices. On Tuesday in Committee, I stated that coal was a common enemy. What I meant to say was that inefficient, unabated coal stations are the common enemy. I apologise for not being clearer about that. Of course, coal can play a significant role in a low-carbon electricity system if it is coupled with carbon capture and storage, which is a very important technology. However, the longer these old unabated stations stay on the system, the longer we will have to wait for investment in low-carbon alternatives, since they are very profitable and can crowd out new entrants to the market.

The Bill must seek to create a legal framework for electricity market reform that provides clarity of purpose and accountability. The Bill contains significant and wide-ranging powers, but there is currently insufficient accountability. Given the implications of the measures in the Bill, it is only right that the Government should be held to account over its performance against its stated objectives. One objective is clearly to increase investment in low-carbon infrastructure and a clear measurement of success is the carbon intensity of our electricity. The requirement to deliver an annual report under Clause 3 is therefore extremely welcome. However, it does not go far enough. If progress is not being made, a statement ought to be made about what will be done to address the reasons for lack of progress.

Of course, increases in carbon intensity in any one year can come about for a number of reasons—the relative price of fuels and the carbon price are important elements that the Government are seeking to correct using the carbon floor price policy. However, there are other reasons why intensity may rise in a given year, such as weather fluctuations, which may lead to an increased demand for electricity, or low hydropower output. They may also be unplanned outages in our nuclear fleet. There are therefore circumstances outside the control of policy and government, which can affect intensity. In these circumstances, any requirement to report on actions to be taken should not commit the Secretary of State to having to act, but there should remain the option to state the reasons for the increase and then to make a case for not taking action. I want to be clear that we do not wish to ask for the impossible, but we do seek slightly more accountability.

If intensity is increasing because of policy failure—for example, if the carbon price is failing to dissuade coal burn or the number of CFDs being signed is too low to deliver sufficient investments in the infrastructure—it is right that the Secretary of State should be required to report this and to detail actions he or she intends to take to correct these failings. Another potential issue is that the UK could seek to delay the closure of coal plants planned as a result of the introduction of tighter clean air regulations. I hope that the Government will not seek a derogation of this kind, because it would have serious implications for the carbon intensity of electricity, and corrective action would then need to be taken to compensate.

The intent behind this amendment is similar to that behind Amendment 22, which was not moved, which sought to require that the duty to a lay a report before Parliament setting out policies and proposals for how the decarbonisation target would be met included a requirement that that report should be modified if it appeared that policies were not going to achieve the target. Amendment 27 has a similar sentiment but offers a much simpler way of achieving that goal. In the event that carbon intensity is not heading in the right direction, there is simply a requirement on the Government to tell Parliament what they intend to do to correct it.

This is a simpler way of achieving the aim that was set out in Amendment 22 and I hope that the Minister will give it serious consideration. The wording may not be perfect, but I think that the sentiment is correct and I wonder if the Minister might propose a workable suggestion of her own.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Baroness Verma)]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, has said, Amendment 27 proposes that if carbon intensity has increased from the previous year, the Secretary of State will report additional actions he or she will take to reduce carbon intensity. I agree with the noble Baroness that it is sensible that, in addition to setting up plans for meeting the target range and the progress made towards it, the Secretary of State should also explain the action he or she will take to stay on track towards the target over time. However, I do not feel that the amendment as it currently stands achieves that.

My main concern is that the amendment would require the Secretary of State to set out additional action in response to an increase in a single year and this may not reflect, as the noble Baroness has rightly said, a number of variants under which the power sector operates in practice. There are many factors that can affect year-on-year measurements of carbon intensity and she has rightly said that cold years often require higher carbon intensities. Another factor could be power stations being offline for maintenance. This has been the case in recent years with some nuclear power stations, the emissions effect of which was reported in our annual statement of emissions. While bearing these points in mind, I support the aim of transparent reporting but it must be meaningful for the power sector to do that in the context of long-term trends rather than year-to-year variations. Therefore, while I support the aim of the amendment, I need to consider further how to address it, perhaps with a view to responding to it at a later stage. With that, I hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Worthington]

I thank the Minister for her comments. I am very pleased that she understood that the sentiment was what we were trying to press; the exact wording needs to be worked out. On that basis, I am very happy to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 27 withdrawn.

Amendment 28

Moved by

[Baroness Verma]

28: Clause 3, page 3, line 31, after “to” insert “the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment,”

Amendment 28 agreed.

Clause 3, as amended, agreed.

Amendment 29

Moved by

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

29: After Clause 3, insert the following new Clause—
“Decarbonisation obligation
(1) The Secretary of State must bring forward regulations for a “decarbonisation obligation” within a year following enactment for the purposes of ensuring obligations under section 1(1) are met.
(2) A decarbonisation obligation means the level of carbon intensity of electricity generation in the United Kingdom that a relevant supplier may not exceed in respect of the total kilowatt hours of electricity that it supplies to customers in England and Wales during that year.
(3) In setting a decarbonisation order, the Secretary of State must first obtain and take account of advice from the Committee on Climate Change.
(4) Under this section, a “relevant supplier” refers to electricity suppliers supplying electricity in the United Kingdom.
(5) Section 4 makes further provision in relation to subsection (2).”

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

This is a probing amendment and in some respects it follows on from what my noble friend has just been talking about. The opportunity to adopt a decarbonisation obligation, which would set decarbonisation targets for supply companies, arises as a consequence of a 2004 European directive, which required electricity supply companies to disclose the environmental impact—that is, the CO₂ emissions and nuclear waste of the electricity that they supply to customers over a year. In 2005, this was given effect in the UK by way of an SI. Therefore, since 2005 up to the year ending 2011—this is a matter of public note—we have published information about the emissions that each of the major energy suppliers has been responsible for in a year.

I think that when the regulations were initially drafted, it was assumed that people would look at what they had emitted and try to reduce the total year by year, given the general consensus for, and desirability of, securing a degree of carbonisation. However, a deficiency in the regulations has meant that there has in fact been very little in the way of an appreciable reduction in emissions from 2005 to 2011—the period for which data are available. The UK average for the year ending 2011 is 430 grams per kilowatt hour, which is a fall of 30 grams since 2005, so one cannot really say that the existing regulation has been particularly effective in reducing the carbon emissions created by the energy generators. Indeed, for other reasons which I think have already been mentioned in respect of the cheapness of coal, in 2012 carbon intensity climbed to 530 grams per kilowatt hour because of the attractiveness of coal as an alternative to gas and other sources at that time.

This is only a probing amendment, as it obviously has not had the benefit of the hands of parliamentary draftspeople. Nevertheless, the point that I really want to make is that I do not think it would be unreasonable for the Government to consider that we ought to use this information and not let it just gather dust on the shelf. I should like to think that this information would provide us with an approach to the problem. It is pretty well spelt out in the amendment that within 12 months of the Bill becoming an Act there would be a decarbonisation obligation, which would be set by the Secretary of State after consultation with and advice from the Committee on Climate Change. In effect, it would be a target for carbon reduction for the main electricity suppliers. We talk in the amendment about the relevant suppliers. By that, I mean suppliers of a sufficient size. We are not talking about micromanaging this. We could say the big six and one or two others, and that would probably catch just about everybody.

Therefore, it is not a massive exercise but I think we are missing a trick here. We have information that is not very satisfying, and it ought to be employed to some extent. If it is not, then in some respects it almost begs the question: why bother gathering this stuff in the first place? Why bother requiring the companies to make these returns if nobody is paying any attention to them? It may well be that there are people within DECC studiously looking at these data every year. However, again, that begs the question: why are they doing it if they are not doing anything with the information?

We have an opportunity here to explore the possibility of using the information as another lever in trying to decarbonise, or certainly to reduce the carbonisation of, our electricity supply. It is a fairly modest amendment and would probably cost very little for the Government to set in motion. It would probably be a source of complaint for the relevant electricity suppliers but, given that they are always complaining anyway, one more reason for complaint will not make an awful lot of difference. It would give the Government the opportunity to take some leadership on this issue, because the previous Government and this one have been rather lax about it. We see quite clearly that virtually nothing has been achieved on decarbonisation during six years of recording. It is a fall of five grams per annum, which probably works out at just about 1.1% per annum. I am not sure that any Government would want to defend that record. I recognise that there are circumstances where there are cheaper sources of fuel, which are dirtier, but these sources will not be available for much longer.

14:15

Therefore, whichever Government are in power—I should like to think that it will be another one—they will have no place to hide and will be collecting statistics for no purpose whatever. They should either stop collecting the statistics or make use of them. We have here a small lever that could encourage electricity suppliers by naming and shaming them in a way that we have not done before. We would be giving them a target and letting them move towards it. I know that for some people targets are a somewhat odious expression, but in areas such as this they are not illegitimate. It would almost be for the benefit of the companies to have some degree of guidance, because they are not always omnipotent or omniscient. The performance of the past six years would tend to suggest that they have been pretty feeble on this issue.

If we were able to compare and contrast the companies concerned, and give them targets that were acceptable to the industry and to the climate change committee, we would go some way to improving what seems at the moment to be a very poor performance from them. On that basis, I hope that the Minister will look sympathetically at the principle of this amendment, if not at its wording.

[Lord Deben]

As the climate change committee is mentioned in this amendment, perhaps I could refer to some of the things that have just been said. I declare an interest as chairman of that committee. This is obviously a probing amendment and I am sure that the Minister will want to look carefully at how it falls. However, it seems to have two elements that the Minister might wish to look at rather carefully. My noble friend Lady Verma is right to be very careful about additional burdens and I am one of those who believe in that, because there is no doubt that any kind of burden will be magnified. There is today’s announcement from the Taxpayers’ Alliance, for example, which has produced a figure for the cost of energy to a normal taxpayer. Instead of the £100 in 2020 that it will be, it is suggesting six times that by using figures which just do not stand up. Whatever we do, we will have that kind of attack.

The first thing that the Minister may find to be of value in these suggestions is that this information is already required. There is no additional information that needs to be acquired. Secondly, we also have a mechanism in place—the climate change committee—to provide the additional information that the Minister might want. Thirdly, it is a way in which one could signify the great importance that we attend and attach to electricity decarbonisation. It cannot be said too often that this is the key to the future. If we cannot decarbonise electricity, we have no hope at all of meeting the obligations that are statutorily before us. It is important to say this again and again because people seem very reluctant to understand why that is. But it is obviously true that if you have decarbonised electricity, you can in fact provide many of the things that people have grown used to having without destroying the climate. If you look at the issue, it means that we can have electric vehicles, particularly with smart metering and smart grids. However, we can also have all the other electrical machines, like the ones we all use today, without feeling that we are contributing to climate change. Therefore, it is absolutely essential to what we need to do, which is why the climate change committee has recommended that we should be very tough in showing that we have to meet decarbonisation and carbon intensity targets by 2030, congruent with where we have to be in 2050.

I hope that my noble friend will look at these amendments, not in the normal way of being contrary but as a contribution to strengthening the Bill without adding extra burdens on anybody’s shoulders. They have to do this anyway—and we would not be able to do anything if they were not doing it. The Minister may find it a useful contribution.

[Baroness Worthington]

My Lords, I wanted to make a few comments about how such an obligation might work. Of course, I completely concur with noble Lords who have spoken already; this is clearly a probing amendment, and a lot of work will need to be done to think through how it might work in practice.

The one thing that I would like to illustrate is that, on the fuel disclosure requirements that we currently have, 12 suppliers are required to report and many of those report very low carbon intensities because they are specifically green suppliers. Of those that are mixed suppliers, there is a very great difference between them; at the top end of the scale, we have Scottish Power in 2011, whose CO₂ intensity was 580 grams per kilowatt hour. At the bottom end of the scale you have EDF Energy, with 253 grams per kilowatt hour. Obviously, that is because the plant self-serves to those supply companies; they are both energy generators and energy suppliers, so they choose to use their own power. It would be hard to imagine giving one figure that they should all meet, but an obligation might be that they should demonstrate an improvement over time by percentage per annum on their current levels, as recorded over the past six years.

There are a couple of reasons why that idea might be a good one to explore. We know that there is an issue among independent generators, which fear that they will not be able to gain access to the market because of self-serving—the tendency to use your own plant and be vertically integrated. If they were required to shift to a low-carbon footprint and intensity, they would have an incentive to find those independent generators that can generate low-carbon electricity and reduce their footprint. That could knock off quite a few issues in one, if we looked at it in detail.

Another thing to commend that idea is that the measures in the Bill are designed to bring forward investment, but nothing is there to compel anybody to come forward. You can set up a CFD strike price and offer these contracts, but if no one wants to bother getting them they can simply carry on with business as usual. If they had this obligation, it would create a great incentive to find those CFDs, apply for them and come forward. The alternative is simply to keep offering higher and higher strike prices until the carrot becomes so attractive that they have to come forward. So it is a good insurance policy for the Bill, providing a way for the Government to link those targets that they propose to set in 2016 with an actual mechanism for delivery. Let us be honest: a target set by the Government to deliver carbon intensity of any value will be delivered only if you find a way for the commercial operators in the market to deliver it. This is one way, and it has potential supplementary benefits in giving independents confidence that their products will have a market.

I hope that we can look at this issue. As my noble friend has mentioned, this is a probing amendment and lots of the details have to be worked out, but it would be encouraging to hear some positive signals from the Government that we might be able to continue the discussion.

[Lord Oxburgh]

My Lords, I simply add my support for this amendment and urge the Minister to give it careful consideration to meet its objectives, if not the words. Previous speakers have shot all the relevant foxes, so I will not pursue any of those, but simply comment that if we had been considering this Bill two years ago I would have urged the Government to use this as their main means of regulating emissions. We could have done away with acres of complexity in the rest of the Bill. However, that is, unfortunately, water under the bridge. I hope that the Minister will give this careful consideration.

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, and of course I look very carefully at all amendments and consider their impact. I am extremely grateful to my noble friend Lord Deben for rightly raising the important points about the information that is already available and the cost burden that it may impose further down the line on consumers. We must be very careful that we do not add to what is already a large pool of requirements put on suppliers and generators.

We are concerned about accountability. The Bill places sole responsibility on the Secretary of State to meet any target range. Once that is set, recognising that it is the Secretary of State who is responsible for setting energy policy in the UK, it is he who will be ultimately accountable to Parliament. My concern about the amendment is that it would be unfair for us to ask suppliers to manage their portfolios in order to meet national carbon intensity limits because, as has been said, it would be incredibly complicated to oversee and would confuse the responsibilities of the state in setting the target range with those of suppliers by specifying the annual level of carbon intensity that they must meet.

The question of the merit order, the order in which generation is dispatched, which is currently in response to price signals, is a commercial decision for industry and I would certainly have reservations about government interfering directly with it. There is, however, a role for government in seeking to achieve decarbonisation by supporting a market framework that will make it more attractive. I think that is what the noble Baroness alluded to by prioritising low-carbon electricity. That is exactly what we are doing through contracts for difference and the carbon price floor to improve the relative economics of low-carbon generation.

Those measures provide a much better means of addressing the gap raised by the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, under his amendment. To quote my noble friend Lord Deben in the fifth report of his Committee on Climate Change:

“The gap between actual and achievable carbon intensity will be closed as coal plant is retired as the relative cost of coal increases under the rising carbon price floor and given tightening EU legislation on air quality”.

We are reaching that point but we do not need to add extra pressures to provide further information when there is more than adequate information around.

I will finish, and ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment, by saying that the Electricity and Gas (Energy Company Obligation) Order 2012 and its predecessors, the CERTs and CESPs, have always required energy companies to save carbon dioxide by promoting energy efficiency measures in households. There is enough going on in the system.

[Lord Deben]

Before my noble friend sits down, I did not suggest that there should be further weight further down the system, I was suggesting that we are already asking all that needs to be asked for this to work.

In what has been an increasingly long life, I have discovered that in most cases it is better to have “both/and” than “either/or”. I hope that she will at least leave a chink open to consider whether there might be some advantage in something after this sort of mechanism, even if it were permissive, so that it was clear that it was something that the Secretary of State could be asked about if he had not done it. Even if she went only as far as that, it would be of considerable help. Would she be willing at least to say that before we get to Report, she will have another look at this, because it seems to me that “both/and” might be better than “either/or” in this case?

[Baroness Verma]

First, I stand corrected by my noble friend. Secondly, I think that the measures we are taking address the noble Lord’s amendment. If I were to take it away, my response would probably be the same coming back. For clarity’s sake, I hope that the noble Lord will feel that I have addressed his concerns and withdraw his amendment.

14:29

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

If the Government are satisfied that they and their predecessors have done everything they could since 2005 to achieve a reduction of 30 grams per kilowatt hour, they are content with very little.

We are not asking the companies to do anything. They have already provided the information and it is clear that they are not pursuing decarbonisation with the enthusiasm and vigour that the Committee and the House want them to. It is therefore surprising that the Minister should be so complacent about this. She is suggesting that she will do no more than is being done at the moment: that the European directive will take out coal eventually and, once it does, we will have reached the sunlit uplands and everything will be fine. I shall withdraw the amendment but I think that when the Minister reads this she will be embarrassed because she is coming out with some fairly complacent stuff.

The major players have not been performing as well as they should have been and should be pushed harder. The Government have the information and the means of consultation to secure realistic targets, which would not be crippling but would be a great deal better than the, in effect, 1% per annum improvement that we have enjoyed over the past five or six years.

[Earl Cathcart]

I genuinely do not understand this. I can understand Europe wanting to get rid of coal altogether, but how is it that the Germans are planning to build 20 more coal-fired power stations? I do not understand how they will get away with it if the Europeans are going to get rid of coal altogether.

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

I am merely quoting what the Minister said. As a consequence of, for example, the large plant directives, our dependence on coal-fired generation will contract to a great extent. The Germans have created a number of problems for themselves and, in some respects, hell mend them. They have turned their back on nuclear power in a petulant and immature manner and they are now trying to resolve problems of generation in a situation where they have the wind in the north, the demand in the south and nothing in between.

Coal may well be an issue but I do not think that they will satisfy the regulations without CCS, which is still a pipe dream in many respects. It is one that we wish to pursue and, I hope, achieve, but for the next 10 years it will be a gleam in the eye of a few technologists and nothing else.

We are not asking the Government to do anything that they do not already do. It begs the question whether, were it not for a European directive, they would be collecting this information in the first place. They do not seem to be doing anything with it. It is there gathering dust and I do not understand the point of collecting it. It might be better to try to rescind the directive and say, “Let’s get this burden away from the companies. We do not need the information, we do not do anything with it and we are not going to use it to encourage them to reduce their emissions”.

[Baroness Worthington]

I am sorry to prolong the debate but I think this is really important. I stress that, in addition to providing a solution for how vertically integrated companies can meet their carbon intensity targets, by requiring them steadily to divest and move into low carbon, you solve one of the other problems that the Bill does not currently adequately address. I am getting e-mails daily from independent generators saying, “Fine, we can get CFD but who is going to buy our power?”. We are removing the obligation from the suppliers to buy low-carbon power. One of the features of the RO until recently was that there was an obligation on suppliers to increase their renewable percentage and that gave them access to the market. There is nothing to replace that in the CFDs. So, if you are an independent generator of renewable energy, you know that you have a good product but if no one wants to buy it you are really stuck.

On that basis, this issue deserves more attention, not merely because it helps us meet the carbon intensity targets but because it helps to solve the problem that the Bill currently faces of what we are going to do about access for independent generators.

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, perhaps I may quickly respond to that. It was made very clear on Report in the Commons that we would consider the concern raised by the noble Baroness on access to markets of independent generators. I am sure we will debate that when we get to that part of the Bill.

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 29 withdrawn.

Clause 4 : Meaning and calculation of “carbon intensity of electricity generation in Great Britain”

Amendments 30 to 35

Moved by

[Baroness Verma]

30: Clause 4, page 3, line 34, leave out “Great Britain” and insert “the United Kingdom”

31: Clause 4, page 3, line 36, leave out “Great Britain” and insert “the United Kingdom”

32: Clause 4, page 3, line 43, leave out “Great Britain” and insert “the United Kingdom”

33: Clause 4, page 3, line 44, leave out “Great Britain” and insert “the United Kingdom”

34: Clause 4, page 4, line 10, leave out “Great Britain” and insert “the United Kingdom”

35: Clause 4, page 4, line 11, leave out “Great Britain” and insert “the United Kingdom”

Amendments 30 to 35 agreed.

Amendment 36

Moved by

[Baroness Worthington]

36: Clause 4, page 4, line 11, after second “Britain” insert “and electricity generation”

[Baroness Worthington]

In moving Amendment 36, I shall speak also to Amendment 37. Again, these are simply probing amendments to elicit more detail. I have a genuine question about definitions of electricity generation. We believe it would be helpful to have more information about what would be included under that descriptor. It is important that electricity is generated in a power station and is then transmitted long distances along transmission lines and through distribution networks. Quite significant losses accrue through that process. One of the advantages of distributed energy is that by locating the source close to the demand you get a potentially more efficient system. I would be interested to hear from the Minister about how far electricity generation will stretch. Does it take us through the plant into transmission and then to distribution? Where do we draw the line?

On what might seem a technical point, within that transmission network, there are sources of significant greenhouse gases other than CO₂. SF6 is a very powerful source of greenhouse gas. In fact, it is the most powerful greenhouse gas. One kilogram of SF6 is equivalent to the emissions of 22,200 kilograms of CO₂. It is significantly used in electricity substations. There are requirements to report losses of SF6 because it is such a significant pollutant. What policies do we have in place to reduce the emissions of SF6? Mechanisms can be used to reduce it. There are obvious leak detection and repair processes that companies should carry out. It is possible to recycle equipment. Employee education and training is a very important aspect.

I am sorry to spring this on the Minister. It is quite a technical issue and I would be surprised if her notes cover it. I use it only as an illustration of the fact that “electricity generation” is quite broad terminology. It would be helpful to know what is included. Anything that the noble Baroness can say about SF6 in a letter or in another way would be helpful.

As regards Amendment 37, I reiterate my thanks for the letter we received, which addresses the concern about how we are to marry up the fact that through the CFD process we may well fund generation outside the UK. I happen to think that is probably quite a good idea. Certainly, if Ireland is happy to have onshore wind that can be directly piped to Wales in a direct cable, that would be fantastic for us. I would prefer it if onshore wind were in the UK, where we would get the benefit of the jobs but there are problems associated with our being a very densely populated country. This is not to challenge the principle that CFDs can be assigned in places other than within the UK but merely to ask how we will account for that within the carbon intensity targets. Will those plants receiving CFDs count towards it? Will the noble Baroness say more about that?

[Lord Teverson]

This is a useful probing amendment. One of the other areas that has not been mentioned is the interest that the Government have had in geothermal energy from Iceland, which has started to be explored. I would like to think that we could have geothermal from Cornwall that we would be absolutely certain was within this regime—maybe I will come to that later in the Bill. It is useful to start to understand this and develop these arguments, because, in terms of dedicated sources of renewable energy that we work with other nations to bring to these shores, it would be regrettable if we were not able to take the full credit for that work within the decarbonisation targets. I would be interested to hear the Government’s thinking in this area.

[Baroness Verma]

Amendment 36 proposes that the Secretary of State makes further provision about the meaning of “electricity generation”. Clause 4 defines carbon intensity as a measure of the amount of carbon emissions generated in grams per unit. Before I go further, I will write to the noble Baroness on SF6, because my notes do not cover that detail. I will make sure that next time they are here at hand.

The Bill covers emissions from all electricity generated within the territorial boundaries of the UK, both from power stations and auto generators, and includes the emissions from electricity before any transmission losses. This approach is consistent with our international reporting system, which the noble Baroness will know about. I should also like to reassure noble Lords that the power in Clause 4(4) enables the Secretary of State to make further provision for the meaning of carbon intensity of electricity generation and this includes any changes to the definition of electricity generation. I think this goes a little way to responding to the concerns of the noble Baroness.

Turning to Amendment 37, Clause 4 currently states that carbon intensity of the power sector includes emissions generated in Great Britain only. Although, as I said, this will apply to the UK power sector following the Government’s amendments to extend the decarbonisation provisions, this does not include emissions from interconnection or non-UK low-carbon generation. The Government considered this very seriously when we were designing these clauses. While interconnection is important, the Secretary of State cannot realistically be responsible for, and would have great difficulty in measuring, the carbon intensity of electricity generated outside the UK. Fundamentally, what is coming down the wires is simply electricity, and we could not say for certain in most cases whether it is low-carbon or not. If anything, my concern is that we would find ourselves overclaiming, when in fact the electricity being imported was from a wide range of generation sources. However, as I previously mentioned, these provisions retain flexibility so that this approach can be reviewed at a later date and changed if we feel it is necessary to do so.

I reassure noble Lords that if it becomes necessary to alter the definition of carbon intensity of electricity generation, for example to include emissions from interconnection and non-UK low-carbon sources, further provisions can be made and will be made by the power in Clause 4(4).

I hope that I am able to reassure noble Lords that the Government’s provisions already have a purpose and a sensible and logical approach for measuring the carbon intensity of electricity generation, and that a further power to amend the default definition is available should the definition need to be modified.

My noble friend Lord Teverson raised a point on thermal support. The Government announced draft strike prices last week for geothermal energy sourcing to support the development of that technology. I know that my noble friend will be extremely pleased to see that.

The noble Baroness mentioned offshore wind turbines off the coast of Ireland. As yet, we have not said anything about limiting support to specific technologies. A memorandum of understanding was signed by the Irish and UK Governments earlier this year which covers renewable technologies, and we are working closely with the Irish Government to develop further dialogue on that. On that note, I hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment.

14:45

[Lord Teverson]

Before the noble Baroness withdraws it, may I make one further comment? I am not getting in the way of progress and I do not expect a response from the Minister, but there is a qualitative difference. I accept the point exactly about general interconnectors but there is a difference between the specific inter- connectors dedicated to wind energy and which are for those sources of power, whether it is around Iceland or Ireland, and general interconnectors. It may be useful for the Government to remember that, but I thank the noble Baroness and the Government for their continued attention to geothermal and I very much welcome her comments.

[Baroness Worthington]

I thank the Minister for her response and I look forward to receiving the letter. On Amendment 37 it is important to say, as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, has just stated, that I was not necessarily probing in regard to interconnectors. However, in the fuel disclosure that we just described, suppliers are able to use electricity that they have purchased through the interconnector to count towards their fuel disclosure. They use an averaged amount that is worked out, in fact, so it is possible to account for interconnection. I am not asking for that, but I wanted to make sure that that was clear.

I was referring to a specific project, which I think is called Greenwire. That project may be called onshore-offshore, being built on the land of Ireland but connected by a direct cable to the UK. It is not an interconnector but a direct transmission line. If that goes ahead, it would potentially be a good and significant source of low-carbon electricity. It would be a shame if that were then not to count towards our carbon intensity target. After all, it would be UK suppliers and consumers who were paying for it. It really is important that when we think about these definitional issues, we get it correctly understood. The letter refers to the difference between direct connection and interconnection, so we are probably on the right track. I wanted to make sure and get it on the record that those projects will count towards our carbon intensity targets. On that basis, I am pleased to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 36 withdrawn.

Amendment 37 not moved.

Amendment 38

Moved by

[Baroness Verma]

38: Clause 4, page 4, line 26, after “consult” insert “the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment,”

Amendment 38 agreed.

Amendment 38A

Tabled by

[Lord Whitty]

38A: Clause 4, page 4, line 27, at end insert “and when the reference to primary legislation applies to Northern Ireland also with Northern Ireland Ministers”

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I do not intend to move Amendment 38A, although the noble Baroness did not actually reject it during the previous proceedings. However, in view of the amendments that replace “Great Britain” with “the United Kingdom”, will the noble Baroness check carefully when reference is made to consultation with devolved Ministers that Northern Ireland Ministers are included at all points and that the reference in general is to Ministers rather than departments? If she is prepared to do that, I am happy not to move the amendment.

Amendment 38A not moved.

Clause 4, as amended, agreed.

Clause 56 agreed.

Clause 57 : Nuclear safety purposes

Amendment 38B

Moved by

[Lord Whitty]

38B: Clause 57, page 55, line 3, after “GB” insert “civil”

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, in moving on to this large group of amendments, we move to an entirely new part of the Bill, which deals with the regulation of the nuclear industry and, in particular, with the creation of the Office for Nuclear Regulation. That body is currently operating in shadow form within the HSE.

I need to thank the Minister and her department for a number of things. This is a large section of the Bill; I said at Second Reading that it was an extremely large section. It was not seriously considered line by line in the House of Commons and we, as the House of Lords, have an obligation to look at it.

I asked the Minister to provide me with an indication of where the regulatory structure of the new ONR, as compared with the previous powers of the HSE, had changed. I thank her for the letter she sent me clearly setting that out.

I congratulate the department on an important breakthrough—it must have had a hell of a job with parliamentary counsel—in managing to put everything relating to the ONR in one place in one Bill. Noble Lords’ previous experience is that, as with the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act, the Financial Services Act and the Public Bodies Act, there is a tendency for parliamentary counsel always to refer back to at least one layer, and often several layers, of previous legislation. It is therefore important that most of what will apply to the ONR is here in one place. I congratulate whoever negotiated with parliamentary counsel to that effect.

However, there are still some uncertainties and a lack of clarity, and possibly some tightening up can be done. It is important that we all recognise that we are creating regulations for a new body that is to oversee a major source of our energy. It is complex and controversial in both political and public relations terms; it is changing over time; and local, national and international issues are involved. It is therefore important that we get the regulation right.

I have tabled a number of amendments, most of which are probing. Subject to what the Minister says, I doubt we shall need to return to any of them on Report. They deal with issues of scope, relations with other bodies engaged in the nuclear industry, the effect of the health and safety provisions on workers on nuclear sites and governance, finance and staff transfer.

Perhaps I may make one other general point. The noble Baroness and other Ministers will be aware that the Delegated Powers Committee, although it did not reserve its most scathing comments for this part of the Bill but for Chapters 2 and 3 of Part 2, made substantial propositions on how the order-making function under this part of the Bill should operate. Regrettably, I had not read that report, which was published on 28 June, in time to meet the deadline for tabling amendments. It would be helpful if the Minister could indicate, either in total at the beginning of that part of the Bill or as we reach the relevant clauses, how the Government intend to deal with the recommendations of the Delegated Powers Committee.

Amendment 38E and other amendments in the group deal with the scope of the ONR and its regulatory authority. The principal issue is the sites which ONR will cover. The definition in the Bill is largely in relation to sites rather than activities, although activities circularly define sites that need to have licences. We need to know which sites we are talking about because many sites which deal with nuclear and radioactive matters will not be covered by the ONR or by the regulations in the way that they are reflected in this section of the Bill. There are, of course, substantial defence sites that deal with nuclear matter and nuclear materials; there are transportation issues, not all of which seem to be covered; and there are radioactive materials, processes and operations being conducted in a wide range of sites across industry, universities, research functions and the National Health Service. Therefore, we need to be absolutely clear what the ONR relates to.

Most of the non-nuclear industry sites are not really governed by the nuclear regulations, although some of them are, and certainly not by the ONR as it will be, but we need to be clear where those divides operate. Therefore, this group of amendments seeks to make that a bit clearer. Amendment 38B would make it clear that this provision relates to civil sites. There may be some ambiguity here because defence establishments, which are, as I understand it, regulated by the Defence Nuclear Safety Regulator, often have some quasi-civilian activity. If it is clear that even those activities are excluded from the ONR, we probably need to make that clear in the Bill, and that is why I suggest that we insert the word “civil”.

Amendment 38D proposes that, once it is clear which sites we are operating on, the Secretary of State or the ONR should be obliged to provide a public list of such sites. At the moment, such sites are defined by whether they have a licence. The licences may well be listed but licences may be at various levels of scrutiny. We need an absolute list somewhere in the system of what sites the ONR regards as nuclear sites for the purposes of the Bill.

There is also a reference in Clause 57 to “associated sites”. Whereas there is a definition of nuclear sites by reference to the licence and a definition of nuclear matter and nuclear material by reference to other regulations, there is no definition of associated sites. I have therefore offered a definition, although I think that it may be far too wide. However, certainly unless we explain “associated sites”, it will be difficult to know what is and is not covered by that.

Amendment 40N deals with the issue that I have just described—that is, sites that do not yet have a licence but are moving towards being areas that would require a licence. As the nuclear industry expands on the generation side, as well as perhaps into other activities, we will expect sites to be in various degrees of preparation. Not long ago, Hinkley Point C, which I have visited on a number of occasions, did not have a licence or planning permission and it had not met all the other requirements in order to set up a nuclear power station. Obviously the functioning power stations and the ones that closed had all those things covered, but the area of Hinkley Point C could not yet be designated as a site because it did not have a licence. Every prospective nuclear power station site will have a period before it gets a licence to operate. We need to make sure that that is also covered and that it is clearly the ONR’s responsibility and, to some extent, the responsibility of other organisations, which I shall come to in a separate group of amendments.

There is also the issue of transport. It is clear that the ONR will now be inheriting from the HSE not only road transport but rail transport, which previously came under the ORR and the rail regulations. It is also clear in this draft that the ONR will cover shipping. However, aviation is a rather difficult issue. Although not much civil nuclear material will be carried in aircraft, some will be, and, if the ONR is not the regulator for its transportation by air, it needs to be made clear who is. At a quick glance, I could not see whether the CAA’s responsibilities covered this, and the Minister may be able to put me right on that, but we need to know whether, if I am suggesting that we also cover air transport, where that responsibility lies.

Therefore, in this first group, there are several issues relating to scope. It would be helpful to have some clarity now but, if the noble Baroness and her advisers feel that it would be better to write to me and other noble Lords, then I shall be perfectly happy with that. I beg to move.

15:00

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, on the comprehensiveness of his amendments. When we approached this Bill, I was rather under the impression that there had been so much thinking about the creation of the new independent body, the ONR, and so much discussion about it that allotting most of today’s session to considering it was perhaps a bit excessive. However, having studied his amendments—and no doubt there will be others who will wish to make points—I think that the discussion may well take us until 6 pm, although I hope not.

I approach this from a number of different standpoints. First, I think that I am the only Member of the Committee who took part in the debates on the Nuclear Installations Act 1965. That was a few months after I had been elected to the other place, but I have since reminded myself of the provisions of that Act, which are very comprehensive. They have been amended down the years since then—through the lovely system of LexisNexis, one can get a very good summary of what the Bill originally was and how it has changed with time. Therefore, to take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, I think that the main licensing provisions of the 1965 Act are still going to be in force and are not repeated in this Bill. It is assumed that the authority, the ONR, will have those licensing provisions. There is a substantial area where people will need to look back. That is the first thing.

Secondly, before I entered Parliament I was an employee of a large chemical company and one of the things that we did was to supply CO₂ to the Magnox nuclear power stations to be used as a cooling material— I will refer to that later. I have also been one of those who over recent years have been pressing very hard for this change to the ONR to take place. The case that had been very firmly made to me was that remaining part of the Health and Safety Executive meant that inevitably inspectors on the nuclear regulation side were civil servants and thus bound by Civil Service terms and conditions. In fact, experienced inspectors are very valuable people, much sought after around the world. They have been though a long period of training and have a lot of experience. Sometimes people will say an inspector is not really fully qualified unless he has been doing the job for about 20 years—and that has been said to me by more than one person. Therefore, there was considerable pressure from this part of the HSE, the nuclear regulatory part, to separate. I heard those arguments and paid considerable attention to them. The noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, may remember that when the Select Committee interviewed Dr Mike Weightman, I raised this point and he was very kind to acknowledge that some of us had indeed been pushing this case fairly hard.

That is how I approach the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. He makes some good points but I hope that he will forgive me if I point out that some of his amendments may indeed perhaps not quite be what he intended or envisaged. However, as I make these criticisms, no doubt he will have good answers. To take the amendments in the order in which they appear on the Marshalled List, the first with which I take issue is Amendment 38D. The noble Lord made quite a point about associated sites and of course he is quite right to refer to the issue—it is in Clause 57(1)(a)—but, as he readily acknowledged, his amendment may go deeper and wider than he perhaps intended.

Let me return to my previous point. The distillers company for which I worked produced CO₂, originally as part of the process of fermentation but eventually as a chemical process, and supplied it to a large number of different industries, not least, of course, the drinks industry. It would be absurd to regard those distilleries and factories as anything to do with the nuclear industry. Of course, when the material is delivered to the nuclear power station it has to be of nuclear quality, which is, quite rightly, properly regulated—but it is not the site where it is made that is regulated but the material that is delivered. No doubt there are many other examples.

I have recently ceased to be honorary president of the Energy Industries Council, which represents something like 600 firms in the energy supply chain businesses, of which nuclear is clearly one. On the rare occasion I was asked to talk to them, I always made the point that they had to make sure that they were producing materials and products to nuclear standards. This was something that quite a number of the firms found quite difficult to do. Those standards are higher than most other engineering standards, particularly for pieces of equipment, but that does not mean to say that the sites where they are made become nuclear sites. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will feel that it would be quite wrong to expect the ONR to go around inspecting sites where no kind of nuclear hazard could conceivably exist.

On Amendment 38F, I agree with the noble Lord. I do not see why this should not be extended to air transport. There must be occasions when nuclear materials are transported by air, although probably not very many, and clearly that should be within the remit of the ONR. That seems to be a reasonable change, but I have criticisms of some of the other amendments.

Amendment 38N refers to,

“other relevant agencies with responsibilities in the nuclear field”.

It is my impression that the nuclear regulator has always been able to consult and go much further than just consulting, having very detailed arrangements for regulating the interaction between the various bodies. There are long and substantial memoranda of understanding that cover that sort of field. I have made it my business to get a copy of the current memorandum of understanding between the HSE, which was the body that was running what is to be the ONR under this Bill, and the Environment Agency. When I came to print it out, it was 14 pages and contained a number of very important statements. I will not begin to read them all, but the objectives of the memorandum are to,

“facilitate effective and consistent regulation by ensuring that … activities of EA and HSE in relation to nuclear licensed sites are consistent, coordinated and comprehensive … the possibility of conflicting requirements being placed on licensees, or others operating on nuclear sites (collectively referred to as ‘operators’ in this memorandum), is avoided … synergies are exploited and the appropriate balance of precautions is attained”,

and,

“duplication of activity is minimised”,

which is of course very important if you are trying to keep the costs down. Perhaps most important of all is that,

“public confidence in the regulatory system is maintained”.

I shall not read more than that, but the annexe to the memorandum goes into very considerable detail as to how it is to be done. Presumably these will all remain in force. They may have to be signed by different people because the organisations will be different. The one that I have in my hand was signed by the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, when she was chairman of the Environment Agency, and by Timothy Walker, the then director-general of the Health and Safety Executive. If there are to be modifications in the memorandum, they will need to be signed by the current people. I hope that my noble friend may be able to address that.

Amendment 40N would not be right. It would risk all sorts of difficulties, duplication and so on. In particular, it would risk classifying a site as licensed before a nuclear site licence is granted. I heard what the noble Lord said about that, but of course there is the elaborate process of the generic design assessment. He referred to Hinkley Point C. That has been absolutely combed over by the existing nuclear regulator. It was a hugely important step forward when it finally gave approval of the design, but the noble Lord is right that there is not a site licence yet. That will be the last stage. To argue that all this should be taken into account without taking account of the whole GDA process seems a little unreal. Therefore, I say yes as regards air transport but I suspect that the other elements may not be quite what the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, intends. I hope that my noble friend may be able to take account of these representations.

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

I congratulate my colleague and noble friend on the rigour with which he has approached this area. It is the nature of probing amendments to make sure that what it says on the tin is what the Government are going to do. If we can get it right, we can avoid the kind of problems which I encountered many years ago as a constituency Member. I picked up the local newspaper to be told that the local authority rubbish tip near one of my villages was a nuclear dump. I then had a terrible job trying to find out who was responsible for the nuclear element within it. It transpired that it concerned a lecturer at Stirling University and that all we were really talking about was the lowest of low-level waste coming out of the radiology departments of the local hospitals. For about 20 minutes, it afforded one of the local hysterics an opportunity to parade his anxiety about all things nuclear. However, it also indicated that there is an awful lot of loose talk. Therefore, if at this stage we can make the issue of associated sites clear and explicit, and even if it is a somewhat tortuous process, as I think my noble friend has indicated, that will be important.

We should not lose sight of the fact that, at some stage or another, a lot of low-level waste is gathered together and taken to Drigg, where it is treated. As we say in Scotland, “Many a mickle maks a muckle”. You end up with a whole lot of little bits of radiological and nuclear waste being brought together on a site and being treated. Therefore, it is important that we differentiate between that which is a nuclear site and that which is not.

It is clear that throughout, for example, the generic design assessment process, which looked at the two new forms of reactors that we may well see in the UK, the Environment Agency walked step-by-step with the nuclear agency at the same time. As Lord Jenkins just said, it is important that we make sure that—

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

Perhaps I may make one thing clear at the beginning. I have no ‘s’ on the end of my name. There is correspondence in the archive at Cambridge University between my great-grandfather and the great Lord Kelvin. My great-grandfather said to Lord Kelvin, “Mind you, when you take out the patent, you must not spell my name with an ‘s’”.

15:15

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

If only an “s” were the only thing that I had to worry about. When you have a name such as O'Neill, it can be spelt about five different ways. In some instances, it is an ‘l’ of a difference at the end—but we will pass over that.

The point that I wanted to get at here is that we know that there are problems with the successor agency. There is a proliferation of agencies with which the nuclear agency will have to be associated and will be linked to. It is very useful that we have this opportunity for the Minister, probably somewhat tortuously, to make the matter quite clear. In this day of judicial review and the like, what we say in these Committees, when we are being sensible and relevant, is of some significance outwith this place. Therefore, it will be guidance for people. I still have some sympathy for constituency MPs confronted with the prospect of a nuclear dump in their back yard. In my constituency, it was almost in the field where we believe the Battle of Bannockburn was fought, but it was not quite. They did not need to use nuclear weapons in 1314, although we might have to use something akin to them in 2014—but that is for another day and another debate. I welcome the amendments and wish them well until they are withdrawn.

[Lord Deben]

My Lords, I do not think that one can add much to what my noble friend Lord Jenkin said, except to underline one thing, which is the question of the sites and their management. I declare an interest as the chairman of Valpak. We are responsible for a good deal of recycling.

First, there is a real issue about sites and the checking of sites. Wherever the check can come on the product, one is in a much stronger position. My noble friend’s point is that, in many cases, the site is actually not a nuclear site at all but the product is provided for a nuclear installation. In those circumstances, it is very important that any consideration of the checking of sites should be limited to those which one has to check and not include those which one does not. That is more important than one might think, given how difficult such checking is.

Secondly, I support the point made by the noble Lord, Lord O'Neill, as I was also previously a Member of Parliament—for a constituency with two nuclear power stations. It is interesting how quickly people become happy to have those nuclear power stations once they understand the situation but how easy it is to stir something up when you have them. The only way to overcome those things, as I know the Minister will understand, is to have absolute clarity and to state matters in a form and in language that people can understand.

When we sought planning permission for Sizewell B, I held nearly 50 parish meetings. The trick was that the only people who could come to those meetings were people who lived in the parish, so the peripatetic protesters could not arrive and we could have a proper conversation. The protesters had to go to their own parish meetings. At most of them, they were well known and not altogether liked. Therefore, the discussions, considered and reasonable as they were, ended up with all those parishes supporting the opening of the new nuclear power station. My noble friend should be reminded that what made it work was the simplicity and clarity with which we discussed the issue. I hope that in answering what I think has been an interesting debate, particularly the discussion between the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and my noble friend Lord Jenkin, she will give us an assurance that we will continue to be as clear as possible. This is a very dangerous area in which to be unclear and it helps a great deal if there is clarity from the beginning.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I ought to declare an interest in the sense that, unless climate change has made a difference, I live about 10 miles due north-east of Sellafield. I also regularly use the A66, which is used by vehicles carrying nuclear materials and waste, and I also use the M6. I am sure that other noble Lords and I have that in common.

I shall start by reflecting on what my noble friend Lord Whitty said. It is good to see that the department has taken these issues seriously in the Bill. His amendments are extremely constructive and helpful in strengthening what the department obviously takes seriously, and that is right.

Perhaps I may make a couple of observations. First, I should like to pick up on what the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said. The Minister knows about my preoccupations with the recycling and waste process. I believe it is essential always to remember that this is a national responsibility and that we have to be certain that the sites selected are the best—or, at any rate, the least worst—available in the United Kingdom. It is irresponsible to get this tangled up with localism, local responsibility and so on. It is quite unfair to place on a local authority and local representatives responsibility for strategic decisions on such an important national issue. This is a national responsibility and we must approach it in that context. Of course it would be appropriate, at the right time, to get involved with local authorities on the implications, but we have to be satisfied that we are acting responsibly as a nation.

Secondly, I have often reflected in life that one of the problems that we run into as legislators is that we are inclined to think that legislation provides the answer. Of course, it does not. Legislation at its best underpins what should be in society’s behaviour and enhances the opportunities for good, effective professionalism and so on. Inadequate arrangements work exactly in the opposite direction and inhibit good action. Although sometimes with imperfect structures wonderful things can happen, it is much better and more reassuring to have the best possible structures and arrangements.

My most important point is that what matters most is the culture. It has to be a culture shared by workers and management at all levels. It cannot be the responsibility of only the safety experts or those named with a safety responsibility or the inspectorate. That is a losing game; it is like a gamekeeper trying to catch poachers. The responsibility must be central to the professionalism and culture of all those involved in this work because the hazards are considerable. From that standpoint, I hope that in our deliberations we will look at this sense of shared cultural responsibility.

I do not want to be sensationalist—it is easy to be sensationalist in an area such as this—but for those of us who live in an area like Cumbria there are too many stories of one thing after another going wrong. We have just had another massive fine imposed in the past few weeks. We have had stories of lorries coming from the Midlands with waste dribbling from them all the way across to their destination in west Cumbria. It is important to make sure that this issue is properly seized and that there is an indispensable culture of commitment in the whole nuclear operation. I want nuclear to succeed but this is essential to its success and contribution to humanity.

My final point is simply this: there is probably room for us to explore a little more the relationship between what we are talking about now and health. There needs to be full co-operation between all those involved and those operating the health services in the vicinity. Sometimes in these areas matters come to light that need attention, and I hope that that point can be taken on board.

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, for his careful consideration of this part of the Bill. I will start by commenting on questions that have been raised before going through my notes to be able to answer, I hope, each amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has raised. The noble Lord mentioned the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee’s report. We are extremely grateful to the committee and are giving careful consideration to its recommendations and working closely with it to provide it with further documentation. I hope to get that to it very soon.

The noble Lord asked whether the Bill covered sites yet to be granted a licence. The definition of a relevant nuclear installation includes proposed installation sites, so the answer is yes. No safety critical work can ever happen unless a licence has been issued.

I start by congratulating my noble friend Lord Jenkin because next year he will be completing 50 years of continued service in Parliament and we are extremely grateful for that.

[Noble Lords]

Hear, hear!

[Baroness Verma]

When my noble friend said 1965, I tried to remember what I was doing then and I think I was probably playing around in a nursery playschool. I am extremely grateful for the wisdom and support of my noble friend and for being able to count on his great experience when I need information and advice. He is clearly very formidable in his experience and we all greatly benefit from that, even though he sometimes poses incredibly difficult questions for me to answer. One question he posed was whether ONR still has licensing provisions in the Nuclear Installations Act 1965. The answer is that ONR will be responsible for enforcing the nuclear safety sections of the 1965 Act, including, for example, the granting of nuclear site licences.

I am also extremely grateful to my noble friend Lord Deben for his contribution. He is absolutely right about engagement and clarity. I hope that I will be able to respond with clarity to the amendments that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has raised. I have also learnt a new terminology today from the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill. I am always amazed at these debates at what they turn up and I can then use—probably at an event tomorrow, when I am going to be speaking on “mickles” and “muckles”. I perhaps need to get greater clarification on exactly what it means, in case I end up in huge amounts of trouble.

The noble Lord, Lord Judd, and I share sometimes opposing views on the way in which we deal with waste, but I hope that we remain in constructive dialogue on this subject. The noble Lord should understand that I still firmly believe in localism and the involvement of local people in how sites in their communities are located. While a site is always in the national interest, we must never forget that those communities have to live with whatever site is on their patch.

I turn to Amendment 38B. The noble Lord has asked that the definition “GB nuclear site” in Clause 57 should be replaced by “GB civil nuclear site”. While the ONR’s role does not extend to regulating nuclear safety on Crown nuclear sites—as the noble Lord has picked up—such as those owned by the Ministry of Defence, there is a number of licensed nuclear sites which are operated by civil contractors for defence purposes. The ONR will have overall responsibility for these sites, which include the Atomic Weapons Establishment sites at Aldermaston and Burghfield and the Rolls Royce nuclear submarine fuel production plant in Derby among others. Therefore, while I appreciate the noble Lord’s efforts to add greater clarity to the Bill here, I do not think that amending it in the way that he seeks will make the definition any clearer.

Amendment 38C extends the definitions included within Clause 57 to the rest of the Bill. This amendment, however, is not required, as the terms defined in the clause are not used without appropriate reference elsewhere in the Bill. Therefore, the noble Lord should rest assured that the terms are covered, if not at the front of the Bill.

15:30

The first part of Amendment 38D requires the Secretary of State to hold and maintain a list of nuclear sites. The transparency and availability of quality information to the public is an issue that affects us all and I am grateful that the noble Lord has raised it. He asked where it could be put for easy public access. Perhaps I may direct the noble Lord to the website of the Department of Energy and Climate Change, where, along with maps of nuclear sites, he will find other information.

There is already a requirement for the Secretary of State to hold such a list of nuclear sites—I have directed the noble Lord to where it is—and it comes under Section 6 of the Nuclear Installations Act 1965. That section was pivotal enough to the operation of the ONR that it has been redrafted in clearer language, which I think is what my noble friend Lord Deben was asking for. The language is clearer and it appears in Schedule 12 to the Bill, on page 180. I hope that that reassures noble Lords that such a list will continue to be required and maintained in future.

The second half of Amendment 38D seeks to define “associated sites” in Clause 57(1)(a). I am grateful to the noble Lord for his amendment. His proposed definition is broader than we intended, and supporting the operation of any nuclear installation could potentially expand the ONR’s nuclear safety remit beyond what is intended. “Associated sites” in the context of this clause was designed to cover any element of a nuclear site that was not a nuclear installation. For example, buildings and roads, if improperly placed, could have the potential to affect the safe evacuation of a site. Although we see the benefit in defining an associated site, we are concerned that the noble Lord’s amendment does not cover the intent of the clause. Therefore, I cannot accept it as it is, but I will take it away, consider it further and perhaps return to it at a later stage.

Amendment 38F extends the ONR’s nuclear security purposes to include UK aircraft transporting nuclear material. I should like to make it clear that, without this amendment, the transport of nuclear material by air within the UK, or to or from a UK nuclear site, is already within the ONR’s nuclear security purposes. The effect of this amendment would be to extend the ONR’s purposes to UK aircraft operating elsewhere in the world—on transports with no connection to the UK or its sites. This is an unnecessary extension to the existing regulatory system and scope of the regulator, and it would not be practical to enforce. The security of nuclear material transported by air outside of the UK will continue to be regulated by the relevant international regulators under the requirements of international air safety and security law.

Amendment 38J also relates to transport by air—in this case, seeking to extend the ONR’s purposes to include the safety of radioactive material transported by air. This function is currently carried out by the Civil Aviation Authority, with support, by agency agreement, for certain aspects from the ONR. This is a well established split of responsibility between safety regulators. It works very efficiently and will continue to do so with the creation of the ONR. Therefore, it is not necessary to alter the current approach through the Bill.

Amendment 40N is linked to Amendment 38D. It widens the definition of “nuclear site” to include any sites that are yet to be granted a nuclear site licence within a list of sites required by Amendment 38D. Under the Nuclear Installations Act 1965, it is, as I have already said, against the law to operate a nuclear site without a nuclear site licence. Therefore, I am slightly unclear about what sites the noble Lord proposes this amendment would bring within the definition. I will of course work with the noble Lord to try to address and understand some of his concerns ahead of Report, if he so wishes.

Finally, I come to Amendment 40R relating to parliamentary procedure for regulations made under Section 18 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, which transfers “enforcing authority” responsibility from the Health and Safety Executive to the ONR or the Office of Rail Regulation. The current negative resolution procedure for assigning enforcement authority status from the Health and Safety Executive to local authorities or the Rail Regulator is well established and therefore I do not see good reason for changing this with the creation of the ONR. I hope that noble Lords are satisfied with my responses and that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, will withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I will be very happy to withdraw the amendment and I thank the Minister very much for the clarification. I think there are still things which in some respects are not as clear as perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Deben, and I would like, and I will quickly go through them. I am grateful for the support of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, in relation to air transport and his general intervention. He talked a lot about the relationships with other organisations, which arise in the group after next, and that also tempted my noble friend Lord O’Neill down the same road. If my noble friend does not mind, I will not respond to that at this point. I am also grateful for the Minister’s indication about how the Government intend to deal with the report of the Delegated Powers Committee, and no doubt we can return to that on Report.

In relation to the designation of “civil” and the requirement on the list of sites, I regret that I failed to notice that there is a reference to a list of sites on page 180. That would be extremely helpful. It would clarify the issue, because I do not expect anybody would expect the AWRE at Aldermaston to appear on a civil nuclear site list but I suspect they might for the Rolls Royce engineering works. I also suspect there will be others where it is not absolutely clear. I am not arguing that they should be within the ONR’s remit, but from first principles, it will not be obvious that it is not. So, while the list will be helpful, some clarity is still needed.

Regarding aircraft, I am still not absolutely clear. Clearly the CAA does have some responsibilities here, as does the international regulatory authority, but the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, seemed to say that internal flights were already covered. Both I and the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, could not see where that is in Clause 59, where it very clearly refers to internal shipping and internal or territorial waters for shipping and to rail and road, but not to air. I am not expecting an answer now, but to me what the noble Baroness was saying did not seem absolutely clear.

On the issue of “associated sites”, clearly my definition is too wide and I would not expect the ONR to be regulating the activity of the distillers that are putting bubbles in our bubbly. I think that operationally there is a need for a definition of associated sites. As the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said, it is more product-related, but whether they regulate that only at the point where it arrived on a licensed nuclear site is at the frontier of the ONR’s responsibility.

All I was trying to establish regarding the pre-licensing activity, which I think the noble Lords, Lord Jenkin and Lord Deben, describe—and taking Hinkley Point as an example—was that the HSE and the ONR as was and the new ONR have a responsibility well before there is any nuclear activity on that site. So that is within its area of responsibility. It is not a licensed nuclear site until the activity begins, but it has a major role in preparing for that. Therefore, it should be part of the ONR’s responsibilities. That is all that amendment was attempting to establish.

We have had an interesting and wide-ranging debate—slightly wider ranging than the actual amendment—and I thank the Minister for clarifying some of that. If her officials feel that there is more which needs clarifying, either in a letter or by way of some discussions, I would be very open to that. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 38B withdrawn.

Amendments 38C and 38D not moved.

Clause 57 agreed.

Clause 58 : Nuclear site health and safety purposes

Amendment 38E

Moved by

[Lord Whitty]

38E: Clause 58, page 55, line 42, at end insert—
“( ) For the purposes of this section, the provision of section 2 of the 1974 Act with regard to information to and representation of workers on health and safety issues shall continue to apply.”

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, this amendment deals with relatively bread-and-butter matters and with the effects of the transfer of responsibility for non-nuclear health and safety functions on nuclear sites from the HSE to the ONR. In various ways, we seek to ensure that there is continued protection for the workers on those sites, even though the ONR and not the HSE is now the appropriate regulator and enforcer, and that the provisions of the health and safety Act of 1974 would continue to apply.

Amendment 38E states unambiguously, for clarity’s sake, that the workers on ONR sites still have the rights provided under Section 2 of the 1974 Act. I was involved in the discussions on the 1974 Act. I cannot go back quite as far as the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, did—to 1965—although, within three years of that Act being passed, I worked on one of the nuclear sites that it applied to. However, Section 2 of the 1974 act provides the basic health and safety rights: to information, to representation through safety reps and to consultation. I am concerned here mainly with non-nuclear matters on nuclear sites, but I want it made clear that that provision will still apply to those workers in relation to both nuclear and non-nuclear matters.

I will jump to Amendment 38U, which is perhaps a bit esoteric. It deals with existing compensation schemes for workers on nuclear sites where there is the issue of existing schemes, particularly in relation to radiation damage, and where collective arrangements were established 20 or so years ago. The change of regulations and the change in responsibility should not alter the ability of workers on nuclear sites to receive the compensation provided under those schemes, which avoid lengthy and complex legal proceedings. The Minister is looking puzzled at this. I am happy to talk to her officials outside but it is important that that is retained.

More controversially, Amendment 38T would delete the application to this sector of a change that was made under the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act a few weeks ago. It was pretty controversial in this House and I suspect that even those who voted for it here did not expect it to apply on nuclear sites. Writing the implications of that Act into this Bill means that on nuclear sites, whether for non-nuclear issues or for nuclear issues that are not specifically provided for in the regulations, there is no ability for a worker to seek compensation for a breach of statutory duty. Taking the economy as a whole, “breach of statutory duty” can cover a wide range of things—we had that debate the other week. However, that a breach of statutory duty on a nuclear site, for whatever reason, should not allow the worker to sue for that breach is not what the public would expect.

There is a particular sensitivity about this change applying to nuclear sites, whatever the merits of a general change. Your Lordships can imagine the situation arising where workers had been affected as a result of a breach of statutory duty by the management or the contractors on a nuclear site. If those workers were unable to sue for that breach of statutory duty, there would be outrage in every newspaper from the Daily Mail to the Morning Star. The department and the ONR need to be conscious of that and at least modify these clauses a little to ensure that that eventuality could not arise. I beg to move.

15:45

[Lord Deben]

My Lords, on the controversial comment that was just made, I find it very difficult because I do not believe that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has quite got it right. The sort of error that would cause there to be a special need to be able to sue would be suable under the law without the breach of statutory duty, which is a very narrow statement that you can sue for the statutory duty being breached irrespective, in a sense, of the effect. The kind of concern that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has raised, which he does not mention but is pressing towards, is something that I cannot conceive could possibly not be available in a law case for someone who was damaged by it.

I have a particular reason why I hope that the Government will not give way to this proposal. One problem of nuclear sites—I have dealt with them for much of my adult life, with Sizewell A and Sizewell B—is that for the most part they are like any other site. One difficulty of treating them as if they are always nuclear rather than like any other site is that often quite unnecessary concerns are raised. I always remember a very small fire in a small shed a long way from the actual nuclear site, but on the nuclear periphery, and the sort of headlines that it got, whereas if it had been on an allotment there would have been no news about it at all. It became a nuclear accident.

I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, will understand that the sort of issues that might properly excite him, the Daily Mail and the Morning Star—although whether anybody would notice that the Morning Star had been excited by it would be a real question—are covered by the law in any case. To make a special exemption here would cause a problem to those of us who have to deal with those sites, because it suggests that they are so different from other sites that they should have special protection, of the sort that we talked about in the previous debate. I hope that noble Lords opposite will remember that I was not entirely a supporter of the Government on many aspects of that Bill, so it is not because I am trying to defend it. However, this amendment would be a mistake, is unnecessary and would not be worth having, because it has a disadvantage in how it treats nuclear sites that would be damaging.

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, in creating the ONR as a statutory body, it is important to ensure that the tenets of health and safety will continue to apply to the regulated community. Before I go on to respond to Amendment 38E, I should like to respond to Amendment 38U first, because it is important that I allay the noble Lord’s fears early on.

We considered in detail during the drafting of this clause that the amendment ensured that existing rights of compensation continued to remain available if people developed cancers or were subject to accidents. It is clear that it is still covered under the Nuclear Installations Act 1965, which puts in place a regime for compensating those who suffer injury or damage as a result of a nuclear incident. The regime covers nuclear incidents at nuclear-licensed sites or Crown sites, and claims are permitted to be made up to 30 years after the incident. I hope that has helped to address the noble Lord’s concerns lying behind the amendment.

In Amendment 38E, the noble Lord seeks to ensure that Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act continues to apply to nuclear sites in Great Britain regulated by the ONR. I can reassure him that the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act and relevant legislation made under it will continue to apply to ONR-regulated sites. This will include Section 2, and therefore I do not think that the amendment is necessary.

For clarity, amendments to the HSWA in Schedule 12 to the Bill will create the statutory ONR as an enforcing authority on nuclear sites and, as such, the statutory body will be responsible for the enforcement of all non-nuclear health and safety legislation, including operators’ compliance with the requirements for the provision of information and representation of workers. I think that that addresses the noble Lord’s fears.

Amendment 38T deals with civil liability. Clause 65 of the Bill sets out the application of civil liability for a breach of a duty contained in nuclear regulations and the safety provisions of the Nuclear Installations Act 1965.

As noble Lords may recall—I think that the noble Lord referred to it earlier—in the last parliamentary Session the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act amended the civil liability provisions contained within the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. The amendment would remove the provision setting out that breaches of a duty imposed by health and safety regulations would always be actionable where they gave rise to damage. Such regulations would include any made for the ONR’s nuclear safety, security, safeguards and radioactive materials transport purposes.

The amendment seeks to undermine the decision made in this House and the other place that civil liability should apply to health and safety legislation only where specific provision is made. Therefore, rather than making clear provision reversing the situation, the amendment would remove the clear wording of the existing clause, making it unclear whether a claim for breach of a statutory duty could be brought. The amendment does not seek to amend parallel provision in the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. By not doing so, it would create an unequal regime between the two major pieces of health and safety legislation in the field—this Bill and the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act. It would be inappropriate and untenable for us to create a statutory regime between the civil nuclear industry and others.

I hope that the noble Lord has found that explanation reassuring. However, if he would like further clarification and would like to meet with officials, I shall be more than happy to extend that invitation to him and to other noble Lords.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that. I am very satisfied with at least one and a half and possibly two out of three. I certainly accept her assurance that the provisions in Amendment 38U are not necessary. I was concerned that the Bill should not affect a scheme which provides a set level of damages for minor radiation activities and which has run for 30 or 40 years. I was party to the negotiations that set it up. Although there will now be very few people claiming under that scheme, there are some, and I hope that it will not be affected by the change of jurisdiction. Therefore, I am grateful for the Minister’s reassurance, which I hope is sufficient.

I do not expect the Government to change their mind about civil liability but I think that it was right for me to table this amendment because it draws attention to the consequences. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, says that we should not treat such sites any differently from any other sites. However, for all sorts of reasons, nuclear sites are dealt with differently, and the whole of this legislation deals with them differently. There is a highly subjective dimension to it and, in effect, he referred to that. If there is an incident on a nuclear site, it gets blown out of all proportion. I think that all sides of this Committee are in favour of an extension of the provision of our nuclear energy sources in this country.

We also know that it would not take a lot to turn public opinion in the wrong direction—we need only look at Germany—and for the whole strategy to fall flat on its face. It would be quite wrong if that arose because of a health and safety issue that was not provided for in the nuclear regulations, whether it concerned an omission regarding nuclear waste or nuclear material, or some other breach by the management at a nuclear plant. The reality is that the level of safety on nuclear sites, not only in respect of nuclear issues but on all others, has to be—the industry recognises this—of the highest order, and any breach must lead to a sanction.

[Lord Deben]

I would not want the noble Lord to mistake what I said. Of course a nuclear site, by its very nature, has to be treated seriously and differently. The Bill has a great deal of that difference in it. The issue I raised was this. The noble Lord referred to something that was not about nuclear sites but was a general statement of workers’ rights, and in particular of their ability to sue. The ability to sue here is based on a failure to meet responsibilities in a way that all of us would deplore. However, it has nothing to do with nuclear matters. Any failure in the nuclear area is already covered.

I know that the noble Lord wanted another go at what we discussed before. That is all well and good, and I would not for one moment stop him. I have done it myself and no doubt I will do it again. It takes one to see another; let us be perfectly clear about that. However, I say to the noble Lord that it is not sensible, even in his delicate way, to give people fears that are not reasonable. This question is dealt with fully in the Bill, and in other Acts. What the noble Lord is asking for has nothing to do with nuclear sites. If we were to agree to it, it would suggest that somehow or another it did. As it does not, it would be a faulty suggestion.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I did not expect to convince the Minister, but before he stood up I had a slight hope of convincing the noble Lord, Lord Deben. Clearly, I have none whatever now. However, on a site such as Sellafield there are things that can go wrong that are not related to the handling of nuclear material but that could be fairly disastrous not only for objective reasons in terms of the damage they might do to workers and others on the site, but for the general reputation of the site. The fact that that would then lead to an inability to sue for a breach of statutory duty seems wrong. As the noble Lord, Lord Deben, indicated, I think that it is wrong in other sectors as well. However, we have special responsibility in going through the Bill to make sure that the nuclear sector is not vulnerable to things that government lawyers have changed in other respects that will have a disproportionately negative effect on the image of the nuclear industry. For that reason, I am not happy with the Minister’s reply, but I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 38E withdrawn.

Clause 58 agreed.

Clause 59: Nuclear security purposes

Amendment 38F not moved.

Amendment 38G

Moved by

[Lord Whitty]

38G: Clause 59, page 57, line 23, at end insert—
“(4) Operations of the ONR under this section shall be conducted in conjunction with the Department for Energy and Climate Change.”

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I will speak also to the other amendments in this large group, to which the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, and my noble friends Lord O’Neill and Lord Judd, have already referred. The ONR does not operate in isolation. Many other bodies—both regulatory bodies and operational, quasi-regulatory bodies—operate in this field. The ONR has relations with government departments and bodies such as the Environment Agency. I declare a recent past interest as a board member and non-executive director of the Environment Agency. In my final two years on the board, I had responsibility for nuclear matters.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has huge responsibilities in relation to nuclear waste. Although not directly a regulator, it is a quasi-regulator on account of the conditions in which it deals with contracts and with the care of nuclear waste. We have referred to the Defence Nuclear Safety Regulator; there is clearly some overlap in responsibilities there. On the security side, there is also the Civil Nuclear Constabulary. There may be others. There are certainly some local authority responsibilities as well.

16:00

It is very important that the ONR acts in co-ordination with these other bodies, knows what the boundaries are and who is responsible for what, and can, where necessary, act jointly with them. As the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, says, there are existing memoranda of understanding. I am familiar with the one with the Environment Agency and there are others. When we talk about the Environment Agency, we must also recognise that there are also different bodies in Scotland and, shortly, in Wales that have those responsibilities. All those facets of the ONR’s responsibility need to be addressed.

Before I come to the issue of general co-ordination, the first two of these amendments, Amendments 38G and 38H, deal with a different matter: the relationship between the ONR and government departments. I was slightly surprised, to be honest, when I read quite recently the Commons debate on this, to realise that the ONR was going to have the DWP as its sponsor and not DECC. The logic of that is that the HSE’s sponsor is the DWP; some people would query the logic of that but nevertheless that is the situation. It seems absurd to have the ONR dealing with such a vital sector of the Department for Energy and Climate Change’s responsibilities but being the responsibility of a different Secretary of State—so when we refer to the Secretary of State in this legislation, the presumption is that it will be the DWP unless otherwise specified. There are references in the text to co-ordination with DECC. The amendments suggest that there should be rather more. Frankly, I would prefer the sponsorship to shift to DECC and then it would be pretty obvious that co-ordination and joint activity between the department and the regulator was necessary. Failing that, we need some sharper requirements on co-ordination between the department and the ONR.

Amendments 38K, 38L and 38M concern co-ordination, which can be dealt with through the memorandum of understanding. It would be useful if the Minister could provide us—not now but some time before Report—with a diagram of where all those different authorities interface and who is responsible for what in relation to nuclear sites. Amendment 40E requires co-operation as regards the health and safety function, which is understandable. Amendment 38P requires joint regulation with the Environment Agency, for example, in relation to design. That was referred to before: the generic design is actually a joint activity between the ONR—or the HSE as was—and the Environment Agency. Amendment 38S, which deals with offences, recognises that some of the powers and some of the enforcement have to go to other agencies under the nuclear regulations. Amendment 40Q concerns Schedule 12, which deals with the transfer of responsibilities between bodies. The text refers to the ONR and the Rail Regulator. The Environment Agency, at least, also needs to be in there because there are some areas where some future rationalisation of the responsibilities between the two authorities ought to be addressed.

I think that I have dealt with most of the major points in this group. I hope that, while we can have a further debate, people will recognise that whether we achieve the co-ordination and the understanding between the agencies via an existing memorandum of understanding or a new one, it is vital that the legislation reflects the need for the ONR to act in co-ordination with these other bodies and for the public and management and workers in the nuclear sector to understand where the authorities’ responsibilities begin and end. I am not expecting the Minister to accept all or any of the amendments in this group as they stand, but this needs to be addressed, at least in some generic way, in the Bill. I beg to move.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, I must start with an apology. I dealt in my earlier speech with arguments which are much more relevant to the group of amendments to which the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has just spoken. I sometimes wish that there were a cut and paste facility for Hansard so that the relevant paragraphs could be taken out and inserted at the appropriate place. I will not repeat those arguments as they are on the record, even if they are in the wrong place. I apologise for that and hope that colleagues will forgive me.

However, I must take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, on Amendments 38G and 38H. I understand his argument that because the ONR will not be, as it were, under DECC but under the DWP, there therefore needs to be a reference to DECC. I ask him to think what the public perception would be of a clause which said that the operations of the ONR had to be “conducted in conjunction” with DECC. One can only imagine the situation that might arise. Supposing there was an argument whereby the ONR was unhappy about certain aspects of a licence for a nuclear installation but DECC was seriously worried about the implications for the country’s security of supply.

To my mind, any suggestion that DECC could lean on the ONR to modify its advice in order to satisfy the DECC requirement would be hugely damaging. For that reason, the noble Lord’s amendment needs to be looked at with great care. As I said earlier, the essence of this part of the Bill is to give the ONR a much greater degree of independence than it has had so far. That is done for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that people should have confidence in its expertise to do what is right to secure the safety of nuclear installations and all who work there and of the public who live near them, without showing fear or favour to any government department. Of course, in the end, somebody has to bid for the money to provide that. That is the role of the DWP and in that sense it is separate from DECC. However, that should not give rise to any possible suspicion that the ONR could come under the influence of DECC. That is my view. I shall be very interested to hear what my noble friend has to say about that.

I have already dealt with the question of collaboration. I am worried that if there is too much, one will get a clouding of who is responsible for what. I would not complain in the least if my noble friend were to agree to the request of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, for a diagram to be produced before Report showing where the lines of responsibility fall. It seems to me that that would be helpful to the debate. Perhaps eventually it could be made available for public consumption, if that appeared to be appropriate. However, one has to be jolly careful in this area. Some of the issues are dealt with already in other parts of the Bill—I have no doubt that my noble friend will refer to that—or in legislative powers that exist elsewhere. I have again looked through the 1965 Act and some of them are there, surviving as current legislation. As I said, the memorandums of understanding are hugely important. Although they may have to be modified in the light of the passing of the Bill, they should certainly continue to exist.

The question of whether regulators other than the ONR should have powers and responsibilities for the enforcement of regulations is difficult. Already, nuclear operators can be prosecuted by two regulators if they are guilty of offences that offend the legislation of both of them. Again, we have to be very careful not to muddle the lines in any way. I ask my noble friend to look at that matter with some circumspection. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has posed a series of important questions, and I, for one, look forward to my noble friend’s reply in due course.

[Lord Deben]

My Lords, I want to refer particularly to the suggestion that DECC and the DWP should in some sense be brought together in this. I speak as a former Minister for health and safety. I also speak from a family background with a great interest in what happened in the coal industry in South Wales. There is no doubt that one of the problems of the nationalisation of the coal industry was that it was always thought that, because it was a nationalised industry, there was no need to make a real distinction between the industry and the way in which it was policed. In the early days, that was not thought to be important because people had a very high-minded view about what nationalisation meant. I am not going to enter into that discussion but that was what people thought. They felt that if it were nationalised there was no need to have too strong a distinction between the way the whole thing was run because everyone was working particularly for the benefit of the miners as well as for the customers outside. One can perfectly understand the history of what led to that.

However, there is no doubt that as time went on it became more and more clear that you had to be very different. You had to think about the fact that, whatever else was true, management—even management with the highest ideals and attitudes—could not really be responsible for policing itself. You had to be very careful about that. Therefore, increasingly we divided it and made sure that the policing of the system—looking at the mines and making sure that they were safe—was very separate.

As a Minister for health and safety, it always seemed that the most important thing about our regulation was that it showed that the ministry responsible for a particular industry had to be second-guessed right the way up to the Minister. The Minister responsible for health and safety was not the same Minister as the one who was responsible for many of the industries which the Health and Safety Executive policed. I always thought that that was terribly important. Inside the then department of whatever it was, now the Department for Work and Pensions, there was a culture of seeing that as a most important independent difference.

I feel very strongly that there is always a suspicion among the public that the nuclear industry is so powerful and strong that it can lean on Ministers. I remember that the industry used to act like that. When I was Secretary of State for the Environment, I got some pretty offensive interventions by senior people in the nuclear industry because I waited until I had the full reports as to whether I should give planning permission for the test drilling of a deep site for nuclear waste. When I turned that down because the nuclear industry had failed to meet the requirements of the Planning Acts, I cannot tell the Committee how rude, offensive and utterly self-opinionated the industry was because I said, “You haven’t obeyed the law. As the planning Minister”—not the nuclear Minister—“I will not give you planning permission because you have not looked at alternative sites and all kinds of other things”, and I turned it down. That was done by someone who was known to be in favour of nuclear power. However, I felt uncomfortable about the two connections because, as the environment Minister, I had responsibilities which ran across the two.

16:15

I say to noble Lords and particularly to the Minister that it is crucially important that people do not think that the independent investigation and safety regulation of the nuclear industry can be leant on by any powerful group. The Department for Energy and Climate Change needs to be protected from that allegation. Although it is uneasy, peculiar and odd, and when you first look at it you wonder why—I have every sympathy with the observation of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, that it does not seem to be fit—as my noble friend Lord Jenkin said, it is absolutely true that this is the most dangerous thing to do. You have to have your policemen here and the policed there, and you need the public to understand that that is the case. It was helpful to have two nuclear power stations in my constituency because I was able to say to my constituents that the investigations, discussions and decisions were undertaken by someone who was utterly separate from the Ministry of Energy, as it was at one stage, and then the Department of Trade and Industry; that the department did not have control over the people who did the investigations.

I am sorry to have delayed the Committee but the experience of not only the nuclear industry but the coal industry before it should lead one very much to support what the Government have proposed.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

Does my noble friend recollect, as I do, the ghastly events of the landslide at Aberfan? With three other Members of Parliament, I was due to go on a visit to the mining industry just after it happened. I remember that we were briefed by Lord Robens, who was then the chairman of the National Coal Board. He was completely shattered by what had happened in Aberfan and he made it a matter of personal responsibility. He went down there, he attended a number of the meetings that were held and he followed it up.

My noble friend has given an example of the kind of thing that can go wrong if you muddle the responsibilities. My noble and learned friend Lord Howe of Aberavon was one of the counsel who took part in the Aberfan case and for him, too, it was one of the most shattering events that he had ever taken part in. Aberfan is a very good example of why one has got to make absolutely certain that these responsibilities are separated.

[Lord Deben]

I agree with my noble friend about that example. The reason I drew from familial experience was that I was brought up by a father who had pastoral responsibility for one of the mining villages in south Wales. For him, that event was most devastating. Although as a family we were not affected by it, my father was affected by his memories of what he had to do in those kinds of circumstances. I remember vividly his comment that you can never trust to police an industry those for whom the main interest is the industry as a whole. That is not because they are bad men and women, but simply because they would have to wear two different hats, and you should not ask people to wear two different hats. That is why we keep on talking about declarations of interest and so on. We know that however good and sensible you are, it is sometimes quite difficult to remember which hat you are wearing.

Again, I agree with my noble friend—Aberfan remains in one’s heart in a very special way and will be there until the day one dies, even though one was removed from it. That is simply because of the effect it had on people one knew and upon the memories of my father. I feel strongly that we should not allow the lesson that we should have learnt from the coal industry to be forgotten in this industry.

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

I have some sympathy with the remarks that have been made, which sets me at variance with my noble friend. When I was chairing the Trade and Industry Select Committee in the late 1990s, we went to Dounreay, which has been the subject of many investigations and problems. Had other colleagues been here, I am sure they would have be able to embellish this far more than I can. At Dounreay, there had quite clearly been a failure to scrutinise the safety arrangements on the part of what was then the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate. It is fair to say that that part of the inspectorate had pretty well gone native. Dounreay is in a very isolated part of the UK. You cannot go very much further north without getting wet. It is natural that everybody was living and working together, playing golf on the same golf courses, probably drinking in the same pubs and what have you. They came together.

An independent report had to be carried out. It was carried out and, as the Select Committee, we wanted to see it. We were told by the DTI Minister at the time, who I think was John Battle, that it would not be appropriate for a Select Committee to see it. The DTI was the sponsoring ministry. The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate was in those days, as it is now, sponsored by the equivalent of the DWP. It took the Secretary of State for Scotland, who had environmental responsibility for the area, to step in and say, “Publish and be damned”, so we got access to the report. In fact, it was not anything like as damning as people had anticipated, but it was essential that it was produced.

There is a danger in establishing this umbilical link between the sponsoring department and the functions. We have seen it in agriculture and food safety in the past. And we have taken strenuous steps to correct it, but there are still problems. In my experience, the nature of the nuclear industry is such that it is a secretive industry. It grew out of the production of weapons-grade material for nuclear weapons. While it is now under commercial control in a number of respects, it nevertheless still has a culture of understandable secrecy, partly because of what would be regarded as security but also because it is so damn dangerous. The truth is that because of the way in which in the industry is handled, the dangers are minimal.

The culture of the industry is determined not only by security but by safety. At times, there is a sense in which the industry is covering its own back as well as trying to protect people. That is natural. Even today nuclear installations are for the most part in relatively isolated, secluded areas. It is common knowledge that Sellafield was chosen during the war because it was most unlikely that German bombers would ever be able to find the place because it is shrouded in mist and it is likely to be raining all the time, hence the Lake District. In those days, it was just a weapons store.

The industry has a security culture and a culture that is understandably and correctly preoccupied with safety, but it is also at times unduly linked to matters of secrecy where safety can be jeopardised. In my limited experience, I confronted a situation where there had been regrettable failures at Dounreay, which have now been corrected. The report on that was nothing like as condemnatory as people thought it would be but there was reluctance to have it published. It took an independent agency, the Scottish Office, and the late Donald Dewar as Secretary of State—who made it quite clear that he saw no reason why we should not have access to it—for us to get the report. I remember that we got a faxed copy of it as we got off the plane in Caithness. The clerk had summarised it by the time we got to Dounreay and we were able to make use of it when we were questioning officials.

There is a danger in creating too close a link between the ministry and this function. It is important that we discuss it and have it aired but I would like to think that we do not go any further with it because there are too many examples of departments looking after their own too carefully. The ONR took a long time to come about. It should really have been in the previous Energy Bill but in those days the DWP and DECC were arm wrestling over it. It was a turf war. The compromise was that they would let it go as long as they had a control over it. The DWP conceded a bit and held a bit and we just have to accept that that is the way in which the matter was agreed. For the reasons I have given, it would be desirable for us to leave it to the DWP rather than having a sponsoring department that might take an overprotective view of what could be at stake here, which could be very serious.

[Lord Roper]

My Lords, when I heard the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, introduce this amendment I had a good deal of sympathy with it. It seemed strange that we should be losing contact with something of such importance but having heard the last three speeches, I see the strength of the points made by my noble friends Lord Jenkin and Lord Deben and by the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill. I hope that on this occasion the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, will think carefully about this amendment.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, before the Minister replies, perhaps I might point out that most of this debate has been about a sponsoring department. I regret making what was a throw-away remark as a background to this, because none of my amendments attempt to or could reassign sponsorship responsibility from one department to another. It is entirely a matter for the Prime Minister. It is not a matter for regulation. I hope the Minister will deal with the amendments on their merits because there is clearly an overwhelming view in this Room on the matter of sponsorship. I am certainly not pursuing that today.

[Baroness Verma]

I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and I hope that I will be able to allay his fears. In fact, I think my noble friends Lord Deben and Lord Jenkin and the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, have explained far more eloquently than I could why it is important that the DWP should remain the main sponsor body. I am extremely pleased to hear that the noble Lord, Lord Roper, has been convinced by argument and has changed his mind. That is the benefit of your Lordships’ House: we can have these detailed debates which highlight how things can be illustrated far better by people with far more experience than I have.

I assure the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, that DECC will still have appropriate statutory levers to ensure the effective delivery of policy areas for which DECC Ministers are accountable to Parliament. Such independence is a requirement of the European nuclear safety directive, which has been implemented by the UK.

I will now address the other amendments in the group, which have not had as much of an airing as the noble Lord would perhaps have liked. Amendments 38K, 38L and 38P allow for changes to how nuclear regulations are made, in particular that they could confer powers on other bodies. The Bill is deliberately focused solely on the ONR and the functions and remit that it needs to be an effective regulator. It would be a significant change of focus to make provision for conferring functions and responsibilities on other regulators and would require changes to many aspects of the Bill. In addition, any regulations made that covered the remit of another organisation could be made jointly with them, using the Bill and another more appropriate legislative vehicle. To that extent, I take the view that these amendments are unnecessary.

16:30

Amendments 38M, 38N and 40M allow for general agreements and co-operation between ONR and other bodies. We have already made adequate arrangements for the statutory ONR to enter into agreements, such as agency co-operation agreements and memorandums of understanding, as my noble friend Lord Jenkin pointed out. It is not necessary for all those relationships to be laid out in the Bill.

It is also inappropriate for co-operation agreements to be a primary function of the ONR, as would be the case under Amendment 40E. The ONR’s principal functions delineate its remit as a regulator, and I do not agree that they should be diluted by agreements that can already be made under the Bill without the need for amendment.

I cannot accept Amendment 38Q, as it unnecessarily limits the type of persons who can be prohibited from working with ionising radiations. Our intent is that this might include categories of person, such as pregnant women, and should not be limited only to those who are not a specialist appointed to fulfil a certain role within the organisation.

I am grateful to the noble Lord for Amendment 38S, which would have the effect of allowing the creation of nuclear regulations that could be enforced by others. I appreciate the noble Lord’s intention behind this amendment, but I hope to reassure him that it is not necessary. First, the clause to which the amendment pertains applies to regulations, which can be made only in matters within the purposes of the ONR. These are matters within the particular expertise of the ONR, and it is unlikely that any other regulator would have similar expertise. Clearly, it would not be appropriate for non-experts to be taking on such a role. Secondly, were the Secretary of State to agree that some of the ONR’s functions could be better carried out on its behalf by another body, there is a power in Clause 83 for the ONR to make the necessary arrangements for this to happen. Finally, were the Secretary of State to need to make regulations that spanned more widely than the nuclear regulations allow, a hybrid of two or more legislative vehicles could be used to allow other bodies to enforce those aspects which fall outside the scope of the ONR’s purposes.

I also note that my colleagues in the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee have recommended that the regulation-making powers in Clause 63 follow the affirmative route the first time that they are used. As I said earlier, I will consider the recommendations with a view to tabling amendments at Report. I hope that that adequately responds to the noble Lord’s concerns, and that he will agree not to press the amendment.

Amendment 40F is also not needed, as the ONR will already have the power to appoint any inspectors jointly with any other regulator. The Bill provides that appointments of such inspectors will be based on their skill set, not who they work for. Amendment 40L expands the ONR’s role with respect to compliance with nuclear safeguards obligations to include facilitating compliance by the Department of Energy and Climate Change with any safeguards obligations of the department. I assure the noble Lord that the department does not enter into any nuclear safeguards agreements acting independently of Ministers, and therefore the department itself does not and will not have any nuclear safeguards obligations that are not obligations of Ministers of the Crown. This amendment is therefore also unnecessary.

Finally, Amendment 40Q is added to allow for responsibility for enforcing the duties under HSWA to be transferred by regulations to the Environment Agency or another public body. This is not an appropriate amendment. The current policy is that provision would only be made for transfer between ONR and bodies which already have responsibility for enforcing health and safety legislation.

On that note, I hope that the noble Lord will have found my explanations to his amendments reassuring. The noble Lord asked whether I would provide him and the Committee with a diagram of the way in which the regulators are laid out and I am quite happy to do so. I hope the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Roper]

I welcome what the Minister said about considering between now and Report the Delegated Powers Committee report on how these regulations are made for the first time. It is important that that is done and I hope she will give us some indication—perhaps in the reply which the Government will make to the committee’s report—of what is to be done on that matter. We will otherwise need to come back to this matter on Report.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I join the noble Lord in welcoming what the Minister said. It is important that the Government give a clear response before Report to the Delegated Powers Committee’s recommendations, which affect powers under three important clauses in this section.

I appreciate the Minister’s reassurances and that she is going to give me a picture of how all this operates and who relates to whom. I should have started with that before I began drafting amendments for this complex part of the Bill. I thank noble Lords who have spoken and who, by and large, were not in support of writing much into the Bill.

I have largely dealt with the issue of relations with DECC on sponsorship. However, for the sake of historical accuracy I should say that the Health and Safety Executive and its predecessor bodies, such as the nuclear inspectorate and the Safety in Mind organisation, have frequently been in the same department as the sponsoring department for all or part of their activities. That may be tidied up by banging it into a department which has little responsibility for the industry, and that may be the right place. However, I reiterate that my amendments do not seek to change the sponsorship role but to create an important relationship between ONR and DECC. The two points at which I have inserted them relate to the nuclear security and nuclear safeguards areas, which are also covered by international obligations—and the department negotiating on international obligations, along with the FCO, will be DECC.

Clearly, the Committee’s view is that we should accept the status quo, and I will withdraw any implication that I or the Labour Party will not stick with the status quo. Without wishing to upset the general sponsorship arrangements, there is an issue of whether the legislation should at least at some point reflect the relationship with DECC as well. This is not to compromise the independence of the ONR, which is clearly set out in the early parts of this section of the Bill. I would not want to do anything to jeopardise that for the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Deben, and others have spelled out.

As to the other regulatory bodies, I will look at the map or picture and see whether I need to come back on any specifics. However, Clause 84 refers to the co-operation between ONR and the HSE, for obvious reasons. Will the Minister look at that clause—she has no obligation to respond to this—and consider whether there should be a general requirement to co-operate with the other bodies operating within the nuclear area, without going through the specifics of my individual amendments? With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 38G withdrawn.

Clause 59 agreed.

Clause 60 agreed.

Clause 61 : Nuclear safeguards purposes

Amendment 38H not moved.

Clause 61 agreed.

Clause 62 : Transport purposes

Amendment 38J not moved.

Clause 62 agreed.

Clause 63 : Nuclear regulations

Amendments 38K to 38N not moved.

Clause 63 agreed.

Schedule 6 : Nuclear regulations

Amendments 38P and 38Q not moved.

Amendment 38R

Moved by

[Lord Whitty]

38R: Schedule 6, page 131, line 1, leave out paragraphs (a) and (b)

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 38R, I will also speak to the other amendments in this fairly mixed group. Perhaps Amendment 38R, and Amendment 38Q with which we have just dealt, should have been in the earlier group relating to workers in the nuclear sector. However, Amendment 38R deals with the provision that the ONR would have the ability to prohibit the employment of certain people under paragraph 10 of the schedule. Paragraph 9 provides that employment can be restricted to those who have met appropriate qualifications. I therefore wonder why we need the additional provision here; it is a relatively technical point.

Amendment 38V would make clear that the ONR is not seen as a Crown agency, whereas the HSE for most purposes is seen as a Crown agency or at least as a body which is an emanation of the state. Even where other regulators are public corporations in the form of their incorporation, there is no denial of their Crown status in legislation. I wonder whether this is simply to ensure and underline the fact that ONR employees will no longer be regarded as Civil Service employees, and therefore the inspectorates and highly technical skills that are needed by the ONR in the nuclear field can be rewarded at, probably, substantially higher rates than would be allowed under the Civil Service pay structure. That seems a slightly heavy way of ensuring that one could make appropriate market-rate payments to a very small and important sector. I hope that I can get clarification on that.

Amendments 40H and 40J relate to the provision of training, which is of course another important aspect. You do not need the quality of staff only when you recruit and pay them, you also need to continually update them within the ONR with the best possible training. Clause 8 provides that the ONR may provide training, whereas the HSE’s provisions, the equivalent of the Health and Safety at Work Act, provides that the HSE must provide training. Amendment 40J makes it clear that training is appropriate and relevant—it is not training for anything—but the lack of a requirement on the ONR to provide training needs to be addressed.

16:45

The final amendment in this group, Amendment 40P, deals with the issue of staff coming out of the Civil Service. In general, if they are getting paid better and are on better terms and conditions, I suspect that those staff, at least in immediate terms, will be quite happy to leave the Civil Service. However, there are important issues of seniority, access to pensions, and dates of retirement which need to be preserved in this transfer. Although there are correct references to the TUPE provisions or equivalent in this Bill, “or equivalent” is normally interpreted as the provisions that the Cabinet Office lays down, which effectively means that transfers within Civil Service bodies are covered by the equivalent of TUPE.

It is not clear whether transfers from a Civil Service body into a new public body, which is explicitly deemed not to be the Civil Service, also means that the staff retain the same seniority that they would have if they were still part of the Civil Service. That is important. Although some of these staff are extremely specialist, some may wish to return to the Civil Service at later stages in their career. Therefore, their entitlements as civil servants need to be preserved however they may be treated in a period in which they are on the staff of the ONR as a non-Civil Service body. These points need to be clear and they need to be tidied up, because this ought to be a relatively seamless transfer. However, there are some loose ends and I hope that the Minister can reassure me on these points.

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, for allowing me an opportunity to clarify some of the points he has just raised. Amendment 38R, when read with Amendment 38Q, as the noble Lord rightly said, seeks to limit the indicative list in Schedule 6 so that it can make reference only to nuclear regulations, including provision to restrict employment on the basis of qualifications or experience. The reason that broader provision has been included in the Schedule is that nuclear regulations may need to specify situations where individuals cannot do certain jobs—for example, pregnant women working at greater risk from ionising radiations, or restrictions on employment for certain types of person for security-critical posts. While Schedule 6 is only an indicative list, it would be a retrograde step to remove the examples in paragraphs 10(a) and (b).

Amendment 38V in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, seeks to remove the explicit provision in the Bill stating that the ONR is not a Crown body and that its property is not property of the Crown. The decision to include specific provision in the Bill to establish the ONR as a body outside the Crown was not made lightly. It is, however, integral to the policy of creating a more independent, flexible and efficient regulator. Most notably, the position of the ONR outside the Crown enables its staff not to be classified as civil servants. Recruiting and retaining skilled specialists is crucial for the ongoing effectiveness of ONR and Civil Service restrictions on pay and recruitment pose a serious risk to this.

Clause 76 includes a power for ONR to provide training which relates to its purposes. For example, if new regulations were brought in, it might be appropriate for ONR to provide training to duty holders on new requirements. Alternatively, if ONR has access to certain safety or security expertise of limited supply on the open market, it might be appropriate to make best use of this by offering training to up-skill the regulated community. Amendment 40H seeks to make this power a duty. While the provision of training by the ONR might be a useful and effective tool to promote safety or security, it is not a core function of the ONR. By making this a duty, it could divert valuable resource away from its core regulatory functions. Amendment 40J seeks to ensure that the ONR carries out only appropriate and relevant training. The ONR’s power to provide training is already limited to its purposes; therefore, I am confident that the Bill already focuses sufficiently on the ONR’s role in this area.

Finally, Amendment 40P seeks to protect ONR staff’s continuous service should they move in and out of the Civil Service. I reassure the noble Lord that pension rights of ONR staff will be preserved under existing provisions in the Bill, and I refer him to paragraph 15 of Schedule 7. As for preserving their seniority, I am reliably informed that civil servants are appointed on their skills and experience and that an official record of their continuous service is not retained for this purpose.

I hope that the noble Lord has found my explanation helpful and will accordingly agree to withdraw his amendments.

[Lord Roper]

My Lords, could the Minister give assurances that, on the references in Clauses 68, 80 and 104, the reports of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee will be looked at very carefully by the department and that she will be able to give us some assurance fairly soon? Otherwise, those are matters to which we will want to come back on Report.

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, as I said earlier, of course, I am doing my level best to ensure that the Committee gets the information. We are considering very carefully what the committee laid out.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for going through the amendments. I accept the argument in regard to people’s physical conditions, such as pregnancy, and other reasons why they should not go into certain areas, and I understand that the provision is for that. I am afraid that my suspicious and conspiratorial mind thought that it was something to do with security, with a big S, and therefore could be quite a wide and broad requirement. However, after the explanation that it is confined to those sorts of things, it is fine.

On the issue of the Crown, it seems to me that there are not many other bodies that are public bodies which have that explicit divorce from the Crown. I am not sure whether in shrinking the state, as the coalition intends to do, there is a whole range of these coming up. I assume that the ONR will never be privatised and that this is, as the Minister and I indicated, really a ruse to pay people more, which is necessary—although it is necessary for a number of other regulators, not excluding the Environment Agency’s nuclear staff, which will not be met by this change. I will not take it further now, but it is peculiar, and we will keep a weather eye open for any other use of this in relation to public bodies. We may have to consider at a later stage whether it is appropriate.

I do not want the ONR to be diverted on training, but it is the employer’s responsibility to ensure training; it does not necessarily have to provide it itself. It is explicit in the Health and Safety at Work etc Act and necessary in the HSE that the organisation has a responsibility to make sure that its people are trained up to full modern requirements. That is every employer’s responsibility but, in relation to nuclear regulation, it must be a particularly acute responsibility, which the employer ought to accept. So I do not really accept the Minister’s complacency about leaving “may” there, when “must” would reflect the status quo and what I hope is the reality of the ONR’s future regulation.

I accept that the Civil Service has changed a bit since my day when seniority used to be very important. I also accept that there is a reference specifically to pensions. But other aspects of seniority and continuous service are still relevant, including retirement dates and the point at which you can apply for, for example, early retirement on sickness or other extraneous grounds. I accept that it probably is not a point which needs to be covered in legislation. I do not think that it is a trivial point and may not be a trivial point for some of the staff who are due to transfer. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 38R withdrawn.

Schedule 6 agreed.

Clause 64: Nuclear regulations: offences

Amendment 38S not moved.

Clause 64 agreed.

Clause 65: Nuclear regulations: civil liability

Amendments 38T and 38U not moved.

Clause 65 agreed.

Clause 66 agreed.

Schedule 7: The Office for Nuclear Regulation

Amendment 38V not moved.

Amendment 38W

Moved by

[Lord Whitty]

38W: Schedule 7, page 131, line 35, leave out “7” and insert “8”

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, this group is fairly straightforward and deals with the structure of the board of the ONR. The amendments allow us to move to increase the minimum number of non-executive members by one and to provide that among those non-executive directors there should be experience of the nuclear sector. The amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, probably express that slightly better than mine and I therefore hope that the Minister, if she does not smile on mine, will at least smile on his. The amendments also propose that the ONR board reflects at least some of the structure of the organisation from which it is coming. The HSE has always operated on a broadly tripartite basis, with employers, trade unions and representatives of workers represented on the Health and Safety Commission. The shadow ONR within the HSE also reflects that position.

I recognise that the Government are not that keen on trade unions and that regrettably, for the first time ever since 1974, through periods of government of every hue, this Government did not consult the TUC on the latest appointment to the board of the Health and Safety Commission. However, they appointed a trade union person to it. Therefore, they obviously continue to have some belief that the tripartite nature of the organisation is helpful. I think that that needs to apply also to the ONR, which operates some of the HSE’s non-nuclear functions and all the HSE’s nuclear functions. Therefore, it should be explicitly representative of people with experience as employers and people who have experience of representing employees—which, by and large, will involve trade unions.

It is very important to understand that the sector which the ONR will regulate is still quite a highly unionised sector. Although there have been difficulties, the co-operation between the workforce and the management is very important, which has been greatly appreciated at most points during the history of the nuclear sector. It also has been one in which the HSE has helped, by its structure of governance, to ensure that there is co-operation between the workforce, the management and the Government in relation to the management of the nuclear sector.

Whether in broader terms they like it or not, the Government would be wise to ensure that there is representation of the two sides of industry, as we used to say, in the nuclear industry and in the regulator which deals with the nuclear industry. Amendments 38V to 38X clear the ground for that and Amendment 38Y provides for it. I also support the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, which, as I have said, perhaps are a better way of expressing the absolute necessity for people on that board to have experience of nuclear safety in operating their functions on the board. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s comments. I beg to move.

17:00

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, for his kind remarks about the two amendments which stand in my name. It is very important, when you are setting up a board of this kind, to have a proper balance between executive and non-executive members. We are in an interim position concerning the executive members. The chief inspector, Dr Mike Weightman, retired earlier this year, and that was a considerable loss. He established not only a huge personal relationship but an important overseas relationship with the regulator in this country. There is great admiration from many nuclear countries overseas for our system of regulation, and a succession of chief inspectors, not least Dr Weightman himself, have made a major contribution to that.

Obviously, one has to have a strong chief executive and chief inspector, but it is also very important that one has on the board a mixture of executive and non-executive members. My amendment simply prescribes that:

“At least one non-executive member must have experience of, or expertise in, matters relevant to the ONR’s nuclear safety purposes”.

That is self-evident, but it is not in the Bill. I think that that is the right way to do that.

On the other hand, I do not agree with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, that there should be appointments from the NDA and the other body mentioned. They seem to me to be much too directly involved in the work of the board and of the ONR. They are among the regulated, and that is probably not right. There are a number of experts from academia and elsewhere in industry who could fulfil that role without having to look to the Government’s own bodies to provide people for the board. Under my amendment, at least one of them must have experience in the matters which concern the board. That would strengthen the board and the legislation and add to the public reputation of the ONR and its board.

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, again, I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and my noble friend Lord Jenkin for their amendments prompting this debate.

Amendment 38W increases the number of non-executive directors on the ONR board from seven to eight, and Amendment 38X makes a corresponding change. These amendments would result in the ONR’s board having a maximum membership of 12, which is quite large for a relatively small organisation. Amendments 38W and 38X accommodate Amendment 40A of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, which empowers the Secretary of State to appoint an executive member nominated by the Environment Agency or a member nominated by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. Although I fully appreciate the importance of the ONR having a strong working relationship with other regulators and relevant bodies, including the Environment Agency and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, such relationships are already in place and we expect them to continue when the ONR becomes a statutory body. The Bill does not prevent persons recommended by those organisations being appointed as non-executives, so I do not feel that the amendments are needed. Consequently, it is not my view that Amendments 38W, 38X and 40A are required.

Amendment 38Y sets out some areas of expertise that the Secretary of State might consider when appointing a non-executive. Nuclear matters, governance, health and safety, and employment are all areas where an ONR non-executive could have expertise, but they are not the only ones. We also need to look at areas such as finance, audit and project management, which are crucial to the effective and efficient operation of any organisation and should not be dismissed.

I do not believe that the legislation should limit the skills that a non-executive can bring to the ONR or fetter the Secretary of State’s ability to make appointments. Nor do I think that persons without a background in such matters are incapable of bringing valuable skills and experience to the ONR. On that basis, I do not believe that Amendment 38Y is required.

Amendment 40B would remove the power of the ONR to pay non-executive members, except for the HSE member, a pension or gratuity. This power helps to enable the ONR to draw upon the widest pool of suitably qualified people as prospective non-executives. It is especially relevant for those with an extensive range of relevant skills and expertise who have reached or are approaching retirement age. Such sums that the ONR might decide to pay must be approved by the Secretary of State, so there will be suitable checks on the ONR’s spending on this front. On that basis, I do not believe that Amendment 40B is desirable.

I now turn to the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Jenkin. These concern the expertise and experience held by the ONR’s non-executive directors in the areas of nuclear safety and nuclear security. Amendment 39 is designed to enable more than one non-executive director with security experience or expertise to be appointed to the ONR board, and Amendment 40 requires at least one non-executive to have experience relating to the ONR’s safety purposes.

As drafted, the legislation gives the ONR a skills-based board, ensuring that there is a balance of individuals with the necessary experience and expertise to provide strong governance to a modern regulator. To ensure that the ONR’s security interests are carried out in the context of wider national security policies, the legislation makes it a requirement for the board to have one non-executive director with relevant security experience. The legislation also enables more than one such non-executive to be appointed by the Secretary of State. I therefore reassure my noble friend that the current wording of the Bill does not limit the ONR board to simply one member with security experience or expertise, and on that basis I hope that he recognises that Amendment 39 is not required.

Nuclear safety expertise on the ONR board will be provided, at the very minimum, by the chief nuclear inspector, who will be an executive member. Further executive or non-executive members with nuclear safety experience can be appointed if it is felt necessary. I agree wholeheartedly with my noble friend that in the former chief nuclear inspector, Mike Weightman, we had an excellent, world-class inspector who was globally recognised, particularly given the work that he did post-Fukushima. Due to him, we have strengthened our reputation across the globe as a lead inspectorate. Tribute must be paid to Mike Weightman. His eight years of service have been highly appreciated by us all.

The ONR is an organisation whose role is predominately concerned with safety. The Government are confident that the ONR board will, without specific provision in the Bill, include individuals with the experience and expertise to provide governance in this area. Thus, experience of safety issues will be held not necessarily in one individual but across a number of members, who will bring with them a range of expertise. Therefore, I do not believe that Amendment 40 is required.

I shall just touch on the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, concerning the presence of a member from the unions. The ONR board will be a skills-based board rather than being made up of representatives of particular stakeholders. I reassure the noble Lord that the board will not be minus just the trade unions; industry representatives will not be on it either.

I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and my noble friend Lord Jenkin have found my explanation reassuring and that they will agree to withdraw their amendments.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My amendment has of course not been moved so I cannot withdraw it, as I am sure that my noble friend realises. I may study her remarks quite carefully, together with the advice that I have been taking on these matters. I hope that I will not need to return to this on Report, but the advice I had was that people felt pretty strongly that there had to be one non-executive director with experience in the area of the ONR. I am not quite sure whether the Bill gives them the power to do that. We hope that it should be firmly written into the Bill that they must, but I have not moved the amendment so I cannot withdraw it.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I am somewhat disappointed by the Minister’s reply, but I should first apologise to the Committee that I did not refer in my opening remarks to the last three amendments in this group, which deal with cross-appointments. They would not be compulsory, but the Secretary of State should have the option of appointing people from other bodies with a role within the nuclear industry. It would be helpful to have something like that in the Bill, as co-ordination between agencies is aided by having non-executive directors who cross-represent. We do too little of it and, as a result, we have turf wars and misunderstandings between agencies. I could bore the Committee with some of those from my experience as a non-executive director of two such agencies and as a Minister. I agree that the Secretary of State should not be bound to do this, but the Bill should at least point him in that direction and I am disappointed that the Minister does not accept that.

On the point about pensions, this was a probing amendment. Very few regulators pay pensions to their board members. It is all part of the market rate for nuclear-trained and qualified people. I will not say any more about that in that case, as it is fine, but it is slightly odd to have that in legislation.

On the central question about the make-up of the board, it seems to me that the board, including the non-executives, must represent the best traditions in health and safety governance. That means that they have to have a high level of expertise and knowledge of the law, and of the technical and scientific areas, in which they operate. I am therefore a bit surprised that the Minister is not prepared to accept something like the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin. It also means that the success of the Health and Safety Executive over 40 years—it has been a great success, since it has brought down the level of injuries, deaths and dangerous practices across the board in industry—has in part depended on it being seen as a collaborative effort.

The symbolism, and usually the reality, of that was that at the top level there were people representing the unions as well as the Government. Clearly, the Government still accept that view of the make-up of the HSE board even though they do not want to consult the TUC about it. Their advertisement for the board of the HSE, which I briefly considered, makes that clear.

It seems wrong that we should depart from that culture for the creation of something which is taking on responsibilities such as those of the ONR in a sector where collaboration and understanding between management and unions—and their ability to have a coherent approach to the management of risk on a daily basis—is so important, because the results of not so doing could be utterly catastrophic. The Government will regret not putting that structure in. Depending on the judgment of future Secretaries of State, they may regret not explicitly saying that they want one of the non-executive members to,

“have experience of … nuclear safety”.

It is not sufficient to say that that will be provided by the executive directors. The whole point of non-executive directors is that they can, on equal terms, discuss these issues with the executive directors. In terms of representation, it may not have the structured or corporate state kind of formal representation that was there in the origins of the HSE, although I regret the passage of that. In reality, they ought to have been able to reproduce the culture of the Health and Safety Executive at top level, and they ought to have on the board people who have experience of the main areas which are the responsibility of the ONR.

I think that it is unfortunate that the Government do not reflect that in the legislation. It is one of the things we may return to. If the Bill goes through in this form, I hope that the judgments of future Secretaries of State, whichever department is responsible, will take these things into account anyway. It would be better, frankly, if it were in legislation. That would set the tone and nature of the organisation. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment at this stage.

17:15

Amendment 38W withdrawn.

Amendments 38X to 40B not moved.

Amendment 40C

Moved by

[Lord Whitty]

40C: Schedule 7, page 139, line 20, at end insert “including full and audited accounts for the year”

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, the Committee will be relieved to know that Amendment 40C is the lead amendment in the final group for today. This group deals with aspects of the financial structure of the ONR. I am not sure that even the totality of 60 pages of regulations and another 60-odd pages of schedules makes this subject clear to me.

Amendment 40C is pretty straightforward. I cannot see in the reporting mechanism, although I am sure that this would be the fact in practice, that the report that the ONR has to give to the Secretary of State, and that the Secretary of State gives to Parliament, must include a fully audited set of accounts. That seems fairly straightforward. If it is there somewhere else in the Bill, I will withdraw, but it seems helpful to put it in the formal reporting structures.

Amendment 40D deals with borrowing. It is a probing amendment. I do not, in principle, object to the ONR being able to borrow, but it is not a provision that we find very frequently in the powers of regulators. We know that there has been some indication that the amount of public funding that the Government will give to the ONR—directly out of the taxpayers’ pocket, as it were—will be £35 million a year, I think, potentially rising to £80 million. It is a fairly hefty whack and a very important contribution.

The ability to borrow over and above that, and the ability to charge fees, is pretty unusual in a regulator. Can the Minister give us some indication of what she expects the total expenditure to be, not just the taxpayers’ and the fee income, but the total expenditure, roughly, of the ONR in its early years of operation? How much of that does she expect will need to be raised through borrowing? This is quite a delicate area. I am sure there are some public bodies that can borrow but, generally speaking, not regulators.

In the nuclear sector, speakers on previous amendments have emphasised the absolute necessity of the ONR being independent. There is a wider issue of conflict of interest over whom it would borrow from and what obligations that borrowing would provide. It is presumably not helpful if the ONR borrows from the industry it intends to regulate or anybody with connections to it. If we go ahead with an ability to borrow, there should be some pretty explicit restrictions on it. If the provision simply means that the ONR can borrow from the public works system of loans from the Government, we probably should say so. If it goes outside that, issues do arise.

This is not only an industry issue; security and safeguard issues are also involved. Would we want it to borrow from overseas sources? Probably not in most cases. In a subsequent clause we allow the ONR to operate overseas, but should it be able to borrow money to do so? Again, who will it borrow the money from to regulate or help regulate someone else’s nuclear sector? I am suspicious about this. My amendments would delete the lot but I am willing to listen to something short of that. Before we finish with the Bill, the Government need to be cautious about this and make explicit what powers we are giving it, what the limitations are and what the money is for.

On Amendment 40G, Clause 34 allows the ONR to charge fees. However, it is not clear on what basis those fees will be charged. In general, the Treasury would require regulators to charge fees based on full-cost recovery. Is that the principle on which the ONR is to operate? It is not quite the principle on which the HSE operates, but it is moving towards it. It is, broadly speaking, the principle on which the Environment Agency operates and it would be useful to know on what basis it is to charge fees to the industry and to whom in the industry it is to charge fees. Is it simply the operators of the nuclear sites and installations, or is the whole of the supply chain feeding into that operation to be charged fees as well?

Clause 79 allows the ONR to provide services to anyone, more or less, provided it has the consent of the Secretary of State. Presumably that includes overseas. In principle, it may be okay to provide the expertise of ONR staff in areas for which the ONR is not responsible—which, as I read it, Clause 79(2) to (5) allows—but that seems a bit odd. If the expertise and services it is providing are not in the areas for which the ONR was set up, you could have all sorts of odd operations. A top nuclear inspector in his spare time may also be an expert in karate or in almost any area. On the basis of this clause, the ONR could hire out its services under the label of ONR. More likely, you could get the ONR running an engineering consultancy service, a scientific and technical service or a metric measuring service using its expertise, but not in the areas for which it is responsible.

If we are going to do that, we will be creating a somewhat different beast—a beast that can diversify. As we find with quasi-public bodies that diversify, if that side concern turns into a seriously commercial money-making concern, it can distort the priorities and the nature of the organisation as well as create areas for conflicts of interest.

I hope these wide and bland powers to provide services to almost anyone will be looked at again by the Government, and that clarification will be given, if not in legislation then at least in the guidance, on how the ONR board and management will eventually operate. I beg to move.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, I have doubts about two amendments in this group. On Amendment 40G, I am told that full cost recovery always takes place. However, you have a potential position whereby a licensee who needs to be properly regulated may be in financial difficulties and unable to pay the charges that he would otherwise have to. It may be a rare occurrence but, given that they attempt a full cost recovery at the moment, there needs to be a possibility that some essential services may not be paid for on the spot by the licensee because they do not have the money. I would be very interested to hear any other arguments.

I am unhappier about Amendment 40K. This point has been raised with me by the Nuclear Industry Association, which feels that it would be greatly to the advantage of the UK generally and the ONR in particular to be able to develop and make the best use of its expertise in markets not just in this country. The effect of eliminating subsections (4) to (9) of Clause 79 would be to reduce the ONR to its absolutely core activities. There is quite a strong feeling that that would not be to everybody’s advantage.

My noble friend referred to the effect of the Fukushima disaster and the great tsunami there, and I said earlier that it greatly enhanced the reputation of regulation in this country because of the work of Dr Weightman—but it goes wider than that. The supply chain for the nuclear industry is very much concerned with spreading its activities abroad to increase overseas earnings, and here, too, the ONR could provide valuable services and should not be prevented by the Bill from doing so. Of course, it will always be concerned primarily with its regulatory duties in this country, but it has the expertise, and will develop increasing expertise, to provide wider services and perhaps earn some money for itself and for this country. So I would be unhappy to see the elimination of those four subsections.

On the question of the account of what the total money might be, I await with interest the answer from my noble friend.

[Lord Deben]

My Lords, I wanted to build for one moment on what my noble friend Lord Jenkin has said and take it to a further degree. This House should be very careful about restricting a body that we have been careful to construct. There is a terrible habit in your Lordships’ House, of which there was a good example today when somebody got up and said to the Minister, “What are you doing about Egypt?”—as if we were doing anything about Egypt, or as if we should always do something about everything. It is about time that we realised that there are a lot of things in this world that we are not likely to do anything about at all. One thing that we should not do is to do things about things about which we cannot at this moment know anything whatever.

We have no idea how this organisation will develop. We have some suggestions, which my noble friend Lord Jenkin has put forward, which may represent some of the routes. But here is the idea that we should be so frightened that we should write down now what this organisation may or may not do, when it has been carefully built, with a whole lot of non-executive directors and all sorts of restrictions as to the nature of the people who run it. I find that one of the problems of government. I would prefer the organisation to be in the position of doing rather too much or doing something wrong than not being able to do what it needed to do, or what came to it, or to take up opportunities that might arise. We have to be a bit freer on this. There is a kind of determination to control that we should resist. I would much prefer this organisation to be sensibly built and then left to get on with it. So I hope that we resist any suggestion that, at this moment, we should decide what this organisation should do in two or three years’ time, or indeed in five or six or 10 or 11 years. It is much better to leave it as it is, and I hope that my noble friend will resist any such proposal.

17:30

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

I rise in defence of my noble friend—although we disagreed on the previous amendment. We are losing sight of what is a legitimate tactic in the process of scrutinising legislation. In order to have the Government justify what is in the Bill, we have to ask them to remove things for them to tell us why they should be in it in the first place. That is what my noble friend has sought to do in a variety of areas. No one is suggesting that the ONR will decline the invitation. It seems to be general public knowledge that one or two Middle Eastern states that are envisaging or engaged in the development of nuclear power have looked to the United Kingdom as an independent regulator separate from the supplier of the kit and the running of the kit which they anticipate having. In order for us to have a clear understanding of the powers and the responsibilities of the ONR, we have to use the rather brutal method of seeking to delete those powers from the Bill so that they can be better defined. I realise that I have spoken for about two minutes longer than I should have done, but we are making rather heavy weather of this and I hope that my noble friend’s amendments will be treated fairly, as the Minister always does.

[Baroness Verma]

I am extremely grateful that the noble Lord ended on his last note, because I consider everything extremely carefully, but I agree with my noble friends Lord Deben and Lord Jenkin that we must not be so restrictive on what the ONR could do to enhance its standing in the world. I would like to address the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, as they are grouped, so that I can clarify for him the reason why we are taking the position that we are.

Amendment 40C would require that the ONR’s accounts are presented to the Secretary of State and laid before Parliament at the same time as the annual report. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, asked whether the accounts would be made available. Accounts are already required to be audited and laid before Parliament under paragraph 21 of Schedule 7, and, in practice, the accounts and the annual report will be published together. I hope that that answers the noble Lord’s question on reporting and laying before Parliament.

Amendment 40D would remove the ONR’s powers to borrow. This is not an element of the Bill that it is intended that the ONR would use frequently, and it can be used only with the Secretary of State’s approval. It is certainly not a blank cheque, but there may be instances where the ONR’s work may require extra funding in the short term to achieve a long-term goal, and in this instance I believe that the ONR’s power to borrow money, with appropriate checks and balances, is suitable for an independent public body.

Amendment 40G, on the other hand, would seek to require the ONR to recover the full costs of an inquiry. Laudable though the intention is, we cannot always guarantee that full cost recovery will be appropriate. The costs of some inquiries may not be fully attributable to one or even a group of duty holders. We would not wish unfairly to add extra charges to business for costs not incurred by them.

I am grateful to the noble Lord for tabling Amendment 40K. It would remove provision in Clause 79 for the ONR, with Secretary of State approval, to provide services related to its expertise but not part of its purposes. My noble friend Lord Jenkin eloquently articulated how important the provision is, because of the specialist knowledge that ONR possesses, if resource were available, to, for example, assist another country with assessing the safety of a new reactor design. Under the Bill, ONR could charge for such work, including at a commercial rate. The provision of such advice would have real benefits—not just financially, but, as my noble friend said, by helping to spread the UK’s high standards of practice internationally and giving ONR inspectors wider experience.

Let me be clear: the ONR’s first priority will be to meet its obligations as the UK’s nuclear regulator. Nothing will allow us to detract from this. My noble friend Lord Deben is right; we must allow the ONR to get on with its core activities. To ensure that there are no actual or perceived conflicts of interests, any commercial work which the ONR undertakes will be only with the consent of the Secretary of State. For those reasons, I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

Before my noble friend sits down I hope I may be allowed to say how much we owe to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, for enabling us to have debated a large number of matters during the course of the afternoon. As I said earlier, I had my doubts about whether we would take the time. We will stop just half an hour short and are most grateful to him.

[Lord Whitty]

Flabbergasted as I am, I thank the noble Lord and others who are saying, “Hear, hear!” I wondered if we could get through a full day when I started on this process, because, in principle, we agree with the Government’s broad strategy and we certainly want an ONR which is effective, independent, vibrant and innovative. Anything I have said is not intended to restrict that. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for pointing me to paragraph 21 of Schedule 7 about the annual accounts. It would be helpful to have them all in one place, but nevertheless this seems to cover the point.

On full recovery of costs, there will be situations in which regulators cannot do that. They usually have to explain why to the Treasury, certainly if it is done on any systematic basis. There will be exceptions, but I think that the Government have said they will be pursuing the principle of full recovery of costs. I am not therefore pursuing the argument that this needs to be in legislation. At least we have a clear answer that that is the principle and that fees and costs will be covered plus the Secretary of State’s allocation of grant in aid—or whatever we call it these days.

That might still leave a gap which presumably is intended by the borrowing provisions here. As my noble friend Lord O’Neill says, I have proposed deletion, not to say that I am utterly opposed to borrowing powers, but to see to what degree the Government are likely to use them. The Minister has pretty much indicated that they would not use them that often, but they are there. Given that they are there, I think that in some capacity or another, the Government—it could be the Secretary of State in guidance, or whatever—need to be pretty careful of what kind of borrowing the ONR engage in, because this gets into the area of conflict of interest.

This also applies to my amendments in relation to what services the ONR can sell. Because my deletions would still leave subsections (1) and (2) of the clause, which allow the ONR to sell services anywhere in the world which relate to its areas of purpose—that is, nuclear safety in the widest sense—all the objectives of selling services to other states that are interested in developing nuclear power would be allowable, even if my full deletion was accepted. I am worried about a provision that says we can also sell services to anyone anywhere that are not related to our purpose. That seems to allow for a money-making venture which is not really related to the role of the ONR.

At the end of the day, through all of this, we have to remember that the ONR is a regulator. As a regulator it has to be cleaner than clean. It has to have clear sources of operation; clear standards to which it operates; clear standards for the qualification of its staff; and—yes—some limitations on what those staff and the organisation can do. To retain a genuinely world-class regulator in a very difficult and delicate field, we need to be careful not to allow any loopholes which allow a conflict of interest to be claimed, even if it is not for real. I am a bit suspicious about the issue of selling services. I think the Government should reflect on it. For now, I am happy to complete this stage—only 20 minutes in advance, regrettably—and beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 40C withdrawn.

Amendment 40D not moved.

Schedule 7 agreed.

Clause 67 : Principal function

Amendment 40E not moved.

Clause 67 agreed.

Clauses 68 to 71 agreed.

Schedule 8 : Inspectors

Amendment 40F not moved.

Schedule 8 agreed.

Clauses 72 and 73 agreed.

Clause 74 : Inquiries: payments and charges

Amendment 40G not moved.

Clause 74 agreed.

Clause 75 agreed.

Clause 76 : Research, training etc

Amendments 40H and 40J not moved.

Clause 76 agreed.

Clauses 77 and 78 agreed.

Clause 79 : Provision of services or facilities

Amendment 40K not moved.

Clause 79 agreed.

Clause 80 agreed.

Clause 81 : Compliance with nuclear safeguards obligations

Amendment 40L not moved.

Clause 81 agreed.

Clauses 82 and 83 agreed.

Clause 84 : Co-operation between ONR and Health and Safety Executive

Amendment 40M not moved.

Clause 84 agreed.

Clauses 85 to 88 agreed.

Schedule 9 agreed.

Clauses 89 to 94 agreed.

Schedule 10 agreed.

Clauses 95 to 99 agreed.

Clause 100 : Interpretation of Part 3

Amendment 40N not moved.

Clause 100 agreed.

Clauses 101 to 103 agreed.

Schedule 11 : Transfers to the Office for Nuclear Regulation

Amendment 40P not moved.

Schedule 11 agreed.

Clause 104 agreed.

Schedule 12 : Minor and consequential amendments relating to Part 3

Amendments 40Q and 40R not moved.

Schedule 12 agreed.

Clauses 105 and 106 agreed.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, this may be a convenient moment for the Committee to adjourn.

Committee adjourned at 5.45 pm.

House of Lords

Thursday 4th July 2013 Lords Chamber

Thursday, 4 July 2013.

11:00

Prayers—read by the Lord Bishop of Truro.

Death of a Member: Lord Campbell of Alloway

Thursday 4th July 2013 Lords Chamber

Announcement

11:06

[The Lord Speaker (Baroness D'Souza)]

My Lords, I regret to inform the House of the death of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, over the weekend. On behalf of the House, I extend our condolences to the noble Lord’s family and friends.

Visas: Foreign Domestic Workers

Thursday 4th July 2013 Lords Chamber

Question

11:06

Asked By

[Lord Hylton]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the impact on the well-being of foreign domestic workers of the introduction in April 2012 of the one-employer visa regime.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Taylor of Holbeach)]

My Lords, the reforms to the route for overseas domestic workers restored the original purpose of the route as a way to accompany an overseas employer visiting the UK, and included measures to minimise the risk of ill treatment. All overseas domestic workers receive written information about their employment rights. The Government have seen no persuasive evidence of any deterioration in the treatment of overseas domestic workers since the April 2012 reforms.

[Lord Hylton]

My Lords, the Minister is responsible for safeguarding vulnerable people. Will he therefore personally investigate why, in 24 out of 29 cases, such workers were paid no wage at all, while not being allowed out unescorted, having their passports taken away from them and not even having a room to themselves? Will the Government accept that their safeguards often prove ineffective, since domestics are too frightened to go to the police or employment tribunals? Is it not time to prevent such domestic slavery happening?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I understand the noble Lord’s concern and thank him for asking this Question. The Government are aware of the report from Kalayaan, and my honourable friend Mark Harper, Minister for Immigration, has agreed to meet Kalayaan the Tuesday after next. I have been invited to join that meeting. I understand that the report was based on the 29 individuals on the new visa who sought Kalayaan’s advice in 2012. I have to say that this contrasts with the 156 who went to Kalayaan under the old regime last year and the 300 it would normally get in the preceding years. In turn, that compares with the 15,000 to 16,000 domestic visas issued annually—a figure that has not in fact varied since this new procedure was put in place.

[Baroness Cox]

Is the Minister aware that the new visa system, which ties migrant domestic workers to one employer, removes all their protections and deprives them of any resort in terms of challenging, appalling conditions of employment and abuse, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, said, is in effect a form of modern-day slavery? How will Her Majesty’s Government ensure that such trafficked domestic workers will receive legal representation if they need it, given that, as their visas are limited to six months under proposed legal reforms, they would not pass the residency test of at least one year’s residence in the UK?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I understand the noble Baroness’s concerns, and indeed this is one of the issues that the Minister for Immigration is considering. However, perhaps I may put into perspective what the April 2012 reforms require. The control of the scheme is itself one of the protections in place. Previously there was a five-year period, and a six-month period obviously enables us to discipline that particular application so much better. We require evidence of an existing employer-employee relationship and 12 months of overseas employment before the visa application can be made. We also require that written terms of condition of employment accompany that visa application and are produced with it. Employees are still entitled to the protections in UK employment law, and they are provided with a letter in a number of languages setting out their rights under the law.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

My Lords, nobody wants to see the visa system abused. However, I am confident that the Government do not think it is right that anybody working in this country should be made more vulnerable to slavery or physical, sexual or mental abuse, with effectively no power to take action to protect themselves, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Hylton. Will the noble Lord consider, in the meeting that he will shortly have with Mark Harper MP, what action the Government will take to ensure that those who are responsible for such crimes will be brought to justice, and not allowed to get away with it by deporting the evidence?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

Indeed, anybody who violates the trafficking laws in this country is subject to the full force of the criminal law. Given that individuals have already worked for their employer for 12 months overseas, it is reasonable to assume that there is a normal employer-employee relationship between those individuals.

[Lord Tebbit]

It is my understanding that there is a great deal of abuse of such people, most often Filipinos, by the embassies of certain nations which we need not mention. What can my noble friend do about that? Embassies claim diplomatic immunity, and they abuse those people, Filipinos in particular, who then essentially escape from the embassies and become illegal immigrants here. What can we do to help them?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

We are bound by the Vienna convention in terms of the employment of staff at embassies, so the extension of British employment law in that regard is not possible. I think that this Question focuses, legitimately, on those who come here under the new six-month visitor domestic service agreements, which is a different arrangement.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I declare an interest as co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Human Trafficking. One of the great problems is that if these women who have been trafficked—and I suspect that there is a substantial minority about whom we do not know—cannot get another job, they will be sent home and may be re-trafficked. The Government need to recognise that this is a real problem.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I have tried to make it clear that these people are not casually trafficked. They must be in the employment of the employer for 12 months before they come to this country. It is designed for people accompanying overseas visitors, who I think this country seeks to encourage. However, I do not think that the scenario that the noble and learned Baroness points out actually exists. There is the national referral mechanism. Any information on trafficking represents a criminal offence, and we would not hesitate to prosecute.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords—

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords—

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

My Lords, it is the turn of the Labour Benches.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords, will the Minister undertake at his meeting next week to reconsider his statement that there is security in knowing that people have been in employment for 12 months? The conditions in which they may have been in employment in some other countries may be equally bad.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I give that undertaking, and course I am aware of what the noble Baroness is suggesting. However, this country’s power to deal with such matters is limited to their treatment here in the UK.

Welsh Government: Comprehensive Spending Review

Thursday 4th July 2013 Lords Chamber

Question

11:15

Asked By

[Lord Wigley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what discussions they have had with Welsh Government Ministers about the effect of the Comprehensive Spending Review on the delivery of devolved services in Wales.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, Treasury Ministers and officials have regular discussions with the Welsh Government on a wide variety of topics. Finance Ministers from the devolved Administrations met the Chief Secretary in Belfast on 3 June to discuss the forthcoming spending round. We have also received a joint written representation from all three devolved Administration Finance Ministers.

[Lord Wigley]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that Wales has the lowest level of GVA per head of any nation or region in these islands? Does he also accept that the key to regeneration is infrastructure investment, particularly to stimulate local economies? Why was it then that, in the review last week, while Scotland and Northern Ireland received an increase of 2.7% and 1.5% respectively in their capital DELs—departmental expenditure limits—Wales received a paltry 0.3%? As Anglesey has had the lowest GVA per head of any county in the United Kingdom during the past decade, will the Government now find capital funding for a much needed new road bridge over the Menai Strait to Anglesey, both to improve the traffic bottleneck there and to stimulate economic development on the island?

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, as the noble Lord said, the Welsh Government’s capital budget for 2015-16 will increase by 0.3% in real terms, but that is only part of the story in terms of government capital expenditure in Wales. As he knows, south Wales is set to benefit from the electrification of the main line to Swansea and of the valley lines. He will be aware also that the Government have committed to spending £0.25 billion on a major new prison in north Wales.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

My Lords, given the high dependence of Wales on public sector expenditure and public sector employment, what is the Government’s best estimate of the number of jobs in Wales which will be lost as a result of the review?

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I do not think that it is a question of jobs being lost in terms of the review. As I said, the capital budget for Wales is increasing. The resource budget for Wales will fall only very marginally in cash terms, by 0.4%, which is significantly less than the cut in the non-protected budgets of departments in the UK.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

My Lords, in view of the dreadful shortage of money that we have for health services—in north Wales, we had a meeting last week that might threaten the existence of one of our district general hospitals—could not the Barnett formula be immediately reviewed to bring some areas in Wales more up to date?

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, as noble Lords are aware, the Government have made it clear that we will not be reviewing the Barnett formula during this Parliament, at a point when we are sorting out the country’s finances.

[Lord Morgan]

My Lords, do not the Welsh Government desperately need to increase their borrowing capacity and was this not dealt with specifically by the Silk commission report last November? The Government promised their response to the report in the spring. Allowing for the vagaries of our climate, when, please, is spring coming?

[Lord Newby]

As the noble Lord has pointed out, it has been a late spring this year. I can tell him that the result of the Government’s consideration of the Silk review will be published shortly.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, how much was the older population in Wales taken into account in the spending review, given that our elderly population is 4% greater? In fact, we are net importers of elderly people, who come to retire in Wales. They come with comorbidities and needing high healthcare spending, which is then borne by the Welsh Government.

[Lord Newby]

That is obviously one factor out of a whole raft of factors relating to the different demographics and needs of the nations and regions of the UK. The elderly population are, of course, protected by the triple lock on pensions. It means that their state pension has done pretty well during this Parliament.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the impact of the comprehensive spending review on Wales could have been radically different if the £9.6 billion of VAT uncollected over the last period had been collected? Perhaps if HMRC’s spending had not been reduced by 5%, that would have enabled it to collect what was due and Wales could even have had two prisons.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I did not know that the noble Baroness was in favour of such radical spending on prisons. In terms of the tax cap and VAT, the next figures on the tax cap will be coming out in September. HMRC has been very successful during this Parliament in collecting previously uncollected taxes from a range of sources and, as the noble Baroness knows, we have put a lot of additional resources, almost £1 billion, into tackling tax avoidance and evasion.

Public Health England Advisory Board Membership

Thursday 4th July 2013 Lords Chamber

Question

11:21

Asked By

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that women are represented on the Advisory Board of Public Health England.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)]

In April 2013, we appointed four non-executive members to Public Health England’s advisory board. They each bring to this role a great range of experience. We will shortly advertise for further candidates to enhance the expertise available to Public Health England. We aim to ensure that, as far as possible, the advisory board provides an appropriate gender balance and representation from ethnic minority and disability backgrounds.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I hope the House knows that in addition to the other two who sit on this board, this an all-white, all-male board. I am delighted that the Minister has admitted this in the sense that they are going to re-advertise. However, can he explain why No. 10 vetoed the highly respected and experienced woman who was recommended by the independent appointments panel? Could it possibly be because she sits on the Labour Benches in your Lordships’ House?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, absolutely not. The noble Baroness to whom the noble Baroness refers is, in everybody’s eyes, a highly qualified person. It would be inappropriate in any case for me to comment on individual candidates, successful or unsuccessful. However, I can confirm, and I emphasise this strongly, that the recruitment campaign was managed in a way that completely complied with the principles of the Commissioner for Public Appointments’ code of practice. It was open and transparent, and appointments were made on merit against published criteria for the role.

[Baroness Jolly]

My Lords, will my noble friend explain what action is being taken to grow tomorrow’s female and minority leaders in health?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, across the field of health it is difficult for me to give a generic answer, but the NHS Leadership Academy, which is now starting its work, will ensure that women with promise for leadership will be encouraged to come forward in a variety of roles, not just clinical but managerial. I hope that we will see the fruits of that work over the coming months.

[Baroness Masham of Ilton]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that Public Health England is responsible for campaigns for vaccinations, and that as vaccinations deal mostly with children and young people, mothers are involved, so it is essential to have women on the advisory board?

[Earl Howe]

I do not think that women necessarily have exclusive expertise in the field of vaccination. However, I take the noble Baroness’s point. It is something that we are closely bearing in mind in the context of the forthcoming appointments that I mentioned in my Answer.

[Baroness Gould of Potternewton]

My Lords, may I follow up on the question asked by my noble friend on the Front Bench? I have two specific points. First, if the Government have a diversity policy, why was such an appointment not made in the first place? Secondly, when are the adverts that we understand will extend the board going to go out? Are they going to look specifically for more women and more ethnic minority members?

[Earl Howe]

The advertisements will go out, I understand, in September, with a view to making the appointments by the end of the year. As regards the gender balance, the noble Baroness may like to know that within Public Health England itself there are almost twice as many women and men across the workforce, and in senior roles there are more women than men. I hope noble Lords will understand that Public Health England itself has no gender bias. The key thing is that appointments are made in accordance with the published criteria on merit. It is our aspiration to have gender balance, but the criteria must be related to those issues.

[Baroness Scotland of Asthal]

My Lords, the Minister is dedicated to equality and understands very well the issues relating to female health, particularly as a result of the World Health Organisation report last month, which indicated that the greatest cause of morbidity in women and girls, in one case in three, is domestic violence. Can he therefore explain why the Government chose to have a board that has no women on it? That board cannot then reflect the reality of the health needs of our nation.

[Earl Howe]

We are very mindful of that, but I come back to the point that these appointments were made on merit in accordance with the published criteria. That is not to say that the unsuccessful candidates lacked merit, but we did not operate a policy of positive discrimination and I do not think that anyone would wish us to do that. Having said that, we are mindful in the department of the need to have gender balance whenever we can in public appointments. Our record is not bad; we are in the region of 44% of appointment rates for women appointed to public positions, which is quite high up in the departmental league table.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes]

My Lords, does the Minister recall a famous speech of Baroness Thatcher’s, when she was Mrs Thatcher, when she said that the experience that women gain in life generally is not to be underestimated? It is all very well to have everyone with all the experience and qualifications in the world, but does he not think it is also important to have some women who could bring basic common sense to the board?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, yes.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall]

In view of the answer that the Minister gave to my noble friend a few moments ago about not operating a positive discrimination policy, is it possible or even likely that the next round of advertisements will also result in the appointment only of men?

[Earl Howe]

I simply cannot tell because we do not know which candidates have come forward. It may be that no women come forward. I hope that that is not the case. We make a point of advertising our appointments on the website of Women on Boards UK Ltd—the noble Baroness may be aware of it—which is an open UK-wide organisation for women seeking to leverage their professional skills, if I can put it that way, on to leadership roles. We will see what happens, but I assure the noble Baroness that while there will not be positive discrimination, there certainly will not be negative discrimination either.

[Baroness Deech]

Does the noble Earl agree that very well qualified women are held back from getting appointments by the lack of affordable childcare and that this is especially crucial in medicine? Does he agree that report after report has recommended that medically qualified women be given more flexible working arrangements, and more time and help, to serve on boards such as this, and that those reports have by and large not been implemented?

[Earl Howe]

I am aware of those concerns and I share them. In the context of Public Health England, these are non-executive roles and will involve only a certain amount of the person’s time. Nevertheless, childcare could well be an issue for any successful woman candidate.

Taxation: Tax Collection

Thursday 4th July 2013 Lords Chamber

Question

11:30

Asked By

[Lord Teverson]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they intend to take to increase the collection of tax revenue following Apple’s zero return for United Kingdom corporation tax.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I am unable to comment on the tax affairs of individual companies, as doing so would be a breach of taxpayer confidentiality. Tax avoidance by multinational enterprises is an issue that requires co-ordinated global action. The UK is committed to supporting multilateral action through the G20 and the OECD. The OECD will present an action plan for tackling these issues to the G20 later this month.

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for that reply. What conversations are the Government having with the Republic of Ireland to prevent footloose and stateless subsidiaries paying derisory levels of corporation tax in its domain? I come back to my fundamental question. Is it right that my wife’s small printing business last year paid its full dues of £22,000 of corporation tax, when Apple, with a turnover in the UK of £1 billion, paid absolutely nothing?

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, the noble Lord raises an important point. Eighty-four per cent of Apple’s non-US operating income was booked by an Irish subsidiary that was not tax-resident anywhere and paid tax at a rate of 0.05%. That is clearly unacceptable and is why the G20 will look at the issue later this month. It will be presented with a report from the OECD that suggests not only what action is needed but sets deadlines for taking it and makes proposals on the resources that are going to be needed to implement the new rules.

[Lord Sugar]

My Lords, the issue here is one of transfer pricing policy by foreign companies such as Apple, where, to put it simply, the prices of their merchandise are inflated and the margins that they make parked outside the UK. The merchandise is then sold on for virtually cost price in our country. Will the Minister consider making an assessment of these companies’ sales and applying a profit margin criterion, based on industry standards? They can argue about it afterwards, including about the disclosure of their true costs.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, this is exactly the issue which the OECD is looking at currently. Along with the French and the Germans, we have made a significant financial contribution in terms of getting experts working on this. There are a number of ways of dealing with it. The noble Lord suggests one way. The key thing is that we rapidly come up with new rules and get them implemented at an international level.

[Lord Flight]

Pertinent to the last question, some 20 years ago when transfer payments were introduced, I acted for the company that I was running in discussing with the Inland Revenue, as it was at the time, how they would operate. The arrangements were not based on legal matters, but on commercial reality. We went through each area of activity to see what was going on where and what would be a fair allocation of costs, revenues and profits. I cannot understand why transfer payments are not operated thus today. Will the Minister say whether we are operating transfer payment regimes in the way that they were intended and started 20 years ago?

[Lord Newby]

There is considerable scope for HMRC to undertake the kind of discussions that the noble Lord describes. The additional resources that we put into compliance have been spent in no small measure dealing with exactly that. The amount of revenue that we have been able to recover has increased by a number of billions, but this does not deal with problems such as the ones that my noble friend Lord Teverson has described.

[Lord Woolf]

My Lords, 40 years ago I was junior counsel to the Inland Revenue for a time. At that time, I and the Inland Revenue understood the legal position to be that every taxpayer had the right to arrange their affairs to reduce their liability for tax. I understand from what the Minister has already said that it is proposed to reconsider that situation. So be it. However, until it is changed, does the Minister agree that the principle that I have just enunciated is still a good principle of law and one to which the Inland Revenue still has to have regard?

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I agree that it is a good principle, but the problem we face at the moment is that large multinationals are able to order their affairs so that in some cases they end up paying virtually no tax, or nothing that is proportionate to the tax regime in any major country.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, the Government’s rhetoric on this subject is good, but we need an action plan to follow up that rhetoric. The Minister spoke about the OECD’s efforts, but what specific efforts are the UK Government putting into this problem? What additional resources will they be putting in and how do those additional resources sit alongside the 5% cut for HMRC in the CSR? Why did the Government resist the amendment in the other place calling on the Chancellor of the Exchequer to report on the progress on this important issue within six months? The abuse by these companies is expensive to HMG and an insult to the public. To get something done, we need a plan, resources and reporting.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, as the noble Lord will be aware, Ministers get a brief for Questions which always has a section headed: “The Previous Government’s Policy”. I shall read out what the brief says under that heading:

“None—the taxation of multinationals is a relatively new area of policy”.

The truth is that this Government have put in an additional £1 billion and several thousand additional people to tackle this. The pace of change in this area of tackling abusive tax arrangements has never been at this level. The UK Government have led it and will be reporting frequently on it. Frankly, the argument that this Government have somehow been deficient in tackling this problem does not bear thinking about.

Egypt

Thursday 4th July 2013 Lords Chamber

Private Notice Question

11:37

Asked by

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, following the Egyptian army’s removal of the country’s elected President yesterday, what action they are taking to encourage Egypt to return to democratic government as soon as possible.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask a Question of which I have given private notice.

[The Senior Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Warsi)]

My Lords, we are concerned about the prospects for democracy in Egypt. As the Foreign Secretary said in his press statement, the UK does not support military intervention to resolve disputes in a democracy. We want to see a civilian-led Government and prompt, free and fair elections in which all parties are able to take part. We are in touch with political leaders to stress the need for political solutions that can unite Egyptians behind a legitimate democratic outcome.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean]

My Lords, I am sure that we would all agree with every word that the noble Baroness said, particularly in respect of a return to civilian democratic government as soon as possible. One of the problems in the last election in Egypt was that there were two sectarian non-liberal parties standing for election as opposed to 40 secular liberal parties. Of course, Her Majesty’s Government cannot intervene directly, but is it possible for them to encourage agencies that already work with the Department for International Development on these issues, such as the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, to advise and mentor the profusion of secular liberal parties in Egypt in order to provide effective party organisation, which is so necessary in any democratic society?

[Baroness Warsi]

My Lords, as noble Lords are aware, I am always incredibly cautious about intervening in a way where we are trying to affect the outcome of elections in any country, but I take the noble Baroness’s point about working with parties in preparation for an election. Indeed, that is what we have been doing through the Arab partnership fund. I know from my experience when I was in Egypt that the opposition appeared to be fractured, but the current situation is much more complicated. The National Salvation Front, the Tamarod, the main group that has been calling for the protests against President Morsi that have resulted in the current situation, has secular parties in it, but alongside the Defence Minister yesterday when the announcement was made that President Morsi would be removed was the Sheikh al-Azhar and the head of the Coptic Church. This is not just a pure fight between secularists and parties that feel that religion should be part of the state. It is much more complex than that. We are urging all parties to go back to a democratic process. Military intervention is not the way forward.

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

My Lords, having met the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo after the fall of President Mubarak, does the Minister share my disappointment that Mr Morsi clearly was either unable or unwilling to recognise that democracy means governing not on behalf of the minority who elected you but on behalf of the whole country? In any renewed election, that is the appeal that must go out from the rest of the world.

[Baroness Warsi]

The journey to democracy is a long and hard process. Along the way there will be many challenges. Indeed, it took us hundreds of years to get to the point where we had an effective democracy. I take my noble friend’s point that this had to go beyond elections; there had to be an inclusive process and there have been challenges along the way. It is important that we understand that, although some of the concerns that were being raised by the opposition were of course right in terms of progress on the economy and progress on inclusivity, concerns were also raised that President Morsi was seen as being too close to the US and too close to the Qataris—partners, of course, with whom we work incredibly closely. That is why it is important to go back to saying that military intervention to deal with disputes is not the way forward in Egypt. Parties must return to a democratic process and then be prepared to stand behind the results of that democratic process.

[Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale]

My Lords, the United States has a very clear position on overseas development assistance in response to military coups. What will be the position of the British Government in relation to Egypt’s overseas development assistance following the events of the past 24 hours?

[Baroness Warsi]

I think that the most constructive way in which both the United Kingdom and our partners can play a role is to ensure that we continue to support the people of Egypt in getting back to a democratic process. I do not feel that an immediate decision to disengage would be the right way forward.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, does the Minister recall that two days ago when I asked her about the intelligence that we might have received about military intervention, she replied,

“it has helpfully been indicated that there is no intention for there to be a military coup”?—[Official Report, 2/7/13; col.1079.]

Does she agree that we need to re-examine the sources of information on which Ministers base their replies in the House? Does she also agree that we need to examine carefully the kind of constitution that is likely to emerge as the army now imposes what it calls caretaker rule? In the new Egypt, if there is no regard for Muslim minorities such as the Shias who were lynched last week in a Shia village, for the Copts whose daughters and women have been abducted, sometimes raped, or for the secularists, who also want the right of full citizenship, and if those things are not guaranteed, there can be no chance for Egypt in the future.

[Baroness Warsi]

My Lords, Egypt can move forward only if all parties and all citizens within Egypt feel that they have a stake and a role to play in any future democratic outcome. I take the noble Lord’s point, but it would be inappropriate for me to comment on intelligence matters at the Dispatch Box.

[Baroness Berridge]

My Lords, apparently there were just as many anti-American placards as there were anti-Morsi placards in Tahrir Square. Could the Minister please outline what discussions the UK Government are having with the American Government to ensure that neither country is seen as supporting any future Egyptian Government who seem to be on a trajectory towards a theocracy?

[Baroness Warsi]

My noble friend makes an important point, to which I was alluding earlier. The campaign of the opposition, the Tamarod, has been incredibly complex and has many facets to it—including not enough progress on economic reform and of course not enough progress on inclusivity—but there is an anti-US, anti-western undertone to much of what has been seen on the streets. It is important, however, that we also take into account the will of the Egyptian people, which is best expressed through a democratic process. It is important that that process takes place quickly and that, once that process has taken place, we work with the leaders chosen by the Egyptian people.

[Lord Lawson of Blaby]

My Lords, my noble friend the Minister rightly reminded us of the very slow progress towards mass democracy in the history of this country. We went though having, first, freedom and the rule of law, then constitutional government and then democracy. Democracy was the icing on the cake. Does the Minister not agree that there is not much point in having the icing if you do not have the cake?

[Baroness Warsi]

My Lords, as your Lordships can probably tell, I like icing and cake. My noble friend makes an important point. It took us hundreds of years to come to the conclusions and deal with the issues to which he refers and there were long and bloody disputes over the role of the church and the role of the state. These are discussions that are taking place in Egypt and, of course, across the Middle East and north Africa. We now require strategic patience. We must allow this process to take place. Of course, there will be many bumps along the way, but it is important that all parties are allowed to take part in any future democratic process. That is why, among other things, we have this morning called on the authorities to free any Muslim Brotherhood senior figures; it is important that they, too, can take part in any future democratic elections.

[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, in her response on Tuesday, the noble Baroness said that we do not try to tell people what to do and that it was a matter for them. I hope that she will accept today that nothing in my question—or, indeed, in that of my noble friend Lady Symons—suggests anything else. Over the years, the FCO has facilitated local discussions in Egypt and worked through public diplomacy briefs and the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. It has been friendly help, not interference. I think that we were given something of an assurance today that there will be discussions. However, the House is entitled to know in a little more detail how we are going to set about that. Otherwise, it seems to be against a background where it is very hard to make any assessment of what is likely to happen, when it will happen and what impact we think we will have.

[Baroness Warsi]

I think that the noble Lord would accept that for the Foreign Office to outline that, and for me to do so at the Dispatch Box, within 16 hours of what has happened in Egypt would be completely inappropriate and incorrect. We need to be patient. We need to understand the situation on the ground. We need to see how things play out over the next 24 to 48 hours. Of course, we have our ambassador and officials on the ground who are looking at this, but it is important that we play a supportive and helpful role rather than being seen to be leading an agenda that clearly must be led by the Egyptian people. The noble Lord must be careful if he expects the Foreign Office or this Government to act in a knee-jerk fashion to anything that happens around the world.

Business of the House

Thursday 4th July 2013 Lords Chamber

Timing of Debates

11:47

Moved By

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

That the debates on the motions in the names of Baroness Shephard of Northwold and Lord Marlesford set down for today shall each be limited to two and a half hours.

Motion agreed.

Consolidation etc. Bills Joint Committee

Thursday 4th July 2013 Lords Chamber

Liaison Committee

National Security Strategy Joint Committee

Procedure Committee

Statutory Instruments Joint Committee

Membership Motions

11:47

Moved by

[The Chairman of Committees]

Consolidation etc. Bills Joint Committee

That Viscount Hanworth be appointed a member of the Joint Committee.

Liaison Committee

That Lord Touhig be appointed a member of the Select Committee in place of Baroness Corston, resigned.

National Security Strategy Joint Committee

That Lord Clark of Windermere be appointed a member of the Joint Committee in place of Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, resigned.

Procedure Committee

That Lord Grenfell be appointed an alternate member of the Select Committee.

Statutory Instruments Joint Committee

That Baroness Mallalieu be appointed a member of the Joint Committee.

Motions agreed.

Draft Deregulation Bill

Thursday 4th July 2013 Lords Chamber

Motion to Agree

11:48

Moved By

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

That it is expedient that a joint committee of Lords and Commons be appointed to consider and report on the draft Deregulation Bill presented to both Houses on 1 July 2013 (Cm 8642).

Motion agreed, and a message was sent to the Commons.

Employment: Young People

Thursday 4th July 2013 Lords Chamber

Motion to Take Note

11:49

Moved By

[Baroness Shephard of Northwold]

That this House takes note of the case for preparing young people for the world of work in order to realise their aspirations.

[Baroness Shephard of Northwold]

My Lords, I am honoured to move this Motion. I should declare two relevant interests. I chair the council of the Institute of Education and I am deputy chair of the Social Mobility Commission, set up by Government in January this year.

Noble Lords present need no persuading that education is one of the most important responsibilities of any Government. One of its key objectives must be to equip young people with the knowledge and skills to make them employable in a rapidly changing and increasingly complex labour market. The possession of these skills has never been more important than it is today. People without them can face a future with little prospect of improving their lives and realising their aspirations. In his most recent Ofsted report, the Chief Inspector of Schools, Sir Michael Wilshaw, points out that,

“a more equitable access to high quality statutory education is a fundamental precursor to an individual’s future education and training, employment, social mobility and economic prosperity”.

The key word is “equitable”.

There has been striking progress in schools’ performance over the past 20 years. In 1992, 38% of 16 year-olds achieved five or more GCSE passes at grades A to C. In 2012, the figure was over 80%, with 59% of pupils attaining grades A* to C in five subjects, including the absolutely essential maths and English. The development of academies by the previous Government and this one, building on the principle of GM schools established by the Government before that, has opened up the school system to new ideas and the very welcome involvement of business and the voluntary sector in school governance. Increased autonomy for heads has encouraged innovation and is helping to drive up standards. In March this year, three-quarters of schools inspected were found to be good or outstanding. The relentless emphasis on standards from Government and from Sir Michael Wilshaw leaves the system in no doubt about what is expected of it.

However, there is more, much more, to do, as the most recent Ofsted report, Access and Achievement, published on 20 June, makes clear. I said that the chief inspector’s use of the word “equitable” was of key importance. That is because in the UK children from the highest social class groups are three times more likely to go to university than those from the lowest social groups; and fewer than one in five degree entrants to the Russell group of universities—the major research universities—come from the four class groups that make up half the UK’s population. This gap needs to be closed, for the clear economic reason that in an increasingly competitive world we cannot as a nation afford to waste the potential of any of our citizens, not to mention the obvious social and moral reasons. Indeed, in the same report, while pointing out the success of school improvement initiatives such as City Challenge in urban areas, notably in London, Sir Michael highlights significant underachievement in some suburban areas, and from my perspective—which has always been a rural one—very significantly, also in some isolated rural and seaside areas. Here, the effects of isolation, deprivation of access and low expectation have been ignored by metropolitan thinking and policy-makers for far too long.

I do not have time today to explore the link between academic underachievement and material disadvantage, which is real and of great concern. The chief inspector takes a robust view in his report. He says:

“Deprivation does not determine destiny … poverty of expectations bears harder on educational achievement than material poverty—hard though that can be—and these expectations start in the home”.

He adds,

“as a society we have to create a culture of much higher expectations for young people, both in our homes and in our schools”.

Some may want to take issue with the robust and tough approach of the chief inspector. I will leave his view floating in the air for coming speakers. However, what is beyond argument is the importance of early-years education. Gaps in achievement are clearly established by the time children reach the age of five. The home learning environment is of great importance, but so is the quality of early-years professionals. That quality, too, can make a difference to children’s life chances. There has been an impressive improvement over the past three years in the standard of early-years provision. There needs to be more of it, and more effective targeting to help the most disadvantaged. The Government’s current programme is providing good-quality, part-time early education to 40% of the most needy two year-olds, alongside parenting support. That is pointing the way. There are good initiatives such as Books for Babies and Play and Learning Strategies. In this area the Government have made good progress and are set to make more.

Another area where there has been marked progress is in access to higher education. Successive Governments, including the present one, have given strong encouragement to universities to improve their outreach arrangements. The result today is that almost 50% of people up to the age of 30 are, or are becoming, graduates, compared with around 37% in 1997. Given the importance of graduate status for employment, as well as for people’s aspirations, that is a great advance.

It might surprise some noble Lords to learn of the progress made by my own university, Oxford, so frequently is it demonised by the media—and in the past by some politicians—as being elitist. Oxford now offers the most generous financial support of any university in the country to the poorest students. One in 10 of its United Kingdom undergraduates is from the lowest income band: that is, £16,000 a year or less. State school admissions to Oxford are in the majority. It holds more than 2,000 outreach events every year. It has appointed outreach staff for every county and city in the UK. Their job is to focus on schools with the smallest numbers of students going to Oxford. Interestingly, anecdotal evidence from some schools shows that teachers are sometimes depressing the aspirations of children who wish to go to Oxford or Cambridge. That of course is unacceptable, but at least we know about it. The work at Oxford extends to successful partnerships with individual schools, down to primary school level, and intensive work with teachers. Oxford’s successful summer schools have seen more than two-thirds of all participants applying to Oxford, with a success rate of double the average of all applicants.

However, if 50% of people can now look to graduate status to realise their aspirations, it means that 50% cannot. From 2015, all young people will be required to participate in learning until the age of 18. This is creeping up on us. It is not a raising of the school leaving age but a change in the required participation age. These young people will have to choose between a school or college sixth form, possibly—if they are very fortunate—a university training college or studio school, an FE college or an apprenticeship.

The Wolf review of 2011 identified a number of problems with the routes open to these young people. In the first place there is the most confusing mix possible of qualifications, identified by acronyms. Their pathways to employment are not always clear—if, indeed, they exist. Far too many FE courses offer no help with poor English or maths skills, the very ones most required by employers. There are perverse incentives for providers to recruit for the courses that get the most funding or performance points. Those of us engaged in these areas of public policy will not find this a new phenomenon. We have known about it for a long time, and those who make the policy should be up to spotting the difference.

There are not enough apprenticeships, of course, and much of the teaching in FE colleges has been found by Ofsted to be poor. In response, the Government have promised to create a further education commissioner with wide-ranging powers. I think my noble friend will be able to update us on that. Indeed, this person may already have been appointed. In any case, it is an extremely welcome move. The Government have also given much more attention to the importance of apprenticeships. However, the underlying problem is still employer demand. Most of the new apprenticeships have gone to people over 25, which was not the point. The Government could well consider creating more apprenticeships within government departments to set an example. Meanwhile, they might pay closer attention to the German model, which has served Germany well for many generations and which provides an aspirational route to employment.

We are looking here at the destinations for half of our school population. Much effort has been made to improve the routes for those aspiring to go to university. At least the same amount of effort now needs to be made for those who do not. Their choices should not be treated as second best. In all these areas, so vital to helping young people to prepare for the world of work and to realise their aspirations, there has been progress under this Government in a uniquely challenging climate of unprecedented change in the labour market and international competitiveness.

But—I am sure that my noble friend will have been waiting for the “but”, and it has come—there is one area, that of careers advice and guidance, where, in my view, policy has gone backwards. I personally find it more than obvious that, at a time when there is high youth unemployment, when the statutory participation age is being raised to 18, when the education and training routes between 16 and 19 are multiple and their outcomes are far from clear, and when we need to encourage aspiration and not muddle it, there is an urgent need to help young people to make the right choices. I find it hard to believe that the link between aspirations raised by improved educational standards and the need for unwasteful career choice appears to be ignored by the Government. According to the Government’s own National Careers Service, the cost to the economy of young people making wrong choices amounts to some £28 billion. That same National Careers Service revealed last week that only 1% of teenagers had actually used its helpline. Instead, the Government have chosen to transfer responsibility for careers guidance to schools, but without funding and apparently without statutory accountability. The young people worst affected by this move are inevitably, as always, the most disadvantaged.

No one wants a remote, state-run monolith to do this work. There is good practice in some schools and colleges. They are well placed to help, although only one in six increased its work in this area last year. There is excellent input from the voluntary sector—for example, Career Academies UK, the Prince’s Trust and Barnardo’s, which perceive the need—and, of course, from employers themselves, from academy chains and from other consortium arrangements. However, for the young people the result is random, and that is not good enough. At the very least, the Government should empower Ofsted to inspect all schools for statutory compliance in their careers work, thus ensuring transparency and accountability for a vital public service. I look forward to my noble friend’s response on this issue because, although it would be a small move, it would be a start. Without it, and despite the excellent progress in so many other policy areas, we risk stifling the very aspirations on which the future of our country depends.

12:04

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, it is a very great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard. I have long respected her views on education and child development and, indeed, on issues beyond education. It is also a pleasure to be part of such a distinguished group of speakers in this debate. I agree with the noble Baroness’s emphasis on early years provision and the influence of the home. Sadly, some children miss out on early fostering of self-confidence and skills. As she said, it is not about material resources but nurture. Somehow, we have to ensure that that is there for every child. I also agree with her views on careers advice and hope that that will improve.

The noble Baroness addressed two issues—employment and aspiration—and tied them neatly together. I shall try to follow those themes. I shall first address what employers want of young people, for surely that is where we must look. I found it interesting to look at criteria from companies both big and small. Of course, they want literacy and numeracy and appropriate qualifications but they also want the following from an amalgamated list: communication and interpersonal skills; problem-solving skills: self-motivation; working under pressure to meet deadlines; team working; the ability to learn and adapt; and negotiating skills. These are the so-called important soft skills.

Dominic Barton, global manager of McKinsey and Company, said a few months ago in an article in the Telegraph online:

“The world of work is currently out of sync with the world of education”,

meaning that young people do not have the skills they need to get jobs. The Work Foundation and the Private Equity Foundation have stated that many young people not in education, employment or training,

“don’t have the so-called ‘soft skills’ employers are looking for, but often the only opportunity to learn those skills is on the job”.

City AM newspaper said in January:

“Rather than just looking at the quality of a degree, large City companies are now looking for more personal skills. They want to see evidence that a young person is self-aware, has the ability to take responsibility, is consistent and capable of taking initiative and willing to be adaptable”.

Clearly, employers think that there is a problem. Why is there this problem? As the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, said, the problem begins early and is compounded as a child grows. I go back to the recent UNICEF report card on child well-being, with its comparative data across 29 of the world’s richest countries. The UK does not do well in these comparisons. On well-being, we come 16th and across the other dimensions of material well-being, health and safety and education, we come 24th out of 29. Performance on other measures is recorded, such as that on behaviours and risk—for example, obesity, bullying, drugs and alcohol and housing and environment. Our record on young people not in education is simply appalling. We are the only developed country in which the further education rate is below 75%. We come just above Cyprus and Malta. The report notes that this may be the result of an emphasis on academic qualifications combined with a diverse system of vocational qualifications which have not yet succeeded in achieving either parity of esteem or an established value in employment markets.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children, which I chair, recently conducted a review of what children want. From listening to young people talk about their aspirations, it seems that we should look again at our approach to child health, including mental health, and to education, leisure opportunities and personal support for young people, such as careers advice. I have suggested previously that we need a strategy for youth across all government departments. I would be interested to hear what the latest government thinking on this is. I wish to suggest a few ways in which we might better prepare young people to have aspiration, better soft skills and motivation and better chances of employment.

First, I inevitably say that personal, social and health education in schools must be part of all school life and I echo the debate on citizenship held by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, in this House last Thursday. The following factors contribute to personal, social and health education in schools: courses which support and protect children, like anti-bullying; gatherings which inspire young people to feel part of a community, like school assemblies; a curriculum which recognises that children are individuals who grow and change and which provides opportunities to discuss, at an appropriate age, sexuality and relationships, resistance to dangerous pressures such as grooming and internet hazards, healthy eating, safety and what being a good citizen means. Children need opportunities to develop the skills of empathy in personal relationships, self-respect and respect for others. They need opportunities to enjoy physical activity, drama and other arts. Some information will, of course, be gained across the formal curriculum. Some may be in assemblies, inspired by positive role models. Some may be inputs from the school nurse, first aid organisations, national and local politicians, sports men and women, drama groups and so on.

The Minister must be tired of hearing me say that a school should know where and how personal social skills are being developed in young people and should be able to provide evidence of that commitment. A majority of schools can probably do that but some cannot, as stated in a recent Ofsted report on personal, social and health education. I suggest that schools where PSHE is not organised will be schools where children, and particularly vulnerable children, may end up without those important soft skills. As I said earlier, children who are at risk of being unemployed are also vulnerable to joining gangs and be less likely to form healthy relationships or conduct healthy lifestyles. Nor should it be forgotten that children first need a sense of self-esteem to be able to perform academically.

Schools have their part to play, but so do other factors. This week I was interested to read an article in the Guardian by my noble friend Lord Adonis, saying:

“It is not being young that makes you unemployed, but being young and unskilled”.

He strongly supports apprenticeships and points out that barely one in 10 of Britain’s school-leavers take an apprenticeship. As I said earlier, such schemes can encourage the skills for employment. My noble friend Lord Adonis gave three suggestions for reform. First, the public and private sectors should be funded by the state to provide apprenticeships; secondly, quality must improve; and, thirdly, information about apprenticeships must be marketed and co-ordinated. Lo and behold, two days after this article, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, was reported on the front page of the Guardian as asking:

“Don’t want a lost generation? Then copy us”.

She would say that, wouldn’t she? But it means that we should concentrate on apprenticeships and not just on academic study.

Finally, I want to refer to a highly successful scheme, the Amos Bursary, which gets young black boys and men from inner-city schools to access universities or the world of work and become future leaders. Such young men are the most underrepresented in higher education and in top-flight professions. They may have had a lack of encouragement from home and school and may be vulnerable to bad influence. The bursary was established by my noble friend Lady Amos, former Leader of your Lordships’ House, and her sister, Colleen, in memory of their parents. Mentors are vital to the scheme and establish trust, offer advice, introduce alternatives, challenge, motivate and encourage initiative. They help build confidence, raise aspirations and performance: they are tough on these young people. The Amos Bursary has grown from seven students in 2009 to 41 today. There are many more applicants than can be accommodated as the scheme is only funded by donations of practical help from individuals and companies. Some mentors are young people who have gone through the scheme themselves and know what it is about. The scheme is run by volunteers and supporters.

Young people can be helped to aspire, to be confident and to succeed. I hope that the debate today has provided thought which might be built on in government policy.

12:14

[Baroness Brinton]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard of Northwold, for initiating this important debate, which is vital to understanding what we need to do as a country to prepare our young people for their working lives.

Employers, when surveyed, say repeatedly that young people leaving full-time education—whether at 16, 18 or after a first degree—often lack employability skills and a real understanding of the world of work and how they must adapt and learn to succeed. In June, John Cridland, the director-general of the CBI, said that the quality of careers guidance is not good enough and that many young people leave school or college with little knowledge of the workplace. He warned that the Government,

“may have adopted too laissez-faire an approach”,

when they gave the right to schools to run their own careers advice. Careers information, advice and guidance—which I will shorten to IAG—are critical to inform and guide young people and their families about the opportunities for further education and work. We parents need our own information to be updated; entering the workplace is very different to how it was in our day. I shall focus principally on IAG.

Our present system is failing too many young people. Eighteen months ago, the Association of Colleges surveyed 16 year-olds. Only 7% knew that apprenticeships were a post-GCSE qualification. Less than 20% were able to name BTECs, and only 9% could name diplomas. All these are very good vocational routes into the world of employment. The BBC recently reported Joshua Robinson, an apprentice at Cisco Systems, as saying:

“Apprenticeships were never mentioned as a viable alternative to university and the problem really lies in the perception of schools”.

Yesterday, at a meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning, of which I am a member, we heard from some major engineering employers about their excellent apprenticeship schemes. We heard of a young man who had a clutch of GCSEs at grades A and A*, and who was absolutely clear that he wanted to do an apprenticeship at Rolls-Royce. Yet his teachers were telling him that this was the wrong route for him and that he must go to university. I suspect that they did not know that advanced engineering apprenticeships have a strong progression route right through first degrees and often into postgraduate study. I suspect that the teachers did not know that there were 11 applicants for every apprenticeship last year, with many, many more applying to organisations such as Rolls-Royce, Babcock and others. Sadly, I suspect that their aspirations for their students were to map out the same experience as their own: A-levels and a traditional academic course at university.

The employers yesterday were also clear that employability skills were an issue. Some good practice existed but not enough, and they applauded those further education colleges and universities that focused on them. They involve exactly the skills to which the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, referred. Communication skills are key but there are others, including leadership and working as part of a team, which do not seem to be taught in most schools and colleges. Employers are also often concerned about literacy and numeracy in young employees. We alone of the OECD countries allow young people to give up maths and/or English if they follow an academic route such as A-levels. While our A-level system has much to commend it, involving in-depth study of subjects, it is possible to leave behind one of the two core subjects that every employee will need in the 21st century.

With the raising of the participation age in compulsory education to 18 by 2015, does the Minister agree that all students should continue with both maths and English, whether pure or applied, or as literacy and numeracy, until they are 18? The international baccalaureate insists that students continue with English and maths, and there are real benefits that young people often do not realise that they need until later in their life at college or university, or when they start work. It also allows pupils to utilise their broad education by bringing creative solutions in from other disciplines to their future jobs and apprenticeships.

For those young people who follow vocational routes, there is a focus on continuing with literacy and numeracy, and I am sure that this is right. However, I suspect we need new courses that are particularly relevant for the industry that they are going into, such as English for engineers or statistics for humanities students, that will give them the skills they need. The key message to students must be that the lower your skills level, the more chance there is that you will be out of work. Recent youth unemployment statistics show that a quarter are without five good GCSEs, 14% have good GCSEs but no further qualifications, and 8% have a degree. That could not be clearer: the higher your qualification, the less likely it is that you will be unemployed.

For many young people, the best route into work is through an apprenticeship. This Government have created over 1.2 million new apprentices, and we need more employers to come on board and develop apprenticeships. There are some excellent examples of employers working in schools with both pupils and teachers, and it is evident that where it happens, everyone benefits. I believe that this should start in primary school, and I am grateful to the Government for starting IAG at 13, but business link days for 10 and 11 year-olds give children the chance to design things, to create marketing ideas and to test out experiments which can fire their imaginations and move them away from the all too common aspiration of being a footballer or, even worse, a footballer’s wife. It is also important to ensure that pupils follow the right courses at the right levels. The engineering employers we spoke to yesterday all commented that the lower level maths GCSE exam at grade C does not provide a starting point for engineering apprentices at 16, so pupils who want to go into engineering, and their teachers, should push to do the higher level exam as a minimum.

We need to see if the new arrangements for careers advice in schools are working, and I suspect that this will be a common theme of the debate. Many concerns were raised in your Lordships’ House during the passage of the Education Act 2011, not least the move away from face-to-face advice for most young people. Can the Minister tell us when a detailed review is planned and what the Government will do to ensure that young people get access to information? That is because we are still hearing about examples of schools refusing—and I do mean refusing—to allow brochures from local FE colleges or employers offering apprenticeships into their schools. How on earth can our young people and their families come to an informed decision about progression routes if they do not know about them? What action will the Department for Education take with schools where this practice persists?

The National Careers Council report, An Aspirational Nation: Creating a culture change in careers provision, provides an excellent perspective on how we can improve IAG for our young people, and asks for the role of Ofsted when reporting on IAG in schools to be strengthened. Can I ask the Minister if he supports this specific proposal, as well as the report more widely? Careers advisers are themselves coming together for accreditation and for continuing professional development, which is to be commended. We must not hamstring them by reducing the scope of their advice because of the actions of some schools. The OECD has argued that:

“As careers diversify, career guidance is becoming both more important and more challenging. More complex careers, with more options in both work and learning, are opening up new opportunities for many people. But they are also making decisions harder as young people face a sequence of complex choices over a lifetime of learning and work”.

It is vital that we have a strategic careers service that supports young people in their early and later decisions about subjects and levels of subjects. It should ensure that they have access to information about all the options open to them, not just about progression in their current school’s sixth form. Pupils should leave school, college or university with a good, broad range of qualifications and skills that will make them not just employable, but able to achieve their aspirations and ambitions for their lives.

12:24

[Lord Norton of Louth]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lady Shephard on initiating this debate. I very much commend her for the way in which the Motion is drawn—the emphasis on aspiration is crucial. I declare an interest as professor of government at the University of Hull. That interest is relevant to what I want to say.

The focus on preparing young people for work tends to be on those in the 16 to 19 age range or younger, and especially those not in education or employment. I will look at a different body of young people, those in higher education, but the points I wish to make have a wider application.

As we have already heard, employers variously complain that students are not well prepared for the world of work and that they lack requisite skills and understanding. When students are in higher education, they may expect to gain jobs but, especially for those who may be the first generation in higher education, they may not always appreciate the range of career opportunities available to them.

One key means of addressing both these dimensions is through ensuring that students have some opportunity for experience-based learning. Enabling students to gain some experience in the workplace, as an intrinsic part of their studies and not simply an add-on, can enhance their skills and widen their opportunities. It has been recognised for some time that experience-based learning enhances opportunities for students. Increasingly, universities and other bodies are arranging placements for their students with firms, public bodies and other institutions.

I have been arranging placements at Westminster for a quarter of century. I run a four-year degree at Hull where the third year is spent on placement in Parliament, and we also now provide opportunities for one-semester placements for our students taking three-year single honours degrees in the department. The experience of being in Westminster has enormous value for students. In the time available, I want to draw out the benefits of such experience-based learning and at the same time identify what needs to be done to maximise the benefit of such experience for the student. The principal but not only benefits of such experience-based learning are threefold.

First, and this is very relevant to what we have already heard, students acquire practical and transferable skills. Research shows that not all employers seek the same attributes but what students acquire through placements are highly transferable skills. I know this not only from observation but from a funded study undertaken of our students in the 2004-05 academic year. The vast majority of students identified a number of skills acquired or honed as a result of a placement, including time management and interpersonal skills. Having to deal with a range of people—irate constituents, senior officials or some people who may have a sense of their own importance—is great training for later in life. Indeed, the students acquire the very skills identified by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen.

The second value is pedagogic. Where students are placed not just to get some work experience but are placed in a work environment of interest to them, they get to learn about the institution and the process. They may begin to develop their analytic skills—understanding why things work as they do. As I shall explain, there are challenges in achieving this benefit.

The third benefit is that of personal development. Of the students surveyed, 87% felt that the principal thing they gained from the placement was self-confidence. Where students are given responsibility, it enhances their self-esteem and their capacity to look after themselves. They no longer feel dependent on others; they are able to act in a more independent manner. There is a particular consequence that flows from this. It widens their horizons. It makes them aware not only of career opportunities that they may not have considered but it gives them the confidence to apply for jobs that otherwise they may not have contemplated. That is why I welcomed the wording in my noble friend’s Motion. The reference to aspiration is so important.

The generalisations I have made are not confined to work experience placements of the sort for which I am responsible. The benefits can be achieved from a wide range of work-based opportunities. They can be life-transforming, especially for those from backgrounds where the perception of career opportunities may be narrow. The more we can do to ensure that such opportunities are made available to young people, the better. However, experience-based learning does not fulfil its full potential unless it is taken seriously by those arranging the placements. It is not a quick fix or a cheap option. To be effective it must be taken seriously, not only by those offering the placements but also by the home body arranging them. As one study of work experience in higher education observed:

“The quality of work experience is greatly enhanced by prior induction and briefing”.

One should not simply send a student off to a placement, in effect waving them goodbye and welcoming them back when it is completed. One has to prepare them for the placement and provide them with support during it. On my degree I emphasise what I characterise as the three Is: induction, integration and investment. I am responsible for an induction process leading up to and including the placement, ensuring that students are prepared and know what to expect from the experience. The degree is integrated: students spend a year studying the institution before taking up a placement, and continue to study while on placement. They also draw on their experience when they return and apply their knowledge of Westminster in a global context, and in completing a dissertation. The students receive support from the university while on placement. It is an investment, not only by the university but more especially by the students. The more they put into the experience, the more they get out of it.

The result is that students not only get good degrees, but they also tend to get the jobs to which they aspire. In the case of my students, that often means taking up posts in Westminster and Whitehall. However, as I emphasised, these points are not confined to this particular placement opportunity. I believe that much if not all of what I said applies generally to experience-based learning. It is a means of changing, and indeed transforming, the opportunities and aspirations of young people, whether through a short placement with a local employer or a particular institution or something of a much more long-term nature.

The more we can do to ensure that schools, colleges, universities and other bodies that serve the needs of young people develop and offer such opportunities, the better for young people and for generating a more effective and contented workforce. The benefits are clearly enormous, but achieving them requires a commitment of resources and planning. However, that commitment can be enormously rewarding.

12:32

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

My Lords, may I say how much I appreciate the opportunity to take part in this debate? I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, and everyone else who has contributed and started one thinking in various ways. I would like to step in a different, more global, direction. We believe that every child has potential, and our job is to make it possible for that potential to be realised. Yet in many areas of the world, especially those that are ravaged by war, famine or disease, there are hundreds of thousands of youngsters who will never be able to realise their massive potential. How do we tackle that? We have taken one step in this Parliament which I admire very much: sticking by our commitment to international aid. We must do all that we can, both as a Parliament and as supporters of individual organisations that try to relieve the suffering and starvation of so many people.

Despite progress, how many young people across the planet have no hope whatever of realising their aspirations? History shows that during the last war about 60 million people lost their lives. I wonder that we do not think of that 2.5% of the world’s population and how many Beethovens, Einsteins, Darwins and Wilberforces we have lost. What talent has been lost? We have perhaps lost a more imaginative diplomacy, and perhaps even greater music. How many have we lost to the ravages of war? We think of those in our time who contribute so much, of Gandhi and possibly Nelson Mandela. Our job, I am sure, is to help others to achieve and to contribute.

The world penalises itself by not being able to help these youngsters to achieve their goals. They have dreams, but they have to live with their nightmares. I suggest that the only way to tackle this completely is on a worldwide, global level, to make sure that children and grandchildren, ours and others, will be able to dream and to achieve their dreams. I suggest that erecting new borders or destroying present bridges is no help whatever. We are together; we are one world. Our own Governments, in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as well as here, must embrace the younger generation. This is of especial importance in a time of recession, when we must give them hope and a reason for dreaming their dreams.

Sometimes we find ourselves in a Westminster bubble, where we seem to be out of touch with many of our people. New regulations might mean that those in the other place can increase their allowances substantially. Imagine how somebody who is going to lose their home, or is unable to buy food to put on the table for their children, will feel when they hear that under these regulations some will get richer while they get poorer. Think of young unemployed Britons and their anxiety as they post application letter after application letter, who then hear that others are going to increase their share of the fat of the land.

It has been said that, “We parley while they lament”. We see what is happening, and how less advantaged children in many different parts of the country and the world face an uphill struggle before they can dream their dreams. I do not watch “West Wing”, or rather I did not, but the character Sam Seaborn said:

“education is the silver bullet … Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce”.

I am sure we would all say that that is right. I hear that unqualified teachers—I was one for a wee while—are to be allowed to teach our youngsters, but we need the best possible teachers and the highest possible standards. We must look at this in the most serious way. Just as we expect those who work in the classroom to be qualified, those who offer career advice in schools, job centres and local communities must be the very best people we can appoint. When someone goes for career instruction they should not have to talk to a computer, or receive a list of perhaps 12 or 20 jobs that they can apply for. They should be able to talk to someone who has deep compassion and care for those in that situation.

The Chancellor of Germany recently remarked how important it was to have experienced advisers on hand to help young people on a local level, and that this could not be underestimated. That is one reason why Germany is doing better in the present recession than other countries. We cannot ignore this when we see the number of youngsters who are without jobs, especially in Greece, Spain and Italy. We are doing very well compared with them. What is their feeling? Does this not contribute to the riots and the discontent? We ignore this situation at our peril.

Last month I asked a Question about youth unemployment, the most pressing problem facing Europe, and what action the Government are taking with other European Union states to tackle it. The European youth employment initiative is to be shared, with the European Investment Bank also contributing, throughout the European Union. In his Answer the noble Lord, Lord Freud, mentioned the meeting in Madrid on youth unemployment on 19 June. This was possibly an opportunity for the Government to discuss the youth unemployment initiative. The noble Lord, Lord Freud, raised my hopes. I was grateful for his Answer.

However, in a further Written Answer from the noble Lord, which I received on 1 July, he stated:

“The Minister for Employment did not discuss which UK regions will be eligible for support from the Youth Employment Initiative (YEI) at the meeting in Madrid on 19 June or at the European Employment and Social Policy Council (EPSCO) in Luxembourg on the 20 June. The Government does not expect to discuss the regional division of funds in the UK under the YEI at the Berlin meeting”—

which took place yesterday. The Answer concludes:

“The Minister did not raise UK efforts to tackle youth employment … at the meeting in Madrid, or …. Luxembourg … and there are no current plans to discuss this”,—[Official Report, 1/7/13; col. WA 185.]

at Berlin yesterday.

In September 1938, Neville Chamberlain, the then Prime Minister, flew in from Berlin with a piece of paper in his hand. I do not think that the Minister for Employment, or whoever is going to Berlin, will have even a piece of paper in their hand when they fly home. Perhaps they have flown already. This is a scandalous neglect of opportunity. The youth employment initiative could raise hundreds of thousands of youngsters out of this trap of hopelessness. We must be there.

I am a gentle Liberal and am proud to be a gentle Liberal, but sometimes even gentle Liberals have to say that the time has come for us to reconsider much of the work that has been done and what the UK is doing. I ask the department to do that, or to give me an answer today as to what happened at Berlin and what other things will happen that can bring hope to the young people. When they have hope, they can think of jobs and of their contribution to the life of our community.

12:42

[Viscount Eccles]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my noble friend, but I am afraid that I am going to come rather closer to ground level than he was. I have one reflection on Germany: if it was not in the euro and went back to the deutschmark, a Volkswagen would cost 25% more than it does today.

I have one other reflection. My noble friend Lady Shephard mentioned that people get where they get by random processes. I am in that club: I got here twice, both times by a random process. We should not discount the ways in which people arrive at some destinations by random processes. Of course, we are all to a greater or lesser extent creatures of our own experience—a point I shall come back to in a number of ways.

Different people take different lengths of time to grow up. When we refer to young people, we need to remember that education does not stop at 18 or 21. Higher degrees can be gained by people who are much older than that, having found out on the journey who they are, what they are capable of doing and what they are not capable of doing. We have, quite correctly, mentioned aspirations in this debate. At some point, of course, it is always possible to have too many aspirations while, at another point, it is possible to have too few. What we are really seeking is reality. We are trying to find out, as we go through the journey, where we really want to be and where we are capable of being.

To illustrate that, I would like to talk about the foundry industry and will do so in some detail. My noble friend will be pleased to hear that I was introduced to the foundry industry by work experience. When I was 18, I worked for a number of weeks in Ford’s cylinder block foundry in Dagenham. Most of the people who lived in that part of east London and worked in the cylinder block foundry were of Irish extraction. They were able to make sure that nearly everybody in the foundry shop was of Irish extraction as they had their own methods of creating a community. It was a fantastic experience—I shall not go into it in any detail—but I finally hung up my steel-tipped foundry boots 54 years later, having been continuously involved in the foundry industry in one way or another throughout that time.

The foundry industry is a very old industry—one thinks of bronzes from China or Benin in west Africa—and it is never going to go away. It is a method of making complicated shapes in different metals which cannot yet be superseded—there may be this 3D, building-up-in-layers process, but not yet. It is not a big industry in this country: there are 20,000 people involved in it, in 400 foundries, which make half a million tonnes of castings a year. In this latest recession, not one single foundry of any note has had to close down, which is in contrast to the way that things were happening in the middle of my foundry career. This is an industry which is quite small, quite specialist and absolutely necessary. Every single motor car has castings in it. There are many other things that have to have castings in them, but every single motor car does. That demonstrates the necessity of the industry.

The question is how anybody arrives in the industry and how they can be prepared for a career in it. I shall briefly tell your Lordships about a foundry with 250 people in it making steel castings. The shifts were days, not days and nights. The first person got to the foundry at 6 am to get the furnaces going; the last person would leave between 6 pm and 7 pm. Once the hot metal came down, there was no stopping for tea breaks; it was a continuous process. Despite that, they all had tea and were very ingenious at keeping it hot. There are plenty of places in a foundry where you can keep your tea hot.

The work was relatively dangerous. It could not have been done without a workforce who really knew what they needed to do and did not have to be told anything. I do not exaggerate. Only when something went wrong were the managers, who were all foremen and charge hands in those days, involved. The interdependence of that workforce, the discipline and the willingness to be sure that they were looking after each other were absolutely vital. Who would prepare a young person for that sort of disciplined existence? Clearly, if you are on a small team and somebody does not turn out, it is pretty difficult.

There has been a lot of talk about schools, and I shall talk about them, but I do not see how you get round the idea that some sort of self-discipline and a willingness to be interdependent has to start in the home. If it does not, I do not know that you are doing too well. Anything else is a substitute, because, however you look at the way in which people grow up, the home is more important than the school. Okay, sometimes, the school becomes a substitute in some sense but in the foundry industry—it may be different today—the schools were not much help. They did not like foundries. Good Lord, if you invited school teachers into foundries, they would go out saying, “For goodness sake, don’t go in there. It’s hot and it’s dirty, and the men look pretty rough to me”. The lads in the foundry did but, of course, they arrived in one set of clothes and then changed into their foundry clothes. When they went home again, having had a shower in the foundry showers, they were very different and could do well in the pub more or less straightaway. There is a thing about conformism and expectations among the academic community, and I do not think we have got that right yet. We need a much broader acceptance of difference and diversity, and of people getting careers and satisfaction in places which school teachers, on the whole, do not know about and do not like.

If the careers system is not working in favour of foundries, another way is that of community and shared experience. I remember well the office manager, George Warner, coming to me and saying, “There’s a woman and a boy in your office and they want to talk to you”. She said to me, “This is William and he’s useless. He’s 16 and he doesn’t know what he wants to do. He won’t make up his mind about anything, but as you know my uncle”—she had family in the foundry—“will you give him a job?”. We had a bit of a conversation and we gave him a job.

Again, there is a whole raft of things about having too few aspirations. Who is going to solve them? It is not going to be central government nor, in my view, is it going to be academic institutions on their own. There has to be some willingness within a community and a society to look and see how we solve this and give people opportunities and back-to-work experience again.

The other thing that has happened in the foundry industry, alongside discipline, is the amazing sophistication of the technology. The materials technology during the time that I have been involved—I am now only an observer—has been quite amazing. The equipment technology has also been quite amazing. For example, in automotive casting foundries, you will find a machine called a Disamatic, which is made in Denmark. The guys on that machine are individually responsible for about £200,000 of capital equipment. It is very unlikely that they are graduates; I do not know that we would actually find it very satisfactory to employ graduates on a Disamatic.

As you increase the sophistication of a foundry, the cost of capital is no higher in the United Kingdom than it is in China—arguably, it can in fact be lower. Therefore, the greater the extent to which you can make the mix of your assets more capital and less labour, the more competitive you are. This operates in two directions: it means that western economies can remain competitive but also that the number of jobs available will not increase and is quite likely to go down. It also means that the people in that foundry have to be, on average, better educated and more willing to accept the disciplines of a continuous process. That is a big challenge.

One must not forget that the guys on the Disamatic also need manual skills. This is not something that central government can solve in any way. I am happy to say that another college has been set up just to look at foundries. My final message is that we should be much more open-minded, reject conformism and stereotypes, and actually go and look at the details of what people can do and how they can get a very satisfactory career out of it if they find their way into the foundry industry.

00:00

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I am sure that we can all say amen to that, and I hope that my noble friend will forgive me if I do not follow him into the foundry. I will begin by congratulating most warmly my noble friend Lady Shephard, not only on introducing the debate, but on the wise and firm manner in which she spoke. There is no one who is better at admonishing people with charm than my noble friend. I hope that the Minister will respond positively to someone who was one of the most successful Secretaries of State for Education in recent times.

I shall never forget when I talked to my honourable friend about some problems in my constituency, and head teachers having various difficulties. She said, “Bring them to see me”. I took half a dozen heads from the South Staffordshire constituency, who were completely bowled over when I said they were going to see the Secretary of State, and we went and had what was, for me, an unprecedented experience because she actually saw us on time. Ministers rarely do that.

Today my noble friend has given us an exemplary lead in what she said in her speech, and I would like to take up some of the points that she made. However, I would like to begin by saying that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, was kind enough to refer to the debate that we had last week on citizenship, I think that this debate is in many ways complementary to that one. I just hope that the Minister will be able to give a slightly more positive response to this debate than he felt able to give last week.

One of the things that I will major on, following the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is careers guidance in schools. This is absolutely crucial. It is a sort of add-on extra in many schools, and it should not be. The present Secretary of State is very good at telling people what he thinks should happen, and I think that he is a most excellent Secretary of State, but I believe that there should be a requirement for every secondary school to have not only a careers staff but a careers panel drawn from the local community. There would be industrialists relevant to the industry of the area, maybe a foundry, or farmers if it was in a rural area and, obviously, professional men and women. It would be a group of people who really knew what they were talking about.

I believe that it would also be sensible if, during the final year or two of their course, every pupil had the opportunity to go and see how a farm works, perhaps how a foundry works, or how a solicitor’s office operates. If they not only had the work experience—which is very important indeed, and my noble friend Lord Norton does it absolutely brilliantly—but had also seen how other places work, they would have a breadth of knowledge when they came to make the choice. They would also have something to aspire to. I really believe that the careers service in schools in our country leaves a great deal to be desired.

The other point that I would like to develop is this: in her speech the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, talked about apprenticeships, a subject which was echoed very eloquently by my noble friend Lady Brinton. There is still an unfortunate attitude, and I choose my words carefully, adopted towards those who work with their hands as though it is second best. There is almost a looking-down on the vocational aspect of the technical school or college. Frankly, I think that was compounded by the, in my view, misguided decision to make all polytechnics universities. They were different institutions that called for different talents, and they provided different opportunities. It is not a failure if a young man or woman does not go to university; it is a failure only if that young man or woman is unable to realise the full potential that they have within them.

I have been associated for many years with a body called the William Morris Craft Fellowship, of which I am chairman, and which I helped to found almost 30 years ago. Every year we give travelling fellowships to young men and women, and I am pleased to say that many of them have been women. They are craftsmen, builders, joiners, stonemasons, glaziers, plumbers—we have run the whole gamut. These are young people who have decided that they want to spend their lives repairing, upholding and adding to our built heritage. Only last week at a debriefing lunch in London, I was able to talk to last year’s craft fellows, one of them a woman bricklayer, another a woman stonemason, another a young man who was also a stonemason.

The breadth of experience that we are able to give those young people, mostly in their 20s, as they take themselves around a whole range of sites seeing disciplines other than their own at work, enriches them, makes them far better crafts men and women and puts them in a position—this is what we wanted to do at the beginning—where they themselves can take charge of major projects. We have been running now for 26 years, with well over 100 fellows—once a fellow, always a fellow—and already we have had several who have written books, while others have taken over companies. They have achieved a whole range of things, and they have gone into schools and inspired young people. I would like to see more of that. I do not believe that our young people are sufficiently alive to the opportunities and satisfactions of a career in the crafts.

We have the great good fortune of working in this most beautiful building, which did not just depend on the architectural genius of Charles Barry and Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin; it depended far more on the craftsmen—they were all men in those days—who carved the panels, created the stained glass and built the walls, and it still depends on the skilled craftsmen of today repairing and restoring those things and keeping this building in being.

Keats, of course, memorably said:

“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness”.

We should inspire our young people with that thought so that they can take part in the crafts. Craftsmen make an imperishable contribution, in some cases, to the fabric of their country. We have so sadly, almost criminally, neglected and denigrated that as a career opportunity for many that we should be ashamed. As at least a couple of speakers have mentioned, the Germans do not take that attitude, and neither should we. In this country we have some of the finest and best crafts men and women anywhere in the world.

Another association that I am involved with as a patron is the Heritage Crafts Association, which is an association of individual crafts men and women making artefacts such as leather goods, pewter, silver and woodwork—a whole range of things—many of them one-man or one-woman bands, and many unable to afford to take on apprentices. I took a group from that association to see Mr Matt Hancock, the Minister with particular responsibility, a few weeks ago. We had a warm and receptive hearing, and I hope that that will lead to things. The Government should be helping those one-man band crafts men and women to take on others and pass on their skills. That is tremendously important.

My noble friend Lord Norton took up the word “aspirations” in the Motion. Yes, every young person should have an aspiration. It is our duty to give them the inspiration to have aspiration. I hope that my noble friend Lady Shephard’s Motion, in drawing attention to that fact, will help to persuade my noble friend on the Front Bench that, although things have been done, much more needs to be done.

We have marvellous debates in this House and we have had some admirable contributions today. One of the sadnesses is that what we say in here so often remains a state secret. I hope that what has been said today, and what I am sure what will be said in the following half hour or so, will get out into the wider world. My noble friend Lady Shephard has performed a signal service in drawing attention to this subject, and I truly hope that her debate will bear fruit.

13:05

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

My Lords, I, too, add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, on securing this vital debate. I pay tribute to her outstanding work in this area. I declare an interest as vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Social Mobility, which is relevant to my contribution today.

I am sure we can all agree that current levels of unemployment for young people are simply too high. From February to April this year, some 950,000 young people aged between 16 and 24 suffered unemployment. When young people fail to find work, their prospects can be bleak indeed. It is well documented that long periods of joblessness when young translate into lower lifetime earnings. In the worst cases, youth unemployment can inflict lifelong scars on the individual, as well as increasing costs to the Treasury. Indeed, the recent ACEVO commission on youth unemployment found that current levels of youth unemployment in 2012 would cost the Treasury approximately £28 billion in the next decade alone.

I warmly welcome the strong emphasis that the coalition Government have placed on social mobility as a central plank within their social and economic reforms. I strongly support the Deputy Prime Minister’s social mobility business compact to help to ensure that all young people have fair access to job opportunities, the Government’s commitment to deliver at least 250,000 more apprenticeships during the spending review period and the support that they have pledged for young people seeking work or further education and training through the youth contract. These are positive steps, of course, but today’s debate is an opportunity to think boldly about what more could and should be done.

When I speak to employers, they say that they are looking for several main things: a good grasp of the basics, particularly English and maths; the right attitude towards customer service; and what are sometimes called—although, as I will explain, I think this is misleading—the “soft skills”. I would like to say a little more about that, building on the wise words of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen.

The recent report from the all-party group entitled Seven Key Truths about Social Mobility set out the key issues that policy should focus on, looking at the unequal opportunities that start in the earliest years of life and all too often persist and widen in later life. These truths cover the importance of the early years in the home, as we have heard today; the critical importance of education, including both the quality of teaching and extracurricular activities; the pivotal role of access to university; and the need for other pathways to mobility such as apprenticeships, which we have rightly heard a lot about today.

The final key truth, which I want to focus on, is that of character and resilience, something that the all-party group saw as the missing link in the chain. Character and resilience may be viewed by some as a somewhat amorphous term, and some might choose to dismiss it as fluffy or cosmetic soft skills. In fact, the very term “soft skills” strikes me as something of a misnomer. Far from being fluffy, developing character and resilience is about developing the fundamental drive, tenacity and perseverance needed to make the most of opportunities and succeed in life, whatever obstacles stand in the way. It is about self-esteem, self-confidence, self-discipline, aspiration and expectation. In everyday language, it is about believing you can achieve, understanding the relationship between effort and reward, sticking with the task at hand and bouncing back from the knocks life inevitably involves.

A recent survey of evidence from the Prince’s Trust tells us that young people from affluent backgrounds are more likely to be told by their family that they can achieve anything and that more than one in four young people from poorer backgrounds felt that people like them do not succeed in life and that if they have failed an exam or been turned down for a job they are more likely to feel that they have already failed in life. There is a growing body of evidence showing the link between developing these social and emotional skills, and doing well, academically and in the workplace.

Research by the IPPR indicates that social and personal skills have become 33 times more important in determining life chances, while soft skills have become 10 times more important in determining future earnings in a single generation. Paul Tough’s recent book, How Children Succeed, which your Lordships may have seen, also illustrates the ways in which character skills contribute to cognitive ability. In addition, the American Nobel Prize winning economist, James Heckman, has found that character traits are just as predictive of academic or job success as more traditional cognitive skills.

In the light of all of this evidence the all-party group hosted the character and resilience summit earlier this year. We heard from Alan Milburn, chair of the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, who said that it is not ability that is unevenly distributed, but opportunity. That phrase has stuck with me. We heard great things about work going on in schools—both in the state and the independent sector—with examples of volunteering in the local community, out-door activities that push pupils outside their comfort zone and a wide range of imaginative extra-curricular activities.

We heard schools saying that developing traits such as these is now part of their core business and that for employers, who are so relevant to today’s debate, these less tangible skills of sticking at it, not giving up, empathy and teamwork are precisely what they are looking for in potential recruits. Overall, the message we heard from academics, head teachers and employers is that whatever qualifications you might have, where you are on the character scale will have a big impact on what you achieve in life.

What does this mean in practice? A recent Prince’s Trust Feedback from the Frontline survey found that a third of young people apply for more than 100 jobs before getting hired. With odds like this, it is all too clear just how critical resilience is for young people entering the world of work. In addition, recent research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and York University found that when they sent off fictional CVs that appeared to be from disadvantaged people, they fared worse than those not from disadvantaged backgrounds. I find that scandalous, but it demonstrates clearly how the odds are stacked against too many of our young people. That is why I want to call on the Government to take more account of the growing evidence surrounding the role of character and resilience in improving social mobility and see how we can put some of these ideas into practice.

As other noble Lords have said today, international comparisons can be helpful. I was interested in recent research by the IPPR that suggests that countries with strong transition systems—to use the jargon—are associated with far lower levels of youth unemployment and disengagement. Key features of stronger systems include a wide range of high-quality pathways into skilled jobs, such as apprenticeships, and early exposure to the workplace through high-quality and regular work placements. It is instructive for us to reflect, as my noble friend Lord Roberts and other noble Lords have done, that countries such as Germany which tend to have these features in their education and training systems have been successful in lowering youth unemployment since the economic downturn began.

I have some more practical suggestions. The Prince’s Trust survey had some important suggestions for what the Government should do to help more young people, including the provision of face-to-face careers advice for 16 to 19 year-olds. That is vital and it is an area crying out for reform. Like my noble friend Lady Brinton, who spoke so eloquently on the subject, I would also like to ask my noble friend the Minister whether he can say what steps the Government are taking to improve careers advice for this age group.

In response to its survey findings about the sorts of things that young people want from programmes to help boost their self-esteem, confidence and resilience, the Prince’s Trust has created the Team programme. This is a 12-week personal development programme that focuses on building resilience and encourages young people to pull together as a group. When the programme ends, participants continue to support each other through job clubs, some of which are completely youth led. The Team programme has seen more than 115,000 participants since its launch in 1990. Impressively, it boasts a 70% employment success rate within three months of completion of the programme.

We should also look out into the community, beyond Government, to get thoughtful advice on what more can be done to help prepare young people for work. Last week I had the pleasure and the privilege of hearing about the Campaign for Youth Social Action, which is led by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. The campaign aims to provide a long-term vision to drive a real change in culture toward making youth social action, or volunteering, a universal norm. This is based on research demonstrating that meaningful social action improves empathy and that awareness of society around us leads to better engagement in education and, particularly relevant today, increased employability, confidence, problem-solving skills and resilience. I repeat the word “resilience”, but do not apologise for the focus that I am putting on it today.

The focus of today’s debate has been on getting young people prepared for the world of work and getting a job. But once this has happened, if young people are to achieve their aspirations, there must be opportunities for progression. Many employers understand this well and ensure that progression opportunities are available. But to ensure that progression is a reality for all young people, I strongly favour the establishment of a national lifetime careers service, in particular for young people, and for adults on low wages. They should be actively encouraged to engage with such a service and through this be assisted to develop a career or training progression plan.

In conclusion, we have taken time today to reflect on the efforts being made to prepare young people for the world of work. This debate has clearly shown that a number of things are vital. They include improving practical skills training and levels of English and maths attainment and supporting the development of strong character and resilience. These are key to ensuring that all young people are able to make the most of their talents and do well in the world of work. I urge the Government to build on the steps that they have already taken to make a reality of this collective aspiration.

13:17

[Baroness Fookes]

My Lords, I am not quite sure that I can match my noble friend Lady Shephard’s ability to admonish with charm, as my other noble friend suggested. I want to belabour the government Minister nearest to me on the subject of careers advice and guidance, which many others have most eloquently spoken about. We suffer in this country from what I would call an intellectual snobbery that downgrades anything that is not only with the brain. If it is with the hands, it is somehow inferior. This point was made clearly my noble friend Lord Cormack.

I suggest another area: the world of horticulture. Here I declare my interest as the chairman of the all-party gardening group. You only have to mention this to the average careers teacher or adviser and they think immediately of some low-grade job that only the lowest and the humblest can aspire to fill. In fact it is highly skilled in its craft. It goes off into other fields, such as garden design and the study of plant diseases, and all kinds of other ways in which horticulture can be a truly skilled career or set of careers to follow.

In this place, we have two distinguished horticulturalists, and good examples, in my noble friends Lords Skelmersdale and Lord Taylor, and I think there are many others in the House who have these kinds of skills. I hope that the Minister will take this on board when reflecting on how the careers service should be guided in future.

I now turn to people who find it difficult to get work: those at the very bottom of the pile. I must declare my interest as chairman of an ambassadors group that supports the charity Tomorrow’s People in the Plymouth and south-west Devon area. It has an established reputation for trying to get the long-term unemployed into work and staying in work, which is a key element. In its work trying to help the long-term unemployed, it has realised that the problem is also at the youthful end of the scale, so it has developed programmes which I hope your Lordships will find of interest.

One is called Working it Out and is intended for those who have left school but who are, to use the ghastly term, NEETS: those who are not in education, employment or training. It has gathered together groups of 12 to 15 such young people, many of whom have appalling family problems as well, which compounds the issue. It gets them together as a group with two leaders who take them through about 12 weeks doing something useful. It might be going off to climb a mountain or redecorating a dilapidated old community centre, all kinds of things. The young people work as a group and the leaders try to inculcate in them teamwork, punctuality, reliability and initiative. At the end of those 12 weeks, most of the young people have remained on the course. At that end of the scale, you do get a few drop-outs, but the majority stay and most of them go into further training or get jobs.

A year or so ago, I watched a group in Plymouth that had a very inspirational leader. He was an ex-Royal Navy diver who had had a bad accident. He was no longer able to dive, so he had come out of the service. He had those young men and women enthused, and a number of them were contemplating going into one of the armed services. Of course, from there you can build up all kinds of careers within the armed services.

I also found that on many occasions Tomorrow’s People dealt with people whose educational achievement was weak. It managed to get some volunteers—I do not know how it did it—who had been teachers to come in and teach simple English and simple arithmetic. I sat behind a young man who was learning how to add up two columns of figures and how to carry a figure to the next column. He was 16 or 17. One wonders what had happened in the educational system. It had clearly failed him, but at least this was a useful attempt to bring practical skills and some academic skills to bear.

These Working it Out schemes led Tomorrow’s People to think that it should get those young people before they left school and that it needed to operate in schools. This has lead to an interesting experiment that is taking place right now. Fourteen schools in a London borough are selecting children of 14 or older who seem to be at real risk. Tomorrow’s People is bringing in a Coach with a capital C—I suppose you could say a mentor, but the expression does not matter very much. The coach sticks with the children over a period of up to five years from the age of 14 to the age of 18 or 19. There are one to one sessions and group sessions. The children are taken on visits to places of work. Then they graduate to going to workability workshops, which inculcate the kind of soft skills that my noble friend Lady Tyler was talking about. Tomorrow’s People then tries to get them work experience. This scheme is apparently having considerable success. Admittedly it is long term by the standards of most courses, and I am sure it is quite expensive, but let us consider the expense of having those young people for ever on benefits. When you look at it in that light, the more remedial work that is done at an early stage, the better. It is a reflection of what my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth was talking about in relation to higher education. I am bringing it down to this lower level, but the same principles apply.

I hope I have given your Lordships some idea of some of the practical applications. Other interesting ideas have been suggested by other noble Lords, and they are all of enormous value, because talking about lifting aspirations and poverty of expectation will get us nowhere. Someone somewhere has to get down to the nitty-gritty of working with these young people.

A year or two ago, I went to a school in Plymouth where I was asked to be one of a group of exemplars or role models, which made me feel slightly uncomfortable. There were several of us: a school teacher, the manager of a local store and me. We were supposed to enthuse the young women of 15 or 16 or so. I cannot tell you how depressed I was by the time I had finished. They already seemed set in not expecting anything much from life or a job. I do not think they had even lifted their thoughts to a career. I thought that that was no way to go as a country. We have so much to offer, and so many educational institutions are offering a great deal. It was a truly depressing experience. Anything we can do from the early years is of the utmost importance.

I hope the Minister will take some practical steps to assure us that the Government are taking on board all the points that have been made in this interesting, high-level debate. I ask him in particular whether he would be prepared to look at the two schemes that I know most about, particularly the one in schools in Shoreditch. I do not think I mentioned that before, but it is Shoreditch. I would be delighted if he could find time to pay a visit and see it on the ground. Would he be prepared at least to look at extending that kind of approach to schools generally? It would be extremely valuable. In the end, actions speak louder than words.

13:28

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, for tabling this debate today and for eloquently raising a number of important questions. I appreciated her contribution. This debate has given us the opportunity to explore in detail some very real challenges. In the course of this high-level debate, we have come up with a range of practical and interesting solutions to some of these challenges.

A number of noble Lords made the point that we had a very similar debate last week when we debated citizenship. The debates have some common themes, because we were looking for the need to create more rounded individuals, not just academic achievers but active and considerate citizens with all the skills to have successful and fulfilling lives in the broadest sense. That is an echo that we have heard again today. We all want young people to be ambitious—to stretch themselves and to achieve their dreams—but at the current time it seems that the very opposite is happening. We have youth unemployment remaining stubbornly high at 20%, and over a million young people between the age of 16 and 24 not in education, employment or training. We have a generation that is lost in depression and despondency. We are losing their energy and their skills to the economy. Something is clearly going very wrong, and we need to address this urgently.

Some of these challenges are wider than the UK. We are obviously impacted by the global downturn. The noble Lord, Lord Roberts, spoke very eloquently on that matter and reminded us that we have a combined interest in having a proper international perspective. I was shocked at the quotes he gave in that letter about how government Ministers were not addressing and raising the issue of youth unemployment at an EU level. I will be interested to hear, as that discussion goes on, whether the Minister can give us a more positive update on that.

We know, for example, that there are an estimated 75 million unemployed young people worldwide. Obviously, that figure masks countries that are winners and losers. We want to be the best and to learn from the best here in the UK. This is not rocket science. There are ways of creating meaningful jobs for young people, and there are examples globally that we can learn from. We need to make sure that we take those lessons back so that we can maximise the opportunities for the next generation.

However, a number of noble Lords have said that we in the UK continue to have concerns about school leavers not having the right experience. This has been confirmed in the CBI report that was recently published, and the point has been made by several noble Lords around the Chamber. The CBI criticised the lack of key skills such as self-management, problem solving and aptitude for work. These concerns were recently echoed by the Federation of Small Businesses, which identified poor literacy, numeracy and communication skills as a barrier to employment.

Interestingly, the CBI also identified a critical lack of skills in key sectors such as manufacturing, construction and engineering, which might be the driver for future long-term growth in the economy, where vacancies already exist. So even where those vacancies exist we are not producing the young people with the skills to seize those opportunities. We need to start realigning young people’s aspirations with the types of jobs that we know will be generated over the next two decades, many of which will not even exist today.

First, I agree with my noble friend Lady Massey and the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, that we have to start at an early-years level. That early-years provision is absolutely vital. Interestingly, the Government have cut the early intervention grant by some 40% since 2010, so they speak with mixed messages on that.

Secondly, education should be less about cramming facts and more about rounded skills that make young people employable. Rather than learning vast amounts of technical data, which may well be out of date by the time employment starts, students need to demonstrate analytical and collaborative skills. They need to learn how to speak confidently and articulate an argument, how to listen to others, how to scrutinise established views, and how to take an idea and work it up into a substantial, well argued piece of coursework.

I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, that developing character and resilience are also an important part of those key skills. Last week I spent an inspiring morning at a school in Waltham Forest where young people were writing and performing poetry about their lives. They were able to demonstrate that they were articulate, confident and literate. All the evidence shows that these are the types of skills that employers welcome. We know, however, that the Government’s education reforms are having the opposite impact with their singular focus on cramming and passing an end-of-course exam and the removal of speaking skills from the English GCSE. I have to ask the Minister what evidence there is that employers approve of these education reforms and whether they think that young people will be more employable as a result of these changes.

Thirdly, I echo the wide range of criticisms of the careers service that have been made by a number of noble Lords around the Chamber. We clearly need to address the dire straits of the school careers service. Regrettably, all our warnings about the dangers of moving careers advice into schools, without any resources or expertise, have been shown to be true.

The report of the Commons Education Committee is devastating on this issue. It identifies a worrying deterioration in the level of provision for young people and highlighted concerns about the quality, independence, impartiality and availability of careers advice. For example, the evidence from Careers England has shown that only 16% of schools have maintained the previous level of careers advice. Teachers report that they are pressurised to encourage children to stay on in the sixth form regardless of their aptitude, rather than considering wider options, as it has a positive impact on the school budget. Surely this cannot be right.

Teachers also admit to having very little current experience of the world of work. Indeed, some were quoted as saying that in the absence of that they relied on giving the careers advice that they were given in school to young people. They also overly relied on websites for advice in the absence of that knowledge. As a result, young people are denied the regular one to one, face to face engagement with a professional that would help them make better career choices at an early stage of their schooling.

We know how heartbreaking it can be when a young person finally decides on a career choice only to discover that they have studied the wrong subjects to make that a reality. The Select Committee chairman described the Government’s response that careers have been delegated to schools and that they would not interfere as an abdication of their responsibility on this matter. I absolutely agree with this judgment.

I am aware that Ofsted is carrying out a review of careers teaching, but I hope the Minister can reassure us that the collapse of this service is being given urgent attention and that a provision that is fit for purpose will be urgently introduced. I was very interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, say how this should be not just about improving the professionalism of careers staff but about bringing more careers panels into schools and having wider opportunities for young people to make careers visits outside of school. Again, I hope the Minister will be able to respond positively on that.

A recent report from Pearson has discovered that, in the absence of proper advice, over a third of young people used television programmes to help them decide on careers and that one in 10 girls look to celebrities for inspiration about their future careers. It is no wonder that young people are failing to achieve their aspirations.

Finally, we need to move away from the long-held belief that a degree is the only route into well paid work. This includes challenging parents, who often see a degree as a rite of passage for their child and something that they can boast to their friends about. Parents need to be educated too. In Austria, for example, careers education is given to both parents and pupils. I commend that as an idea for consideration.

There is thankfully in this country now a growing realisation of the value of vocational education. My party is doing a great deal of work to develop a vocational offer on a par with the best of academic training. I therefore welcome the Government’s belated announcement today of a new tech qualification, although we will want to see and scrutinise the details.

Several noble Lords commented on the German model of combined apprenticeships and study. It is often held up quite rightly as an exemplar, and we can clearly learn a great deal from it, but we have to create a vocational alternative that is right for us—for the UK’s economy—that focuses on our specific and unique opportunities for growth.

We need to incentivise more employers to offer quality apprenticeships, not just in traditional subjects, although I very much enjoyed hearing from the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, about his experience in the foundries. We also need to develop apprenticeships in the developing sectors of IT, design and the creative sector, where much of our further growth will be. I also agreed with the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, that the Government could do a great deal more to offer apprenticeships in our own governmental organisations.

While we welcome the development of studio schools, we need to ensure that the opportunity to study academically in parallel with work experience is not just a feature of specialist schools but becomes an established feature of mainstream schooling as well. Again, I very much take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Norton, that this model can apply equally in higher education. I was very interested to hear of his experiences at the University of Hull.

In conclusion, we have shared many common themes in this debate today. We all share the desire to give every child a chance to succeed, but there is a great deal more that the Government can do to give young people the skills which employers say are essential, and the careers advice to make their way successfully through to the future jobs market. I very much hope that the Minister can reassure us that the Government have a plan to address these crucial issues, and I look forward to hearing from him.

13:40

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash)]

My Lords, I thank those who have taken part in this debate, particularly my noble friend Lady Shephard for securing this debate on such an important issue. I know that she is committed to ensuring that young people leave their education prepared to enter employment or higher education.

High-quality vocational education delivers the knowledge and skills that employers need and is an essential part of a healthy economy. My noble friend Lady Shephard raised the question of equitable access, and the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, also touched on it. My noble friend Lady Tyler raised the question of social mobility. A very fine young man, David Johnston, who used to run the Oxford Access Scheme and then my wife’s and my charity, and who now runs the Social Mobility Foundation, tells me that the foundation recently organised work experience for state school pupils with JP Morgan, Whitehall and Linklaters solicitors. They have achieved a high take-up rate, but not without a good deal of encouragement to schools, many of which saw this programme as not for them and too posh. They had no one to engage with the programme and, indeed, some were actively hostile towards it.

This is a question of attitude and mindset. Our children are capable of far more than we have previously asked of them. As my noble friend Lord Norton said, we need to raise their aspirations at every turn. I was appalled when—thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis—we arrived at Pimlico Academy and I saw how the school had really not engaged at all with the business and professional communities. We installed a Raising Aspirations programme and have a full-time Raising Aspirations co-ordinator. We have had 400 speakers to the school over the past five years and our RA co-ordinator organises work experience, visits to companies, hospitals, universities and so on. It has had a remarkable effect on our students’ ambitions. I am delighted to tell my noble friend Lady Fookes that we have a gardening club, and I look forward to going to Shoreditch with her.

We want to send a message to all schools that they should actively engage with a programme like Raising Aspirations. I invite the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, to actively encourage the unions also to send this message to their members. We are working to make available more and better work experience opportunities by funding post-16 work experience at the same level as qualifications, giving providers more opportunities to develop closer links with employers. We are removing the bureaucratic barriers that employers tell us deter them from offering these opportunities. We recently published long-awaited simplified health and safety guidance, busting many of the myths which surround work experience placements. Ministers recently wrote to employers confirming that the insurance industry has committed to treat work experience students as employees so that they will be covered by their existing employer’s liability compulsory insurance policies.

My noble friends Lady Shephard, Lady Tyler, Lady Fookes and Lord Cormack, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Massey and Lady Jones, raised the question of careers guidance, which I accept is not good enough by some way. We have transferred responsibility for this to schools because, frankly, the previous regime was acknowledged by just about everybody, including Alan Milburn, as not working. We have established the National Careers Service. This provides a focus on clear information and high-quality advice. Since its launch in April 2012, the service has handled almost 68,000 helpline calls, e-mails and web-chats with young people. We have also extended the requirement down to year 8 and up to year 13 from this September, and are extending it to young people in colleges. This will ensure that more young people can access the support that they need when they need it.

However, good schools seek to identify their students’ aptitudes, interests and passions at an early age and work with them to develop their knowledge of career paths while keeping their options open. Good schools engage with their local businesses and professional communities to organise careers advice, speakers, visits, work experience, mentors and so on. This is all part of a good education and we will seek to encourage all schools at every turn to emulate the practice of good schools. One face-to-face interview late in a young person’s school career is a very poor substitute for a good education.

My noble friend Lord Cormack mentioned the idea of a careers panel, which I have seen adopted in a number of schools, including my own. It is an excellent idea. In my discussions with schools about how they can substantially beef up their careers advice, I will be mentioning it whenever I can.

Business of all size has an important role to play in the development of young people’s employability skills. We have seen some excellent good practice from organisations such as Business in the Community through its business class programme, which now has 253 partnerships, planned to rise to 500 by 2015. Our guidance is very clear that we expect schools to establish and maintain links with other education and training providers to ensure that they are aware of the full range of options open to them. Ofsted’s thematic review of careers, reporting in September, will assess progress to date on careers guidance, but it has already said that it will give greater priority to the inspection of careers in schools from September.

The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, asked if I was tired of hearing her saying that PSHE is vital. I am not, because I agree with her that it is a vital part of what good schools should be providing. As she knows, however, we are apart on the point of whether or not it should be statutory. We trust teachers to deliver it because they know the needs of their individual pupils, which vary widely. As she mentioned, gang issues are sadly prevalent in many schools. In others, in leafy suburbs, the issues may be different. We feel that teachers must be free to adjust their provision accordingly.

All good schools focus on the character of their pupils, which my noble friend Lady Tyler mentioned. We expect all schools to do this. The Government are passionately committed to the plight of more disadvantaged pupils, and we are sharpening the way in which schools are held to account for the achievement of their disadvantaged pupils. We are doing this by ensuring that a clear and consistent set of measures are used throughout the accountability system, including Ofsted inspection. We are also increasing the coverage of the accountability system, so that even schools with small cohorts of disadvantaged pupils will be included.

There is no doubt that the UK’s 16 to 19 year-olds face tough transitions into the labour market, and this is particularly true for those young people who leave education without the necessary employability skills that employers cry out for. Since 2010 we have made progress in strengthening our skills system. As my noble friend Lady Shephard mentioned, in 2011 we commissioned Professor Alison Wolf to review vocational education. We accepted all 27 of her recommendations and I am delighted to report that we have now either implemented, or are well on the way to implementing, all of them. We are establishing a system of vocational reform that is rigorous and responsive to employers’ needs.

The most recent study from the CBI makes it very clear that 50% of employers consider literacy and numeracy one of the most important factors when recruiting school and college leavers. Major changes in the way that post-16 education is funded and the type of education offered are therefore being introduced in September. Students aged 16 to 19 will be offered a study programme which will include either a substantial vocational or academic qualification, or an extended programme of work experience.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, talked about the importance of English and maths. At the heart of 16-to-19 study programmes will be the requirement for all students who have not yet achieved an A* to C in English and/or maths by the age of 16 to continue to study towards achieving them. This will either be through a GCSE or other “stepping-stone” qualifications, such as functional skills. This requirement will be enforced by making it a condition of student funding, and education providers who fail to meet this condition will have their funding withdrawn.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, is correct that education is not about schooling young people to pass exams by cramming them with facts, but the current system of controlled assessment and bite-size assessments fails young people. It reduces teaching time and encourages rote learning and overmarking. Learning how to speak confidently, articulate an argument and listen with interest are particularly important. That is why we have included these skills in our proposed GCSE English language content.

Because we want to ensure that more young people can access high-quality education and training provision, later this year we will raise the participation age in England. From the new academic year all 16 year-olds will be required to continue studying or training for at least a further year. From 2015 that will be extended until at least their 18th birthday. Our reforms mean that young people will be able to choose to go to school, college or work-based training to take a study programme or traineeship. They can also enter an apprenticeship or study part-time alongside full-time work or volunteering

We know that many young people are highly motivated by the prospect of work but are not ready or able to secure an apprenticeship. That is why the Government are launching a high-quality traineeship programme within study programmes for 16 to 19 year-olds from August. This will better prepare young people for direct entry into an apprenticeship or a job. Employers will be at the very centre of traineeships, running the programme or offering high-quality work placements in partnership with a trusted provider. Traineeships will last a maximum of six months. The core content will be a high-quality work placement, work preparation training and English and maths. Providers and employers will have the freedom to bring these elements together in the best way to engage and support individual trainees.

My noble friend Lord Roberts mentioned Germany. A great strength of the German style is how apprenticeships are seen by young people, parents and employers as high quality and high status. This is supported by very serious investment by industry in apprenticeships. That is exactly why we have committed to pursuing the reforms recommended by the high-tech entrepreneur Doug Richard in his excellent report last year. Our reforms will put employers in the driving seat of apprenticeship standards and apprenticeships funding, just as they are in many other European countries with successful apprenticeship programmes. The number of apprenticeships has doubled since 2010 and applications are up one-third over the past year.

We are increasing the quality and rigour of apprenticeships. Doug Richard’s recent review recommends that employers play a more central role in setting standards, overseeing testing and becoming more demanding purchasers of training. There will be a clear assessment standard at the end of an apprenticeship. Most importantly, we have a broad programme to improve standards. From 2013 we plan to report academic and vocational qualifications and apprenticeships separately, giving equal public recognition to vocational education.

We have established the accountability, financial monitoring and regulatory framework that will underpin the 16-to-19 curriculum reforms and the introduction of study programmes. Ofsted will inspect 16-to-19 study programme work experience provision under the common inspection framework and the results of these inspections will help to identify effective and less effective provision in meeting the needs of students. Reform to the 16-to-18 performance tables and the publication of employment destination measures from this summer will make schools and colleges more accountable for their students’ achievement and progression into employment. We are also reforming vocational qualifications. We are repairing the broken link between the qualifications that students take and the training that employers need. Employers, universities, parents and students must have confidence that their vocational qualifications are of the highest standard.

We have already reformed vocational qualifications taught to pupils at 14, with effect from last September. We have just completed a consultation on reforming 16-to-19 vocational qualifications and plan to set out rigorous new standards that the qualifications will need to meet if they are to count in future performance tables. The outcome of the consultation was published this morning. We are introducing two new categories of vocational qualifications from 2014: technical level qualifications or “tech levels” for students wishing to specialise in a recognised occupation; and applied general qualifications for students wishing to continue their general education at advanced level through applied learning.

Our new technical baccalaureate measure will recognise the achievement of students who take the highest value occupational qualifications, alongside maths and an extended project. The tech bacc will provide a mark of achievement for young people who achieve a recognised standard of technical training. We propose this be endorsed by employers and their representative organisations as a strong grounding for entry to an apprenticeship, skilled trade or technical degree. We have also approved 39 new UTCs and 26 studio schools. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Eccles will be pleased to hear that a number of car manufacturers are engaging with these projects.

The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, mentioned the work of the Amos Bursary. For many years I have been personally committed to the plight of young black boys, through my involvement with the Eastside Young Leaders Academy and other organisations. I wish the Amos Bursary good luck tonight with its event and auction. My noble friend Lady Shephard asked whether we had yet appointed the FE commissioner. We have not. We are recruiting widely to secure an individual of the highest calibre and have already begun to recruit a team of advisers to assist the FE commissioner in his or her role.

In order to meet their career aspirations, young people need to be equipped to compete in a global market that demands ever higher and more technical knowledge and skills. The package of reforms that we have instituted will mean that more young people will have access to the highest quality academic and vocational education and training, on which, I assure noble Lords, we place equal weight. This will give them the qualifications, skills and confidence to take their place in the workplace and to enjoy fulfilling careers and sustainable employment. Employers in turn will benefit from a workforce with an increased skill set that will help boost the UK’s economic growth and lead to a more prosperous future for all of us. I thank all noble Lords for participating in this important debate.

13:56

[Baroness Shephard of Northwold]

My Lords, there are a few minutes left in which I can thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. There has certainly been no lack of advice or ideas for the Government, and a great deal of agreement across the board about what is necessary, what is admirable and what is less successful. That is often the case in the House of Lords, which is why it is such a useful source of advice for any Government.

There has been some welcome clarification from the Minister, not only about the Government’s plans for technical education, but also for greater accountability on the part of further education colleges. I was extremely pleased to hear that there are moves afoot to appoint the further education commissioner. The existence of a single person who is truly accountable and can speak for making improvements to the sector should help a great deal and be successful.

There has been a lot of unanimity over anxieties about the function of the careers service. It is not a disaster to have the function placed in schools—there is much inspiring and excellent work going on. What I do find difficult to understand is that apparently we will still not place on Ofsted the same statutory responsibility for inspecting this function as it has for other functions in a state-funded education service. While we often look across to the independent sector when we say what we expect of academies, it might be salutary also to look at the careers advice provision within the independent sector to see what is available across the board for young people in the state sector. It is not a good comparison at the moment. We need the reassurance of Ofsted that the careers service is not random.

My noble friend Lord Eccles has made great play of the importance of being random. If randomness has thrown him into the House of Lords not once but twice, it is a marvellous quality. However, we cannot expect that his application will always be as successful across the board and in every sphere as it obviously was when it had the result of him appearing twice in the House of Lords. I do not recommend it as a general principle when we look at the future prospects of our young people.

This has been a great debate and I thank all noble Lords, not least the Minister. This House should take note of the importance of preparing young people for the world of work in order to realise their aspirations.

Motion agreed.

Supply and Appropriation (Main Estimates) Bill

Thursday 4th July 2013 Lords Chamber

First Reading

14:00

The Bill was brought from the Commons, endorsed as a money Bill, and read a first time.

Immigration and Security

Thursday 4th July 2013 Lords Chamber

Motion to Take Note

14:00

Moved By

[Lord Marlesford]

That this House takes note of the relationship between effective immigration controls and the interests of the security of the United Kingdom.

[Lord Marlesford]

My Lords, the balance between the protection of our national borders and our openness to the world is an area of policy in which the demands of the citizen can arouse the suspicions of a libertarian. This is one of the perpetual and challenging problems of protecting democracy. Any solutions must emerge from the reflections of the philosopher and the imperatives of the elected politician. As a mere observer and commentator on the political process, I seek only to identify some issues, explore the options that are available in our chaotic world and suggest practical decisions that need to be taken.

At no time since 1945 has this country been as threatened by terrorism as it is today. The threat is likely to continue and even grow during the lifetimes of many of us in this Chamber today. During the Cold War, the danger of conflict was both checked and mitigated by the nuclear stalemate. Three decades of Irish terrorism were for us a local difficulty, although certainly not a little one. Today, the world is threatened by a conflict between the theocratic factions of Islam—Sunni and Shia—and their complex and varied subdivisions, such as the Alawites.

Religious struggles can and do last for centuries, during which they wax and wane. This one started more than 1,000 years ago with divided claims to the leadership of the Muslim world. The lack of a pan-Islamic secular leadership is one key to the problem that we face. The man-made borders of today demonstrate fragility, with maps taking on the instability of a kaleidoscope. A cruel civil war is spreading through much of the Muslim world, putting several nations in danger of descending into the anarchy and agony of the failed state. The factional terrorists of Islam seem to unite only in the overriding mission of Islamist jihadists to install a worldwide caliphate under Sharia law. An uneasy concordat between Muslims and Christians is now fragmenting, with mounting aggression against Christians, who are irrationally perceived as representatives of western interests.

A virtue of democracy is its vulnerability to authoritarianism, which is why it must be protected from the inhumanity of theocracy. We in the UK, along with other western nations, are menaced by jihadists, both imported and home-grown. Many people arriving in Britain, including some of those seeking asylum from persecution, bring with them their own political, religious and cultural agendas. My premise is that if a nation cannot defend its own border security, everything is at risk. It is in that context that I suggest that where the survival of democracy is at stake, the human rights of the ideal democratic state must be subordinate, at least temporarily, to national security. The absolutes of death are not part of life and never can be. Nor can our democratically elected politicians put responsibility for our national security in the hands of unelected bodies in Brussels, Strasbourg or anywhere else. That is the road to tyranny.

The proposals that I shall make are neither dramatic nor threatening to our cherished British liberties. They are, in sum, based merely on using the possibilities offered by effective management, combined with technology, to help identify and forestall threats of serious crime and terrorism. I believe that the British people support our security and intelligence services having the powers and facilities that they need to protect us. Our deep-rooted sense of independent justice, and our ancient system of parliamentary democracy, hold the ring against abuse, either from inside or outside, by those powers. I have been to GCHQ and was impressed in particular by the priority given to countering the threat of cyberattack, which is a form of terrorism.

The coalition Government have, rightly, abandoned the proposals for a national identity card. To begin with, it could never be a secure or even reliable means of immediate identification. Secondly, it has historical overtones that are unacceptable. Identification numbers, and passports for travel, are another matter. They have existed in various forms for a very long time. Today’s technology offers far greater efficiency. It goes without saying that the issuing of passports must be protected by the highest security. Some years ago, my noble friend Lady Anelay and I visited the Passport Agency. We were able to identify serious and obvious weaknesses in the system. Recently, as the Identity and Passport Service, I understand that it has been better—but how much better?

It is absurd that the British passport authorities are unaware of what other passports those with a British passport hold. I was warned by security sources five years ago of the danger of terrorists and other criminals concealing their activities through the use of multiple passports. Risk areas include Pakistan, Somalia and Algeria. I am not against people having more than one passport, or multiple nationalities. However, for years I have urged the Government to take steps to establish details of what other passports UK passport holders have. There should be a strict obligation to divulge full details to the British passport authorities, including a photocopy of any other passports held. One response I have had in the past from the Government was that people would not necessarily disclose the fact that they had a second passport. The answer to that is simple: anyone found to have concealed their non-British passport would be liable to have their British passport cancelled. As a British passport is issued under the royal prerogative, there should be no administrative problem in doing that, although a judge could have a part in endorsing the decision.

There are many aspects to the visa question. However, as with nationality, it is absurd that we should be inhibited from discriminating in favour of certain categories of persons who should be given British nationality or visas to come to Britain. We already do so, with some nationalities requiring visas and others not. One of the silliest things I heard recently was the Chancellor, when announcing that Mark Carney, his nominee for Governor of the Bank of England, would take British citizenship, emphasising that Mr Carney would of course not have any preference or priority in his application.

Of course there have to be fast tracks and priorities for those we want, for example genuine businesspeople, as well as bars and vetoes on those we do not want in our country. To deny this is egalitarianism gone mad. Genuine students must be encouraged. They are the future trade links for the UK. I welcome the Government’s new proposals to limit health tourism in the NHS by non-EU nationals. We must also examine the vulnerability of our borders to those arriving from and through Europe. Our national interest must be paramount in formulating immigration policies. This does not, of course, exclude us from continuing to act as a haven for the persecuted, who are, incidentally, often obliged to use false passports to escape from where they are coming.

However, it is crucial that the processing staff who issue both passports and visas should be of the highest integrity, and this has certainly not been the case. The hub-and-spoke system of issuing visas from regional centres can facilitate corruption and sacrifice quality to economy. The staff of the border agency have not only been of inadequate calibre but have proved to be seriously and systemically corrupt. In five years, some 30 members of Home Office staff have received heavy prison sentences—up to nine years in one case and three, four and five years in several others—for misconduct in public office, and the great majority of these were from the border agency. This is so serious that I hope the Minister can tell us that a plan has been made to root out the corruption in an organisation in which these convictions may well be only the tip of the iceberg.

On 25 March, my right honourable friend the Home Secretary announced that the border agency, which is still not fit for purpose, is yet again to be reorganised. I suggest that a Green Paper is needed to say what is to be done, with particular reference to staffing. If we are going to have legislation on this, it should probably be subject to pre-legislative scrutiny. There have been so many disastrous failures, and this time we really must get it right.

I believe that the UK Border Force should be subject to similar standards of discipline and nationality qualification as the Armed Forces; they are, after all, part of the defence of the realm. We now have a new commander of the Border Force, Vice-Admiral Sir Charles Montgomery, who was Second Sea Lord. He faces a great challenge to get a grip of the show. He should be up to it, but time will tell. Meanwhile, I would like to see some of the very able military officers and non-commissioned officers, who are prematurely leaving our Armed Forces because of defence cuts, recruited into the Border Force in positions of command and control. Clearly, members of the Border Force cannot be allowed to continue to take industrial action, as they are at present. They should instead, I suggest, be part of the military covenant.

I come now to the e-Borders system. We are probably one of the least efficient advanced countries in the electronic protection of our borders. I believe that three of the most efficient are Hong Kong, Israel and the United States. It is lamentable that, after enormous expenditure on our e-Borders system, it is still not in sight of completion. When there are so many people who may be intent on harming our society and our nation, it is absurd that we do not know even whether they are in the country. What is the point of laying down conditions for entry that include requirements for departure, as most visas do, when we have no way of knowing whether people who should have left our shores have actually done so? The system will be complete only when every entry and departure is electronically linked to an up-to-date warning list, with records kept for as long as the security forces think necessary. In my view, that is no threat to privacy. I have three questions for the Minister. First, how much has so far been spent on the e-Borders project? Secondly, how much more is budgeted to be spent? Thirdly, when will it be completed?

Finally, I come back to the controversial area of human rights and our national sovereignty. In the debate on human rights on 20 June, my noble friend Lord Faulks referred to the £1.7 million cost of litigation in the Abu Qatada extradition case and the lack of any limit, apparently, to what the taxpayer is expected to fund. Those who our courts have declared a risk to our national security can at present twist and turn at huge financial cost to the taxpayer to avoid or postpone deportation. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, commented in that debate on the “totally disproportionate” cost of British advocates appearing in front of the European Court of Human Rights, who are, apparently, “10 times more expensive” than advocates from other jurisdictions. Resources are limited. Such costs cannot be justified in the face of spending cuts in so many other areas. If extradition is to continue to be subject to the European court, there should be a fast track to that court, so that there is not endless messing around before a case gets there. The European court should itself have a fast track to deal with deportation cases. That could save much time and money, I suspect.

As my noble friend Lord McNally said in that debate, human rights are,

“deep in the political DNA of the British people and of our history”.—[Official Report, 20/6/13; col. 460.]

If, as the old cliche has it, politics is the art of the possible, then the effective control of immigration and the protection of our borders is an equal challenge to all our political parties and leaders, and they should surely be able to agree a policy on a cross-party basis. Such a policy should never—indeed need never—undermine our proud traditions of parliamentary protection of liberty.

[Lord Spicer]

Before my noble friend sits down, I will make one quick comment, which I think can fit in within the time allocated to him. He mentioned in his brilliant speech that the passport office is getting better. I had the experience recently of trying the fast track. I spent nine hours in the passport office. The main reason it gave me was that it could not communicate between London and Liverpool. That might perhaps prompt my noble friend to think again a little about how efficient it really is.

[Lord Marlesford]

My noble friend gives a very good example of the problems.

14:17

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, for an interesting speech on such a significant issue. The relationship between effective immigration controls and the interests of our security—the words used in the title of his debate—is certainly not the same as it was some years and some centuries ago. He talked about the kaleidoscope that has twisted again, of course, just in the past few hours.

I wondered what security was in this context. My noble friend Lord Alderdice tells me that in Northern Ireland during the Troubles they used to distinguish between those involved in the Troubles and ODCs: ordinary, decent criminals. I think that the distinction now between organised crime and terrorism across the UK is quite blurred. As the noble Lord has said, crime threatens security and funds terrorism. I wondered even more what was meant by a “border” in this context; I mentioned this to the noble Lord yesterday. Our physical border is hard enough to defend, with international aviation, a lot of coastline, trading, parcel services and so on, but of course it is the non-physical border and modern communications and their new challenges that are so much the subject of our attention, and so they should be.

The House has debated cybersecurity, which the noble Lord has mentioned, on a number of occasions. It is one of the areas in the national security strategy, along with organised crime, climate change, energy and so on, in which immigration controls certainly have a role, so it must be right that security is intelligence led.

There have been home-grown rebellions through the ages. Disaffection may take new forms now, although there was something very primitive about the attack in Woolwich. Those attackers clearly felt a need to talk to the world, as have those who have formed pre-suicide attack statements. What should we learn from this? What are the needs which those who recruit them are meeting? When talking about some people’s vulnerabilities recently, particularly those of young people, I realised how those have been exploited, how they are let down by the system, or feel that they are, how they feel unseen and not responded to, and that we could have been talking about grooming for sexual exploitation, gang recruitment or terrorism. We need to speak to the needs of these young people and to reach out to them in a way that they understand and not see the problems only through the lens of our own views.

I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, who I do not think is taking part in this debate but is in his place, for arranging a meeting earlier this week with representatives of a women’s network, the Shanaz Network, which grew out of the worries of mothers about their sons, and sometimes their daughters, and their vulnerability to radicalisation and finding the language and a way to talk to them about this. They said, although not quite in these terms, that fathers may tend to applaud their sons as being masculine and macho whereas mothers are much more inclined to say, “Stop and think”. They have searched for ways to say that, and I am sure in many instances have been very successful in doing so. I mentioned intelligence-led provision. I have heard it said that our security services, in recruiting or “turning “ people, think in terms of, “We must get this person”, not, “We must get to know this person”.

The other major issue that was more than touched on by the noble Lord is the competence—I use the word deliberately—of our border controls. The frustration of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee is evident in its regular reports on the UKBA. I do not need to spell out what the backlog means at a macro as well as a micro or an individual level. In its last report, the Home Affairs Select Committee said:

“It is possible that tens of thousands of individuals whom the Agency has not been able to trace are still here … We are astonished that the Agency provided this Committee, and its predecessors, with information that turned out to be patently wrong on so many occasions over the last six years”.

I am not comforted by the outsourcing of immigration services, not least because I am not convinced that the level of training needed to undertake the job of, for instance, an entry clearance officer, which is important and often very sensitive, will be given, although I have no doubt that the Minister will tell us of the work that is being done to turn all this around.

Our borders are not under threat from mass movements of people, as is the case, for instance, in north Africa or Italy, but that does not mean that we should not think as seriously and thoughtfully as this debate allows others—I do not include myself in that—to do. We could, of course, turn the question on its head and ask what security we provide for migrants who are open to exploitation, but I suspect that is not what the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, seeks from this debate.

14:24

[Viscount Bridgeman]

My Lords, I, too, am grateful to my noble friend Lord Marlesford for initiating this debate.

It is worth reflecting on the reasons why the United Kingdom is such a sought after destination for immigrants. It is a commonly held view that this country has over the centuries benefited from its immigrants: the Huguenots, the Jews before and after the Second World War, and, more recently, thanks to the farsighted decision of the late Lord Carr of Hadley, the Asians from east Africa, to name only a few. It is fair to say that this country has been enriched by their contributions. However, these groups’ numbers pale into insignificance when compared with the huge numbers continuing to seek to settle in this country, mainly from the Indian subcontinent, particularly from Pakistan.

What draws such large numbers? It is, I suggest, in part the legacy of the empire, the shared English language, the basic familiarity with institutions which they will have known in their home countries, the attraction of the British way of life and the confidence that they can reasonably expect a fair deal from British justice, with a race relations regime that on the whole is a force for good. However, there are problems, as my noble friend pointed out. We do not have a national identity regime, the background of which he described very well. However, we must face the fact that because of its absence it is probably easier to “get lost” in the United Kingdom than in any other country in Europe. There is also the multiplier effect. The larger an originally immigrant community, the easier it is to hide oneself in it.

Many of the immigrants are economic migrants or “health tourists”, a subject very much in the news. However, as my noble friend pointed out, all too many arrive with more sinister intentions. My noble friend Lady Hamwee amplified that point. Many will have read with horror and disgust that several of the 7/7 bombers had been playing cricket the previous week. What better cover could they have had? To deal with this, we have a border control regime that in the recent past has proved not to be up to the job.

It is worth remembering that in the matter of border control, this country starts with several advantages not possessed by fellow members of the European Union. To start with, apart from Malta and Cyprus, the UK and Ireland are the only island members. We are not members of Schengen, which means that we are not, at least directly, affected by the porous links in the Schengen border chain, notably the Turkish-Greek land border, which causes so many problems to the already beleaguered Greeks, although I am encouraged by the steps which the EU has recently taken to improve the policing of that border.

Nevertheless, border control has quite plainly not been delivering. It was not effectively overseen by the previous Administration, who in 2008 formed the UK Border Agency, which held responsibility for all aspects of the immigration system, its overall policy, visa and migration applications, and the enforcement of border controls, including on crime. The agency was faced with a big backlog of asylum cases and its IT systems were often incompatible and relied on manual data entry instead of automated data collection.

The UKBA had been given agency status with the best of intentions to keep its work at arm’s length from Ministers. However, the effect was to create a close and defensive culture, which meant that many of the inefficiencies and problems associated with the UKBA remained hidden from the organisations that had the responsibility of scrutinising them. My noble friend has drawn attention to the shocking number of criminal convictions in the Home Office, particularly in the border agency, over the past five years. I very much welcome the appointment of Vice-Admiral Sir Charles Montgomery to be the commander of the border agency.

Noble Lords will recall that in March 2012 the functions of the UKBA were restructured, with immigration enforcement and visa applications being separated into two separate units within the Home Office and responsible to a Minister. This was to enable each body to create its own culture around its own priorities. The border force was created with the responsibility for entry controls and customs functions at UK borders.

I wish to take up a point made by my noble friend about e-passports. There are huge technological advances in this area, although in my limited recent experience I have yet to see my own e-passport beating the conventional queue at passport control. However, this is probably due to people ahead of me in the e-queue being as unfamiliar with the system as I am.

There are immense possibilities for intelligence-gathering with this new technology. My noble friend mentioned the inability of immigration authorities to compel applicants for passports to disclose other passports held by them. With the advent of the global society this is surely becoming increasingly anomalous, to say the least, facilitating as it surely does the activities of the international criminal. There must also be a read-across to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. I am not familiar with the background to the issue of dual or multiple passports by other jurisdictions, but I would welcome the Minister’s assurance that the Government are aware of this problem and to know whether they have any plans for addressing it.

14:30

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, on obtaining this timely and important debate and on his introductory speech. I suspect that we have come to the same conclusions by slightly different routes. My personal experience with immigration controls, and therefore with the immigration and asylum system, began when I was appointed Chief Inspector of Prisons. When I was made responsible for the inspection of what were then called immigration detention centres in 1997, I was absolutely appalled by the amount of inefficiency and waste that I found. Immigrants and asylum-seekers were being detained for months, even years, while their cases were allegedly examined in what I can only describe as a dilatory manner. The process for foreign national prisoners sentenced to deportation was started only after they had completed their prison sentences. Legal arrangements for the speedy resolution of asylum applications were totally inadequate. Detention centres lacked detention rules and used totally inapplicable prison rules. There were many other examples.

Later, I was one of the commissioners of an independent asylum commission that examined the whole system and reported in 2009. At the heart of our concerns was the UK Border Agency, with its culture of disbelief, whose word on performance figures we simply could not believe, making us wonder quite how Ministers, deprived of actual facts, could come to meaningful conclusions. Worryingly, appreciation of the faults in the system was not helped by Ministers using that false UKBA evidence to counter outside concerns about actual facts. That is one of the main contributors to the unsatisfactory situation which the Home Secretary is now trying to resolve. This year and last I have been conducting a review of the removal process of those sentenced to deportation and discovered a quite horrifying muddle in case handling, quite apart from the actual conduct of the deportation to be.

I must declare my interest as a member of the recently formed soft power Select Committee, which is due to report to the House later this year or next year. When I was director of public relations for the Army, my job was to protect and project the Army’s image. Our national immigration policy should have both those same intents in mind. The National Security Council reports on border issues every year, and I am sure that the national security protection work of the National Crime Agency and the Border Policing Command will come under its regular scrutiny. The Select Committee has also learnt that the National Security Council is responsible for the co-ordination of the projection of soft power. If it, too, already has those, why should it not exercise them more?

Immigration controls are an essential ingredient of national security. In the past, however, too many involved in exercising those controls have seen them as a process and an end in themselves which they have not related to wider implications. I am very glad that maximum use of technology and intelligence is being made, because this is the key to tackling a whole range of border security checks. I welcome introductions such as the immigration and asylum biometric system. However, at that heart of all that are people. We must be concerned about the people who use and interpret the technology, not the technology itself. There are currently 17 agencies working to secure our borders, which is far too many, not least because there is a lack of clarity over who is actually in command of them and to whom they are responsible and accountable, collectively and individually.

Earlier in the year, the Home Secretary reorganised what used to be called the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, so famously dismissed by John Reid as not fit for purpose, which is now called the UK Border Agency. As I understand it, the outside structure, if that is the right term, is now to be the Border Policing Command, within the National Crime Agency, which will be the national lead for border security and will oversee a single intelligence picture, co-ordinate and task other agencies involved in border security and work with overseas partners to disrupt early those who pose a threat to border security. Secondly, there will be a border force that will concentrate on screening and managing all goods and passengers arriving in the United Kingdom.

Within the Home Office, there will be an immigration and visa service and a law enforcement service, each with its own director-general, who will be a member of an oversight board, chaired by the Permanent Secretary, whose membership will also include policy, the passport service and the border force. In announcing the new organisation, the Home Secretary said that she was doing this because the UK Border Agency was too big, lacked a clear culture, lacked transparency and accountability, lacked adequate information technology and was subject to a complex policy and legal framework.

If the UK is to project what the Home Secretary wants, which is a culture of customer satisfaction among businessmen and legal visitors, it is absolutely essential that our immigration controls are seen as being focused on national security and are not seen by potential international clients as an excessively bureaucratic and intimidatory ordeal to be undergone before doing business with, studying in or visiting this country. It is essential that the officials responsible for such aspects as student and business visas are continually reminded of how their attitude and efficiency rebound on our national reputation. I have been very struck by the volume and strength of complaint made by witnesses to our Select Committee about this. If it results in the falling off of either business activity, which affects our economy, or of student numbers, which affects both our economy and our influence in the world, it could be said to be damaging to our long-term security.

Therefore, while I am sure that the proposals announced by the Home Secretary have the potential to be an improvement on what was in existence until March, I fear that they were based on an incomplete and in-house assessment of the main problem. True economic migration needs to be limited, as does the abuse of student and family visas. However, every aspect of immigration control is ultimately dictated by national security and so the whole system, particularly if it currently includes 17 agencies, needs to be reformed with a view to making it more accountable and transparent.

I am very glad that the role of the independent chief inspector of the UK Border Agency is to be increased. I pay tribute to the present holder of the appointment, John Vine, whose reports are always penetrating, constructive and worth reading. I would rather that his independence was marked by him being a Crown official, and therefore Her Majesty’s chief inspector, because that extra degree of independence is always useful when dealing with myriad different agencies. Who, for example, is responsible and accountable for the non-circulation of and failure to act upon alerts produced by the National Border Targeting Centre, an organisation that hopes to cover every arrival in the United Kingdom by 2014 and which the Home Affairs Select Committee, whose continuing focus on the failings of the UKBA is to be warmly applauded, recommends should be accountable to Parliament?

There have been, and are, many concerns about the way in which immigration controls are themselves controlled and conducted. There are too many of them for anyone concerned with national security to be comfortable with. The internal reforms announced by the Home Office are good, but only in part. I would feel much happier if the National Security Council, responsible for protecting the security and projecting the image of the nation, were to institute an outside examination of the immigration system, rather than rely on a series of in-house palliatives, to ensure that this nation is protected and its image projected in the way we would wish.

14:40

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

My Lords, I share the view expressed by many other noble Lords that my noble friend Lord Marlesford is owed a great debt of gratitude for allowing us to debate this important topic. He has a great virtue: once he has got his teeth into an issue, he does not let go. I had opportunities in another Select Committee under his tutelage, when together we were able to work on the chronic mismanagement of another agency, the Serious Organised Crime Agency and its multiplicity of suspicious activity reports—the SARs regime. My noble friend has done an admirable job by filleting the UK Border Agency this afternoon. It is also a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. I serve under his tutelage, too. He is the chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on prison reform, of which I am the secretary. I also serve with him on the Select Committee on Soft Power and the UK’s Influence, which has been in operation for a few months.

It would be impossible to go one better on either of those two distinguished contributions, and I want to step back a little and consider the country’s security needs in a slightly wider context. My starting point is that mentioned by my noble friend Lord Bridgeman, the shock that many of us felt on learning that the July bombers were not foreign-born jihadists but native-born Britons who therefore had access to the supposed benefits of our society—economic, educational and cultural—and I and many other people asked ourselves: what did this unwelcome news portend?

I identify four trends that together have exacerbated tensions, sadly all too often present when the sensitive but nevertheless important issue of immigration is discussed. In my view, taken together, they carry significant implications for the long-term security of this country. The first issue is the scale of immigration in the first decade of this century. Secondly, there is the potential crowding out of native-born individuals in the economy. Please note that I used the words “native born”, which are not alternative words for “white”. I mean that the impact of crowding out is equally, perhaps more, significant for recently arrived, second-generation immigrants than it is for people who have been here longer. Thirdly, there is the impact of the current, deep-seated economic recession. Fourth is the way that all these together are being exacerbated by the increasingly crowded conditions and population density of England, particularly the south-east of England.

First, the scale of immigration over the post-war period between 1945 and about 2000 resulted in there being about 4 million ethnic-minority Britons, most of whom came from post-colonial states. Since 2000, the pace has quickened. In the years since, their number has doubled to 8 million. To set this in historical context, it is said that if one omits the years of the large Huguenot immigration after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1465 and the impact of Irish immigration—for much of the time Ireland was part of the United Kingdom—in each year between 2004 and 2010 there were more immigrants to the United Kingdom than there were in the whole period between 1066 and 1945. There were more immigrants in each year than there were in nine centuries.

The question that we have to ask ourselves is how quickly and successfully can our society absorb such numbers, and what does “absorb” mean? If they are not absorbed, what are the possible consequences for our security? Our society rests on a delicate balance of shared rights and responsibilities. Our welfare state in particular rests on a generational balance. What do we ask of immigrants? Undoubtedly, our life is enriched by their diverse contributions, but what of our values, our beliefs and our approaches? What are we entitled to ask, perhaps require, them to accept? There is evidence—admittedly much of it anecdotal, but equally much of it widespread—as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby mentioned in the global migration debate on 6 June, of introverted, inward-looking communities, including schools and faith groups. These must be breeding grounds for attitudes that do not form part of our historic traditions and therefore present dangers to the nation’s security.

This situation is exacerbated by the dangers of crowding out, which is well documented among people in the lower range of wage and skills. My noble friend on the Front Bench, with his knowledge of East Anglia, will have first-hand knowledge of this situation in the Peterborough area. However, there is potential crowding out higher up the scale. The Higher Education Commission last year conducted an inquiry into postgraduate education. My noble friend Lord Norton of Louth and the noble Lord, Lord Boswell of Aynho, were members of the inquiry. The report stated:

“Much of the recent increase in postgraduate student numbers is due to rising numbers of international students. Postgraduate enrolments have increased by more than 200% since 1999, compared to an increase of just 18% for home and EU students. The Commission is concerned that this increase masks stagnation in the qualification and skill level of the home-domiciled population. We need an emphasis on up-skilling the UK population, ensuring that British students are able to compete in the global labour market”.

Added to that is my third point. The general impact of the economic recession and the psychological impact on young men and women of not being able to find gainful employment, especially among first-generation arrivals, should not be underestimated, particularly when they see the jobs they seek being taken by immigrants.

Fourthly and finally, the population continues to increase. The Office for National Statistics has recently produced a press release covering last year’s population increase. The population of England and Wales grew by 396,900, 60% of which was due to the excess of births over deaths but 40%—155,500—was due to international arrivals. Just to put this figure in context, this means that the population of England and Wales is increasing by 1,084 per day. We are putting a medium-sized village on the map of England and Wales every week. We are putting a parliamentary constituency on the map every 10 weeks.

Security does not just stop at the White Cliffs of Dover. It is a ghastly, overused and hackneyed phrase to say that we live in an ever more interconnected world. If we do not want people to try to come here in large numbers from that wider world, and within those large numbers there will inevitably be some who wish this country ill, we have to find ways to make life more tolerable for them at home. We may be feeling sorry for ourselves about our economic plight but to the people in developing countries, particularly those who have found development to be difficult, the UK looks like Nirvana. Somehow, therefore, desperate people are going to find a way to get here.

However, there is a wider point. What these developing countries need is leadership. They need their citizens to be trained in the skills that a modern state requires. Yet, we see nothing perverse in setting out to recruit these very people to come and work here. Let me give a practical example. I am extremely pleased to see in his place the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, because in the debate on global migration earlier in June to which my noble friend on the Front Bench also replied, the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, explained how this country is still creaming off health workers from all over the world to come and work here. He said:

“In our own country it is clear that we have been absolutely dependent over the past four or five decades on the migration of skilled workers in healthcare—doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals—to ensure the delivery of a successful National Health Service. I myself am the son of two medical practitioners who came to the United Kingdom in the 1960s to continue their own postgraduate education and were given the chance to develop their careers here, both as academics and clinical practitioners”.—[Official Report, 6/6/13; col. 1378.]

He went on to explain that just over a quarter of a million individuals are registered with the GMC, 160,000 of whom are the products of our 32 recognised medical schools, 25,500 of whom come from within the EU, but 67,000 of whom come from the wider world. If you do the maths, this means that 26.5%, over a quarter of the doctors in this country, come from outside the EU. They will not all be from developing countries and some will be pursuing academic rather than clinical careers, but one is inevitably drawn to the conclusion that there must be a measurable adverse impact on health provision in developing countries as a result of these policies.

Let me make it clear to the noble Lord that this is not an attack on him or his parents. I have no doubt that this country has benefited greatly from their work. However, it is worth asking ourselves about the considerable implications for other less fortunate parts of the world. For example, in Malawi, following heavy migration, there are now 336 nurses for a population of 12 million people. On the same scale, the UK would have fewer than 2,000 nurses. When your child is dying of a preventable disease in a developing country and you are told that the West is recruiting your country’s scarce health workers, does this make you more favourably disposed towards the West or does it make you more receptive to the blandishments of the extremist? An important by-product of the information revolution is that more people now know more about other parts of the world than ever before. What we could, so to speak, get away with 10 or 15 years ago is becoming increasingly a matter of public record. Further, what is happening in healthcare is paralleled in a whole range of other skills and professions.

To conclude, my noble friend Lord Marlesford is absolutely right to stress the need for secure borders, but we also have to think strategically about what we should demand of those who were born and reside here, what we should demand of those who seek to live here permanently, how many of them we can afford to admit, and what we offer them all in return. To fail to resolve this conundrum means that we will put at risk that delicate balance of rights and responsibilities on which our civil society, honed over hundreds of years, depends. The security of the nation and its prosperity depend on our ability to engage with and resolve these challenging issues.

14:52

[Lord Selsdon]

My Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend Lord Marlesford for giving us the opportunity to discuss this issue. He and I often sing from the same hymn sheet, but he is perhaps more of a highly trained and intelligent Rottweiler while I am just a friendly Labrador, concerned about not upsetting too much my noble friend on the Front Bench when we gang up together. When I first joined your Lordships’ House, goodness me, some 50 years ago, I asked the then Leader of the House what I should do about a maiden speech. “Talk about something you know about”, he said. I replied, “Sir, I do not really know about anything”. He said, “Well, talk about your childhood, then”. I have suddenly realised that there is an opportunity, in this debate on immigration, for me to do so.

When the war came in 1940, with my mother and my younger sister I was suddenly migrated to the United States for safety purposes, so we were told. A year later my mother had to return to the United Kingdom because her own mother had died, her brother had been shot down and killed, and there were other family matters. However, she could not get back to us. As migrants or immigrants, we were moved from the United States up to Canada, to a form of nursery school run by a wonderful woman called Sister Hilda. She had had a school in Rottingdean where she had looked after children of empire while their parents were away and could not be with them. So there I lived and I learnt to speak Canadian. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Occasionally I had to write letters to my mother, and when the other I day I found them, I saw that they were all about the war.

In that environment I was to some extent an immigrant, but it was rather more complicated than that. My father, who I did not see for many years, and my mother were called Selsdon, but the name of my sister and I was Mitchell-Thomson. As bright young children, we naturally worked out that we were probably not the children of those parents, and that perhaps ours had been killed in the war or even, I managed to find out, that we were possibly illegitimate. However, it was too long a word for me and I did not understand what it actually meant. This went on for quite a period of time, but then with great aplomb, my mother, who was then serving as a driver in the RAF, through a friend managed to get us on board a Canadian troopship and thus come back to the United Kingdom.

When we arrived we were immigrants into the United Kingdom and we were treated as such, but our name was not the same as that of our parents. We had labels around our necks so that we could be identified when we were taken off the train in, I think, Olympia, having sat in the ship in Liverpool for some three or four weeks. I was quite happy about it because the Canadians were kind to children. They taught me all about things and they let me clean their guns. I loved the idea of the war and I really wanted to join up. The difficulty was that when we came back to our real life over here, I was an immigrant and I was to be sent off to school. However, we did not have any clothing coupons so I could not have a school uniform. A young boy quite likes to be in uniform, so it was rather difficult. I could have a school hat, but not the uniform. One remembers the difficulties of being, to some extent, a foreigner in your own country.

Over time I have interested myself an awful lot in the Commonwealth and in the question of identity. When the identity cards Bill was going through the Lords, I went off to do a trial run. We were told to have biometric pictures taken in some vans outside. When they did me the first time the electronic voice said, “Not recognised”. So, without telling anyone, I went off to another van and tried to do the same thing, but again the electronic voice said, “Not recognised”. I suddenly asked, “Why do we have to have identity cards?”.

Then I learnt in the course of our debates that in this great country you can call yourself what you like. There is no such thing as a legal name. The nearest you get to one these days is in the National Health Service. Some bright young NHS statistician in the NHS must have realised that you can give your date of birth, and that is all, because very few people with the same name are born on the same day. Once the NHS has you on the list with your date of birth, it keeps on writing to you suggesting that you should be examined, treated and everything possible should be done, and it then gives you a code name. However, you cannot remember your code name.

You find in our great society that the names of people have been lost and that we all have numbers to remember. Very few people can remember more than a certain number. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, will probably agree with me that you can always remember your service number. Mine was PJ963040—in fact, two alpha and six numeric are the best way of remembering anything. It is the best method of identification.

If it is not necessary to have an identity card, what is a passport? Is it an identity card? I had a problem with this when I worked internationally. Often my passport was in for a visa somewhere or other. I did not think that it would necessarily matter, so I would travel without a passport. Once when I was on the board of a company I went to Italy and arrived there without a passport. I thought that they would wave me through as usual, but it was the day after the Heysel stadium disaster where, as noble Lords may remember, British fans caused a lot of deaths in a stadium in Belgium. The passport people, who I knew quite well, said that they could not let me through without proof of identify. I said that I did not really have anything, but then I realised that I had one of my father’s suits. I showed them that from the label inside it was quite an old suit and therefore it was proof of identity. They took the jacket, then came back and said, “The jacket’s gone through. If you take your trousers off, they can go through as well. But under the current regulations we cannot let you through. You do not have actual proof of identity”. I had to wait to be identified.

We do not believe in carrying proof of identity here in the United Kingdom—nor do I believe that we ever should—but perhaps there is a case for some form of it. Some time ago I lobbied about whether it would be possible for Commonwealth countries to have a slightly different passport from non-British nations, which would seem to be appropriate. Alternatively, would it not be possible for all immigrants to be required at all times to carry a card that was proof of identity, which might perhaps help them in their activities?

I have tried to search and work out what the level of immigration is. The best way to do it is to ask the immigrants themselves. This morning I was woken up as usual by 11 Romanian builders. I complained to them that there was a chap at the end of the road who was one of those who sells you the gold ring that he drops on the ground. You pick it up and it has got “19” on it and he says, “Can you give me some money?” and you say, “Are you an illegal immigrant?”. They have got to know me now.

The Poles, of course, colonised a good chunk of Putney but they are among the best plumbers, without any doubt. All these immigrant groups, once they are established, become extraordinarily British and they want to educate their children; above all, they want to see things bettered. If you are looking at televisions, audiovisual, it is the Caribbean that has the skills. Do not ask me why. Throughout the whole system those people who have been integrated into our society have actually developed skills.

The questions we are facing are: how many more people want to come here? How many illegal immigrants are here and in what way can they be controlled or administered? Usually it is with the associations themselves. Having dealt with the Arab world for many years, I go to talk to people at the mosques and you can find out what is going on. Of course, the greatest value is the amount of information you can get from each other in exchange, particularly on situations such as Egypt at the present time.

I do not know what we can do about the passport situation or immigration controls. I do feel that it has gone wrong. For those of us who travel quite a lot, if you turn up at Calais to go through the Channel Tunnel, you will find two of the gates open for cars to go through and the others shut; you may have to queue for half an hour or longer and miss your connection. It is the same at all the airports. In most other countries, the waiting time is less. Is it because we have more people coming here or more people wanting to come here than other nations or is it that we cannot cope? Do we really need a new airport for ourselves?

Perhaps the Minister can give us some idea of what proportion of the inflowing traffic into the United Kingdom is non-British. It is a growing amount and the excuses and reasons are given that we are a tax-friendly nation. But perhaps more than anything else, the world feels that children who are brought up and educated in England may have a better chance in the future.

If we feel that the Commonwealth is important, as I have always done, we should recognise that there is more that could be done with it. When I used to sit with Enoch Powell a long time ago, he suggested that we had a Commonwealth passport. Now one says: what is the benefit of the Commonwealth and what are the opportunities? If we look at illegal trafficking of people, which tends to take place within the 200-mile limit of each country, we find that the EEZs—economic exclusion zones—of the Commonwealth are equivalent to 60% of the world. An awful lot of the trafficking now is maritime. That is perhaps a worry if it cannot be monitored.

I would quite like to see whether we could have a Commonwealth identity card or some sticker or visa in the Commonwealth. I would also like to find out why even in your Lordships’ House we should be required to wear identity cards. We should know each other but my latest research indicates that very few of your Lordships can put more than 100 names to faces. The doorkeepers cannot quite do 100. My difficulty on these Benches is that I see only the backs of the heads of my noble friends, whereas I can see the faces of noble Lords opposite, so in general I feel I have a greater recognition of them.

The question to the Minister is: could we please think of some method of enabling people, if they wanted to, to identify themselves with a piece of paper or a card so that they may not appear to be stateless?

15:04

[Lord McColl of Dulwich]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, for introducing this debate. I will speak very briefly about human trafficking or, as our Prime Minister describes it, “modern day slavery”. Most people who have been trafficked into the United Kingdom have been tricked into coming here with the offer of work and the hope of making a better future for themselves. Instead, they are exploited and abused in brothels, in agriculture, as domestic servants, cultivating cannabis, and so on.

Trafficking is not primarily an issue of immigration. Rather, as the Home Secretary said recently, it is “international organised crime”. By giving the Immigration Minister lead responsibility for tackling human trafficking, the Government’s approach unfortunately tends more towards the immigration aspects than the criminal justice response to trafficking.

The UK Border Agency is the body responsible for deciding whether there are grounds for believing a person to be trafficked. It holds this responsibility for all cases where the person comes from outside the EU. The UK Human Trafficking Centre makes the decision in all other cases. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm exactly which of the new immigration entities within the Home Office has taken over this responsibility following the break-up of the UK Border Agency, announced in March.

In 2012, two-thirds of all trafficking referrals were decided by the UK Border Agency, which is unsurprising since most victims come from outside the EU. The involvement of immigration officials in deciding who is and who is not a victim of trafficking and who is eligible for support under the national referral mechanism is problematic. It creates the potential for confusion between the processes and criteria for decisions on immigration and those that should be followed when determining if someone is a victim of trafficking.

I was pleased to hear the recent announcement that from 1 April the team within the UKBA that deals with human trafficking would,

“be exclusively dedicated to that task and will not combine its work in this area with any other”.—[Official Report, 21/3/13; col. 669.]

This is a very positive step forward in addressing this inherent conflict of interest. However, even if there is no longer the possibility of individual officials handling both trafficking and non-trafficking cases, there remains the potential for a conflict of interest in the institution as a whole. As the Centre for Social Justice said in a report published in March:

“The fact that any potential victim is required to make their welfare case to the very agency that may at the same time be considering their immigration status is a denial of the right to have an independent decision concerning whether they have been trafficked”.

Many NGOs express a lack of faith in the decisions made by the UK Border Agency, and all the judicial reviews undertaken in relation to decisions under the national referral mechanism since 2009 have been in relation to decisions made by the UK Border Agency. Many support organisations report reluctance from victims to enter the formal referral process out of a fear of immigration authorities. The recent report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights on the rights of unaccompanied migrant children expressed concern, saying:

“The low level of NRM determinations by the immigration authorities fails to dispel perceptions of an inherent conflict of interest, which could undermine goodwill towards the mechanism and put trust in the system at risk”.

This is the heart of the problem.

There is undoubtedly a key role for the Immigration Service to play in identifying potential victims of trafficking as they pass through our borders, and in assessing claims for asylum. However, these vital roles must not be compromised by other immigration priorities, nor should they be allowed to overshadow the true nature of trafficking as a question of criminal activity and exploitation. Victims of trafficking should not be afraid to come forward or to seek support out of fear of deportation.

Effective immigration controls are necessary for maintaining national security and developing our business and economic interests but they must not prevent us offering support and sanctuary to those who most need it.

15:09

[Lord Rosser]

My Lords, I, too, would like to extend my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, for securing this debate. We all have a direct interest in ensuring our national security. Indeed, the protection and security of our citizens is the number one priority for any Government. The Motion refers to the relationship between effective immigration controls and the interests of the security of the United Kingdom. I will largely confine my comments to that specific issue. Although opinions might vary as to what constitutes effective immigration controls, there must be question marks over the effectiveness of the current arrangements when judged against the criteria of their importance to national security and the maintenance of that security.

The issue of national security and, more particularly, border security was referred to in the Government’s 2011-12 Annual Report on the National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review. The report said:

“Increased use of biometrics in support of asylum, visa and biometric residence permit applications provides tighter border controls to identify those who pose a threat to the UK”.

It went on to say:

“The use of technology and intelligence to check people and goods remains key to tackling the range of border security threats. Improvements in this area … include a continuing increase in coverage of routes and data acquired by e-Borders. Since April 2012, e-Borders acquires 100% of data for non-EEA flights. From 25th July 2012 … airlines required by law to provide data to e-Borders may be denied authority to carry to the UK specified foreign nationals who pose a terrorist threat”.

The annual report also referred to continuing work on the development of the Border Policing Command as part of the National Crime Agency, ahead of the formal creation of the NCA. No doubt if there is anything further of substance to report on this continuing work, the Minister will give us an update when he responds to this debate.

The splitting off of the Border Force from the United Kingdom Border Agency was announced by the Government in March last year. Since then, the performance of the agency appears to have deteriorated, with growing delays in dealing with asylum cases, visas and foreign criminals. Claims that the asylum backlog had been cleared lacked credibility, as the Government had simply written off some 100,000 cases without proper checks.

In March this year, the Government announced further changes to the border agency, splitting up its activities into two entities within the Home Office. What difference, if any, these further changes will make remains to be seen. The reality is that enforcement has got worse, visa delays have got worse and 50% fewer people are refused entry at ports and borders. The number of people absconding through Heathrow passport control has trebled, and the number being caught afterwards has halved. The number of foreign prisoners deported has dropped by 16% and there has also been a big drop in the number of employers being fined for employing illegal workers.

A recent Commons Select Committee report showed that following the Government’s splitting up of the border agency in March last year, there was a 20% increase in the backlog of asylum cases in three months, a 53% increase in the number of asylum cases waiting more than six months compared with the previous year, an increase in delays for some in-country visa applications compared with the previous three months and 59,000 cases not getting even as far as being entered on the database. The committee said that 28,000 visa applications were not processed on time in one three-month period. That means that two-thirds of visa applications were not processed on time.

What of course contributed to the difficulties was the impact and method of the implementation of the Government’s changes. The financial cuts of more than a third will certainly not have enhanced national security, which is an important part of the subject matter of this debate. There is immigration that works for Britain and immigration that does not. We support policies to bring down the pace of migration—particularly low-skilled migration—through stronger controls on people coming to do low-skilled jobs and action against bogus colleges. We need proper training programmes to help the young unemployed get into the sectors that are recruiting most from abroad—programmes such as Care First, which the Government abolished.

More needs to be done to cut illegal immigration. By definition, this can have an adverse impact on national security since the required checks and controls, however technologically advanced, cannot be undertaken. The Government’s net migration target is not targeting the right things. Much of the drop since the election comes because more British citizens are leaving the country and fewer are coming home. Most of the rest is accounted for by falling numbers of foreign students. The Government are targeting university students and entrepreneurs but ignoring illegal immigration, which is of course outside the target. Illegal immigration is getting worse, with fewer people stopped, more absconding, fewer deported and backlogs of information on cases not pursued. Illegal immigration is not exactly being deterred by the continuing exploitation of migrant workers, which also undercuts local workers. Stronger action is needed, which means national minimum wage regulations which can be made to stick, with better enforcement and higher fines, and a register to tackle rogue landlords.

Pulling out of the social chapter and co-operation on policing and justice measures, as the Government appear to want to do, will not make it any easier to manage and control migration, including illegal immigration. No one would wish to suggest for one moment that this Government, or indeed any Government, do not take their national security responsibilities seriously or fail to give this the highest priority. Effective immigration control is one of the building blocks that must be in place to ensure that as much as can reasonably and effectively be done to protect the security of our country and our citizens is being done. However, the reality is that the present arrangements are not as effective as they could and should be or indeed, in fairness, as effective as I imagine the Government want them to be.

15:17

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Taylor of Holbeach)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, sat down rather promptly, so I apologise for not having my speech quite to hand. I wondered when he was going to stop flinging around data which I scarcely recognise from my experience as a Home Office Minister—some of them are open to challenge. I would rather concentrate on the theme of the debate, which has been useful because it has shown the background against which all immigration policy has to be conducted.

I thank my noble friend Lord Marlesford for tabling the debate. The relationship between effective immigration controls and the interests of national security is a key focus for the Government. Securing the border is a major challenge each day and needs an effective and efficient organisation with a real focus on law enforcement and security driving it forward. Intelligence is also key in strengthening border and immigration processes—a number of noble Lords referred to that. My noble friend was particularly eloquent about the vulnerability of a liberal democracy such as ours to threats from authoritarian or theocratic states and jihadists.

Border transformation is a key focus for the Government. Maintaining a secure border is about detection, interruption, disruption and prevention as far upstream in the process as possible. It is about making sure that we are in the right place at the right time, with the right information, to stop the threat at source before it even reaches our shores.

The work that we do overseas is vital to maintain our strong border. At our embassies and high commissions, staff deal with large volumes of applications to travel to the United Kingdom. Biometric visas are a vital step in maintaining a secure border. I think that the development of biometric visas has been widely welcomed by all in this debate.

We keep our visa regime under constant review to ensure that it is in line with risk and remains the most secure in the world. The UK’s Risk And Liaison Overseas Network, RALON, works with airlines overseas in a training and advisory capacity in relation to the adequacy of documents held by passengers seeking to travel to the UK. While RALON officers have no legal powers, their role allows them to remind carriers of potential financial penalties if they allow boarding to somebody who may be inadmissible to the UK. As a consequence of their interventions, around 8,000 passengers were denied boarding in 2011-12. Equally importantly, RALON assists local authorities in the identification of facilitators and racketeers involved in the organised movement of inadequately documented passengers, identifying and leading or supporting criminal investigations overseas and in the UK.

We also have a robust visa application process. The Home Office refused more than 330,000 visa applications last year, playing a key role in ensuring that only genuine travellers are granted a right to enter the UK, and we are committed to providing an ever improving service to support this. We have already introduced a number of service enhancements to ensure a good customer experience and are constantly seeking improvements.

Border technology is an integral tool in helping to protect the UK against potential acts of terrorism, serious crime and abuses of the immigration system—it was mentioned by my noble friend Lady Hamwee. When we are able to assess passengers and crew in advance of travelling, it greatly assists our ability to control borders. Our technology, combined with our robust visa regime, means better protection and a stronger border than ever before.

We continue to see the benefits of advanced passenger data collection on both inbound and outbound journeys. It provides early warning of the arrival of people of interest and the departure of individuals giving concern from a security, immigration or customs perspective. We now check the movements of more than 148 million passengers and crew a year from passenger information provided by 147 carriers on 4,790 routes into the UK. Since 2005, we have collected and analysed data on almost 600 million passengers and crew movements. My noble friend Lord Hodgson talked about the scale of what we are dealing with in this hugely mobile world. These figures give us an indication of the sheer capacity that we require to keep control of our borders.

Border Force was created on 1 March 2012 as a separate operational command within the Home Office with direct ministerial oversight—as has been correctly pointed out, it is headed up by Vice-Admiral Montgomery—separating border control functions from the wider immigration functions of the Home Office. The aim is to bring a genuine law enforcement culture to Border Force. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, expressed some concern about the different elements of responsibility within the command structure of immigration and migration control policy. However, we believe that properly focused management is an important aspect of our responsibility to maintain a secure border.

Border Force continues to make a significant contribution to cutting crime. In 2012-13 we made nearly 70,000 seizures, including more than £200 million-worth of smuggled tobacco and cigarettes, and more than £100 million-worth of smuggled alcohol. Many people are still trying to enter the UK illegally or without the appropriate documentation. Border Force refused entry to almost 10,000 people at ports in 2012, and another 4,000 were stopped at juxtaposed controls in France and Belgium before they could even enter the country.

In 2012-13, for those passengers for whom we have measured the queuing times, more than 99% were cleared through immigration control within our published service standards, which is exceeding the target. I frequently travel by air and I know how frustrating it is to arrive at an airport at the end of journey feeling a little bit tired, but the new system is providing a much faster throughput than was the case a few years ago.

As the Minister in the Home Office with responsibility for identity, I listened carefully to my noble friend Lord Marlesford, as I always do; indeed, I always listen to my noble friend Lord Selsdon when he talks about identity. My noble friend Lord Marlesford raises a valid point in relation to dual nationals and of how the authorities keep tabs on the movements of people who travel using one passport to get out of the country and another passport to get into the country. This is an issue worthy of further consideration, and I can tell my noble friend that I will think through what he says very carefully before returning to him on this matter.

A number of noble Lords asked about exit checks. The Government have made a commitment to reintroduce exit checks by 2015. We are currently exploring how advance passenger information can support this and what, if any, further changes are necessary to deliver the exit checks and our e-borders capability. We continue to see the benefits of advance passenger data, providing early warning of the arrival and departure of individuals giving concern from a security, immigration or customs perspective.

There have been a number of noble Lords who have mentioned the announcement on 26 March by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary, which I repeated here. It laid out her reasons for dissolving the UK Border Agency. I think that the debate has recognised that the UK Border Agency was not working. One of the aims of the restructure was to split the work of the agency to create two entities with two distinct structures. In its place will be an immigration and visa service and an immigration law enforcement organisation; two commands within the Home Office and directly accountable to Ministers in the exactly the same way as Border Force is directly accountable to Ministers.

The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, points out the importance of people and direction in, if I may say so, leadership in making sure that these forces are effective. I might not share all of the analysis in his critique, but he rightly identifies the work of John Vine and how invaluable his critical assessment of performance in those agencies is proving to be.

By creating two entities instead of one, we will be able to create distinct cultures. The first is a high-volume service that makes high-quality decisions about who comes here, with a culture of customer satisfaction for businessmen and visitors who want to come here legally. The second is an organisation that has law enforcement at its heart and gets tough on those who break our immigration laws.

Physical embarkation controls are carried out on a targeted, intelligence-led basis. Border Force and immigration enforcement officers perform checks targeted at immigration and customs crime, including identifying overstayers and detecting smuggled cash proceeds of crime. During 2012, electronic exit checks resulted in 566 police arrests on outbound passengers.

The Home Office has already shown that it can deliver for the country, despite budget pressures. Immigration reforms are working. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, that we have achieved net migration cuts of more than one-third. The evidence shows that our policy reforms are not inhibiting growth or putting people off coming to the UK. I reiterate that there are no restrictions on student numbers coming to this country. We are striving to ensure that the brightest and best come to the UK to study. Increases in visa fees will ensure that those coming to the UK contribute accordingly. Fee increases will be matched by substantial improvements to visa processing services to ensure that the UK remains open for business. There was a 5% increase in visas issued for skilled individuals under Tier 2 in the year to March 2013, showing that we are attracting the brightest and best to the UK and supporting the growth agenda.

That brings me on to what has been probably one of the most remarkable speeches that we have heard today, that of my noble friend Lord Hodgson. He put the current management of our borders and the conduct of our immigration policy in the perspective of the sheer scale of recent migration and the global nature of the world in which we live. There is much to debate in the issues that he raises, not least the whole thrust of the argument in my comment that there was a 5% increase in visas issued for skilled individuals under Tier 2. That is tremendously important for the UK economy, but what is the corresponding impact on the developing world? There is a strong argument for saying that Britain as a force for good in the world has a huge role, in soft diplomatic terms, in providing a place where people can come to study and take those skills away or indeed develop them here within our own community.

I will address a few points made by my noble friend Lord Marlesford. He made a strong attack, and one or two others mentioned this, on what he perceived to be corruption within our border force—not the Border Force, but the old border agency. Our corruption strategy is focused on proactively reducing the motive and opportunity for corruption and fraud by increasing our deterrence and prevention activity. In creating an anticorruption culture, we are enhancing our capability proactively to identify more corrupt activity, and we are creating a centre of investigative excellence in anticorruption by developing the skills and capabilities of the investigators and enhancing the processes utilised for the management of anticorruption activity.

My noble friend also asked a number of questions about e-Borders. To date, e-Borders has cost the UK £475 million. The activity of e-Borders has now been absorbed within the wider and more comprehensive border systems programme for which Sir Charles Montgomery is the senior responsible officer. The e-Borders element of the programme forms part of a procurement proposal that is likely to last 12 to 14 months. Subject to approvals contracts, new supplies should be in place by late 2014. Thereafter, the service will move across to the newly contracted suppliers over a six- to nine-month period.

The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, asked about border policing command. This will brigade the National Crime Agency’s operational response overseas and at the UK border into a single entity. The border policing command will better co-ordinate intelligence and operational activity through co-location within Border Force, Special Branch, and other partners and intelligence teams at the border to identify more criminal groups operating across the UK border and to increase disruptions. It will lead proactive investigations at the border, such as into corruption and evasion of controls at small ports, that will limit the ability of criminals to move and operate across the UK border.

There are a few points in noble Lords’ speeches to which I would like to refer. I mentioned that my noble friend Lord Marlesford talked about the anarchy of the failed state and the threat that it posed to this country. He felt that the quality of our staff in the border service was not adequate. I think that I answered that in describing the new leadership that is being provided through this. This is the right approach for the future of our border services.

My noble friend Lady Hamwee emphasised the use of intelligence to combat crime and a terrorist threat. My noble friend Lord Bridgeman asked about the attraction of the UK for Asians, but mentioned how within communities it was quite easy for those who came here and were not desirable to get lost. This is an issue of which we are very conscious.

My noble friend Lord Hodgson’s speech was a remarkable contribution. To my noble friend Lord McColl of Dulwich I say that the team to deal with trafficking remains in place. We recognise that this is an important issue, and we want to make sure that we have effective controls in detecting trafficking and prosecuting those responsible for it.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Rosser—perhaps I surprise him again—in saying that intelligence and technology are the heart of secure borders. They must be the heart of what we do. I add to that good leadership of the people engaged in this task, which I take from the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. Effective immigration controls in the interests of national security are key. Work to secure our border begins far beyond the UK’s shores. We work around the world to ensure that we are in the right place at the right time with the right information to stop the source of the threat before it reaches our shores.

15:38

[Lord Marlesford]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for contributing to an important debate on a big and important subject. It represents a huge problem and a huge challenge. I point out to the Minister that this Government have been in power for three years and it is about time that we started getting more results. The situation is still very unsatisfactory. Otherwise, we would not have had only in March the dissolution of the whole border agency.

The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, condemned accurately and in detail a lot of the symptoms, but I hope that he agrees that a lot of them are a legacy of the policies that his Government left behind and that we have been too slow to change. I am not convinced that they have yet been given sufficiently radical treatment. The committee of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and my noble friend Lord Hodgson could contribute usefully in arriving at a good solution. Putting the admiral in charge of the Border Force is very sensible, but the rest of it seems still very amorphous. I suggest that the Government produce a Green Paper to describe how the border agency, which has been taken back into the Home Office, will be organised. It will probably need some legislation—he has not said that—and this must be closely looked at by Parliament before it is done, otherwise the same mistakes will be made.

My noble friend Lady Hamwee made a very important point about the new era of electronic communications, which has given a different dimension to some of the problems of ensuring our national security through the borders and elsewhere. It is not surprising. Everyone now makes a tremendous issue of the scale at which Governments intercept communications. It is not surprising that they do so, and it would be quite wrong if they did not because the scale of communications has gone up so much. Everybody now can communicate in very sophisticated ways, which enables those who are inclined to crime or terrorism to do things that previously they could not do. The technological revolution in communications has greatly increased the danger from terrorism. The problem is enormous. There is a lot more work to be done, and I hope that the Government will, after three years of cogitation, consult Parliament quite closely on what they propose to do before they do it.

Motion agreed.

Immigration Rules: Impact on Families

Thursday 4th July 2013 Lords Chamber

Question for Short Debate

15:41

Asked By

[Baroness Hamwee]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have any plans to review the social and economic impact on families of recent changes to the immigration rules.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I could fill my limited minutes and everybody else’s with examples of the impact of the family migration rules introduced a year ago this month. The media covered some of them when the all-party group launched the report by the inquiry that I had the privilege to chair. Those affected tell better than I can the outrage, confusion, puzzlement and anguish of British citizens and taxpayers who had never for a moment expected that their country would put such obstacles in the way of them living with their family in that country.

The All-Party Group on Migration is supported by the Migrants’ Rights Network, which wrote the report, and I thank it very warmly. The report looks at changes to the rules that had previously required someone seeking to sponsor a non-EEA partner and any children to demonstrate the ability to maintain their family without recourse to public funds. Immediately before last July, that was equivalent to income support—about £5,500. A number of sources and a range of evidence of income were counted. Now the minimum income requirement is £18,600, a level that is not attained by getting on for half of British workers, and there are considerable regional variations. The minimum income requirement is greater when there are children and can be met only through limited sources. Those who are successful at the initial stage of application must meet other criteria at later stages, but it is too soon to see their impact.

There is also a block—I use that term advisedly—on applications by adult dependent relatives to join British citizens and permanent residents here. They have to demonstrate a very high level of dependency, one which suggests to me that they would not in fact be able to travel, and that the sponsor’s financial support is not sufficient to provide care in their own country. Will the Minister give an example of when an application by anyone in this group could be successful? If you have the money to meet the requirements to come here, you have the money to be supported in your original country.

The Migration Advisory Committee was asked about the income needed to support applicants,

“without them becoming a burden on the state”.

That is an economic remit, and it gave economic advice, but as the MAC recognised, there are also legal, moral, and social dimensions. Our report calls for an independent review as to these impacts. Noble Lords will be familiar with the work of Oxford University’s Centre on Migration, Policy and Society. COMPAS is just the sort of organisation I have in mind to do such a review. It also calls for a review of the income level and how the system is working. I am well aware that the Government have said in recent answers to Parliamentary Questions that the rules are working as intended. They say that they will keep the impact under review without having any proposal to conduct an immediate review.

A study by Middlesex University suggests that preventing up to 17,800 migrant partners—the Government’s estimate—from coming and working here will cost the UK as much as £850 million over 10 years in lost economic activity. There is no evidence that most migrant partners have claimed public funds during their first five years here. Most, in fact, work and pay tax, and want to do so. Conversely, excluding a partner may increase claims on the state. A single parent may need support, which would not be necessary if there were two parents here to share the care of the child. Both sets of rules are driving out some of the very people who contribute significantly to our society. Of course, that is a double win if this is a numbers game.

The reality of the finances of many families does not fall neatly within narrow criteria. What about an incoming partner’s employability and earnings or indeed a significant job offer? Surely it would be sensible to review the exclusion of these. A lot of employment does not come within tier 2, an alternative route which is often suggested as being available. What about self-employment? It is subject to peaks and troughs and it is not always evidenced in the easy ways that the Government would want; but as a country we want entrepreneurial spirits. What about the length of time that savings must be held and their form when an applicant relies on savings in lieu of earnings? This affects people over a range of circumstances. I have to say that I think anyone holding an awful lot of liquid cash is likely not to be handling his assets very well. I have just heard of a high-net-worth couple that we would surely want within our tax base here who have relocated to another country because of the rules. I urge the Government to review the application of non-cash assets. What about the assistance available from family members—members who feel it natural and who are desperate to help their younger family members? This is felt particularly acutely by grandparents who want to be part of their grandchildren’s lives but cannot if what they can provide by way of accommodation and money cannot be counted to meet the requirements.

A child’s early months and years are hugely significant in his development, not merely—if “merely” is the right word—his well-being. In another part of the legislative forest, a child’s welfare by statute is paramount; so says the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Noble Lords are of course very familiar with Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights and with Section 55. It was as recently as Tuesday that we discussed in debate on the Children and Families Bill a government clause providing for a presumption that the involvement of a parent in the life of a child will further the child’s welfare. The four UK Children’s Commissioners support an independent review and that the obligation to secure a child’s rights to a family life be reflected. The Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration recommends that the best interests of the child should be referred to expressly in decisions. We now even seem to see parents who are not allowed to live here being refused a visitor’s visa. It is no answer that the Briton should take his British children and live abroad if that is not the best for his family. I heard someone affected by these rules on a radio phone-in say that he was building up a business here—and that there just was not much call for mortgage-broking in Nigeria.

There were some changes in April to the evidence of means that it is required but—this point applies much more widely than to this type of application—the evidential requirements are not sufficiently clear or straightforward for applicants to understand. I do not think it is appropriate that we have managed to create a system where the ordinary applicant has to find legal advice. Indeed, it is a sorry state of affairs if the scope for flexibility and discretion in an assessment is constrained by the abilities of entry clearance officers and other immigration staff.

I would like to talk about the time taken for dealing with applications and appeals, whether the objectives of promoting integration are achieved, whether the rules support family life—which is clearly an objective of the Government—and about the amount of taxpayers’ money which is being spent, and will be spent, on government lawyers defending decisions, but I have to leave time for others who I hope will talk about the real human dilemmas.

We have a higher income threshold than any other major western country except Norway. We are out of step with the rest of the EU. Is it right that if, for practical reasons, you are not able as a couple, one of you not being an EEA citizen, to move to Ireland or France to live and work there for just a few months and then come to the UK under the treaty as EU citizens, you are denied the opportunity to live in this EU country as a family?

We live in an interconnected world, a term which was used in the previous debate. British citizens fall in love with people from Canada, Bangladesh, Costa Rica, Chile and Australia. We want to protect our reputation, a point which is often raised in connection with student visas. We want to protect our values, care for our parents, and have a family life. One of those values is fairness. These rules are not regarded as fair by so many of our fellow citizens. I therefore repeat the inquiry’s call for a review because of, as I have said, the outrage, confusion, puzzlement and anguish that are being felt.

15:52

[Lord Parekh]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for introducing this debate on changes to the immigration rules. I will concentrate on three areas that worry me greatly.

The first has to do with the way in which one is not allowed to bring one’s parents and grandparents from the country of one’s origin. The new immigration rules require that if your parents or grandparents are over the age of 65, ill, disabled or otherwise unable to function, you may not bring them so long as you have a sibling in the country of origin who can look after them, or can hire a nurse who can look after them. I find this simply extraordinary for half a dozen important reasons.

First, looking after one’s parents or grandparents is a privilege to be enjoyed and an obligation to be discharged. It is not something that you outsource to your siblings or a nurse. Secondly, it is not just a question of physical care, which a sibling or nurse can provide; it is about emotional reassurance and support during the last days of one’s parents or grandparents, which only you can provide. Thirdly, people would leave the country if confronted with the choice of either going to their countries of origin to look after their parents or staying here. In fact, we had a moving submission from the British Medical Association written by Stephanie Creighton on behalf of a large number of doctors and consultants, many of them saying that they would leave the country. In fact, a couple of them have left already, simply because they could not bring their parents to live with them here.

Fourthly, I find the whole thing quite pointless. If our concern is to ensure that no demands are made on public funds, that is already taken care of. If people here who bring parents or grandparents are prepared to look after them—they used to be able to do so—those parents or grandparents will not be dependent on public funds: in which case, what is the point of this rule?

If this were the only alternative for controlling immigration, I would at least concede the point of it. Canada does not follow this policy. It has a super visa under which parents and grandparents can be brought in for two years until such time as their right to permanent settlement is decided. In the United States there is no problem. In fact, a few years ago, when I tried to bring my parents here—they were in their 80s—my brother, who is settled in the United States, found it much easier for them to spend their last few years with him.

More importantly, if our concern is to create a culture in which the aged are respected, I should have thought that letting people bring in their parents and grandparents would be ideal. It sets an example to their children and to wider society and helps to shift the culture in which the old are seen as a liability or a burden. So far, I have accepted the terminology of the rules, which talk about parents and grandparents. There is a complete embargo on uncles and aunts. I come from a civilisation where very often uncles perform more or less the same role as parents, as they did in my case.

If your parents are dead or disabled, you might feel that you have incurred the same moral obligation and emotional commitment to your uncle as you have to your parents. There is no reason why one should impose a complete embargo. Immigration officers should be required to look at the nature of the relationship. If the relationship with an uncle or aunt is of a kind that one would recognise as filial, they should qualify.

My first concern is therefore simply this, and I really want to emphasise it: not allowing one to bring in parents and grandparents as long as there is someone else to look after them is simply morally unacceptable. It is also unworthy of a civilised society. We are asking people to outsource their obligations to somebody else and saying, “Do not worry, pass it on to somebody”. That is a culture that we should not aim to encourage.

My second difficulty with the immigration rules involves family visitor appeals. These are being disallowed and people whose applications have failed are being told that they can apply again. Family visitor appeals make up about one-third of all immigration appeals and a large number of them succeed. The Government say that they succeed because very often new information is provided at the appeal stage, but as I look at some of the applications I do not find that. In fact, what is called new information is often the exposure of implicit bias, important facts that were mentioned but neglected, or bureaucratic irregularity that is pointed out.

It is certainly true, as the Government have said, that in some cases new information was provided, but the House should bear in mind that this is not the only factor. Other factors that appear at the appeal stage include the way in which certain biases appear. It is therefore important that we should allow family visitor appeals.

My third concern is one which the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, rightly pointed out: the way in which one is allowed to bring in spouses. This is a long story and many of us have spent at least 30 or 35 years fighting for the right to bring spouses. The Government require an income of at least £18,600. If a child is involved, it is £22,400. On current estimates, just under 50% of people simply would not qualify, because they do not earn that kind of money. For some of us in this House, like me, a university professor, £18,000 is not even a quarter of what one earns, but that is not what schoolteachers, nurses, UK Border Agency officers or even some sections of retired people earn. If we insist on this sum we will disqualify half the ethnic minority population, as well as many others.

Equally importantly, income fluctuates. In a volatile economy, jobs come and go. I might have a job paying £18,600 today, but tomorrow it might be much less. Nor do the regulations take into account the likely income of the spouse, or the way in which, among ethnic minorities and elsewhere, families generally chip in with their savings. I very much hope that the Government will reconsider this figure.

16:00

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Hamwee for bringing this issue to the fore and for her work on the inquiry that she led. One of the big differences between the United Kingdom and, say, Egypt, is that there is a very broad political consensus. Although we may argue between different sides of the House, and on occasion even more on this side of the House, at least we have fundamental principles that we believe in. Whether we are Liberal Democrats, social democrats, socialists, libertarians or Conservatives, we have certain values in common. They include, perhaps, the market economy, democracy, the rule of law, and all the things that bind us together and ensure that we have a stable, long-term democracy.

Two elements of that come within the area of family life. One is that the state should not determine who you can or cannot marry. The second is that families ought to be able to live together; the state should always allow them to live together. We can all think of exceptions. Sham marriages, of which there have been many, should be prevented; forced marriages are illegal and wrong; and the state splits up families when there is criminality by sending criminals to penitentiaries and prison, which clearly is right. However, whether families choose to live together, and who we marry, should be up to us as citizens. In particular, they are our rights as British citizens.

We have heard some of the background figures. Some 5 million UK citizens live abroad. We think of all the citizens from other countries who live here, but 5 million of us are elsewhere. Every year something like 150,000 of our citizens migrate from the UK for more than one year. They are not necessarily retired people—or gangsters, who used to go to Spain before the European arrest warrant but now go further abroad. Some 90% of them are of working age. Perhaps more importantly for this debate, two-thirds of them are single; they are not married when they go. We also know—I know this from my own family—that people go abroad, to university and to study, and they go abroad on gap years. Those areas are expanding.

What happens to the 90% of young, single people when they are working abroad and wanting to get on with life? Strangely enough, they tend to meet people and fall in love with them. We should celebrate that. Strangely enough, a large number of them get married and, praise the Lord, have children. This has happened in my extended family, and it will be something that increases. However, as we have heard, it is estimated that some 47% of these people would not have an income that would enable them to come back as a family unit, with or without their children, to the United Kingdom.

I will give two examples that I have come up against. I went to Buenos Aires over Christmas and the new year, because two members of my extended family had got married and had a son, who now has Argentinian as well as British citizenship. They invited us out there, and we met another British citizen who had married a Brazilian woman. Now they as a family can no longer come back to the United Kingdom. I have had correspondence from someone whose family I knew a long time ago and who now lives in Canada. She is now married. She cannot come back to the United Kingdom with her spouse because they are not able to fulfil the income requirements.

We talk about those bad guys, the tax exiles, but we now have marriage exiles from this country, and children of British citizens who cannot come back and grow up in British society if they want to. We have British grandparents in this country who are unable to meet, look after and nurture their grandchildren and to see them grow up. That is the outcome of these regulations and of the legislation behind them.

Where do we look for our guidance? I looked back at some of the 2010 election manifestos. First, I looked at the Conservative manifesto, and I would like to bring the House’s attention to it. Right at the beginning it mentioned families. On page 41, and I am utterly with my Conservative coalition brothers and sisters on this, it stated:

“We will … make Britain the most family-friendly country in Europe … Strong families are the bedrock of a strong society … We will help families with all the pressures they face … We will not be neutral on this … Britain’s families will get our full backing across all”—

I emphasise “all”—

“our policies”.

That clearly includes immigration and migration. Those points were reflected in the coalition agreement, which stated on page 14:

“The Government believes that strong and stable families of all kinds are the bedrock of a strong and stable society. That is why we need to make our society more family friendly”.

We are failing in this area, particularly on this issue. It will be a growing one, and it will affect all our families. It affects mine, although I am pleased to say that my wife’s son-in-law managed to gain entry before these arrangements came into play. I am an absolutist in this area, and I ask the Minister: do the Government, too, believe that the state should not determine who can marry or whether families can stay together?

16:07

[Lord Kilclooney]

My Lords, in the 20 years that I was a Member of the other place, I never had a visa application case to deal with. Of course, that is easily explained. Representing Northern Ireland during the 30 years of the Troubles, I found that no foreigners wanted to come and live in Northern Ireland, so no visas were required. We got the odd foreigner coming up from the Republic of Ireland, but otherwise none at all. How times have changed. Immigration is now a big challenge in Northern Ireland, as it is elsewhere in the United Kingdom. We have tens of thousands of foreign people now living in Northern Ireland, from Lithuania, Poland and especially Portugal.

The report that we have before us today from the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Migration is an excellent publication. All-party groups have had some criticism in the media in recent weeks, especially about staff, access to this building et cetera. However, I think that this is one of the finest examples of work by an all-party parliamentary group. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and her colleagues on the good work of their group, because it is a thorough, detailed and excellent report and certainly enhances the good name of all-party parliamentary groups.

I want to stress several points in the report before I go on to one particular example, without mentioning names. One is the delay in deciding these applications. I know of a case where a visa for a spouse, married to a United Kingdom citizen in Northern Ireland, was applied for in February 2012. The decision was made by the Secretary of State in May 2013—15 months later. That is an intolerable delay for a family unit as they wait to find out whether or not they will be awarded a visa.

On page 23 of the report, a submission from the Belfast Migrant Centre refers to the problem of the minimum income requirement, which is of course uniform throughout the United Kingdom. However, as the centre points out, average wages vary throughout the different regions of the United Kingdom, whether it is Scotland, Wales, the north of England or Northern Ireland. Is it fair to have a standard minimum income requirement when average wages vary in different regions of the United Kingdom?

I know personally the people involved in a case where a girl from Australia, loyal to Her Majesty the Queen, applied for a spouse’s visa. She had been working in the United Kingdom and had a work permit since 2008, five years ago. She is the unit sister of a 38-bed nursing home in Northern Ireland and went back to her home country of Australia in February 2011 to marry a United Kingdom citizen from Northern Ireland. He is from the third generation running a family firm in Northern Ireland, formed in 1975, which now employs 25 people. There is therefore no issue of a minimum income requirement in this case. However, the Secretary of State surprisingly reached the conclusion that she is married to a British citizen—which, of course, is correct—and went on to state in the decision: “As both speak English there are no insurmountable obstacles to both travelling to Australia together—as such your application fails”. It is unbelievable that that could happen. Someone who employs 25 people and who has been living in Northern Ireland for seven or eight years goes back to Australia to get married and is told that the application for a visa to live in the United Kingdom has failed. It is terrible for the married couple and has very adverse implications for a successful family firm.

While thousands of EU citizens flow into all parts of the United Kingdom each year—a net inflow of 200,000 per year, some of whom now probably work in the Home Office assessing visa applications—people from Australia, New Zealand and Canada, subjects loyal to Her Majesty the Queen, are being refused visas. Is it any wonder that support for UKIP is increasing as more and more people realise the implications of the present government policies on immigration and visas? I appeal to the Government to accept the recommendation of the all-party group that the whole procedure needs to be reviewed.

16:13

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness on having introduced the debate. She was right to do so. It is very important that this matter should receive scrutiny and consideration in this House.

I am deeply concerned by the situation in which we find ourselves because it seems to me that when we talk about the kind of society we want to be in—we spend an awful lot of time talking about that—what really matters, and the values which we have as central to that society, should be evident in all aspects of our life. People, however reluctantly, can understand the need for immigration controls and immigration policy. That is true of this country and of our friends abroad. What upsets people is when, within that immigration policy, we do not follow through the logic which we say is vital to maintaining the values and behaviour which we see as being central to our nation.

I am really very disturbed that we are speaking with forked tongues on the issue of family. We keep emphasising the importance of family in our own society, but it does not apply to people who have been allowed through the immigration system to come and join us and make a contribution to our society. Either the family matters or it does not. I found the evidence submitted by the BMA, to which my noble friend Lord Parekh has already referred, very interesting. It talks not just about the personal pressures but about the quality of work undertaken by doctors if they are surrounded by their family or if they are debarred from having their family with them. If we see these doctors as essential to the operation of our health service—and, my God, they make a huge contribution to our health and well-being—it is terribly important that family values should apply, to enable them to perform at their best.

My noble friend, Lord Parekh, in a delightful but telling way, wove together the principle and practicalities of this. We all know, in our own families, how important grandparents are to the operation of the family, enabling mothers to work and running children to school and to their activities. Grandparents have a crucial part to play in the success of the family as part of society. It is shooting ourselves in the foot to say that we want people who are entitled to come through our immigration system, and to welcome them so long as they are making a full, positive contribution to our society, but then to deny those very aspects of life which will enable them to maximise their performance. It just does not make sense.

I also want to pick up on the more difficult, contentious issue of the operation of our penal system. If people have had sentences over a certain period of time they are subject to deportation. I have seen too much evidence that the impact on the children is not taken into account in these decisions. Sometimes there is a quite cynical neglect of any consideration whatever of the children in the paperwork and the rest. We were pioneers—I repeat, pioneers—in the creation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, in which, I am glad to say, the Conservative Party played a big part. We won great international esteem for the part we played, as I was saying the other night in our deliberations on the Children and Families Bill. We have a long way to fall and I am afraid we are falling. What people judge us by is not what we said at the time of the convention’s creation but how we actually operate the convention, not only in detail but in spirit, in our own society and the way we go about organising our affairs. I am not going to say there have not been some marginal improvements, and of course there are some very fine people working in this area. However, are we absolutely certain that the child is central to our considerations in all the work of the UK Border Agency and all the work of the Home Office on deportation in connection with crime? That is what the convention, which we helped to draft, demands. Is the child central to our considerations? This needs to be taken very seriously indeed.

In conclusion, all of us, whatever our party differences across the House, want to live in a nation that feels at peace with itself—a nation that is confident in the underlying principles in our society. We all want to be seen as a nation that is not only successful and achieving in materialist terms but whose characters of compassion, care and concern are self-evident in everything that we do and the way that we go about it. I am not denying the need for an immigration policy—of course I am not, it would be nonsense—but those principles, which are admittedly difficult and challenging, have to be seen as applying in the operation of that policy. I am glad that the noble Baroness has given us the opportunity to look at these issues. Some of them need to be examined very carefully indeed.

16:20

[Lord Avebury]

My Lords, a huge amount of concern has been expressed outside this House about the Government’s policy of making it more difficult for near relatives to join primary migrants who are settled in the UK, contrary to the declaration that my noble friend Lord Teverson quoted, which appears in both the Conservative manifesto and the coalition agreement, and states that,

“strong and stable families ... are the bedrock of a strong and stable society”.

Instead, the Government have divided husbands from wives, parents from children, and elderly dependants from those who want to look after them in their final years. They have weakened family unity and made it harder for migrants to contribute their full potential to our society. They are violating the right to family life and will face challenges, I hope, in the courts.

The Government intend to narrow the permitted exceptions in Article 8 of the ECHR beyond what is permitted in the convention. However, whatever is written into our legislation may have no effect on the jurisprudence of the European Court. If it follows the existing practice of the court, it is a pointless exercise, but if it is more prescriptive, the Government risk a series of expensive cases in Strasbourg, which is already grossly overloaded.

It has been almost impossible for a sponsor to bring an elderly parent to the UK following the amended rules that came into operation last July. From then until the end of October, only one visa was issued to a dependent relative, and, like my noble friend, I would like to know whether anyone else in this category has got past the barriers since then. Is it necessary and proportionate to prevent a migrant looking after an elderly parent? In many cultures, as the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, emphasised, it is an exigent duty to look after your parents in their old age, and making that virtually impossible is doubly inhuman.

Mrs M, aged 65, left her homeland in Iraq with her husband and they were living in Syria. A few years ago, Mr M died, leaving his widow entirely on her own. As the situation in Syria worsened, Mrs M applied to the UK consulate in Beirut to come here as the dependant of her two sons, both of whom are UK citizens. The brothers are poor but a well known charity stepped in to guarantee that Mrs M would be supported without recourse to public funds. When no reply was received to the application, the brothers asked me to help and I wrote to the Minister for Immigration in April. Two months later, I had received no reply, and I wrote again on 15 June. Today, exactly a year after the original application, her son got a refusal letter. So even where the financial and other conditions are satisfied, the Home Office avoids issuing the visa to an elderly dependant in a war zone.

The committee chaired by my noble friend Lady Hamwee, who is to be warmly congratulated on such a professional job of work, found that 61% of British women citizens in work would not qualify to sponsor a non-EEA partner on the basis of their earnings. No account is taken of the provision of free accommodation by parents, other close relatives or an employer. The income threshold was also found to be discriminatory, because women’s earnings are 15% below men’s. The committee’s recommendations deserve sympathetic consideration, as do those of ILPA, BiD and the Migrants’ Rights Network.

To make matters worse, legal aid is no longer available for appeals against refusal of visas for spouses, children and elderly dependants, in spite of the fact that some of these cases are far too complex to be dealt with adequately by litigants in person, as we heard on Tuesday from the Red Cross and UNHCR at a meeting in this House. Many will turn on European case law dealing with the right to family life, of which few non-lawyers would even be aware.

I should like to give an illustration of this in the case of non-EEA victims of domestic abuse. They have a legal right to stay in the UK if they comply with Rule 289A of the Immigration Rules, which is explained in the 48 pages of guidance published under the imprint of the UKBA in April, even though it had been abolished a month earlier. On page 5 of that document, the applicant is told that she must also comply with E-DVILR, an appendix to the Immigration Rules, and other obscure requirements kick in for particular applicants. If the relationship is an informal one, the abused non-EEA partner is clearly even more vulnerable. The Black Women’s Rape Action Project says that the frequency of the abuse and the severity is often more extreme when the victim is an immigrant woman and even more so when she is not married and is in an informal relationship. Even worse, the victim’s presence in the UK becomes unlawful the moment she leaves the abuser. Informal relationship victims have nevertheless won cases before the First-tier Tribunal. I would like to ask my noble friend whether the Government will accept those decisions and amend Rule 289A accordingly.

The successive tightening of the screw on family migration, now being taken a stage further by the MoJ’s Transforming Legal Aid proposals, is not really aimed at saving money. It is part of the Government’s campaign to reduce net migration to below 100,000 by the time of the next election, an impossibility when at the same time we are seeking to attract more than the 206,000 students admitted last year. Family migrants accounted for under 10% of the total last year, but they and their British sponsors are being made to suffer in pursuit of what the Economist has called, “the Tories’ barmiest policy”.

16:27

[Lord Taylor of Warwick]

My Lords, I would like to add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for introducing this debate, and I thank her committee for its excellent report.

“No blacks, no Irish, no dogs”; that was the sign in many windows in Britain in the late 1940s when my father was looking for accommodation. Growing up in Jamaica, he had thought of Britain as the mother land. After fighting for the British Army in the Second World War, he was shocked to be asked, when he came to Britain, when he would be going back home to the Caribbean. But after scoring a century for Warwickshire County Cricket Club he changed overnight from being described in the local Sports Argus as a “Jamaican immigrant” to “local Brummie hero”.

Let us fast forward to August of last year. Instead of racist signs in windows, millions of British TV viewers and thousands in the Olympic stadium cheered a Somali immigrant running to double Olympic gold. What was also significant was that the man from Mogadishu, Mo Farah, was wearing a British vest. Today, many of Britain’s high flyers in public life, business, entertainment and sport are from immigrant backgrounds. This is why the all-party parliamentary group report is so important. It is not an inquiry just about a minority group; it is about the Britain of the future. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, have made the point that the report emphasises that there must be an independent review of the minimum income requirement, and the reasons for that are set out very eloquently.

The rules are such that children, including British children and babies, are being separated from their families. We know that the formative years of any child’s life are the most crucial. It is easier to build a strong child than to repair a broken man. Keeping children away from their families is just storing up trouble for the future, as was so eloquently emphasised by the noble Lords, Lord Teverson and Lord Judd.

What really concerns me is the context in which we are debating these matters. Only today the Home Office produced a report that talked about the negative impact of immigration. It used phrases such as “asylum dispersal areas”; for example, Bolton. What the report did not do was emphasise the positive impacts of immigration. For example, as the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, mentioned, there is evidence from the BMA that the National Health Service has already lost some skilled foreign doctors because they have had to return overseas in order to care for elderly relatives. If you took away immigrants from the NHS and many of our public services, they would be in chaos. What worries me about the Home Office report is that it is really more about the coming election. It is creating an “us and them” attitude, which will play very much into the pathway of racist parties such as the EDL and the BNP. We need a society that comes together. We must argue and debate these matters in that context.

The Prime Minister has described the Government’s immigration policy objective as,

“good immigration, not mass immigration”.

The Government believe, and I agree, that they can reduce overall net migration levels while attracting more of the “brightest and best” migrants whose presence is deemed most beneficial to the UK. But good immigration should also be fair immigration. There is worrying evidence that the recent changes to the Immigration Rules are separating families and depriving Britain of skilled professionals, such as doctors. The Government need to commission an independent review now. Yes, the rules need to be firm, but they also need to be fair.

16:32

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno]

My Lords, I wish that I had made any of the speeches that we have heard this afternoon. It has been a wonderful debate and we thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for making this possible. The report has emphasised the action that is making family life so much more difficult.

I fear that the old British hospitality is becoming British hostility—that is how it looks to those overseas. There is a knee-jerk reaction to so much that happens and half-truths take over from positive, full, thorough-going reports. It seems that if you want to make your home here in the UK, it is an obstacle course now—a difficult and very unwelcoming situation.

So much that we read in our newspapers seems to be there in order to create hostility and stir up opposition to people outside the UK. Of course, we are all immigrants. The English came to Wales, we came to England; we had 3,800 Welsh dairies in London. We have been a people who move, who are happy with each other, and so it should be today.

I read one paper today and there were four stories about the immigrants who are coming and how unwelcome they are, with headlines such as, “Immigrants sponging off the taxpayer”. But the Office for National Statistics says that while 13% of UK taxpayers claim out-of-work benefits, only 7% of immigrants do. Another headline was, “EU migrants take our jobs”. But the facts are that nine out of 10 new jobs are taken by British nationals. We also hear that the epidemic of health tourists is costing us billions. However, the British Medical Journal reported that more Britons seek health advice overseas than people from overseas seek health treatment here in the UK. Scaremongering creates hostility, both for immigrants and British citizens. It has no place in a civilised society.

As has already been mentioned by others in this debate, in the field of asylum and immigration it seems that we are making the door narrower and narrower and the obstacle course more difficult. Instances of this include the UK citizenship test, which we mentioned here the other day, and the low, frozen asylum support rates. An asylum seeker who comes to the UK must wait 12 months before being allowed even to consider taking a job. He must exist on £35.63 a week. That is the income. It is not, as some suggest, that £1,000 cheques are waiting for asylum seekers as soon as they arrive in this country. That is not the truth. The truth is that we make it more and more difficult for people who come to this country. Now, of course, there are new restrictions which will divide families. That is totally opposed to our British tradition.

I turn now to the “Life in the UK” citizenship test. I owe a lot to Dr Thom Brooks of Durham University for his investigation into these questions. This UK citizenship test is totally inappropriate. We are told:

“If you spill a stranger’s drink by accident, it is good manners (and prudent) to offer to buy another”.

People have to know that, and applicants are also expected to know 278 historical dates. Can any noble Lord tell me the height of the London Eye? You are expected to know it. There are 3,000 facts in this citizenship test. Even we could not answer all the questions. A little while ago in this Chamber I asked, “When did the Emperor Claudius invade Britain?”. The answer was “43AD”, but nobody raised a hand. The test makes it impossible for people who want to become part of a community here in the United Kingdom to have any confidence at all. Dr Brooks said that it is more like a bad pub quiz than anything meriting true consideration. The ladies here might like to know that in the test there are 29 historical figures who are men and only four who are ladies.

The Government are erecting more barriers and making entry into Britain nearly impossible, especially for those with little funding. Not only should we welcome people, we should welcome people who have talent and potential. A little while ago I was with the Watoto children’s choir, who come from Uganda. I asked them what they would like to be when they grow up. They are orphans, whose parents died of AIDS. One little girl said she wanted to be a nurse and a little boy said he wanted to be an airline pilot. We came to the last child, who was 10 years old and a feisty little fellow. “What do you want to be?”. “I want to be President of Uganda”. I thought that was a wonderful answer. People have dreams and they have abilities. Our approach to those who want to come to these shores should not be to close the door and make it difficult. We should not only assess the money they have, but also the abilities and dreams that they can share with us.

16:38

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Llandudno, and his tribute to the contribution that migrants have made to this country across time. We have discussed many of those in our debate today. I join those who thanked the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for calling this important debate and for the work of her all-party group and join my noble friend, Lord Kilclooney, in emphasising the benefits that such groups can bring to the parliamentary process. Only last week, three new sets of consultations around children in care, covering children missing from children’s homes, out-of-authority placements and data sharing, were produced by the Minister for Children and Families. These were a direct result of the work of Ann Coffey MP, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Runaway and Missing Children and Adults, and of that group’s report, produced jointly with the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Looked After Children and Care Leavers, on children who go missing from care. These can be very effective instruments.

Although I have not looked in detail at immigration issues for some time, I have an inkling of the challenges that the Government face in immigration policy, as I served for five years on a sub-committee of your Lordships’ EU Select Committee tasked with looking at immigration policy. Indeed, I had the privilege of serving with the noble Lords, Lord Avebury and Lord Teverson. That experience made me particularly concerned that over-relaxed policies on migration allowed businesses to neglect some of the less work-ready youth of this country, because European Union labour could easily be found from abroad. We have all become more aware of the need for managed migration as we become aware of pressures on services, particularly school places, and especially of the housing shortage, and how these have contributed to social tensions. I pay tribute to the Government for their attention to the need to manage migration more carefully.

However, I am very troubled by the rules that we are debating today. The new income requirement for sponsoring a non-European partner affects UK citizens. Most of them are hard-working taxpayers and many are making an important contribution to our health service and especially to the care of the elderly. These points have been made various noble Lords.

The rules are pushing some women into dependency on the state, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said. As lone parents, they can no longer afford to work. Most importantly, the rules are depriving children of their parents—their fathers in particular. They may have the effect of increasing pressures on housing and school places in London, as it is only here in London that mothers can hope to earn the income necessary to be reunited with their spouses, because of London weighting.

The four UK Children’s Commissioners have issued a statement detailing their concern about the impact of the rules on the rights of children to a family life. In their briefing, they said that the Government’s impact assessment for the new rules,

“barely makes any reference to a child’s best interests and fails to consider at all how these were considered in arriving at the proposals for change”.

They also reported their concern that decision-makers may not be considering the best interests of children in individual assessments of applications, as guidance requires.

The emerging evidence, as shown in the report from the all-party parliamentary group on the impact of the rules, shows that they are having the surely unintended consequence of dividing children from their parents, in particular fathers, with the potential for long-term damage. We all know the poor outcomes for boys growing up without fathers and all lament the increasing number of boys growing up without a father involved in their life. Not so long ago, as I attended the juvenile court in west London, it was drawn to my attention that the young people attending that day would occasionally have a mother with them but that no fathers were present at the proceedings.

Only this Tuesday, at Second Reading of the Children and Families Bill, as referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, we heard the Schools Minister defending a new legal presumption for the family court: that it is normally in the best interests of the child to have both parents involved in their upbringing. I hope that I have that correct. The noble Baroness, Lady Perry, whom I am pleased to see in her place, made a very passionate and eloquent speech in that debate. She said:

“Denying a child adequate contact and time with both their parents is not in that child’s best interest. The sense of self-worth and confidence in any child comes primarily from one's parents, and continued contact with two parents can strengthen a child’s confidence, even after the trauma of divorce. I was interested to read in the Sunday Times … that even bad fathers should, with proper supervision and safeguards, be allowed time with their children”.—[Official Report, 2/7/13; col. 1119.]

It is that important.

I have several questions for the Minister. In formulating these regulations, was consideration given to the impact that they would have on children, particularly on those boys thus denied contact with their fathers? Can he say how many boys are unable to have regular contact with their fathers as a result of these rules? If not, can he say how many children are affected? Are the Government concerned at the impact on boys being denied access to their fathers as a result of the rules? Will the Minister tell us whether the Government intend to review these impacts and what steps they will take to ensure that any damage to children is minimised? That is rather a lot of questions and the Minister may prefer to write to me.

In considering these regulations, I was reminded of the experience of setting up the Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre about 10 or 12 years ago. Again, this was to address a thorny problem with immigration. When families had exhausted all the processes for asylum, the Government needed to remove these families and some of them were unwilling to go. Eventually it was determined that some of them would be locked up in Yarl’s Wood. Unfortunately, that was a category C prison and so we had children, babies, young children and their mothers entering the reception area of the prison, being taken through a prison gate and all the locked doors in that prison, and being cared for by prison officers.

The Children’s Commissioner again played a very important role, visiting on many occasions and campaigning on the issue. I congratulate the coalition Government on deciding that this was not the right policy and reversing it. Visiting on one occasion, I remember meeting a 16 year-old girl who had been in that setting for, I believe, nine months with her younger sister. She was so angry: how could she, as a child who had committed no crime, be denied her freedom for all that time during her childhood? I had no way to respond to her on that occasion.

What really came across in the Yarl’s Wood experience was that there was no clear thought at the beginning of the policy about the impact on children and families. Over the 10 years, there was a great deal of change and consideration and, eventually, the policy was overturned. I hope that, in this case as well, we may see further thought from the Government and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

16:48

[Lord Rosser]

My Lords, in view of the difficulty that I created in the previous debate by sitting down sooner than the Minister expected, perhaps I should say to him that I am not sure that I will take up all my allocated time on this occasion either.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for giving us the opportunity to have this debate and to discuss the report of the inquiry launched by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Migration. We have heard some powerful and passionate speeches, which I will not even attempt to emulate.

As has already been said, immigrants have benefitted Britain over a great many years. They have come to our shores to help build and develop some of our major companies, as well as sustain our National Health Service and win us Nobel prizes. It is because immigration is important that it needs to be controlled, and its impact needs to be fair for all. We need to build common bonds, including more emphasis on speaking English.

We also need to draw the distinction between immigration that works for Britain and immigration that does not. That is why we support policies to bring down the pace of migration, particularly low-skilled migration, and why we support stronger controls on people coming to do low-skilled jobs.

However, some changes that are made to immigration rules can have unfortunate consequences, and today we are discussing one such change—a significant one. In July last year, as we know, major changes to family-related immigration categories came into effect. With limited exemptions, British citizens or settled persons wishing to sponsor their non-EEA national spouse or partner to join them in the UK must now demonstrate a minimum gross annual income of £18,600, and more if they are also sponsoring dependent children. New foreign spouses or partners must also wait for five years rather than two, as previously, before they become eligible to apply for permanent settlement in the UK. More restrictive eligibility criteria have also been introduced for adult dependent relatives of British citizens who wish to settle in the UK.

Last year the Government anticipated that the change would result in, I believe, up to 17,800 fewer family visas being granted every year, arguing that keeping the bar high for family migration could result in savings to the welfare bill. At the time, we expressed our support for strengthening the family migration rules to protect UK taxpayers and said that if people want to make this country their home, they should contribute and not have a negative impact on public funds. However, we cast doubt on the Government’s approach that focused so much on the sponsor’s salary, and said that there needed to be a fair framework for those who fall in love and build family relationships across borders.

The report from the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Migration on these new family migration rules, which has just been published, has already been referred to extensively. It highlights the impacts of recent rule changes on ordinary British citizens hoping to build a family in the UK with a non-EEA husband, wife or partner. Among the report’s key findings were that some British citizens and permanent residents in the UK, including people in full-time employment, have been separated from a non-EEA partner, and in some cases their children, as a result of the income requirement.

In addition, some British citizens and permanent residents have been prevented from returning to the UK with their non-EEA partner and any children, again as a result of the income requirement. In some cases the non-EEA partner was the main earner with a medium or high salary, but that could not be counted towards the income requirement under the new rules. On top of all this, the report found that some children, including British children, have been indefinitely separated from a non-EEA parent, once again as a result of the income requirement.

It looks as though the doubts raised about the Government’s approach, which was focused so heavily on the sponsor’s salary, have, unfortunately, been proved right. Among the recommendations made in the all-party group’s report was that the level of the income requirement should be reviewed with a view to minimising any particular impacts on UK sponsors as a result of their region, gender, age or ethnicity, and that family migration rules should ensure that children are supported to live with their parents in the UK where their best interests require this. We certainly see no difficulty in having a review without prejudging what its outcome might be.

I want to raise a specific point about our Armed Forces. As I understand it, the Government have now decided that members of our Armed Forces posted or fighting for our country overseas should not be exempt from the new family migration rules. Perhaps the Minister could explain the thinking behind that decision, as it is in marked contrast to the Government’s decision, announced yesterday, of an exemption for members of our Reserve Armed Forces in respect of the employment tribunal qualifying employment period when pursuing claims for unfair dismissal on the grounds of reserve service.

It remains to be seen what the Government’s response will be to the findings in the report and the recommendations of the inquiry launched by the all-party group. However, it does not look as though the new rules in their present form and the way in which they are being applied are, to put it mildly, doing a great deal to strengthen and enhance family life in what is hardly an insignificant number of instances.

16:54

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Taylor of Holbeach)]

I thank all noble Lords for contributing to a good debate and in particular my noble friend Lady Hamwee for tabling the Motion. It can but be a proper function of this House to scrutinise government and what it does. In this area, noble Lords have indicated in their speeches today sincere and genuine interest in the application of policy.

As noble Lords know, the Government are determined to reform the immigration system and restore public confidence in it. In that context we implemented in July 2012 a major set of reforms of the requirements to be met by non-European Economic Area nationals seeking to enter or remain in the UK on the basis of family life. The Government welcome the report of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Migration on its inquiry into the impact of the new family migration rules. In monitoring this impact, we will consider carefully the findings of the report.

Many noble Lords have spoken of their concerns about these new rules. The passion of the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and the challenges from my noble friends Lord Teverson, Lord Avebury and Lord Taylor of Warwick have provided us with a test. I enjoyed the speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Parekh and Lord Kilclooney. I am not entirely sure that I enjoy the testing standards of my noble friend Lord Roberts of Llandudno, but I am pleased that in his closing speech the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, demonstrated that we agree on many of the key issues and recognise the heart of them for government. I hope he does not believe that I presume too much.

Perhaps I can start by setting out the background to the changes introduced last year. My noble friend Lord Teverson focused very strongly on his concerns about family life in this country. The Government welcome those who want to make a life in the UK with their families, to work hard and to make a contribution, but family life must not be established here at the taxpayer’s expense. That is fundamental for the income test and is the reasoning behind the income threshold. We expect the new income threshold to prevent burdens on the taxpayer and promote successful integration. Those wishing to establish their family life here must be able to stand on their own feet financially. That is not an unreasonable expectation as the basis of sustainable family migration and good integration outcomes, on which I am sure all noble Lords agree.

The previous requirement for adequate maintenance was not, as it turned out, an adequate basis for sustainable family migration and good integration outcomes. It provided little assurance that UK-based sponsors and their migrant partner could support themselves financially over the long term. One of its considerable downsides was that it involved a complex assessment of the current and prospective employment income of the parties and their other financial means, including current or promised support from third parties. This was not conducive to clear, consistent decision-making.

That is why the Government decided to establish a new financial requirement for sponsoring family migrants. The level of the threshold was based principally on expert advice from the independent Migration Advisory Committee. The levels of income required are those at which a couple, once settled in the UK and taking into account any children, because children can be included in the threshold by an additional threshold sum, generally cannot access income-related benefits. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and my noble friend Lord Taylor of Warwick said that a family policy needs to be fair. The Government believe that this is a fair and appropriate basis for family migration. It is right for migrants, local communities and the UK as a whole.

The Government agreed with the Migration Advisory Committee’s conclusion that there is no clear case for varying the income threshold across the UK. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, will understand that it would be impossible to set a threshold for migration to Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales. What would become of freedom of movement within the United Kingdom? It is unreal, and that is the principal reason why it has been ruled out. A requirement that varied by region could lead to sponsors moving to a lower threshold area in order to meet the requirement before returning once a visa was granted. It could also mean that a sponsor living in a wealthy part of a relatively poor region could be subject to a lower income threshold than a sponsor living in a deprived area of a relatively wealthy region. A single national threshold also provides clarity and simplicity for applicants and caseworkers. I think all noble Lords will agree that the Immigration Rules are complex enough. They have been complicated by politicians and lawyers, and we need to make the rules as simple as we can if we want an efficient and effective way of determining outcomes.

We have built significant flexibility into the operation of the threshold allowing for different income sources to be used towards meeting the threshold as well as significant cash savings. Employment overseas is no guarantee of finding work in the UK, and the previous and prospective earnings of the migrant partner are not taken into account in determining whether the threshold is met. If the migrant partner has a suitable job offer in the UK, they can apply under tier 2 of the points-based system.

We have also made significant changes to the adult and elderly dependent relative route, ending the routine expectation of settlement in the UK for parents and grandparents aged 65 or over. A number of noble Lords were concerned about this. The noble Lord, Lord Parekh, made an eloquent speech about it. Close family members are now able to settle in the UK only if they require a level of long-term personal care as a result of their age, illness or disability that can be provided only in the UK by their relative here. The route is now limited to those applying from outside the UK. These changes reflect the significant NHS and social care costs to which these cases can give rise.

The report highlights some cases affected by the changes that we have introduced to this route. The new criteria for adult dependent relatives more clearly reflect the intended thrust of the requirement of the old rules that parents and grandparents aged under 65 and other adult dependent relatives of any age be allowed in the most exceptional compassionate circumstances to settle in the UK.

There should be no expectation that elderly parents and grandparents who are self-sufficient or who can be cared for overseas should be able to join their children or grandchildren in the UK. That is the policy intention and the cases which have been highlighted are not unintended consequences. They demonstrate how the policy is intended to work.

The new family rules are intended to bring a sense of fairness back to our immigration system. The public are rightly concerned that those accessing public services and welfare benefits have contributed to their cost. The changes we have made are having the right impact and they are helping, I hope, to restore public confidence in the immigration system.

The number of partner and other family route entry clearance visas issued in the year ending March 2013 is 37,470. It has fallen by 16% compared with the year ending March 2012. I can assure all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate—the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, approached this with a great deal of understanding of the issues—that we will continue to monitor the impact of the rules. Since last July we have made some adjustments to the rules in response to feedback from customers and caseworkers. These include allowing those in receipt of research grants paid on a tax-free basis to count the amount on a gross basis and counting investments transferred into cash savings within the period of six months before the date of application. My honourable friend Mark Harper has also indicated, in a parallel debate in another place, that he would consider representations made on parts of detail about the operation of other aspects of the rules. I hope noble Lords feel that this debate has been worth while. Certainly the report of the APPG has been worth while.

[Lord Judd]

The Minister, in his usual way, is replying with great courtesy and concern. We all appreciate that. He referred to the complexity in the regulations and the difficulties for caseworkers and, indeed, we might add, border officials and the rest in applying those regulations. Does he not agree that that is why it is so important that certain salient points of guidance should be expressed all the time by Ministers and others, such as the paramount importance of the child, the rights of the child and the situation of the child in the midst of this jungle of complexity?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I would agree with the noble Lord that our policy here within the UK is a strong focus on family—and indeed on children. It could be argued that there is a dichotomy here between an immigration policy that is designed to limit numbers and reduce net migration and the maintenance of family structures.

I was going on to seek to answer the noble Lord’s points on a number of issues because he did ask about the impact on children. We recognise the importance of the duty under Section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in the UK. The consideration of the welfare and best interests of children is taken into account in immigration policy. The noble Lord came in right on cue even if I have not been able to satisfy him totally.

My noble friend Lord Avebury asked whether any adult dependent relative visas have been issued since October 2012. I can give him an answer to that. In the year ending March 2013, 5,066 visas were issued to other family members according to published Home Office statistics. These figures do not separately identify adult dependent relatives of British citizens and settled persons in the UK.

The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, asked what consideration of the impact of policies on boys denied contact with the fathers, and of the impact of policies on both boys and girls, was taken into account in the development and implementation of the new rules. We do not know how many children are affected by the rules. Where the effects of refusal under the rules would be unjustifiably harsh, there is a provision to grant leave outside the rules on a case-by-case basis if there are exceptional circumstances.

I said before that this has been a good debate, not least because there have been three John D Taylors speaking in it. I am grateful to all noble Lords, however, for their contributions. I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Hamwee for bringing the report to the attention of the House and of the Government. We welcome all contributions to the debate on how best to ensure that family migration is done on a properly sustainable basis. I am grateful to have the chance to hear the views on these issues. I am conscious that I have not replied to every point that has been raised in this debate but, with the leave of noble Lords, I will write a commentary on the debate, covering all points made, addressed to my noble friend Lady Hamwee and copied to all participatory Peers, and place a copy in the Library.

House adjourned at 5.11 pm.